[lixtra]

Yes, learn to accept your mortality. Long term the human race will die.

Some think by robots taking over.

Some think by earth getting as warm as it has not been a long time much faster than ever (although live was thriving at that time).

Some think a bit meteor might hit us or a super volcano could erupt and cause 100 years of darkness.

Some think a global nuclear war will end us.

Some think humans will just procreate till they overuse the resources of the planet and people just starve.

And so on. Accidentally I ordered above by most likely end of the human life as we know it.

[adwhit]

As a creature capable of empathy, I am quite upset at the thought of incalculable suffering we are condemning future generations to just because we can't be bothered not to.

[ur-whale]

That's because you have a working assumption there's something we can do about it.

I don't believe there is: in that regard, humanity is as much in control of its own destiny as a mold colony growing on a slice of bread under a glass dome.

To wit: we have been incapable of solving basic problems like ending hunger or war for our entire history. There is zero reason to believe we can actually do anything about something much harder like global warming.

What will happen is what seem to happen to all form of life on planet Earth throughout history (e.g all life before stromatolites started pumping highly poisonous oxygen into the biosphere, or dinosaurs and whatever put them down, etc...): we will go through a cataclysmic, extinction-level event.

What will come out the other side will likely still be life, but unlikely be human, or if it is, vastly changed.

And you can pump out as much empathy as you'd like. As has been repeated ad nauseam, the physical world doesn't give two hoots.

If a solution exists to global warming, it's expansion, nothing else. Musk is correct in that regard.

[titzer]

I was with you up until:

> If a solution exists to global warming, it's expansion, nothing else. Musk is correct in that regard.

And then I was like: yeah, this is exactly why we should not expand; we don't deserve it.

But I'm an optimist. The universe is a whole hell of a lot smarter than we are, and it will properly contain and eliminate us.

[Notorious_BLT]

> We don't deserve it

The universe doesn't care about your concept of 'deserving'. By the universe's definition, anything we can achieve is 'deserved'.

[ThomPete]

Some future generation is going to go extinct whether by astroid, super nova or end of the universe.

The idea that the coming generations are more important than the current is frankly the most unemphatic thing I have heard in a long time.

[titzer]

> The idea that the coming generations are more important than the current is frankly the most unemphatic thing I have heard in a long time.

You're right. We should definitely continue with the status quo of stuffing our fat faces with slop and burning oil like there's no tomorrow, literally.

[ThomPete]

If you take a couple of steps back and think about this idea that future generations are more important than current ones you would probably realize that it's not such a simple thing to conclude on.

I never said we shouldn't do anything. What I said is that the idea of simply using the well being of the future generations as an argument for how the current generations should behave isn't empathic.

We should do a lot of course among others keep developing new technologies to solve some of the problems that humans create while still allowing the many millions who are poor improve their lives too.

That is the paradoxical discussion here and it's frankly way more important than some strawman about not doing anything here.

[zepto]

I agree with the first part, but who is doing this ‘just because they can’t be bothered not to’?

Last time I looked most people weren’t idling their time away in a stress free paradise.

[jobigoud]

> Yes, learn to accept your mortality. Long term the human race will die.

Don't give up?

We can accept our mortality as individuals but why accept that of the species? There is no precedent for what we are. We are the first species that we know of that could be actively trying to survive for as long as possible, at the species level, by concerted effort of intelligent individuals and long term planning.

The average lifespan of mammalian species seems to be 1 to 2 million years. Very short. We should try to survive for much longer than that, and this needs planning and not fucking everything up.

It's also kind of important that we or a descendant species (including a robotic one) survive because we might be alone in the Universe.

[adrianN]

In the very long term we're all dead. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't actively work to prevent that for as long as possible. Just because you'll die of old age at some point it's not okay for me to torture you to death.