> Humans have done some cool things to conquer our basic nature and environment, and we continue to do cool things. Compared to other species we are absolutely killing it. Yes we suck compared to what we are going to be in the future, but that's the point!
At the same time it's important not to forget humans have done some messed up things to the environment that are not easy to clean up or undo. And they still do, all with a paltry goal to make a short term profit. This is what drives my optimism away, though I am not a pessimistic person by nature.
1) Most humans mean well and these are side effects of solutions to other problems - we can find and hold up examples of people acting poorly but to extrapolate that out I don’t think is fair. Energy abundance has done unbelievably important things for civil rights, quality of life, and the prospect of life being able to outlive Earth.
2) It’s important to remember life on earth is ~75% behind us. We’ve only got another 500m years until there is a complete extinction event with little hope of coming back. If you take humans out of the picture, you don’t save nature, you doom it to complete extinction.
Humans are awesome, all flaws considered. We are the only golden ticket our planet has printed to get life off this rock.
From your question I assume you’re on the Timeline of the Far Future Wikipedia page, which references this. It’s the next few boxes below the gamma ray burst.
At the same time it's important not to forget humans have done some messed up things to the environment that are not easy to clean up or undo. And they still do, all with a paltry goal to make a short term profit. This is what drives my optimism away, though I am not a pessimistic person by nature.