Are we fucked as a species?

Nuttin

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Lately, perhaps triggered by the unprecedented heatwave that has hit many countries worldwide, I don't know, intense heat does something to the mind of most.

/rant on

I have been thinking of the terms of being human and what it means to be one, we are the top species of this world, a world we are set to destroy as it is in the human nature itself to do so, regardless of what people say, the climate we have now is not normal, anyone can see that, you don't have to listen to someone stating jay or nay on that topic, you, yourself, just have to go out and look around, most of you people I guess, resides in the US and I don't know you probably have areas where it does not rain much, but in northern Europe where I am at, it has not rained properly for over 2 months now and that is not normal, nor is it normal to have +30 - 36 degrees celsius daily here, its usually not bad weather, but it use to rain at least a couple of weeks during summer total here.

We have atm also like 21 wildfires in our tiny country of which 4 of them are deemed not possible to put out, unless we have an extensive period of rain, at the beginning of this week it was talk about that the rain would come on thursday, which is today and it hotter than fuck here at the moment, latest prognosis now say's sunday...

But it is not only the environment (which we cannot control as much) that fucks us as a species, it is actually how empathic we are, which we aren't to be truthful, some few are (yes I believe that), but the majority aren't. We really do not care what happens to others unless we our selfs suffer from it, we make bad jokes of horrifying shit that happens to others, I mean the first thing that happens when there is an accident and we are near it, is that we take a picture and post it in order to get likes and what not - this is being done worldwide, I am not pointing finger at anyone except us humans as a species.

Race, color of skin, religious beliefs are what matter most for us today, in all democratic elections these are usually at the top of things that "has to be fixed" but they sugarcoat it with other words of course, that other species in this world is eradicated, that people drink poisonous water, die from hunger / diseases / you name it, that corporations exploit countries, human trafficking etc etc aren't even on the agenda - which is shit we should fix and we can but we simply don't care, we don't want to know, we have a profound belief that money fixes everything, an earthquake nearby - well I'll send a couple of bucks, there done. Now I can sleep knowing that I have helped, where in truth that money probably does not matter at all as there are charges, tariffs to be paid as soon as your money leaves your hand, there are greedy buggers along the way to that cup of rice and the mug of clean water - this is all in our nature as well, to profit, unless you make a profit out of it, why even bother.

We ridicule that which we don't understand, we invest more money in finding ways to kill off each other than the other way around, again this is human nature, we are encoded to destroy each other with any means possible, it seems anyway, there isn't another species in this world that has killed off as many as have we of their own kind, as we continue to find faults on all others except the ones we know.

Today it's race, color of skin and religious beliefs, but there has been "incidents" for lack of other word where something as simple as what fucking tribe you belong to, like the Rwanda massacre - to me to be honest, I could not tell them apart, same race, same color of skin and same religious beliefs, but we find other means to justify our blood thirst, be that tribal or even beliefs on what is humane or not, should we or should we not have slaves 1861 ?

In the past, like in the 1800 or so, people had a vision of how the world would look now 2018 or at least in 2000 as that was a magic number, in the year 2200 I am guessing that not many of us are left, the way we as a species, are progressing, it doesn't look particular good. I for one think we are fucked.

I
 
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Dandai

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"Unprecedented" on what time scale? Your hubris is showing.
 
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Ossoi

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but in northern Europe where I am at, it has not rained properly for over 2 months now and that is not normal, nor is it normal to have +30 - 36 degrees celsius daily here, its usually not bad weather, but it use to rain at least a couple of weeks during summer total here.

I'm in the 5th week of wearing casual clothes to the office because of the heat - the fifth consecutive week. Normally we might have 1 week or several days where it is warm enough to justify it. No rain for that time, not sure when it last rained. Grass everywhere is orange and brown, temps consistently above 20 as a minimum, 25 average. Predicted tomorrow will be 35+ and record highs

My "we've fucked ourselves" prediction is one I've posted multiple times in the gamergate thread, I think we'll eventually realise that plastics (specifically the endocrine disrupting properties) were responsible for falling fertility rates, gender dysphorias and other reproductive disorders/changes, but by the time we realise it will be too late to clean up the environment
 
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StJesuz

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I can only guess that OP has very little knowledge of human history. Things are so much better today than they have ever been, it renders every other worry on the post irrelevant.

I believe that humans are more resistant to catastrophe than ever before. Global thermonuclear war remains the most credible danger to our civilization. Our species can almost certainly survive even if our large population cannot. Our knowledge has never been more durable or portable than it is today.

A hundred years from now humans will be born on other worlds, my son may live to see this happen.

Don't let your mind keep you in prison, the choice is simple.
proxy.duckduckgo.com.jpg
 
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Dandai

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I just assumed this was a troll thread, but if you're legit concerned, try tackling something within your control, something upon which you can actually affect a change. Once you've finished that (and it will almost certainly take longer than you think it will), move the goal posts out a little farther. Don't go from whatever your particular everyday problems happen to be to existential dread about perceived extinction level threats. You're not ready for that yet.

Have some humility. You wouldn't walk up to a broken helicopter and start tinkering on it, would you? Of course not. You don't know the first thing about repairing helicopters. You also wouldn't spare any thought concerning how fucked the future passengers and crew of that broken helicopter may or may not be.

So with that in mind, why would you try to solve something like this? And before you say, "But Dandai, there is no solution. We're fucked!" ask yourself why did you make the thread?
 
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GuardianX

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The issue, partly, is that humans are reactionary.

The reality is that we could pretty much do away with a TON of environmental woes if we dumped money into further researching high yield energy devices like Nuclear. The issue is that hippies and news media has really "Nuked" (forgive me...) those plans, people fear a reactor more than a coal plant. The unfortunate part is that a few reactors chewing through a modicum of resources would satisfy the world's need for power many times over for hundreds of generations.

Tie the above with our inability to talk about anything these days because we are so worried with talking "beyond" our allowed area because of perception issues. White people are not allowed to offer solutions to blacks, First Worlders aren't allowed to offer solutions to third worlders...ect. Perception is ruling things more than practicality and that is an issue that will cause the destruction of more things faster than environmental impact issues. The rest of the world can't step in and solve Venezuela because that wouldn't be right...BUT...people don't understand that if the assistance isn't offered publicly it'll be done covertly like China in Africa and USUALLY covert things come with a much deeper impact.

A hundred years from now humans will be born on other worlds, my son may live to see this happen.

I love this thought and I share the dream but I don't think it'll happen for a LONG time mainly due to the fragility of humans off planet.
 
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Phazael

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My money is that widespread antibiotics is what fucks us. We have used them so liberally that we are starting to lose out ability to combat serious infections when it really counts. It all ties in to the large degree we have defied evolution in our development. If you stop nature from rubbing out undesirable shit you end up with an epidemic of peanut allergies, trannies, and numerous other autoimmune or mental disorders. Not curbing the population will also fuck us, because at some point our ability to cram fucktons of food into urban areas will get disrupted by something unexpected (crop blight on corn, power outage, natural disaster) and people will riot/collapse civilization over that shit. As long as whatever reset button finally wins leaves around 10-15% of the current population (and the more educated segments) alive, the species will continue. Probably be better for it. But none of this shit will come to a head (barring random massive natural disaster/disease) for a while yet, so enjoy the slow descent while you can.
 
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Dandai

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My money is that widespread antibiotics is what fucks us. We have used them so liberally that we are starting to lose out ability to combat serious infections when it really counts. It all ties in to the large degree we have defied evolution in our development. If you stop nature from rubbing out undesirable shit you end up with an epidemic of peanut allergies, trannies, and numerous other autoimmune or mental disorders. Not curbing the population will also fuck us, because at some point our ability to cram fucktons of food into urban areas will get disrupted by something unexpected (crop blight on corn, power outage, natural disaster) and people will riot/collapse civilization over that shit. As long as whatever reset button finally wins leaves around 10-15% of the current population (and the more educated segments) alive, the species will continue. Probably be better for it. But none of this shit will come to a head (barring random massive natural disaster/disease) for a while yet, so enjoy the slow descent while you can.
But we've already discovered an entirely different system of antibiotics that works on bacteria that is highly resistant/immune to our current, commonly used antibiotics. I don't recall the name of the product/technology off the top of my head, but I read that it would be impossible for the bacteria to be resistant to both methods simultaneously (because developing defenses against one makes it vulnerable for the other). So as microbial evolution drifts towards resisting one method, the other can be used and maintain effectiveness.

That's the thing about discussing extinction level events - we're pretty damn committed to not going extinct and have the capacity and adaptability to ensure it doesn't happen. Yeah, it will likely suck for a lot of people and possibly for a long time before the extinction event gets fully addressed, but outside of some sort of immediate and planet rending event, I think it's damn near impossible to kill us off.

In the end, it may just be us and the cockroaches, but we'll be there.
 
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3301

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It sure will be interesting to see what happens as jobs go away because of technology.
 
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Vinen

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It sure will be interesting to see what happens as jobs go away because of technology.

There will be an underclass of unwashed masses. Just as there was in the past.

The best will be the people who English degrees who are "educated" and join them.
 
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Tuco

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Are we fucked? Ultimately yes, by the heat death of the universe.

Till then? I'm optimistic.

This isn't something that I spend a lot of time thinking about, and isn't at all rational, but I like to think that we're part of a system created by a sentient prime mover of some kind that wants to see what kind of shenanigans we come up with. So we've got an ideal universe with all kinds of technical possibilities enabled by physical properties (chemistry, nuclear, +++).

So when I hear about problems like AI convergence, grey goo, nuclear wasteland, resource depletion, global warming, antibiotic resistant diseases etc etc I casually disregard it. It's not that I think we don't have to worry, it's that I think we'll be able to overcome anything put in front of us.

Again, it's not a rational belief, but when we're talking about unforeseen issues like these, what is? Till then I'm doing my part by making killer robots.
 
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k^M

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I'd like to think if technology renders a lot of jobs moot, that we'll become more like the immortal aliens in... Star Trek Insurrection (?) who instead turned to trade skills, spending 50-60 years as apprentices and such. People always go off the deep end with the thought that a machine doing the work of hundreds (if not more) means those people are fucked, but it also means people can spend less time living to work I hope.

Rest of it, yeah we're probably fucked but I'm more concerned about detroit/baltimore/chicago happening to denver than extinction level events happening.
 
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dizzie

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It sure will be interesting to see what happens as jobs go away because of technology.

We'll all be sitting on our asses with government subsidy each month playing EQ34 on VR 24/7 or fucking our sex robots. That or going outside and getting cooked by the global warming.



In reality, we
 
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Hosix

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We are fucked because of Florida, zombies or crazy AI terminator killing us.
 
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Phazael

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The reason I bring up the antibiotic thing is because its a pretty massive topic of concern within the medical field and CDC in general. And its pretty much a given that we both over use them and newer strains of bacteria are becoming more and more resistant to them. Single cell organisms are better at the survival game than we are, as many have been around forever essentially. As for getting off this rock, we won't unless we figure out how to make perfect gravity (a lot of our biology depends on it) or what does settle elsewhere won't really qualify as human (they are already talking about genetic engineering for off world environments as a serious option), per se. Basically, some minor fuckup that balloons from panic is the silver bullet to our species, if there is one. Diseases are pretty good in that regard and turn people against one another, even mental ones like TDS LOL.
 
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pharmakos

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We'll all be sitting on our asses with government subsidy each month playing EQ34 on VR 24/7 or fucking our sex robots. That or going outside and getting cooked by the global warming.



In reality, we

Totally unrealistic prediction.

EQ34? Psh, EQ3 MIGHT be out by then.
 
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BrutulTM

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It sure will be interesting to see what happens as jobs go away because of technology.

Jobs have been going away because of technology since the industrial revolution and every technological revolution has made humans more prosperous and healthy. In 1840, farmers made up 69% of the US workforce. Today it's under 2% and yet we make more food now than we did then by orders of magnitude and people still manage to find a way to occupy themselves productively even though there's 15 times as many of us. I'm pretty sure in 1860 nobody thought "well we can all just be video game developers and social media consultants once the machines are doing the farm work." yet here we are. The fact that you can't imagine the economy of the future doesn't mean that it won't exist.
 
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Phazael

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Yeah the fact is we just crank out fuck trophies to the limit of the available productivity, in most cases. This results in a lot of jobs that do not revolve around core needs, like pretty much anything liberal arts related. So in a way, it is interesting, until the next practical industry happens and there is demand again.
 
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