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To: BenLurkin
[Nick Bostrom] was the founding director of the now dissolved Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford.

I guess that's appropriate.

In several different ways.

58 posted on 08/24/2025 9:04:56 AM PDT by x
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To: All

This kind of stuff fails on the pages of a dictionary.

Extinction requires 100% eradication. This is a right and proper definition. Not like “collapse” which we so often see thrown about (with no solid numerical definition).

So what does it take for extinction? Here are some ways:

Sun goes nova. Sorry, there is no surviving that one.

Massive asteroid strike. Odds really high of 100% deaths, though taking a rather long time, maybe 100 yrs to get the last human starved.

Climate change of a few degrees? Absurd. You could lose what, 20% of the population? That ain’t extinction.

Oil scarcity? Pretty good odds of extinction, but it will take 100 years or so. Transportation ends and that means food shipment does. So you will have humankind restricted to villages. They can’t grow. They can’t recover because big population gains require oil. So a stagnant population in various locales just waiting for the random disease to arrive, for which there will be no drugs since . . . transportation died.

Nuclear war? Nah, self limiting. When you are out of warheads, you are out of warheads. Dust in the atmosphere? Yes. Low food production from that dust? Yes. But “low” doesn’t meant zero. You can’t get to 100% death count if some people are eating. That same issue with drugs above? No, you still have oil to move drugs, because consumption of the scarce amounts reduces with the population. In general, it’s recoverable, over centuries.


59 posted on 08/24/2025 9:28:53 AM PDT by Owen
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To: x
Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford.

I wonder who funded that?! Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates?!

65 posted on 08/24/2025 10:32:37 AM PDT by Rummyfan ( In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.👨 )
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