For a long time I’ve been interested in reading about the origin of the universe and the origin of life on Earth. My reading about the origin questions led me to read about the evolution of life on Earth and to think about the possibility of life elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy and the universe at large. The scientific story of us is a fabulously interesting subject.
It seems to me that relatively simple single-cell life forms might be all over the universe, but complex multicellular life like we have on Earth may be harder to find. Intelligent creatures capable of building nuclear bombs may be even more uncommon. But the universe is a big place and there must be at least some other habitable planets, including some with intelligent creatures something like us humans. What happened to them? Are they still around? Would creatures achieving human-like technology elsewhere in the universe inevitably face the risk of self-destruction unless they instituted a substantial reshaping of their culture and society to save themselves from themselves?
A lot of smart people here on Earth are talking about exactly this sort of thing confronting human beings right now. We’ve created several pathways to our self-destruction, like climate change and the possibility of nuclear war.
So-called “Existential Riskography” is a gloomy subject, but it is eerily fascinating. We are intelligent enough to create the technology with which to build a thriving civilization. The same technology can also destroy us. Are we smart enough not to do it?
I want to explore this topic in more depth over this next year.
There are two articles I found today that are worth reading:
Monte