Human Extinction

Click, click, click screams my mouse when I am clicking through random links not knowing where I am going to end up. Lo and Behold! I came across this paper "Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction". I like to read to papers in full or court opinions in full when I get a chance. If you are about to yell "BORING", plz plz plz take a second to go this link. :D

The paper is interesting, a topic that I have given a considerable thought before. Possible causes that come to mind,

1. Human
   
   • Wars (Nuclear/Bio/Chem)
   • Nuclear accidents
   • Bio/Che accidents
   • Diseases
   • Pollution
   • Artificial Intelligence
   • Natural Resources.
2. Extra-terrestrial
   
   • Solar activity
   • Asteroids
   • Unknown ( Probably aliens :D )

The paper talks about the cost effectiveness of preparing and delaying human extinction as much as possible. The debate for ever is going to be when is the returns on the investment going to be seen. I am not going to summarize the paper here, it is small enough for anyone to just go and read it. Talking about ROI, I think the returns are both tangible and intangible. Intangible, is the part what we learn from the identifying and trying so solve a problem. History is replete with examples of accidental discoveries and inventions. Yeah, it is worth investing time and money in such ventures (prudently of course).
Going off tangentially and talking about wars,

Wars have been going on for time immemorial, what makes it really scary is the sophistication and ease of bio/chem/nuclear weaponry today. The quest for oil and religious wars make it even more brain dead. It is not unusual to die for an idea.

The fight for "Freedom" is worth fighting for, but then freedom from or for what? Civil rights, cruelty, equal treatment, misinformation, speech yeah make sense. The war against others, for not believing your religious ideas is the most depraved human act. The fight for resources is inevitable (no I don't condone it). The oldest cause is food.

Food riots that happened earlier in the year are examples of what is to come. Water shortage is the other resource that will become the cause of wars. It is soul crushing to see another human die from thirst/hunger. There are other things that happen in the world that I consider as soul crushing too, like rape of a woman/child etc. I digress.

While exhaustion of natural resources happen in the hands of some countries more than the others, humans are collectively responsible and the same goes for pollution.

Damages from Bio/Chem/Nuclear wars are however from the decisions of very few people, the people who authorized the launch and the people who assisted in the launch. Which is very very very scary. There are supposedly safeguards, but is every situation anticipated? Life is fun because most of it is not stuff one anticipates. :) With humans, however we can never be assured when one can push things over the tipping point. Tom Clancy's Sum of All Fears comes to mind.

Contrast sophistication of wars from like say before 1900 and now. The wars then wouldn't have really wiped out the world as such, but today with the arsenal that we have, we can easily wipe out the whole world literally. The wars before 1900 didn't really destroy a lot of plant and animal life, however today with the bio/chem/nuc we can wipe out most forms of life. Wonder what kind of life forms would evolution lead to.

I wonder if we are really better off than the people who lived centuries ago? Is longer life really worth it in today's environment? Does it really matter if lifeforms get wiped out from Earth? I wouldn't think it would affect the universe at all. Some people however beg to differ with me,

GOD! he/she/it has a divine plan. If the world today is a example of the grand plan, then it is a truly screwed up plan. At work if I built/designed solution like that of Earth, I would be fired before the sun went down.