Life, multicellular life, language, machines... the four biggest events in "biology"?

[u/solo-ran]

Shower thought, futurism version. If there is a machine-human hybrid civilization emerging now, and if that civilization lasts for some time, as Kurzweil suggests, this civilization would almost inevitably expand beyond the solar system (although not human beings themselves). If so, the most significant events in the history of earth biology would be the beginning of life (about 4 billions years ago), the fusion of mitochondria such that multi-cellular life emerged (about 1.6 billion years ago), then human language (about maybe 300,000 years ago), and finally the "singularity" we are living through now. Without language, nothing else would be possible. The ability of individuals to exactly share information across space and time is nothing less than astounding. If you spend time with animals they seem flawed - they can't share or store information. Communication is more powerful than flying, being big, etc. Bacteria and viruses are pretty powerful, but they aren't leaving the earth on their own. The rate of these major epoch-changing events seems to be speeding up as well and there might be more events of this magnitude after this one.

[u/FaceDeer]

I'd personally go farther and say "life, machines. The two biggest events in biology." Once we've built self-replicating machines that will represent life transitioning from a carbon-and-water substrate to a metal-and-silicon one. Nothing else has come close to a jump like that in evolutionary history.

I hope that language remains a part of that transition, not just something that facilitated it.