Originally published at: When will the last human be born and how many people will there ever be? | Boing Boing
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“How do you ask a man to be the last man to live for a mistake?”
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whutza “Human” exactly? (Mars bylaws section 7.531 sol:2737: “Less than 47.3% non-original non-cellular connected bits and you’re still technically ‘human’”)
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One thing that needs to be considered, if one imagines a future where humanity manages to survive beyond current crises is when our descendants will stop being human. Science fiction often suggests humans as we know them will continue to exist hundreds of thousands or even millions of years into the future, but based on what we know about speciation, that seems absurd.
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The voice-over puts me in mind of this…
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Apparently the last human will be a lot skinnier than current models, and require an extensive moisturization routine.
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We’re due for the next evolutionary iteration. Homo sapiens monoxide?
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Don’t I know it.
Spending the first ten years of my life being told on one side that we’d all be annihilated in a nuclear war. And by the other side that the nuclear war was good actually because it was the Battle of Armageddon which we should all look forward to and was also going to show up any time, probably this year, is a big part of why I have such a strong, hair-trigger “Shut up, Doomer!” reflex.
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This is likely how
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Although no war has made a dent in human population growth, plague did. The presumption of this video that if humans can just hold on through a few more centuries we will somehow slove all our problems seems really far-fetched. Dense populations will always be in danger of pandemics.
I think that 10 million years from now there will still be descendants of Homo sapiens (whether they are called something else then is arbitrary) on Earth, but see no reason to think there will be as many people as there are now
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We only have n=1 for speciation in a species with technology though. It may that we have artificially frozen (or at least slowed) evolution because of how we manage healthcare and assist many folks to live to childbearing age who might not otherwise have done so. This is a good thing, of course, both morally and pragmatically for our species, since you never know who the next Stephen Hawking will be. However I don’t think we know how this will affect evolution of modern Homo Sapiens over the next few hundred thousand years.
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See also: this documentary
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I suppose it depends what you mean by human. Species change on that type of time scale, but once you’re in a clade you’re stuck there.
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How bout:
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