As the human race has become globalized on Earth and humanity has become increasingly interconnected, the dangers we face can affect the en...
As the human race has become globalized on Earth and humanity has become increasingly interconnected, the dangers we face can affect the entire human race and even threaten the existence of global human society. And as the capabilities of the human race continue to evolve, so too do the threats to humanity, many of which we ourselves create.
At the dawn of the human race, the small size of the human population posed the greatest risk to the survival of our species. Genetic evidence suggests that there may have been periods when humanity was on the brink of extinction. The reasons for this are unknown, but in the case of a small population, even a slight decline can lead to extinction.
Today, the situation is completely different. With the growth of our population and the accompanying accumulation of knowledge, the nature of the threats has also changed. The emerging challenges are less directly threatening the extinction of our species and more likely to affect the existence of human society, causing social decline and even leading to complete social collapse. However, social decline and collapse, when the complexity of society as an organism decreases, and society functions with decreasing efficiency until it eventually disintegrates and ceases to exist, are just as dangerous to the existence of the human species, as they result in a decline in human capabilities and a resulting population decline, which can even lead to extinction.
However, humanity is a problem-solving species thanks to its available and present intelligence and accumulated knowledge. Our history proves that when dangers arise, which we ourselves are increasingly capable of causing, and thus avoidable, but typically we do not avoid them because of the present accompanied immediate benefits of the activity causing the dangers, or we just simply cannot foresee them when they inevitably pose a threat, still, we are also more and more able to solve the challenges, maintain our existence, and continue to evolve through directed evolutionary adaptation.
It may be worthwhile to classify the dangers facing humanity into two categories: relative dangers, which can be solved by the directed evolutionary adaptation that determines our current development, and absolute threats, which, if they exist, cannot be solved even by our increasing knowledge and the resulting directed evolution, and consequently cause social collapse and may even lead to the extinction of our species.
Let us examine the risks we currently foresee and attempt to assess their impact according to relative and absolute categories.
Climate change
The current climate change is undoubtedly the result of human activity, although humanity may have encountered climate change even before its global existence, and climate change may actually have caused the spread of humanity across the Earth. Although we do not yet have the means to regulate the Earth's climate, hence once climate change has begun, we will still be unable to stop the change, even if we reduce or eliminate the causes - as this phenomenon can be clearly seen, for example, in the northern and southern hemispheres during the change in temperature after the winter and summer solstices -, still we can adapt to climate change in two different ways.
One method is the traditional, generally applicable, and widely used migration. Migration, as it was and as it is always present; it is usually accompanied by social tensions, but migration does not necessarily and inevitably cause social collapse. With sufficient social intelligence, the problems that arise with migration can obviously be dealt with. We humans, are all, if not identical, at least the same. Obviously, migration can be exploited for political purposes, which our leaders do, but this certainly does not have to lead to social collapse, at least in the host society, and it can even be beneficial with proper intelligence.
We can also adapt to climate change through advances in science and technology, and with the accompanying lifestyle changes, i.e., through directed evolution, which can provide adequate protection against the consequences of a changing climate. As humanity has evolved, we have not just adapted ourselves to different environments, but we have also become increasingly independent of the state of the environment as well, and it is precisely this evolution that has enabled us to live in virtually any climatic conditions on Earth and to exist in any environment the Earth can provide.
Climate change certainly poses a relative threat to humanity.
Decrease in the complexity of the biosphere, mass extinction of species:
The Earth's biosphere has undergone mass extinction several times, which is also happening right now, and this time is certainly caused by human activity. We are transforming the Earth's environment on a global scale at a rate that natural evolution cannot keep up with. If the rate of environmental change exceeds the rate of adaptation possible through natural evolution, it will directly lead to a reduction in the quantity and complexity of the biosphere and lead to mass extinction.
However, with our currently available potential capabilities, the decline in biodiversity no longer necessarily poses a similar catastrophe for the human race as well. We are increasingly reducing our dependence on the biosphere for our biological survival, we are living more and more in the human-sphere, and this process of increasing independence will continue as we advance in science and technology. For example, the plant and animal species that we use to sustain our existence would already be unable to survive in natural conditions without human care. Our separation from the natural biosphere is also clearly demonstrated by the fact that the mass of domesticated animals we keep for our survival significantly exceeds the population and mass of naturally occurring multicellular land-based fauna, not to mention the similar comparison to humanity.
Mass extinction is already happening, but so far it hasn't really affected humans, and as our knowledge grows and science and technology advance, the threat of mass extinction to humanity can be further reduced, practically neutralized. If the speed of adaptation brought about by the directed evolution, which mainly depends on us, is greater than the speed of environmental change caused by mass extinction, we have the chance of survival and even further development.
Mass extinction poses a relative threat to humanity.
Depletion of resources
Human society is constantly faced with the depletion of resources. Since humanity has distanced itself from the natural processes that maintain the balance of the biosphere by utilizing human intelligence, our use of resources does not lead to balanced usage of them in the functioning of humanity and in relation to human activity.
We always use up resources, and typically, we always find new ones to continue our development. Of course, we can also see examples when the depletion of resources led to social collapse, as happened for example on Easter Island, where huge stone statues were erected for religious and/or social reasons, and probably used the available trees to transport them until they ran out from wood on the island, and society collapsed due to its dependence on forest, resulting in migration and/or extinction. However, the society of the Easter Islands was certainly small, the habitat had no substitute resources, and scientific and technological development did not allow for the renewal of depleted resources or the finding of alternatives. The religious and social motivation was too strong to recognize the danger.
We are now in a similar state to our society, like on Easter Island. We are consuming our renewable resources at an ever-increasing rate and using more and more resources in a closed system, pursuing an unsustainable lifestyle. However, as the human population and its demands grow, it is not only our consumption that is increasing, but also our accumulated knowledge and intelligence, our problem-solving capabilities. We now have a much better understanding of our environment. Even if we cannot prevent problems due to our human nature, we are increasingly able to recognize them and adapt, albeit still not in a balanced way, much more effectively than our ancestors.
Living in a closed system indeed means that material resources are limited and will eventually be exhausted, but a closed system also means that the material environment only transforms, not ceases. As our knowledge grows, we may be able to reuse transformed resources and utilize new ones that were not previously used as resources. The availability of resources is essentially only a technological problem for humanity.
The depletion of resources poses a relative threat to humanity, which can only be endangered by excessively rapid population growth and overpopulation that is disproportionate to the available and applied knowledge.
Overpopulation
The danger of overpopulation is actually a relative risk, which is the ratio of population size to available resources, which is obviously relative. Obviously, the size of humanity living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle could not have reached eight billion, just as the size of humanity that can be sustained could certainly be even larger than it is today with more intensive food production and more efficient industrial activity.
Furthermore, there is a contradictory but explainable correlation between rising living standards and a counterproductive slowdown in population growth. If this trend continues, within a generation we will reach at least a local maximum in the human population, when the following decline is not caused by any adverse changes, epidemics, or wars.
Always, because we can only compare it to, we evaluate the size of humanity with our current capabilities, and it is true that if everyone would consume at the same level as people in the developed countries, the resources available to us with our current capabilities would prove insufficient, but not only are lagging societies developing in terms of consumption and size, but the current limitations and the level of development itself can moderate the size of the population, while the development of our knowledge can support the growing demand.
Population growth poses a relative threat to humanity.
Wars, aggression
There is no doubt that destroying each other is a habit of ours as old as humanity itself, yet human civilization, although often fraught with tension, practices an extremely social lifestyle. For example, considering our lifestyle and the density of the social connections, life in a big city, with its occasional but always limited outbreaks of violence, is only possible because we instinctively, and also as a result of socialization by learning, possess the lifestyle that is adaptive toward each other.
It is true that in the course of our controlled evolutionary development, we have also created weapons whose use would have a catastrophic effect on human societies, but so far, we have avoided global disaster because we are perhaps able to see that the use of these weapons could lead to total social collapse for all parties involved, or even those not involved as well. The actual role of these weapons is deterrence rather than practical use, but even then, only against opponents of a similar category, because we clearly do not use these destructive weapons in wars, even without the threat of a similar retaliatory action.
So far, we have avoided the catastrophe caused by weapons of mass destruction, despite the fact that most of them are under autocratic control. It seems that the present instinct for life is capable of overcoming the "whatever" attitude, even in the case of autocrats. In the longer run, social development favors democratic systems, primarily because of their greater effectiveness, and democratic systems fundamentally promote conflict management and cooperative behavior. It is difficult to find examples of war between democratic societies, and democracy, even if it sometimes appears unstable, has suitable mechanisms that are capable of reducing and defusing emerging tensions.
Wars and aggression, especially in a society that is becoming globalized through our directed evolutionary development, even if they cause a lot of pain, actually pose a relative threat to humanity.
Natural disasters, including natural or even man-made epidemics
Our resilience to natural disasters is developing particularly effectively as a result of our accumulated knowledge. Not only are we increasingly able to mitigate the effects of these disasters and face them with greater preparedness, but we are also becoming increasingly capable of preventing them. Of course, volcanic eruptions and extreme weather events cannot be avoided, but their global human impact can be significantly reduced through forecasting and preparation. Even the impact of an asteroid causing a global disaster is becoming increasingly preventable thanks to our technological advances. Epidemics can break out at any time, especially if they are artificially induced, but our knowledge of how to deal with them is also advancing, and if society, armed with real knowledge, does not resist scientific solutions, any pandemic can be dealt with effectively and with increasing efficiency.
Natural disasters, including natural or even man-made epidemics, pose an increasingly relative threat to humanity.
The dangers posed by directed evolution
Directed evolution is the way in which humanity develops. Directed evolution basically takes the form of scientific and technological progress, which also brings about social and socio-political changes.
However, directed evolution that brings about progress can also cause, particularly quickly, immediate and direct environmental effects that are difficult to foresee and that sometimes may pose threats to humanity. There are countless examples of such environmental changes resulting from development, ranging from the aforementioned climate change to the possession of nuclear weapons and the dangers of social media to individuals and society. However, most of these direct, immediate dangers caused by development are typically easier to avert, or could be averted, assuming that we recognize the danger and, at least to some extent, refrain from engaging in the activity that causes the danger.
In theory, directed evolution serves our adaptation to changing environmental conditions and also serves development, but—surprisingly similar to the functioning of natural evolution—humanity, which has developed through natural evolution, is typically incapable of proactive adaptation, especially if the change requires foresight, conflicts with actual present interests. Our intelligence makes us more suited to problem-solving than to problem avoidance.
The fate of humanity—including the process of our directed evolution—is determined by momentary advantages and immediate benefits, rather than by rational insight leading to a better future. A better future can typically only be a consequence of progress.
For a long time, the development of a better life and an increase in the general standard of living were not characteristic features of our directed evolutionary development. Our tools have developed, and our lifestyle has changed, but the general standard of living of humanity has hardly improved.
This phenomenon only changed after the industrial revolution, when production efficiency increased to such an extent that it became necessary, in the interests of keeping up the actual benefit of profit, for the goods produced to find owners, purchased in some way, and profits could only increase generally and continuously if the incomes of the population also increased generally.
The increase in income then directly leads to a rise in living standards and, of course, to profit-boosting overconsumption, with all the consequences that it entails.
Directed evolution, as practiced by humankind today, like natural evolution, can lead to dead ends, unsuitable developments, and improper variants under given circumstances. One consequence of the natural evolution of this kind of development is species extinction. Directed evolution can also lead to extinction, but it is much more amenable to correction.
The intelligence present generally allows for correction, except in cases where the actually present advantage of the developmental process leads to a future disadvantage. In this case, the advantage gained during development takes us further and further away from the state that enables survival, assuming and requiring ever greater change for correction, i.e., a positive feedback prevails in the system, causing the problem.
A current example of a similar phenomenon is the use of hydrocarbons in transportation. At present, hydrocarbon-based transportation brings such direct benefits—not only to companies, but also at the societal level through taxes—that immediate interests, especially when social governance also benefits from those immediate interests, ignore or even deny professional suggestions and scientific facts, resulting in environmental damage that is increasingly difficult to overcome.
However, the continued use of hydrocarbons is not fundamentally a developmental change. Scientific and technological progress can override immediate interests when the benefits of using hydrocarbons are less than the profits generated by the alternatives created by development. We can see this process in the transition to transportation based on electricity. The process is not simple, but considering the size of the relevant economy, it is happening at a particularly rapid pace.
However, it is a different situation when the actual and present benefits of the development of directed evolution lead to future disadvantages. Such development, by having the nature of positive feedback towards a problem, can pose an absolute threat to humanity. Can we find such a type of development that humanity will apparently have to face?
We must look for a developmental process that causes an effect of change on something in a negative direction, and this negative change does not weaken the benefit of the process of development, i.e., it does not result in negative feedback, and even the continuation of development may reinforce the negative change by its continuation, i.e., the feedback is positive in this direction.
Consumption driven by economic growth
Growth is a form of survival for companies. It is a typical observation that anything in the economy that does not grow will eventually cease to exist. Companies, and the economy as a whole, are growth-oriented, as this phenomenon is clearly visible in stock market valuations.
However, in order to achieve growth, the goods produced must also be purchased, which means that it is necessary to manufacture products for which there is demand, or even by creating demand for them.
It is worth emphasizing the positive side effect of growth, which is that growth typically requires continuous innovation, which, like natural evolution, leads to progress.
However, at the same time, it is worth emphasizing the negative side effects of economic growth, namely the artificially generated, useless, unnecessary, or even unrealistic nature of consumption. Growth, the immediate benefits, and the actual profits lead to unnecessary consumption and overconsumption, which creates positive feedback toward a state that is unsustainable in the long term. The necessity for growth as a benefit and the accompanying increase in consumption can cause environmental change faster than the actually present directed evolution can adapt to, which will certainly result in social decline and possibly even social collapse.
Consumption driven by obligated growth could pose an absolute threat to the survival of humanity.
Population decline resulting from the application and spread of artificial intelligence
We have seen examples of human population decline in connection with rising living standards. However, population decline is an unusual and rather surprising concomitant effect of living a better life than a consequence of it. Rising living standards cannot be a natural cause of population decline; higher living standards alone do not cause a decline in reproductive capability, just as in natural evolution, higher living standards understandably result in more offspring, so naturally, population growth would be the direction of positive feedback. However, the sacrifices involved in raising offspring and the accompanying decline in living standards, especially if the existence of offspring does not bring future benefits, and the instincts of having descendants developed through natural evolution can be overridden by the comforts of a more pleasant life, make population decline in human society rationally understandable.
In the case of the human species, changes in living standards do not naturally correlate with changes in population size, but the negative feedback loop that actually drives the decline is not the cause of rising living standards. The actual positive feedback is not related to the standard of living, but is in fact the generated effect of the beginning decline in population. It is not at all inconceivable that there could be social settings in which the higher standard of living would result in more offspring, even in human society.
Let us examine the correlation between the spread of artificial intelligence and population. Artificial intelligence, like all technological developments to date, has saved human labor and made it more efficient, and at the same time, rendered it redundant. In the past, however, the freed-up human resources typically found other tasks to perform after a short transitional period, which the technological development that had caused the surplus was not capable of filling. The application of artificial intelligence, however, results in a different situation in this respect.
Advances in artificial intelligence are increasingly replacing humans in both cognitive and manual tasks. Companies using artificial intelligence are seeing increased production efficiency and higher profits, as the use of artificial intelligence reduces the amount of human labor needed to increase growth. As human jobs are lost, the general standard of living declines due to the loss of personal income, and society's ability to support the offspring is also reduced. Thus, the consequence of this development is an increase in corporate profitability, and this advantage leads to a decline in society, which results in positive feedback in the direction of population decline.
Social collapse is a consequence of positive feedback, but naturally occurring positive feedback is not inevitable if, through socially conscious, enforced regulation, the decline of living standards is prevented, and even if maintaining the population could be linked to the maintenance of personal living standards.
As Marx's erroneous prediction confirms, the exploitation of workers did not lead to sustainable profit growth even in the early stages of the industrial revolution; rather, it was the deliberate increase in effective demand by growing income that led to sustainable profit growth, which, through reasonable insight, made social collapse avoidable, and only less developed societies underwent revolutions. Similarly, the industrial revolution of artificial intelligence makes it rationally foreseeable that short-term profit interests will lead to a decline in profits in the longer term due to a decrease in solvent demand.
However, the current impact of artificial intelligence is also influenced by the fact that purchasing power could decline not only due to falling incomes, but also as a result of positive feedback from population decline, since the natural reaction to a decline in living standards in this case is to forgo having children. Human society can easily fall into a spiral of change in which the declining population makes it even more necessary to replace human labor with artificial intelligence, which will lead to a decline in the propensity to have children among those experiencing a decline in living standards, and even a decline in the propensity to have children among those who maintain or even improve their standard of living, and after a while, the collapse of human society will become inevitable.
The process becomes even more dangerous if profit growth continues despite population decline, and as the sustained profit growth continues alongside population decline, the more difficult it becomes to reverse the situation, leading to the collapse of society and even the extinction of our species.
The increasing utilization of artificial intelligence, especially without social control, not just over usage, but over the distribution of profit created by it as well, poses an absolute threat to the survival of humanity due to its impact on population decline.
However, if we look at this process from a broader perspective, we can see that it is merely the consequence of evolutionary development, the continuation of evolution, being the continuation from the development of naturally formed intelligence towards the emergence of artificially intelligent life. This development could take place through the gradual transformation of our biological form into a cyborg-like existence, thereby prolonging and extending our personal life, but the process is much more likely to take a form that is easier to achieve when the peak evolutionary form continues in the form of artificial intelligence, taking over this role of development from the human species.
Evolution involves the accumulation of information (knowledge) and the increase in complexity, resulting in the gradual and continuous reduction of the biological nature of the peak evolutionary form (the most complex format), as the biological form actually acts as a constraint on this development. It fundamentally depends on us, as we are the creator, if we will be able to sustain ourselves and live together in some kind of symbiotic form with the evolving, now not necessarily biology-based intelligence in its sustainable form of existence, which will probably require reducing the absolute danger of the spread of artificial intelligence to our population decline too, as also mainly depends on us too if we will be capable of avoiding all other absolute dangers that humanity still has to face with.
The human race is fundamentally threatened only by itself.
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