From: Nick Bostrom
This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a "posthuman" stage
Some people argue that dinosaurs went extinct before birds evolved, while others say that birds are simply dinosaurs that have evolved into bird species. It's a kind of a semantic issue. The end result is that today there are plenty of bird species and no dinosaurs except for crude simulations and fossil remains. So, if someday robo-sapiens, enlightened machines, artilects, and posthumans supplant humans, that will necessitate humans creating autonomous and self-sustaining human-competitive entities to carry on the evolution of machines. IOW, we'll have to build that which builds posthumans, or we'll have to make posthumans ourselves. Either way, since posthumans won't emerge spontaneously, doesn't that imply that humans (or at least transhumans) can't go extinct before reaching a posthuman stage? Unlike the dinosaurs, we're building posthumans from the ground up rather than letting evolution have its way with our DNA, right?
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