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Stephen Wordsworth's avatar

"Properly understood, evolutionary pressure refers to the increase in a population of genetic traits that mitigate environmental threats"

That is a secondary effect, evolution only responds to "environmental threats" by how much it affects the ability of that organism to reproduce. Evolution is just the almost tautological observation that those that are better at reproducing become more numerous over time. There is a common myth that "removing environmental threats stops evolution", which is pure nonsense, it only shifts selection from survival traits to raw fertility. Modern living seems to neutralize some reproductive instincts in the present breed of humans but this will not be permanent over time humans will evolve genetic adaptations to modern living just as they did to farming etc, and like all life forms reproduce exponentially until they have filled the available habitat if we get something like fusion rockets then that could be the resources of the entire solar system, turn all the minerals in asteroids into cartwheel habitats. Before the solar system is totally mined out it would make sense for habitats to migrate to other solar systems as they will all be descended from those who had the strongest drive to reproduce of each generation.

If robots take over and wipe out organic life its just the same thing the robots that make the most copies of themselves become more numerous over time.

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Stephen Wordsworth's avatar

As we have no idea how hard the filters are to cross we dont know how many filters are needed. Could be a single trillion to one filter. Maybe the creation of the first cell and genetic replicator, it involves several components coming together. There could be a lot of lifeless, sterile yet potentially fertile and Earth like worlds out there just waiting for us to seed them.

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