Spoiler alert! The fate of every successful species is to wipe itself out ∞

According to a famous bit of biology (Gause), “The fate of every successful species is to wipe itself out.”

OR IS IT?

Great longish read, many ideas & fine turns of phrase. A little more:

If we [Homo sapiens] follow Gause’s pattern, growth will continue at a delirious speed until we hit the second inflection point. At that time we will have exhausted the resources of the global petri dish, or effectively made the atmosphere toxic with our carbon-dioxide waste, or both. After that, human life will be, briefly, a Hobbesian nightmare, the living overwhelmed by the dead.

Mann paints a vividly pessimistic picture of the fate of uncontrolled human growth and development … but then he turns around and makes some really interesting points about our potential to restrain ourselves just in time.

What’s going to happen? I can hardly wait to see!