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Rogermcfarley t1_jcggclw wrote

Reply to comment by fieryflamingfire in Discussion: the goal of human existence should be avoiding the heat death of the universe by Mickeymousse1

There's almost zero chance humanity will exist the time frame is around 1.7×10 to the power of 106 years. It took 13.8 billion years of cosmic history for the first human beings to arise, and we did so relatively recently: just 300,000 years ago. 99.998% of the time that passed since the Big Bang had no human beings at all; our entire species has only existed for the most recent 0.002% of the Universe.

Evaluating those figures says to me it's extremely unlikely this should be of concern. I will never know how long humanity exists but it's likely to have come and gone in a negligible amount of time compared to the timeframe for the heat death of the universe to be realised. In fact for the amount of time Humans have existed there could be a hypothetical reincarnation of humanity billions of times in that timeframe. The task for humanity to exist this long is overwhelmingly against it ever happening. In fact humanity it's almost definite we'll make no dent in that timeframe and will have ceased to exist trillions of years before the Universe ends.

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fieryflamingfire t1_jchac3w wrote

Unless we transition to a state where our passage (and perception) of time is much faster

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Rogermcfarley t1_jchaori wrote

Why would that be advantageous?

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fieryflamingfire t1_jchbohm wrote

I was thinking that'd be a symptom of some other change, not the point

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Rogermcfarley t1_jchc96g wrote

That would be applicable to the whole of humanity?

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fieryflamingfire t1_jckc1jy wrote

Sure. Our perceptions and mental states are probably going to be subject to tons of technological "tuning". Who knows what that's going to look like

This is all spitballing / conjecture obviously

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Rogermcfarley t1_jckcz8p wrote

1.7x10 to the power of 106 is an unimaginably vast amount of time. Currently we live on a rock in space so we'd need faster than light travel to get anywhere meaningful which of course would alter time relative to the initial position. I can't predict what will be possible. However as a species we have existed for a negligible amount of time. I honestly can't imagine humanity existing even a million years from now. Anyway It's not something any of us living today will find out. It's possible Humans will wipe themselves out before then, hypothetically speaking we might create ASI which could decide to wipe us out or we may interface with machines and eventually lose our biological state.

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fieryflamingfire t1_jcksrhz wrote

That's one possibility. Another possibility is: we don't wipe ourselves out, we build ASI and sustain full control over it, and we lose our biological state on purpose rather than on accident.

And even if this is something none of us will ever experience, thinking about it still seems like a fun / useful exercise

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