This is probably going to sound off topic at the beginning but I just needed a starting point and this came to mind so I'm going with it. There is some method to the madness. IMHO one of the very few remaining big concepts in the watered-down Star Trek Voyager series took the form of the Physician AI in hologram form whom the crew needed desperately to evolve beyond his program. I don't recall his being specified as digital or not but he certainly was an analogue.
Stephan Hawking proposed (I know he wasn't the first and probably not the last but "Brief History" came to mind also) that prior to language the human species could only evolve at Biological rates, slowly, with very little change between one generation and the last. Hawking, and others, then go on to propose that language changed everything, first with oral history and even moreso with written history where each new generation, rather than starting like the last one at "zero", could start along a logarithmic progression. This is historically accurate in that apparently we spent around 1 million years (depending on where one assumes anything remotely resembling humans in our past began ... I mean we could go back to bacteria but that just makes the early period longer) with exceedingly little change. Hawking likens this situation, starting post language, as a tangential and sometimes competing sometimes complementing path of evolution, loosely based in mind and body. IIRC he ultimately formulates the issue that the characteristics that served us well as a species in the trees and on the plains for so long are now becoming so at odds that it is akin to the Sci Fi short story in which a loaded gun is left in a baby's crib as analogous to giving Man fission and fusion bombs, and either the "baby" must grow up, the "doctor" must exceed his program, or the technology must be abandoned. It may be worthy of note that a beakthrough of inestimable impact is underway
EFDA - European Fusion Development Agreement and holds considerable promise
There is in all likelihood no way to turn back the hands of time and perhaps it's just as unlikely to just start over after some major apocalypse, Malthusian or otherwise. It's important to consider that any starting over is not equivalent to the past because although we have changed very little at the biological level and many would justifiably argue that we really haven't progressed all that far from coming down from the trees technologically since we still live in houses made of sticks and stones and depend on crops and the bounty or lack therof of drinking water and all of these things have changed rather drastically. When man was "on the rise" at first raw materials, even metals were essentially lying about in a form that a good fire could make useful and the biodiversity necessary for good odds at finding food was essentially everywhere since all life flourished in the temperate area from which it sprang. This can be expanded upon but after all this is but one post in a forum and I'm a ratchet jaw.
So while there may be scenarios in which we could "go back" I maintain that this is highly unlikely as an outright choice and much more likely to be stumbled into, probably as a result of our ancient programming to fight for territory and material gain, blindly follow leaders, distrust those who appear different, and solve conflicts with violence, often as first resort, etc etc. However we might get there the odds of either staying on a comfortable level or rising again don't appear as "betting with the house".
Often Creationists have said to me in hopes of proving the literal translation of the Bible, "Look around at all that is here for us" wheras I see that as a given since that is from what and whence we sprung. We fit because it came first. It is not a given that any survivors of an apocalypse will find it so accommodating.
So we, like the "doctor" or "the crew" if you wish, desperatly need to rise above our programming but wihout losing those characteristics that however ugly or politically incorrect are good survival instincts. Just knowing where that line is drawn is a major project not likely to be sussed out in just one generation. I submit that the best way to discover what is wheat and what is chaff as well as how to separate the two is again based in odds. We need to colonize other environments - perhaps undersea, perhaps Antarctica, but certainly on other worlds, moons and planets - spread the odds. One problem in our programming is that we tend to be ridiculously self-centered and self-congratulating - the whole "Center of the Universe, made in His image" thing. While the moon landing is quite possibly the highest achievement of Mankind on so many levels, including the cooperation required just to name one rarely mentioned (albeit still driven by deadly competition), it is a very small step compared to the vast ocean of Space and the difficulties that must be overcome. Yet even that happened over 40 years ago and has been relegated to near forgotten legend by many and ho-hum or wasteful by many others ignorant even of the spinoffs and Science itself, the single most useful and productive methodology ever invented is as suspect by many as politicians and lawyers and fit for only giving us Viagra, ShamWow, and the means to foment religious crusades. We have a very long way to go.
If this thread is about assessing the odds, my vote is that Science, the evolution of the mind, holds the answers, and obsession with vanities of the physical hold far more threat to our survival as a species. The Earth won't be in danger for 10 Billion years but we may face extinction in a few human lifetimes. and we have yet to raise the bar of survival past dinosaurs, cockroaches and horseshoe crabs, let alone bacteria, so what do we have that makes us different and possibly more succesful?. If we don't strive to make this new survival strategy, Intelligent Reason work for us, the truly meek, bacteria, may ironicaly actually inherit the Earth. Wouldn't that just be a Cosmic hoot?
