‘Supercontinent’ could make Earth uninhabitable in 250m years

[raklian]

If we continue to technologically evolve without going extinct as a whole group, what we will be doing in 250 million years, I wonder? Imagine AI accelerating our progress by a million times in few centuries. Now what about 250 million years? Boggles the mind. We'll probably have already long ago shed everything that makes us remotely "human" becoming something else incomprehensible, in the process transforming Earth, even the Sun, into something else for reasons we can't fathom. That begs the question: will Earth in its general form even exist by then?

Yes, it will. Turning it all into computronium would be pretty evil - even if we're some posthuman god-like entities, the rest of life on earth will not be. Creating intentionally an environment or world animals can't survive on would be pretty horrendous - heck, pretty messed up now that we're doing it unintentionally.

Well, I don't know how we'll perceive other living things on Earth after we've evolved to that extent. As I said, we won't be remotely human, thus it may no longer in be our nature to think about our relationship with Earth's other inhabitants in terms we're used to. When we build houses, we don't think about the millions of ants and other insects we're destroying in the process, you know. I'm not saying it will happen, but the possibility is real.

[Vakanai]

If we continue to technologically evolve without going extinct as a whole group, what we will be doing in 250 million years, I wonder? Imagine AI accelerating our progress by a million times in few centuries. Now what about 250 million years? Boggles the mind. We'll probably have already long ago shed everything that makes us remotely "human" becoming something else incomprehensible, in the process transforming Earth, even the Sun, into something else for reasons we can't fathom. That begs the question: will Earth in its general form even exist by then?

Yes, it will. Turning it all into computronium would be pretty evil - even if we're some posthuman god-like entities, the rest of life on earth will not be. Creating intentionally an environment or world animals can't survive on would be pretty horrendous - heck, pretty messed up now that we're doing it unintentionally.

Well, I don't know how we'll perceive other living things on Earth after we've evolved to that extent. As I said, we won't be remotely human, thus it may no longer in be our nature to think about our relationship with Earth's other inhabitants in terms we're used to. When we build houses, we don't think about the millions of ants and other insects we're destroying in the process, you know. I'm not saying it will happen, but the possibility is real.

We're going to be directing our evolution in the future - if we choose to evolve into something completely sociopathic that we do not care about other lifeforms to such a great extent we send all other life into extinction just to make the whole earth a computer for "reasons were too dumb now to guess at", then frankly we deserve to go extinct as a species ourselves soon rather than later to avoid us becoming galactic asses.

Don't mean that to sound confrontational by the way, just that evolving into something with no concern over other life is pure evil, no if ands or buts about it. Humans as a species are bad enough as is, I don't want us as posthumans to be even worse. Intelligence should never come at the expense of love mercy and compassion, both need to coexist.

[FuturismFan]

If we continue to technologically evolve without going extinct as a whole group, what we will be doing in 250 million years, I wonder? Imagine AI accelerating our progress by a million times in few centuries. Now what about 250 million years? Boggles the mind. We'll probably have already long ago shed everything that makes us remotely "human" becoming something else incomprehensible, in the process transforming Earth, even the Sun, into something else for reasons we can't fathom. That begs the question: will Earth in its general form even exist by then?

Yes, it will. Turning it all into computronium would be pretty evil - even if we're some posthuman god-like entities, the rest of life on earth will not be. Creating intentionally an environment or world animals can't survive on would be pretty horrendous - heck, pretty messed up now that we're doing it unintentionally.

Well, I don't know how we'll perceive other living things on Earth after we've evolved to that extent. As I said, we won't be remotely human, thus it may no longer in be our nature to think about our relationship with Earth's other inhabitants in terms we're used to. When we build houses, we don't think about the millions of ants and other insects we're destroying in the process, you know. I'm not saying it will happen, but the possibility is real.

People still do care about insects. Some insects are protected species.
https://law.stanford.edu/2022/06/06/nat ... ecies-act/

Butterfly gardening is also a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_gardening

Insect hotels are used to give shelter to insects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_hotel

While our minds may not be on insects when building homes, we still preserve and maintain insect habitat. Heck, even with organisms like bacteria, we seek out rare species from caves and hydrothermal vents. I think we'll still care about protecting animals and plants even as hypothetical posthumans. Life may be rare in the universe, after all. I think that posthumans would probably care about protecting it.

[raklian]

Yes, it will. Turning it all into computronium would be pretty evil - even if we're some posthuman god-like entities, the rest of life on earth will not be. Creating intentionally an environment or world animals can't survive on would be pretty horrendous - heck, pretty messed up now that we're doing it unintentionally.

Well, I don't know how we'll perceive other living things on Earth after we've evolved to that extent. As I said, we won't be remotely human, thus it may no longer in be our nature to think about our relationship with Earth's other inhabitants in terms we're used to. When we build houses, we don't think about the millions of ants and other insects we're destroying in the process, you know. I'm not saying it will happen, but the possibility is real.

People still do care about insects. Some insects are protected species.
https://law.stanford.edu/2022/06/06/nat ... ecies-act/

Butterfly gardening is also a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_gardening

Insect hotels are used to give shelter to insects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_hotel

While our minds may not be on insects when building homes, we still preserve and maintain insect habitat. Heck, even with organisms like bacteria, we seek out rare species from caves and hydrothermal vents. I think we'll still care about protecting animals and plants even as hypothetical posthumans. Life may be rare in the universe, after all. I think that posthumans would probably care about protecting it.

I don't know about that. You might be right for the next tens of thousand years where we can still make reasonable predictions, but 250 million years is a unimaginably long time. I'm not even sure we'll retain any of the traits that make us "human" such as caring for others, or practice moral relativism (good vs evil duality, etc.) by then. It is far more accurate to say we cannot predict what we will become or will do. What I earlier said is just a possibility but not an inevitable future.

[wjfox]

Now what about 250 million years? Boggles the mind.

If we progress through the Kardashev scale, Earth won't be important or special by then (if it even still exists). Every possible "problem" on the planet will have been solved. Every atom, down to the innermost core, will be catalogued and utilised in some way – probably within a vast network of computing consciousness that spans our entire galaxy and beyond. Earth might be the equivalent of the first transistor in the first microprocessor, existing as a perfect sphere of perfect matter.

The beings that replace us will be focused on issues that are nearly incomprehensible to us today, possibly involving aspects of interdimensional travel or multiverse exploration. Maybe even time travel.

It's difficult to imagine Earth's ecosystems surviving under such a scenario. Perhaps whatever life is deemed worthy of saving will be transported to artificial planets, or uploaded to simulated environments, which exist only as historical archives.

Then again... Occam's razor would suggest we'll go extinct, long before then, and the supercontinent scenario will play out as described in this article.

We just don't know!

[Vakanai]

Now what about 250 million years? Boggles the mind.

If we progress through the Kardashev scale, Earth won't be important or special by then (if it even still exists). Every possible "problem" on the planet will have been solved. Every atom, down to the innermost core, will be catalogued and utilised in some way – probably within a vast network of computing consciousness that spans our entire galaxy and beyond. Earth might be the equivalent of the first transistor in the first microprocessor, existing as a perfect sphere of perfect matter.

The beings that replace us will be focused on issues that are nearly incomprehensible to us today, possibly involving aspects of interdimensional travel or multiverse exploration. Maybe even time travel.

It's difficult to imagine Earth's ecosystems surviving under such a scenario. Perhaps whatever life is deemed worthy of saving will be transported to artificial planets, or uploaded to simulated environments, which exist only as historical archives.

Then again... Occam's razor would suggest we'll go extinct, long before then, and the supercontinent scenario will play out as described in this article.

We just don't know!

Disagree. If we do survive and evolve, I think we'd still value life, and thus would not turn earth into a supercomputer at the cost of all other known life in our solar system. We can get just as far by being selective in what we do and don't turn into a computer. The asteroid belt, Kuiper belt, the Oort cloud, the upper atmospheres of the gas giants, plenty of places where life doesn't exist. Our moon has no life on it if proximity is somehow a concern.
Not all stellar bodies in the reachable universe would need to be converted into computronium, aka Earth, maybe Mars if we discover life there, same for the seas in Europa or Enceladus, etc. We're actually kind of spoiled for material, we have more objects in our solar system so far than any other observed system in the universe to date. We can afford to spare life and still have more matter to turn into computers than any non-interstellar species.

I really don't think any problem will ever require so much compute that it can only be solved by making everything into a computer, especially at the expense of the only other life we know for a fact exists, our fellow earthlings.

I have to hope that posthumans are better shepherds of this planet than modern humans. If we ever reach a stage where we decide axing all other lifeforms in the pursuit of more compute for "reasons" is fine and dandy, well...would rather we go extinct than evolve in that case.

Mind, this is if we do survive the next 250 million or whatever years. Chances are looking more likely we'll go extinct in the next couple centuries or so do to the hellish climate we're still creating for ourselves.

[Jakob]

Even if evolution just takes its natural course without any technological intervention, nothing recognizably human will be on Earth in 250 million years to witness it.

[Cyber_Rebel]

It's possible that actual spacefaring civilizations leave their original planet of origin, perhaps opting to go entirely in space depending on what they value or level of technology they have attained. Might be especially true for machine civs which could find the "compute" within space better suited than being locked into a single ecosystem. I wonder if such a scenario happened (or has happened) if the original planet of origin is safeguarded, not for resources but out of a sense of letting nature evolve naturally, possibly giving way towards another technological capable species. This is basically kind of like the Zoo Hypothesis, where said developing species are completely unaware of being within a planetary zoo for a higher order civilization.

Earth becomes an off-limits garden world where life has the capability of giving rise to other intelligent species, who might someday ascend to the galactic scale.

Would also be a possible work around to the fermi paradox on a larger timescale, with a bit of prime directive within the mix. We become someone else's "ancient aliens" depending on what we become between now and 250 million years, assuming we do evolve and don't go extinct. Extinct being non-existing in this sense, and not becoming something else.