Will Science Destroy Us?

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by Moontanman

Bacteria and other microbes already rule the earth, complex animals are just a after thought in numbers, biomass and influence.

I agree – and more.

In the view of some pretty good evolutionary biologists (eg: Lynn Margulis), we highly differentiated tissued animals are essentially bacteria – not just convenient environments to host the masses of them that colonize our bodies, but ourselves ancient colonies of less cellularly differentiated organism that became so specialized they became our tissues, yet so connected that all of them share a common genome (with the exception of a single holdout, our mitrochondria, which appear to be so good that no advantage is afforded by incorporating their genome into the main, somatic one). If correct – that is, if complex animals didn’t evolve from one or a few simple ancient ancestors, but from many tens or thousands of them – the term “colony” hardly seems adequate – “cities” might be better.

The question of whether it’s ultimately sensible, biologically, to think of us humans as other than cities of bacteria aside, I think we humans, as a species, are closest to justified in claiming to rule the Earth, for the reason given in Herpert’s Dune: "He who can destroy a thing, can control a thing." As I argued above, I don’t believe humankind has yet gained the ability to destroy ourselves, let alone the the Earth itself, but, if we continue to advance in science and technology, I believe we will gain it.

Alongside the 20th century, fiction and bad science-fueled belief that humankind currently can, with it’s meager capacity to alter ecosystems and blow things up, destroy the Earth, I think can lay the pre-20th century, religion and lack-of-scientific-imagination-fueled belief that nothing – at least nothing human - can destroy it. The Earth is not the heart of the universe, but merely a big – by human standards – physical object, differing from small object in how easily it can be destroyed only in scale, not principle – the “big enough hammer” Boerseun described upthread.

Reading through this fairly old thread, I see nobody’s yet mentioned a fundamental dichotomy, or paradox, of human survival and extinction: that science and technology, the tools with the greatest promise of assuring our long term survival, also present the greatest threat to it.

Long term, the Earth is not a very safe place. Geology and planetary astrophysics reveal a history of violent collisions with other solar system bodies – big smashes – resulting in the Earth’s entire surface melting, rendering it as about as hospitable as a lava flow. Although most such events are from an early solar system epoch, the hadean, and such collisions are much less likely now, they are not in principle impossible. Assuming only an increment more technology and malevolence than humankind currently has (and some would argue we’ve no current deficit of malevolence), such an event would be artificially engineered, increasing its likelihood dramatically. This is rocket science, but not conceptually beyond the imagination of a young human child.

Excluding a big smash disaster, the Earth will be only slightly more hospitable in about 1 billion years. As the Sun slowly, inexorably increases its core pressure due to mounting quantities of helium, its hydrogen-helium fusion rate, and its brightness, is increasing. In about a billion years, Earth will be too hot for liquid surface water, and human life as we know it will be impossible. It’ll be right nasty long before then.

If humans haven’t the technology to prevent or escape these or any other chance or inevitable natural catastrophes, they’ll extinguish us.

The dichotomy arises from the technology needed to avoid these natural catastrophes – essentially, greater power densities than we presently have, and techniques to control them – are the same that enable us to create artificial catastrophes just as lethal.

Thus, I’m a diasporist (a moniker I just coined, though I doubt I’m the first ) – I believe it’s necessary, in the long term, to assume that the worst possible natural and artificial disasters will inevitably occur , so the survival of humankind requires that we live scattered so widely in space, on and off planets, than no single natural or artificial disaster can kill all of us.

I believe if science enables us to spread – and I can imagine nothing else plausibly doing so – it will not destroy, but save, us. If not, I know not if science will be instrumental in our destruction, or nature, but am certain something will be.