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austinjp | 19 days ago

Russell's chicken (or turkey) would like a word.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_illusion

discuss

order

baxtr|19 days ago

I love that you brought this up.

Chickens are killed ALL the time. It’s a recurring mass event. If you were a smart chicken you could see that pattern and put it into a formula.

In contrast, the end of Humanity would be a singular event. It’s even in the name…

And that is fiction / speculation in comparison. It’s not backed by any data. Human survival over 300,000 years by contrast is.

I mean it’s fine to dream things up, but let’s be fair and call it what it is.

computomatic|19 days ago

On the other hand, species go extinct with increasing regularity.

toldnotmywrath|18 days ago

The frame is not from our view. It is from that of this singular chicken who has only ever known its keeper's care. As that chicken, we simply do not know if Christmas will ever come.

The collapse of civilizations has happened many times. Today, all of humanity is bound tighter than ever before. In the latter half of the last century, we were on the brink of nuclear war.

New things are happening under the sun every day. If we were that exceptionally smart chicken you describe, then we have reason to expect Christmas.

aidenn0|19 days ago

One thing I've wondered about is:

Suppose a civilization (but not species) ending event happens.

The industrial revolution was fueled (literally) by easy-to-extract fossil fuels. Do we have enough of those left to repeat the revolution and bootstrap exploitation of other energy sources?

kristiandupont|18 days ago

The point of that thought exercise is to show that reasoning by induction is flawed. As best I can tell, you discount it with further induction.

Invictus0|19 days ago

298,000 of those years didn't have toilet paper. It was utterly impossible for a single person to "end humanity" even 200 years ago; now, the president can do it in minutes by launching a salvo of nukes. Comparing the present moment to the hunter/gatherer days is preposterous.

austinjp|18 days ago

Erm, humanity is experiencing recurring mass events right now.

throwerxyz|19 days ago

What, you weren't alive when the last mass extinction event occurred? Why didn't you communicate or at least write the last handful down or something? Aren't you smarter than a chicken?

It's funny that you think we know what happened to humans anymore than a chicken knows what happened to chickens.