[jniedrauer]

No extant life is capable of building advanced technology except us. It would take a very long time for that to change. And there are no guarantees that we don't experience another catastrophic mass extinction event along the way that finally finishes us off.

They would also be left with a world that has no cheap fuel sources or easily accessible raw materials.

This may be the only chance our solar system will ever get at advanced civilization.

[EliRivers]

On a long enough timeline. The kind of time that recycles continents. The kind of time that turns a small mammal into a dominant technological species.

My point was that the OP assumed only humans can do it. I disagree. There's no law of physics preventing another species evolving and having a go, once humans vanish. In the meantime, while they're busy evolving, some cheap energy sources can be created for them. Plenty of time left before the sun changes too much.

[ForHackernews]

> In the meantime, while they're busy evolving, some cheap energy sources can be created for them.

That may or may not be true. The fossil fuel glut that helped humanity develop industrial technology was the byproduct of a pretty strange set of evolutionary and environmental circumstances: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2016/01...

[TeMPOraL]

But honestly, who cares if a hypothetical far-future species of intelligent beings would evolve on Earth. We are humans, this is our civilization, and if we fuck this one up, we're checking out of the game. Even if we don't go extinct, it'll be many millennia before we're back at our feet. We have one chance here to build something qualitatively new and permanent in this universe.

[ForHackernews]

It may well be too late already. This article was originally posted in 2016, and things have gotten worse since then: https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fos...

If we wanted to have a genuine fighting chance of holding climate change to a safe level, the entire world would need to be on a war footing: rationing, mass revocation of driver's licenses, no coal power plants, anywhere.

Nobody will stand for that, there's no political or economic will. Our grandchildren will curse us for hard lives we've bequeathed to them.

[mirimir]

I get that perspective.

But maybe we could identify with self-consciousness and intelligence, rather than with just humans.

[TeMPOraL]

Sure. But right now humans are the only species exhibiting self-consciousness and intelligence in the known universe! We barely have a clue about how that came to be, and under what conditions it could happen again. It may very well be that we are - and forever will be - the only ones with "the spark" in the entire lightcone of Earth.

So until another self-conscious intelligence presents itself, or until we have a more robust model that shows one should arise shall we die off, I think it's best to stick with our team for now, as it might be the only team.

[EliRivers]

But right now humans are the only species exhibiting self-consciousness and intelligence in the known universe!

Unless you're working to a different definition of these terms, self-consciousness and intelligence have been witnessed in many of the other species on this planet.

[mirimir]

OK, fair enough. Me, I'm betting that we'll build self-conscious machines, or become them (not that we aren't already, but I mean not-meat machines). But yeah, that's totally speculative.