Surur t1_iu3dcja wrote
Reply to comment by Southern-Trip-1102 in The Heavy Price of Longtermism | Longtermists focus on ensuring humanity’s existence into the far future. But not without sacrifices in the present. by thenewrepublic
> The future will exist so better it be one with humans in it than not.
This is neither here nor there for living people. Your actual life will not be measurably improved by people 1000 years from now living the star trek future.
> Also the fact that there will be exponentially more humans in the future than in the past.
If you look at population curves, you can't actually guarantee that. Bayesian logic and the mediocrity principle suggest you are living in the most populated time currently, and in the future, there will be fewer or fewer people, and certainly not quintillions, else why are you one of the very special first 100 billion?
Southern-Trip-1102 t1_iu3ista wrote
This isn't about people living in the present, this is about the existence of humanity over time. I am prioritizing humanity as a collective super organism not as a group of individual organisms.
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That is wrong for 2 reasons, first assuming that people will always have life spans of about 80 years, given technological development solving immortality is inevitable, second even if we assume limited lifespans the collective lifespans summed over the rest of the life of the universe assuming constant population size is still many many magnitudes larger than the current population size.
Surur t1_iu3s1ne wrote
> assuming constant population size
There is really no reason to assume this. The fact that our population is set to peak suggests decline in the future.
> I am prioritizing humanity as a collective super organism not as a group of individual organisms.
That's your choice. There no real imperative for that.
JKJ420 t1_iu93fuq wrote
> in the future, there will be fewer or fewer people
This only applies to Earth. There will be countless of people living off Earth. At, least we should hope so.
Surur t1_iu93ud7 wrote
Every species goes extinct eventually. Some sooner than others.
JKJ420 t1_iu9o5bd wrote
How did you get to that conclusion? Even if this was true in the past, why would it apply to the future? I am genuinely curious. Not trolling.
Surur t1_iu9pikt wrote
That is not a controversial thing to say.
> The background level of extinction known from the fossil record is about one species per million species per year, or between 10 and 100 species per year (counting all organisms such as insects, bacteria, and fungi, not just the large vertebrates we are most familiar with). In contrast, estimates based on the rate at which the area of tropical forests is being reduced, and their large numbers of specialized species, are that we may now be losing 27,000 species per year to extinction from those habitats alone.
> The typical rate of extinction differs for different groups of organisms. Mammals, for instance, have an average species "lifespan" from origination to extinction of about 1 million years, although some species persist for as long as 10 million years. There are about 5,000 known mammalian species alive at present. Given the average species lifespan for mammals, the background extinction rate for this group would be approximately one species lost every 200 years. Of course, this is an average rate -- the actual pattern of mammalian extinctions is likely to be somewhat uneven. Some centuries might see more than one mammalian extinction, and conversely, sometimes several centuries might pass without the loss of any mammal species.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/03/2/l_032_04.html
It can of course be summarized in the words "nothing lasts forever".
And as to why it would apply in the future - entropy.
JKJ420 t1_iuc8155 wrote
It's hard to get a conversation going if your go-to answer is the heat death of the universe :-).
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