We're killer Apes that pay income tax, and wear hats. However yes we have a spark...a tiny spark of something better, and brighter. Time we need time. Evolution is so slow. The gene that some few have that dampens aggression, and opens new channels of intelligence needs time.
My lay person's estimate is 20 to 50 thousands years before it's a given common trait. The problem is that such few that have it are so often either killed outright in childhood for being different or pushed aside in mating competition.
This is why the kind gentle ones are so rare.
As for those many thousands of years needed...we don't have it. That ecological "Tipping Point" is not in the future, but the past. Perhaps 50 to 100 years past. Maybe slightly longer. Some in the field are beginning to realize this. Right now it's being dismissed. But then back in the 1990's they said what's happening now the disasters wouldn't occur till mid-century or later.
Get the drift? ...we're fucked.
Mind you Earth 'will' abide. Heck in it's early history it survived a hit by an object the size of Mars. So we're no threat. Earth will just right itself without us. In 30 million years or so you'd never know we were ever here.
As for 30 mil. I meant that the scars humans will leave behind on the earth, quarries tunnels city traces canals, and such will be mostly if not totally gone by then.
Oh sure if you knew what you were looking for you might find a ceramic doodad here, and there. Also though the half-life of most of the radio-active materials we fooled around with will have cooled off. There are some artificial exotic materials with half-lives that border the 'Hundred Million' mark.
If you were an Exo-Archaeolgist say 60,000,000 years from now. That, and your dig was in the neighborhood of a former Laurence Livermore site. You'd be surprised, and intrigued at the radiation readings you were getting.
The source would be clearly artificial, and had been in this deposit for tens of millions of years. Like the Voyagers sailing out to the stars this find would say there was a very very ancient intelligent species that once lived on this world.
That would be our "First Contact".
Stay tuned.
The tipping point won't kill us all off - just most of us. And it'll probably take at least a century, most likely two or three. That's how Rome went down, & other big civs. But industrial civilization is toast, for sure.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, we won't be around in 30 million years. Most species don't last more than ten mil, tops, and it's pretty clear that our super-duper brains won't save us. I mean, how smart have we been, really?
It's too bad that natural selection, as you rightly point out, doesn't seem to favor the "nice" gene, at least not in primates. Cetaceans, maybe?
Z
Based on observation the Cetaceans have the "Gentle Gene" pretty good.
ReplyDeleteYeah a few hundred years before we're back in the trees what few of us are still around. The assorted Alfa-Males will be post digital "War-Lords", and such till the resources run out, and chaos finally ends natures latest experiment with intelligence.
Sentience doesn't seem to work well on land.
"Most species don't last more than ten mil, tops".
ReplyDeleteI doubt we'll break the one million mark. As for 30 mil. I meant that the scars humans will leave behind on the earth will be most if not totally gone by then.
Oh sure if you knew what you were looking for you might find a ceramic doodad here, and there. Also though the half-life of most of the radio-active materials we fooled around with will have cooled off. There are some artificial exotic materials with half-lives that border the hundred million mark.
If you were Exo-Archaeolgist say 60,000,000 years from now. That, and your dig was in the neighborhood of a former Laurence Livermore site. You'd be surprised, and intrigued at the radiation readings you were getting.
The source is clearly artificial, and has been in this deposit for tens of millions of years. Like the Voyagers sailing out to the stars this find would say there was a very very ancient intelligent species that once lived on this world.
That would be our "First Contact".
"Most species don't last more than ten mil, tops".
ReplyDeleteI doubt we'll break the one million mark. As for 30 mil. I meant that the scars humans will leave behind on the earth will be most if not totally gone by then.
Oh sure if you knew what you were looking for you might find a ceramic doodad here, and there. Also though the half-life of most of the radio-active materials we fooled around with will have cooled off. There are some artificial exotic materials with half-lives that border the hundred million mark.
If you were an Exo-Archaeolgist say 60,000,000 years from now. That, and your dig was in the neighborhood of a former Laurence Livermore site. You'd be surprised, and intrigued at the radiation readings you were getting.
The source is clearly artificial, and has been in this deposit for tens of millions of years. Like the Voyagers sailing out to the stars this find would say there was a very very ancient intelligent species that once lived on this world.
That would be our "First Contact".