• OpenStars@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    It will continue for precisely as long as it continues to work… (plus probably a bit longer to account for lag time).

    e.g. one of the earliest historical writings on this planet made this statement perhaps 3,000 years ago:

    There is nothing new under the sun.

    But… we seem to still need to keep re-learning that, every few generations.

    • UPGRAYEDD@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is also the 1st time in history we could fuck up bad enough that it wont be recoverable. Climate change, nuclear war, biological experimentation, AI… it seems inevitable that we will erase humanity from the galaxy.

      • Globulart@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Pretty sure people though that in the 1910s, then again in the 1940s, then a few times in the 70s/80s, and now seems like a persistent feeling over the last 10-20 years or so.

        Eventually we’ll be right, but humans as a group seem to have incredibly bleak outlooks.

        • UPGRAYEDD@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Ya, by 1st time, i meant in the last generation of humans. Starting in the 30s or so when people started seeing the invention of the things listed above.

          I didnt mean like just now in the 2023. Or last decade.

      • OpenStars@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Yup, it’s so weird even that we might also have the technology to save ourselves - like maybe AI should be ruling us instead of humans (bc that way whoever made the AI can be the secret king - surely that’s not new either:-P).

        But history does tend to run in cycles, for whatever that’s worth. One day the sun won’t shine down on us anymore, but so far it always has, even if that doesn’t mean that it always will.

        In any case, definitely some hard times coming up ahead, that much seems certain at least. Though extinction, while possible, is not a foregone conclusion. I mean, if even Kurzgesagt can find hope, it must be warranted.:-) video 1, video 2 focusing mostly on climate change

        • UPGRAYEDD@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I mean… kinda? If i do the math in my head… if there is a 1 in a million chance every day for something to happen. It seems like it wont happen.

          But a million days is just about 2,700 years. The human race has been around maybe 100 thousand? Its a bunch of probabilities stacked on top of each other, in a way that reminds me alot of the Fermi paradox.

          And we keep inventing new ways to do it and making the current ways easier. There are also plenty of non self inflicted ways it could happen. Commet or meteor, gamma ray bust, supervolcano, etc.

          It really isnt a question of if, but when. Before or after we become interplanetary or better intersolar-system species. My hope at this point is just not in my lifetime.