Where is the continuation of life going?

You're worried about that? You do realise that such an occurance is millions of years away.

The human race has existed for maybe a hundred thousand years, tops. In those years we have developed this far in our technology. Given another hundred or thousand times that ammount of time we will develop to a degree unimaginable today.

Every miracle in the bible is easily achieved by modern science. What we can do today is what people imagined only gods could do just two thousand years ago. In millions of years humans (if we still exist) will have most likely mastered space and time and be easily capable of preserving ourselves no matter what happens to our sun, our galaxy or even the universe.

Of course all that development is worth nothing if an asteroid or nuclear war wipes us out tommorow. Life's funny that way.

theantibuddha

And perhaps in million of years our modern science will be seen as something primitive, like we see today Aristotle's Physic.
And perhaps what we think today about the futur of the universe - and the conception of universe itself - will be nothing but a curiosity, to students of history.

I imagine a futur with fellows in a philosophical debate, like us, saying: can you imagine that those people believed in Gods, Souls, scientific laws? How could they be so "naif"?

Actually I'd expect that in the next twenty years One of the formative moments in my science education was learning about the odd notions about electricity from the 17th century and the entire class laughed at some of the things they said. I realised that at the time they were about as confident in their science as we are in ours and in a few centuries people will laugh about our odd notions.



As do I. Except I imagine them in those futuristic tight licra outfits. Not because I expect people from the future to wear tight licra, but simply because if it's my imagination then why not dress everyone in skintight thin slightly transparent fabric.

But what if science will not develop as much as it has? That, plus the limit of resources could prove a problem.

Millions of years... MILLIONS.



why?

I must say I find it hillarious that a bunch of people who have no inkling about how long even one hundred years is try to see the world in millions of years.

As for the question of the thread... Where is the continuation of life going? It's going on? Towards death? But is that an ending? For that matter, what is the continuation of life? Evolution is a self powered engine. It knows no destructiveness.

It's approximately 36,524 days. There, can I imagine now?

No. You're just flinging numbers. There is a difference between the knowledge of how many days it is and the understanding of the value of this number.

Approximately 36,524 days you say. This number does not tell me anything. It is as worthless as the number 100 years. I have an abstract idea of what it is, but that's all I have.

If you meet a person who has actually lived for one hundred years, I bet this person can tell you how long that is. I am twenty six. That's the extent of durability I can truly relate to.

I do understand it... it's one more than 36,523 and one less than 36,525.



Your ability to relate to time is your own concern and I won't gainsay you but I don't find myself limited to my own personal experiences, that's what imagination is all about. The human brain is a fantastic instrument capable of remembering the past and extrapolating from it the future. I have seen enough history unfold in the present to understand the manner in which it unfolded in the past.

No, I can't relate to a million years, even in the most general of terms. I can maybe relate to 300 years or so, not any more than that. In human terms I can distantly conceive of 5000 with great difficulty but no more since that is about the limits of recorded history. Any longer than that has meaning to me only in geological or astronomical terms.

Of course the further I go from my own experiences the blurrier the notion becomes... with more experiences these things become clearer. But to limit ourself to the crystal sharp notions that pertain to what we've already experienced is to deny the power of the imagination.

I see your point. And I think you see mine. Evolution is not done with us. No telling what will happen. We can use our imaginations as you said.