Comment by jacobgold
8 hours ago
That seems unlikely. Just imagine humanity 100, 1000, and 1,000,000 years from now. Humans will have solved every physical problem that is solvable.
Humans will have also evolved into new kinds of immortal/superintelligent beings that would be totally unrecognizable to us.
It may be the case once a civilization reaches "max level" they universally decide to "reset the game" because there's nothing left to do. Maybe self-destruction or maybe they "spawn" a new universe. The possibilities are wild.
Why do you think that? Life on Earth has been around for billions of years and and yet we have no immortal beings nor all problems in physics solved.
There’s no reason beyond wishful thinking to believe any of that is true.
Everything we know and see has proven that progress is exponential.
Your statement that progress or intelligence is binary has no basis outside of intentional and ignorant pessimism.
And if you extrapolate the growth of infants they should weigh billions of pounds by the time they’re in grade school, and yet they don’t.
In what basis do you presume our progress will continue exponentially?
I’ll take pessimism over wishful thinking.
Tell that to the Romans or the Chinese or the Ottomans or the Egyptians or the Greeks or the...
The Earth only developed intelligent life a few million years ago, us (homo sapiens) a few hundred thousand years ago.
We've only been in "technological takeoff" for ~250 years and are already using spaceships and computers to deliver and operate drones on Mars.
Now imagine 250 years + 1,000,000 years.
Civilizations collapse, do you think we're immune to that now because technology is at some level?
3 replies →
It is impressive, but there’s no reason to think it will continue on the same trajectory.
No cohesive civilization on earth has been able to continue uninterrupted for 1000 years, our chances aren't as good as you think they are especially since our current civilization is showing all of the signs of being over the hill and accelerating in its decline. Technological advances can be lost and the capacity of a civilization to accomplish far reaching goals can stall and degrade and eventually cease all together. Anyone who doesn't think we're on a ticking clock is either hopelessly optimistic or ignorant of history, probably both.
I imagine that 100 years from now(or significantly less than that) the ocean water level will be several meters higher, large parts of the world will be unliveable due to heat waves and wars will be fought over food and water. I doubt our species will last another 1000.
I'm very confident our species will last longer than the next 1000 years. Our current civilisation, though, now that's a completely different story.
You might try spending some time reading predictions of doom and gloom from the past. It should be very reassuring.