(no subject)

[farla]

So hello. It appears I exist again.

I'm violently apathetic, so I'm not really going to make much of an entry.

Basically, we're all screwed, but at least when everything goes to hell, a lot of people are going to deserve it.

Comments

[farla.livejournal.com]

Perhaps.

But we've already used up about half the planet's lifespan. Also - well, did you ever read Ringworld? Without certain resources, civilizations can't rise. We've used up most of those resources. There are still ores and such left, but they require our current level of development to access. Any technological fall can be permanent because there aren't the resources needed to build up again - if you can't access metal and are stuck at the stone level of tools, you can't advance. If humans are wiped out and the next race has to start from scratch, they're going to be operating on a tight deadline while having far more disadvantages.

Plus, we wiped out most higher intelligence, as well as many social animals. There are smart animals left, but they're generally very short lived and generally not social. That's not a good recipe for civilization.

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

...

Damnit. That's absolutely right.

Although I'm not quite sure what you mean by the last paragraph. Most of the animals I think of when I think about intelligence are pretty social. Certainly most of the more intelligent mammals are, though maybe not some of the birds... Or are you just going a ahead and counting species of animal that are currently threatened among those already killed off?

[farla.livejournal.com]

Eh, for a given value of social. A lot of animals are social in the interactive way, but they aren't able to work together. Squirrels, say. They don't get into a group and defend the birdfeeder from others, or work together to get the heaping pile of corn back to their nests. They instead fight over it. They're quite smart and obviously have pretty good communicative ability, but they're not cooperative.

For that matter, a sizable portion of cooperative animals were killed off because it's not a good strategy against humans. Ducks used to be highly social nesting animals. All modern ducks, however, are solitary nesters because group nesters were easier to kill - ducks would be extinct today if it wasn't for the few solitary nesters.

Groups that rely on each other, and that pass knowledge on, which is what made human society develop, are also groups human society excel at destroying. Those groups stop working if you regularly kill many of them because information is lost faster than it can be passed down.

A good sign this has already happened is that, now that there are protections for dolphins, they have started to display new behaviors which are being taught to their young. Either they never thought of this before in the millions of years they've existed, or we killed off all the parents before they could teach their young, and they're having to relearn everything.

It's possible some animals - say, raccoons - might, in absence of humans, develop more communal societies once our selective pressure against it has been removed, and go from there. But there's so much about our own evolution that looks like a fluke, that coupled with the lack of any similar species things do look a bit ominous.

The best bet, I think, would be if monkeys and such did survive, since we know they can produce a space-reaching intelligent species and that they did so last time during climate upheaval, which I figure we'll have in spades. If we're really lucky, rapid evolution might make get them to advanced tool users before our cities are completely gone, at which point they'll have some access to those metals. That might get them advanced enough that they'll be able to cope with the reduced resources they'll have without stagnating at a stone ax level.
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