If a nuclear war occurred, tens of millions of
people at least would survive. Technological progress would salvage itself back
from the wreckage and continue on again. (Michael Crichton in Jurassic Park)
There is no archaeological evidence
that people have been blasted back to the Stone Age once before. If we are here
experiencing the Nuclear Age, and the destiny of humanity is to blast itself back
to the Stone Age then grow back to the Nuclear Age repeatedly, it seems unlikely
that we'd be experiencing the first time it happened. (Although, this argument
may be a fallacy similar to anthropic principle.)
Bacteria are no threat.
A simple organism cannot win out on a
global scale over an advanced super-organism. "Gray goo" is a possibility but
it's unlikely that 5000 educated and healthy humans would band together and
cooperate on the construction of an endeavor, for years, to wipe
out the human species. Also, the progress of Life/Organization
is intrinsically tied to increases in communication, which would make it hard for
the 5000 to work unmolested by the other 6,995,000.
The fear that less intelligent people breed more is only a
momentary blip before engineered evolution (biotechnology, or any device that
would fit the moniker of "cyborg" devices, is engineered evolution. Evolution
that proceeds by choosing to make the organism more productive, as opposed to
evolution that feels its way around in the dark and with 25 years between
iterations. A personal computer
is an example of a cyborg implant, one with low bandwidth.) takes over.
Some think that A.I. and robots will leave humans sitting around in ennui,
dejected. Robots are labor saving devices, a subset of tool use that's been with
us, and improving the quality of life for us, forever. A.I. crosses the
line into "consciousness" so we will merge, as Fortune.com reports Elon Musk
saying on Feb.13 2017 and Isaac Asimov (The Last Question) and others foresaw.
The merger is an expansion of
consciousness as growing a front cortex was an elevation.
Global warming is worrisome but technology
and infrastructure and general knowledge base have advanced to the point where
there is enough productive power to solve the problem before it becomes fatal.
(In other words, the seeds that planted the potential for self-destruction give
more than enough juice to power the construction of an aversion.)
Look at all the people working to avert global warming. There are
dunderheads opposing them, but in the end, Right Has Might because organized
systems have superior power over less-organized
systems. (Looking at Arthur C. Clarke as StatGuy2000 mentioned him,
he says this as "One cannot have superior science and inferior morals.
The combination is unstable and self-destroying.")
Some of the best people, after considering potential problems that may befall
humanity, devote their life to heading those problems off. We are grateful to
them and perhaps you should be one of them.