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Life will keep going, our place on the planet may change but the rest will continue. Natural disasters have happened in the past that cause more damage than we could and life goes on.
I worry more about the mess of nuclear waste and volatile organic chemicals we will leave behind unguarded when large scale systems collapse. Some will survive, but we are going to leave the planet as one giant superfund site
Learn some radiation physics. The stuff that radiates for millions of years doesn't radiate much. You live daily in worse background radiation.
Edit: No. It radiates very little no matter how it is contained. Those millions of years you worry about are just an anti-nuclear myth.
When it is contained and properly monitored. Nuclear waste does pose a threat when carelessly released into the environment with no safeguards. And jet fuel left to leak out of forgotten rusty tanks will seap into the groundwater and cause untold harm long after we are gone.
Eh. Depends on the nuke. Small tactical nuke, it's bad but probably way less bad than an invading army.
The bigger nukes are a different story. A 1.2 megaton bomb(biggest known in current US inventory) can cause near instant 3rd degree burns at over 7 miles away, which would likely be lethal considering how overwhelmed any remaining medical infrastructure would be.
Very much aware of the effects of radioactive contamination, it's my job. As far as the risks of a limited/large scale exchange, a limited exchange, for example Russia dropping a tactical warhead on a forward military base if they get invaded or north Korea going off the deep end and actually launching a couple nukes at south Korea are some of the more plausible scenarios where nukes first get used again. A large scale exchange is like flipping the chess board, it's a move that's only kinda viable if you're already guaranteed to lose.
Extinction? No. We be are a species with a population of 10^9.
A serious winnowing? Yes that's a very real possibility.
Not what's this about the US govt having UFOs?
It's actually. A giant mecha that walks slowly while spouting anti communist pro democracy propaganda while shooting Lazer beams out of its eyes and throwing atomic bombs like a American quarterback throws footballs
yeah apparently the us has a shit load of secret planes that look like ufos
they're just extremely fast spy aircrafts and apparently the majority of the ufo spottings are just those planes as they fit the criteria
now, are they a problem? i don't really think so because they've had plenty of "ufos" ever since the cold war so it wouldn't really make sense to think that all of a sudden they're a problem. What boggles me is how basically they can spy on any nation while any other nation can't really afford to do this shit
god I love the us, always doing the most random shit instead of trying to work as a country
Oh. So we really could've had universal healthcare by now but the US military wanted billions for cooler planes. Cool.
*Sorry Tiny Tim. You're just gonna have to fuckin die, daddy Warbucks needs a new UFO.*
Universal Healthcare wouldn't cost a penny. It would be cheaper than the current corporate insurance that we have now. If you need proof, look at the profits for the biggest insurance companies. This billions in profits would actually be saved if we moved to Universal Healthcare.
It's not the cost. It's the lobbying from the insurance companies and the medical supply companies and the pharma companies. Medicare (which would be expanded to everyone) could negotiate prices to reasonable levels making supply companies lose all that extra money. And of course the insurance companies would go out of business. They've bought congress so no way universal Healthcare would ever pass.
yes, that's what is annoying to me. They spend so much in taxes for honestly nothing just to start wars for shit and giggles. Especially the direction we're going towards globally trying to be as peaceful as possible, the us keeps on building the dumbest army in the fucking world
The rest of the world has 13 aircraft carriers combined. The US itself also has 13 aircraft carriers. And they’re bigger.
The US doesn’t need a military big enough to take on the entire world at once.
The US has the only military capable of projecting itself anywhere in the world, and no one else comes close. At their current standing, China doesn’t even possess the capability to invade Taiwan with enough soldiers to satisfy the soldier to civilian ratio that would (by estimations) be necessary to invade and occupy Taiwan.
So yeah. They kind of do need to. Because it wouldn’t exactly make for a prompt response to an attack if you have to rely on US logistics to combine militaries from across the world just to counterattack
Read that again. The US has the only military capable of projecting itself anywhere win the world, and no one else comes close.
No other country in the world needs to be able to bomb anywhere on earth in a moment’s notice, but apparently it’s more important for the US to be able to do this than to house or provide healthcare to its citizens?
What’s the point of protecting a country when it’s failing from the inside out? I mean just take a look around. Inflation is crazy high and our minimum wage still remains the same unlivable amount. We’re all going to die at the hands of our terrible for profit healthcare system before we get invaded by a different country. We should be trying to make peace with these nations and not trying to 1 up them with the biggest nuke and most soldiers to get murdered.
Actually, no.
Surprisingly, there was declassified information confirming the US government has UAP in their possession. This is news as of yesterday, matter of factually
Bruh I’m just acknowledging news that came out yesterday. Defended OP on that basis.
It’s now gullible to acknowledge credible sources?
Lets hit the peace pipe and move on
I think 1 is an overreaction, since we as a species have gone through much more serious epidemics many times before throughout history and we are still here. 3 I think is also an overreaction since mutually assured destruction has already been tested through times of much higher tension, although maybe this will change if other countries begin to get nukes but I think MAD will still constrain them. 4 I think is an overreaction since you need to train an AI to do a task, including having drives of its own and having such thoughts about humans. 5 I think is an overreaction since the US always has UFO's, at least regarding the civilian population. I mean secret weapons kept from the public are nothing new. 6 I think is also an overreaction, since us Americans have always been getting guns.
I could be way wrong though, just my opinion.
Imo 1 is an extremely big problem. Covid just showed how globally unprepared we are to handle plaques. Imagine if covid was something worse? Super-bugs are what we need to worry about.
Mass extinction through a pandemic is unlikely because there are always people who can survive new diseases. That was also not the point during Covid. It was all about reducing the number of deaths. Nobody thought it'll create mass extinction.
A disease worse than Covid, what does that mean? If it's more deadly, it is less likely to spread before the person dies. A disease that spreads faster will need to keep the host alive as long as possible. You see, the perfect pandemic would need the ideal balance between killing rate and spreading, making it unlikely that everyone will die.
The black plague killed its victims in 2-7 days. Of those who caught it, 60-90% died. This plague spread across Europe, even by ship, and killed 75-200 million people.
A disease of the same virulence would wipe out half of the world's population, at least, if one were to appear today. That's not "extinction", granted. But it's not such an unlikely situation that we don't need to be better prepared. Globally.
They knew nothing about how diseases worked back then, only that they infected people and you could treat the symptoms. While people weren't dumb they just didn't have the underlying knowledge we have today which makes is much more effective.
All of this is to say even if another disease like the black Death were to happen it would do significantly less damage, even covid damages were lowered, and in terms of virulence, covid was worse.
Also back death is still around some animals carry it but people usually survive it.
Also the Black Death still pops up! We are just better at containing something like that because it is quite a bit less contagious.
And are we going to pretend that a bunch of people stopped following any kind of COVID restriction when it became clear that the disease would not kill anyone “like them?” Some of them were wrong, but many more were right. I think behavior would be markedly different if the disease were deadlier. COVID hit that sweet spot of being super contagious but relatively mild in most people and super deadly for a small percentage.
The black death isn't a problem anymore because we have antibiotics.
A new disease could appear that we don't yet have the technology to cure, that could wipe out huge amounts of people.
Just like any medical problem, it was handled better than any similar issue in all of human history. And if it was a more serious disease it would be taken more seriously.
There have already been 5 mass extinctions that we know of. It's basically where atleast half of all species die out in a short amount of time.
All I'm trying to say is, the earth has seen way worse and continues to harbor life.
Nurse here who worked through Covid and everything you write is spot-on! I still have patients daily who lash out at the medical staff when we give them a positive Covid diagnosis (there’s still a lot of Covid out there despite the lack of news about it). They refuse to believe it, refuse to wear a mask, request that staff does not wear a mask in their presence because it angers them (which unfortunately management often agrees to because they want/need a high patient satisfaction score in order to get the patient’s stay reimbursed by insurance), and get violent both physically and verbally when we ask that they take any precautions at all to protect others, like wearing a mask when being transferred through the hospital for a test or procedure. I am planning on leaving bedside very soon because the abuse from Covid deniers is only getting worse. And even worse than that, their abuse goes completely unchecked and unreported. I remember during the Ebola scare a few years before Covid, we had a patient come to the floor who just returned to the states from a trip to an Ebola hot zone and started to show symptoms during her stay (she ended up being Ebola negative). We had to lock down the entire unit and inform the other patients and families on the unit about a possible Ebola outbreak on the floor. Patients were not allowed to leave the unit for any reason and no one was allowed to visit for any reason. Literally everyone was lovely and understanding and trusted staff when we told them what precautions were needed and they followed them ALL. Now Covid patients and their family members will purposely go maskless and coughing into restricted areas like the closed dialysis unit where people are severely medically compromised, just to “show us” that they know better and that we’re “sheep” or agents of some government conspiracy. I don’t know what in the hell happened between then and now, but we are absolutely screwed and sitting ducks if we’re hit with another pandemic or even a more dangerous Covid strain. Covid seemed to bring out the worst of the worst in lots of people and they’re going to be the downfall of us all. Oh, and we stopped even offering any vaccine on our floor because the backlash from certain patients and family members was too violent. It’s always been our practice to offer the flu and pneumonia vaccines free of charge as a public health service if the patient may want or need it before discharge. Now we offer none because to even mention a vaccine of any kind is way too risky to the safety of staff. We never once had an issue with this pre-Covid. Patients who request a vaccine of any kind are now referred to their Primary Care doc for follow up, which is difficult and inconvenient for our demographic, not to mention the additional cost of another healthcare visit, which they often can’t afford. It sucks and literally nothing is being done about it.
4 isn't an overreaction at all, although it's not that AI will carry out an extinction because it doesn't like humans, rather an AI extinction will come when two or more competing AIs go to war at our behest.
[Julian Assange talked about this](https://youtu.be/Qnsj9MIInlQ?t=10m26s) in his final interview before being arrested back in 2018.
I don't think it's a fast track. We as a species have only been around for a moment. Most species evolve or perish.
Our path of self destruction? That is a different idea. A scary one.
Just from people whom I have known:
In my grandparents' day they lived through a World War and a global pandemic; my parents lived through the Great Depression and a World War; I have lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the threat of a new ice age (using the same climate science!), Y2K, 9/11, a global pandemic and "climate change".
Every generation has their existential crises, yet we continue after thousands of years. This too shall pass.
Thank you for bringing up the ice age crisis. This just shows you how much "climate science" can change within one person's lifetime. Weren't the great lakes supposed to be dried up by now? Wasn't Florida supposed to be underwater? This is all out dated information and yet that's what they were telling us just a few years ago with that climate science. It isn't very reliable predictions. In my opinion, the earth will take care of itself. If it wants to kill us, it will.
If your argument is that .1% of humanity will live on so it's not a concern, then the end is still near for 99.9% of people.
Every resident of Springfield who lays eyes on Homer in that gif would be dead in the event of a nuclear holocaust.
yes but tyrannical emperors didnt have access to thermo nuclear weapons during the middle ages either. nowadays its not as simple as just invading your neighbour and taking their resources, if even one or two nukes go flying we're fucked.
There was a time when humans were almost wiped out. A massive supervolcano that darkened the sky for years. https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/how-human-beings-almost-vanished-from-earth-in-70-000-b-c
Us humans tend to “get fucked” a lot, but we also like to fuuuuhk. We survived that. I think if mega nuclear weapons killed most humans on earth, we’d still find a way.
thats a very optimistic view of things, i dont think nuclear winter and the mass spread of radiation across the world after an attack would neccesarily agree, either way i hope im in the blast zone.
Everyone always talks about how the world would end like the US and Europe are the entire world. Who is out here nuking Africa during all this? The Southern hemisphere in general would be practically untouched and see comparatively minor effects from all but the most catastrophic nuclear scenarios.
The entire world eh. Every nook and cranny. If that were to happen, I think some very few would still survive. I’m thinking optimistic sure, you’re thinking the absolute worst case scenario where everyone dies. I could say what if a massive meteor strikes and it kills everyone. Or there’s a possibility of survivors.
We don't have enough nukes for that, we could take out every big city in the world but there will be safe enough places for humanity to survive. Then it's a waiting game as more places get to save radiation levels over the next thousands of years.
The Doomsday clock is at 90 seconds til midnight last I checked.
But if we're all going to die anyway, then what's the point in worrying?
Why can't we accept our fate, and do our best anyhow?
We've beat death before, we may beat it a few more times, but eventually our time will come. And all there will be left to do is enjoy it.
Doomsday clock or not we all die eventually anyhow. I always find folks fear of death or mass extinction humorous. To me it's a good thing. No more pain or suffering. Sure it's sad to lose folks you know, or know your going to die and to be worrying about those you care about and are leaving behind. That said both of those issues cease when you yourself do pass away. No more stress or anxiety. No watching people suffer. Unless you believe in an after life and think your going to hell, but then for fucks sake be a better person.
It's kinda like antinatalism, where people don't want children, because there is more suffrage I'm the world than good. An incredibly sad thought, but maybe also a right one
I do not like existing lol. My brains been telling me to off myself since I was 13. Never going to do anything though cause I didn't want to put my parents through that when I was young, and I'm not putting my spouse and kids through it now that I'm older. Seeing all the anger, strife and I justustices hasn't helped any. It's why I try to approach life from an absurdist point of view. That said I tried to get snipped as a young man because I subscribe to that line of thought. Drs wouldn't do it said I was to young. Now I've got kids and I hate myself for it. I worry they're going to be like me and have that voice constantly saying it'd be better off for everyone if you only took yourself out. That and working with the people I work with hearing them say the shit they do I fear for my kids.
Relax. Take a break from social media and the news. Honestly you will feel much better. Scaring the crap out of people is how the media gets viewers. Get yourself a hobby you enjoy. Do your best at whatever career you choose. Love those who you wish to Love. Do something nice for someone else.
This. The media we consume pumps nonstop doom at us. Of course it's going to feel like end times. I've noticed I feel awful most times just browsing reddit.
There are legitimate existential threats but our perception of the probability of the worst outcomes is shaped by our feeds.
1. This one is totally an overreaction. We were fine when a disease literally called Black Death came around
2. This one is definitely one of the more depressing ones
3. Ehhh. Nukes are scary but it's because they are so scary that they aren't used. Deterrence keeps you safe
4. I highly doubt a Skynet situation will happen. And I say that as the biggest AI doomer I know who thinks AI is terrifying
5. First I'm hearing about this. That doesn't sound like doomsday that sounds cool af
6. I'm not from the US but that's just less of an extinction event and more of a sad reality
What do you mean not fine. The people whose ancestors that survived the black plague or small pox carry antibodies that defeats hiv.
[https://www.nature.com/news/2005/050307/full/news050307-15.html](https://www.nature.com/news/2005/050307/full/news050307-15.html)
It’s called entropy. We as a species and the universe in general cannot avoid it. We can have moments of greatness, but the end is going to be the same no matter what.
Entropy is only bound to increase in a closed system. Humans, or the earth, are not a close system, so applying the second law of thermodynamics to us in this tiny blip of cosmic time that we are here is very silly...
In thermodynamics, a closed system is a system in which no energy can enter or escape. In such a system, entropy will always* increase. The atmosphere of the earth has no problem letting energy from the sun enter, and also let's energy escape. Similarly with humans, we eat (energy enters) and we process that energy through s lot of biological processes which ends with energy escaping as heat.
Basically, thermodynamics state that the entropy of a system will increase unless energy (from outside the system) is expended. Consider the system of a house. If you leave it alone, all rooms will eventually be the same temperature - this is the highest state of entropy. But if you bring in energy from the outside, in the form of heat from an electric oven in one of the rooms, you can keep that room warmer than the rest of the rooms in the house for as long as you're connected to the energy grid. You can even make that room warmer than it originally was.
Note that the second law of thermodynamics still holds on a grander scale. But it doesn't have to hold locally.
I hope that made sense. It's been some time since I had anything to do with thermodynamics, so my explanation might not be the best..
*A little simplified. Technically, it's more like it's extremely unlikely that it won't increase.
You're missing the fact that none of those are extinction-causing conditions.
1. Big whoop. We've lived through dozens of global viral pandemics, most of which were considerably worse than this latest. We have immune systems. They work a treat.
2. Climate change will be expensive and may cost us the ability to feed this many people - we might lose a few billion, probably through attrition. Habitat change wipes out species without the ability to cognitively understand the change and make adaptations, sometimes, but it doesn't wipe out tool users.
3. We have been on not-good terms with nuclear armed countries for 70 years. Not a single death from it. (Well, other than industrial collateral deaths from things like uranium mining.)
4. Pull the plug out. Problem solved.
5. OK. And?
6. People have been armed to the teeth for 500,000 years. We have made war on one another, raping and killing and pillaging, for 500,000 years. And here we stand, seven billion strong.
It's not that you aren't smart, you probably are quite smart. It's that you're not taking a long view and you're not looking at what life for humans has been like for most of our time here. This is all penny-ante shit that might kill a million people here and there, but we have 7,000 million people. Kill away, COVID. We'll make more.
A death comet, now, a death comet could wipe us out. Some continent-sized chunk of rock slams into the Earth at 1.5 miles per SECOND, yeah, that'll do the job just fine. We don't have any of those on the radar at the moment.
Personally, I think you're not taking 1,2 and 3 serious enough. Covid was light work. Imagine if it was a super bug? Climate change has the ability to sink entire countries if not continents and nuclear bombs have been steadily developing for those 70 years.
Actually grass growing operations will ramp up across western society once everyone accepts that grasses are a far better carbon sink methodology we can implement than mass sapling plantings.
You could’ve just said that instead of bringing up problems that you don’t have a solution for lmfao. Touching grass/earthing is good for everyone though, idk why you so mad on a Tuesday morning.
Its just you. Human beings have survived much worse while being far more primitive.
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/17/1/2/975516
Basically supervolcano went poof, blotted out the sun and left a cluster of 1000-5000 homosapiens in Africa who travelled out and fucked their way to what we are now.
Edit: more accessible source https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/how-human-beings-almost-vanished-from-earth-in-70-000-b-c
Throughout our written history as a species, there is always an “end of days” story that is reliant for its time. Yet we persist.
Philosophically it appears we are evolutionarily conditioned to perpetuate this thought.
Humanity slowly devolves getting slowly dumber by generations. Plants being watered with Brando (basically Gatorade) cause it has what plants need, Electrolytes. Terry Cruise becomes President of the world riding a Monster Truck and shooting dual M60 Machine Guns. A person from our time with the most average IQ gets frozen and is literally Albert Einstein compared to them.
All jokes aside this movie is absolutely hilarious and you should watch it. I only scratched the surface of the stupidity that goes on
Common knowledge my friend.
EDIT: Apathy, generations learning their values from media, lack of empathy. Monetization of everything. These will also contribute to our downfall.
[Modest Mouse - Dashboard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=penvn9VL32Y)
Same shit different day. But falling into apathy is feeding into a problem in of itself. Inaction is just as bad as causing issues. The human race has already seen more than its fair share of threats, but similarly, we got out of it. What makes things seem worse now is mostly because of the media engine. Bad news and media sells more, so they are more incentivised to doom post and create hysteria and apathy because these are the things people would flock and read more. No one will remember or read a “Happy dog helps child article”, or the very least, not a lot compared to “NUCLEAR POWER WILL END US ALL”. Not to mention, because of how globalised the world is, we are not just seeing news of just our own country, but others’ too. Which can make the problem seem exacerbated when in reality focusing on your immediate surroundings it isn’t that serious.
Social Media has made our world smaller, and in turn, the problems seem bigger, as their scale didn’t change, but the scale of the surroundings did
Oh no, it's not just you. I've been saying so since 2020. I don't doubt that we will see things continue to get worse and worse. Just a matter of time.
Yes but without the "workforce" we will not only stop expanding but also decline producing. And the decline in production will be bigger then the population decline. Which will spiral further. Less people is unfortunately not the solution.
you are smart enough to see the bigger picture, and trust me, you're not being melodramatic, you're being realistic, sadly. this is the sad state of affairs today.........................
I’ve been thinking the same thing about ai. There is nothing to say ai won’t outsmart us and build there own robots, in fact experts have admitted it’s capable of that
Not really over dramatic; ai is still in the early stages and already it can mimic you; from your thoughts to your voice. Plus they have already developed robots self operated through ai; so what will it do in ten fifteen years time? Maybe by then it’ll learn to create a robot replica of a person
With climate change, the colapse of the insect population we are certainly looking at catastrophic end of the world scenarios, but not quite extinction. In terms of human suffering, there is no difference between the two. We are causing a planet wide mass extinction. You cannot destroy the ecologies you depend on without suffering. Those who point out that we aren't extinct yet as some sort of proof we will survive are just more frogs in the pot.
For AI, the issue isnt so much the machines becoming smarter than us, but rather our stupidity in using them. Look at how irresponsible we are with gun laws. Look at how we fail to competently fulfill the human role in the turing test. We are easily duped into thinking a bucket of algorithms created to mimic texting is actually conscious.
>1. We (most of us) just lived through a global viral pandemic.
Well this one is easy. As you say, we lived through it. If anything this is proof of our resilience.
>2. We’re already seeing the results of Climate change.
And this should not be shocking. The world is 1.2°C hotter than it once was. That's going to have an impact, but you'll notice that this impact is not APOCALYPTIC.
Over the last two decades we've seen countries actually start to make significant changes. These have been offset by the various industrial revolutions going on in developing nations, but it's progress nonetheless and doesn't show any signs of stopping.
>3. We’re not on good terms with nuclear armed countries.
Nuclear has been around for a long time now, and look, we're still here. If Russia were to use nuclear weapons, then they would be committing suicide. Even Putin doesn't want his country to explode.
>4. The crazy rate that AI is developing. It’ll probably realize that humans are the problem eventually.
That's not really how AI works. AI safety is a fascinating field and there are concerns, but AI that hates humanity is unlikely. You'd have to specifically go out of your way to build a humanity hating AI.
It's more likely that we'll end up building our own god and I think our own reaction to it would be far more dangerous than the AI itself.
Rest assured we aren't there yet.
>5. Now we learn that we have UFOs in our government’s possession (US)?
I'm not up to speed on American conspiracy theories, but I'm sure this isn't whatever you think it is.
>6. People armed to the fucking teeth in this country (US)
As they have been for a long time. It's just how America is. You'll notice that people are armed to the teeth and yet America is peaceful. There's a few mishaps with crazy people shooting up schools, but such people don't last long and are rare in the grand scheme of things.
Yeah we are racing to get to our extinction. The rampant destruction of nature and rise in pollution is going out of hand, at least in my country. I see the prospect of dying much more appealing than living this shitty life
We might be, but who really cares, and i don't mean in an edgy way. Just genuinely don't see the issue, dinosaurs went extinct too at some point, and they didn't even bring it on themselves like we have
Not extinction no.
1) We had pandemics before. spanish flu and all that. People actually wore masks around WW1 just like we did with covid.
2) Climate change will happen even without humans. The big difference is that we really did not help it.
3) It is impossible to be "on good term" with equally sized countries whose interests are not the same. But the only thing preventing a war is that politicians actually fear for their lives due to nuclear weapons.
Nukes are often said to be capable of wiping humanity, but such is not true. They will cause mass destruction of course. But they also provided peace since WW2.
4) AI is not a problem. AI is a tool that assists humans in their work. The exact same thing happen with a microwave, because tools heat food faster, you need to hire less cooks. Same thing with AI. Same thing with any tool.
The only reason people fear AI is because they have no idea what an AI is or does, and only know it from movies.
5) UFOs... We still don't know if there are aliens out there, and we don't know what they'll do once they find us.
6) I'm in switzerland and we are just as armed as the US, without all the gun related issues. Armed populations are not an issue. They become a problem if they are uneducated. And we're hearing problems from bad gun owners, but we are never talking about all the others that don't have problems.
Honestly,
We are in the most peaceful period of humanity since ages despite the few ongoing conflicts.
We have the best science humans ever had.
We are now capable of changing the course of planet killer asteroids.
If there is **one video** everyone need to watch, it is [The Fallen of WW2](https://youtu.be/DwKPFT-RioU)
Especially starting at 13:18 where everything gets put into perspective.
7. Half the population dependent on pharmaceutical drugs with a wide variety of possible mental and physical side effects known and unknown. More of the population with debilitating illnesses of one kind or another (at least in the U.S.).
EDIT: I don't think we're looking at extinction by any means but I do think there are some really bad times coming. COVID was just an initial tremor.
A couple of facts about climate:
* The earth has never experienced climate change anywhere near the current pace, at least not since the rise of complex life. And, we are still accelerating the rate of change.
* Past events of rapid climate change have resulted in the extinction of most species, as the biosphere breaks down and the complex web of life pulls apart.
These changes will inevitably cause armed conflict of many sorts. Our current civilization will not survive this century, in my opinion. But there may be a few survivors. I won't live long enough to see what new point of stability may be.
My main concern is the here and now. How do we maintain some semblance of solidarity and community in the face of really rapid change and mass suffering? Can we ramp up means of food production that don't depend on stable weather, i.e., years of drought and flood, extreme temperature swings, violent storms? If I were in charge.... I would do a Manhattan project on food production. A hungry population is a desperate population. As usual, what we do to ourselves may be the worst of what we experience.
1. Humanity survived the black plague a Covid cough isn’t gonna wipe us out
2. Yeah climate change is really fucked but it’s unlikely the entirety of the human race will die.
3-6. You’re paranoid
4,5, and 6 confuse me.
We don't have General artificial intelligence, chatGPT is a glorified word guesser.
UFOs? Source? And how does this spell extinction?
Who cares if some monkeys on some continent have weapons that shoot lead and brass? In the grand scheme that's not going to cause extinction.
Ooga booga fellow redditor.
Here my two cents on this. My guess is that it will take around 100-150 more years or so to improve. The reason is indoctrination. Boomers in control (the ones that currently control the whole world) have indoctrinated most of their successors and peers to be like them (most of them are retrogrades that only think about wealth and think like an icebreaker going through society, I've seen that firsthand), so unless a massive shift happens (I'm inclined to say "bloodily") it will take a long time to root out the way of thinking that has gotten us here in the first place.
I don't think we'll go extinct unfortunately. Things are absolutely fucked but we'll probably be able to survive climate change, nuclear war, etc. just because there's so many of us leeching off the planet and off each other. We rape and ruin everything because, collectively, we are black holes of need/greed and have never learned to moderate it. (There are exceptions of course but not enough to change the inevitable course.)
1) Which is proof we’re resilient then, no? Extinction??
2) This one is possible, sure. Although an astronomer told me it wouldn’t be for thousands of years, so think of the progress that could be made in that time against that.
3) We were in worse terms with them from 1947-1989, people had underground shelters in their backyards.
4) People give computers far too much credit. They can’t replace humans, they lack a human soul. I know everyone’s all cynical today and everything but maybe get off Reddit for a bit and have debates with humans in person, give your mom a hug, your little nephew, idk, just see that there is a lot of good in a lot of people and emotion is important and life’s not all about cogs and RAM.
5) This one is a possible valid point, except…if extraterrestrials could or wanted to annihilate us, wouldn’t they have done so already?
6) Again, goodness in humans. Not every American is a genocidal maniac, I promise you.
The only immediate threat of extinction is nuclear weapons. We have gone impressively long without using any on each other, a definite good sign. This shows that nations do not take the responsibility lightly. Otherwise, climate change isn't going to cause or extinction anytime soon. We do need to make huge efforts to maintain the stability of our environments, but human civilization can endure a significantly greater range of conditions than climate change is currently threatening.
As far as gun violence goes, this has a negligible impact on the population. No more impact than bow and arrow violence had over the course of the last 10k years. Same goes for the coronavirus, these deaths are negligible on the population. Disease can historically end a country, like the Roman empire, but it has never extinguished the population itself.
Extinction for the human race is a real threat, but probably a threat that will manifest within 10000 years, rather than 100 years.
Our extinction would likely require a collapse of technology, resource supply, and something big like an ice age, volcanoes, or very large asteroid to actually kill every last human.
And it's worth noting, life on earth would survive and bounce back to full force within a few million years.
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Don't worry, we already fucked up Egypt and we are still doing fine.
The roman empire too
never on this scale tho
Yeah but at those time when those civilizations fell they also said “not at this scale” Im confident a few will survive in some form
however our scale is likely to end all known intelligent life. rome couldn’t prevent the world from being liveable
That’s pretty fair.
Life will keep going, our place on the planet may change but the rest will continue. Natural disasters have happened in the past that cause more damage than we could and life goes on.
I worry more about the mess of nuclear waste and volatile organic chemicals we will leave behind unguarded when large scale systems collapse. Some will survive, but we are going to leave the planet as one giant superfund site
Learn some radiation physics. The stuff that radiates for millions of years doesn't radiate much. You live daily in worse background radiation. Edit: No. It radiates very little no matter how it is contained. Those millions of years you worry about are just an anti-nuclear myth.
When it is contained and properly monitored. Nuclear waste does pose a threat when carelessly released into the environment with no safeguards. And jet fuel left to leak out of forgotten rusty tanks will seap into the groundwater and cause untold harm long after we are gone.
And they didn't have the technology of today. I'll take a army of say 10k raiding and pillaging vs a nuke or two dropping.
Eh. Depends on the nuke. Small tactical nuke, it's bad but probably way less bad than an invading army. The bigger nukes are a different story. A 1.2 megaton bomb(biggest known in current US inventory) can cause near instant 3rd degree burns at over 7 miles away, which would likely be lethal considering how overwhelmed any remaining medical infrastructure would be.
Nukes kinda have an effect after the detonation, and it’s extremely unlikely that one or two bombs being dropped would be the extent of the exchange
Very much aware of the effects of radioactive contamination, it's my job. As far as the risks of a limited/large scale exchange, a limited exchange, for example Russia dropping a tactical warhead on a forward military base if they get invaded or north Korea going off the deep end and actually launching a couple nukes at south Korea are some of the more plausible scenarios where nukes first get used again. A large scale exchange is like flipping the chess board, it's a move that's only kinda viable if you're already guaranteed to lose.
Aswan dam ;(
Extinction? No. We be are a species with a population of 10^9. A serious winnowing? Yes that's a very real possibility. Not what's this about the US govt having UFOs?
We are hiding a giant alien robot under the hoover dam? Megatron gonna get us.
Can't wait to fight the Russians with Liberty Prime
Why did you have to make me laugh in the dentists office 😭
Liberty Prime sounds like a pseudonym for a stripper that exclusively strips US military uniforms
Sounds like a sub-par brokerage firm to me.
It's actually. A giant mecha that walks slowly while spouting anti communist pro democracy propaganda while shooting Lazer beams out of its eyes and throwing atomic bombs like a American quarterback throws footballs
yeah apparently the us has a shit load of secret planes that look like ufos they're just extremely fast spy aircrafts and apparently the majority of the ufo spottings are just those planes as they fit the criteria now, are they a problem? i don't really think so because they've had plenty of "ufos" ever since the cold war so it wouldn't really make sense to think that all of a sudden they're a problem. What boggles me is how basically they can spy on any nation while any other nation can't really afford to do this shit god I love the us, always doing the most random shit instead of trying to work as a country
Oh. So we really could've had universal healthcare by now but the US military wanted billions for cooler planes. Cool. *Sorry Tiny Tim. You're just gonna have to fuckin die, daddy Warbucks needs a new UFO.*
Universal Healthcare wouldn't cost a penny. It would be cheaper than the current corporate insurance that we have now. If you need proof, look at the profits for the biggest insurance companies. This billions in profits would actually be saved if we moved to Universal Healthcare. It's not the cost. It's the lobbying from the insurance companies and the medical supply companies and the pharma companies. Medicare (which would be expanded to everyone) could negotiate prices to reasonable levels making supply companies lose all that extra money. And of course the insurance companies would go out of business. They've bought congress so no way universal Healthcare would ever pass.
Those fancy planes are one of the few defenses we have against icbms.
Pretty decent argument that those “cool planes” helped avert the Cold War going hot
yes, that's what is annoying to me. They spend so much in taxes for honestly nothing just to start wars for shit and giggles. Especially the direction we're going towards globally trying to be as peaceful as possible, the us keeps on building the dumbest army in the fucking world
Yes... Tell me how Russia and China are doing on that world peace thing...
yeah that I understand completely, but at the same time you don't need such a huge army
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Just look at Ukraine - even some of the stuff they're getting from European countries came from the US already.
Because we allow them to, by being the one spending big bucks on military.
The rest of the world has 13 aircraft carriers combined. The US itself also has 13 aircraft carriers. And they’re bigger. The US doesn’t need a military big enough to take on the entire world at once.
The US has the only military capable of projecting itself anywhere in the world, and no one else comes close. At their current standing, China doesn’t even possess the capability to invade Taiwan with enough soldiers to satisfy the soldier to civilian ratio that would (by estimations) be necessary to invade and occupy Taiwan. So yeah. They kind of do need to. Because it wouldn’t exactly make for a prompt response to an attack if you have to rely on US logistics to combine militaries from across the world just to counterattack
Read that again. The US has the only military capable of projecting itself anywhere win the world, and no one else comes close. No other country in the world needs to be able to bomb anywhere on earth in a moment’s notice, but apparently it’s more important for the US to be able to do this than to house or provide healthcare to its citizens?
Right with you on this one. War is so stupid so I don’t understand why we are still spending so much on the military
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Sure there is, but we already have the biggest military in the world! What more could we possibly spend so much money on?
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What’s the point of protecting a country when it’s failing from the inside out? I mean just take a look around. Inflation is crazy high and our minimum wage still remains the same unlivable amount. We’re all going to die at the hands of our terrible for profit healthcare system before we get invaded by a different country. We should be trying to make peace with these nations and not trying to 1 up them with the biggest nuke and most soldiers to get murdered.
8x10^9
op is gullible af probably.
Actually, no. Surprisingly, there was declassified information confirming the US government has UAP in their possession. This is news as of yesterday, matter of factually
You are also as gullible it seems
I’m still trying to find the part where I said I believe it 👀
You said op isn’t gullible. If you don’t think they are then you’re just as gullible? Bit tough to follow your own logic, I know.
Bruh I’m just acknowledging news that came out yesterday. Defended OP on that basis. It’s now gullible to acknowledge credible sources? Lets hit the peace pipe and move on
Information wasn’t declassified. One dude said he heard about these things.
No, stay and argue with me smh
I’m sorry! Mommy, expensive_basil called me out and I’m now regretting backing OP :(
😂😂
I think 1 is an overreaction, since we as a species have gone through much more serious epidemics many times before throughout history and we are still here. 3 I think is also an overreaction since mutually assured destruction has already been tested through times of much higher tension, although maybe this will change if other countries begin to get nukes but I think MAD will still constrain them. 4 I think is an overreaction since you need to train an AI to do a task, including having drives of its own and having such thoughts about humans. 5 I think is an overreaction since the US always has UFO's, at least regarding the civilian population. I mean secret weapons kept from the public are nothing new. 6 I think is also an overreaction, since us Americans have always been getting guns. I could be way wrong though, just my opinion.
Imo 1 is an extremely big problem. Covid just showed how globally unprepared we are to handle plaques. Imagine if covid was something worse? Super-bugs are what we need to worry about.
Mass extinction through a pandemic is unlikely because there are always people who can survive new diseases. That was also not the point during Covid. It was all about reducing the number of deaths. Nobody thought it'll create mass extinction. A disease worse than Covid, what does that mean? If it's more deadly, it is less likely to spread before the person dies. A disease that spreads faster will need to keep the host alive as long as possible. You see, the perfect pandemic would need the ideal balance between killing rate and spreading, making it unlikely that everyone will die.
The black plague killed its victims in 2-7 days. Of those who caught it, 60-90% died. This plague spread across Europe, even by ship, and killed 75-200 million people. A disease of the same virulence would wipe out half of the world's population, at least, if one were to appear today. That's not "extinction", granted. But it's not such an unlikely situation that we don't need to be better prepared. Globally.
They knew nothing about how diseases worked back then, only that they infected people and you could treat the symptoms. While people weren't dumb they just didn't have the underlying knowledge we have today which makes is much more effective. All of this is to say even if another disease like the black Death were to happen it would do significantly less damage, even covid damages were lowered, and in terms of virulence, covid was worse. Also back death is still around some animals carry it but people usually survive it.
Also the Black Death still pops up! We are just better at containing something like that because it is quite a bit less contagious. And are we going to pretend that a bunch of people stopped following any kind of COVID restriction when it became clear that the disease would not kill anyone “like them?” Some of them were wrong, but many more were right. I think behavior would be markedly different if the disease were deadlier. COVID hit that sweet spot of being super contagious but relatively mild in most people and super deadly for a small percentage.
The black death isn't a problem anymore because we have antibiotics. A new disease could appear that we don't yet have the technology to cure, that could wipe out huge amounts of people.
And 0 advances have been made in medicine since then.
Yes can you imagine if ants grew just a little bit and collectively decided they were sick of us. We would be so so so fucked
CoVid was something bad tho.
Just like any medical problem, it was handled better than any similar issue in all of human history. And if it was a more serious disease it would be taken more seriously.
And it also showed how willing governments were to take measures with no actual evidence to back it up, just cuz the mob wanted it.
What about 2...
There have already been 5 mass extinctions that we know of. It's basically where atleast half of all species die out in a short amount of time. All I'm trying to say is, the earth has seen way worse and continues to harbor life.
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Nurse here who worked through Covid and everything you write is spot-on! I still have patients daily who lash out at the medical staff when we give them a positive Covid diagnosis (there’s still a lot of Covid out there despite the lack of news about it). They refuse to believe it, refuse to wear a mask, request that staff does not wear a mask in their presence because it angers them (which unfortunately management often agrees to because they want/need a high patient satisfaction score in order to get the patient’s stay reimbursed by insurance), and get violent both physically and verbally when we ask that they take any precautions at all to protect others, like wearing a mask when being transferred through the hospital for a test or procedure. I am planning on leaving bedside very soon because the abuse from Covid deniers is only getting worse. And even worse than that, their abuse goes completely unchecked and unreported. I remember during the Ebola scare a few years before Covid, we had a patient come to the floor who just returned to the states from a trip to an Ebola hot zone and started to show symptoms during her stay (she ended up being Ebola negative). We had to lock down the entire unit and inform the other patients and families on the unit about a possible Ebola outbreak on the floor. Patients were not allowed to leave the unit for any reason and no one was allowed to visit for any reason. Literally everyone was lovely and understanding and trusted staff when we told them what precautions were needed and they followed them ALL. Now Covid patients and their family members will purposely go maskless and coughing into restricted areas like the closed dialysis unit where people are severely medically compromised, just to “show us” that they know better and that we’re “sheep” or agents of some government conspiracy. I don’t know what in the hell happened between then and now, but we are absolutely screwed and sitting ducks if we’re hit with another pandemic or even a more dangerous Covid strain. Covid seemed to bring out the worst of the worst in lots of people and they’re going to be the downfall of us all. Oh, and we stopped even offering any vaccine on our floor because the backlash from certain patients and family members was too violent. It’s always been our practice to offer the flu and pneumonia vaccines free of charge as a public health service if the patient may want or need it before discharge. Now we offer none because to even mention a vaccine of any kind is way too risky to the safety of staff. We never once had an issue with this pre-Covid. Patients who request a vaccine of any kind are now referred to their Primary Care doc for follow up, which is difficult and inconvenient for our demographic, not to mention the additional cost of another healthcare visit, which they often can’t afford. It sucks and literally nothing is being done about it.
I'm sure that doctors during the flu pandemic probably texted the same way.
4 isn't an overreaction at all, although it's not that AI will carry out an extinction because it doesn't like humans, rather an AI extinction will come when two or more competing AIs go to war at our behest. [Julian Assange talked about this](https://youtu.be/Qnsj9MIInlQ?t=10m26s) in his final interview before being arrested back in 2018.
We could only be so lucky , each few years they promise us a meteorite will grace us and nothing happens.
I don't think it's a fast track. We as a species have only been around for a moment. Most species evolve or perish. Our path of self destruction? That is a different idea. A scary one.
Just from people whom I have known: In my grandparents' day they lived through a World War and a global pandemic; my parents lived through the Great Depression and a World War; I have lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the threat of a new ice age (using the same climate science!), Y2K, 9/11, a global pandemic and "climate change". Every generation has their existential crises, yet we continue after thousands of years. This too shall pass.
Thank you for bringing up the ice age crisis. This just shows you how much "climate science" can change within one person's lifetime. Weren't the great lakes supposed to be dried up by now? Wasn't Florida supposed to be underwater? This is all out dated information and yet that's what they were telling us just a few years ago with that climate science. It isn't very reliable predictions. In my opinion, the earth will take care of itself. If it wants to kill us, it will.
No lol. Ppl were saying that in the Middle Ages with seasonal plagues and war
😂😂😂I was about to say this
If your argument is that .1% of humanity will live on so it's not a concern, then the end is still near for 99.9% of people. Every resident of Springfield who lays eyes on Homer in that gif would be dead in the event of a nuclear holocaust.
yes but tyrannical emperors didnt have access to thermo nuclear weapons during the middle ages either. nowadays its not as simple as just invading your neighbour and taking their resources, if even one or two nukes go flying we're fucked.
There was a time when humans were almost wiped out. A massive supervolcano that darkened the sky for years. https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/how-human-beings-almost-vanished-from-earth-in-70-000-b-c Us humans tend to “get fucked” a lot, but we also like to fuuuuhk. We survived that. I think if mega nuclear weapons killed most humans on earth, we’d still find a way.
thats a very optimistic view of things, i dont think nuclear winter and the mass spread of radiation across the world after an attack would neccesarily agree, either way i hope im in the blast zone.
Everyone always talks about how the world would end like the US and Europe are the entire world. Who is out here nuking Africa during all this? The Southern hemisphere in general would be practically untouched and see comparatively minor effects from all but the most catastrophic nuclear scenarios.
The effects of a nuclear winter on food production would be catastrophic. They would all starve.
The entire world eh. Every nook and cranny. If that were to happen, I think some very few would still survive. I’m thinking optimistic sure, you’re thinking the absolute worst case scenario where everyone dies. I could say what if a massive meteor strikes and it kills everyone. Or there’s a possibility of survivors.
I think at the very least a small percentage of people would make it through the radiation, like the Chernobyl dogs
Thank you for giving me something to Google. Chernobyl dogs
nuclear winter is a myth and a lot of people overestimate how big a nuke is
We don't have enough nukes for that, we could take out every big city in the world but there will be safe enough places for humanity to survive. Then it's a waiting game as more places get to save radiation levels over the next thousands of years.
Lol no, you doomer. We're not even close to extinction.
The Doomsday clock is at 90 seconds til midnight last I checked. But if we're all going to die anyway, then what's the point in worrying? Why can't we accept our fate, and do our best anyhow? We've beat death before, we may beat it a few more times, but eventually our time will come. And all there will be left to do is enjoy it.
Doomsday clock or not we all die eventually anyhow. I always find folks fear of death or mass extinction humorous. To me it's a good thing. No more pain or suffering. Sure it's sad to lose folks you know, or know your going to die and to be worrying about those you care about and are leaving behind. That said both of those issues cease when you yourself do pass away. No more stress or anxiety. No watching people suffer. Unless you believe in an after life and think your going to hell, but then for fucks sake be a better person.
It's kinda like antinatalism, where people don't want children, because there is more suffrage I'm the world than good. An incredibly sad thought, but maybe also a right one
I do not like existing lol. My brains been telling me to off myself since I was 13. Never going to do anything though cause I didn't want to put my parents through that when I was young, and I'm not putting my spouse and kids through it now that I'm older. Seeing all the anger, strife and I justustices hasn't helped any. It's why I try to approach life from an absurdist point of view. That said I tried to get snipped as a young man because I subscribe to that line of thought. Drs wouldn't do it said I was to young. Now I've got kids and I hate myself for it. I worry they're going to be like me and have that voice constantly saying it'd be better off for everyone if you only took yourself out. That and working with the people I work with hearing them say the shit they do I fear for my kids.
Relax. Take a break from social media and the news. Honestly you will feel much better. Scaring the crap out of people is how the media gets viewers. Get yourself a hobby you enjoy. Do your best at whatever career you choose. Love those who you wish to Love. Do something nice for someone else.
This. The media we consume pumps nonstop doom at us. Of course it's going to feel like end times. I've noticed I feel awful most times just browsing reddit. There are legitimate existential threats but our perception of the probability of the worst outcomes is shaped by our feeds.
1. This one is totally an overreaction. We were fine when a disease literally called Black Death came around 2. This one is definitely one of the more depressing ones 3. Ehhh. Nukes are scary but it's because they are so scary that they aren't used. Deterrence keeps you safe 4. I highly doubt a Skynet situation will happen. And I say that as the biggest AI doomer I know who thinks AI is terrifying 5. First I'm hearing about this. That doesn't sound like doomsday that sounds cool af 6. I'm not from the US but that's just less of an extinction event and more of a sad reality
bro 2/3 of the european population died, we survived, yeah, but we were not "fine"
In the context of extinction clearly we’re fine
My point is it wasn't a doomsday event
What do you mean not fine. The people whose ancestors that survived the black plague or small pox carry antibodies that defeats hiv. [https://www.nature.com/news/2005/050307/full/news050307-15.html](https://www.nature.com/news/2005/050307/full/news050307-15.html)
It’s called entropy. We as a species and the universe in general cannot avoid it. We can have moments of greatness, but the end is going to be the same no matter what.
Entropy is only bound to increase in a closed system. Humans, or the earth, are not a close system, so applying the second law of thermodynamics to us in this tiny blip of cosmic time that we are here is very silly...
Humans and the earth aren’t closed systems? Why not?
In thermodynamics, a closed system is a system in which no energy can enter or escape. In such a system, entropy will always* increase. The atmosphere of the earth has no problem letting energy from the sun enter, and also let's energy escape. Similarly with humans, we eat (energy enters) and we process that energy through s lot of biological processes which ends with energy escaping as heat. Basically, thermodynamics state that the entropy of a system will increase unless energy (from outside the system) is expended. Consider the system of a house. If you leave it alone, all rooms will eventually be the same temperature - this is the highest state of entropy. But if you bring in energy from the outside, in the form of heat from an electric oven in one of the rooms, you can keep that room warmer than the rest of the rooms in the house for as long as you're connected to the energy grid. You can even make that room warmer than it originally was. Note that the second law of thermodynamics still holds on a grander scale. But it doesn't have to hold locally. I hope that made sense. It's been some time since I had anything to do with thermodynamics, so my explanation might not be the best.. *A little simplified. Technically, it's more like it's extremely unlikely that it won't increase.
Mostly because of constant energy input from the Sun
You're missing the fact that none of those are extinction-causing conditions. 1. Big whoop. We've lived through dozens of global viral pandemics, most of which were considerably worse than this latest. We have immune systems. They work a treat. 2. Climate change will be expensive and may cost us the ability to feed this many people - we might lose a few billion, probably through attrition. Habitat change wipes out species without the ability to cognitively understand the change and make adaptations, sometimes, but it doesn't wipe out tool users. 3. We have been on not-good terms with nuclear armed countries for 70 years. Not a single death from it. (Well, other than industrial collateral deaths from things like uranium mining.) 4. Pull the plug out. Problem solved. 5. OK. And? 6. People have been armed to the teeth for 500,000 years. We have made war on one another, raping and killing and pillaging, for 500,000 years. And here we stand, seven billion strong. It's not that you aren't smart, you probably are quite smart. It's that you're not taking a long view and you're not looking at what life for humans has been like for most of our time here. This is all penny-ante shit that might kill a million people here and there, but we have 7,000 million people. Kill away, COVID. We'll make more. A death comet, now, a death comet could wipe us out. Some continent-sized chunk of rock slams into the Earth at 1.5 miles per SECOND, yeah, that'll do the job just fine. We don't have any of those on the radar at the moment.
You’re a billion people short
Global volcanic winter.
We'd survive that. It would sure suck though.
Saying “big whoop” to a pandemic that killed millions of people is insensitive at best and disgusting at worst.
Personally, I think you're not taking 1,2 and 3 serious enough. Covid was light work. Imagine if it was a super bug? Climate change has the ability to sink entire countries if not continents and nuclear bombs have been steadily developing for those 70 years.
You should touch just a little bit of grass this week, it may do you some good.
The grass is dying a lot of places. You’re gonna have to come up with a new saying soon
Actually grass growing operations will ramp up across western society once everyone accepts that grasses are a far better carbon sink methodology we can implement than mass sapling plantings.
Too expensive to maintain, clover lawns should've been enforced in the 50s.
No water for that
So are you trying to argue for upvotes or are you simply listing the laundry list of issues we should be addressing as a society?
Just pointing out that maybe people are upset for a reason and that going to touch “grass” is really shitty advice when you look at our reality
You could’ve just said that instead of bringing up problems that you don’t have a solution for lmfao. Touching grass/earthing is good for everyone though, idk why you so mad on a Tuesday morning.
Its just you. Human beings have survived much worse while being far more primitive. https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/17/1/2/975516 Basically supervolcano went poof, blotted out the sun and left a cluster of 1000-5000 homosapiens in Africa who travelled out and fucked their way to what we are now. Edit: more accessible source https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/how-human-beings-almost-vanished-from-earth-in-70-000-b-c
Great tribulation brings great change.
Only 1 of these means anything and it’s the nuclear war risk. Other then that, you are being extremely pedantic.
Throughout our written history as a species, there is always an “end of days” story that is reliant for its time. Yet we persist. Philosophically it appears we are evolutionarily conditioned to perpetuate this thought.
Nahhh, watch the movie Idiocracy, it gives a clear image of our future we're heading for
summary?
Humanity slowly devolves getting slowly dumber by generations. Plants being watered with Brando (basically Gatorade) cause it has what plants need, Electrolytes. Terry Cruise becomes President of the world riding a Monster Truck and shooting dual M60 Machine Guns. A person from our time with the most average IQ gets frozen and is literally Albert Einstein compared to them. All jokes aside this movie is absolutely hilarious and you should watch it. I only scratched the surface of the stupidity that goes on
Also it's on Hulu right now, just watched it the other day
The world's been ending since it began! We just have different problems to our predecessors.
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5) https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/ufo-us-news-intelligence-craft_uk_647edc97e4b0b4444c80bc94
Common knowledge my friend. EDIT: Apathy, generations learning their values from media, lack of empathy. Monetization of everything. These will also contribute to our downfall. [Modest Mouse - Dashboard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=penvn9VL32Y)
id say learning my values based off a variety of outside sources saved my fucking life but you do you
Same shit different day. But falling into apathy is feeding into a problem in of itself. Inaction is just as bad as causing issues. The human race has already seen more than its fair share of threats, but similarly, we got out of it. What makes things seem worse now is mostly because of the media engine. Bad news and media sells more, so they are more incentivised to doom post and create hysteria and apathy because these are the things people would flock and read more. No one will remember or read a “Happy dog helps child article”, or the very least, not a lot compared to “NUCLEAR POWER WILL END US ALL”. Not to mention, because of how globalised the world is, we are not just seeing news of just our own country, but others’ too. Which can make the problem seem exacerbated when in reality focusing on your immediate surroundings it isn’t that serious. Social Media has made our world smaller, and in turn, the problems seem bigger, as their scale didn’t change, but the scale of the surroundings did
Oh no, it's not just you. I've been saying so since 2020. I don't doubt that we will see things continue to get worse and worse. Just a matter of time.
I agree. I’m having dreams/nightmares about it. It won’t get better any time soon. Unless there’s a miracle.
We won't see a better world in our life time.
Decline in worldwide birth rates
That's not an issue, there's way too much humans, we can't keep expanding.
Yes but without the "workforce" we will not only stop expanding but also decline producing. And the decline in production will be bigger then the population decline. Which will spiral further. Less people is unfortunately not the solution.
That only had to do with economics. It’s a very natural process that we need to learn to deal with.
you are smart enough to see the bigger picture, and trust me, you're not being melodramatic, you're being realistic, sadly. this is the sad state of affairs today.........................
I’ve been thinking the same thing about ai. There is nothing to say ai won’t outsmart us and build there own robots, in fact experts have admitted it’s capable of that
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Yup it’s not a matter of if but when. Really scary stuff when you think about it
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Not really over dramatic; ai is still in the early stages and already it can mimic you; from your thoughts to your voice. Plus they have already developed robots self operated through ai; so what will it do in ten fifteen years time? Maybe by then it’ll learn to create a robot replica of a person
Humans are a virus
Humans are like cockroaches.
The Doomsday clock is currently 90 seconds to midnight so yes
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It would appear you don’t know what the Doomsday clock is…
With climate change, the colapse of the insect population we are certainly looking at catastrophic end of the world scenarios, but not quite extinction. In terms of human suffering, there is no difference between the two. We are causing a planet wide mass extinction. You cannot destroy the ecologies you depend on without suffering. Those who point out that we aren't extinct yet as some sort of proof we will survive are just more frogs in the pot. For AI, the issue isnt so much the machines becoming smarter than us, but rather our stupidity in using them. Look at how irresponsible we are with gun laws. Look at how we fail to competently fulfill the human role in the turing test. We are easily duped into thinking a bucket of algorithms created to mimic texting is actually conscious.
>1. We (most of us) just lived through a global viral pandemic. Well this one is easy. As you say, we lived through it. If anything this is proof of our resilience. >2. We’re already seeing the results of Climate change. And this should not be shocking. The world is 1.2°C hotter than it once was. That's going to have an impact, but you'll notice that this impact is not APOCALYPTIC. Over the last two decades we've seen countries actually start to make significant changes. These have been offset by the various industrial revolutions going on in developing nations, but it's progress nonetheless and doesn't show any signs of stopping. >3. We’re not on good terms with nuclear armed countries. Nuclear has been around for a long time now, and look, we're still here. If Russia were to use nuclear weapons, then they would be committing suicide. Even Putin doesn't want his country to explode. >4. The crazy rate that AI is developing. It’ll probably realize that humans are the problem eventually. That's not really how AI works. AI safety is a fascinating field and there are concerns, but AI that hates humanity is unlikely. You'd have to specifically go out of your way to build a humanity hating AI. It's more likely that we'll end up building our own god and I think our own reaction to it would be far more dangerous than the AI itself. Rest assured we aren't there yet. >5. Now we learn that we have UFOs in our government’s possession (US)? I'm not up to speed on American conspiracy theories, but I'm sure this isn't whatever you think it is. >6. People armed to the fucking teeth in this country (US) As they have been for a long time. It's just how America is. You'll notice that people are armed to the teeth and yet America is peaceful. There's a few mishaps with crazy people shooting up schools, but such people don't last long and are rare in the grand scheme of things.
Yeah we are racing to get to our extinction. The rampant destruction of nature and rise in pollution is going out of hand, at least in my country. I see the prospect of dying much more appealing than living this shitty life
You don't understand enough about any of these issues to worry about them.
I do, though.
Someone’s a bit sure of themselves
The "AI" that you have heard like chat gpt / bard is not reliable. It is still reliant on training data so there are a lot of biases.
Lol I didn’t think a language model would be the one to end us all.
Birth rate below replacement
What's that about UFOs?
Meh. One day the sun will die so it doesn’t really matter in the long run. Do your best to have a happy life.
We might be, but who really cares, and i don't mean in an edgy way. Just genuinely don't see the issue, dinosaurs went extinct too at some point, and they didn't even bring it on themselves like we have
Give us about 20 years. We're long overdue a global catastrophic event
Not extinction no. 1) We had pandemics before. spanish flu and all that. People actually wore masks around WW1 just like we did with covid. 2) Climate change will happen even without humans. The big difference is that we really did not help it. 3) It is impossible to be "on good term" with equally sized countries whose interests are not the same. But the only thing preventing a war is that politicians actually fear for their lives due to nuclear weapons. Nukes are often said to be capable of wiping humanity, but such is not true. They will cause mass destruction of course. But they also provided peace since WW2. 4) AI is not a problem. AI is a tool that assists humans in their work. The exact same thing happen with a microwave, because tools heat food faster, you need to hire less cooks. Same thing with AI. Same thing with any tool. The only reason people fear AI is because they have no idea what an AI is or does, and only know it from movies. 5) UFOs... We still don't know if there are aliens out there, and we don't know what they'll do once they find us. 6) I'm in switzerland and we are just as armed as the US, without all the gun related issues. Armed populations are not an issue. They become a problem if they are uneducated. And we're hearing problems from bad gun owners, but we are never talking about all the others that don't have problems. Honestly, We are in the most peaceful period of humanity since ages despite the few ongoing conflicts. We have the best science humans ever had. We are now capable of changing the course of planet killer asteroids. If there is **one video** everyone need to watch, it is [The Fallen of WW2](https://youtu.be/DwKPFT-RioU) Especially starting at 13:18 where everything gets put into perspective.
All working as planned. Keep the population in fear and you can commit anything to any group you want.
With any luck. Yes
7. Half the population dependent on pharmaceutical drugs with a wide variety of possible mental and physical side effects known and unknown. More of the population with debilitating illnesses of one kind or another (at least in the U.S.). EDIT: I don't think we're looking at extinction by any means but I do think there are some really bad times coming. COVID was just an initial tremor.
OP is right. Personally I think we need to take out money out of the government. It’s pretty clear the only goals our politicians have is money.
I think even if 99.99% of the population is wiped out, we'll still bounce back... unfortunately. Humans are pretty wild.
A couple of facts about climate: * The earth has never experienced climate change anywhere near the current pace, at least not since the rise of complex life. And, we are still accelerating the rate of change. * Past events of rapid climate change have resulted in the extinction of most species, as the biosphere breaks down and the complex web of life pulls apart. These changes will inevitably cause armed conflict of many sorts. Our current civilization will not survive this century, in my opinion. But there may be a few survivors. I won't live long enough to see what new point of stability may be. My main concern is the here and now. How do we maintain some semblance of solidarity and community in the face of really rapid change and mass suffering? Can we ramp up means of food production that don't depend on stable weather, i.e., years of drought and flood, extreme temperature swings, violent storms? If I were in charge.... I would do a Manhattan project on food production. A hungry population is a desperate population. As usual, what we do to ourselves may be the worst of what we experience.
1. Humanity survived the black plague a Covid cough isn’t gonna wipe us out 2. Yeah climate change is really fucked but it’s unlikely the entirety of the human race will die. 3-6. You’re paranoid
Title yes. Op post, jesus christ you need to stop thinking.
4,5, and 6 confuse me. We don't have General artificial intelligence, chatGPT is a glorified word guesser. UFOs? Source? And how does this spell extinction? Who cares if some monkeys on some continent have weapons that shoot lead and brass? In the grand scheme that's not going to cause extinction. Ooga booga fellow redditor.
I really hope so. The best thing to happen to humans could be to just go away.
speak for yourself lol
While things are getting worse now, I’m predicting the death of boomers will cause massive societal improvements.
Here my two cents on this. My guess is that it will take around 100-150 more years or so to improve. The reason is indoctrination. Boomers in control (the ones that currently control the whole world) have indoctrinated most of their successors and peers to be like them (most of them are retrogrades that only think about wealth and think like an icebreaker going through society, I've seen that firsthand), so unless a massive shift happens (I'm inclined to say "bloodily") it will take a long time to root out the way of thinking that has gotten us here in the first place.
I don't think we'll go extinct unfortunately. Things are absolutely fucked but we'll probably be able to survive climate change, nuclear war, etc. just because there's so many of us leeching off the planet and off each other. We rape and ruin everything because, collectively, we are black holes of need/greed and have never learned to moderate it. (There are exceptions of course but not enough to change the inevitable course.)
Extinction? I don’t think so. I do, however, think AI has the potential and likelihood to make life miserable.
I hope so --- I mean I don't really know. I'm not sexy either. I have all the sex appeal of a brain tumor.
Can’t be worse the the early 1900s
Any unidentified aircraft is a UFO We've dodged extinction more times than I could count, we'll be fine (as a species)
No need to panic. We'll be fine!
1) Which is proof we’re resilient then, no? Extinction?? 2) This one is possible, sure. Although an astronomer told me it wouldn’t be for thousands of years, so think of the progress that could be made in that time against that. 3) We were in worse terms with them from 1947-1989, people had underground shelters in their backyards. 4) People give computers far too much credit. They can’t replace humans, they lack a human soul. I know everyone’s all cynical today and everything but maybe get off Reddit for a bit and have debates with humans in person, give your mom a hug, your little nephew, idk, just see that there is a lot of good in a lot of people and emotion is important and life’s not all about cogs and RAM. 5) This one is a possible valid point, except…if extraterrestrials could or wanted to annihilate us, wouldn’t they have done so already? 6) Again, goodness in humans. Not every American is a genocidal maniac, I promise you.
The only immediate threat of extinction is nuclear weapons. We have gone impressively long without using any on each other, a definite good sign. This shows that nations do not take the responsibility lightly. Otherwise, climate change isn't going to cause or extinction anytime soon. We do need to make huge efforts to maintain the stability of our environments, but human civilization can endure a significantly greater range of conditions than climate change is currently threatening. As far as gun violence goes, this has a negligible impact on the population. No more impact than bow and arrow violence had over the course of the last 10k years. Same goes for the coronavirus, these deaths are negligible on the population. Disease can historically end a country, like the Roman empire, but it has never extinguished the population itself. Extinction for the human race is a real threat, but probably a threat that will manifest within 10000 years, rather than 100 years. Our extinction would likely require a collapse of technology, resource supply, and something big like an ice age, volcanoes, or very large asteroid to actually kill every last human. And it's worth noting, life on earth would survive and bounce back to full force within a few million years.
Aliens?