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[drokhole]

70. Familiar, but not entirely clear...

Since scientists have kept upping the number of presumed planets, does that mean the odds are increasing?

Anyway, reminds me of something Terence McKenna said in regards to the way we've been burning through resources so rapidly:

"The problem is, energy can be used to destroy as well as build. So as the human enterprise has moved toward greater and greater power, and ability to manipulate the environment, the stakes in the cosmic game have risen. And now what we have is approximately $100 billion sitting in the center of the crap table, and one roll of the dice more and we’re going to either win it or lose everything. Because intelligence, if we fail, will never again reach the kind of levels on this planet that we have reached.

Why? Because we have extracted all the available metals near the surface of the Earth; an evolving species following after us will find the Earth strangely depleted of usable materials, down to the 1500-foot level; and so intelligence coming beyond us will find it just does not have the resources to make the leap to technical civilization. So it’s beginning to look like a one-shot deal."

I think the "one-shot deal" he was talking about was an intelligent, technological species leaving the planet and exploring the cosmos (and/or surviving, for that matter).

That lecture must have been something. I wasn't familiar with Philip Morrison, but it seemed like he was in the thick of it.