2y ago

The People Cheering for Humanity's End

www.theatlantic.com

The People Cheering for Humanity’s End

I found this essay about differing viewpoints on where Homo sapiens is headed to be very interesting.

43 comments

Pay walled, but I gotta say, I've not seen any reason why we deserve to go on. We are a parasite on the planet destroying everything as we go until there is nothing left.
- “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world, than the end of capitalism.”
- Disable JS on the page and you can view the article in full.
  Edit: I took a screenshot of the page and uploaded it to imgur.
  
  Excellent work, thank you
  
  Nice! Thank you
- The funny thing is its what all life does, but it means despite our cognitive abilities we are really proving we are nothing more than any other animal. All we would have needed to do is act on what we know rather than what we want and we would not be here.
  
  While that may be true, I've not seen a bunch of orangutans bulldoze entire cities and push their inhabitants populations to extinction. We're not comparable with any animal due to the sheer destructive power we have.
- Cyanobacteria: hold my beer
  
  It's only become as big of an issue now due to our own influence. Fertiliser runoff being a huge contributor.
- Firefox reading mode works.
  
  I need to switch but what do I do about the hundreds of open tabs on chrome? (on my phone that is)
- Interestingly, we're the only species who debate whether we should continue. All other life (that we know of) takes it as a given.
- Sorry, not my intention to post a paywall link, I use a browser that deletes all cookies every time I close it so these sites usually work for me with a "you have X free articles left" banner at the bottom.
  
  No need to apologise.
- I can understand your point given the state of things, but I think the point always deserves a caveat, which is that the parasitism and destruction isn't equally distributed. The majority of people on earth consume at a relatively sustainable rate, and there's no reason they deserve to be wiped out. Unfortunately they're increasingly forced to rely on the destructive minority for their basic needs.
- Personally, I think humans are the most interesting and important thing going on in this solar system, let alone planet. Actually, I think it would be a pretty tough argument to suggest anything else...
  
  Can't tell if you being sarcastic or sincere.
  
  Yup, really doing a bang up job with that importance. Really look after each other, are full of compassion and want the best for all living creatures. Really a gift to this university..

The techno-gazillionaires who are fused with AI can live for eternity without the rest of us while they celebrate the success of their enshittified libertarian accelerationist utopia.
- It's going to be like the end of Don't Look Up
  
  Naked billionaires being eaten by crockolisks?
- Um...sorta? A rudimentary AI simulation of them will live until power ceases, but that will be a separate entity than the flesh and blood gazillionaire who commissioned the AI to represent him.
  On the other hand, it does intersect with the transporter paradox: When you beam down to the planet, is it the same you or just a clone with all your memories that is convincingly you even to itself? And if that's the case, when you go into delta sleep and then wake again (at which point all your cognizant functions reboot) is the waking you the same person as the you who went to bed the night before?
  If there's any possibility that it isn't then the gazillionaire AI zombie may be good enough.

Didn't read cuz of paywall but anyone interested in this topic should look into antinatalism.
- https://12ft.io
  
  Thanks!
- They do talk about that in the article quite a bit!
  If you clear cookies for the site you should be able to read it.

The thing is, we assuredly have a lot of great filters between who we are now and Q-continuum or whatever enlightened existence we imagine as a goal.
We obviously have some tragedy of the commons problems, and fail to regard everyone in our civilizations of hundred of millions as fellow and equal human beings. Either we figure out how to overcome these sociological problems, or we die out. Depletion of resources, warfare-driven holocaust and contamination by pollution are some of the less exciting filters, but they're recurring.
I suppose if we try some geoengineering and it leads to disaster then we can say we killed ourselves by big science experiment. Though black holes or strangelets would have been cooler.

A "disparate group of thinkers" also known as defeatists.
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=i9o8ZyOVWUo
🖕

43 comments