🚀 go-pugleaf

I commend you for your optimism, but I take a pessimistic (realistic?) view
of things.  The "mutant cavemen" would be survivors (if any) of a nuclear
holocaust.  As to survivors of other causes, I remember reading that another
*conventional* World War would not enable us to rebuild - there wouldn't be
enough raw materials left with which to do so.  Our current use of raw
materials is only possible due to their concentration in ore deposits,
fossil fuels, etc.  Once dispersal by usage has occurred, then technology,
esp. primitive "technology", would be unable to retrieve the needed
materials.  What to do?  Try delving through the world's garbage dumps?  No,
we've only got one chance, and that is NOW.  If we mess it up, then that's
it. The human race has had it.
Even now, the clear-felling of forests, then replanting, leaves out all
those minor, refined, aspects of the old-growth forest.  The human brain is
clever, but not quite clever enough; clever enough, however, to accelerate
our own extinction.  (Why we survived till now is more due to absence of
technology, rather than lack of the killer instinct which is now coupled
with it.)
========================
"EarlCox" <earlcox@earlcoxreports.com> wrote in message
news:n5Zkc.77096$yv.2698684@twister.southeast.rr.com...
> Perhaps.
>
> I don't understand why the survivors would be "mutant cavemen". On the
> whole, given the sheer size of the earth, the fact that a very small
> population of hominids actually did survive diseases, predators, and
natural
> disasters over the past several million years and then managed to spread
> over the planet, and, finally,  the basic territorial survival edge that
> intelligence invests with humanity as a species, I suspect that homo
sapiens
> would probably do quite well as scattered tribes or pre-industrial age
> settlements for another ten to twenty millennia or so until the earth
began
> to repair itself. In line with  recent evolutionary benefit assessments, I
> note that our particular kind of intelligence is probably a terrific
> evolutionary "select for" advantage at the village level but becomes a
> significant survival detriment at our level of planetary occupation and
> population density.
>
> Earl
>
> --
>
>
> Earl Cox
> Founder and President
> Scianta Intelligence, LLC
> Turn Knowledge Into Intelligence
> www.scianta.com
>
>
> AUTHOR:
> "The Fuzzy Systems Handbook" (1994)
> "Fuzzy Logic for Business and Industry" (1995)
>
> "Beyond Humanity: CyberEvolution and Future Minds"
> (1996, with Greg Paul, Paleontologist/Artist)
>
> "The Fuzzy Systems Handbook, 2nd Ed." (1998)
> "Machine Intelligence Tools for Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery"
> (due Early Summer 2004)
>
> ........