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by EliRivers 2851 days ago
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.
2 comments
ForHackernews 2851 days ago
> 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...

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TeMPOraL 2851 days ago
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.
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ForHackernews 2851 days ago
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.

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mirimir 2851 days ago
I get that perspective.

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

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TeMPOraL 2850 days ago
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.

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EliRivers 2846 days ago
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.

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mirimir 2850 days ago
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.
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