Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Wednesday June 14 2017, @02:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the make-backups...-and-test-them dept.

Earth has been hit by objects in the past, with devastating effects. Scientists largely agree that it was an asteroid or comet impact that started the chain of events that wiped out the dinosaurs around 60 million years ago.

[...] impacts from objects in space are just one of several ways that humanity and most of life on Earth could suddenly disappear.

We are already observing that extinctions are happening now at an unprecedented rate. In 2014 it was estimated that the extinction rate is now 1,000 times greater than before humans were on the Earth. The estimated number of extinctions ranges from 200 to 2,000 species per year.

From all of this very worrying data, it would not be a stretch to say that we are currently within a doomsday scenario. Of course, the “day” is longer than 24 hours but may be instead in the order of a century or two.

So what can we do about this potential prospect of impending doom?

[...] But the threats we face are so unpredictable that we need to have a backup plan. We need to plan for the time after our doomsday and think about how a post-apocalyptic Earth may recover and humanity will flourish again.

How to backup life on Earth

As computer experts, you are familiar with backup plans. What should we do to backup human survival ?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @07:48AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @07:48AM (#525324)

    technically, it is not thanks to Darwin that the mind is boggled. Darwin could at most be credited with discovering how the mind evolved, not with creating it...

  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday June 14 2017, @08:02AM (4 children)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Wednesday June 14 2017, @08:02AM (#525329) Journal

    Unfortunately, I have been reading Žižek [amazon.com] of late, and the point of an idealistic materialism seems to be that the creation of the mind, and it's bogglement, occur simultaneously, or something like that. Once Mind is present, it is something that always already was, so of course Darwin does not create speciation, except that in a very real sense, he does. A mind that is not aware of evolution, of it's own evolution, is not yet a mind. And my point, a mind that realizes that it is the result of an evolutionary process necessarily realizes as well that its evolution was in no sense necessary, except for that fact that it does exist, so its evolution was necessary. But this does not hold for other possible worlds. Yes, it is philosophy. Deal with it.

    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @09:00AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @09:00AM (#525342)

      I'm sorry, I thought you were interested in objective reality.
      You can certainly discuss philosophy, but to claim that something must be experienced in order to exist is a meaningless statement when you are pursuing a description of objective reality (and that is what I am doing).

      If you're not interested in objectivity, then I don't really understand why you even bother reading something written by other people --- it's obvious their opinions are irrelevant since their subjective universes are distinct from your own.

      • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday June 14 2017, @07:43PM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Wednesday June 14 2017, @07:43PM (#525628) Journal

        I'm sorry, I thought you were interested in objective reality.

        Don't be, because you are not.

        You can certainly discuss philosophy,

        What do you think "philosophy" is?

        but to claim that something must be experienced in order to exist is a meaningless statement when you are pursuing a description of objective reality (and that is what I am doing).

        See, this is where philosophy can be useful. Are you claiming that there are things that objectively exist, of which there is no possible experience? Putting aside the question of whether this is correct or not, how could you possibly know of such existences? Certainly there are some things that do not exist and thus we will never have an experience of them, but how are we to distinguish those non-existent things from the existent things we never experience? This is an epistemological problem, rather than an ontological one.

        If you're not interested in objectivity, then I don't really understand why you even bother reading something written by other people --- it's obvious their opinions are irrelevant since their subjective universes are distinct from your own.

        This does not follow. I can see that you are assuming that there are only two possibilities: objective (independently existing) reality, or, total relativistic solipcism. The reality of the universe, however, is much more interesting than this. The fact that what someone is saying may, or may not, correspond to an independently existing reality is not really the point. When I listen to them I am experiencing something, another consciousness. We do not have to go all Cartesian at this point, but it is enough to suggest that if I listen, you exist.

        You might try reading some Slavoj Žižek, he's a bit off his rocker, but he is making a serious attempt to establish an idealist dialectical materialism, or in other words, to deal with objective reality. Naïve scientific realism is some what passé, especially after van Fraassen. [wikipedia.org]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:17AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:17AM (#525761)

      How many angels can dance on the point of a needle? And, how many people give a damn?

      Sophistry is sophistry is sophistry.

      • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:29AM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:29AM (#525771) Journal

        You are confusing medieval theological metaphysics with modern epistemology and philosophy of science. Ignorance is ignorance, and ignorance. There is a vast difference between sophistry and philosophy. I could explain it to you, if you are interested.