To all the people secretly hoping humanity gets wiped out, (and I know there’s a few of you,) because humanity is awful and terrible and we’re ruining the planet and it would be so much better off without us, let me point something out. If humanity disappears from the Earth, it might be better for all the duckies and bunis, (see what I did there?) but there will be no one around to enjoy our absence. It is in the nature of evolution to produce, eventually, beings such as us, capable of reshaping our environment, and as long as the pace of development of that ability outstrips the pace of development of our wisdom to recognize what we’re doing, every future species intelligent enough for us to hold a conversation with is going to share this trait: we find it is easier to destroy than to create so the peak of our civilization is constrained to exist in the interstice between how great our intellectual achievement can be, and the moment our destructive capability becomes great enough that we have enough individuals capable of mass destruction that ONE at least proceeding to destroy the rest becomes inevitable.
The thing I wonder is whether it will take so long for nature to develop another sentient race that by the time it does, all trace of our civilization is wiped off the face of the Earth, or will those distant descendants evolve in short enough time to notice by the traces we leave behind that we existed and be capable by then of deciphering the clues that will remain? What will they think of us? Will they make our same mistakes? Or will they be smart enough to guess that putting all your eggs in a single pan-global-civilizational basket is a stupid idea?
Imagine being in the last group to go! What a stench would exist on the face of the earth. Too many to bury. What level of intelligence is within the body of the final group. Have children? No, they might be left at 3 and under with no one to care for them. So many imaginary problems when we have so many real ones right in front of us!
To all the people secretly hoping humanity gets wiped out, (and I know there’s a few of you,) because humanity is awful and terrible and we’re ruining the planet and it would be so much better off without us, let me point something out. If humanity disappears from the Earth, it might be better for all the duckies and bunis, (see what I did there?) but there will be no one around to enjoy our absence. It is in the nature of evolution to produce, eventually, beings such as us, capable of reshaping our environment, and as long as the pace of development of that ability outstrips the pace of development of our wisdom to recognize what we’re doing, every future species intelligent enough for us to hold a conversation with is going to share this trait: we find it is easier to destroy than to create so the peak of our civilization is constrained to exist in the interstice between how great our intellectual achievement can be, and the moment our destructive capability becomes great enough that we have enough individuals capable of mass destruction that ONE at least proceeding to destroy the rest becomes inevitable.
The thing I wonder is whether it will take so long for nature to develop another sentient race that by the time it does, all trace of our civilization is wiped off the face of the Earth, or will those distant descendants evolve in short enough time to notice by the traces we leave behind that we existed and be capable by then of deciphering the clues that will remain? What will they think of us? Will they make our same mistakes? Or will they be smart enough to guess that putting all your eggs in a single pan-global-civilizational basket is a stupid idea?
This sent a shiver down my spine.
Imagine being in the last group to go! What a stench would exist on the face of the earth. Too many to bury. What level of intelligence is within the body of the final group. Have children? No, they might be left at 3 and under with no one to care for them. So many imaginary problems when we have so many real ones right in front of us!