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Wahaha wrote

Reply to comment by Zenen in A technologically advanced society is choosing to destroy itself. It's both fascinating and horrifying to watch by smallpond

What are you even smoking? The heat death of the universe is inevitable. It's not just Earth. It's the entire universe. Won't happen during my lifetime, but just the travel time (let's just pretend space travel was real) would take thousands of years.

We have to start somewhere, though.

The Earth is generally fine. It might get a few degrees warmer, but that will only make winter less cold. We are at the end of an ice age, so Earth warming up isn't strange. Micro plastic pollution is of much greater concern than climate change.

Maybe Earth will even warm up enough to make Antarctica a place people would want to live.

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Zenen wrote

Is your belief in 'the inevitability of heat death' based in the same type of scientific understanding that climate scientists base their work off of? Choosing to cherrypick scientific knowledge to reinforce one's own beliefs and ignoring the rest of the data is not very scientific at all.

The Earth is probably about as fine as you and I are - which is to say not fine and actually struggling to cope with the state of modern society... unless you're actually totally fine with how everything is going?

The earth is a living being in a rather careful homeostatic balance, and saying that the only consequence of a warmer climate is like saying the only consequence of a fever (i.e. when our internal climate gets a few degrees warmer) is not needing a coat. Fevers happen when our bodies need to kill off something inside of them... and humans would be the cause and the target.

If your going strategy is to extract the resources from this planet so that we can leave and find other planets where we can do the same, I would like to point towards viral propagation and ask if that is the form of (not) life that humans need to be taking inspiration from.

Don't give into apathy, you can make a difference in the world around you!

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Wahaha wrote

No, it is based on the laws of thermodynamics. There is no cherry picking of data, because it is not based on data points. It's just a consequence of how the universe works. The sun is burning something. Once this resource is exhausted the sun will go dark. It will never go back to providing "green energy". Everything in the universe is like that. The only way to prevent the heat death of the universe is to reverse entropy. That is like traveling back in time. Impossible.

So going to other planets isn't a solution. We have to actually leave this universe. Whether this is even possible or not, I do not know. But if we do not, we will 100% perish in the future.

The Earth is not alive. It's a rock in space. Whether it has living organisms on it or not doesn't matter to the rock in space.

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Zenen wrote

It's a rock in space that somehow underwent abiogenesis to bring about living organisms. Separating the substrate of life from the things that grow out of it is like separating the laws of thermodynamics from the fact that the self-replication of life itself is a force that actively fights against entropy.

Also, we have no idea what creates consciousness, but we are far from the only example of interconnected neurons and synapses on the planet. Did you know that trees send signals to one-another through fungal networks that connect their roots to one another? Maybe they know something about interdimensional travel.

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Wahaha wrote

I know about fungi networks, but even if they should know, we can't communicate with them.

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smallpond OP wrote

It might get a few degrees warmer, but that will only make winter less cold. We are at the end of an ice age, so Earth warming up isn't strange.

You can lead a brainwashed horse to water, but you can't make it drink: https://skepticalscience.com/

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Zenen wrote

I think it would be great if we can avoid namecalling, saying that someone is "brainwashed" is essentially an excuse to de-legitimize their viewpoint rather than considering it in depth

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smallpond OP wrote

I prefer to 'namecall' if that's how you wish to view honestly describing a situation as I see it. You can delve deep into the minds of the brainwashed if you wish, I'm sure that'll be productive.

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