Beginning of history

 https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/william-macaskill-beginning-history?utm_medium=promo_email&utm_source=pre_release&utm_campaign=pre_release_081122&utm_content=20220811&utm_term=all-special-send


The fossil record indicates that the average mammal species lasts a million years. By this measure, we have about 700,000 years ahead of us. During this time, even if humanity remained earthbound at just one-tenth of the current world population, a staggering ten trillion people would be born in the future.

Moreover, our species is not the average mammal, and humans may well be able to outlast their relatives. If we survived until the expanding sun scorched the earth, humanity would persist for hundreds of millions of years. More time would separate us from our last descendants than from the earliest dinosaurs. And if one day we settled space—entirely conceivable on the scale of thousands of years—earth-originating intelligent life could continue until the last stars burned out in tens of trillions of years.


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