[dec0dedab0de]

...we die out and the planet recovers on its own.

I like to think that the point of humanity is to destroy as many genetic lines as possible, before going extinct ourselves. A trial by fire that weeds out all but the most resilient. Eventually evolving into new, even better intelligence.

[pretendscholar]

Evolution in the sense of natural selection is an incredibly brutal, dumb, and silly subtractive process. I urge my fellow hn commenters not to mistake this for some higher purpose or value. Its an easy mistake to make but the selection pressures that would leave some survivors of the Holocene implies no higher, better intelligence. Often it involves greedy local optimization. Roaches and rats for example are well suited to survive and although clever and resourceful they aren't exactly what might be thought of something that might lead to uberintelligence or something better than our evolutionary path.

[dec0dedab0de]

That's why I prefaced it with "I like to think" to indicate a sense of wistfulness

[pretendscholar]

Ah, one can hope.

[hnick]

Well, there are different types of resilient. Many domesticated animals and livestock will outlive their wild counterparts because they're useful to us - but the day we go, I'm not so sure how well they will do!