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Will humans go extinct?


Still Waters

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However, stromatolites have not yet gone extinct after over 1 billion years living on Earth ......    And humans aren't that much more intelligent* so there is hope for us yet


* there is evidence some stromatolites are 3 times as intelligent as some humans.  Although a few experts argue it is at least 7 times.

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Undoubtedly humans will go extinct.

All that rises, diminishes.

 

Change is the one true constant.

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56 minutes ago, Still Waters said:

Will our species go extinct? The short answer is yes. The fossil record shows everything goes extinct, eventually. Almost all species that ever lived, over 99.9%, are extinct.

Some left descendants. Most – plesiosaurs, trilobites, Brontosaurus – didn’t. That’s also true of other human species. Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo erectus all vanished, leaving just Homo sapiens. Humans are inevitably heading for extinction. The question isn’t whether we go extinct, but when.

https://theconversation.com/will-humans-go-extinct-for-all-the-existential-threats-well-likely-be-here-for-a-very-long-time-135327

This is an interesting topic, but I personally don't agree with the article. Most of it is based upon comparisons between Humans and other species, including our prehistoric ancestors. Now its clear that they didn't survive, but the reason is because we as species evolved and unlike any other creatures on the Planet the result of this evolution produced a mammal more intelligent than any other creature that walked the earth. For this reason and the fact that we are continuing to evolve, its possible that we will not become extinct so long as the following events don't happen.

Unless we cause our own extinction, because lets face it Man is his own worst enemy so hopefully our next phase of evolution will change that part of us that is still animalistic in nature. Last another thing that could cause the extinction of the human race is a natural disaster, and there are many different scenarios that could bring everything crashing down. But I am certainly more optimistic than the author of the article, because I believe that the human race in some form will survive, I mean just look at the odds of us even making it this for. I think once we reach the point were we can spread our seed into the Solar system and the Universe our race will be assured of immortality and the possibility of extinction will no longer be considered a possibility.

 

Peace 

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1 hour ago, Essan said:

* there is evidence some stromatolites are 3 times as intelligent as some humans.  Although a few experts argue it is at least 7 times in the case of some Americans.

:yes:

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17 minutes ago, Tuco's Gas said:

Not to nitpick,  but homo erectus, just like homo habilis and a. afarensis before him, didn't exactly go extinct.  Rather, they were our ancestors. As were the 20 or so other species of primate bipedal hominid that formed our evolutionary path.

Branches,  We lived alongside of 6 of our ancestors for thousands of years. 

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Advanced modern human will be the first to go... 

~

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How many of these species had a space program?

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12 hours ago, Tuco's Gas said:

 

As far as all species one day going extinct, maybe we homo sapien sapiens (our true name, btw) will evolve to become as indestructible as the humble tartigrade....

 

https://www.livescience.com/57985-tardigrade-facts.html

Homo sapiens sapiens (our subspecies name) is a recent thing though made necessary when some academics started preferring the trinomial Homo sapiens neanderthalensis to simply Homo neanderthalensis for neanderthals (and no doubt other claimed sub species since) to denote sub species. It's not straightforward though and I don't think there is complete agreement about this, some just stick to our species name Homo sapiens.

We'll be extinct one day , one way or the other, but I think humans will outlast cockroaches. Our numbers might be vastly reduced in the next 100 yrs or so though.

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19 hours ago, Manwon Lender said:

This is an interesting topic, but I personally don't agree with the article. Most of it is based upon comparisons between Humans and other species, including our prehistoric ancestors. Now its clear that they didn't survive, but the reason is because we as species evolved and unlike any other creatures on the Planet the result of this evolution produced a mammal more intelligent than any other creature that walked the earth. For this reason and the fact that we are continuing to evolve, its possible that we will not become extinct so long as the following events don't happen.

Unless we cause our own extinction, because lets face it Man is his own worst enemy so hopefully our next phase of evolution will change that part of us that is still animalistic in nature. Last another thing that could cause the extinction of the human race is a natural disaster, and there are many different scenarios that could bring everything crashing down. But I am certainly more optimistic than the author of the article, because I believe that the human race in some form will survive, I mean just look at the odds of us even making it this for. I think once we reach the point were we can spread our seed into the Solar system and the Universe our race will be assured of immortality and the possibility of extinction will no longer be considered a possibility.

 

Peace 

yes this!

I was about to say, not one of the previous species managed industry and technology!

The other species were/are destined to be stuck on planet Earth forever ....humans at least have a chance to one day find another home (s) which will seriously increase chances of survival in the long term.

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1 minute ago, quillius said:

yes this!

I was about to say, not one of the previous species managed industry and technology!

The other species were/are destined to be stuck on planet Earth forever ....humans at least have a chance to one day find another home (s) which will seriously increase chances of survival in the long term.

As Buckaroo Banzai said, "No matter where you go, there you are."  We take our best natures and our worst natures with us when we go.  It is not the earth we need to escape from. but maybe ourselves.

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9 minutes ago, Tatetopa said:

As Buckaroo Banzai said, "No matter where you go, there you are."  We take our best natures and our worst natures with us when we go.  It is not the earth we need to escape from. but maybe ourselves.

hopefully further evolution will remove some of the worst natures :)

 

at very least we would have a chance, other species never had this option open to them

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When it comes to extinction timing is everything.  Colonizing the solar system may save us but only if we get there before we need to.  It also doesn't need to be the result of one big cataclysmic event.  Any event that significantly reduces human population with reduce our ability to perpetuate the world we've created.  Most individuals in the modern world are not as self sufficient as our ancestors from 200 years ago.  We rely on a host of technicians and other experts to maintain our way of life for us.  So it wouldn't take a single extinction level event to wipe us out, but any number of lesser events could send us back to the stone age.  Then from there we may taper off into extinction.  We chipped rocks for millennia before advancing by small steps and there were probably many times when the entire human race was hanging by a thread.  If we are sent back to that point again there's no guarantee we'll progress the same way a second time.

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Humankind is so amazing. The only thing that'll take us out is us.
And that's sadly pretty likely.

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2 hours ago, Seti42 said:

Humankind is so amazing. The only thing that'll take us out is us.
And that's sadly pretty likely.

Committing suicide is only one possibility for the end of the human race.  The dinosaurs had existed much longer than we have and had no ability to destroy themselves.  But the randomness of the universe intervened and they disappeared overnight.  We're in the midst of a pandemic that caught us by surprise.  We're coping, this time, but the next one could be worse.  We could evolve out of existence.  There are actually more scenarios than I'd like to consider at the moment.

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We will.

I'm certain we'll eventually evolve into an different species.

And even then its inevitable given the whole heat death of the universe at the end. Even then I don't expect us to be around by then nor the species we could evolve into.

Edited by MysteryMike
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IF we don't destroy ourselves, there's a chance that we can go elsewhere than earth. If we stay here... we are doomed for sure when the sun will go pow in a couple of billion years.

Edited by Jon the frog
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Frankly, I think nukes are a much greater threat then Climate Change, or a virus. Climate Change we can engineer, viruses we can develope treatments. Nukes are only controlled by the fickle trends of politics.

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Even if we got out into space, within a thousand years those people probably would be greatly different, if not separate species, from Earth standard humans.

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Sure, if an event is big enough anything can go extinct.   I think humans have the best chance to survive though.   Humans occupy every corner of the Earth.   If 1 spot is spared (Alaska, Hawaii, Iceland, New Zealand), the humans will survive.  We have the know how to hunt almost any animal and we can eat plants.  There are many people around the world with access to bunkers and can survive for months in them.     

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Zombie apocalypse will be the end of all humans,,

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I think we will go extinct at some point.  Right now we have over 10 billion people on earth.  I have read that there is a child born every minute, of every day.  Our resources will be depleted soon, and we can't live without food and water.  We try to control the breeding of  insects, animals, plants but never ourselves.  Some books said "go forth and multiply" and we did that.  But those same books told us to be good stewards of our earth and we have not done that. 

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5 minutes ago, cathya said:

I think we will go extinct at some point.  Right now we have over 10 billion people on earth.  I have read that there is a child born every minute, of every day.  Our resources will be depleted soon, and we can't live without food and water.  We try to control the breeding of  insects, animals, plants but never ourselves.  Some books said "go forth and multiply" and we did that.  But those same books told us to be good stewards of our earth and we have not done that. 

How do you think we will go extinct?   We can't live without food and water, but there will be lakes in places that can and will support small communities even if 99% of the population dies.  

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17 hours ago, DieChecker said:

Even if we got out into space, within a thousand years those people probably would be greatly different, if not separate species, from Earth standard humans.

It's evolution, that's nice!

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On 5/5/2020 at 2:50 PM, Manwon Lender said:

This is an interesting topic, but I personally don't agree with the article. Most of it is based upon comparisons between Humans and other species, including our prehistoric ancestors. Now its clear that they didn't survive, but the reason is because we as species evolved and unlike any other creatures on the Planet the result of this evolution produced a mammal more intelligent than any other creature that walked the earth. For this reason and the fact that we are continuing to evolve, its possible that we will not become extinct so long as the following events don't happen.

Unless we cause our own extinction, because lets face it Man is his own worst enemy so hopefully our next phase of evolution will change that part of us that is still animalistic in nature. Last another thing that could cause the extinction of the human race is a natural disaster, and there are many different scenarios that could bring everything crashing down. But I am certainly more optimistic than the author of the article, because I believe that the human race in some form will survive, I mean just look at the odds of us even making it this for. I think once we reach the point were we can spread our seed into the Solar system and the Universe our race will be assured of immortality and the possibility of extinction will no longer be considered a possibility.

 

Peace 

However the entire human race has forgone survival of the fittest and natural selection, in some places it is completely reversed where survival of the unfit and the helpless have been placed above the fit and we have become a weaker and more fragile species because of it.

As such we maybe far more prone to an extinction event,  in fact there have been some theories that our man made enfeebled race is what allowed the coronovirus to spread so rapidly and kill so many. 

Edited by Socio
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