Why shouldn't humanity last for billions of years?

[Ralathon]

I think human "evolution" will be our demise as we breed to create a race that cares only about physical beauty and hence uses valuable resources that should go to brain matter to emphasis one's "beauty" over another.

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.

[peadar1987]

19% probability of human extinction before 2021. That can only rise.

I call shenanigans on that. 19%? What is that figure based on?

[magnemoe]

I call shenanigans on that. 19%? What is that figure based on?

This, only cosmic events could cause us to go extinct in 6 years. Note that the dinosaur killer would probably not be enough to kill everybody, that happened 250 million years ago might do the tricks.

Chance for this would be 6/250.000.000=0.0000024% if we assume risk is constant. Other world ending cosmic event has not happened the last multiple billion years.

There is an risk for an future man made even who kill off all humans, however we has no way to do this today, far fewer nukes than during the cold war and no chance for an all out war.

- - - Updated - - -

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.

Human evolution is an none issue unless civilization falls hard. We are pretty close to be able to modify our own genes, this is where the changes will be comming.

Fun note, races probably looks the way they do because of beauty ideals. This is not an effect today because we move a round a lot and the ideals changes fast.

[Ralathon]

Human evolution is an none issue unless civilization falls hard. We are pretty close to be able to modify our own genes, this is where the changes will be comming.

Fun note, races probably looks the way they do because of beauty ideals. This is not an effect today because we move a round a lot and the ideals changes fast.

I know, probably should've been more clear in my use of sarcasm there. The guy to whom I was replying was making the idiocracy argument, which I find an absurd argument.

[Mr Shifty]

If you aren't frightened by climate change, you don't understand the situation.

Add oil depletion to this equation. Global transportation and shipping infrastructure is oil-based, and it's hard to see a viable alternative. (Coal is one, but would require replacing or retrofitting almost the whole existing global vehicle fleet, and would grossly exacerbate the climate problem.) I don't see how global technological civilization outlasts fossil fuels. There's no other energy source that's remotely as versatile, energy-dense, and portable.

[DaMichel]

Well resource depletion and over-exploitation could become a little problem.

Example: The demise of the ancient culture of the easter island. A popular theory says that they used up all the wood to help move the big statues, leading to the destruction of suitable land for agriculture. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/climate-overpopulation-environment-the-rapa-nui-debate/

Obviously resources like oil, gas, and even uranium for nuclear power are finite. What will happen if our descendants use it all up and fail to develop alternative technologies in time? Wars over the last remaining resources will give humanity a really bad time.

I'm not even sure what alternative tech would be. Oil for instance is needed for plastics, too. Did i hear you say biofuels/bioplastics. Well okay but then farming for biofuels/bioplastics is going to compete even more with farming for food. Bad times again.

This in conjunction with climate change is the next big filter for sure. And it can only be overcome by international cooperation. Once national differences are set aside we can start colonizing space. See ISS

Edit: Mr Shifty ninjad me.

Edited May 11, 2015 by DaMichel

[michaelsteele3]

Why don't we wait until we're a type III civilization and then we'll talk?

[dansmithers]

Humanity is so hard to define that I'd like to break the question into two parts:

Many people(especially sci-fi writers, apparently) define "Humanity" as the sum total of human culture/books/religion. By this metric, humanity might not evne last the next thousand years, much less the next billion. Think about how much we've forgotten about our own 10000 year long history, and you'll get an idea of how hard it'd be for us to even have a chance of reading Shakespeare in the year 12015

Secondly, a more hard and fast definition is humans as a species. Obviously, in a billion years we'll have evolved, but intelligences descended from the life of Earth will almost certainly be around, in one form of another.

[-Velocity-]

If civilization still exists 1 billion years from now, I think it will probably be inhabited by a huge number of different kinds of beings. One billion years is about twice as long as there have been vertebrates on Earth. Intelligent beings have the ability to accelerate their own evolution by a factor of thousands or millions of times that of natural evolution, force that evolution along a direction of their choosing, incorporate innovations natural evolution never could, create otherwise impossible chimera-like life forms (say, an synthetic life form, combined with a machine life form, combined with a genetically modified creature from the original Darwinian brood stock, all in the same body), etc. etc. etc. Even if intelligent machines are never created and non-sapient animals are never "uplifted" to sapience, just our current Homo sapiens species alone will have likely diverged into a myriad of very different "species". The fact that we can consciously choose who to reproduce with, deliberately create new species if we want, that we will have probably settled the entire solar system after 1 billion years (and probably other stars too), and the extremely accelerated rate of evolution will make a high rate of speciation a certain thing.

So I think that thinking of our current human civilization as being "humanity" after 1 billion years of continuous existence is ridiculous; compared to whatever they would be, a modern human and a chicken would look like blood siblings.

Edited May 11, 2015 by |Velocity|

[goldenpeach]

If you want to last more than 5 billions years, you have to go in space. After that, the earth will fall in the sun: that sort of event is known is california for having negative effect on healt.

[itstimaifool]

True, but a different species nevertheless. And when we talk about humanity, I believe we are talking about the ensemble of all homo sapiens. Homo sapiens will not be able to reproduce with homo sapiens descendant.

Even if we talk about culture and civilization, everything will be forgotten given enough time.

If we're defining evolution as such, then say hello to your mom and dad.

<picture of bacteria>

Humanity is so hard to define that I'd like to break the question into two parts:

Many people(especially sci-fi writers, apparently) define "Humanity" as the sum total of human culture/books/religion.

If civilization still exists 1 billion years from now, I think it will probably be inhabited by a huge number of different kinds of beings.

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.

[magnemoe]

Well resource depletion and over-exploitation could become a little problem.

Example: The demise of the ancient culture of the easter island. A popular theory says that they used up all the wood to help move the big statues, leading to the destruction of suitable land for agriculture. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/climate-overpopulation-environment-the-rapa-nui-debate/

Obviously resources like oil, gas, and even uranium for nuclear power are finite. What will happen if our descendants use it all up and fail to develop alternative technologies in time? Wars over the last remaining resources will give humanity a really bad time.

I'm not even sure what alternative tech would be. Oil for instance is needed for plastics, too. Did i hear you say biofuels/bioplastics. Well okay but then farming for biofuels/bioplastics is going to compete even more with farming for food. Bad times again.

This in conjunction with climate change is the next big filter for sure. And it can only be overcome by international cooperation. Once national differences are set aside we can start colonizing space. See ISS

Edit: Mr Shifty ninjad me.

Oil to coal cost $120/barrel long term. Germany did this large scale during WW2. Oil has one problem, its an bulk resource and most production is in unstable areas. Works just as well for plastic however this is far less price sensitive.

Breeder reactors and reprocessing who the US do not do of ideological reasons and we have uranium enough. Note that uranium is insignificant part of nuclear power plant costs, however nobody pay more than they have to so only the best mines are profitable.

More fun neither the stone or bonce age ended because we run out of resources

Easter Island failed because they run out of trees as they was cut down, this made it impossible to make boats, did not affect agriculture outside of tools.

Overpopulation is canceled, main issue in 2100, but probably close to 2050 is lack of manpower.

- - - 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 agree here, 500-10.000 years not an billion and we will be multiple species, who would be very different. Think The Kzin-Borg wars. This is probably the major deep time issue.

[H2O.]

An awfull lot of civilization/country have collapsed because of a lack of energy:

-Roman (collapse of the agriculture)

-Maya & Aztec (collapse of the water network)

-Germany during WWI & WWII (oil shortage)

We are running low on oil: yes, production increase but population too, so we are back to 1970's levels of per capita oil produced per year. There is absolutely no reason this will change (shale oil and sand oil are just very polluting bad jokes with a borderline ridiculous EROI).

All dreams of space travel will fall short if energy supply become low. No matter how incredible technology we invent, you need 1 joule for 1 newton metre.

The more I think about it, the less hopeful I am : if we don't have a lot of energy, we are stuck in the solar system. On the contrary, if we have a lot of energy, interstellar travel is irrelevant (why bother? we have everything we need here on the solar system).

Edited May 11, 2015 by H2O.

[WestAir]

Absolutely not. Not in this form, anyways.

Super genetically-perfected immortal transhumans? Maybe, but not todays homo sapiens. Personally I think that's a good thing. People today are very notably illogical in decision making. Anyone who deals with people day-to-day can write a book on the imperfections of man.

I don't know what type of "person" will exist a Billion years from now, but it can't be any worse. I only wish I were around to meet our more-perfect descendants.

[LABHOUSE]

We will not, but what we leave behind will stay for milenia. People get worse every year.

[magnemoe]

An awfull lot of civilization/country have collapsed because of a lack of energy:

-Roman (collapse of the agriculture)

-Maya & Aztec (collapse of the water network)

-Germany during WWI & WWII (oil shortage)

We are running low on oil: yes, production increase but population too, so we are back to 1970's levels of per capita oil produced per year. There is absolutely no reason this will change (shale oil and sand oil are just very polluting bad jokes with a borderline ridiculous EROI).

All dreams of space travel will fall short if energy supply become low. No matter how incredible technology we invent, you need 1 joule for 1 newton metre.

The more I think about it, the less hopeful I am : if we don't have a lot of energy, we are stuck in the solar system. On the contrary, if we have a lot of energy, interstellar travel is irrelevant (why bother? we have everything we need here on the solar system).

Romans was getting far too corrupt, today Roman empire would be considered an failed state. Then migrations from east snowball into Germany and Rome.

Maya, other theories claims barbarians with bow and arrow who was an new weapon in America. Aztec: think Spain is an good candidate.

German WW2, well hiting US and Russia at once might be an bad idea, hitting Russia during winter another.

[Aanker]

People have predicted the moral, biological and societal degradation and inevitable End of Mankind since at least the pyramids. When Attila roamed the steppes of Europe and the Western Roman Empire was in its death throes (from a combination of failing agriculture, internal strife, economic woes and corruption), some even thought the apocalypse was upon them! Humans tend to see problems before they see the solutions - and once a problem has been solved, another one is found. I think it is a fallacy to assume that history will repeat itself in this way indefinitely (because even the universe as we know it has an definite end point in time, whether that be a cold death or a big rip or somesuch), but I don't foresee the end of mankind happening anytime soon.

[Xannari Ferrows]

Even if people could survive billions of years, humanity wont. Long before then, everyone will have become mindless drones. Unless that changes, there's no hope for humans.

People =/= humans.

[Broax]

I think it depends on four things:

1) Our ability to colonize (in a self sufficient way) other planets ASAP;

2) Our ability to not self destruct (in anyway imaginable and unimaginable) before point 1 is achieved;

3) There isn't an advanced alien race and/or vengeful spaghetti god that holds a grudge against human kind;

4) Some natural disaster (in anyway imaginable and unimaginable) doesn't send us to stone age/kills all humans before point 1 is achieved.

If all these four conditions are met then I think we have a fighting chance to colonize other stars/galaxies/universes (assuming all these are possible in a stretch of science we can't imagine) and therefore escape any event that may risk our extinction.

Basically I guess that if we can colonize another planet in a self sufficient way that makes it totally independent from earth (that means having access to all required resources to expand a settlement and have the population grow) I can't imagine what could stop us from living billions of years.

[daniel l.]

If we dont destroy ourselves this century then we will survive but we probably wont last as a species for a billion years because by then we will have evolved into a completely different species.

[DaMichel]

Oil to coal cost $120/barrel long term. *snip*

More fun neither the stone or bonce age ended because we run out of resources

Easter Island failed because they run out of trees as they was cut down, this made it impossible to make boats, did not affect agriculture outside of tools.

Overpopulation is canceled, main issue in 2100, but probably close to 2050 is lack of manpower.

Resources: This is all fine right now. But i'm talking about the medium-term to long-term future when all these resources will be used up, and there won't be any of it left. You have to agree that the amount of this stuff on earth is finite. Of course if mankind manages to exploit extraterrestrial resources, mankind will be saved ... for some time ...

I think it was about the year 2000 where the peak oil, i.e. the point of maximum oil production was predicted. Then new drilling methods (horizontal drilling) and fracking were invented which delays the whole thing. America has a slight overproduction at the moment i think. Hence oil is cheap. At least this is what i read on the internet ... so go ahead and pick my claims apart.

Easter island: The point is overexploitation. Beside "However after clearing completely the forest of large grown palm trees, the soil was quickly eroded by the heavy rain falls that periodically occur. The barren volcanic rocks could no longer sustain agriculture production and soon the farmers were no longer able to feed the population. - without timber no one was able to build boats to escape the impending doom" from the cited blog. Right. Soil was not the only problem.

Overpopulation: Agree. Isn't the population curve already leveling of?!

Edited May 12, 2015 by DaMichel

[Camacha]

Colonies are a safeguard, but also a risk. What happens every time you separate two groups of people? Exactly, they grow apart, become wary of each other's views and ideas and animosity grows. Just like there never has been world wide peace on Earth, I cannot imagine there being peace between the separate human factions. It is, sadly, just not in our nature.

[magnemoe]

Resources: This is all fine right now. But i'm talking about the medium-term to long-term future when all these resources will be used up, and there won't be any of it left. You have to agree that the amount of this stuff on earth is finite. Of course if mankind manages to exploit extraterrestrial resources, mankind will be saved ... for some time ...

I think it was about the year 2000 where the peak oil, i.e. the point of maximum oil production was predicted. Then new drilling methods (horizontal drilling) and fracking were invented which delays the whole thing. America has a slight overproduction at the moment i think. Hence oil is cheap. At least this is what i read on the internet ... so go ahead and pick my claims apart.

Easter island: The point is overexploitation. Beside "However after clearing completely the forest of large grown palm trees, the soil was quickly eroded by the heavy rain falls that periodically occur. The barren volcanic rocks could no longer sustain agriculture production and soon the farmers were no longer able to feed the population. - without timber no one was able to build boats to escape the impending doom" from the cited blog. Right. Soil was not the only problem.

Overpopulation: Agree. Isn't the population curve already leveling of?!

Resources will be an problem long term unless we start to mine in space. Its not an problem in medium term, remember that you have two trends, the easiest resources will be used first so cost rises, counter this extraction techniques get better so it get cheaper. So far prices has been dropping long term. If prices for some materials start rising they will be used less.

Did not know/ remember the follow up erosion on the easter island but it make sense.

Overpopulation, birth rates is down a lot all over and is falling, much of the current population increase is because the huge generations born from 1950 and forward is still alive even if you have few kids population will increase.

[1of6Billion]

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

[Dunbaratu]

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.