Is Our Doom Inevitable?

[Kilgore Trout]

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

Ah yes, like Meatwad.

 

[England my lionheart]

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 think its possible for us to get wiped out but our species are great survivors so unless its a natural disaster of epic proportions i think we'll scrape through.

If we have a maximum potential i don't think we are any way near to it qnd i think we are already falling from it.


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.

I think civilisation as we know it is doomed to fall by our own hand,with the help of technology of course.

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 think there has to be a change to what we regard as civilisation for us to progress further and i think depletion of resources will play the major part.
I think we still have the potential to further progress but only if we wake up and take in some reality.

 

[Eliot Wild]

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?

This is one of those cool questions I'd like to ask Neil Degrasse Tyson.

I certainly believe, though an astro-physicist like Tyson I am not, that mankind can achieve planetary mobility before our expanding Sun requires us to develop SPF 100 Billion.

If not, what is the point of NASA? If we never stood a chance to escape the confines of the solar system, then what was Carl Sagan wasting so much time going on and on about?

I guess this brings up a good point, I refuse to place blind faith in religion. I refuse to cast my lot with some proposed diety out of mere "belief".

However, I have a certain amount of "faith" in folks like Tyson, Sagan, Drake, Hawking, and many others who, not only believe as I do that mankind should at least endeavor to attain universal mobility, but also have demonstrated talents that inspire me to believe it is possible.

 

[KatNotKathy]

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

The ripe old smell of humans. You survive. Oh, you might have spent a million years evolving into clouds of gas and another million as downloads, but you always revert to the same basic shape. The fundamental human. End of the universe and here you are. Indomitable, that's the word. Indomitable!

Edit: alternately Toclafanes.

 

[Beyondo]

Ah yes, like Meatwad.

Extremely versatile, LOL!

 

[JMorris]

if Children of Men taught me anything, its that Scandinavians will be the saviors of the earth.

 

[jimmy button]

The moment we began supporting complex society with agriculture our fate was sealed.

 

[Smoke]

Is Our Doom Inevitable?

Yes. What lives, dies. What begins, ends.

 

[Mister Emu]

Ah yes, like Meatwad.

Hotdog, Igloo, Igloo, Hotdog, Igloo, Igloo, Igloo, Igloo.

 

[Sunstone]

I figure the human population will collapse sometime in the next 100 years or so. I expect about an 80% die off, from what I hear from some scientists.

 

[Rainbow Mage]

If our doom is inevitable it will be by human doing and not by divine doing.

 

[Mathematician]

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?

Quite possible, if all the time required it. We could evacuate some of our species off the planet in less than fifteen years if the need arose. It would exhaust any government's budget and still leave most of humanity on Earth to be erased by whatever disaster comes our way, but orbital settlements are feasible right now. We would soon need infrastructure on another planetary body to successfully maintain the colony's frame for longer than twenty years, but food is already grown in heavily-controlled environments.

Really the only things that could doom us all right now are a comet or instant nuclear obliteration. Once space exploration becomes a profitable enterprise and humans start to settle elsewhere, our "species" can be assured of success until either the universe implodes or another, stronger sentient race discovers us and wipes us out. Assuming the whole transhumanist evolution thing hasn't taken off yet.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Bump for further discussion.

 

[cynic2005]

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.

[youtube]JdILmgJGuvw[/youtube]
YouTube - Dr. Michio Kaku about Future Civilizations

Personally, at the current rate at which things are going, I don't think we are going to destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons, but we will destroy ourselves by obliterating most of our natural resources and the environment. Mass starvation will be inevitable. At the current rate, we will not be able to sustain a lot of things to include our global economic system, as it requires an infinite supply of resources. So what I presume will happen is a sort of self implosion of civilization that will send it back into the dark ages. A few humans will survive with the little left over resources to sustain their selves with.
Have you ever heard of Easter Island?

 

[Alceste]

I think human population will peak around 2050 and the subsequent collapse will be primarily due to famine. What will follow, since it's unlikely we won't have weaned ourselves from a growth-based economy fueled by private investment and "enlightened self-interest" by then, will be the rapid deterioration of our technological and highly complex society. Very bloody regional conflicts over border integrity in the face of mass migrations due to climate change is likely, as well as water wars (i.e. India and Pakistan), are quite likely.

I don't think this will result in a complete loss of technology though, due to the volume of printed material and high rates of literacy we have attained, and some regions are less susceptible to famine than others. I can't guess what kind of civilization will emerge, post-collapse, but I'm laying the foundations for the kind of world I would want to live in now. Namely small, self-sufficient rural communities that still make use of technology to enhance their quality of life, such as micro-generation energy technology and of course satellite internets.

 

[DallasApple]

Yes..Im not as smart as you..but I think we are all going to die..

Love

dallas

 

[Midnight Pete]

Doom is inevitable. Wolfenstein leads to Doom, and Doom to Quake.

I'm assuming that by doom the OP refers to death. Death is inevitable, but what if ultimate survival did not depend on the body? What if death is not the end? As technology progresses, there will of course be more and more ways to scientifically cheat death. Maybe even reverse ageing. Maybe --just maybe-- science will find a way to achieve physical immortality. Maybe there will come an age of post-human, Nietzchean demigods who have cast off human frailty, purged themselves of imperfection.

Who wants to live forever?

There's only one kind of eternal life I'm interested in.

 

[xkatz]

Well the Earth is inevitably doomed when supposedly in about 4-5 billion years the Sun consumes our planet.

 

[Midnight Pete]

Well the Earth is inevitably doomed when supposedly in about 4-5 billion years the Sun consumes our planet.

I won't be around when that happens, so it does not faze me. Stars are born, they live, and they die. Everything that has a beginning has an end ...

 

[Revoltingest]

[youtube]xoCZ07hwoZ4[/youtube]
YouTube - Tonightat11Dooooooooooom.mov