Every person living today looks extraordinarily impactful when you consider that 1000 years from now there will probably either be a million+ times as many humans or we’ll all be extinct.
This statement looks equally applicable to the year 1900, for example.
We have more reasons now (nuclear weapons, unfriendly AI, grey goo, the great filter) to think we will someday destroy ourselves than people in 1900 did.
I don’t believe that it is generally agreed upon where the great filter lies. We could already be past it. Finding multi-cellular life elsewhere in the solar system would support the hypothesis that the great filter lies ahead of us. But, we have not done that.
Why would the great filter (between current circumstances and astronomically-visible artificial events) being ahead of us imply there being no humans in the future?
Great point. Even if the great filter lies ahead of us, that in no way implies there being no humans in the future. However, it does increase the probability of an existential catastrophe in the near to midterm future.
True in the sense that part of the possibility space of the human future that does not include interstellar engineering includes worlds where such things are possible/likely but humans go extinct. I think though that the possibility space is much thicker with possibilities in which interstellar engineering is something that isn’t possible/practical but extinction is not necessarily in the cards.
This statement looks equally applicable to the year 1900, for example.
We have more reasons now (nuclear weapons, unfriendly AI, grey goo, the great filter) to think we will someday destroy ourselves than people in 1900 did.
The question isn’t what we think, the question is whether in fact every person is “extraordinary impactful”.
As a baseline may I suggest the humans during Pleistocene?
I don’t believe that it is generally agreed upon where the great filter lies. We could already be past it. Finding multi-cellular life elsewhere in the solar system would support the hypothesis that the great filter lies ahead of us. But, we have not done that.
Why would the great filter (between current circumstances and astronomically-visible artificial events) being ahead of us imply there being no humans in the future?
Great point. Even if the great filter lies ahead of us, that in no way implies there being no humans in the future. However, it does increase the probability of an existential catastrophe in the near to midterm future.
True in the sense that part of the possibility space of the human future that does not include interstellar engineering includes worlds where such things are possible/likely but humans go extinct. I think though that the possibility space is much thicker with possibilities in which interstellar engineering is something that isn’t possible/practical but extinction is not necessarily in the cards.
True, but we have a lot more reason to fear it than people in 1900 did.