# The end of humanity: 2021 A.D.



## danielfranco

Hi, forum-brethren:
Please humor me for a second or two...
I have always wanted to ask people from far away places (never been outside the Northamerican region of the world) their opinion about the proximity of the doomsday for humanity. I mean, a lot of forum members are part of the western world, so they have been exposed to a lot of the judeo-christian prophecies of doom, and also to the new batch of scientific tales of woe that seem to back up the good-old Apocalypse (doomsday argument, Carter catastrophe, global warming, technological singularity, etc.)
What do people around the world think about this point of view, that the end of humanity is near?

[The 2021 date comes from the technological singularity argument, that says that on that date no more predictions about technological developments can possibly hold true, and that the future becomes unpredictable after that date, in effect casting doubts about the survival of the human species... On the other extreme, one of the versions of the doomsday argument gives us a 5% chance that humanity will still be around by the year 10,000... If I could choose, I'd like to go with the later date, please and thank you!]


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## mjscott

When I was but a child my sister horrified me with thoughts that the Sun, before dying out completely, would swell up to the size of the orbit of Jupiter, consuming all in its path. She laughed, "What are you worried about? By the time this all happens, you'll be long gone anyway!"

All other things I've heard are that prophecies of past people, such as Nostradamus, end about 2013. After that, nothing.

I *DO* know that time is relative. To a newborn baby, a day is a lifetime. The older we get, our perception of the entirety of a lifetime stays the same--meaning that each year is a smaller fraction of the whole than the year before.

Ideally (I don't always live an ideal life) I'd probably rather spend my life preparing for my own meeting-with-my-Maker, so to speak, than pondering the demise of all of humanity.

If I were to play the odds, chances are that I'll go first--making that transition by my self--rather than having a lot of company with me--(in the event of all of us going together).


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## MonsieurAquilone

Alternatively, you could wait for the success of Transhumanism and Cryonics which could give people 'indefinite' lifespans.


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## mjscott

Aha! Now you're getting into religion! For surely the Catholics believe in a place of limbo whereas the Protestants do not! Cryonics would definitely put people in a place of limbo--as long as someone was around to maintain the electric generators!


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## MonsieurAquilone

So true, as an atheist, I am going to see what man is capable of doing!


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## danielfranco

Thank you for your points of view.
As mjscott says, perhaps it is better to prepare for the personal meeting with the Maker, if those are your personal beliefs.
Still, I cannot help to wonder (like many before me have done, I'm sure) what will happen after I'm gone...
The "Carter catastrophe" actually plays the odds, and using the Bayesian approach to analize those odds it predicts an end to humanity in about 250 years from now, regardless of technological, medical, or social advances in the intervening time... As a matter of fact, if we developed the ability to conquer the interstellar distances tomorrow and started populating the planets, even then the Carter catastrophe holds and predicts the final wipe-out at the same distance in time. Peculiar, no?


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## Bienvenidos

I'm not sure about when humanity will end, but I would say we have a pretty long time ahead of us. Although the global warming issue really frightens me. I'd also like to mention that the world will be changing, too.  For example, scientists are predicting that the island that I live on will be gone in 10,000 years (10,000 years is a long time, though).

*Bien*


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## maxiogee

End of Humanity?

So… we knew it couldn't last forever, didn't we?


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## danielfranco

He, he... Yep, "all things must pass away". And even though humanity really was mostly all bullcrap, it still makes me queasy to imagine the planet without us, knowing how soon all traces of humans will fade into the green background... Ah, well, if things go like MonsieurAquilone says and we make it into Transhumanism and Cryogenics, it all shall be well, I guess...


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## mjscott

MonsieurAquilone said:
			
		

> So true, as an atheist, I am going to see what man is capable of doing!


 
Check here for a poem by ee cummings concerning human progress and its end:

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/57.html

Cummings has another poem in which he quips that the last one to leave the universe--please turn the lights out....


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## maxiogee

mjscott said:
			
		

> Cummings has another poem in which he quips that the last one to leave the universe--please turn the lights out....



A) Why bother? 
B) Don't - the moths seem to like them! 
C) Maybe the lights will be the first stuff to go, when the power-stations all go into meltdown.


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## MonsieurAquilone

The good thing about transhumanism (if it is successful) is that it would render human thought machine-bound (i.e. instincts and emotions will be artificially generated) which would eliminate many humans' fear of death.  A bit like Newton's apple 'what goes up must come down', life has a beginning and thus an end.  But, without becoming to philosophical, bacteria divide (reproduction I suppose) to continue the chain of life.  If humans can themselves, by any means (if one ever strives to have an indefinite lifespan), divide themselves, duplicate themselves by mechanical transhumanism, we may all live slightly longer than perhaps we were ever biologically destined to live.....


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## tvdxer

You know?

I have absolutely no idea.  I think it will probably come after my lifetime, but whenever my life ends, or the world ends, I just hope I'm prepared.  That's really all.


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## danielfranco

Transhumanism is also discussed in the "technological singularity" theories. Basically, they have two versions: weak and strong transhumanism. The problem with this is that there is no guarantee about who will "make the cut" into transhumanism, in fact spelling the doom of the rest of humanity... Unless the transhuman become "benevolent gods" who live according to the "Meta-Golden Rule": "Treat your inferiors as you would have your superiors treat you". Otherwise, there seems to be no use for non-transhumans in this brave new world...


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## danielfranco

I've just read tvdxer post, and I agree with the sentiment. I just wanted to ask other people's opinions about the supposedly imminent "end of things", since it seems to be a fashionable theme even in documentaries. I was raised in a protestant household to expect the end of everything at a moment's notice (the Rapture), and I also lived through many years of the cold war, which also made it rather possible to be living within half an hour from complete obliteration. Therefore, I find it a bit difficult to reject all these predictions about the coming bane of humanity, and wondered what other people thought about it, is all...


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## Markus

I think it's easy to understand intellectually that one day the entire Earth will be swallowed by the sun and that humanity and all it ever did will be entirely forgotten, forever and ever. But to truly understand this, down to your bones, is I think a rare experience. I haven't had it yet, some little part of me still thinks it's going to live forever.


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## coconutpalm

I love science fictions!
As an atheist, I think the day when the sun swollows us, everything in this planet ends, and that's all. 
BUT human beings may have the chance to live forever. Science, technology, and our desire. Remember? Desire is infinite.


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## maxiogee

coconutpalm said:
			
		

> As an atheist, I think the day when the sun swollows us, everything in this planet ends, and that's all.



But, will we still be here (whether you take that "here" to be the Earth or in the Universe is moot)?

Surely the day any person dies is the day _their_ world ends?


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## danielfranco

Right, every time someone dies, a whole universe dies with him...
But I think even in the best-case scenario, humanity as we know it will not make it much further into the future. Humanity will either be so completely changed by science and technology that it will be as disconnected from us as we are from any other animal on the planet, or it will have undergone biological changes that would make our descendants quite different than us, say, as other great apes are different from humans nowdays.
And then, for the immortals that may come, there's also the death of the baryonic universe... No more energy to go around!
I guess I'm a bit depressed lately, sorry...


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## geve

danielfranco said:
			
		

> Right, every time someone dies, a whole universe dies with him...


Well, of course, you're all just 'happening' in my brain! Everything will disappear with me.

Look at the bright side, danielfranco: If all human beings disappear together, then nobody will feel sad for their loss.


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## Pivra

Who cares, when it comes you won't be the only one who dies anyway lol.


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## coconutpalm

Yes, it's true——when I die, "my" universe dies with me. But I don't believe it's the supreme truth. Why does Bill Gates help those in need? Why do we raise children, love them, and die happy if they live happily? Why do we donate our organs to other people (I'm going to fill in the form about donating my dry blood cells tomorrow)? 
The limited span of life makes us cherish our life more, and cherish other's life, too!
We struggle to live today, not only to live a better life of ours, but also to strive to create a more prospective tomorrow for our descendants, and maybe for all the other lives in the planet.


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## maxiogee

danielfranco said:
			
		

> But I think even in the best-case scenario, humanity as we know it *will not make it much further into the future*.



How quickly do you think evolution happens?
Men's bodies still haven't found a way to stop having nipples, despite not needing them for the last several millennia!



			
				danielfranco said:
			
		

> Humanity will either be *so completely changed* by science and technology that it will be as disconnected from us as we are from any other animal on the planet


You do know that changes we make to our bodies may well not be passed on in our DNA - that needs to be evolved. There is so much redundancy in our DNA that to change a few genes here and there just to achieve - say - a longer life, might not necessarily pass on to the next generation. The checks and balances within the DNA itself can reject modifications which do not fit the 'blueprint' it contains.



			
				danielfranco said:
			
		

> Humanity <snip> will have undergone biological changes that would make our descendants quite different than us, say, as other great apes are different from humans nowdays.


And then we cease being human and our society/culture/heritage is gone. Genetically we are very little different from the millions of species which have become extinct since life began here. Changing us into some other species doesn't mean we will be the dominant species - just look at how dominant we are at present, and yet how hard we have to fight to stay ahead of the merest bacteria or virus - HIV/AIDS is nearly wiping us out - a teeny-tiny virus. Imagine if a mammal was as inimical to us, and half as hard to get to grips with!



			
				danielfranco said:
			
		

> But I think even in the best-case scenario, humanity as we know it *will not make it much further into the future*. Humanity will either be so completely changed by science and technology that it will be as disconnected from us as we are from any other animal on the planet, or it will have undergone biological changes that would make our descendants quite different than us, say, as other great apes are different from humans nowdays.
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> danielfranco said:
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> And then, for the immortals that may come, there's also the death of the baryonic universe... No more energy to go around!
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> I wouldn't plan on that happening any time soon. Or even any time not-soon! You'd probably have as long as the Universe takes to get to the point at which it not only stops expanding, but to the time when it begins to contract, before we might need to draw up a few contingency plans.
Click to expand...


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## danielfranco

A Tex-Mex shout out to our Ireland mates!
You know what, guys? To be completely honest, my outlook about the proximity (or not) of humankind's demise changes back and forth by seasons... Sometimes I also think about the many eons have to go by before evolution intervenes, but then sometimes I'm much too aware that evolution happens every day, every minute of the day (just an added bonus when you live in a radioactive planet!).
The whole sci-fi crap about technology doing us in around the year 2021 has to do with a famous graph that shows how paradigm shifts are happening at shorter and shorter intervals, and how in that year it will be impossible to predict what could possibly happen next, ever again. The first proponent of the technology singularity argument said that in that date there will be mankind's last invention ever, and shortly after that humans will be as good as gone... "Whatever", I think most of the time!

It's interesting to see so many posts expressing the same point of view, that it's really no biggie, right?


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## mjscott

This is ee cummings style--no capital letters--using space on the page to speak so much. At the end of the link I put in my previous post, I have dissected the poem as best as I could (it's a blog from Rice University and commentaries on the very poem I've posted here), which includes the possibility that death is really bigger than any technology that can spare us from it--or maybe so insignificant.... The reason you waver from it being all-important, danielfranco, is that it would weigh us all down to obsess over it all of the time--and would hinder us from living the moment to its fullest. On the other hand, it is an inevitability we all have to face. In ee cumming's case (He also never capitalized the letters in his name.) he was also a Protestant (His father was a Protestant minister.) and linked _death_ with _life safely beyond_. If you have an assurance about what happens next, it can give you some comfortable latitude in which you can enjoy today.

Best wishes!

pity this busy monster, manunkind,
 
not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)
 
plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
                          A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh
 
and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical
 
ultraomnipotence. We doctors know
 
a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go


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