The sun still has half its ten-billion-year life span to go. The earth’s population might stabilize at fifteen billion or so, and our successors could even colonize other parts of the galaxy, allowing a far greater increase in their numbers. But think what that means: nearly every human who will ever exist will live in the distant future. This would make us unusual in the extreme. Assume, quite conservatively, that a billion new people will be born every decade until the sun burns out. That makes a total of 500 quadrillion people. At most, 50 billion people have either lived in the past or are
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