[adrianN]

For it to be a Great Filter, it needs not to wipe out humanity completely, it's sufficient to end technological civilization. A nuclear war over resources can easily do that. As Covid has shown, even minuscule disruptions can lead to widespread scarcity, so a nuclear war might not even be necessary.

[RandomLensman]

I could also say: covid showed that despite widespread disruption, technology civilization actually didn't collapse at all.

Anyone can imagine any kind of doom scenario, but then I could justify inaction all the time: if it isn't warming, an asteroid will get us or aliens or nuclear war or ..., so why bother?

[theshrike79]

Covid didn't cause a mass migration a 2-3 degree increase in temperatures will make big parts of Africa, India and China unliveable for a good part of the year due to wet bulb temperatures. Anyone without working AC will just die.

Those three contain about 2 BILLION people. That amount of people deciding that it's time to live somewhere else will cause issues. Our current migrant problems are a drop in the bucket compared to that.

[gameoverhumans]

> covid showed that despite widespread disruption, technology civilization actually didn't collapse at all.

What I hear: "hey look, I pulled a piece out of the Jenga tower and it didn't collapse! Clearly from this I can infer that more pieces can be pulled without any consequences!"

> if it isn't warming, an asteroid will get us or aliens or nuclear war or ..., so why bother?

Uh, because we don't have control over foreign sentient beings, nor the path of celestial bodies? Do you really not see the difference between those things and anthropogenic warming as a result of rapid industrialization?

[RandomLensman]

You think we are physically unable to build an asteroid defense?

Anyway, I didn't say we should do nothing about climate change (and we are doing a lot), but if the counter to everything is: not enough, doomed anyway - then, yes, totally happy not to work in that field anymore.

[gameoverhumans]

> You think we are physically unable to build an asteroid defense?

Mate the dino-nuking asteroid that hit Earth was 10km in diameter. Even if we launched every nuke we had at such an object, it wouldn't do much to deter such an object. And that's assuming it's moving at a low enough fraction of c that we could actually detect such an object in time to mobilize all said nukes.

So, no, I don't think we would be able to defend ourselves today (nor by 2100, let's say) against such an adversary. Same deal with any species that is sophisticated enough to do interstellar travel. For them it's even easier, they can just pick up a few rocks from Kuiper belt, stick some mass drivers on them and it's bye-bye Earth within a few weeks/months.

> (and we are doing a lot)

The point is we're not. We haven't even reached peak fossil fuel yet. Even if we stopped everything tomorrow, things would still keep getting worse for at least another few decades. But as it is we're reading today about how bad we made things for ourselves in the 80s. Since then our consumption has only continued to accelerate, which can only mean things will be even worse tomorrow.

> but if the counter to everything is: not enough, doomed anyway

No. That's not what I or anyone else in this thread has been saying.

It's like this. We are on the Titanic. Some very clever people have charted our course and done ocean sonographs and determined there's a big-ass iceberg ahead. Many folks like you are insisting either a) there's no iceberg or b) icebergs are good for ship hulls or c) we'll out-technology the iceberg somehow and thus we don't need to worry about the iceberg. So right now all we've done is ACCELERATE towards the iceberg. If there was sensible suggestions like "let's alter our course slightly" I wouldn't be saying "well that still puts us on course for the iceberg so there's no point". I would be saying "great! that's a start!".

[RandomLensman]

Well, I can see how you don't see that we are doing a lot. Thankfully that is not distracting people from doing.