Why shouldn't humanity last for billions of years?

[magnemoe]

You're forgetting one important thing: You cannot turn off evolution. As long as we're DNA based and still procreate, we will continue to mutate.

So no, it will be impossible for humans to last a billion years. What will be possible, on the other hand, is for the *descendants of* humans to be around in a billion years.

Whatever they end up being, they won't be humans though.

To put that in perspective, the common ancestor of *Lemurs* and Humans is only about 50 million years ago. That's still only 5% as long as the duration you're talking about here.

The first mammals of *any* kind, date back to only about 20% to 30% as long as the duration you're talking about.

True, might claim that evolution goes slower with humans than most animals, we take care of out weak for one, still this is very deep time.

Generic engineering will also speed this up dramatically. Likely its multiple species of humans in some hundreds years, something who would probably take a million years with evolution.

Still it makes sense to think of them as humans even if they claim they are not as its old school and boring

[xXIndestructibleEVAXx]

It depends if we ever leave the solar system. As it is now, no.

[Mr Shifty]

I do not agree on the resource part of the discussion. Earth is more or less a closed system. Resources don't disappear.

Earth is nothing like a closed system. Photosynthesis, which is the reaction plants use to sequester solar energy in the form of chemical bonds in carbohydrate molecules, is an endothermic reaction, which means it requires an energy input. Generally, that energy comes from the sun. Oil and other fossil fuels are formed through a long chain of a variety of chemical and physical reactions, but carbohydrates are the materials those reactions work on. Combustion is the process of getting that energy back out breaking hydrocarbons back into CO2 and water. Even if the cycle were reversible at that point (it's not, c.f. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics), it certainly wouldn't be after we use that energy to heat food or move cars around or light our houses. Think of our fossil fuel reserves as a giant battery that took hundreds of millions of years to charge. We'll deplete the battery within a couple of centuries and that's it; it's not coming back on any timescale that concerns us.

I see fusion as a potential solution, but it's not a panacea. Even if we can get fusion going before fossil fuels are gone and before climate change wrecks havoc on technological industry and supply chains etc, (note: without high-tech factories and global supply routes and foundries and hundreds of other components of our technological civilization, fusion will never ever happen) it will require a massive change in how we get and use energy. Specifically, it's hard to imagine how overseas and airborne shipping works in that paradigm. Trucking disappears and we go back to using trains for continental transport, which means that paved intercontinental roadways probably are left to decay. (Space travel, needless to say, is impossible without fossil fuels.) Everything becomes more local, prices rise, standards of living fall, and we get used to living in a world that, while higher-tech, is probably somewhat similar to the early 19th century . . . until big-agriculture collapses due to climate change and 8 or 9 billion humans strip-mine the biosphere for food as we starve to death.

Edited May 12, 2015 by Mr Shifty

[peadar1987]

Not true. Even with zero fossil fuels, wind, wave, solar nuclear and geothermal power would be completely unaffected. So long as we have a ready supply of energy, most things are possible.

[Mr Shifty]

Not true. Even with zero fossil fuels, wind, wave, solar nuclear and geothermal power would be completely unaffected. So long as we have a ready supply of energy, most things are possible.

Renewables are a small part of total energy consumption (~9% in the U.s.) and they're all location dependent. You can't just replace a fossil-fuel plant with a renewable plant. And there's no viable renewable source for transportation. You might be able to power a family car with a battery for commuting to work, but you can't power long-haul trucking with one. You can't power an ocean crossing container ship or a freight airliner with one. And you can't power a rocket with one. All of that means power distribution and shipping infrastructure has to be drastically altered, and we -- as I said above -- become more local.

Fission is not renewable. At current rates, known uranium ore reserves will be depleted in about 90 years. If we switch a significant portion of our energy infrastructure to fission, it'll be much faster. Uranium is fairly common, so there are less-easily-extracted sources, but that means an already expensive and politically volatile energy source becomes very much more expensive and probably not worth the, ahem, fallout.

Edited May 13, 2015 by Mr Shifty
itstimaifool points out that rockets don't require fossil fuels

[Fel]

Yes, but the quality of life for people who emphasise beauty is much lower thanks to low disposable income. So their children will grow up in a less than ideal environment. Only the sons and daughters of beautiful people who are also intelligent will grow up in a environment that allows them to fully express themselves. So before long we'll be overrun by super beautiful, ultra intelligent ubermenschen.

See, I can make baseless claims about the future of human evolution as well.

It isn't baseless, such as yours isn't baseless... but the retort doesn't invalidate the argument. You ignore that the ideal environment is not needed for procreation to be successful, nor does the environment need to be ideal to produce viable offspring that again mate in the future.

Africa and those wonderful "we need your money" commercials routinely demonstrates the ability of humanity to survive in even the worst conditions. If we talk truthfully about poverty and welfare, we do see that while we abhor the idea of abusing the system for personal wealth, we also feel we cannot let the children just "die off" due to social darwinism.

Trying to make the future of evolution into a creationist argument is invalid; even as a starch scientist you concede that we procreate for beauty, but trust in "Lord Darwin" that your evolution will produce a being of superior intellect. lower-middle class is enough to go above the poverty line, and lower-middle class aren't supremely intelligent beings... WHAT are we, as a species, doing to SELECTIVELY BREED for intelligence? Because the basis of evolution is not creationism, the basis isn't even survival of the fittest... the basis is procreation and the ability to produce a successful generation.

You could evolve with the capacity and the drive to produce more babies than other humans (for sake of argument, let's say 20 in a lifetime), those babies, if viable, would thus overpower the "normal" line of genetics due to rate of procreation (and if it is a dominate gene). How does this benefit mankind? How does it ensure survival? It doesn't. But it is a completely valid form of evolution.

- - - Updated - - -

I used a poor choice of words in the poll and in my original post. Rather than saying "Humanity" I should have said "Any life, intelligence, or culture directly descended from or created by humanity."

You all make some great points: A billion years from now, a negligible chance that there will be a recognizable human civilization. Culture, technology, and biology all change, and changes in one of those cause changes in the other two, so it's inevitable, given enough time, that humanity will cease to exist in it's current form. But I think that descendants of humanity will exist for a long time to come. And by descendants, I don't just mean biological parent-to-child descendants. We could develop artificial life or uplift existing species. We could create intelligent robots that reproduce and evolve like life does. We could all life inside a giant computer simulation. And then all of these creations of ours could do the same thing again. But you would still end up with a descendant of some sort from current humanity. This is what I meant in the original poll.

I do like the new wording... what... residues, of humanity will remain.

This is a very popular subject in Sci-Fi, especially when we talk of what "symbolics of humanity" our decedents retain.

Curiosity,

Ingenuity,

Love,

Compassion

Of course, this gets into the deep metaphysical notion of what humanity actually is very quickly.

I don't see us ever leaving the solar system. We were born here, we will die here... but it is possible for us to develop extremely efficient probes with terrifyingly low power requirements that may drift through space, hoping to one day find life. It would be interesting if, by this time, we refined our ability to create an AI; something with the traits we identify as human, to spread our heritage across the stars. (Of course, the chance of finding life is............ yeah)

[magnemoe]

Renewables are a small part of total energy consumption (~9% in the U.s.) and they're all location dependent. You can't just replace a fossil-fuel plant with a renewable plant. And there's no viable renewable source for transportation. You might be able to power a family car with a battery for commuting to work, but you can't power long-haul trucking with one. You can't power an ocean crossing container ship or a freight airliner with one. And you can't power a rocket with one. All of that means power distribution and shipping infrastructure has to be drastically altered, and we -- as I said above -- become more local.

Fission is not renewable. At current rates, known uranium ore reserves will be depleted in about 90 years. If we switch a significant portion of our energy infrastructure to fission, it'll be much faster. Uranium is fairly common, so there are less-easily-extracted sources, but that means an already expensive and politically volatile energy source becomes very much more expensive and probably not worth the, ahem, fallout.

First you could use coal for majority of the oil and other hydrocarbon uses. We are not close to run out of coal, more so if we stop burning it of environmental reasons.

Hydrogen or methane is also energy carriers.

Uranium reserves are based on price and strategic reserves, if uranium price increase 10 times it would have minimal effect on nuclear power cost. You can also reprocess waste, US does not do this of ideological reasons. Then switch to thorium.

if cheap fusion work out, that is one of the 10+ projects running now this become far less of an problem you can do a lot high energy demanding chemistry with cheap energy. Up to stuff like turning wast into plasma and separate the elements then create new molecules.

Edited May 12, 2015 by magnemoe

[itstimaifool]

You might be able to power a family car with a battery for commuting to work, ... but you can't power a rocket with one.

The rest of your post is valid (at least, I can't find any immediate problems with it), but this is not. You can use electricity from an arbitrary renewable source to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen, which can be used as rocket fuel. Obviously, this isn't the best fuel for every scenario (if it was, it would be the only fuel that's ever used), but it's at least an option.

[Wesreidau]

We will never run out of hydrocarbon transportation fuel. History demonstrates this. If there is one thing two world wars have taught us, it is that a German chemist faced with a shortage of a chemical will find a way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process

http://www.geek.com/science/audi-develops-synthetic-diesel-from-co2-1621481/

Faced with a shortage, intelligent people find a way. Synthetics are too expensive now (largely input energy, this is a liquid battery more than a fuel source) compared to simply pumping the stuff from the ground, but should that change the price signals will change as well. We may all die of a supernova, but the absence of hydrocarbon fuel won't reduce us to the stone age beforehand. Besides, Titan is dripping with the stuff I hear.

The question of if we get off this rock is one of will and not ability. If we were willing to bleed our way to another star system, with mining accidents in our own solar system and ships lost en-route to other worlds, we would still eventually achieve being an interstellar species. The only technology needed that I can foresee is sufficiently human-like androids to serve as surrogate parents for the first generation to be born from artificial gestation devices while in orbit over Kepler 62e.

And considering how gestation-generation ships operate, "humanity" will exist across the galaxy a billion years from now with a fraction of the evolution of the original populations. Humanity will be a thousand sub-species on a thousand worlds. Some won't know Earth ever existed. A number might mistake themselves for native species. They'll all wonder why the other ones aren't talking.

[peadar1987]

Renewables are a small part of total energy consumption (~9% in the U.s.) and they're all location dependent. You can't just replace a fossil-fuel plant with a renewable plant. And there's no viable renewable source for transportation. You might be able to power a family car with a battery for commuting to work, but you can't power long-haul trucking with one. You can't power an ocean crossing container ship or a freight airliner with one. And you can't power a rocket with one. All of that means power distribution and shipping infrastructure has to be drastically altered, and we -- as I said above -- become more local.

Fission is not renewable. At current rates, known uranium ore reserves will be depleted in about 90 years. If we switch a significant portion of our energy infrastructure to fission, it'll be much faster. Uranium is fairly common, so there are less-easily-extracted sources, but that means an already expensive and politically volatile energy source becomes very much more expensive and probably not worth the, ahem, fallout.

As others have pointed out, and adding a point or two of my own:

-From a pure hydrocarbon point of view, we already have the technology to form them from CO2, hydrogen and an energy input.

-Uranium-235 isn't the only viable fission fuel. With heavy water as moderator you can even use natural uranium as fuel. Thorium is three times as abundant as uranium, and can also be used. Current designs burn about 5% of their nuclear fuel before they can no longer maintain fission, and it is estimated that there is between 50 and 70 years of uranium left economically recoverable at current levels of consumption. There is no reason at all why you can't approach 100% burnup of a fuel source with breeder reactors and fuel reprocessing, so using known fuel sources, we could relatively easily squeeze 80 times the life out of our uranium reserves, much more if we're willing to spend a little more money.

-Solar power is quite comfortably capable of providing for all our energy needs. All of Europe could be powered by a solar array in the Sahara and an HVDC transmission line. Using a eutectic salt as a heat reservoir could smooth output and give dispatchability. Would it be more expensive than digging dead plants out of the ground? Definitely. Would we do it if it was the cheapest way to continue to get our energy? In a heartbeat. We're not going back to the 19th century, even if fuel ends up costing 5 or 10 times as much as it does now.

[H2O.]

We will never run out of hydrocarbon transportation fuel. History demonstrates this. If there is one thing two world wars have taught us, it is that a German chemist faced with a shortage of a chemical will find a way.

The only think that history demonstrate is that it is possible to find energy. It is however hard to consider that "Faced with a shortage, intelligent people find a way". When Germany lost control of the Roumanian oil fields during WWII, production collapsed. No ersatz can ever be manufactured to the quantity that is needed to fuel our society.

The subject of EROEI is crucial, and every energy source that is not and the bottom of the list is either already used (hydro, nuclear, wind) or incredibly polluting (oil, coal).

Now, there is obviously a possibility to use more wind and nuclear energy but the fact is: economic growth is the consequence of largely available cheap energy. It is no mystery that economic growth is slowing since the 1970 in the OCDE countries (oil shocks anybody ?) and is more or less stable per capita.

[Jonboy]

The Fermi Paradox indicates that there should be millions of civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy, but we haven't heard from them. One troubling implication is that intelligent species are unstable and wipe themselves out before they can spread very far.

Another is that life is much more rare than "back-of-the-napkin" estimates imply. In that case, our descendants may be around for very long indeed. Even if they are quite lonely in a big universe.

[Mr Shifty]

The Fermi Paradox indicates that there should be millions of civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy, but we haven't heard from them. One troubling implication is that intelligent species are unstable and wipe themselves out before they can spread very far.

Another is that life is much more rare than "back-of-the-napkin" estimates imply. In that case, our descendants may be around for very long indeed. Even if they are quite lonely in a big universe.

Another is that intelligent life is rare, and that technological civilization is even more rare. This seems pretty likely to me -- intelligence isn't a pre-determined outcome of evolution; there's no evidence that it's particularly adaptive in the long run. And even though we've been more or less the way we are for a few hundred thousand years, we've only had the capability to make ourselves known to the wider universe for about 100 of those years.

[Teutooni]

The way I see it, intelligent biological life is not well suited to surviving cosmic timescales. Evolution is a powerful adaptive process, life can thrive almost everywhere on earth. But we know of only one example of life leaving earth. It requires not adaptation, but prediction. Something biological evolution is incapable of. Which leaves intelligence, the predictive component. (yes evolution produced intelligence but is not itself capable of prediction and intelligence is not necessarily tied to evolution).

If we can design a machine that is at least as intelligent as us, our legacy has a fair chance of surviving cosmic timescales. Machines are much better suited to space travel. No need for complex lifesupport, no need to live on planets or have artificial gravity, can be very small compared, etc. They could be a true spacefaring civilization with no need to land on planets except perhaps to mine resources or nostalgy or tourism or something. If we define them as our offspring, then we have a fair chance to survive a long time.

[Bill Phil]

An intelligent machine that is also sapient will be heavy, at least at first. Probably to the point it would take less resources to get more people to the same place. Which is better anyways. More people = more diversity in ideas = better outcome when problems arise.

[magnemoe]

The Fermi Paradox indicates that there should be millions of civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy, but we haven't heard from them. One troubling implication is that intelligent species are unstable and wipe themselves out before they can spread very far.

Another is that life is much more rare than "back-of-the-napkin" estimates imply. In that case, our descendants may be around for very long indeed. Even if they are quite lonely in a big universe.

Plenty of other explanations Fermi Paradox, advanced or intelligent life is very rare is one good.

Add that aliens is not humans, an predator with no prey who could be effectively domesticated would stay hunter gatherers no matter how clever.

Or they are unable to cooperate effectively in larger groups than packs.

Way more ways aliens can fail, unrestricted reproduction or more aggressive or simply stupider, we are smarter than we need to be as huter gatherers or dirt farmers.

- - - Updated - - -

Another is that intelligent life is rare, and that technological civilization is even more rare. This seems pretty likely to me -- intelligence isn't a pre-determined outcome of evolution; there's no evidence that it's particularly adaptive in the long run. And even though we've been more or less the way we are for a few hundred thousand years, we've only had the capability to make ourselves known to the wider universe for about 100 of those years.

First contact image:

Edited May 14, 2015 by magnemoe

[Rondon]

An intelligent machine that is also sapient will be heavy, at least at first. Probably to the point it would take less resources to get more people to the same place. Which is better anyways. More people = more diversity in ideas = better outcome when problems arise.

Yeah sure, at first. I have to say you seem biased to this situation so that human colonisation is the best option. Sure at first a sapient machine would probably fill up a giant five storey building, however if electronics keep advancing that will keep shrinking, a sapient machine could wind up being trivially small, provided electronics do keep advancing.

And the idea that the machine will be less creative, is again at the mercy of the future of the technology, it may not be creative at the start, but again this could change, for all we know sapient machines could wind being vastly more imaginative than humans, it remains to be seen.

[Teutooni]

An intelligent machine that is also sapient will be heavy, at least at first. Probably to the point it would take less resources to get more people to the same place. Which is better anyways. More people = more diversity in ideas = better outcome when problems arise.

We are not talking about sending the first ENIAC of AI, we are talking about cosmic timescales. Billions of years. A recent ted talk mentions current experts believing we'll have a human-level machine intelligence in 20-30 years. That is, as good as us in everything, including creative thinking. I am not talking about sending one massive skynet to space, I'm talking about a population of superintelligent machines. Machines that could be more "humane" than us. This is ofc very optimistic, but I see it as our best shot at surviving the challenges of spaceflight on long timescales.

[Robotengineer]

We are not talking about sending the first ENIAC of AI, we are talking about cosmic timescales. Billions of years. A recent ted talk mentions current experts believing we'll have a human-level machine intelligence in 20-30 years. That is, as good as us in everything, including creative thinking. I am not talking about sending one massive skynet to space, I'm talking about a population of superintelligent machines. Machines that could be more "humane" than us. This is ofc very optimistic, but I see it as our best shot at surviving the challenges of spaceflight on long timescales.

Can these machines be matte black, have a rectangular ratio of 1:4:9 and turn gas planets into stars? I would support making our own monoliths.

[Owen5595]

The "World Oil Crisis" is gonna be the like the technological developments during the Cold War. If humanity is pressured, technology usually rapidly advances.

[Jonboy]

The "World Oil Crisis" is gonna be the like the technological developments during the Cold War. If humanity is pressured, technology usually rapidly advances.

Let's hope so.

[worir4]

Imagine in the far future if we do colonize our galaxy and beyond. Humans would be wide spread and on millions of planets but i wonder if millions of years from now, will they remember they came from Earth?

[-Velocity-]

Imagine in the far future if we do colonize our galaxy and beyond. Humans would be wide spread and on millions of planets but i wonder if millions of years from now, will they remember they came from Earth?

We "remember" that we evolved mainly in Africa, and that we shared a common ancestor with chimps and bonobos about 6 million years ago.

My point is that it is nearly impossible to forget- at least permanently- because of science and archaeology. If anyone in the distant future really wants to figure it out, they can.

Oh and I highly doubt that humans will take over the galaxy. I find it very unlikely that we're the first people to make it to this stage of civilization within the Milky Way.

[mrclucks]

According to the kardeshev scale, earth is about a type 0.73. A type 1 civilization is able to harness the amount of energy that falls on the planet, but there is a big risk for a civilization to wipe itself out shortly before achieving type 1 status.

I believe that we are within 100-200 years of wiping ourselves out or becoming type 1 and if we make it to type 1, our decendents will continue on for many many billions or trillions of years

[Fel]

Another is that intelligent life is rare, and that technological civilization is even more rare. This seems pretty likely to me -- intelligence isn't a pre-determined outcome of evolution; there's no evidence that it's particularly adaptive in the long run. And even though we've been more or less the way we are for a few hundred thousand years, we've only had the capability to make ourselves known to the wider universe for about 100 of those years.

I'd like to point out that civilization as we know it also isn't a predetermined outcome of intelligence. i.e. just because you have the capacity for space travel, doesn't mean you need to seek it out. Native Americans and Africans are strong point here as their civilizations evolved very differently from European Civilizations.

Indian Civilizations, being empathic and having respect for the land, European viewing the world to be inheritance from God to Humans.

Even now, we insult people who would choose to live in any civilization other than our own, calling them "backwards" or otherwise implicating they're of lesser intellectual capacity than the rest of society.

There's no denying that the labour was primarily manual, but we don't call our Olympiads idiots, do we? We acknowledge that it is more than just strength, that it takes SKILL, the ability to coordinate yourself for short periods of time processing a large amount of data concerning the physical environment and correcting for that error in your output.

I think it would be extremely interesting what happens if we ever find intelligent life that chose a different path than us. "To serve man" is a reflection on our society to treat "different" societies as lesser, as animals. How would we treat others should we find them to be too different than us?