[dogprez]

It's already happened before on earth multiple times, it's not that hard to imagine.

Asteroid, super volcano, ecological collapse, nuclear war (with its knock on environmental effects), pandemic could all cause human extinction.

edit: Also, human extinction shouldn't be the bar. Prosperous humane existence for all, or hope of someday achieving that should be the bar.

[yanderekko]

Okay. When people say "the future is doomed", I assume they're talking about likely near-term scenarios and not the fact that eventually entropy will dissolve the universe or whatever.

[eggsmediumrare]

Ecological collapse, nuclear war and pandemic are likely near-term scenarios.

[throwaway4aday]

We've been through two large pandemics in the modern era and neither caused the destruction of human civilization. Even the really bad pandemics of the medieval era that killed large chunks of the population did not result in the destruction of humanity. We also lived with serious endemic diseases for a large fraction of our history and they didn't bring about doom. This means that the chances of extinction due to pandemic are still very slim.

Nuclear war thankfully has still not occurred. Even if it were to occur one can hope that we would have enough sense to limit how many weapons were used. The fact that MAD works wherever it is in place indicates that humans are not as gung ho on self-immolation as the media makes us out to be.

Ecological collapse and climate change are two different things. Total ecological collapse is much harder to accomplish barring a massive event such as an asteroid impact.

[dogprez]

There is a huge difference between how the world works today and how it worked in the medieval era though. We are much more interconnected and co-dependent as evidenced by COVID-19. Maybe there are uncontacted people that could survive a major human pandemic? We also have worse weapons, can the people that survive a pandemic that kills 2/3 of humanity, like the plague, keep it together? There is already speculation that people like Putin were twisted further by the isolation of COVID-19.

WRT ecological collapse, aren't we experiencing the front end of a mass extinction in the oceans? Can humans survive such an event or will it be a domino effect up the food chain?

I don't usually like ruminating on this stuff but it's worth considering our future without AI if we are going to consider what it may be like with it.