Slashdot Mirror
20 Ways The World Could End
kevlar wrote to us with the online version of Discover's 20 Ways the World Could End. Ranging from Asteriod Impacts to Mini Black Holes, it's all sorts of fun potential disasters.
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Twenty-one #654995387: Slashdotters invent an infinite number of doomsday scenarios, all numbered "21". Having an infinite number of scenarios, the probability of "the twenty-one event" occuring becomes infinite. Like Wile E. Coyote's looking down and causing gravity to take effect, the realization of the certainty of a twenty-one event causes one to occur.
Twenty-one #655835601: The infinite density of the #21 causes all ideas to collapse into it, turning the rest of the world into a place just as mindless as slashdot.
Twenty-one #659995379: Just because.
"If we patented these methods of world destruction, could the human race survive forever?"
No, But if we patented "1 click" world distruction then the world would be safe for at least 5 to 7
years while the legal battle ensued.
AdFuel
Yes, we're all just a great big game of SimEarth 3590 and it is vitally important that we keep this place interesting. If the forteen year old kid who is running this thing gets bored and decides to run UltraMegaQuake ]})|({[, we're toast. So for the Earth's sake, everybody go out and do something interesting. The fate of the Planet is in the balance.
The cake is a pie
Starting with discover.com ... ;)
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
If we patented these methods of world destruction, could the human race survive forever?
I didn't see any mention of a giant marshmallow man destroying the earth. don't these people watch TV. Not to mention Godzilla or Gamera. These people obviously have not done their research. Not one mention of the sky falling. These people call themsevles scientists. Bah. Bunch of crackpots is what they are.
Unless one (or more) of the other things happens first, I believe #16 ("Robots take over") will definitely occur. And I'm firmly on the side of "next stage in evolution" rather than "end of humanity."
Ray Kurzweil has written a book called The Age of Spiritual Machines. In it, he basically predicts that human kind will be supplanted by its own creations. This will not be a takeover of the kind depicted in Terminator or The Matrix, but a slow merging of the two "species" and an eventual complete transformation of the very definition of "human" and "life."
This is happening already. Consider the term "brain-dead." When it was still novel, people distinguished "brain-dead" from "dead," but I'm pretty sure there are many people now who basically equate the two (maybe not doctors, for whom it's probably a clinical term). At one time, a beating heart indicated life, and a lack thereof, death. Now, the death of the brain is the "real" death. This is a subtle modern shift in what it means to be "alive." I suspect that as the function of parts of the brain get figured out by scientists, a new term-- "mind-death"-- will appear.
I don't know if I agree with all of Kurzweil's reasoning, but I fully believe in the conclusion. In fact, I cannot see how it could possibly end otherwise. However, I don't see it as a hostile takeover, but an enhancement of everything that makes us who we are: an expanding of our abilities. It won't limit us, or de-humanize us, or destroy any part of us--it will allow us to be what we want to be, more than ever before.
Okay, I sound like I'm evangelizing now, and I'm drifting off-topic. I recommend the book. It's got some very interesting ideas.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
See, Super Mario Brothers 2 didn't suck, it was really a end-of-world prophecy.
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I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.