
How are humans going to become extinct? - fromdoon
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-22002530
======
ggreer
To summarize: At this point, humanity is its own greatest extinction risk. If
we don't destroy ourselves in the next century, we will almost certainly
inherit the stars.

For a much deeper treatment of this subject, I recommend _Global Catastrophic
Risks_ , edited by Nick Bostrom and Milan Ćirković. The overarching point is
straightforward (see the paragraph above), but the details of each threat are
interesting on their own.

1\. [http://www.amazon.com/Global-Catastrophic-Risks-Nick-
Bostrom...](http://www.amazon.com/Global-Catastrophic-Risks-Nick-
Bostrom/dp/0199606501)

~~~
ProAm
Humans will most definitely be the cause of human extinction on planet Earth.
I would put my money on Homo sapiens not making it another million years on
the surface of the planet.

~~~
visakanv
Homo sapiens reached anatomical modernity about 200,000 years ago and began to
exhibit behavioral modernity around 50,000 years ago.

I suspect that our descendants 1,000,000 years from now wouldn't consider
themselves Homo sapiens- primitive, brutish creatures. (Consider how we feel
about our ancestors from as recently as 50,000 years ago.)

~~~
infectoid
> Consider how we feel about our ancestors from as recently as 50,000 years
> ago.

Or a few thousand years ago for that matter.

I think the social landscape with look and feel a lot different in the next
100 years.

~~~
ekianjo
> Or a few thousand years ago for that matter.

Actually we can relate very well with the concerns of people from a few
thousands years ago. Writings from ancient Rome, from ancient Greece are still
very contemporary in many, many ways.

------
lutusp
A quote: " ... international policymakers must pay serious attention to the
reality of species-obliterating risks."

Are these people all completely ignorant of evolution and science? No matter
what happens in the future, one or another species-obliterating risk is a
certainty. Here's why:

1\. Our species has existed for about 200,000 years.

2\. On that basis, and given our present knowledge of biology and evolution by
natural selection, it's reasonable to assume that, within another 200,000
years, we will have been replaced by another species who either successfully
competed with us, or into whom we simply evolved over time.

3\. Human beings are a note, perhaps a measure, in a natural symphony. We're
not the symphony, and we're certainly not the reason the music exists.

4\. Based on the above estimate, there will be 10,000 more human generations,
after which our successors will no longer resemble modern humans, in the same
way that our ancestors from 200,000 years ago did not resemble us.

5\. We need to get over ourselves -- our lives are a gift, not a mandate.

6\. I plan to enjoy my gift, and not take myself too seriously. How about you?

~~~
spingsprong
"1\. Our species has existed for about 200,000 years.

2\. On that basis, and given our present knowledge of biology and evolution by
natural selection, it's reasonable to assume that, within another 200,000
years, we will have been replaced by another species who either successfully
competed with us, or into whom we simply evolved over time. "

When our species had existed for around 5 years, does that mean it was
reasonable to assume that within another 5 years, we will have been replaced
by another species?

~~~
kamaal
That arguments sounds like a classic religious argument against evolution. _'
If we came from the monkeys, why aren't currently monkey's turning into
humans'_ like argument.

The answer is evolution is more like a fork/branch than modifications on the
trunk. Mutations happen all the time, every cancer victim, is a victim of
mutation. But when the gene begins to spread and take root rapidly, at some
point we get that gene dominant among a species.

A lot will happen over the next 200,000 years. We will likely change in major
ways.

But if you were to take this whole singularity thing seriously we may not even
need all that. By 2045 you can live on eternally on the cloud.

~~~
vixen99
monkey's?

------
ilaksh
I feel a medium-term or maybe even short-term threat (in the next 10-30 years)
not of extinction necessarily but of becoming completely irrelevant. People
like to jump to the conclusion that artificial super-intelligence will want to
eliminate humans. I don't think that is a foregone conclusion at all.

However, if (when) super-intelligent artificial general intelligence
"arrives", that pretty much makes normal unaugmented humans the relative
equivalent of chimps. It means that our opinions and actions are no longer
historically relevant. We will be, relatively speaking, obsolete mentally
disabled people running along doing relatively stupid things.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_Juh7Xh_70](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_Juh7Xh_70)

In order for our opinions and abilities to actually matter relative to the
super-doings and super-thoughts of the new AIs, we really _must_ have this
magical nano-dust or something that integrates our existing homo sapien 1.0
brains with some type of artificial super-intelligence.

So that is what I am worried about -- will the super-AIs show up before the
high bandwidth nano-BCIs (brain-computer interfaces) or before I can afford
them.

Of course, in the long run there may not be a good reason for AIs to use
regular human bodies/brains at all and so that may be phased out for
subsequent generations.

~~~
salmonellaeater
Even an AI with innocuous goals will destroy humanity[1]. It would have to
have explicitly pro-human goals in order to be anywhere near 'safe.'

[1]
[http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer)

~~~
kamaal
Well actually, no!

There are a lot of things to this Armageddon-through-AI equation. Firstly this
thing called 'energy'. A paper clip maximizer will long reach its demise
before converting a maximum part of planet to paper clips, merely because it
needs a lot of resources to produce energy, and maintain itself too.

In fact true AI would not destroy anything. Because true AI would know it
doesn't have sufficient data to make any such decisions.

~~~
Houshalter
There is more than enough energy on Earth alone to destroy humanity. Most
likely an AI would want to maximize it's energy. Covering the entire face of
the Earth with solar panels, or even building a matrioshka brain from the mass
of the solar system.

An AI not specifically programmed to value human life would have no reason to
keep us around. It'd either kill us because it sees us as a threat,
competition, or just annoyance, or it would kill us by accident as it consumes
all the resources it can.

------
sdrothrock
The article talks about disasters that could eliminate humanity, but I wonder
if humanity is more likely to become extinct in the sense of no longer being
"homo sapiens."

For example, through a technological singularity or even just through
accumulated gene therapy over generations.

~~~
ggreer
When Bostrom and others talk about humanity, they usually mean humanity and
its extremely advanced descendants. They expect some value drift. Robin Hanson
puts it rather succinctly in [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/12/steps-up-
the-ladder.ht...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/12/steps-up-the-
ladder.html):

 _Of course we should also wonder what we may become as we rise. We are no
longer the foragers who began this climb, nor the farmers who climbed just a
few floors below, and those ancestors would probably not be pleased with
everything we have become. We’ll probably also have misgivings about what our
descendants become. But hopefully we will on net be proud of them, just as our
ancestors would probably be proud of us._

~~~
lutusp
Okay, hold on a minute. When you say, "humanity and its extremely advanced
descendants", when you link to an article containing the phrase "steps up the
ladder", when you quote someone saying, "we should also wonder what we may
become _as we rise_ " [emphasis added], you're overlooking something basic
about evolutionary theory that everyone needs to understand.

And that is that evolution is not necessarily a progression from less to more
advanced, from less intelligent to more intelligent, or for that matter, from
_less anything to more anything_.

Evolution is not a plan with a goal, it is a blind algorithm that chooses
survivors, regardless of the survivors' traits, with the single requirement
that they are the fittest for the environment in which they find themselves.

This talk about steps up the ladder and extremely advanced descendants is
scientifically ignorant and a New Age fantasy. We are as likely to be replaced
by cockroaches as by superbeings.

~~~
ggreer
1\. I was explaining the position of Bostrom, Hanson, and others. I do not
completely agree with them.

2\. I think you have misinterpreted their position. Bostrom and Hanson know
quite a bit about evolution. They know that evolution is undirected and would
eventually result in an organism we wouldn't recognize, let alone value. But
they both think that we are entering a time in which we will no longer be
bound by evolution. They think that humanity will soon be able to engineer
minds, allowing us to improve their raw abilities while having them retain
many of our own values.

On this point, I do agree with them. Evolution hill-climbs, so it gets stuck
in local maxima and can't search the entire solution space. We're already
building lots of stuff that could never evolve: radio, wheels, impellers,
turbines, lasers, etc. In billions of years, evolution hasn't figured out a
way to send signals faster than 0.000001c (300m/sec). That's how fast sound
waves and nerve signals travel. As optimization processes go, it really is
quite terrible. If we want to make better minds in any reasonable time-frame,
we'll need to engineer them ourselves.

~~~
lutusp
> I think you have misinterpreted their position.

I understand it perfectly -- they're either as ignorant as their followers, or
they're exploiting public ignorance.

> Bostrom and Hanson know quite a bit about evolution.

They either know nothing about evolution, or they're deliberately misleading
their readers. Contrary to their writing, natural selection is not a race to
the top, because it's not a race to any particular objective.

> But they both think that we are entering a time in which we no longer be
> bound by evolution.

Apart from revealing their inability to grasp evolutionary theory, this is an
ignorant New Age fantasy. We will always be bound by natural selection, even
when we actively participate in the process.

> They think that humanity will soon be able to engineer minds, allowing us to
> improve their raw abilities while having them retain many of our own values.

But that's also evolution. To argue that people meddling with genetics isn't
evolution is to misunderstand evolution's scope.

> Evolution hill-climbs ...

You really need to stop thinking about natural selection as though it's a race
to the top of the hill. This idea contradicts both evolutionary theory and
copious observational evidence.

> We're already building lots of stuff that _could never evolve_ [emphasis
> added]: radio, wheels, impellers, turbines, lasers, etc.

All these things exist in nature, even including the lasers, _all of which
evolved_ in nature:

[http://laserstars.org/summary.html](http://laserstars.org/summary.html)

Bacteria use wheel- and axle-based electric motors to propel themselves
through their environments:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22489/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22489/)

All your examples have similar pre-existing embodiments in nature. And _they
all evolved_.

> If we want to make better minds in any reasonable time-frame, we'll need to
> engineer them ourselves.

People doing engineering is an example of natural selection. There is nothing
in the sequence of human events that isn't an example of evolution by natural
selection.

All this talk about moving beyond evolution fails to grasp how evolution works
in our lives. Even A/B testing of Web pages is an example of natural
selection.

To summarize, these people you're quoting are simply pandering to low public
taste -- they're either broadcasting their own ignorance or exploiting the
ignorance of the public. Evolution doesn't work they way they claim, and their
writing is a scientific laughingstock.

~~~
ggreer
I don't have time to address everything you've laid out here, but I must say
that you seem to almost willfully misinterpret my statements. Moreover, many
of your rebuttals are simply incorrect on matters of fact.

Please, in the future, try to remember the principle of charity. Also, you
might foster more productive discussions by sprinkling a little tact onto your
comments.

~~~
lutusp
> Moreover, many of your rebuttals are simply incorrect on matters of fact.

You're wrong, but post your evidence -- let the evidence decide. The authors
you cite make a number of obviously false claims about evolution, claims
falsified by citation in the standard references.

------
Zigurd
Global thermonuclear war is still the #1 risk for destroying civilization and
having a good chance of killing every human on the planet.

~~~
sentientmachine
Even then it would probably not end our species. Even if every country had
nuclear weapons and simultaneously vaporized every square inch of land surface
(very unlikely), there would be a few carnival cruises and people who escaped
to underground bunkers to hold out for enough years to repopulate some place
later. It would be 99% losses, but the tough ones would survive. It may take a
few thousand years to get back to where we were, but the buried technology
would be found, and we would quickly get back to this point, with a lot more
genetic resistance to the radiation fallout.

~~~
lutusp
> Even then it would probably not end our species. Even if every country had
> nuclear weapons and simultaneously vaporized every square inch of land
> surface (very unlikely), there would be a few carnival cruises and people
> who escaped to underground bunkers to hold out for enough years to
> repopulate some place later.

This is very, very likely, and there's even concrete evidence, based on the
fact that the human race was nearly wiped out 70,000 years ago, but recovered.

70,000 years ago a huge volcanic eruption with global consequences called the
"Toba event" reduced the human population to somewhere between 3,000 - 10,000
people. We know this by analysis of our DNA, which carries a lot of
information that can be used to assess our genetic history. That record shows
that a severe genetic bottleneck took place 70,000 years ago, and geographic
evidence shows a corresponding massive volcanic event thought to be
responsible. More here:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory)

~~~
9876543210
The theory behind the Toba event is really interesting, and the wikipedia
article does mention that a number of other species are implicated with
similar apparent bottlenecks, but it seems curious that this event wouldn't
have affected all living creatures universally.

Based on the description of the event, a 5-10 year volcanic winter, I'm trying
to imagine how such a disaster might compare to the dinosaur's extinction
scenario. Why would only some creatures suffer more devastating effects than
others? Does this point to additional complexities in the chain of subsequent
events in the post-eruption environment, such as species-specific plagues, and
partitioned food-web collapses due to the loss of a keystone species?

Would plants and aquatic species expess such a bottleneck differently, when
compared to primates and other apex predators?

~~~
lutusp
> ... but it seems curious that this event wouldn't have affected all living
> creatures universally.

That's easy to explain based on the fact that some species tolerate
temperature change better than others. Remember that the Toba event took place
just as an Ice Age was beginning, so there were multiple stressors, affecting
many species. The survivors were those that (a) could take shelter against the
sudden cold, and/or (b) were naturally more resistant to the cold.

A similar partition happened during the asteroid-initiated dinosaur extinction
event 65 million years ago -- some species were better able to deal with the
sudden cooling of the global climate. Like the little mammals, who could take
shelter underground, and from which we eventually sprang.

> Would plants and aquatic species expess such a bottleneck differently ...

Yes. Some of them are able to tolerate freezing conditions that would kill
most land animals. As just one example, there are species of frog that can
freeze solid, then recover when things thaw out.

[https://www.units.muohio.edu/cryolab/projects/woodfrogfreezi...](https://www.units.muohio.edu/cryolab/projects/woodfrogfreezing.htm)

------
midnitewarrior
The disastrous effects of exponential growth will be our demise.

~~~
infogulch
I blame the economists. They had to drop out of their math degree because they
couldn't understand exponential functions... surprise surprise now we have
earth-destruction level superpowers trying desperately to keep up an economy
based on unsustainable exponential growth.

~~~
philwelch
Most economics grad schools prefer you have a math degree, actually.

~~~
infogulch
What? You're not going to take my ad hominem argument lying down? Fine, I'll
just go back to youtube comments...

