Prophecy for the end of the world in 2012

[BeardofPants]

I really do think you are placing far too much credit in the human ability for destruction. If for some godforsaken reason, we manage to wipe out every iota of humanity, you necessarily think that that would be the end of life on earth? I think not. All that aside, I don't think the earth will fall to a WW. That's just a fairytale we like to scare the kiddies with. Along with all those silly conspiracy theories that those nutjobs keeping bangin' on about. Life is a lot more resilient than anything we can throw at it.

[BeardofPants]

Originally Posted by Tessar

Maybe YOU intend to die in 2012--by 2009 my spacecraft should be complete, at which point I shall search for the many pants that BoP stole from me and take them away with me to a safe planet where we may live in peace and unnakedness.

Bah, quit yer bellyaching. Anyone would think that ya didn't like bein' nekkid. Besides, nekkidness is next to godliness, or some such garbage.

[BeardofPants]

Doomsday Arguments

[Lief Erikson]

BeardofPants, having faith in humanity is not rational.

As for destroying life, I think we're very much capable of it. We right now have enough firepower to blow up all life many, many times over. We also are mangling our atmosphere with Global Warming, and we're thinning our ozone layer. We also are killing off vast amounts of life in our oceans. And that's just in modern times.

I think we're fully capable of destroying all life in our world and leaving the world's atmosphere, oceans and the rest of it utterly ruined. A few hundred years will undoubtedly enhance our ability to destroy our world and cause it lasting or even permanent damage by many, many multiples.

And as for humanity's likelihood of doing what technology is enabling us to do, I'd say that is very high. Humanity is selfish and aggressive, not improving, no matter what Brownjenkins says . We nearly destroyed ourselves in the Cold War. With WMDs in the hands of terrorists, the threat is much higher.

It'll take time though, I very much believe. I think we've got a few hundred years at least.

[The Telcontarion]

Wikipedia is a information control system.

[trolls' bane]

Nevertheless, it is not replacing quantum mechanics any time in the near future, and to think that anyone should state otherwise bugs me a bit. No offense to you or anything, but the first paragraph of each those first two websites contain statements contradictory to everything in modern physics thus far. Admittedly, controversial scientific views are held with the utmost scrutiny, but these don't even appear to offer concrete, physical evidence (from what I scanned of them, that is) that matches any real observation or mathematical prediction. That is the problem with such physical theories: without the math to back it up, you might as well make a tab in the round filing cabinet. (This does not apply to non-physical sciences. Biology doesn't need math to back it up. But the end of the world is a purely physical consequence of any action: physical or biological, unless the end of the world means the end of the human species itself, which, again, has it's very foundations in physical occurrences. I myself have seen no evidence for life's demise other than the threat posed by planetessimals and humans themselves. Being that humans are in fact destructive, I think they're going to destroy this planet more. Yet, I beleive that humans are also more creative than destructive (hard to beleive, huh?), at least to a degree where the end of the Earth won't matter (at least to humans), who will then just have colonized the nearby solar neighborhood (or at least the solar system), and hopefully such an event would teach them what not to do.

My confidence in human descision making, however, isn't exactly high. If humans had any common sense, they would have built a space elevator already.

[The Telcontarion]

hey, you might be right, food for thought. It is a fact though that the earths rotation is slowing down. We may differ on the why and it's consequences.

[BeardofPants]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

BeardofPants, having faith in humanity is not rational.

I agree - and I never said anything about having 'faith' in humanity to not do something stupid. I merely stated that too much credit is being placed in humanity's ability for destruction. Life can survive in the most hostile of conditions. Humans may be directly or indirectly responsible for extinction on a massive scale now and in the future, but life will go on. With or without humanity.

[BeardofPants]

Oh - and this whole business with interfering with the environment? Not new. We've been warring and changing and fiddling and raping and destroying for just about our entire existence. As have the chimps. It's in our ****ing dna to be selfish developmentally driven chumps. Ain't nothin' changing there.

[trolls' bane]

Originally Posted by The Telcontarion

hey, you might be right, food for thought. It is a fact though that the earths rotation is slowing down. We may differ on the why and it's consequences.

I think I might have heard that, but I don't think it's deccelrating significantly. I'll have to look that one up eventually.

Well, good night everyone!
Have to be at the living desert early tomorrow. 9:30 AM nature walk.

[Earniel]

Originally Posted by BeardofPants

If for some godforsaken reason, we manage to wipe out every iota of humanity, you necessarily think that that would be the end of life on earth? I think not.

You make a good point. It's true that we tend to think too antropocentrical that we see the end of us as the end of the world. It's after all very likely that life would go on without us. To say we could take every single bateria or deep see creature down with us is a bit too ambitious, even for the human race.

[Nurvingiel]

Well yeah, I meant the end of humanity too in my own anthropocentric way.

[Jonathan]

Originally Posted by BeardofPants

I really do think you are placing far too much credit in the human ability for destruction. If for some godforsaken reason, we manage to wipe out every iota of humanity, you necessarily think that that would be the end of life on earth? I think not. All that aside, I don't think the earth will fall to a WW. That's just a fairytale we like to scare the kiddies with. Along with all those silly conspiracy theories that those nutjobs keeping bangin' on about. Life is a lot more resilient than anything we can throw at it.

I agree with you fully. Can't think of anything to add right now.
We are ruining the planet but I think we'll live through it. Humans are amazingly good at adapting their enviroment to suit their needs and I think that would be the case even in worst case scenarios where the ozone layer is gone or the polar ices have melted.

Originally Posted by BeardofPants

Doomsday Arguments

Very interesting approach, with probability and numbers and all. It's all based on assumptions but hey

Here's an ABC news article that relates to the above.
How to Calculate Chances of Doomsday!

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

Humanity is selfish and aggressive, not improving, no matter what Brownjenkins says . We nearly destroyed ourselves in the Cold War.

Well that's what the Judeo-Christian tradition implies. On the other hand, people like Adam Smith assumed that man is fundamentally good. So whether man is good or not depends on your own worldview. Lief, you're Christian and I should think Brownjenkins is quite liberal - hence your different opinions

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

Well that's what the Judeo-Christian tradition implies. On the other hand, people like Adam Smith assumed that man is fundamentally good. So whether man is good or not depends on your own worldview. Lief, you're Christian and I should think Brownjenkins is quite liberal - hence your different opinions

I'm merely stating what I was told in my International Politics class .

Originally Posted by Eärniel

You make a good point. It's true that we tend to think too antropocentrical that we see the end of us as the end of the world. It's after all very likely that life would go on without us. To say we could take every single bateria or deep see creature down with us is a bit too ambitious, even for the human race.

And a few hundred years from now, with the technology of 2400 or 2500?

We can annihilate all life right now, and considering what we're doing to our oceans, they're on a steady course toward being rendered uninhabitable. Considering the rate of technological change we've been experiencing in our modern era, and considering how humanity's ability to destroy itself increased by many, many multiples in just the 20th century, I really think you're being overly optimistic.

[Spock]

I can see by all the diverse responses and the areas they address, that I should have been much more specific in order to get a more rarified response.
It's too late now so I'll just let this continue through the ten days allotted before the end of the thread.

[Earniel]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

We can annihilate all life right now[...]

I disagree. There have been huge extinctions in the past, where even the ocean life died out for over 75% but life was never fully eradicated, and I highly doubt we are capable of destroying all life in one go. We can continue to poison this planet, like we're still doing right now, but while that will kill some, even many species, other species will simply adapt to the changed environment.

In a few hunderd years, our destructive capacity will likely be different. But considering we don't know how things will be in a few hundred years, things are difficult to judge now.

[Lief Erikson]

Considering how rapidly our ability to destroy one another and life on Earth is increasing, I'm sure that the technology available to us in coming decades or centuries will have far, far more terrible capability.

But at this point, we land in a realm of merely opinion, so I guess it's not worth debating.

Originally Posted by Eärniel

We can continue to poison this planet, like we're still doing right now, but while that will kill some, even many species, other species will simply adapt to the changed environment.

We already are in the middle of a mass extinction of unimaginable scale. What we're going through right now is one of those mass extinctions you're talking about, only not for humans yet. We're wiping out vast numbers of species already.

[Nurvingiel]

Three people did answer that we are approaching the end of the world. Why did you guys say that? I'm curious since that view hasn't actually been expressed in the thread. (Unless that's one of those survey pitfalls where different people understand the question differently.)

[The Telcontarion]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

Three people did answer that we are approaching the end of the world. Why did you guys say that? I'm curious since that view hasn't actually been expressed in the thread. (Unless that's one of those survey pitfalls where different people understand the question differently.)

I was one of those nurvi, My post about it are on the first page. Significant replies to my points of view where made by trolls' bane.

[trolls' bane]

Originally Posted by Eärniel

You make a good point. It's true that we tend to think too antropocentrical that we see the end of us as the end of the world. It's after all very likely that life would go on without us. To say we could take every single bateria or deep see creature down with us is a bit too ambitious, even for the human race.

It is a good point. In fact, if we ended, I think life would be better off.
That's why I'm going to have my brain put inside a giant genetically engineered raven before I die.