Is Our Doom Inevitable?

[Kilgore Trout]

The development and increasing rate of progress of technology can bring about the perception that this process, once started, will ultimately keep leading to greater knowledge, and more advanced application of that knowledge. The increasing rate of population growth, the increase in average life span, and the wide dissemination of technology and products feeds this perception, and adds the additional perception that unlimited growth is possible with increasing technology.

However, we are still animals - and although social animals, we are still primarily selfish and shortsighted. Is it, in fact, more likely, that our development of intelligence, and the resulting development of technology, is more likely to lead to our doom, than our unending progress?

In fact, is it possible that we never had a chance at long term survival, once the iterative process of developing technology began? Perhaps our perception of development/progress has never been anything more than an illusion, and once we were able to create technology which improved over successive generations, our fate was sealed.

Even if technology itself doesn't lead to our doom, is it possible that we only had the capability to reach a particular point based on our limited resources, and once we reached that point, we would ultimately began a steady decline, ultimately resulting in a fall of technological civilization, and possibly the end of the human race?

 

[Storm]

Is Our Doom Inevitable?

I would say likely, but not inevitable.

Is it, in fact, more likely, that our development of intelligence, and the resulting development of technology, is more likely to lead to our doom, than our unending progress?

It could go either way. We could nuke ourselves into oblivion, or find technological solutions to problems like overpopulation.

Even if technology itself doesn't lead to our doom, is it possible that we only had the capability to reach a particular point based on our limited resources, and once we reached that point, we would ultimately began a steady decline, ultimately resulting in a fall of technological civilization, and possibly the end of the human race?

I think that scenario is rather unlikely to result in our extinction. Reduced numbers, certainly, but not "the end of the human race." We would balance out eventually, reaching a point where the population was low enough for the planet to sustain.

 

[tumbleweed41]

I do not think it is inevitable, but it is in our own hands.
Without our brainpower and ability to physically manipulate our environment, I doubt we would have made it as long as we have, in the numbers we currently have.
Like many things, technology is not a bane on humans, only the misuse of it.

Barring a great natural catastrophe, I think humans have the ability to continue for much longer than we have already been here.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

I guess I'm asking more whether we get wiped out or not, whether we had a maximum potential, and if it was inevitable that we would eventually fall from that?

So, we may wipe ourselves out, but, if we don't, perhaps we were always doomed for civilization to fall and not be able to recover - particularly once certain key resources in technological development were used up.

The perception that we are in the middle of an endless process of progress may be an illusion, and these times might, ulimately, be the height of human civilization, and will never be matched again.

 

[Rainbow Mage]

It's in our hands, or rather should I say, the hands of the higher ups. A few individual people trying to do the right thing is indeed noble, but it won't change the governments.

 

[Eliot Wild]

The perception that we are in the middle of an endless process of progress may be an illusion, and these times might, ulimately, be the height of human civilization, and will never be matched again.

I don't know. We are smack-dab in the middle of a reality television craze. Please don't scare me with worries that might be the absolute height of human art, culture and civilization.

Nah, I understand, or at least think I do, what you are saying. And like the other respondents, I think we certainly have the potential to go either way.

Hopefully, as a species, we will continue to advance, to evolve and perhaps even venture off this planet in a substantive way. Maybe we will do more than just plant a flag on a lifeless moon. Maybe after realizing the futility of flags to begin with, the futility of forming little groups that suspiciously eye other little groups, we will actually catapult off to some distant galaxy where we can show another species just how incredibly stupid we really are.

Or, yes, I suppose it is possible, maybe we've hit our climax, our maximum potential, given our seemingly staunch refusal to recognize certain resources as finite, along with other prominent factors, it might just all be downhill from here.

I'm hoping for the former. I certainly wouldn't want to be remembered as the species which peaked with "Dancing with the Stars".

 

[KatNotKathy]

Of course it's inevitable. We might be able to hold it off for a really really long time, but entropy will get us in the end.

Then we'll all fly to Utopia, where the skies are made of diamonds!
____________________________/

 

[Storm]

I guess I'm asking more whether we get wiped out or not, whether we had a maximum potential, and if it was inevitable that we would eventually fall from that?

I don't think so. Admittedly, no small part of that is faith. I believe we're destined for something much greater. We may or may not reach it as humans, but reach it we will.

So, we may wipe ourselves out, but, if we don't, perhaps we were always doomed for civilization to fall and not be able to recover - particularly once certain key resources in technological development were used up.

Are you measuring success solely by population density?

I think we'll probably see a sharp drop in numbers, but I hope that will teach us to live within our planetary means.

The perception that we are in the middle of an endless process of progress may be an illusion, and these times might, ulimately, be the height of human civilization, and will never be matched again.

If our current state is the height of human civilization, we are a sorry species indeed.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

If our current state is the height of human civilization, we are a sorry species indeed.

I'm speaking more technologically.

The ability to communicate nearly instantaneously around the world, travel quickly anywhere on the planet, move vast amounts of resources, transplant healthy organs, etc. - these things certainly don't seem sorry considering the fact that 99% of our technology has been developed in that past century.

 

[Storm]

I'm speaking more technologically.

The ability to communicate nearly instantaneously around the world, travel quickly anywhere on the planet, move vast amounts of resources, transplant healthy organs, etc. - these things certainly don't seem sorry considering the fact that 99% of our technology has been developed in that past century.

Ah. I was thinking more along the lines of social and moral issues.

Our current technology is impressive, it's true. To us. I have little doubt that it will continue to advance, though.

 

[Mister Emu]

Advancement gives us the opportunity to avert out doom as opposed to sealing it.

Something will come, eventually, that will destroy the earth. If nothing else, the sun will die. Our only opportunity to survive is to have the ability to leave.

 

[Storm]

Advancement gives us the opportunity to avert out doom as opposed to sealing it.

Something will come, eventually, that will destroy the earth. If nothing else, the sun will die. Our only opportunity to survive is to have the ability to leave.

:yes:

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Our current technology is impressive, it's true. To us. I have little doubt that it will continue to advance, though.

I had always assumed so, and would like to think so, but I'm starting to doubt whether this is the case. In fact, the more experience I gain, and the more I learn about people and history, it seems more intuitively correct to me that we're more likely to end up returning to a state of more primitiveness, rather than ending up with spaceships, house cleaning robots, and transporters.

I think we have the potential as a species to progress to much more advanced levels, but, ironically, I think it's the vast majority of the species which will inhibit this potential, and ultimately cause a crash.

Unfortunately, if we returned to a pre-industrial revolution type of society, it would be doubtful we would be able to get to this level again without sufficient fossil fuels. There may be another path, but it would certainly require a different philosophy, and the maintenance of a much smaller population.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Advancement gives us the opportunity to avert out doom as opposed to sealing it.

Something will come, eventually, that will destroy the earth. If nothing else, the sun will die. Our only opportunity to survive is to have the ability to leave.

Assuming that we even have the potential to leave, let alone the foresight, industry, and impetus. It may not be that we even have the ability to develop technology to go anywhere else.

 

[Mister Emu]

It may not be that we even have the ability to develop technology to go anywhere else.

True, but if we do not technologically advance we definitely won't.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

True, but if we do not technologically advance we definitely won't.

Indeed, and if I don't pay my electric bill, they'll shut off my electricity.

 

[MSizer]

Advancement gives us the opportunity to avert out doom as opposed to sealing it.

Something will come, eventually, that will destroy the earth. If nothing else, the sun will die. Our only opportunity to survive is to have the ability to leave.

Yes, but it seems to me that there are so many possible ways for our species to go extinct (as every single species in history has done before) that we probably won't get far enough spread around the galaxy in time to cheat extinction.

 

[MSizer]

...Unfortunately, if we returned to a pre-industrial revolution type of society, it would be doubtful we would be able to get to this level again without sufficient fossil fuels. There may be another path, but it would certainly require a different philosophy, and the maintenance of a much smaller population.

Yes, I've thought too before that there's going to be a big bust and a return to natural means of life would be our only way to sustain, but even if such an unlikely case were to occur, there will be nowhere near enough sun screen to protect us from the sun's demise, which is expected to vaporaize the earth. Our imminent extinction is completely undeniable IMO.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Yes, I've thought too before that there's going to be a big bust and a return to natural means of life would be our only way to sustain, but even if such an unlikely case were to occur, there will be nowhere near enough sun screen to protect us from the sun's demise, which is expected to vaporaize the earth. Our imminent extinction is completely undeniable IMO.

In fact, life will be long gone from earth long before the sun's demise. The sun will already have slowly expanded enough in 1 billion years to boil off the Earth's oceans. Assuming that some other extinction event hasn't killed of humans, or all life, before that time, that will most certainly be the end.

This wasn't really a question of whether life on earth will end eventually though, but rather, did our species, even with developing the ability to create progressing technology, ever really have a chance of surviving anyway? Is the stuff of science fiction - leaving the planet in spaceships - even within our abilities or possible at all for a lifeform such as ours with our limited resources?

 

[Beyondo]

Humanity as a homosapien will pass away and in its place will be a formless being whose image will be its whim...