It's the END OF THE WORLD!!!!!

After reading your post, etc. Seriously, what the fuck?!

 

You're right to say that we now have an unprecedented level of control over our survival and reproduction which negates many environmental factors that might influence future evolution. However these are relatively short-term factors. Say, for example, environmental conditions change on earth to such a degree that it cannot sustain the vast majority of the human population, those who are able to survive and pass on their genes would likely be those most adapted to cope with the new conditions. For example, the ozone layer is utterly depleted and the level of UV radiation becomes extremely hazardous, causing cancers to rapidly develop - those people with darker skin types would be more likely to survive long enough to pass on their genes. That's quite a radical change. Smaller evolutionary factors are taking place all the time. Ginger haired people, for example, are on the decline, and it's not because they all got bullied at school! Of course this is all speculation, and evolution is inherently quite random in itself, but I think the safe assumption would be that we are not the final stage of evolution. To assume that we were would imply a certain level of human chauvanism....

 

All the same, it's kinda hard to infer from the fact that humans may adapt to adverse whether that they'd become "unrecognisable".

 

Yes, you're right of course. But that would be my prediction....

 

I believe in MK-ULTRA

 

Hmm... interesting

 

Wow

Mixed results as I expected, but I am surprised at the number of people thinking we will blow ourselves up

I agree to the point that we will most definitely get into another war which will prove to be a big mistake, killing off a big portion of the population, but not all of us

Each nation knows their place in the world wide economy, we all depend on eachother and none of us are ready to challenge the rest of the world

If all goes to worst, maybe all life on a continent will be taken over by another
*cough* Africa --->Americans

But that won't lead to human extinction
I think a mix of climate, extinction of other species, natural disasters, war and interdependency on technology will eventually leave us in ruins

 

Well, I figure we'll use up a resource first that we despirately need but manage to find a way to recreate or make something similar / just as effective. World will keep evolving, but like it says, we'll eventually destory it.

 

If humans become smart enough, then we won't eventually destroy the world. But, if our current ways keep up, then we will. I have faith that we may possibly become smarter and live on and keep evolving, etc.

 

I don't really get why this is so consistent a belief. We've had the technology for decades and we've managed not to do it.

 

That's one thought that popped into my head. We've gotten smarter with the technology overtime, so why would we mess up in the future?

 

if we dont use it in the right way then everyting could just blow up in our faces

 

My theory about the universe is that some type of god somewhere created the big bang or whatever created the everything Billions of years ago.

After so long God i finally board of all of this. So he put humans here.
Just to destroy it for him. We're too inteligent. We're killing the plannet. Everything was fine before we got so smart and advanced.

The purpose of humans is to destroy the world.

So my answer to the Poll is Yes. We're destroying the world ourselves.

 

You didn't read everything I wrote? Geez, I won't be able to sleep tonight. As for your science courses, most good instructors try to mix meaningful lab exercises, sometimes called experiments, in with lectures on theory, be the topic chemistry, physics, biology, engineering, or whatever. I stand by everything I said, but since you're not bothering to read it (or you did bother to read it, but decided to throw in an insult anyway), it's like talking to my dog's ass.

Also, the general level of contributions on this thread seems to be about grade 4 (elementary school), give or take.

Lab exercises are thrown in with theory, because according to accepted education theorists such as Piaget, which see, students learn better when they are engaged in a hands-on exercise. However, the heart of most science courses this side of graduate school is theory, not experiment.

 

I'm not really questioning the uniqueness of human intelligence. Let's put it this way: The intelligence of other species is in general well adapted to dealing with the problems posed by their environments. These other species for the most part do not indulge in abstract reasoning so far as we know, and they do not need to. From a cross species perspective I would say intelligence can be defined in terms of a successful response to environmental challenges. A shark, porpoise or leopard behaves intelligently but will never read or write or debate things.

 

Stop refferring the the Earth as "The World". Humans will never destroy the world with nukes, we may destroy the Earth, hopefully we won't, but the world is a lot bigger then the Earth.

 

"the world" usually refers to earth. When you're talking of something greater than that, it's usually called the universe. Or our galaxy in general. That's just how it's been in my experience.

@ ChrisGriffin: It's not a matter of us becoming smart enough to not destroy ourselves. It's a matter of us being able to see into the future and learn from what could happen. Unfortunately many higher-ups lack this.

 

But it hasn't, has it? I mean, people talk about how we'll blow up the world with our nukes as if it's inevitable, but... Cold War, anyone? Fact is, most people, if called on it, don't want to blow up the world. In fact, they really really don't want to blow up the world. I think we can be pretty sure that the world won't be blown up at least until whoever has their finger on the button has somewhere else to go.

The thread title says "the world", not "the earth" so.....

So basically, you're trying to say that humans didn't build their civilisation because they're smarter than animals who just sat around all day? Is this as a prelude to a sort of "woe is me, when will we ever learn? also: maybe it'd be awesome if we'd never made civilisation and all grew our own food" thing?

 

That's kind of what I was saying. If we're able to learn from mistakes or be careful enough to not make mistakes such as blowing ourselves up, we'll be fine. Humans should be focusing on more important things like setting up civilization on other planets in case this planet does die.

 

And if there is life on other planets? D)
What are we going to do, kick them off? Co-exist?