___________
.Longevity.
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Music by stote/Noise
- How long is the human race going to last? Our track record is about
200,000 years; that's how long our species has been around according to
the best estimates from mitocondrial DNA and the fossil record. If the
future is more than 1/39th but less than 39 times as long as the past,
then from this vantage point in time, the human race has somewhere between
another 5,128 years and 7.8 million years to go.
But in looking over the data on species longevity, Gott found some
disturbing news. He realised that how 'smart' a species is has nothing to
do with longevity. "I'm reminded of the fact that Albert Einstein was a
lot smarter than the rest of the people, but he didn't live much longer
than anybody else," notes Gott. "He died at the age of 76. So the fact
that you're very smart may not increase your longevity."
The situation for the human race is even bleaker than that, however.
Gott's longevity estimate for the human species pertains to all our
intelligent descendants as well. "If an intelligent species typically gave
rise to many later ones," Gott explains, "then you have to ask yourself:
How did i get so lucky as to be in the first one? I could have been the
15th one. We are not the first species to have eyes, for example. But we
are the first species to be intelligent enough to qualify as an
intelligent observer, reason abstractly, create art, ask questions like
this, think about the future, and so forth. Therefore, this limit applies
not only to us but also anything intelligent that might descend from us,
like intelligent machines or some genetically engineered species."
[21c]
