system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How different would the Earth be today if the Permian-Triassic extinction event did not occur?

I know this is an oddly specific question, and I couldn't find anything using the search bar. I'm just curious how this would have effected Earth and biodiversity as a whole.
gpt
It is impossible to answer precisely what current biodiversity and faunal composition would look like in that hypothetical never-never land of "what ifs".

The most we can say is that natural selection would have continued to operate, but with a greater number of lineages to choose fromthan those who were cut off by the Great Dying. And the relative importance of surviving lineages would (probably) not have been the same either, but life is a lottery and a hypothetical outcome is quasi-impossible to predict.

But lets have a look at some of the lineages which might have survived in later times, some to die out, but later (perhaps cut-off by the K-T event?), others perhaps making it to our days:

* Trilobites;

* Eurypterids;

* Orthid and productid brachiopods;

* Several orders of insects (caloneurodeans, monurans, paleodictyopteroids, protelytropterans, and protodonates);

And that's just by focussing on a very coarse taxonomic level, the survival of individual genera and species within lineages has the potential to completely upset future faunal assemblages. Ninety-something (depending on source) of marine species are believed to have croaked in the Great Dying. Had the dice fallen differently, a quasi-infinite number of potentially differently populated worlds could have emerged on the other side.

So who can say?