After humanity

Has anyone of you had any thoughts about, which kind of creatures come after humanity is gone from the Earth? There was a program on Science Channel who said there would be walking octopuses then. What is your take about this?

EDIT: Typo corrections.

 

homosexual bacteria

for sure

 

I have often thought about this myself Arthgon, but then I came to an understanding, well more so a reasoning. As far as we know we are the first species to develop technology, this technology helps us prolong life as well as accomplish so much more than we could if we were walking on all fours. My reasoning is that if we are the first, then why would we come to an end? We could quite possibly continue to expand and reach other planets.

That to the side, what is to say that our understanding of life will even be considered life when we are all gone. We are under the assumption that life has to be some form of creature or even a bacteria. What if there was something different we don't even understand? What if that form of life exists now with us and we don't even know it?

 

Do you honestly think it would come to that though?

 

The Fermi paradox + all of the extinctions that have happened throughout the history of planet Earth.

It's pretty naive to think that we are the end of evolution just because we have brains that are capable of doing more things than the other critters found on Earth.

 

The problem with the prolong life is there will be a possibility that there are more old people will exists then young children.

Yes, there were some ideas to build a colony on the moon first. Now what I have heard on the radio and the television, that they put this idea in the freezer again. (Because of the money that will cost them.)

As far as I know, humans and animals have always found a way to survive in any circumstances, so humanity (and animals) shall evolved into the right conditions in new environments. (Well, until the end of the sun, or the moving of the continents, then only the fish, bacteria, and other marine animals survive by going deeper into the ocean. They shall be accustomed to the cold, and can be larger.) An Example of a possible outcome for humanity: If the earth would cool off, the next generation would have thick hair against the cold weather.

PS: What is more likely to come after the humanity, intelligent insects or something else?

EDIT: Does my eyes decieve me, or has DF become a moderator?

 

I actually did not meant that the insects or any other wildlife shall kill us, but which kind of creatures shall envolve to the next first race, if humanity shall colonize the other planets? Perhaps, because of overpopulation, and/or minerals, food etc, became scarse.

 

Coruscant is the throne room of the emperor, noob.

 

DF's a mod? Irony indeed. Congrats

 

I remember seeing this big thing on the science channel about how there's plans to terraform Mars. It'll take about 1000 years, but it's doable. As for what might happen on earth, our progress is all that's happened over the course of human history. We've done a lot of learning over our short time as a species. The processes required for evolution take millions of years, so it's very possible that things will change in the distant future.
At this point we can't really say "what's next". We'd have to find some way to predict evolutionary paths, but I can definitely say that technology is changing rapidly over the course of our lives. Maybe technology is how a species like ours is meant to evolve. That may of course lead to a period in which we're wholly dependent on our gadgets and we become a race of cyborgs, with a high-tech suit prosthesis to shelter our weak bodies and bulbous heads. Brain size is limited by how wide the mother's hips are, and soon babies will be grown in tanks, allowing their brains to grow to prodigious sizes. It will be a race of pensive egg-heads with mighty robotic limbs, to crush their enemies!
Arthgon, is this an attempt on your part to get us all to make furries*? I spent my time in seventh grade, I don't intend to go back.
*I'm kidding, I just can't decide what animal comes next. What I really don't know is if we're already the top of the food chain, what changes will take place over the next 100 million years?

 

If we don't go extinct by being stupid, then we will most likely go extinct, biologically speaking, by act of will. Human nature combined with ever increasing technological capabilities to control evolutionary development will eventually result in an emergent artificial post-homo sapien species.
I'm betting on stupidity tho'.

 

Dibs on the otters being the next super-race!

 

Someone hijacked floyd's account. Either that or the account gained conscious, killed its owner and now tries to communicate with us.

Do I think humanity is a ticking time bomb, an assembly of irresponsible short-sighter fools prone to self-destruction in the grand scale? Hell yeah. In just years we use up natural resources which needed millions of years to come into being, the value of our population growth tells us we are going to be in some deep shit in no time, we destroy the planet on which we live without really caring what will happen with it in 100 years because it won't be our problem anyway, we are nearly helpless again natural disasters, both coming from the inside (earthquakes, volcanos, so on) and the outside (meteors, solar flares, etc), we possess the nuclear, chemical and biological potential to destroy humanity and the possibility of it happening definitely doesn't equal zero. Not to mention that even if we don't destroy humanity ourselves, we will eventually create Artificial Intelligence, and then it will make the job for us. We are so screwed.

Natural disasters are one thing, but as for the things which are our own fault, I sometimes think that even though we may have the theoretical intellectual and therefore technological potential to colonise other solar systems, travel to other galaxies and so on, we will never achieve that stage because self-destruction is inevitable. And who knows, maybe that's how it is in every case of intelligent life? Maybe life itself is something that on the lower stages tries to survive and thrive, yet on the higher it destroys itself, either because of internal conflicts or because it eventually achieves a level in which it discovers intellectual undeniable proof that there is no sense to exist altogether?

The best thing is humanity probably will be the father of such an organism. The funny thing is it already almost happened once.

I surely hope so, because evolution and natural selection definitely do not favour intelligence nowadays. After all, who has more children, a professor from Oxford or an uneducated illiterate nigger in the centre of Africa?

Your words sounded pretty stupid to me the first time I read it, but when I think about it it actually makes sense. It all depends what would be the reason behind our end, but assuming humanity will make the universe a favour and erase itself from existence with leaving at least the oceans fairly undamaged, octopuses would be one of the best candidates for the new ruler. if I recall correctly, just like man is the peak of the evolution of vertebrates, octopuses are the peak of invertebrate evolution in both body and brain functionality. Of course they would need millions of years to become something more advanced and create a civilisation (be it underwater or on the land, depending on how would they evolve), but without a parasite such as ourselves destroying the planet in an alarming rate, they wouldn't really be in much of a hurry. And so will come the era of Cthulhu. Ph’nglui fhtagn, and all that.

The other possible candidates are dolphins and monkeys, who currently have a comparable intelligence which is inferior only to man, if I'm not mistaken.

 

Those damn naggers.