Poll: humanity and it's future

[Queen Michael]

Why, of course we'll survive! The problem with most pessimists is that they don't understand the difference between "modern civilization surviving" and "human life surviving". After all, as long as just one guy or gal is alive, the human race will have survived! So while our civilization probably is going to go down not with a bang but with a KABOOM, I'm sure some humans will be still alive. Killing loads of humans is easy. Killing all of them is very, very hard.

 

[PrototypeC]

Humans are just like cockroaches, except smell worse. Can't kill them all, can't find where they all hide, and they scatter when you flip the lights on.

Better kill yourself quick then, traitor. You can catch yourself, can't you? The rest of us will make the best of our world and become a space-faring race while the worms eat you.

Well thanks for blowing our cover. Normally, when we make such statements, the humans just laugh and scoff at it like cynical BS, but you just go and rip that can of worms wide open, THANK YOU. Now we'll never finalize that spaceship because you blew the cover.

Damage control: go!
You have no idea how many people legitimately believe that, though. Anyway, I don't usually get pissed like that... I didn't know misanthropes hit such a sore spot with me. What do you actually think?

 

[Samcanuck]

Maybe, but I'm not sure if it should.

 

[Satin6T]

Not if i have anything to do with it

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

Hundred years? Easily.

Up the number to a few ten thousand years and I'd start to doubt.

 

[Srdjan]

Yes we are superior and should start intergalactic empire.

 

[Kud]

Whatever happens, we will fix it with science.

 

[Satin6T]

Whatever happens, we will fix it with science.

or end it with science

 

[Pokenator]

I don't think we are the most intelligent. I doubt the world would have so much pollution and so little ozone had humans never shown up. Would the sharks and whales have used fossil fuels and nuclear energy to destroy our ozone? Would the Buffalo and lions have made cars that emit toxic fumes into the breathing air? My guess is not. We claim that we are the most intelligent on the planet, yet we have dealt the most damage to it.

Honestly, I don't see humans lasting much longer. Maybe a few hundred more years until we start having fatal problems as a race.

But that's all my opinion, of course. I know we are taking steps to recover the damage we have done, I just don't think we will recover at the same rate at which we damage the planet. Stalling the inevitable, if you will. Not the brightest outlook, I know, but it's my outlook none the less. Sorry.

They haven't damaged the Earth because they are incapable of influencing the environment to the extent that humans can because they're unintelligent animals. They're incapable of caring the way that you, and I, and a number of other humans do.

I'm all for environmentalism but this misanthropy is trite nonsense. Humans are imperfect, but we're also the only species on Earth that is capable of the kind of abstract reasoning that produces intellectual and technological innovation. Language, philosophy, and science are all ours, for better or worse. Chimpanzees cannot split the atom, nor could they have held a debate with Socrates.

The fact that dolphins or whatever don't destroy the ozone layer doesn't reflect an inherent nobility, it means that they're not smart enough to do so.

How much longer humanity will survive, I don't know. 100 years seems overly-cynical to me, though. The world keeps changing and it's difficult to predict what our future will be.

Ironically the reason human beings are where they are today is due to the evolution of our hands. This is probably more the reason why no animals, even the most intelligent like dolphins, can never 'engineer' their environment the way we have- they lack hands (or an appendage with the ability to finely manipulate resources to create things).

 

[Valiant The Gamer]

We can't know for sure cause it depends on what leaders nations with nuclear bombs get or if climate change is realy a big deal or the oil so we can't realy know cause some things are unpredictable cause we have no other experience with.

 

[Pokenator]

Hundred years? Easily.

Up the number to a few ten thousand years and I'd start to doubt.

You have a lot of faith in our ability to take responsibility for our actions as a species.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

Hundred years? Easily.

Up the number to a few ten thousand years and I'd start to doubt.

You have a lot of faith in our ability to take responsibility for our actions as a species.

Take responsibility? No, not really.

Survive? Hell yes.

 

[thylasos]

Humanity survive? Yes. Live to the same level we have in the late 20th century? No, I highly doubt it.

 

[Chipperz]

Don't think so. Between Climate Change, some very angry people out there, the ever-present existence of nuclear weapons, and of the potential lapses of sanity in leaders who are seeing their country decline does not look like it will produce a happy outcome.

We will always persist, unless every single square inch of the Earth is absolutely inhospitable, which could not happen due to climate change, or angry people with nukes.

Perhaps. I guess you could say that my definition of "Humanity's Future" is that of a pre-apocalyptic world.

By definition, we're living in a pre-apocalyptic world. The Apocalypse is yet to come!

If you mean post-apocalyptic world, then... I can't believe people still think like that. It made sense several decades ago with the Cold War, but now that's over and Russia and America didn't nuke everything, then, well... Let's face it, the chances of nuclear war are pretty slim.

Doesn't mean I'd not like to have a nuclear war. Post-apocalyptia is awesome. Not worth destroying humanity for, though.

 

[Voodoomancer]

Yes we will.

Not including blowing the damn planet up, no matter how badly we screw up there'll always be some hermit in a cave that'll survive, and a bunch of obscenely rich people in a bunker somewhere.

 

[Elle-Jai]

I was gonna vote "yes." Then I read the topic on the 72 yr old woman having a (donor egg) child with her grandson. My opinion has since changed...

Plus we're fat

LOL I read that too, and EEEEEEEEWWWWWWWW is still the first thing to come to mind.

OT: I chose "yes". One hundred I think we can manage easy, it's when we start looking at one THOUSAND I start to wonder :S

 

[Kaymish]

yes if fallout has taught me anything its that humans are like cockroaches we can hang on to life even if the earth becomes a blighted cinder floating in space and i don't see the earth becoming a blighted cinder in the next hundred years so its almost certain that humans or what ever species we are destined to be come will be around at the turn of the next century

 

[Milney]

Last century saw the two largest conflicts of all time enacted, within 30 years of each other, broiling the whole world (bar some assorted countries - but every continent, even South America, was involved), weapons of horrifc power with side effects not fully understood were both developed and used on other humans.

This century is small time, I can't see anything that didn't destroy us then doing so now.

 

[Milney]

Last century saw the two largest conflicts of all time enacted, within 30 years of each other, broiling the whole world (bar some assorted countries - but every continent, even South America, was involved), weapons of horrifc power with side effects not fully understood were both developed and used on other humans.

This century is small time, I can't see anything that didn't destroy us then doing so now.

 

[zombiesinc]

I was gonna vote "yes." Then I read the topic on the 72 yr old woman having a (donor egg) child with her grandson. My opinion has since changed...

Plus we're fat

Yup, pretty much sums it up.

Unfortunately, my inner-optimistic self caught my usually pessimistic self off guard and had my clicking yes before I knew what hit me.