Tim's blog

Without watching closer, we as human beings have better chances of survival as all the other beings we know.
We are more intelligent (and really “brighter”?), are able to live a kind of everywhere (except in the large ocean space or out of space), we are able to create tools with created tools to make even more complex tools and we are so much more aware of the world and its surroundings.
We probably are surviving forever. …until the universe as we know it will explode or implode or whatever there may be.
Beside of the irony in it, it ignores the most powerful factor there is: time.
Time would prevent us to explore the universe as we did 500 years ago with the oceans. Time is the thing…
The dinosaurs were so incredible successful but time let them go down as over a larger span of time the environment changes from time to time in a much severe way as imagined, prepared or able to deal with.
The uncertainty of the type of a bigger unforeseen change does it. Even a very small probability is growing over a long period of time to an often certain event.
It is about our certain and final event. Let it call it judgement day, even if it would be not a day but rather a millennium or so.
Let me give this an example some numbers. Let us say there is a chance of 0,0000001 % that we all die because of a severe for us yet unknown event within 1000000 years.
The math still gives this a good picture. Well, the reality does not have such borders of 1000000 years. It is for us as a very young existence an incredible long time so very much unimaginable. May be we will have as humans being in 1000000 years 4 arms and 6 eyes. But how we will be is unimportant.
We don’t not look too bad in this example. Now let increase the factor time with the factor 1000.
The maths says: game over dude. Thanks for the fish.
This kind of “forever” overrules even the smallest of our probabilities.
The whole example is silly as it gives a probability to an unknown event. That does not make much sense as if an event is unknown, the probability is unknown too.
A statistical approach also does not help as we don’t know of so many other different type of beings as we are or alike.
Going back to the core message: We will all die, mother!
OK, a bit more serious.
The idea of a good chance of the survival of life overall is isolation and the spread of live over different spaces. You cannot get rid of life then. It adjusts and changes and exists in so many forms that the end of it only goes along with fundamental changes to the basics of the physical world.
Time actually prevents the spread of life and us in the universe as we did and do spread at our home planet.
Looking at the large space surrounding us and the unimaginable distances between for instances planets does not allow “travel” as we know it.

You cannot start and arrive in a similar or close to similar state or condition.

With watching us as we are now and watching the rest of beings we know there is beside of our so great superior attributes, there are some other interesting fundamental differences.
Life seems to have some kind of unwritten rules. Unwritten in a way it is not so clearly obvious. Here a few unsorted and random aspects.

We eat sugar. We even put it into meat. This happens mostly in higher developed areas and not to the great masses of individuals we are but it is a way of life with a good success factor. We do not need to use sugar in the way we do. This is an interesting unreasonable behaviour.
We do not adjust to our environment much anymore and form instead our environment to our needs. Over a long period of time we as organic beings are not able to adjust properly and timely to the changing environment. This ability is important to keep it fresh at all times as changes can come also at every moment.
Instead of spreading further to other spaces, we just over-populate our living space, which is unfortunately the only living space we have and know.

With only slow changes to the environment we may have good chances to get over it in a long period of time.
The reality: the probabilities of events do not have that mercy over a longer period of time.

The youngsters we grow up are so incredibly dependent not only to its parents but also to the system around. Which parent can carry on caring in the same sound way for their babies without the supply of food by others or the built living space made and maintained by others?
Our economic systems are globally fragile. We depend on virtual goods and values. We depend on dynamics which become more and more complex so we cannot rule the world we created.
This all is so with us being so young.
Young kids have often in common to overestimate themselves. Our world works out because the elders do the control.
For us as human beings, we are all the young kids and there is no older one doing the control. Nobody, who can prevent us from us as youngsters.
I hope we can grow up and stop being the twelve years old trying to win in a salt eating competition and ignoring the fact that the winner from the previous year died from it.