Here lies dear old Fred
A great big rock fell on his head.
Here lies Lester Moore,
Four slugs from a 44
No Les, no More
Here lies the body
of Jonathan Blake
Stepped on the gas
Instead of the brake.
The
death of an individual is sad to contemplate, but there is a
possibility vastly sadder to ponder: the possibility of the entire
human race becoming extinct. If that were to happen, perhaps someone
or something might erect a memorial for the extinct human race. In
such a gloomy case, what epitaph might be written for the human
species?
The
following would work pretty well as an all-purpose epitaph for the
human species, no matter how we might become extinct:
But
what about specific extinction scenarios? One possibility is that we
might invent super-intelligent machines which learn how to make
copies of themselves. The number of super-intelligent robots might
grow larger and larger, and the number of humans might grow smaller.
The new super-brainy robots might take over entirely. The new robotic
species might keep us humans around for a while, but they might
eventually decide: the only intelligent beings that should exist on
this planet are super-intelligent beings. Then they might get rid of
us fleshy humans entirely. In such a case they might erect a memorial
for the vanished human race, and it might look like this:
Still
another possibility is that the human race may become extinct because
of a gradually deteriorating environment. Rather than cutting back
our wasteful ways that put the planet in peril, we may continue
spending more and more, shopping more and more, eating more and more,
and driving more and more. This may cause global warming to get
worse and worse. The result might be runaway global warming, as
various feedback loops kick in, which cause global warming to
accelerate more and more (such as the melting of methane deposits in
Siberia and Antarctica). Temperatures may rise so high that the human
race perishes. In such a case the following might be a suitable
epitaph for mankind:
Another
possibility is that the mankind may destroy itself in a war. There
need not be any fancy technological breakthroughs for this to be a
possibility, because the USA and Russia still have many thousands of
nuclear weapons. One day they might be used, in a deliberate attack,
or a war that escalates from a small-scale use of nuclear weapons due
to an accidental launch or a limited launch by a madman. Or the human
race might perish in some new type of war, such as a biological war
using genetically engineered germs. In such a case, the following
might be used as an epitaph for our species:
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