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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

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Human extinction is 100% inevitable.

I don't think anyone knows this with any meaningful level of confidence. The heat death of the universe through entropy is the only thing that I can think of that could guarantee this, but I don't believe we have a complete-enough understanding of physics and cosmology to state with 100% confidence that that's inescapable.

Because of that I am sympathetic to the idea that acting on one's values is ultimately more important than survival. It's the same as preferring to live a beautiful short life over a pointlessly prolonged one in a state of senility.

This is perfectly cromulent, but also, I think most people would prefer to live a beautiful long life over a beautiful but pointlessly short one. And the thing about prolonging versus ending life is that it's asymmetrical; if you prolong life when human civilization is barely lumbering along in a state of senility, there's always the chance in the future that that civilization becomes beautiful and prolonged. If it ends in a blaze of beauty, then no one ever gets to discover if there was a way to have a prolonged beautiful civilization. Believing that the end of civilization/humanity is worth it as long as my own principles and values got met by the last generation requires a God-like level of confidence in the correctness of one's own values. Which points to faith.

Which is also perfectly cromulent! I just wish people would talk about this honestly and openly.

What can I say, I just want to starve on a dying planet in the arms of my loved ones, instead of having to eat or be eaten by them.

(In reality most of the time I am personally extremely unconfident about whether AI, low fertility or climate change will in the long-run hasten or put off the demise of our species, so actual existential continuity tends to fade into the background of my thinking on most issues.)

Also, yes, you are right, heat death is not actually certain.