Hacker News Reader

Comment by riffic | Hacker News Reader

  But homo sapiens will probably survive, and so civilization will probably eventually be rebuilt

This is a very arrogant assumption. Our species is one component of a little-understood web of interconnected dependencies. Just because humans are slightly more clever than past dominant species doesn't make us any less extinction-proof.

View on HN

I'm guess you meant that cleverness doesn't make us any more extinction-proof. But actually it does. Cleverness is a huge advantage in the survival game.

Thanks for the correction re: more versus less. But I'll still posit that this is an arrogant line of thinking:

  Cleverness is a huge advantage in the survival game.

Cleverness won't be much help when underlying dependencies disappear.

Edit: one way humans will extinctionize our species:

https://phys.org/news/2017-02-scientists-categorize-earth-to...

We're basically driving this car full speed towards the cliff. No amount of cleverness will stop this.

The relation might not be linear though.

  Just because humans are slightly more clever than past dominant species doesn't make us any less extinction-proof.

Homo sapiens: the Dunning-Kruger hominid.

I've suggested: the anti-ant.

Ants, individually, are stupid. Collectively, they're intelligent, and solve complex problems.

Humans, individually, are brilliant (by animal standards). Collectively, not so much.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com