So I’m sure how we conceive of being the dominant species is biased. But if we talk about civilizations and their ability to eventually propagate beyond earth, I don’t think dolphins have it. Their ancestry tried out land and said “nah, back to the water”. Not to mention anything we do that takes humans out of the equation entirely is going to probably kill off the dolphins, apes, elephants, basically most of the mammalians. It’ll be so long before something evolves to take our place as “earthlings” all our works will be fossils at best
On this note; given that it’s suspected that Earth has only a good ~800 million years or so left, that may not even be enough time for another sentient species to emerge with enough time to become technologically sufficient enough to … avert extinction – much less undo some of the damage that we have done. We have to grapple with the idea that if we fail as a species, we’ll be the only and last sentient species on Earth to have emerged. Or as I like to call it: Get filtered, nerd.
So I’m sure how we conceive of being the dominant species is biased. But if we talk about civilizations and their ability to eventually propagate beyond earth, I don’t think dolphins have it. Their ancestry tried out land and said “nah, back to the water”. Not to mention anything we do that takes humans out of the equation entirely is going to probably kill off the dolphins, apes, elephants, basically most of the mammalians. It’ll be so long before something evolves to take our place as “earthlings” all our works will be fossils at best
On this note; given that it’s suspected that Earth has only a good ~800 million years or so left, that may not even be enough time for another sentient species to emerge with enough time to become technologically sufficient enough to … avert extinction – much less undo some of the damage that we have done. We have to grapple with the idea that if we fail as a species, we’ll be the only and last sentient species on Earth to have emerged. Or as I like to call it: Get filtered, nerd.