faetal on 9/11/2016 at 21:00
First of all, just to clarify, my premise is that I think it is possible for humans to go extinct within a few thousand years after a severe enough ME event.
Do you disagree?
if so, do you believe that under every scenario, humans would always be the last species standing?
If so, strong justification is required.
Renzatic on 9/11/2016 at 22:17
Quote Posted by faetal
if so, do you believe that under
every scenario, humans would
always be the last species standing?
If so, strong justification is required.
I'm sure cockroaches would outlive us. You could microwave those fuckers, and not even phase 'em.
Pyrian on 9/11/2016 at 23:15
ITT: Faetal responds to my argument that he's wrong about other people's arguments by being wrong about what my argument was, apparently deciding I was arguing about what
he had posted rather than about what
other people were posting.
Quote Posted by faetal
First of all, just to clarify...
Seriously, Chade's post is RIGHT THERE, and he neither claimed that extinction was impossible nor that humans would always be the last species standing.
Starker on 9/11/2016 at 23:27
Quote Posted by faetal
First of all, just to clarify, my premise is that I think it is
possible for humans to go extinct within a few thousand years after a severe enough ME event.
Do you disagree?
if so, do you believe that under
every scenario, humans would
always be the last species standing?
If so, strong justification is required.
It's not "extinction is possible vs extinction is impossible", though. For example, I have stated multiple times in this thread that I think it's possible under extreme circumstances. It's more about how likely it is and how it could happen.
Pyrian on 9/11/2016 at 23:36
But faetal clearly "feels"(?) that people are arguing that extinction is impossible, despite being unable or unwilling to cite anybody in the thread advancing that position, and nevermind the fact that every major arguer has explicitly rejected it, usually from the outset.
Starker on 9/11/2016 at 23:42
*shrug* He possibly feels that questioning a part of his argument means that we are rejecting the very idea of it or that we are deliberately trying to poke holes in it to discredit the whole idea?
bjack on 10/11/2016 at 02:02
Funny that I might be one of the few that agrees with faetal's argument here (at least for the most part), yet he has blocked me. Ironic. I do think he cares far too much about the thread though, as if his balls will shrivel up if he does not get his point across. Nevertheless, his point is simple and easy to understand. Humans cannot survive ALL possible doomsday scenarios. End of story. OK, I will add this... in the worst cases, they cannot survive while remaining on Earth. Even then the likelihood of survival elsewhere is slim.
Any of you know how to smelt silicon? Can you design a computer? One that can read CDs? Can you weave? Can you butcher animals correctly? The questions go on and on. We are a species of specialists and consumers. Few generalists. Maybe some "prepers" will survive for a while. But kiss civilization bye bye. EMP is my favorite pet doomsday scenario at the moment. It will be terrible. It won't just be a local issue, but possibly world wide. No one is coming to help. Stocks of stored food run out in day to weeks, and then what? Fishermen on islands might be able to eek out a subsistence life, as will those in remote areas that do not rely upon tech. There will be no viable factories to produce the raw materials to make that fake meat though.
faetal on 10/11/2016 at 08:11
What I did was state that I felt A could be possible, then I got rebuttals to that position, so I reiterated that I wasn't talking about the situations where we survived and I always agreed that those situations were the most likely. What is so hard to understand? So I agree with everybody all throughout the thread and meet with resistance against just one point, which was basically treated as though I was making a prediction for what would probably happen, despite continual reiterations that wasn't the case. All the while, no one thought to clarify, even once, that they were only interested in scenarios where humans didn't become extinct.
Unless someone did stipulate that, in which case, why not cite it for me, since I've so obviously missed something you are finding obvious?
faetal on 10/11/2016 at 08:12
Quote Posted by Starker
It's not "extinction is possible vs extinction is impossible", though. For example, I have stated multiple times in this thread that I think it's possible under extreme circumstances. It's more about how likely it is and how it could happen.
All I've done AT ALL in this thread is state that it is possible under extreme circumstances, which makes me wonder where the opposition is coming from at all.
faetal on 10/11/2016 at 08:38
Quote Posted by Pyrian
ITT: Faetal responds to my argument that he's wrong about other people's arguments by being wrong about what my argument was, apparently deciding I was arguing about what
he had posted rather than about what
other people were posting.
Seriously, Chade's post is RIGHT THERE, and he neither claimed that extinction was impossible nor that humans would always be the last species standing.
I'm asking Chade to answer two questions before proceeding to discuss with him the points he raised. As I even said RIGHT THERE IN MY POST, it was just to clarify.
I am going at this like a scientist, probably because I am one. If you don't clearly lay out the premise of the discussion, you waste a load of time discussing something irrelevant simply because there was no initial clarification.
Once I get Chade's answers to those two questions, next I was going to ask which parts he specifically disagrees with and go from there. Seriously, I have no clue what Chade's answers would be to those questions, so stop responding like I'm somehow leading.
To address what Starker said - I have no idea how likely it is, hence the 95/5 % abstraction, it's numbers out of thin air. I doubt anyone knows. I'd be as well saying that if you roll 100 dice, it might be just the scenario where every dice lands on one. Biology is a fucking complicated subject. If everyone had basic knowledge of how resilient cell regulatory mechanisms were, they'd find it hard to believe cancer could ever exist, but all it takes is the perfect storm of things to go wrong. However, I can (and have) described some ways that human exticntion could happen. I just obviously haven't done such a bang up job of that I guess.
Best thing I think is I just leave this thread to you guys. Design the scenarios you like the sound of and I'll stay out of it.
[EDIT] Just had a re-read. I answered every one of Starker's questions about how we wouldn't just adapt to everything with very detailed points about food niches, metabolism, fecundity and competition issues. So I don't know where this idea that I'm ignoring everyone's responses is coming from. I think this whole thing may just be a problem of complexity, since Vivian and I reached accord pages ago and everyone else just seems to be annoyed about something which I still don't completely understand.
