[dawnbreez]

This argument has been made since at least the start of written records:

> And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only the semblance of wisdom, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much while for the most part they know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to their fellows. - Plato, in Phaedrus, ca. 370 BC

While our replacements for parts of ourselves have gotten far more advanced, the fact of the matter is that we haven't stopped being human simply because we can make tools that remember things for us, build things for us, or let us change parts of ourselves more easily.

This is because what makes something human is not our body--an argument that Diogenes famously refuted in about the same era--nor is it merely our minds, though our minds are pretty impressive. What makes us human--what makes us alive, in a sense beyond merely being an animal that isn't dead yet--is what we do with those things. I could grow fox ears and a fluffy tail in the world of tomorrow; I could use an AI to remind myself to self-care; today I already benefit from a thousand different kinds of mass-produced products. But none of that makes me a different person, because I'll still be doing things with my life that meant something to me yesterday--because those things will continue meaning something to me tomorrow.

[javajosh]

> This argument has been made since at least the start of written records:

That argument has been made since only slightly later. The key difference is that this truly is a unique time in history by population numbers. It's also unique in that humans could destroy the biosphere if we wanted to - that was never possible before the mid-20th.

Just because people jumped the gun in the past doesn't mean they are wrong now. The truth is that people are always preaching about the apocalypse, and will continue to do so as long as there are humans, I think. But this does not mean an apocalypse isn't coming. Just like the person who always predicts rain is sometimes right.

[thaumasiotes]

> It's also unique in that humans could destroy the biosphere if we wanted to - that was never possible before the mid-20th.

It's not possible now either. If all of humanity's efforts were devoted to this task, they would not even make a noticeable difference.

[javajosh]

My assessment for most of my life has been if most of the world's ~10k 'strategic' megaton-scale warheads exploded in air over Earth's major cities it would kick up enough dust to kill the sun for several years, which would kill off a large fraction of Earth's flora and fauna, akin to a major volcanic eruption or asteroid collision.

There would still be life of the smaller sort, and deep in the oceans of course. Only a terribly unlucky cosmic event, like a nearby supernova spewing enough neutrinos at us could kill literally all life, even in the cracks and crevices.

[thaumasiotes]

That is an ephemeral change. It takes very little time for the biosphere to make a full recovery. You're talking about a small, brief, suppression of the biosphere. And you're calling it "destruction of the biosphere".

[javajosh]

Yes, and when a forest burns down I call it the destruction of a forest even though it can grow back because that's how language is used.

[thaumasiotes]

Even if you're talking about the fires in Yellowstone in 1988, the only way to call that "destruction of the forest" is if you define the forest as being the trees. That's a defensible choice.

(And temperate forests "burn down" all the time as part of their normal operations.)

But you can't define the biosphere as "the species that go extinct in a particular scenario". You're stuck with the whole thing, which is not going to notice whatever humans do. It would make as much sense to call it "destruction of the biosphere" if I moved a rock thirty feet.

[astrange]

Burning down is part of the natural lifecycle of many forests, and they actually suffer when modern land management stops natural fires.

[fennecfoxy]

>I could grow fox ears and a fluffy tail in the world of tomorrow

Yes, please!

[ly3xqhl8g9]

Sooner rather than later [1].

[1] "Diverse Intelligence" - a talk by Michael Levin, timestamp: induce cells to make an eye anywhere, https://youtu.be/iIQX6m2eRPY?t=2939