Man is a portion of the inanimate universe come alive! We may be the sole observer. Our intellect has revealed the nature of our origin and our imagination allows us to speculate upon the manner of our extinction – both as individuals and as a species.

All present societies, like all past ones, are doomed! Among the many civilizations in recorded history, a median lifetime is approximately 250 years. I claim that that’s how long it takes for the psychopaths to seize control of a society, and for them and their cousins the sociopaths to flourish and milk society to death. In the case of America, we are now 247 years into an experiment with a form of representative democracy, which places us near the median longevity for civilizations. If we define Western Civilization to have started in 1454, as some have suggested, we would now be at the 567-year point – which is near the 75 % region for civilization longevities. However we define our present civilization we are “mature” in terms of historical perspective, and it is not an outlandish position to suggest that our demise is near.  

We can’t count on political leadership to save us. After all, the region of the United States with the highest incidence of psychopaths is Washington, D.C. (Murphy, 2018).

I’ve achieved control over my worrying about these matters. It’s not because I’m 84 years old, and near my end. It’s because the human species is near its end, and things that used to matter will soon not matter to anyone.

As Bertrand Russell wrote (1903): “... Such ... is the world which Science presents for our belief. ... That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; ... all the noonday brightness of human genius [is] destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and … the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins..."

I am one of the first people to have presented a conjecture on how to estimate the time of humanity’s end using Sampling Theory (Gary, 1992, Ch. 7). It has become known by the misleading name of The Anthropic Principle. It goes like this: Suppose you’re asked to guess the length of a finite sequence and you are allowed to fetch a sample at random. Suppose the sequence consists of 100 elements, with each tagged #1 to #100. There’s a 50% chance that an element drawn at random will have a number tag between 1 and 50. The same applies to drawing an element with a number tag between 51 and 100, or even 26 and 75. By a similar reasoning there’s a 25 % chance that an element drawn will have a number tag between 1 and 25, etc. Because of this, it is possible to infer the likelihood of the length of the sequence from a random drawing of just one element. The rule for estimating the most likely total sequence length is to simply double the number tag and state that there’s a 50% chance that the sequence length is below that number, and another 50% chance that it is above that number. Similar statements can be made about the chance that the total sequence has other lengths; e.g., there’s a 25 % probability that the total sequence length exceeds 3 times the random number tag, etc.

Figure 29.1. Graph from a 1992 publication (Gary, 1992) showing plausible future world population scenarios corresponding to the 1992 world population being at the 75, 50 and 25^th percentile locations of the complete sequence, according to a sampling theory analysis. (The red dashed trace can be ignored since it is a plot of “innovation rate” which in my 1992 publication was treated as having a possible correlation with population patterns.)

Now, consider the notion that the total number of humans who will ever exist is a finite sequence. For someone familiar with physics this may not seem outrageous, e.g., space-time is a 4-D continuum. The concept of a “rigid” universe was described by H. G. Wells in his book The Time Machine (1895). Like a gigantic pinball machine, the universe is governed by the laws of physics, i.e., F = ma, so that all past and future configurations are inherent in any one configuration.

Consider that we are now at a random location in the finite sequence of human births. Everybody has a number tag, which we can use birth dates to assign. Whether we start assigning humans a number tag at 50,000 years ago, or 150,000 years ago, human populations were always so small before about 50,000 years ago that we arrive at the same approximate conclusion that humans now being born have a number tag of about 62 billion. (This calculation was performed for the date 1992, when I “discovered” the concept; reasons for sticking with that date are given in my book Genetic Enslavement, 2021.) I concluded in 1992 that when plausible future world population scenarios are used there’s a 25 % probability that humanity will begin to undergo a population crash on or before the year 2050! Similarly, there’s a 50 % probability that the population crash will commence at about 2200. Finally, there’s a 75 % probability that the population crash will commence before approximately 2300 AD. The previous figure, Fig. 29.1, shows shapes for the world’s population corresponding to the three scenarios, as I derived them for a 1992 publication.

I have re-calculated population scenarios using “today” as a reference for the sampling theory analysis, since adopting a reference date is somewhat arbitrary. In other words, for this re-analysis I ask the question “If we are now, in 2020 (when this chapter was first written), at specified percentile locations of a fixed sequence, how long is the sequence, and how could plausible future population scenarios place us at the 25^th, 50^th and 75^th percentile locations?” The results of this re-analysis are similar to my 1992 analysis, and they are presented in Figure 29.2.

Figure 29.2. Three scenarios for future world population, corresponding to our present time being at the 75^th, 50^th and 25^th percentile of the entire human sequence.

To the extent that the above sampling theory analyses are valid we can use them to support the assertion that humanity will NOT adopt a winning path to longevity, and that on timescales of a century or two the psychopaths and sociopaths will milk civilization of all its strength to survive. Recall that psychopaths resemble cancer cells in having no prevision of the endings they bring about, including theirs.

What might happen after the collapse? I agree with Ord (2020) that some humans will survive after a near-extinction event. This is shown in the next figure (Fig. 29.3), where the y-scale is logarithmic and the x-scale is a sigmoid function that emphasizes “now time.”

Figure 29.3. Same data as plotted in the previous figure but using a log scale for population and a “sigmoid function” for representing dates.

Notice how I’ve shown the three population declines with a “leveling out” shape following collapse. This is meant to show that a final ending level will correspond to what existed during the AE when only small tribes existed. The lower levels for later collapse dates are meant to suggest that the carrying capacity of Earth will depend on how thoroughly the pre-collapse people ravaged the Earth and exhausted resources.

If humans survive as a large number of small tribes, with populations averaging 150 for example, they might eventually recreate super-tribes. If this happens there could be another Holocene-like population rise and a consequent new version of civilization. Those of the second civilization would surely be aware of the previous civilization due to the physical ruins and still orbiting artificial Earth satellites. Olaf Stapledon’s book Last and First Men (1931) comes to mind. In it he suggested that each resurrection of humanity from the ashes of a previously failed one would differ so much that they should be thought of as different species. Each resurrected species exhibited in exaggeration a feature of our present species, which was a clever writer’s trick for illustrating human flaws.

Figure 29.4. Same data as plotted in the previous figure but extended into the future to show a possible rise of a second civilization (using a log scale for population and a “sigmoid function” for representing dates). The date range is 60,000 BC to 60,000 AD.

Figure 29.4 illustrates possible beginnings of a second civilization for each of the three collapse scenarios. Presumably the rise would have the same form as our civilization: first a rise due to super-tribe creations, followed by a rise when the super-tribes re-invent their version of an industrial revolution, and later followed by a rise after their version of a World War II explosion of technology.

Is it possible that the rise and collapse pattern will repeat forever? Each rise that produces a new civilization would be a new version of the human species. The long interval between civilizations could serve the purpose of eliminating the deleterious mutations that were allowed to accumulate during the existence of the civilization. Each civilization could have its “noonday brightness in the sun,” as Bertrand Russel would say.

Another possibility is that the population collapse could be “complete,” leaving no humans to slowly resurrect their mastery of Earth. This sober possibility can’t be ruled out from what we now know. All of these speculations make me sad, for they represent endings of either versions of humanity or the entirety of humanity. Why are so few people upset by these possibilities?

Why does everyone take for granted how beautiful a place our Earth is? And how lucky we humans are for living on it? It is shameful when people lack gratitude, and behave in ways that are likely to deny future generations being able to enjoy Mother Earth as we have! Shame, shame! We have so much potential as a species, as H. G. Wells wrote about in 1896 when he called attention to the possibility of human improvement, achieved over long stretches of time, as something “…to be lost or won by men, as they may have, or may not have, the greatness of heart to consciously shape…” their destiny.

I have a long-standing interest in speculations about the presence in our galaxy of other intelligent beings. On several occasions my professional career in astronomy has connected with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, SETI. A compelling case for humanity being the only intelligent species in the galaxy is made by Ward and Brownlee (2000). A recent estimate of the probability for the existence of ETI in our galaxy concludes that we are probably alone (Sandberg, Drexler and Ord, 2018). If it is true that we humans are uniquely privileged to be the only intelligent species in our galaxy, what a shame it would be for us to so casually and shamelessly ruin the planet, and kill each other in wars, and live life without an appropriate gratitude.

I believe that we have a “moral obligation” to not squander something so rare and precious. Why, anyway, should an individual care about the fate of his species? Why should I care so much? In a few months, or years, I will die. Eventually, so will my species. Regardless of any noonday brightness that humanity may, or may not, achieve, I nevertheless care!

As I give up hope for humanity having a glorious future I recall a sad refrain by the conservationist Robinson Jeffers (ca. 1925):

“Good news, oh beautiful planet, the accursed race of man is not immortal.”

Bruce L. Gary