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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2014-01-13 21:17, Adrian Tymes
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CALAdGNSe9acOc6a3XqfRD8sd_zoKx7ZD4VY7YoUwigJExNVysQ@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<p dir="ltr">On Jan 13, 2014 7:28 AM, "steinhoff" <<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:steinhoff_j@hotmail.com">steinhoff_j@hotmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
><br>
> <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140105-timeline-of-the-far-future?utm_source=DGM&utm_campaign=Affiliate">http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140105-timeline-of-the-far-future?utm_source=DGM&utm_campaign=Affiliate</a></p>
<p dir="ltr">The punchline is, of course, that this only happens
if we don't do something about it first.</p>
</blockquote>
<br>
Yup. Down the road from me there is a 1000-year old building, still
standing and in good condition. The reason it is still standing and
not just a pile of overgrown rubble is of course that people have
been maintaining it.<br>
<br>
The problem about talking about the long-term future is that it is
so dependent on human decisions, not natural laws. If humans decide
to maintain a building it can last indefinitely. If humans decide to
make a species extinct (smallpox) or help it spread worldwide
(ginkgo biloba), it will change the future evolution of that branch
of the tree of life. If humans decide to colonize the universe it
will become full of life. This makes the long-term fate of many
systems contingent on nearly arbitrary cultural decisions rather
than simple probabilities derived from the laws of nature. <br>
<br>
<br>
[ In a sense cultural decisions can be viewed as derived from the
laws of nature, but there is likely no way their probabilities can
be practically estimated from the laws. They are highly dependent on
several underlying layers of emergent complexity (biochemistry,
biology, human psychology, human sociology) that have many degrees
of freedom that can be randomly set by symmetry-breaking and
contingency. ]<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University
</pre>
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