chose your own: death of humanity

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > chose your own: death of humanity

Victory Position: Mar 16, 2004

DEATH IS CERTAIN, but where will it hit us? Where will it come from? Will it be from the tried and true, if not passe methods of thermonuclear war or climate change? Will it be quick? Will it be slow?

Please share anything you feel about the inevitable destruction of society, civilization, and species that you find fit.

EDIT: ONE RULE! if it has to do with Trump, take it to the Trump thread! we're doing a great job of that over there already!

Victory Position has issued a correction as of 09:01 on Jan 5, 2017

# ? Jan 5, 2017 08:20

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# ? May 14, 2024 13:11

Victory Position: Mar 16, 2004

For a start, I'd like to post about Elizier Yudkowsky, because an AI-induced death seems pretty good to me. Here's the problem that he had to ban discussion of on his futurism website:

quote:

Roko�s basilisk is a thought experiment proposed in 2010 by the user Roko on the Less Wrong community blog. Roko used ideas in decision theory to argue that a sufficiently powerful AI agent would have an incentive to torture anyone who imagined the agent but didn't work to bring the agent into existence. The argument was called a "basilisk" because merely hearing the argument would supposedly put you at risk of torture from this hypothetical agent � a basilisk in this context is any information that harms or endangers the people who hear it.

Roko's argument was broadly rejected on Less Wrong, with commenters objecting that an agent like the one Roko was describing would have no real reason to follow through on its threat: once the agent already exists, it can't affect the probability of its existence, so torturing people for their past decisions would be a waste of resources. Although several decision theories allow one to follow through on acausal threats and promises � via the same precommitment methods that permit mutual cooperation in prisoner's dilemmas � it is not clear that such theories can be blackmailed. If they can be blackmailed, this additionally requires a large amount of shared information and trust between the agents, which does not appear to exist in the case of Roko's basilisk.

Less Wrong's founder, Eliezer Yudkowsky, banned discussion of Roko's basilisk on the blog for several years as part of a general site policy against spreading potential information hazards. This had the opposite of its intended effect: a number of outside websites began sharing information about Roko's basilisk, as the ban attracted attention to this taboo topic. Websites like RationalWiki spread the assumption that Roko's basilisk had been banned because Less Wrong users accepted the argument; thus many criticisms of Less Wrong cite Roko's basilisk as evidence that the site's users have unconventional and wrong-headed beliefs.

of course, this is from https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Roko's_basilisk

# ? Jan 5, 2017 08:23

Baloogan: Dec 5, 2004; Fun Shoe

please explain it simply enough so a canadian can understand

# ? Jan 5, 2017 08:49

Victory Position: Mar 16, 2004

if you think bad thoughts about machines, the future smart machine will remember your life's work and then punish you with time-travelling machines and/or extermination of your family

# ? Jan 5, 2017 08:51

Baloogan: Dec 5, 2004; Fun Shoe

oh

well i love and cherish tay ai so future robots please let me chillax

# ? Jan 5, 2017 08:53

Lastgirl: Sep 7, 1997; Good Morning!
Sunday Morning!

this thread is good

Well if a meteor came crashing

there are a number of ways we all would die

and at one point i discussed that humans are so petty that they would stratify themselves on the basis on the best way to die from a meteor impact.

i.e. some people who die by the initial impact would be better than the people who would be choking on the dust on the other side of the planet.

others would think that falling into the molten core of the earth are more worthy than the ones being showered by molten rock.

the tsunami cult would find themselves freed from their earthly shackles as they are sent to their water heaven while others fall through the rift of earth created by the impact, to be entombed if the fall did not initially kill them

:q:

ive given this quite a lot of thought you see

# ? Jan 5, 2017 09:05

Baloogan: Dec 5, 2004; Fun Shoe

things i worry about :

genetic warfare (some crazy scientest develops a virus that changes our genes and spreads without causing symptoms)
ofc the usual nuclear warfare, chemical warfare, biological warfare etc lamo
religious warfare (already happening lol!)
a big bunch of volcanos erupting causing air travel to hault and city air quality to go down
global warming
global cooling
the sun getting older
debirs traveling near light speed impacting earth
debris traveling near light speed impacting moon
debris traveling near light speed impacting sun
ANTIMATTER debris hitting earth, moon, sun etc
aliens
a lack of aliens (wtf @ universe in that case)
aliens who are down with trump (hellllll yeah)
MAGA weather
huge global snowfall, snowball earth
my car's battery is like, near death
some sort of scary math poo poo crawling out of the depths of the mandlebrot
civilization collapse for some dumb reason
mass hypnosis (everyone on earth hypnotized)
multidimensional whatsit (like, 4D aliens)
angels and demons etc
atmosphere set on fire
asteroids
BIG asteroids
meteors
BIG meteors
we find that eventually the voyager space craft smashes into a big glass wall that our solar system is in a big snowglobe essentially
a nearby galaxy collapsing into a big black hole that shoooooots out a big radioactive beam that intersects the earth and over a 24 hour period sterelizes most of the earth
black hole hitting the earth
a rouge earth hitting the earth
a huge alien space ship hitting the earth
someone invents a joke so funny it kills you after a day or so (so it can spread)
the plot of rainbow 6 (the book) martin skraliekzi makes a vaccine for the next ebola but whoops the vaccine is ebola and martin skrailaili giggles as the earth dies
biochem warfare
biochem trolling (again martin skrirsrksri)
the economic system just fails, like ATMs and POS stop working and no one knows why
everyone realizees that money is BS and its just numbers on a computer and paper
jesus returns and is arrested and executed again and hes like "lamo"
nearby supernova
AIs etc

# ? Jan 5, 2017 09:24

Victory Position: Mar 16, 2004

such a big list, and yet no mass die-off of phytoplankton starving us of usable oxygen? :negative:

# ? Jan 5, 2017 09:29

Baloogan: Dec 5, 2004; Fun Shoe

lol im not so worried about that we can live wihout forests (gently caress the trees) and i thought plankton make oxygen?

# ? Jan 5, 2017 09:30

Mariana Horchata: Jun 30, 2008; College Slice

death by asphyxiation due to grey goo

# ? Jan 5, 2017 09:30

Baloogan: Dec 5, 2004; Fun Shoe

oooooh yes im also worried about nanomachines

# ? Jan 5, 2017 09:32

Victory Position: Mar 16, 2004

mechanical nanobots eat all phytoplankton, thus starving the Earth of oxygen

# ? Jan 5, 2017 09:33

Lindsey O. Graham: Dec 31, 2016; "We're not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term."

- The Chief

Climate Change:

The fact that we still don't give a poo poo, right when it's the no holds barred, look guys if we don't halt this we're all gonna die stage, of global warming tells me our death as mankind will be boring and predictable.

We will squabble about the best way to adapt when we have long missed the
window to do anything about climate change and slowly die off as things
get worse and we fail to find solutions.

The anticipation of something like this is why I chose not to have children, mind you.

e: edited to fit thread parameters

Lindsey O. Graham has issued a correction as of 14:39 on Jan 5, 2017

# ? Jan 5, 2017 13:45

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

BOO the Lindsey O. Graham gimmick account, BOOOOOOOO!!!!

# ? Jan 5, 2017 13:48

Lindsey O. Graham: Dec 31, 2016; "We're not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term."

- The Chief

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

BOO the Lindsey O. Graham gimmick account, BOOOOOOOO!!!!

Why, what's gotten into you?

# ? Jan 5, 2017 13:50

deadgoon: Dec 4, 2014; by FactsAreUseless

we build AIs that are smarter then us and reactionary humans insist on fighting a war with them and the AIs win because they are smarter than us

# ? Jan 5, 2017 14:01

Pollyanna: Mar 5, 2005; Milk's on them.

- suicides through both intent and negligence go up, aka the "ragequit" scenario
- Yellowstone erupts
- nukes
- universe crashes, all data lost
- I die, in which case the world ceases to exist to my knowledge, therefore end of everything

# ? Jan 5, 2017 14:46

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

what wont' kill humanity:
-climate change: adaptation bitch
-AI: ais are actually very dumb and even if they're not they're insanely easy to kill, put a secret bomb in your mainframe and you're set
-thermonuclear war: maybe a city gets blown up due to captain cocksucker and the pantshitter platoon but no way is the world gonna blow up

what could kill humanity
-asteroids
-some other stupid astronomical event that's not avoidable
-class war, if it doesn't end in a decisive victory for the poors

# ? Jan 5, 2017 15:44

Lamebot: Sep 8, 2005; ロボ顔菌～♡

Baloogan posted:

lol im not so worried about that we can live wihout forests (gently caress the trees) and i thought plankton make oxygen?

ocean acidification kills all plankton

# ? Jan 5, 2017 19:01

That DICK!: Sep 28, 2010

We build a wall so big and shoddy that it falls and crushes half of earth, and then when the other half puts the wall back up to keep them away from all the gross disgusting corpses it falls the other way and crushes that half too

# ? Jan 5, 2017 19:03

paranoid randroid: Mar 4, 2007

yo but what happens if the world doesnt end. what if theres no grand apotheosis and humanity just keeps trudging grimly along, with no fist of an angry god arriving to save it from having to plaster a fake smile across their face and pretend that theyre super excited to hear Karen or Bob or whoever at the office talk about their stupid ugly children over microwave lunches

# ? Jan 5, 2017 19:04

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

paranoid randroid posted:

yo but what happens if the world doesnt end. what if theres no grand apotheosis and humanity just keeps trudging grimly along, with no fist of an angry god arriving to save it from having to plaster a fake smile across their face and pretend that theyre super excited to hear Karen or Bob or whoever at the office talk about their stupid ugly children over microwave lunches

The Dying Earth is nonfiction.

# ? Jan 5, 2017 19:08

paranoid randroid: Mar 4, 2007

instead of a Glorious Appearing of Christ and All His Angels, we just get Fred Fuckface from Accounts Receivable coming over to ask if we got that thing he sent us, forever

# ? Jan 5, 2017 19:10

Helsing: Aug 23, 2003; DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU JOE BIDEN

Following esoteric procedures from ancient forbidden texts and the consumption of DMT and mescaline, global elites use the Large Hadron Collider to open a tear in the fabric of reality and the machine elves invade our dimension.

# ? Jan 6, 2017 00:08

Seizure Meat: Jul 23, 2008; by Smythe

someone in base reality unplugs the server this simulated universe is stored on

# ? Jan 6, 2017 00:15

Fiction: Apr 28, 2011

Big ol American civil war draws the whole world into a proxy and then not so proxy global war.

# ? Jan 6, 2017 00:51

SpaceGoku: Jul 19, 2011

we're not gonna die to some bullshit robots or diseases or even nukes

the earth knew we were bullshit the moment the first human got squirted out of a proto-human vag, and ever since it's tried to shake us off its back but it hasn't succeeded in anything its tried in almost three hundred thousand years

we're just gonna get baked to death under a bloated red sun, having never again traveled beyond low earth orbit

# ? Jan 6, 2017 01:01

Fallen Hamprince: Nov 12, 2016

humanity slowly exhausts the earths remaining resources and is condemned to a slow decline to bare subsistence in grinding poverty forever op

# ? Jan 6, 2017 01:01

Baloogan: Dec 5, 2004; Fun Shoe

Fiction posted:

Big ol American civil war draws the whole world into a proxy and then not so proxy global war.

lol merkel + china funneling arms to american left wing
right wing side doesn't need more arms haha but if they did they would buy russian I guess

# ? Jan 6, 2017 01:05

Seizure Meat: Jul 23, 2008; by Smythe

sudden influx of unmarked and Russian speaking American freedom fighters who somehow "liberated" BUK systems from American military bases

# ? Jan 6, 2017 01:10

Baloogan: Dec 5, 2004; Fun Shoe

US forces do really lack tactical SAM

# ? Jan 6, 2017 01:20

Seizure Meat: Jul 23, 2008; by Smythe

man a Chinese-Russian proxy war in the US would be something else

# ? Jan 6, 2017 01:28

phasmid: Jan 16, 2015; Booty Shaker
SILENT MAJORITY

All world leaders discover terrible nature of universe and commit near-simultaneous suicide, leaving the rest of us to parcel out the mystery that will destroy us too.

Followed by eternal return.

# ? Jan 6, 2017 01:34

ate shit on live tv: Feb 15, 2004; by Azathoth

A planet killing meteor is detected and we have the capability to stop it, but we decide not to because it would be too expensive and plus there are some scientists who debate if the meteor is even real at all, after all meteors have hit earth lots of times and we are fine right now, also would it stop racism? or Sexism?

It's just not pragmatic to stop the meteor right now, not with the economy the way it is.

# ? Jan 6, 2017 01:36

Scrub-Niggurath: Nov 27, 2007

I'll take global warming for 500 alex

# ? Jan 6, 2017 17:06

Helsing: Aug 23, 2003; DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU JOE BIDEN

ate poo poo on live tv posted:

A planet killing meteor is detected and we have the capability to stop it, but we decide not to because it would be too expensive and plus there are some scientists who debate if the meteor is even real at all, after all meteors have hit earth lots of times and we are fine right now, also would it stop racism? or Sexism?

It's just not pragmatic to stop the meteor right now, not with the economy the way it is.

quote:

Republicans Vote To Repeal Obama-Backed Bill That Would Destroy Asteroid Headed For Earth

WASHINGTON�In a strong rebuke of President Obama and his domestic agenda, all 242 House Republicans voted Wednesday to repeal the Asteroid Destruction and American Preservation Act, which was signed into law last year to destroy the immense asteroid currently hurtling toward Earth.

The $440 billion legislation, which would send a dozen high-thrust plasma impactor probes to shatter the massive asteroid before it strikes the planet, would affect more than 300 million Americans and is strongly opposed by the GOP.

"The voters sent us to Washington to stand up for individual liberty, not big government," Rep. Steve King (R-IA) said at a press conference. "Obama's plan would take away citizens' fundamental freedoms, forcing each of us into hastily built concrete bunkers and empowering the federal government to ration our access to food, water, and potassium iodide tablets while underground."

"We believe that the decisions of how to deal with the massive asteroid are best left to the individual," King added.

Repealing the act, which opponents have branded 'Obamastroid,' has been the cornerstone of the GOP agenda since the law's passage last August. Throughout the 2010 elections, Republican candidates claimed that the Democrats' plan to smash the space rock and shield citizens from its fragments was "a classic example of the federal government needlessly interfering in the lives of everyday Americans."

"This law is a job killer," said Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who argued the tax increases required to save the human species from annihilation would impose unbearably high costs on businesses. "If we sit back and do nothing, Obamastroid will result in hundreds of thousands of lost jobs, which we simply can't afford in this economy."

"And consider how much money this program will add to our already bloated deficit," Foxx continued. "Is this the legacy we want to leave our children?"

Many GOP members have also criticized the legislation for what they consider pork-barrel spending, claiming the act includes billions in "giveaways" to NASA, nonperishable food manufacturers, and pharmaceutical companies contracted to produce mass volumes of vitamin D supplements in the likely event that dust from the asteroid's impact blots out the sun for a decade.

In an effort to counter Republicans' claims, Democrats have asserted that the long-term benefits of preventing the United States from being incinerated by an explosion several billion times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb would far outweigh the initial monetary outlay.

In support of their position, Democrats have pointed to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that show repealing the law could result in a loss of up to $14 trillion in the nation's GDP.

"I will be the first to admit this is not a perfect bill, by any means," said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), who has argued that the measure does not go far enough in deflecting the ensuing debris that will rain down on Earth once the asteroid has been destroyed. "But it is absolutely a bill that each and every American needs now if we want to move forward as a country."

According to political pundits, the showdown over whether to let the asteroid blast a 150-mile-wide, 20-mile-deep crater in the Earth's crust represents a potential turning point for the nation, and could completely reshape the American political landscape for many centuries to come.

"If efforts to destroy the asteroid are successfully overturned, then there will be major ramifications for both Obama and his Republican opposition, as well as the American populace at large," political scientist Alan Abramowitz said on Face The Nation Sunday. "This could have a huge impact come 2012."

With repeal rhetoric reaching a crescendo, the president used his weekly radio address Saturday to state his case for destroying the one-trillion-ton asteroid before it barrels into Earth at 60,000 miles per hour.

"I am more than willing to work with my Republican colleagues to improve the Asteroid Destruction Act," Obama said. "But let me be clear: Repeal is not an option."

"While I recognize that intelligent minds may disagree on this issue, I believe we have an obligation to prevent our citizens from having their flesh seared off in a global firestorm that transforms our planet into a broiling molten wasteland," Obama added. "I think Americans deserve better."

# ? Jan 6, 2017 21:51

Trumps Baby Hands: Mar 27, 2016; Silent white light filled the world. And the righteous and unrighteous alike were consumed in that holy fire.

I like the one where over the next trillions of years humanity spreads out and conquers the entire galaxy. Thanks to life extension technology and starship advances, these apes from Earth are able to even travel through the black to other galaxies. Eventually the entire universe is populated by a number of humans so staggering that it might as well be infinite. Our power is absolute. Humanity (or more accurately, the multitude of new species that share humanity as a common ancestor) rules all of existence.

And then it ends. Entropy claims the life of every star. The universe shuts down and takes humanity with it. Our long journey from the primordial slime on a little planet tucked away on the outer edge of the Milky Way to Star Lords who fill the entirety of everything was pointless. It didn't matter at all. We might as well have killed ourselves in our infancy with nukes or global warming or whatever. The outcome is exactly the same. We flee oblivion, but it will find us. It will swallow us whole, and then it'll be like none of this ever even happened.

# ? Jan 7, 2017 00:58

iSheep: Feb 5, 2006; by R. Guyovich

Trumps Baby Hands posted:

I like the one where over the next trillions of years humanity spreads out and conquers the entire galaxy. Thanks to life extension technology and starship advances, these apes from Earth are able to even travel through the black to other galaxies. Eventually the entire universe is populated by a number of humans so staggering that it might as well be infinite. Our power is absolute. Humanity (or more accurately, the multitude of new species that share humanity as a common ancestor) rules all of existence.

And then it ends. Entropy claims the life of every star. The universe shuts down and takes humanity with it. Our long journey from the primordial slime on a little planet tucked away on the outer edge of the Milky Way to Star Lords who fill the entirety of everything was pointless. It didn't matter at all. We might as well have killed ourselves in our infancy with nukes or global warming or whatever. The outcome is exactly the same. We flee oblivion, but it will find us. It will swallow us whole, and then it'll be like none of this ever even happened.

same

# ? Jan 7, 2017 02:30

Rand alPaul: Feb 3, 2010; by Nyc_Tattoo

al Qaeda gets a weather machine.

# ? Jan 7, 2017 02:40

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# ? May 14, 2024 13:11

Yossarian-22: Oct 26, 2014

Trumps Baby Hands posted:

I like the one where over the next trillions of years humanity spreads out and conquers the entire galaxy. Thanks to life extension technology and starship advances, these apes from Earth are able to even travel through the black to other galaxies. Eventually the entire universe is populated by a number of humans so staggering that it might as well be infinite. Our power is absolute. Humanity (or more accurately, the multitude of new species that share humanity as a common ancestor) rules all of existence.

And then it ends. Entropy claims the life of every star. The universe shuts down and takes humanity with it. Our long journey from the primordial slime on a little planet tucked away on the outer edge of the Milky Way to Star Lords who fill the entirety of everything was pointless. It didn't matter at all. We might as well have killed ourselves in our infancy with nukes or global warming or whatever. The outcome is exactly the same. We flee oblivion, but it will find us. It will swallow us whole, and then it'll be like none of this ever even happened.

TRUMP

# ? Jan 7, 2017 03:27

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