[helpfulContrib]

Of course its true - we wouldn't have gotten to the moon, or been able to build world-encompassing highway and Internet systems, without the critical mass of people who built our academic and industrial institutions.

To see the nature of your fallacy, just look out at your universities and wonder how they will operate, as effectively as they have so far, with half the staff. And then, that staff halves again in 10 years.

Doing this, honestly, do you still have faith that the deleterious effect of humanity upon itself will be replenished with new perspectives, new generations, new ideas?

We humans are instinctively cannibals. We don't eat each other literally any more, but spiritually and culturally. The moment there is less of that human culture to consume, the closer we get to actually reverting to the physical manifestation of it ..

[tonis2]

A Lot of academics already today are just trying to keep their job, and don't keep up with innovative teaching methods, they don't record their lectures, cause who would pay them if there's a video about it ?

So in reality we would be fine, if we focus on doing the job not keeping the job.