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The Future of Humanity
#1
The Future of Humanity
What're your thoughts on mankind's long-term prospects? Are we destined to become a spacefaring, planet-colonizing race? Are we headed for a Malthusian collapse? Might we be wiped out by a catastropic war or disease? Will artificial intelligence take over? How about a zombie apocalypse? And how long before any of these things happen?

I could post this in Philosophy or General Science, but I light light-hearted responses as much as serious ones. Smile
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#2
RE: The Future of Humanity
Humanity is poked so long as we allow petty things like our differences, whether religious, ethnic, gender, or whatever, dictate our policies. Or so long as we allow greed to dictate our actions.

If the money the world spent in a decade was spent on medicine and science, we would likely have had a permanent presence on Mars by now and be exploring the outer solar system.

The zombie apocalypse? It's already here. Just walk down a busy street one night and look at all the zombies shuffling about while staring at their phones...
Dying to live, living to die.
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#3
RE: The Future of Humanity
If 'Murica is to be held to the standard of where the world is headed, which I doubt at this point, then the world is screwed.

It seems the rest of the world is progressing, except for the extreme middle east, as it should.

'Murica seems quite content on degressing socially, however, and any sane person living in this country should be very afraid.
"Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat."
~ Erin Hunter
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#4
RE: The Future of Humanity
Bleak.
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#5
RE: The Future of Humanity
Brains in jars.

Trillions of brains in jars.

[Image: Brain-In-A-Jar2.jpg]
 The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it. 




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#6
RE: The Future of Humanity
There will be short-term growing pains and long-term gains. It has always been this way.

Personally, I think our short-term future is becoming an in-solar system race which builds and inhabits large, artificial space colonies - NOT planets. Our race was born on a planet but I doubt we remain tied to one. I also doubt we will remain biological-only beings for much beyond 100 years. Inevitably, we will eventually direct our own evolution. Whether or not we branch out into the stars is hard to say. It depends on what the laws of nature permit as possible and practical. It will also depend on the priorities of our descendants who are likely to be much more intelligent than we are thanks to self-directed evolution.

There may end up being two civilizations. One will evolve in space and prosper. The other will remain on Earth and stagnate - and possibly die out. Or there may be multiple offshoots of humanity. I'm optimistic about the future of those who evolve. I'm pessimistic about those who stagnate.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

Albert Einstein
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#7
RE: The Future of Humanity
By fits and starts, humankind will evolve into something very much like Niven and Pournelles Moties.
 The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it. 




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#8
RE: The Future of Humanity
It doesn't really matter does it? Who in the universe is going to give a shit.
As long as we are free to kill each other into extinction, then we did it our way with our rights to bear arms!

Freedom is everything. Much more important than life. Wars prove this every single day.
No God, No fear.
Know God, Know fear.
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#9
RE: The Future of Humanity
(July 4, 2017 at 11:20 pm)Puke Skywalker Wrote: What're your thoughts on mankind's long-term prospects?  Are we destined to become a spacefaring, planet-colonizing race?  Are we headed for a Malthusian collapse?  Might we be wiped out by a catastropic war or disease?  Will artificial intelligence take over?  How about a zombie apocalypse?  And how long before any of these things happen?

I could post this in Philosophy or General Science, but I light light-hearted responses as much as serious ones.  Smile

I have found this a very interesting question for a while, but I'm not much of a researcher. 

I think we'll go extinct fairly soon, but not, like, 1,000 years like some global warming extremists think. Maybe a couple million years, and yes, it will be by global warming. I don't fear war quite as much. Not sure why. I guess I feel everybody is too afraid to use nukes to the extent that their own country would be in peril by their nuking another one. 

Colonization is a fascinating idea, but there are so many questions that go with that. Fire and rescue themes, up to and including disaster management. Cultural themes of various types: what would language law be? What would law in general be, and how would it be enforced? What political structures and concerns would we have? How would we socialize? That alone eats up lots of infrastructural space. Or would Major League Baseball on July 4th be replaced by Connect Four Premiership or Pente League?

And on, and on, and on. This might have been a good research paper in college.
"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
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#10
RE: The Future of Humanity
We'll run out of resources before we get far enough into space to find enough of said resources to accomplish getting that far in the first place. Real Catch-22.
Religions were invented to impress and dupe illiterate, superstitious stone-age peasants. So in this modern, enlightened age of information, what's your excuse? Or are you saying with all your advantages, you were still tricked as easily as those early humans?

---

There is no better way to convey the least amount of information in the greatest amount of words than to try explaining your religious views.
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