Why do you say that? Various other primates, mammals (monkeys, gorillas, dolphins, etc), birds (especially corvids) and even mollusks (octopus and squid for example) are intelligent. Humans split from other primates relatively recently in geological terms. If we go extinct there's going to be a whopper of a niche left…

I guess I'm the only one that agrees with you. Sorry haters. We are viruses with shoes.

If you multiply a very small number, like near zilch by the number of potential situations like... number of habitable planets for life, you got a non zero number of outcomes. In the case of habitable planets in a universe that is near infinite in time and space, you end up with a lot of life forms being created.

Unless…

And yet it has a remarkable probability of being correct.

Why does only "intelligent life" count? We're not THAT removed from other animals. And whoever said the Universe cares to distinguish us from single-cell organisms, without which our species wouldn't be possible?

Eventually it will be our species that saves the universe from its ultimate collapse.

How exactly does one calculate those odds?

Not to mention all the wonderful things humans do to each other. Not that I generally object.

Our comprehension of our destruction of the planet and the existential threat we pose to literally every other species on Earth doesn't negate the fact that humans are a disease. Fuck humans. We're the most boring species on Earth and we're going to kill everything that is special about the world we live in. And…

I understood Beluga Wales are way smarter than us. So if we go extinct, maybe its them finally getting rid of that nasty pest that has been messing up 'their' planet for the last couple hundred years ;-)

"Doctor look what I found, the remains of some bipedal mammal... What happened to them all?" says Squid McSquiddy, a TA at Giant Squid University. Go Inkblots!

You're assuming humanity is intelligent. We're not. Fact.

I didn't say we aren't awesome, just that were not very good at managing our resources in order to be sustainable.

Why's that? Dinos got wiped out and we came after?

Or maybe only a small sidenote in a daily Alien newspaper..."Oh great some toddlers just learned to build nuclear power plant...aren't they cute. Maybe in some million years they even learn not to kill themself with it"

You're gonna have to show your work on that calculation.

Hardly. Took us only a million years, and the sun's got 5 billion years left.

There's no real scientific basis for that rather strong claim, George, just a shit-ton of scientifically dubious assumptions. Not least that a disaster which wiped out humanity would wipe out the planet in such a way that another species becoming sentient is unlikely. On the contrary, unless the disaster absolutely…

Based on what? Over a long enough timeline the odds of anything are pretty good..

Yeah right. If it happened to us, I'm sure the odds are there it will happen to some other species in time.