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Stephen Hawking Asks The Internet a Question
An anonymous reader writes "Dr. Stephen Hawking received about 15000 answers to a question he posted 2 days ago on Yahoo Answers. His question was 'How can the human race survive the next hundred years?'." I imagine you can do better than 'It Can't.' How would you answer Dr. Hawking's question?
'How can the human race survive the next hundred years?'
Birthcontrol, ween of dependence on high energy consumption and colonise the solar system, because we sure aren't going to get along forever on this rock alone.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Given those three issues, it seems probable that we may not make it another hundred years without severe loss of life. I don't think the loss of life will be complete with the death of all humans but I think there is a high probability for a large loss of our populations in one country or another. I don't mean thousands like natural disasters but I mean a hundred million or more.
We'll survive, just not at a luxury like we've known. Honestly, if a lot of major religions and their leaders could start coming to terms with each other. You know, make it so that it's not like a death sentence when you don't believe in God or Allah? You could also reveal to everyone that our leaders should be more like Gandhi and less like Hitler. That would probably help with those first two problems. In every country, to be a successful politician you need a lot of financial support. Unfortunately, the ideal people leading us are those with no interest in padding their own pockets.
As for the third problem you listed, we're screwed. We're screwed because our numbers are reaching epic proportions that the earth cannot sustain and there's really no way around it aside from birth control. I don't support enforced birth control as far as the Chinese have taken it but you have to admit it certainly curbed their population growth rate. If nature fails us or vice versa, things will be pretty bad though I doubt we would become extinct entirely.
Of course, there are an infinite number of universes and I'm sure there exists one which doesn't have any of those three problems
*loads a bullet into the chamber of his handgun*
My work here is dung.
We have to stop being a desposable consumerist society. I.e. we have to live more simply. Now I'm not saying that we all need to be organic gardeners who tailor their own clothes and live directly off the land. I'm very much a metropolitan technologist, but I think that consumption purely for the sake of consumption is our biggest problem. The real question is if the market can correct this or if the market will dig such a deep hole that it doesn't react until the shit hits the fan.
next hundred years?
By installing Linux of course!
Keep on doing what we have been doing for the last 100,000 or so years. Eating, pooping, fornicating, killing each other and creating stuff. Stick to the basics and we will do just fine. Don't believe the doomsday predictions Stevie, there is always going to be a guy with a sign that says, "The end of the world is nigh".
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Whether intentional or not, a huge reduction in population
would do the trick.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Put some people in nuclear-powered hypothermic suspension tanks in a remote part of the world. They'll probably still be alive in 100 years... though it's questionable whether there will be anyone else left to revive them.
good ol' pandemic. A real nasty beast of a bug.
Kill off a couple billion, and we'll be good to go for a while.
What?
A little Cold War, depending on technology to overcome our shortcomings, and a fair amount of luck.
The answer is spirituality, establishment of a world where materialism will be subdued by the spiritual matters. The establishment of the society where consumerism will be frowned at. The answer is walk, not race, think more than act.
Once the world government becomes reality it will immediately transform the economic system from highly internationally competitive firmly capitalistic to more reasonable more socially oriented system.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
There would be no way we would need to ask this question if it wasn't for the arrival of civilization.
It is a given that we will not change, and that will wipe a lot of us out in the next 100 years, but not all of humanity. We are not on the brink of extinction. There may not be 6 billion people on earth in 2106, but there will be people.
How ya like dat?
As silly as it sounds...we will survive just like we always have. One day at a time.
There have been plenty of forecasters of doom saying that the earth would run out of space, food, energy and whatnot and the population continues to expand.
We'll muddle our way through the next 100 years just like we have the few thousand prior to this one.
The only solution I can think of involves legalizing, rather, mandating drugs and banning clothes...
My name is Wootzor von Leetenhaxor
Humans are like cockroaches. We've infected every corner of the globe, and we're not going away. However, if we are to survive and prosper for the next century and hopefully longer, there's going to be some big changes. My boyfriend and I were talking, and following the depletion of oil resources (and not before), we'll see a massive centralization of cities, mostly on coasts, and a move towards renewable energy sources. Cars will never go away; they have too much momentum (no pun intended). But when this happens, we'll see much more of a community feel, as everyone will be in much closer quarters. The massive towers in Dubai and Kuala Lampur (sp?) are good examples of this, and will propogate into the next century as we won't have the finances to get around. Cities like Los Angeles will become a thing of the past, as it will no longer be feasible to have your suburban house with a white picket fence. With this, we'll see a lot of changes. Society will be permanently altered. But as Gloria Gaynor said, "we will survive". If we want to extend ourselves to Mars and the moons of the gas giants, we'll need to perfect the biodome, to be able to live independently. Interstellar travel is out of the question, and always will be. We should give up on it and focus on going to Mars, Europa, and some of the other moons. -sigh-
Amongst other fundamental values, I consider justice the most important.
I also believe that you can not hope to have justice for yourself without asking for justice for everyone else (I believe there is a famous quote that say exactly that).
If you dont want justice for everyone, you are a tyrant!
Any one trying to answer this question seriously is breaking out the 50 cent words. Did he say 100 years? In the past 100 years there's been two world wars, super bombs have been invented, a cold war, etc. Real question should be: "How did we survive the last 100 Years?" If we survived through all that we'll survive the next 100 years just fine.
Answer: By shear force of will
If he wants a more detailed answer than that, he should ask a more detailed question. As any historian can tell you, the "social, political, and environmental chaos" he refers to is absolutely nothing new. The only difference between then and now is that our toys are bigger and shinier.
Pick any period in human history, and I think you'll find that it's easy to define "social, political, and environmental chaos" that worked against the residents of the period. In fact, the conditions that humans have found acceptable in past periods of history are regularly referred to as "squalor" in this day and age. Yet there are precious few examples of civilizations that were wiped out by such conditions.
Yes, the human race makes a lot of messes. Sometimes we stumble across messes that aren't our own doing. Any way you cut it, though, humans will always react to a problem before it reaches the level of self-destruction. Our instict for survival is too strong to do otherwise.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The same way we've survived the past few hundred thousand years--by breeding.
This guy's the limit!
Unite the world under the United States government and turn anyone who would resist into a gaping whole in the ground. Nuclear Winter? Meh, it will simply encourage Hydroponic food production! Public backlash? Hell, nuke them too! I'll just run to the safety of Cheyenne Mountain and hop through the Stargate to wait on another planet...
Government's view of the economy: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving,regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
Grab an asteroid, use solar furnaces to make aluminum, nickle and iron and silicon from the asteroid, drop it to earth as cheap raw materials, and use the mass to attenuate energy incident on earth. Food production should not be a problem unless we can't get rid of all of these little warlords that are killing their people so they can get the newest ak47 shipment from Russia or China. The raw materials can be directly converted to energy--aluminum--or used to make new solar cells cheaper with higher purity silicon. Also, get as much of humanity off of the planet as we can--preferably working in mining, production, or other activities offworld.
i am so very tired....
Humans have survived through ice ages and famine. People often underestimate our ability to adapt and survive. We will survive because we don't want to die
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
And Paul Erlich 35 years ago? Humans invent new solutions and cope. They've even become fabulously wealthy compared to the 18th century.
Tenacity.
Sure, over the past 150-200 years much of the world has fallen into the habit of putting up with what's "good enough", because it's damned hard to fight for what you believe in, what is right, all the time.
To survive the next hundred years, we're going to need to go back to that struggle.
Random quick thoughts:
Evidence is clear that we are downsizing and going towards a more 3rd world kind of world. There is a greater disparity between the classes. The "lower classes" have access to stuff that they never did before, and it is pissing off the upper ones. What the lower class people can do today that was not true even 20 years ago:
Access good information for practically free. To include music, video, and factual information in seconds with a simple google search. Books used to be things for the very wealthy, and took _a long time_ to circulate. Then came the printing press, then came the internet.
Access to damn good stuff at much lower prices than the wealthy used to get. Think about it, and iPod full of MP3s costs less than a decent receiver did in the 70s. Is the quality as good? No/maybe, but its good enough for most people, and the quantity speaks volumes.
So, how will we survive?
Quite well. The tension is tight right now. Governments are losing their power, and thus are trying harder to reestablish their old strangle hold, but they have no real power outside of servicing us with things like basic protection, basic rules/conventions/standards, and things like inexpensive roads and utilities.
Tension is high with the big corps too. They are trying harder to force people to keep paying their extortion and liking it! But we simply have more means of getting away from their strangle hold no matter how tight they try, and hell, if they figure out a way to force us to pay high prices for something that should not be high anymore, then we will just not participate. End of debate.
People with housing and food don't revolt. Ones without those things will!
Food is a done deal. Even a homeless person eating out of a trash can in the US eats better than many people in the world. Housing is getting tough. That is really the ones in control's last trump card. But again, when people can't have a place to live, they will start crashing in rich people's yards and garages or simply take over the rich person's house!
My brain is going faster than my fingers...
The best way to survive the next 100 years is to stop running from the imaginary boogeymen of the LAST 100 years. We have this suicidal fascination with birth control and population reduction. In reality, birth rates are plumetting all over the world. An if it wasn't for immigration, the population of most propserous nations would be in rapid decline. In the U.S. the average couple has only 1.4 children. Without immigration from third world countries, the U.S. would be depopulating at a rate of 30% every 25 years.
Exacerbating this is the profile of who is reproducing. In our welfare state, we pay the least functional and arguably least intelligent segments of our population (this is not racist - 75% of welfare recipients are not african americans) to sit around and breed. The only part of the population demographic that is growing is the poor and dependent.
The crisis of the next 100 years will not be global warming or toxic waste or nuclear fallout. It will be vast armies of stupid belligerent parasites with their hands out demanding to be fed and clothed by a shrinking pool of intelligent functional human beings.
The next world crisis is the crisis of de-evolution!
To survive, we must institute emergency programs of tax relief and education to encourage intelligent people to BREED, for the sake of humanity.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
Because.
When a man lies he murders a part of the world.
Stop manufacturing Hummers and get to work on those Hybrids. Get western troops out of the east and attempt solutions through diplomacy and education on BOTH sides of the pond. Stop packaging everything with more plastic and paint than the actual product. Find methods of getting donations of food to Africa that dont get taxed to the last grain before arrival. Find methods of levelling the economy so the poor arent as poor, and the rich aren't as rich.
>> I imagine you can do better than 'It Can't.'
Sometimes the correct answer is really boring.
First, educate all women until 20, minimum. Educated women raise daughters with higher ambitions who have smaller families. Female education is probably the most successful family planning technique and the reason (IMO) for the so-called fertility drop-off in many countries.
/Posting anonymously
Second, provide free extreme sports for guys between the ages of 15 and 25, without safety equipment.
Remove human decision from selection process and start killing. Eliminate about 2/3 of existing human population, and the planet might actually be viable again.
It is difficult for me to imagine that this question was posted by Dr. Hawking. The answer is self evident. However, the answer is simply this: The human race will survive the next 100 years exactly as it survived the last 100 years.
There is nothing new in political conflict, racial discord, religious fanaticism or just plain hatred of anyone that is different. This has been an integral part of what we are and has, unfortunately, been greatly responsible for our development. As much as we would like to deny it; hatred is as much a part of what we are as is our capacity for benevolence.
If the conflicts of the last 100 years have not destroyed us; then I think it highly unlikely that the next 100 years will have any significant impact on totality of humans.
How can't the human race last the next 100 years?
God spoke to me.
From Yahoo answers, my personal answer:
Humanity has shown itself capable of adapting to an incredible variety of situations, conditions, and hardships. One way or another, I am quite confident that humanity will endure through the next one hundred years.
That being said, the circumstances of this continued survival may be quite different or unpleasant compared to what many people experience today. I believe that humanity needs to come together in a constructive manner and really address some of the many problems we as a species face, from global climate change to the vast poverty, hunger, and disease suffered by much of the world. Until a truly unified approach is taken by all the world's nations, any progress will be piecemeal and incremental.
Alternatively, as you yourself suggested, human colonization of extra-terrestrial worlds by a subset of humanity is an option, however under today's socio-political climate, such an endeavor would likely be limited to a few of the world's more wealthy nations.
I know there's more than enough cynicism to go around, but Dr. Hawking's question was only asking how the human race can survive the next 100 years. Not 1000 or 10,000.
Does anyone really think that there is even the slightest chance of the human race becoming extinct in the next 100 years? (Excepting act of God events like a large asteroid strike or supervolcano) Even the most dire global warming alarmists don't predict the extinction of mankind in the next century.
I expect that in 100 years civilization will look a lot like it does today. India and China will be richer, the US and Europe will be a little poorer and the geeks of the future will have some toys that would make us green with envy.
The real question is, how can any of us reading this survive another 100 years?
The fiery ritual of Carousel. Will you be renewed?
Too late, they know where you live now!
Presently, there are two things that can destroy humanity:
- Fully blown nuclear war.
- A giant freakin' asteroid.
Everything else is pretty much a non-threat when the continued existance of humanity itself (humanity ; not your favorite country) is concerned.
So, nukes. Full blown nuclear war is less of a threat than it's ever been. A nuke here, a nuke there, tragic, but not threatening to the species. The problem I see is that there's no more MAD.
Back in the day, if the US first-strike'd Russia, the US wouldn't have been able to take out everything and would've been destroyed in turn. (And vice versa.) That many nukes, of course, would've been quite problematic for the planet.
Now, however, the cold war is over. The only thing that prevents the continuous use of large-scale nuclear weapons is bad publicity and morality. I hate to drag Godwin into this, but bad PR didn't stop Hitler, nor did morality. To think those two things will prevent a full blown nuclear conflict (or more likely, repeated smaller conflicts) is laughable at best.
We need a return to MAD. MAD as it was won't work. However, a pact stating that any country deploying a nuclear weapon (ala ICBM, city-destroying bomb, et cetera) will immediately be declared war upon and attacked by every other nation in the world, eh, it'd provide a bit more security.
Sad that assurance of annihilation is the only thing that will prevent man from using nuclear weapons against man, but hey - it's been proven to work.
Now, asteroids. You've got me there. I really don't trust NASA to save us from a planet-killer. However, one would hope that between all space-faring nations, something could be come up with to save us.. I'd say, for now, the best thing we can do is to work on developing even better 'early warning' systems. The sooner we know, the more time we have to devise a way to prevent our planet from being ripped a new arsehole by a giant chunk of space rock.
does it matter if the human race lives another hundred years? nature has a plan and that plan is unknown to any of us. it is possible that our species will be extinct in a hundred years and i don't see a problem with that.
please me, have no regrets.
Such as: Banning gay marriage, flag-burning, forcefully installing basterdized democracies....oh the list goes on and on
Our survival as a species has nothing to do with us colonizing other planets or technological advances... until we learn how to do two simple things our future will always be uncertain.
... all that junk about colonizing other planets, or limiting our population growth will not do anything except postpone what everyoine fears.
1) We need to treat everyone as we ourselves would like to be treated.
2) We must strive to develop a sustainable society.
Somewhere in this or the next century, everyone in this world is going to some hybrid form of Indians and Chinese. You may run now but sooner or later they're going to hump you. You may as well help the process along....
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
It would not be difficult. Nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plant life. Animals could be bred and... SLLLLAAAAUTERRRED.
/usr/games/fortune
Take away his 'blink switch' so that he may simply live!
(and leave the living to us bipeds as we see fit) :)
Seriously, he probably uses more hardware than any of us for basic life support. If it's good enough for him, it's good enough for you and me. Just consuming oxygen is not an option!
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
Never ever say "That's something we don't want/need to know." Investigate and study everything.
I think in the coming century, we'll continue to see the world's population increase. It will come in a different kind of environmental revolution; we won't just be changing the environment around us anymore, we'll start changing the environment in us. We'll become more resilient, self-relient, and broaden the conditions in which we can exist in an enviroment and when that happens, we'll be able to inhabit new places on the globe and start to move beyond.
Demented But Determined.
Gets me through life...
with a STFU n00b! Like OMGWTFBBQ!
There's a little bit of social commentary I think some of the Slashdot population should pay attention to. (Myself included.)
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I think the pattern is that humans follow a path of least resistance until a need arises. It is understandable to look at humankind and say that we are headed for a crisis, and there will most likely be one. But what happens at that crisis period is a matter of debate. When global warming becomes an obvious crisis to nearly every human on the planet there will be change. Once the need for unification becomes apparent, it will happen. Whether circumstances will allow reversal is a question beyond my ken, but my feeling is that humans will continue doing what we're doing until we hit a critical point. Then people will change, as needed, until the next crisis. Populations will grow, people will die, and problems will be dealt with locally until it is necessary for things to change. And I don't have any particular faith in humanity, except that we do what is necessary when problems arise.
Does the Earth run linux?
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
I'm still crossing my fingers. I bet my immune system against bird flu. Whom else is with me?
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
would have been to answer him as soon as possible with "First post!"
100,000 years ago up until the 1930s, there were no nuclear bombs. We only had technology to inflict localized damage on our fellow man and planet. Now there are enough nukes to wreck the planet, advancement in biology such that we now have the capability to create biological weapons on a wide scale. Also, in the last 200 and 300 years, industrial society has exploded and we've seen rapid deforestation and ecological carelessness on a massively wide scale.
The situation is vastly different, and failing to acknowledge that is naive.
I work with criminals and with those accused of crimes. Most of the violent crimes stem from a lack of humility on the part of the accused. Many assaults stem from someone calling someone a name or talking poorly about their life situation (be it money, race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, etc.). Many arguments stem from this same cause, wars start in this manner and hatred of one another also stems from people not being about to accept another's viewpoint and exercise a little humility.
We as a species need to stop taking everything so seriously. If someone calls you a Jerk or an Ass, well then get over it. If someone speaks poorly of your office, take it in stride. Stop focusing on the little things so much.
Lastly, we need to settle our differences upfront and in an urgent manner. Holding grudges never leads to anything good. Throughout the course of our existence as a species we have seen that slavery, poverty, starvation and famine, greed and tyranny have all lead us down the wrong path. Many have benefited from all those situations but many more (countless more) have been wronged. Had we offered our food, our money, our help, our humanity to those in need early on we would probably never be having this discussion. The only reason for this question to be asked is that there is a problem, a problem of great magnitude. If we would all take a step back and attempt to work our differences out in a peaceful manner, questions of this manner will not exist 100 years from now.
In classic Slashdot form I need to nerd this up a bit, so here is a quote that we can all appreciate. "They are a great people, Kal-El; they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason, above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you, my only son." The human race does not need a super-being savior (not yet anyway) we need to lead ourselves to a better existence.
... and do things even when they do not directly benefit ... do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
meaning, each person, and forget about what anyone else is doing.
that is all
If we can't manage to deal with each other here in the relative abundance of Earth, how could we possibly have less social or political problems in the fragile and resource starved environments of spacecraft and extra-terrestrial habitats? If we are to survive, it will be dealing with our problems here, not running from them like some 21st century Thoreau.
The question is not "survive?" Humans as a species are pretty bombproof and there will almost certainly be humans around several hundred years from now regardless of where our madness takes us, even if they're starveling primitives.
The question is: How do we survive over the long term (100Myears+) WITH TECHNOLOGY AND KNOWLEDGE INTACT?
Even if they are form a bad source.
Don't Panic.
By making sure people are too busy answering silly questions on Yahoo, thus preventing them from procreating. Or getting them hooked on Warcraft.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
I would propose that there is no answer. His question is flawed in it's presumtion that mankind is or will be technically and socially advanced enough to effect any manner of control upon it's own fate. Frankly it seems preposterous to even pose such a question in a global climate where we are still arguing over things as petty as religous and social differences.
Throwing a nuke over the wall is optional.
The human race is not even close to its demise. Unless Dr Hawkings is speaking about nuclear war or some other plague on humanity, our LIFE CRITICAL resources are not so close to their end. The question is how will the quality of life be as good as it is today in one hundred years. We do not need cheap easy transportation to live, we need it for quality of life. Mankind has thrived for thousands of years on virtually no technology at all, and it only made us stronger. It is a shame that some people insist on telling such dishonest predictions of doom that it trivializes the cause. I hear things like this and it makes it sound like the entire fight for the future is a sham, but I know that is not the case at all. The question does apply, if you mean a thousand years or a million, humanity is reaching an end and we do not want to hand our descendants a lesser world than the one we were born into. Aside from technological breakthroughs, there is no way for humanity to continue increasing in population without totally destroying the possibility of having some degree of equilibrium between us and our environment. It would be irresponsible to continue at this rate only equipped with unfounded hopes of colonizing on other planets and invention of effective fusion reactors. Population control is clearly the only possibility that we can actually count on. To have a child, you need two people. Two children per couple should be sufficient for any family, especially considering the consequences of over population. This balance can be tweaked according to resources and current population, but keep in mind that many people will chose not to have children at all, so 2 children per couple could effectively DECREASE the population. China has already had to make this move and pulled it off only because they are not a democracy. Clearly any American politician would be slaughtered to recommend similar solutions to population control, so the best we can do for now is be honest about expectations and try to share with as many people as possible that our descendants will have better future if we do not introduce them into a crowded planet with no hope of letting up. This is just going to be one of those things that we have to share the knowledge with others before we can expect policy to become effective.
The number one problem we have today that gets in the way of world peace is religion. The number one problem we have that gets in the way of sustaining our existence is consumerism. Beyond curbing these two major problems we will only make existence miserable for the next 100 years. And we will survive for at least the next 100 years, but who knows how long it will take for the earth to come back to balance... /gam/
"In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they are not."
No, seriously.
We have become very proficient in surviving. We can do well in almost any climatic condition, from extreme dry, to extreme humidity, extreme heat or extreme cold.
If we discard giant asteroids and total nuclear war, it becomes difficult to imagine an scenario of human race extinction. Even in the case of pandemia, the sheer number of human beings makes it very possible that some were naturally immune.
Maybe someone has a better idea?
Colonisation off-world seems to be the only answer I can see. As technology becomes more potent it's only a matter of time until the power to destroy the human race can be held in one person's hands.
I'm no healthnut, but I'm interested: www.healthbolt.net
Mandatory reversible sterilization world wide, when people are ready and can afford children allow them, the main problem with human survival is the humans, reduce their number and the problem becomes manageable, step 2 is exactly what Stephen said we have to move out and off this world as they say "all your eggs in one basket is a bad idea" the third is to stop making major decisions based on "will it sell or not" stop making crucial world affecting decisions based on financial aspects alone.
Abolish corporations as they exist today or at least change the laws that define corporations.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I'm sorry - mod me into the ground, but this question is just childish.
Start by getting rid of religious extremism. That requires getting rid of religion, and that may not be a bad thing.
Proper question would have been:
Should the human race survive the next one hundred years?
Answer must include supporting reasons.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
As much as I dislike it, I think the best chance for survival is a "1984" like Big Brother society that monitors everything. Otherwise when we cross that technological line where a small group of people could do something to end life was we know it (biowarfare in your basement, planet cracking bomb, etc.), some group somewhere will.
mind control and planetary ion shield
Who cares? Humans are doomed anyway, in the long term, so why worry about one specific interval in time? I mean, either the universe is going to expand forever and die of heat death, or it's going to collapse into a singularity. Either case will surely destroy any living creatures...
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
If we survive (by I mean survive - not the mere existence of humans scratching out a living, but a technological society of some description) in the long term, it will be purely by luck.
Take the current issues: the possibility of cheap oil running out, and climate change.
Unfortunately we're not a hive mind. It takes individual actions to actually address these issues. People whine about climate change, and how the US isn't in $INSERT_TREATY_HERE - when they aren't personally prepared to sign up to their own personal Kyoto.
The trouble is this: you can give up your car and make a difference that is so small it's simply impossible to measure - but at the same time take a MASSIVE degradation in lifestyle, or continue driving. In this car example, everyone has to give up at once. But since we're not a hive mind it won't happen, and people just won't do it on an individual basis because they know it doesn't matter unless everyone else does it at the same time.
We may get lucky. The price in oil may increase at a rate where it doesn't simply cause economic collapse, but instead results in market forces that cause people to seek alternatives. We might not get lucky, and the economy might collapse in ruins and take with it our technological society. The trouble is we are no more in control of our destiny than a dog on this scale because we're not a hive mind and won't all simultaneously change our lifestyles to address oncoming problems.
We may get lucky on climate change - the world may get warmer and wetter (although it'll suck for Bangladesh, and undoubtedly Africa will take it in the shorts as it always does) and agriculture may become more productive. Or we might get unlucky and things get hotter and dryer. The thing is we're not willing to do anything worthwhile to address the problem - because people aren't willing to do anything about it on an individual level. People aren't even motivated to do really easy things that don't even impact their lifestyle.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
We need is a catastrophic nuclear war to cull the weak and overpopulated nations, and leave those left at a bronze age level of technological sophistication.
Get the space program(s) ramped back up, start exploring further out, and start colonizing. Get the human race spread out are far as possible.
we've survived so far without answering this question.
i suspect that by each of us trying our damndest to survive until tomorrow,
we have a good chance at another 100 years.
that's probablly the same as an old bagle maker told me. cave men
didn't survive by eating what was good for them. they survived by
eating what didn't kill them immediately.
Through overwhelming redundancy and superior firepower.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
Nuke all arabs immediately.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Redundancy. Problem is, it'll take a hundred years to establish viable, self-sustaining populations out there...
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
"No, but M$ runs the world!"
"There's project on sourceforge, but the Earth Assembly Language is proprietary"
"Yeah, but can you play Quake on it?"
"Can you imagine a Beowulf Cluster of those?"
Minimally to survive another 100 years, some of us have to keep fucking, and some of us have to keep farming. Everything else is embellishment.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
The quaint notion that those who are poor or needy are genetically inferior to those who are successful is called social darwinism - a theory in vogue around the turn of the century and popularized by the industrial robber barons of the day to justify their ruthless exploitation of the their workers. Unfortunately, their was not a shred of scietific evidence to support this self serving theory then nor is there any such evidence now. Please refrain from trying to revive this long discredited pseudoscientific theory. It has about as much validity as intelligent design. And by the way, unless you are related to a Rockefeller or Pullman, your ancestors and those of the overwhelming majority of the current upper middle class were among those considered genetically inferior and worthy of extinction.
I think one of, if not the most, destructive element of humanity that is causing the most threat to our survival as a race is the lust for power rather than progress.
Groups of individuals interested in progress and health have no incentive to fight, cause problems, revolt, steal, or destroy. They want to behave in a way that will best contribute to the prosperity of themselves and those around them. I think a vast majority of the political and social problems we face stem from individuals recklessly seeking and attaining power. From Sudanian warlords, to American politicians and businessmen, the lust for power without regard for proress is what is destroying us.
The answer to this? I'm not entirely sure. The best I can come up with is to create and enforce political institutions that prevent the concentration of power, and encourage a culture of education, thought, and progress for individuals and society.
Surely he means human species?
And the answer is: By shear numbers.
FRA: STFU GTFO
Humanity will survive.
As different as things look today as they did from 100 years ago, the world of the next century will be drastically different.
If population growth continues and the predicted economic rise of China and India also continue then the standard of living for most of the rest of the world will decline. We will not be able to continue our lifestyles as we have today.
Meat will be a luxury for rare occasions as global warming reduces arable land and animal to human disease transmission becomes more and more frequent. In fact, meat may be entirely removed from our diet, replaced with a simulated product, or just cut back severely due to the amount of fertile land it takes to grow a cow the old fashioned way.
Oil will become scarce and pollution an order of magnitude worse because we seem to believe that profits and progress are more important than sustainable growth. This will lead to a plateau and then degradation of the life expectancy despite anything medical science can do, though there will be advances made against disease, especially cancer and possibly even heart disease and diabetes.
The rise of Pervasive Development Disorders will lead to a significant portion of our society requiring additional care and structured living conditions. Perhaps progress will be made in understanding why this problem is growing.
No more 20 minute showers, or cruising in your 8 cylinder vehicle. No more fat juicy steaks every Friday. Sadly reality TV will be replaced with something worse and advertising will be even more pervasive and hard to escape from.
North America will still be relatively wealthy if those countries adopt some protectionism and reduce oil consumption. Europe will have less luck with their affluence due to the proximity of poorer nations. South America will probably manage to make economic gains as well given their abundant natural resources providing no wars develop and these countries manage their growing organized crime. The middle east will continue it's magnificent overspending until the wells run dry and then if no work was put into sustainable infrastructure development, the region will become one of the world's poorest. The west and east both will turn their backs on them and remember them as fools. Don't take that the wrong way - they have almost 100 years of prosperity ahead of them and as long as they build on it correctly they can create a sustainable economy. But they depend too heavily on their primary export and have little else in the way of natural resources. There are a few things on the go along those lines but at present there is a huge amount of waste there too. Asia is where things are the most interesting. Russia will probably continue on more or less the same, not as powerful as it once was but still a strong nation. China, India, Korea, Japan and the other powerful members of that region will all be vying for a shrinking amount of petroleum and other natural resources and dealing with intense population pressure. If any of the larger countries suffers enough pressure, war or collapse will result.
It's going to be very interesting.
As for space - we had the momentum in the 60s and early 70s but squandered it. I think, sadly, that humanity has blown it's chance for the solar system, let alone the stars. Perhaps China can get the US back into the game but it's doubtful we'll ever colonize another planet now.
If a major epidemic or war occurs to reduce the population pressure or break the economic model that seems to be forming up, then all bets are off. And of course is a rogue comet comes along, we'll be awfully sorry we let the ball drop.
This sig contains a manual self-destruct. Kindly please put your foot through your monitor in 8 seconds.
Life in general manages to find some way to survive, regardless of how harsh the conditions it's exposed to may be.
Humanity is the same. The world may end up being completely unrecognizable to us, but I think humans will persist regardless of what ever trials they're exposed to. I think more of a concern is how specific nations and cultures will survive.
I don't subscribe to the overly simplistic, idealistic proposals some people put foward. Most of these just aren't realistic. We're dealing with human nature. If humans were perfect any form of government would work; if humans were perfect we wouldn't even need a government. But they aren't, this universe sometimes just isn't a pretty place. Regardless, I think humans will do whatever it takes to survive.
If we go extinct it's because of forces far beyond our control.
Dear Mr. Hawking,
I'm sure you have your hands full reading all those answers, so I'm not counting on you
to find this message, but here is my opinion.
1. The human race can survive if mainstream conduct allows and encourages alternative avenues with emphathis on saving resources. Think taking a step backward from motorized commuting, as it may not lead us into the right direction. Taking a step backward and considering the energy savings, and considering these real savings for the planet's existence.
2. The internet offers great potential in realising savings of energy and resources but its downfall is that people become isolated and socially degraded by using it. It can only be of help if it is in the hands of the people and not corporations or governments. Due to the social degradation the Internet/Matrix will reside more in the hands of a hierarchial powerstructure and impose restrictions and spying due to a fear of collapse of this model.
3. Resource savings, resource savings, resource sey'll think the dirty thirties of the 20th century was nothing, but the next generation that grows up "poor" will learn to live with what they have and make the best of it and innovate. Hopefully not in military advances (since militarys usually are the biggest energy/resource wasters there is) but rather in how to make the best of your resources and make it socially contributive to the whole world.
Thanks for giving me an ear.
One in the many.
I didn't even finish the first page before having to click out of it. Every other answer is "we need to all be friends and share world resources."
If that isn't choke-on-your-own-bullshit stupidity, I don't know what is. It's human nature to want power over something (economical, social, political, etc) and gaining it means struggle against others which in turn means you're going to piss off someone. Communism didn't work multiple times over: stop trying to make it work.
The human race is very resilient, and we are near the top in the list of most resilient species. In order to threaten the species, a very large, world wide, cataclismic event has to occur, such as the sun exploding, or asteroid slamming into us, or a large scale nuclear war.
Earthquakes,Tsunami, Hurricanes, terrorist attacks, and pandemics scare the shit out of people, because they are very dangerous to an individual person. As far as the species as a whole is concerned this is a nosebleed. We've always had to deal with them, it's just gotten better and easier to do so in the modern era.
So basically, in order to survive the next hundred years, as a species, I suggest we take all the nukes on the planet, put them into orbit, and design a guidance tracking system to shoot them at passing asteroids, all the while trying to enhance our ability to track asteroids coming close to us and improving our ability to live in space (or find another habitable world). That will take care of all the big things I can think of.
The only wild card in this is in global warming. The question becomes if the climate changes too rapidly, will we as a species be able to adapt? It's unclear if global warming will cause massive climate change and thus endanger the species so quickly. As such my last suggestion is to beat every world leader over the head until they accept the fact that drastic climate change is occuring, that it's danger is on the level of a nuclear winter, and that we need to dedicate lots of independent resources (I.E. leave the fucking oil companies out of it) to study it.
Having the ability to beat every world leader over the head, however, will solve all the other more managable disasters on this planet and we should be able to live in a utopia by the 22nd century.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?
Do nothing. Or rather, keep doing what we're doing. Chaos is the natural state of the world and it has been for longer than the human race has been around. We found ways to solve or live with yesterday's problems and there is no reason to believe we won't do the same with today's.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
No matter what our answer to the question is we all will be dead 100 years from now. Even if you give the right answer you are not going to get the credit on time.
I am not a very religious man but, I am a man of faith; I do believe in God and by extension, I believe in my fellow man and the planet that God created and provided for us. For eons we have survived, and even thrived in what at times seems like a very hostile environment. We have learned a great deal from those who came before us and, I am sure that those who come after us will continue to build on what we have learned and will also learn how to avoid the mistakes that we have made. This after all is the very nature of man and is what really sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom (many of whom will also survive the next hundred years).
Not only am I convinced that we will survive for another century, I also have faith that we will thrive like we never have before. Advances in medicine will find cures for many illnesses, advances in technology will address many of the problems that vex us today will be resolved. If we run out of oil, we will deal with it with the ingenuity that our species is known for, probably with the help of technology and perhaps with societal pressures to conserve and use resources wisely.
All of this is well and good but it is not enough alone to assure our survival for another century! With rouge nations and terrorist organizations that have the power and technology to take many lives we need something more. Sadly, it is conceivable that the next war could be one of "biblical proportions" that could wipe out mankind. We need to make sure that our world leaders are bright, well advised men that do not operate in a vacuum.
Finally, I will get to the one thing that convinces me that mankind in general will make it for the next millennia. That one thing is love. I know it sounds schmaltzy but, it is a unifying force that will drive us towards a more perfect world. We want to make the world a better place, not necessarily for us but for our children and their children. While people aren't perfect, God gave us one thing that is - love. In the end, it is our love that will triumph. Our fallibility as humans will stop short of destroying us because we will realize that those who we love need to be protected from destruction. As a people, we will not destroy ourselves. Perhaps this is not very scientific but it is a deep truth.
There will be a massive reduction in population, but we'll survive. Nuclear war, mass food shortages, pandemic... something. But those don't kill everyone. There will be some that will survive. (6 billion of any creature is hard to kill off for good.) Maybe those that don't die will have more sense than our leaders today.
Or maybe not.
Stephen Hawking did not ask "The Internet" a question. He basically posted a topic on some stupid Yahoo! message board and got some farktards to answer.
I had expected him to take a more interesting approach such as compiling statistics of everything that is happening on the Internet (rate of expansion of social networks, number of idiots blowing themselves up in their garages, and etc.) and making some predictions based on information derived from said statistics.
Whatever...
http://www.bynarystudio.com
Three words: tin foil hats.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
Replace television with interactive media which encourage thinking.
Replace television with open alternatives which encourage democratic participation, as in open source.
Make every participant an actor, but let them decide how to act -- don't force people into predetermined roles, or roles they are uncomfortable with.
Encourage bottom-up instead of top-down management and government.
Nobody else looks at it from the viewpoint of a sysadmin of history.
I do mirgration, old to new..and the problems are the same, the old interface is scewin stuff up on the new hardware implementation.
People are more important than little green pieces of paper and ideas are more important than downloading porn.
There has to be a GPL interface for power and wealth, accounting and education.
A generation is marked often at 30 years, we need a 40 year human rights & democracy project.
just like last time.
I believe the key to human survival is to actively seek and explore solutions that benefit humanity as a whole. All this political talk with North Korea seeking attention doesn't really do anything to help the world. KJI wants more money, more power, and more global attention. How will we benefit if he succeeds?
I also believe politics is doing more harm than good in the long run. People side with Democratic issues simply because they are Democratic. Abortion, gun control, etc. They are issues that humans are dealing with right now, but deciding whether or not people can abort their babies is not really a step forward in human evolution.
I am for genetic modification/engineering, space pioneering, and spending incredible amounts of money on aeronautics. Pretty much everything that hippies are against. Imagine a world where humans are immune to every disease, mosquito bites don't itch, deformities are "fixed" while still in the womb (not by killing the baby, but by modifying its genetic structure). All of these people who are against genetic manipulation will only prevent a race of humans that are superior in every way. I'm not talking about choosing certain physical traits of your children, but fixing real and debilitating problems that arise because of crappy genes.
Genetically enhanced food is also key to human survival. Why would I spend more on "organic" food that doesn't taste as good, has seeds, and is less healthy for me? I'd rather spend less on food that is modified to be large, tasty, and nutritious. Do people really think that in 10,000 years when humans are flying around in Starships that they'll be raising "organic" food on the ship because it's healthier?
I also believe modifying our planet is in our best interests. It's playing with Nature, but who says we can't? Find a way to control the weather so farmers can get rain 300 days of the year, prevent tsunamis that kill half a million people, stop earthquakes that demolish centuries of architecture.
Another thing that is key to our survival is something that Dr. Hawking has already mentioned: finding ways to live on other planets. Terraforming other planets to be habitable is something that we need to start doing within the next 100 years. I don't think humans were meant to live on earth until their extinction. We might kill ourselves within the next 100 years due to some political differences that cause a nuclear war, but I truly believe that if we can come together as one species of human instead of focusing on our differences, we can make life a whole helluva lot better for everybody.
Remove all current politicians and public servants from office and throw out all the current governments. Eliminate the entire concept of "nations".
Replace it all with one world-wide government, one that is truly democratic and that truly prevents rich special interests from having undue influence on the process and removes politician's self-interested motives by making their pay low and eliminating repeat terms. Draft a new constitution that guarantees equal rights regardless of people's opinions (religion, political stance, etc) or manner of being (race, sexual orientation, etc).
Then we'll finally have a system in place that will actually be capable of listening to science and facts, treating people ethically, and making real progress on the problems that really matter.
..."It can't" is the correct anmswer. Humanity lacks the maturity and will to learn from our mistakes, and we will drain the resources to act on what we learn pursuing unimportant horseshit. We will pwn ourselves in spectacular fashion. I call dibbs on a front row seat to the end of the world. Save one for me while I get some opocorn.
Looking back though history, we can see several attempts at utopian society. All these attempts have failed. With today's technology we can easily destroy ourselves, and the need for something close to an utopian society to bring peace seems to becoming more and more necessary. The problem is not at the government level or at the family level. The problem is at the individual level. Each one of us has gone beyond the need of self preservation to being selfish, self-centered, and self absorbed. This is the root of our problems, and this eventually corrupts every human institution and undertaking, no matter how noble.
I believe there is a solution to this overwhelming problem. The solution can not be found in ourselves. We would mess it up. We need to seek a higher power. I believe that we have been created and that we have a creator, God. I believe that he has the solution. Jesus Christ came into the world to show us God and how much he loves us. That he did and he died for our wrong doing and rose from the dead to show us that he has a good life for us. Believing in him, starts a process of changing us and removing that self centeredness. His spirit dwelling in us enables us to change. That is the only hope we have. (Note churches are human institutions that are subject to the same corruption.)
It's one heck of a design problem. I was originally an aerospace engineer, but I've shifted my focus to work on precisely this problem. It's both the most challenging and the most important problem facing us right now.
The short answer, I believe, lies with biomimicry and a respect for the limitations of natural systems. Nature designs for the long term, and we can learn from those techniques.
For additional references, I would point you to the links on my home page.
As a final note, I would suggest that a design horizon of 100 years is a bit on the short side. 100 years really isn't a very long time, and I think there's a decent chance we could muddle through the next 100 years doing more or less what we have been doing. Thing is, if we do that, we won't make it through the next hundred years.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
I'm mildly offended. "Stephen Hawking asks the internet a question." Since when is Yahoo "the internet?"
As far as I'm concerned, this should have been an "Ask Slashdot", not a Yahoo answers post...
And what did Mr. Gore say?
The answer is so simple to say and understand..
The problem is not food, polution, neither other material problems.
The problem is what people have on their heads as allways would be.
http://www.codingheaven.net/
"In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?"
The world is not in chaos politically, socially or environmentally. All those areas have been improving in the last 100 years. It may seem that it is in chaos because the media has been getting better at reporting the chaos that is still around.
Politically, before World War II, there was a major war every generation. The Iraq war or Vietnam doesn't count as a major war.
Socially, democracy has expanded dramatically as education has improved.
Environmentally, acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer has been dealt with. Polluted land is being cleaned up (I live on land that was once a industrial site). Species are recovering. The same will be applied to 3rd world counties in the next 100 years. I'm sure that CO2 emissions will be reduced once we start running out and technology catches up, just as home heating moved from coal to oil to natural gas.
We are pretty much set until everyone has enough education that they stop reproducing enough. Hopefully we will achieve immortality by then, so it won't matter.
...carefully ;)
_Vishal www.squad9.com
Surviving might be all that humans have left to do once they recklessly and completely deplete the earth's natural resources to further corporate wealth and greed. Then, humans will have to live in their concrete shelters and biodomes, or atleast figure out how to synthesize every single resource the earth gives them naturally.
We must start treating the earth better or surviving is all we are going to be doing in the next 100 years, whether it be hopping to makeshift colonies on other planets or losing the global-warming battle, or starting World War III over the lack of oil.
Personally, I think survival is inevitable, but beyond that, I have major concern for our future generations.
Through modern medicine a great number of people who should have died are living and having children. Their "bad" genes pollute the gene pool in an anti-Darwinism fashion. In addition, with birth control and other advancements and societal influences, the majority of the children are coming from the poor and the stupid, which seems anti-Darwin as well. If this de-evolution continues it will doom the human race. Not in 100 years though.
Reading the answers on that Yahoo page has made me dumber. I could literally feel my brain cells dying.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
It will be only 54 years from now.
and you'll find a huge disparity between the 5-10% or so at the top of the comfort scale, and the rest. Right now the Western world (most of the US + Canada, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea and the Commonwealth) comprises that 5-10%. Guess what? It won't stay that way for too long, it never does. The best you can hope for is a good five hundred to thousand year run, and I think Western civilization might be nearing the end of its spectacular five-century sprint.
Pick any period in human history, and you'll also find a large number of people actively working to cause the end of their particular civilization.
Why is Iraq's fabled "land between the two rivers" a dry dusty desert?
Why is North Africa, the ancient Mediterranean's breadbasket and father of great cities, hardly able to grow enough food to feed its own populations?
Why did the Chacoans up and suddenly disappear after claiming so much of the harsh American Southwest for their cities and farms?
Why did the ancient Mayans leave their cities that required so much labor to construct in the middle of a jungle?
Humans can have an amazing impact on their environment, but it's easy to forget that while we appear to be the masters of Nature. But the two work on completely different timescales.
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
Sorry, Slashdot, but Yahoo Answers beat you to the punch on this one.
You might as well weep into the towel, throw it in, then wring it out in the Backslash area.
a United Federation of Planets. In which, money has no value and people work only to better themselves and their world around them. Too bad Roddenberry never explains how society was ever able to abandon materialism...
Check out the cave on the east side of lake Hylia. Strange and wonderful things live in it.
The question: In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?
:)
My answer: We need to force someone into a spaceship and make it travel at close to the speed of light. Schedule the trip to last an hour (or whatever the proper conversion is for the expected speed) and then have them return to our world.
That time spent up there should be enough to make 100 years elapse on earth. Even if everyone else is dead, we still have that one space cadet - so the human race will have survived.
That is, at least until that one person dies, but that's beyond the scope of the question.
This is not my sig.
Oh, and kill all your hostile neighbors who will take you over when their own resources run out first.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
All the human race? Or just me? ;-) j/k
I don't see a big problem surviving the next 100years (as a race), we'll probably have large popullation loss from the problems we are creating (global warming, war, starvation, etc.), but I don't see that as a bad thing.
Bring it on!
M0571y H@rml355.
I know he's a genius and all, but I think it's overstatement to say earth is "in chaos politically, socially, and environmentally." Compared to history, we're really pretty tame on all fronts. There's a few wars going on, but none on the scale of WWI or II, or older conflicts. There's plenty of social tension in the US and elsewhere, but not as violent as the 60s, and certainly no civil war is imminent. Global warming (or the new term "climate change") is a concern, but humankind survived an ice age and warmer temperatures in the past. So, here's my solution:
Promote free, democratic societies.
Those societies can use the democratic process to bring about political, social and environmental change as the need arises. The alternatives, while they may achieve temporary "fixes" on those fronts, would be far worse in the end.
If China and India start using a gasoline car per adult, we're doomed.
Technology needs to be shared, so that instead of putting a gas station on every corner, developing countrys start with electric cars, efficent power plants, recycling of packaging, etc. etc.
Cutting the birth rate is easy, just eliminate poverty. The wealthier a country is, the lower the birth rate.
The biggest mistake would be for the US to cut ties with countries that do objectional things. By allowing their local government to be the only source of cultural influence, the people may never realize their options. (A filtered Internet is better than no Internet at all)
The pay rate in India is climbing, and the populace is getting more an more tech savvy, before long, Indians will be answering tech support calls for Indians, and Outsourcing will balance out.
And stop going to wars to 'give people their freedom'. That's impossible. Freedom cannot be 'given' it must be earned and taken; because if anyone gives you freedom, they can also take it away.
Laws, rules, regulations and treaties do not intrinsically change the nature of a person, nevertheless imposing said "rules" do provoke a change of behavior. One must contemplate whether or not this change of behavior solves the problem or merely transforms its effects. I believe it is the latter. True self change can only come from self efforts.
Everyone believes that their own personal way of living is justifiable and rational, otherwise, it is ostensible they would behave differently. If, however, the majority of people were correct in these assumptions they would not act in ways that lead the race to self destruction. But, we have already stated that is, indeed, the action of the sum of the individuals of society that are producing self destruction.
Therefore, change is not only necessary on a personal level, but furthermore it is a type of change that is not commonly comprehended or accepted. The impetus for this type of change has nothing to do with "morality" or "good" and "evil," but rather with intelligent, conscious, willful sacrifice for the sake of humanity.
Only if one comprehends a problem can an intelligent solution be proposed. If this is indeed a problem that has not yet be resolved then it appears evident that the masses have not comprehended the problem. As the problem becomes worse, more people will comprehend the problem to a greater degree, whether or not this will occur prior to the "event horizon" of auto-destruction remains to be seen.
This problem will never be solved merely by advancements in material or scientific technology, as this too will only transform the effects of the problem. What is required is a "psychological technology," an intelligent way of life.
Obviously. So that excludes many /. readers.
Oh my god talk about hyperbole and idiotic moderators. The human race isn't going to die out. I mean come on. There may well be a few billion deaths, but there are billions more humans on the planet so lets face it, we're not facing a global extinction event...
The question you should be asking is how do I make sure that my family are the survivors in the coming tough times... Make sure the genes continue.
Deleted
One wonders if Stephen Hawking doesn't suffer from depression. From a physical standpoint he has endured more than most of us can imagine. His physical limitations however might have played a large part in the development his soaring intellect. Now that old age is apon him and his scientific life is in decline one can only wonder what he is thinking about. I am sure he feels his mortality. If I were him I would be very proud of my contribution. Yet he seems to have an apocalypic view centered curiously around himself (megalomania). Is it because he feels his work in physics is undone? He hasn't 'saved humanity' through his scientific work as he'd hoped? Who knows. If the human race's end was so self-evident you would think a man as brilliant as that would tell us why.
an ill wind that blows no good
I think part of the problem is that every economic theory is based on growth. Economics need to understand that growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. It leads to the death of the individual (or humanity in that case). They need to figure out an economic theory of 'stagnation'. Otherwise the old proven solution or wars and plagues will hit with a vengence to make sure our numbers stay down. Besides Kurzweill very hypothetical 'singularity' I don't see any other solution, particularly with dwindling resources like petroleum (you do know that production of petroleum hit an all time high last year and will only be going down from now on, while demand keeps increasing, don't you ?)
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Let's get some facts straight. Here's a site I found: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004395.html
t m
Some European countries are falling, like Germany and Italy, and they have negative growth rates. The United States, however, has a 0.9% growth rate. We're getting bigger, not smaller.
Now, I might have seen the problem with your math. Keep in mind that, in 2004, 36% of all babies were born to single women. http://www.webmd.com/content/Article/114/111283.h
Why are we lead to believe that birth rates are too low? Because in our welfare/social security society, we need more workers than retired people. That's why Europe and Japan are all in a fluster. If less tax money is coming in, governments have to shrink. They don't like that.
The technical aspects are easy - it's just about reducing CO2 production, using more energy efficient lighting, investing more into research and development for "green" technologies, protecting endangered species, etc.
The POLITICAL aspect, however, screws everything up. I believe the world is doomed to a tragic end, we'll have famine, wars, people fighting each other over a plant of wheat, etc while rich people will be isolated in their bunkers for fear of their lives.
Unless we can get organized and take care of the planet, we're in a path leading to self-destruction. Good riddance, maybe THEN the surviving species can do fine without having to worry about the human plague.
It would take some doing to kill all of humanity. The Black Plague swept through Europe before we understood microbes. It cause a good deal of damage, but it never kill off everyone in any area of significant size. We survived a hundred years of industrialism without understanding the impact we had on the environment -- you think we can't survive a hundred years of knowing what we're doing? We've survived more wars than anyone would like to count, and the number of times an entire nation has been anhilated during a war is tiny. Nuclear winter is mostly conjecture, and no one wants to fire enough nukes to start that. Global warming is going to suck, but not wipe out all of humanity suck. AIDS won't take us -- we'll eventually figure out how to stop having unprotected sex with people whose histories we don't know or (more likely) find a cure of some sort. Cancer usually doesn't kill people before they hit an age where they have producted offspring. Actually, given that we've survived everything thus far and kept on going, it would take some sort of global catastrophy to kill us all. I think that nuclear winter is the best bet for end of humanity.
IANA*
I think that if more people were interested in the discussion and trying to find a solution, then there wouldn't be a problem. Or at least, one would emerge over time.
The real problem is that most people don't think and aren't involved (whether through thoughts or action). They just live for the day to day, trying to amass more money so they can buy a better/bigger car, a new ipod or whatever the neighbour has that you don't. The other half of the world in the meantime is too busy trying to stay alive and wondering how to feed their family.
I truly think that for things to get better, they'll have to get a whole lot worse soon. To quote from RATM and The Matrix... "Wake up !"
A million monkeys and this is the best sig they could come up with...
We'll survive by procreating. It's seemed to work in the past, and I reason that it will continue to do so.
And never look back.
What a dumb question. There are more humans on the earth than ever before. Our life expectancy has never been higher. Our quality of life has never been higher. There is nothing to indicate that we are in danger. Only a whacked out liberal pessimist would ask something so stupid.
Colonize other worlds. It's the only long-term solution.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
You are really behind the curve on that one, in many countries (especially much of Europe) birth rates are not keeping up with projected mortality figures! Simply put, after the baby boomer wave more people will be dying than be born.
You don't have to worry about higher birth rates in other countries because in several generations they'll have all the land they need over in Europe and other areas around the globe.
Overpopulation was always a propped up bogeyman anyways.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
100 years eh ,,,, ....." :(
We can go a lot longer if we "Prevent Global Warming
It's unlikely our population will continue to rise as it has in the past. I strongly suspect that either war or disease will greatly thin our numbers at some point. By disease, I don't just mean a naturally occurring one, but more likely, a man-made or man-released one. As far as war, look at what's beginning to happen with nuclear weapons. North Korea has them, Iran will soon have them (if it doesn't already). It won't be too long before terrorists get their hands on one (perhaps decades down the road, but I suspect it's inevitable).
Mass starvation is also a likely possibility. Combine our current unchecked population growth with global warming, and mass starvation is certainly inevitable if war or disease don't come first. By mass starvation, I'm thinkng somewhere in the vicinity of 80%+ of the population in some poorer countries.
Call me pessimistic, but I actually see this as an optimistic (albeit, not for the people during the bad times) outcome. We will survive and some lessons will be learned. It is unlikely that any single disaster, no matter how bad, will wipe out every single person on the planet. Some will survive and we will continue on, even if it has to set us back a century or more.
We've created an unsustainable way of life on this planet and eventually it's going to catch up with us. We are clever and adaptable, but there comes a point where that won't be enough and when it does happen, it won't be on a small scale. It will be on a grand scale.
This is all okay, I think. I mean, it's not happy-happy, joy-joy okay, but it's simply how nature works. Look at animals that overpopulate their local ecosystems. They die in large numbers, but they continue on. It's even happened in geographically isolated human cultures in the past. I suspect we'll learn the lesson of moderate, sustainable population growth after this has happened on a global scale. Tough lesson to learn, no doubt, but we're stubborn animals.
The genesis of Nationalism was strong external enemies that forced regions together into unified communities calling themselves "nations". This provided the common ground to call people we've never met our brothers and fight a common cause for our own survival. To unite the entire world in an analogous Globalism, we need to be attacked by space aliens. It doesn't particularly matter what type of space aliens, just so long as they are strong enough to defeat any individual nation. As the nations of the world coalesce to protect our planet, killing each other in the name of $deity will make even less sense than it does today.
Bring it on Kang & Kodos. Save us from ourselves.
Fucktard
The only way we'll survive is by finding another life form that is easily (but not too easily) defeatable and that doesn't want to be our friend/ally. Only by having a common enemy will humans be able to come together to work towards a common goal. (And lets face it, energy, money, global warming, etc. doesn't count as an enemy.)
Please clue me in folks, since when did Yahoo Answers become "The Internet"?
Did I not get the memo?
Seriously though, it's paranoia to assume the entire race will be wiped out in 100 years time. The economy will be trashed and the world will be awash in civil conflicts, but wiped out? We have too much in common with cockroaches to worry bout that!
Regardless of whatever energy , warfare, disease, or environmental catastrophe happens in the next 100 years, I think people will definately *survive* at least somewhere, if not small, scattered pockets.
I think what Hawking is asking is, how can we get through the next 100 years without massive population loss, another dark ages, massive poverty, loss of knowledge, etc.
The human race can certainly survive in a slave/lord social arrangement. That's been the story ever since we stopped hunting and gathering and started massive farming operations, up until the last couple of hundred years. However, fuedalism doesn't really help human learning or advancement -- it's just a system for keeping the top 10% wealthy, and every one else living in mud huts. What we really need to maintain the current golden age is democracy, civil and political freedom, freedom of information, and social mobility. Also we probably need to to move to renewable energy and less toxic materials.
There is no hope in space. The fact that we haven't found anything out there that would justify the cost of sending a mining/grathering expedition tells you we can't make a living out there. Despite the wide variety of raw material that is consumed in the modern market, there is still *not a single batch of stuff out there* that would justify us bringing it down to us. Not one thing, out of the hundreds or thousands of different types of raw materials we need to keep our civilization going. Any space colony will be *totally* dependant on earth for *all* of its' needs, unless it is set up on another earth-like planet.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
We will survive by praying to the Lord God and the baby Jesus. Every evening, I drive my Chevy Tahoe, with my wife and 10 of my God fearing children, to my church 50 miles away from my 5000 square foot home. My other children also drive to the church in their Tahoes from their large homes and we all pray together. While there, the Lord spoke to me and He said..
o drive the largest vehicle you can for as many miles as you can.
o make sure your house is as far away as possible from everything you either need or want.
o always have the AC cranked up full, especially when you are not at home. If the AC makes it too cold when you are at home then wear a sweater.
o leave lights and televisions switched on in rooms you don't use.
o make sure you eat at least 6000 calories a day lest you die from hunger.
o try to ensure that the things you eat come from declining fish stocks or endangered mammals.
o make sure all your food comes from as far away as possible. Support people in the poor countries by buying a potato shipped all the way from China rather than grown locally
o buy toys and gadgets you don't need and use them as little as possible.
o beget many, many more of Gods children so that in turn beget more children and teach them all the principles above.
o vote for a government that shares your beliefs and will go on holy crusades against other countries.
o do not apply intelligent thought to anything. Blind faith in the Lord is important. Accept the word of your pastor without question because he is better than you and has a direct hotline to God.
o Pray, pray and pray again and everything will be wondrous.
desperately begging for attention...
I'll grant you that the technology we have this past century has increased the capability that mankind's demise could come from non-natural sources, but I still think that even in the face of a very serious disaster, enough of humanity would eek by to keep the species going. Moreover, I think that the probability of a doomsday scenario is, while more possible today, still very unlikely. I think my grandchildren will be more likely to die by getting hit by lightning than by experiencing global thermonuclear war. But then again, I'm an optimist (unlike Dr. Hawkings, obviously).
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
The human race has evolved in such a way that now we are capable of really fucking up the planet and eventually extinguishing all life on it. But let's see what mechanisms we have for that.
On one hand, we have nuclear weapons of gargantuan power. If we start a nuclear war, we can easily kill half of the population and make life incredibly miserable for those who survive... but wait, that implies that billions of people will actually survive, so the race isn't really eliminated.
We have also produced technology that is capable of affecting the planet in a serious, perhaps irreversible way. The effect that mostly concerns us now is global warming. Because of our actions the weather may go really wacky, potentially causing the death of millions. The ice caps may melt, slowly sinking a very significant portion of the land, precisely where most of the population lives. But that process will take many, many decades, and even though millions may die, most people will have time to move away. This will cause the overpopulation of the current high lands, with enormously devastating effects. Furthermore, eventually the climate changes may make the planet completely inhabitable (at least by humans), but that will take several centuries to take place. Meanwhile, the human race will survive.
We can go on and on, analysing the different ways that we may fuck up. But we will always find the same answer: in order to actually eliminate the human race we have to make all our habitats inhabitable, and we still can't do that within 100 years from now. We need something like a giant meteor striking the planet or the sun exploding, or some other phenomena out of our control.
My point is: Stephen Hawking is a very smart guy, but this time he managed to make a question that is wrongly formulated:
Duh, how can the human race not survive the next hundred years?
Birth control only allows us to consume more and not give a shit about the world resources because "there's plenty for everybody". The real solution is that every human being should contribute to the environment.
It doesn't matter if it's two human beings, or 6 billion. As long as we destroy more than we construct, with time we will end up destroying the planet, ourselves, or both. We're a living entropy machine.
Have you guys wondered why all the animals in the world contribute to the ecosystem and help other species? Why are humans the ONLY ONES destroying it?
We burn and cut trees, generate hundreds of times more heat than the one our bodies produce on their own, generate non-biodegradable byproducts, produce non-nutritional food, pollute water with chemicals, help bacteria become more destructive...
You know, now that I think of it, the Amish people are much more eco-friendly than us "civilized" beings.
"In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?"
The cure for political chaos is the cure for greed. Two or more greedy entities grow so large they have to destroy each other.
The cure for social chaos is the cure for zeal. Two or more ideologies grow so large they have to destroy each other.
The cure for environmental chaos is the cure for sloth. A species becomes so efficient they loose the ability to adapt.
Nature will balance the human animal. It is just a matter of time.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
There is an implicit assumption that if we don't do something humans won't survive next 100 years. I see no evidence to suggest that to be the case. In 100 years the world will be richer, there will be less poverty and technology will be providing goods and services that we couldn't even imagine having today. So, I guess, the answer is to keep doing what we are doing and the world will be a better place in 100 years than it is today.
My Blog
200 years in the grand scheme of things is not very long. So far, most of the responses I've seen focus on education, environmentalism, or the like. However, I think the best way for us to survive short-term is to spread out, whether this means colonizing the solar system, the oceans, or near-earth orbit.
Why doesn't he know?
____ plex
If anybody else asked, the question would be tagged as flamebait.
It can survive in the short run for the same reason it survived the past 50,000 years: because it's likely to survive. It could cease to exist for any number of reasons, many of which are beyond human control.
I see the question as a roundabout way of asking for better human behavior which, if improved, would certainly go a long way toward helping _civilsation as we know it_ survive.
But humans have survived our human frailties for thousands of years and we'll likely survive as a species for a while longer. That is, unless some zealot succeeds in outlawing sex . . .
Imagine Stephen Hawking talking about 'population reduction' and stuff like that in his synthetic "fred" voice. It would be pretty weird.
Personally I'd be waiting for the laser to come out of his head if he started talking like that.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
That's silly, there are more than 6 billion of us now, and we are pretty smart and tough; there will still be people in 100 years. The question is how are we going to live in 100 years, how will our technological civilization survive with the challenges of millions of refugees from rising sea-levels, resource depletion and over-population? Will our descendants be enjoying good health, long life, good food and the comforts of technological civilization or will they be scrabbling in the dirt and fighting over the food and water that is left? I think the better question is: "How will technological civilization survive the next 100 years?" My money is on the development of molecular nanotechnology.
I'm a little surprised one of science's most ardent survivors (Hawking was given 6 months to live... sometime in the late 1960's iirc) would ask a question like this. I would ask, if you were an evil genius, how could you go about making sure humanity didn't survive? Nuclear war? Well, that's what we have underground bunkers for, and looking at animals around Chernobyl the second or third generation of survivors might be able to adapt very nicely (sucks to be the first few generations, obviously). Besides, even with all the nukes that are around, you can't nuke the whole planet, especially now that most of the nukes in Russia and even some American ones will probably be duds. Biological warefare might work too, but there's always going to be small group of people that are mysteriously immune to whatever it is. You also have to take into account that whatever you do is going to be resisted... not all nukes are in the form of ICBMs, and even some of those can be shot down. Any biological agent will have the remaining scientists scrambling for a cure. Terrorists will have anti-terrorists. Giant fusion rockets meant to slow Earth's orbit until we fall into the sun will get sabotaged and/or bombed. Alien invaders will have to deal with networking with a Macintosh laptop (May God have mercy on whatever kind of souls they may have).
If he meant civilization when he said humanity, well, just hope for the best.
Twinkies, Twinkies are the answer. I think they have an expiration date of at least 100 years. Next question please.....
One thing that would make the species survive is a massive global war.
Of course, that might not be a good thing for it's individual members.
Western european cultures and asia are already well below birth replacement rates. The real problem is the next 25 years, as enery supplies dwindle.
..don't panic
It's interesting that lots of people are quick to throw in their solution to the survival of the species and not many are questioning the messenger. Stephen Hawking probably knows a lot more about the species' survival than I do, as he and the people he hangs out with are a lot more influential and intelligent than me and the people I hang out with. Why would he ask the question on Yahoo? Is it for shits and giggles, research for a new book, or genuine concern on his part? If it's the latter, then I think we should be worried.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
That is somewhat ambiguous. Are we sustaining our current lifestyle? It is unlikely we can maintain current use of fossil fuels for a century, so we'd have to use other primary energy sources. Are we sustaining population growth? We would have to develop more agricultural technologies to feed everyone. (Soylent green? Edible end of the world movies?) Sustaining technological growth? Well, we have to do that to sustain our other aspects.
I can't see what the questioner means by "in chaos ... socially". The human race has either been in chaos socially forever, or we are not in chaos now. Things haven't changed significantly, that I can see, for some time from a larger perspective. In politics, the common way to survive problems is to force a change in government, sometimes by just letting the current dynasty die out. We can't sustain all of the political systems we currently have.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
To make informed comments I believe in reading the whole article before posting. Umm, I had to make an exception this time.
Hobby Robotics
Good luck. But if by some magic all religious belief systems would vanish from the earth, we might stand a chance. More crimes, more war, more hatred, more killing has occurred in the name of one or another religion than from any other single source. Once religion is extinguished and replaced by rational thought, many things would improve. The population explosion might come under control. Science might flourish in the vast regions of the world where primitive belief systems hold reign and suppress rational thought. When science gains prominence, we might stand the chance of having politicians who don't make policy based on fable and fantasy. Without the mind pollution that religion brings, sexual repression and guilt-induced psychosis would end, making for a saner population, a sure advance towards survival. But religion is not the only evil in the world today. Greed-driven economic systems have a core flaw that influences and pervades all of society. When the driving force of an economy is the motive for profit, i. e. greed, there is no place for the 100 year plan. The "numbers" are the only measure of worth in this system. The quarterly reports and the annual reports upon which corporate values are determined do not include the future of our grandchildren or of the earth. "Did they make their numbers?" How often have you heard that at quarter end? The numbers are all the only concern. What were the earnings compared to the same quarter last year and to the previous quarter? Dollars. Not the intrinsic value to the world or the environment or to the well-being of the sick or impoverished. Those values are not on any corporate balance sheet. And until they are, or until dollar-based balance sheets are eliminated, or until the profit motive is completely replaced by more altruistic motives, there is little hope. Those are the two core problems facing the world today, pervasive religious belief systems and capitalism. The chances of eliminating either one of them in 100 years? Zero. The person who said the next great pandemic will be the cure might be onto something, but it will be a temporary cure unless the society that emerges after the collapse of this one casts out the twin evils of religion and capitalism. But I doubt that is the way it will play out. Getting rid of religion takes education, and lots of it. Getting rid of capitalism, or greed, hasn't worked out too well in the past and human nature is hard to change. So, what should we do? Pray to God that the fanatics in the other religion don't nuke us before we nuke them? Invest our money in the industry most likely to profit from decreasing natural resources and an advancing global warming? Form a cult that worships a god that created a beautiful planet but allows that planet and its inhabitants to be ravished by war, famine, pestilence, and the pollution of emissions of the money machines that drive the economy, because that god must have some secret plan in the back of his mind that only He could possibly understand? Or do we start teaching science and critical thinking with the same zeal that religion is taught now? Could we start living a life of deliberate simplicity, reduced consumption, and harmony with nature? Maybe we could teach our children by example what it means to work together rather than in competition, with greater goals in sight than the numbers at the end of the quarter. Yeah, maybe some day we will evolve to this higher level of consciousness. But in 100 years? Sorry, Stephen, I am not optimistic.
At least, that's the way I answer most questions that begin with the word "how".
Down with the career politician! SUPPORT TERM LIMITS
There's a fairly significant chance of major disasters that kill hundreds of millions or billions of people over the span of a century. There's also a smaller chance that our technological civilization won't survive. But despite global warming, nuclear war, terrorism, epidemics, you name it, the human race will survive the next 100 years; you couldn't eradicate it if you tried.
Humans as a lot are lazy and greedy.
Our society is built on lies and deceit.
It's a giant ponzai scheme that is destined to cave in on it's self.
When the shit goes down it'll be every man for himself.
Only the strongest and smartest will survive.
It'll be a genetic cleansing of sorts.
And the cycle will start over again.
First there was Atlantis then the Romans then the Myans.
We're next....
Rick B.
"Does this wheelchair make me look fat?"
I pretty much agree with you that the human race as a whole is going to do just fine thank you, but how do you make sure that your family is one of the survivors if things do get bad?
Well, you have a family for a start, that's the obvious bit, then you accumulate enough wealth so that future generations have plenty of resources to bring up their own children.
Life always comes down to survival of the fittest, not survival of the nicest or survival of the most concerned about others, but down to the creatures that are willing to do whatever it takes to pass those genes on to the next generation.
Deleted
I mean it may not work but at least it would be fun!
>Having more education than someone does not necessarily make
>you more intelligent.
Nor wiser. Nor more humane.
beer.
Do we need to survive as recognizable humans with compatible DNA and everything? If our descendants are genetically engineered robotically enhanced cyborgs, would they count? Maybe we won't survive as humans, but maybe that's okay if our descendants are friendly cyborg overlords. Or they have an ethical value system that's at least on par with our own (which is setting the bar pretty low).
Let's say humans in our current form do survive the next 100 years. What about the following 100 years? 1000 years? Million years? Homo sapiens haven't been around for more than 10,000 to 100,000 years or so. We won't last forever.
KTHXBYE
Somone needs to figure out how to economically and quickly find and travel to habitable planets outside our solar system, or to quickly terraform Venus (not Mars).
Short of that, we need to also get very serious about asteroid defense technology.
All the other crap that comes up: global warming, population growth, oil running out are mostly qualiy of life issues not mere survival. Even super volcanoes and other catastrophes won't likely cause global destruction, even though they have the potential to reduce our civilization back to subsistence living. A hundred years isn't likely a timeframe when the planet would be completely destroyed of all human life, unless we nuke ourselves. But it is a likely time frame when we still have abundant enough resources and a large enough population to expect that we can solve some of the more elusive answers to our longer term survival and prosperity. After a hundred years though, or even far less than that, we start running out of resources to sustain such a large population. Even now we are seeing the signs of economic strain on our available resources.
Or population growth will eventually take care of itself as it has in many countries already, but actual declines in population will reduce the chance that some of those people will be smart enough (and lucky enough) to figure out the real challenge, which is how to get some of us off this planet to somewhere else where we can propser.
After reading the 15000 replies, Stephen Hawking reaslised that the human race will not survive the next 100 years, except perhaps by accident.
Indeed, the human race will survive the next 100 years no matter what happens, and probably the next thousand or zillion after that. But plain survival doesn't necessarily have to be comfortable. A species can survive for a long time in really adverse and sucky conditions.
Seems that many people interpreted the question (as may have been intended) to be: "How can the human race survive the next 100 years and come out the other end comfortable and thriving?"
Well, let's think about that. Pick any 100 year span in history. I would bet that, at the end of any 100 year span, most of humanity is merely surviving in really adverse and sucky conditions. A small fraction of the whole of humanity actually thrives. That is as true today as ever.
Maybe the question should rightly be interpreted as "How can the small fraction of humanity which is today thriving continue to thrive through the next 100 years and never mind the people who are already scrabbling for survival today." Because that's really the only question anyone has ever truly asked.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
The biggest source of humanity's problems is humanity. Heck, the biggest source of wild bears' problems is humanity.
http://www.vhemt.org/
I think a big part of the answer is to become interdependent upon one another. It's pretty difficult to go to war with someone with whom you are interdependent. The USA might not get agree with a lot of what China does, but it seems pretty unlikely that we'd come to blows. (I suppose part of that is mutual assured destruction, too.) Our economies are too intertwined. Can you imagine the US stopping Chinese imports all of a sudden? The impact to our own interests would be unthinkable. I'm not sure if it's a sad reflection or positive reflection on the nature of people, that selfish economic reasons can now largely override the main reasons we've historically gone to war. (Note that a large portion of wars have been for economic reasons. Even parts of WWII -- Japan attacked the USA because we were blocking their access to oil.)
That said, I'm not sure whether these interdependencies will keep the larger countries from continuing to go to war against smaller countries. In fact, I think there may be more wars over resources as some things (oil, clean water, land) become more scarce.
I think a better world government system would also help. Most people in most countries seem to be against the idea. But I think the US and the EU provide good examples that formerly sovereign states getting together and giving up some of that soverignty can have very positive outcomes -- mainly because of the interdependence they form with each other. Unfortunately, I don't have any idea how to go about changing people's minds on the issue.
(My answer assumes that a major world war is the most likely threat to humanity over the next 100 years. Given the current weapons available, and the escalation of war over the past several hundred years, I don't think this is unreasonable. The other likely contenders seem less likely to happen in the next 100 years, given historical precedents: virus ourbreak, meteor, alien invasion, etc. Global warming and other threats are likely to have a significant impact, but I think they will cause more fighting over resources than direct impact.)
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Just ask RIAA or MPAA.
They always tell us how to live. They should have the answer.
After the oil wars (which we just fought - and will in future fight) followed by the food wars, and the water wars. there will be territorial migration wars ( as the oceans rise and flood what we now call COASTs) as and displaced masses move away from the brown dry dying tropics to the only fertile lands that are left. Humanity will survive - both of them - cowering in some northern/or rocky antarctic cave.
A virus like Ebola wiping out 80-90% of the world's population would do the trick. Other than that? We can't.
A hundred years ago, a very pressing question was what to do with the increasing amounts of horse manure generated in every city. With an increasing population and commensurately more horses, the solution was not readily apparent to many. But the automobile solved that problem quite neatly (or messily, depending on your perspective).
In so many ways we (as a race) have wondered how we will overcome what the future will bring. And yet we repeatedly surprise ourselves with new technological feats and societal adaptations. How can we predict how we will survive when we aren't very good at predicting either future circumstances (e.g. climate) or future tools (e.g. the Web, cell phones). Maybe the easy answer is we will survive by using tools and techniques not yet required or dreamed of.
It is inconcievable to me that we will not survive. Human life is designed to survive through intelligence and mutation. Regardless of what comes our way, we will adapt. The circumstances of our existence will be different. That is unquestionable. But nonetheless we will survive. Caveat: not all of us will survive as individuals. There will be casualties. But hey, that's life isn't it?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I vehemently disagree. Messes are a problem, not consumption... The solution to all our problems is more technology, not less.
There's a non-obvious but significant error in your assumption.
You assume that modern societies are thermodynamically optimal. The key isn't wasting unnecessary energy or planet resources when producing food / clothing / technology.
I don't care if I get my clothes from "grandma" or from "New Wave(TM)". If "New Wave(TM)" produces more pollution per item than "grandma", then it simply won't work for sustained development.
Technology COULD help to reduce energy consumption. Take a look at fluorescent lamps, or more recently, OLED. They consume much less energy than the incandescent bulb. However, many technology innovations consume huge amounts of energy - most computer monitors used in the world still depend on cathode ray tubes. There's a lot of heat generated. In general, more heat = more wasted energy = more planet destruction.
Another example: Cars. Cars use only 20% of the energy they "produce" to move. Plus, they're much heavier than the cargo. More waste. If we managed to produce cars as energy-efficient as horses (and even the horses' "byproducts" can be used as fertilizer material), we wouldn't be suffering air pollution in big cities.
It's not technology per-se that is good... it's the RIGHT technology used IN THE RIGHT PLACE. The key is EFFICIENCY.
Why is he suddenly getting so philosophical? Has he just gotten too old to make any advances in physics and decided to move on to metaphysics? First his urgent call for space colonies, now this. It reminds me of actors who give political speeches. It's not their field of expertise, but people listen to them anyway. It also reminds me of the late career wanderings of other greats like Linus Pauling or Cary Mullis or Issac Newton. idk, I guess he's entitled to muse about whatever he wants, but it's weird to hear him waxing about humanity like a college girl.
It's a lot harder (not impossible, of course) to kill someone, steal from them, or abandon them to starvation, murder, or oppression if you're still having a conversation with them.
The rest, as someone else said a while back, is commentary.
For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals
...
Then something happenend which unleashed the power of our imagination
We learned to talk
All we need to do is make sure we keep talking
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
"How can the human race survive the next hundred years?"
Human race: How many living humans must we have to consider the collected set of them to be the "human race?"
Survive: Does this mean scratching out an existence on the periphery of planet which has seen a new dominant life-form emerge? Or does this mean maintaining our current (or higher) level of technology and knowledge? There are many possible interpretations for the question.
In one extreme, I can picture a single human, the last living exemplar of the species, working on a small patch of ground, trying to grow or capture enough food to survive another day. In this example, to put a checkmark in the "did it" column, this solitary dead-end to the human race must only survive until 4 July 3006.
In the other extreme, I can picture a society much as it exists today: a huge number of humans, embracing technology and modifying the environment and ecosphere as they see fit.
Would either of these examples count as having "survived?"
Barring a cosmic accident, I think sheer math indicates that there will be some humans on the planet in 100 years. Even if we are visited by a deadly virus, or we attempt to annihilate ourselves with Weapons of Mass Destruction(TM), I believe we still have societies who are distant enough that they will find a way to continue some form of existence. I don't imagine it as a pleasant experience.
But, in the end, the math isn't on our side. I don't know the exact odds, but we're due for a mass extinction right about now. The planet has a history of rearranging its occupants every few million years. This is not even counting events coming from space: giant solar flares, big rocks falling from the sky, etc. I'm thinking more of the giant belches of CO(2) or sulfur or whatever, which come bubbling up from the depths of the ocean, or perhaps the emergence of a new species which is particularly adapted to its environment, and suddenly wreaks havoc on the stability on the ecosystem.
So, even if we don't (or can't) kill ourselves, there is still a small, but non-zero, chance that no one from our species will be alive one hundred years hence.
The only viable answer to the question must involve migrating away from the Earth, and establishing self-sufficient colonies on other planets, around other stars. I know this can seem to be unrealistic or impossible, but mathematically speaking, it's the only way to be sure.
This isn't just a possibility. It's an inevitability. The human race on this planet will become extinct. Whether that's within the next one hundred years is tough to predict. But I don't think it's the kind of chance we ought to take. Our number one priority for all the sciences should be developing the technology to reach, colonize, and inhabit other worlds.
Now that I've come this far, I might as well go all the way.
I'm thinking of a guy I saw in traffic the other day. There was a sign indicating that the left lane was closed ahead. A short line of cars were stuck in traffic in the right lane, waiting for the congestion to clear enough to allow us to move forward. The guy I saw came flying down the left lane, drove all the way up to the cones, and turned on his signal to get over. Following his example came other cars and the left lane was soon as backed up as the right lane. Now, not only were we slowed by the construction, but we had the added delay of merging with traffic which didn't need to be there. One guy jumped ahead to better his own position, regardless of the impact his actions had on the rest of us. Enough people became jealous of his position that they caused all of us, themselves included, to suffer more than we would have if everyone had simply lined up in the right-hand lane to begin with. Each individual in our subgroup made a choice, and enough of them made the self-serving choice to make it worse for the entire group.
And that's the problem. We have to figure out a way to overcome this natural tendency in
This space for rent.
If even Stephen Hawking is turning to Lazyweb who I am to refuses to do the same?
And some links to articles about sex. :)
FRA: STFU GTFO
Overthrow warmongers and despoilers of the earth.
Here it is:
/companies/families/gov't/group entities) and ELIMINATE the concept that we should map "ownership" from the social norm.
eliminate the concept of property
I am NOT talking about socialism (where groups own things, or in the case of communism, where the government owned everything) - but rather take the WHOLE IDEA that we have a map between resources and individuals, (or their surrogate -
Do the thought experiments on how this would work tends to unravel much about how both individual and group human dynamics currently work. No governments; local norms, not laws. Local conflict resolution. An armed populous. No more ownership at all, of things, people, or ideas. No buying or bartering. Voluntary joining of larger groups. Allowing people to harm themselves if they want. Anti-status. Mixed and mixing families; (remember, no owning people, like marriage) Lots of changes would have to occur. There would be no more concept of "free" because there would be no ownership. It would take people being a whole lot healthier than they are now for it to work -- but then again, human society not really working great now anyway.
It turns out that people, *when doing things they enjoy* are extremely productive. Every task we have is something that someone enjoys.
It is, however, the way to eliminate the lie of scarcity and start getting people to focus on building HEALTH instead of exclusively trying to build WEALTH.
'How can the human race survive the next hundred years?'. Flamebait : -1
Oh, that's why.
We have to stop being a desposable consumerist society. I.e. we have to live more simply. Now I'm not saying that we all need to be organic gardeners who tailor their own clothes and live directly off the land.
Then what, precisely, are you saying? It sounds to me that you want people to live a diminished lifestyle compared to the one that they're currently living. You've excluded the organic farmer lifestyle as too extreme, so the lifestyle you imagine that other people should live is somewhere in between. What is it? It's important to answer this question because accusing people of "consumerism" is hiding what you're really intending, and what you're really intending is for people to live a diminished lifestyle.
It's harder to say that, isn't it? What *precisely* do people have to give up for your morality's sake? Some things that you think are "excessive" are going to be "necessary" for other people. Wouldn't the organic gardner consider your lifestyle "excessive"? Why would he/she be wrong about that?
I think that consumption purely for the sake of consumption is our biggest problem.
There is no such thing. People don't "consume" merely for the sake of consuming it. There are many possible reasons behind this hated "consuming". For example:
* Hunger
* Convenience (e.g. choosing fast food (I call it fake food) as opposed to something "better")
* Status
* Pleasure
* Envy
The morality of each of those motives may rightly be questioned (yes, even hunger, you cheeto-eating, lard-bellied, WoW-playing dweebs!), but there is no "consumption for consumption's sake".
The real question is if the market can correct this or if the market will dig such a deep hole that it doesn't react until the shit hits the fan.
It sounds to me that the shit hitting the fan means the same thing as living a diminished lifestyle. Perhaps you are suggesting that we diminish everyone's lifestyle or else everyone will live a lifetstyle even *more* diminished than what you're suggesting? That may very well be true, but we need specifics and discussion instead of the guilt-trips and empty rhetoric you provide. Obviously we humans are going to run out of petroleum one day, and we will *all* live crap lifestyles if we don't have a replacement for our energy needs. How will the trucks get food on the shelves of grocery stores without gasoline?
Then again, there are some people who think that humanity is just plain evil. I think those people are using this discussion to further their repugnant goal, and I don't think they belong in the discussion at all.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I don't see why we insist that only biological creatures have value and deserve a future. I see us evolving into machines. This new order of intelligence will solve problems and probably be less demanding on the earth. I just hope I have good interface ports.
Cooperate.
If we can cooperate enough not to blow each other to bits, that's a good first step. We've partially succeeded on that score until now. Meaning, we still blow each other to bits but we haven't done it on such a scale as to end the human race. We're getting a "D" on this, we need to improve our grade.
If we can continue to cooperate on solving real problems such as North Korea, global warming, starvation, and nuclear proliferation, then we might just make it. I'm quite certain we can make it if we truly increase our cooperation. The U.S. invasion of Iraq is a great example of what NOT to do. So far, the reaction to North Korea seems to be quite multi-lateral (but that story is not over yet).
Cooperation also means moving towards ending racisim, tribalism, patriotism, and any other stupid -ism that bases hatred on largely random physical traits. Can we not start to grow up as a human race and realize that we are all much more similar than dissimilar? Will it always be the Capulets vs. the Montagues?
Cooperation should mean the end to drug trademarks so that people do not have to die or live in pain simply because they were born poor or in a poor country.
Cooperation means spreading the weath of nations more evenly. It means looking beyond mere, dirty profit as a motive to enriching humanity in whatever way possible.
Cooperation is more than one hand washing another, it is communities and societies and nations sharing their strentghs and improving each other's weaknesses for the betterment of ALL.
"A cord of three strands is not easily broken."
How do you promote this kind of compassion? Can you teach it in a school? We need to care about our communities but instead we have become more and more isolated.
...you must be in your early 20's, right? I can tell because that's the age when everything thinks they know it all. Not bashing you...I was there too.
You'll figure out eventually that your parents are far more intelligent than you ever thought possible.
The internet got back to him in just two days...take that Senator Stevens! The tubes really aren't that full.
There are four times as many of us as there were a century ago. I'm not at all concerned that the human race won't survive the next century. Let's consider the worst case -- massive global warming, depletion of oil leading to the breakdown of modern energy intensive agriculture and thus to widespread starvation, a nuclear war or two, George Bush IV gets elected, someone releases a bioengineered combination of AIDS and the common cold. Even with all this, I doubt very much that we'd lose more than 90% of the human population. That would still leave 650 million people, about as many people as the world had in 1700. Nobody in 1700 thought we were near extinction. In fact 650 million is a very large population for a 50 kg top-of-the-food-chain mammal.
The United States might not survive as an intact country (particularly considering its massive pile-ups of debt). A good many of the five million or so species of non-human life are not likely to make it through the next century. But people will certainly survive.
Ah, you are, like Hawkings, a pessimist, I see. Me, I'm more optimistic. I think that today, the majority of people are far better off on average than 100 years ago, and better off than 100 years before that. Yes, there are plenty of people today who are in nations that are ridden with civil war or genocide, and while the implements of destruction used in such campaigns are more awesome today, I think there is more civil peace today than, say, 1,000 years ago.
Moreover, I think humanity is more 'civilized' today than in times past. Yes, there are still atrocities committed in war zones, but I think overall we're a more tame and kind society. Whereas in the past people were quickly put to death for what today are considered minor infractions (if infractions at all), that people were killed merely as a spectator sport, that not paying ones debts could get him flogged, that speaking out against the rulers in a nation could get one killed, and so on... (And, sure, there are places and situations today where these happen, but they are reviled and not nearly as wide-spread as they once were.)
And technology is better. 2,000 years ago, a large percentage of babies didn't live past a year old. Disease was more rampant. Just look at things like the Plauge, which wiped out (IIRC) more than half of the population of Europe. Sure, such things might happen today, but you can't tell me that the average person today is less healthy than the average person 500 years ago. Things are better, and while there are those today who have it a lot worse than the top-crust, I'd content that the worst off today are head and shoulders above the worst off of the past.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
The answer to Hawkings question is that every once in a while we need to have a well respected person ask this question so that everyone will consider upcoming possibilities and begin to prepare for the possible problems. Everyone will have a different answer to this question, so as many possibilities as possible are covered.
So, the answer is to think about the question.
Intellect, Innovation and GRACE from above.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
I'm 32 years old, and based on what's happened during my lifetime, Republican presidents preside over recession and war, while Democrats bring peace and prosperity. There are exceptions, but the assertion holds up when you look at the big picture.
It's not about moving people off-planet. It's establishing alternate populations that can maintain civilization (and possibly humanity's existence) if something catastrostrophic happened on Earth. Worst case, people re-(over?)populate the Earth after the current inhabitants get wiped out. Disease, meteor impact, nuclear conflict, whatever.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
How many people died during the plague? During the last flu pandemic?
How low did human population get during the last great meteor strike? (Some say in the low 10s of thousands)
Nature has bigger and better ways of killing our asses (and Global Warming is not one of them.)
You mean like the deforestation of the British Isles? Wiped pretty much every tree off of them, and they used to be covered with them! Why, Scotland only has about 1% of it's original forests remaining -- truly a tragedy of the modern world. Wait... that happened a thousand years ago.
Okay, well my country, Canada, is a major world exporter of wood and wood products. Forestry is an incredibly important industry. We must be deforesting our country at an unbelievable rate! Let's see... save the rainforests web site, Canada, rate of deforestation -- 0% for the last twenty years.
Most of those aren't uniquely modern problems and some of them actually have solutions now that we didn't have before. We have to get better at APPLYing those solutions in some places and we'll probably need to develop some new techniques, but the world probably isn't ending.
As for nukes, people a few thousand years ago used to destroy cities by killing everyone in them up close and personal, then salting the earth to make sure nobody could use it again. Killing cities isn't a modern invention either. Yes, we have better tools to do it now, but we're also MUCH better at not using them.
the answer is 42, of course
In communist russia the internet ask questions from Prof Hawkins!!!!
"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances." - Dr. Lee De Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube and father of television
The species will survive short of a extreme mass extinction worse than the Permian-Triassic event http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian-Triassic_exti nction_event/. Humans are capable of exploiting every resource on land and the near ocean, including other humans, for survival.
There are both sufficient resources and the "self-interest" to use them to ensure that there will be a segment of human society that enjoys the benefits of current, or better, medical and convenience technology for much more than 100 years. The proportion of the species represented by that segment will rise, or fall, but you can bank on the wealthy of some region or other to use the troops and tech' that they control to sustain a comfortable lifestyle. Their thugs (for example, most of the population of the United States) will also enjoy just enough to keep them loyal. The rest of the species is simply another resource to be exploited. Only if some of those with the power again stupidly try to "own it all", rather than "dividing the spoils" in mutual self-interest is there any danger that all of human society will be reduced to subsistence farming and herding, or less complexity.
SOYLENT!
Enjoy Soylent Physicist, now with anti-oxidants!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
I am amazed at the amount of self guilt and pessimism expressed in response to his question. I propose that the question was asked from the _false_ pretense that we are at risk of not surviving. The question is even asked using a (stated) false pretense as a setup: "In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally". How's this for an alternative view:
We will survive the next 100 years even if we tried our hardest to destroy ourselfs. Every biological and mental mechanism we have programmed into us is designed to continue our race. Take away our desire to reproduce? Take away our pride, greed or desire to exceed? The human race stands no chance of being destroyed.
Steven Hawkings may be one of the smartest men who has lived, but perhaps he hasn't studied history? Or perhaps he is trolling. Our world is in chaos politically socially and environmentally? Compared to when exactly? Oh my god, it's because BUSH is president isn't it. Yep, all Bushes fault. Seriously people, take the liberalism, go cut and blog about it on your livejournal. I can't believe a smart man such as Steven Hawkings would live in a state of emo self defeatism by telling himself the world is going to hell, so I can only assume that it was a brilliant troll.
and to put it bluntly:
YHBT YHL HAND
Why is Stephen Hawking doing this, why is he asking this question on Yahoo network? Is it a clever way to get more traffic to Yahoo sites?
You can't handle the truth.
The human race can survive the next one hundred years by behaving as though it deserves to.
The situation is actually barely different at all. Since the earth's creation it has been devastated with collisions, volcanoes, earthquakes, ice ages, magnetic field changes, etc. And higher life forms on earth has also been nearly wiped out by plagues / viruses. Deforestation and ecological disasters on a massive scale have been the planetary norm. Species have naturally gone extinct for millions of years.
The only difference today is humans can also inflict much of the same damage. Nature has always been more powerful than man. We're only just starting to catch up on how much damage we can inflict ourselves.
Developers: We can use your help.
And that's pretty much it.
Someone once said that politics are for those who didn't have the looks for show business. I laughed it off then, but now I'm not so sure. Stupid things are done by politicians. They do things for money, for personal gain, for "political" reasons (another way of saying "spite"), for religious beliefs. They keep people in fear to hold onto their power. They wage war, commit murder on a grand scale, thieve, slander, lie, plunder the general coffers. In short, politicians almost without exception, are evil.
Genetic manipulation, both for humans and plants, is not a bad thing on itself. The problem is that, the way current research is being done, very few will actually gain much by it. Just like research in geriatric medicine is wonderfully funded because there are a whole lot of rich seniors that would pay anything to improve their lives, genetic advances wold be marketed for the rich, and would only marginally help the average guy. Genetic engineering in plants is not just done to increase yields: companies like Monsanto make sure that the seeds the farmers buy won't reproduce, so that they have to buy them again next year. How does that kind of research make the plant better?
As far as organic food goes, I tend to buy organic produce, because in the local markets I have access to, the organic product tends to taste better. When fruit grows faster, it matures faster and doesn't get enough sun to get a decent taste. The food companies want to grow a lot of good looking fruit fast: Taste is only secondary. A vine riped tomato will taste significantly sweeter than any that you'll find in your typical supermarket. Anyone can distinguish between a normal banana and an organic banana, just on taste. A piece of meat that was never frozen and doesn't have hormones tastes better than the meat at the supermarket.
I'm sure it would be possible to spend research money on getting better tasting produce, but your average farmer is not paid extra if the food tastes better: he sells it all to a big distributor, that will pay him the same price per pound. The only ones that seem to concentrate on flavor just happen to have the organic label.
Is how I will survive the next 100 years. Ok I am not *that* selfish. But I love love love seeing the world change around me. I am only 28 and comparing the world today to the world when I was a child.. It amazes me the things that have changed. If I am lucky enough, rich enough, and if medical science has advanced enough to keep me alive and sane until about 2100 or so. I will be very happy.
we're not facing a global extinction event...
Yet...
Statistically an extinction level event *will* happen in the future. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in half a million years, noone knows.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Beside finding other planets, over time the human race is going to have to change its ability to live with itself. It needs to mature. Currently we are so caught up with our own lives that there are people so poor that they die from starvation. Small groups of people hold power and money. If we would spread it around, we could raise the quality of living for the general population of earth. However, that is extremely idealistic, and will probably never happen. I think that the way things are going, we'll be able to survive the next 100 years, as long as no one jumps the gun on setting off bombs and other weapons. The human race has an extraordinary ability to adapt, and evolution is inevitable. If countries get too crowded, plague or disease will remove the excess people. However, evolution is a relatively weak natural progression fighting against a strong unnatural force of weapons. It might take a thousand years for us to weed out a flaw in our genetics, but we can all be blown up within a matter of seconds. The human race doesn't seem to realize how much it tends to bring the torch of destruction close to the oiled wick of death. If we can teach people to put out the flame, then we will not only survive the next hundred years, but we will excel at them.
for which there is no real answer.
Personally, i think we need to learn from our past mistakes before we can ever truly advance. If we don't, we are going to end up doing what all other known and unknown cultures / civilizations did. Disappear!
~patrick
How can that be? My calendar says the world ends on January 19, 2038 at 3:14:07 am.
As a prophetic show noted, global warming will just be cancelled out by the nuclear winter and everything will be fine!
You're looking at population growth by country, with is totally inaccurate as to what you want to look at, because it includes immigration. For example, your value for the United States - 0.92% growth. But look at the US entry in the CIA World Factbook (the source for your chart) - you will see it lists the U.S. as having a birthrate of 2.09 children born/woman (2006 est.) This is *below replacement fertility*, which lies at about 2.2 births / woman (basically you have to have more than two babies per couple on avgerage because a certain percentage of them will die before they bear their own children.
If you look at actual birthrate, you will see the vast majority of countries in the "first world" (read: North America, Europe, developed Asia, etc.), are actually well below replacement birthrate, and still falling rapidly. This trend comes from a number of reasons - people delaying children until late in life, people opting to not have children, more acceptance of gay/lesbian couplings.
If we did, as the GP said, "spread the weath" more evenly, we would see the population very rapidly stabilize. The more affluent a society the lower the birthrate, because the parent's don't feel they have to have as many children for their family to carry on. It is a trend you can see throughout history.
You will learn this and more around the topic in any intro sociology class.
Just like the Cold War.
If it wasn't for the MAD (Mutually assured Destruction) scenario, the NATO and Warsaw Pact alliances would no doubt have gone to war with eachother. If we'd let our egos rule our actions, the world's ecosystems would be smoking husks by now.
I forsee similar circumstances in the coming century. In this case, the threat will not be so much the spectre of Nuclear Armageddon- more likely it will be the spectre of the Earth's systems that we depend upon being so irrecoverably wrecked that we will not be able to survive at the levels we have grown accustomed to throughout the past hundred years in developed countries.
Once the emerging superpowers enter the same boat as the current industrialised powers, one can only hope that mutual cooperation will be the outcome of any negotiations.
Since the scenario of global cooperation would rely upon the detrimental results of Climate Change being seen to be potentially more dangerous than more "traditional" conflicts, this effectively leaves the Earth's fate reliant on a coin tossed between the Arabs and the Jews.
Basically, if Iran nukes Israel and starts World War 3, our chance of stopping Civilisation's slide into anarchy slips through our fingers. We need to *stop* the conflicts and get down to the business of saving the lives of everybody- whether they are Jewish, Arabic, Hindu, American, British, Caucasian, Chinese, or disciples of the flying spaghetti monster.
Jonathon Swift's A Modest Proposal has some advice for survival.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Brute Force and Ignorance. We're in luck, the world already has plenty of it.
What reason is there to think we won't be around in 100 years? Global warming is bad, yes, but hardly the end of humanity. Running out of oil may not happen and if it does, may not be a complete disaster. Maybe launching all the nukes in the world could exterminate everyone, cause nuclear winter, and make the entire surface of the planet too radioactive for life to handle, or maybe not. There's been worrying about Malthusean doomsday overpopulation scenarios for centuries now. There's the way the Easter Island civilization went (Jared Diamond's Collapse). Maybe in our need for more and more, we can't stop ourselves from cutting down all the forests and catching and eating every last fish in the oceans? We see those possibilities, and are working on solutions, like, for instance, stop treating the oceans as commons so they don't suffer the Tragedy of the Commons. Even if we do screw up that monumentally, that may not mean The End. I don't think we will screw up like that-- I guess I have just a touch more faith in our intelligence. Then there's always a chance a dinosaur extinction sized asteroid is due to collide with the earth in the next 100 years, but that's quite unlikely, and every year our ability to detect and do something about that improves. A passing star or black hole could disrupt the solar system. Aliens could show up and exterminate us. Little or nothing we can do about those.
Most ways of killing us off are just so much paranoid fantasizing. Technology might advance to the point where a push of a single button could kill all of humanity in a second, while the technology to keep fanatic madmen away from that button somehow does not advance. We could invent intelligent robots or computers or "improved" evolutionary superior superhumans that decide to exterminate us a la Terminator or Khan. Or robots could sap our will to live by taking all the challenge out of life. Everyone could decide children are annoying burdens and not have any more. We could make a superbug, or a plague of rogue nanites, or have genetic engineering of something such as food go horribly wrong, or discover something like Vonnegut's Ice 9, or cause runaway global warming. We might inadvertently cause the extinction of some critical species-- suppose we accidentally killed off all the bees? The wacko element of religion is always going on about "the end is nigh", God is going to end the world soon, Armageddon, Ragnarok, etc. It's good fodder-- I think there've been many books and movies about each one of those. But none are at all likely in the next 100 years, and most aren't at all likely ever.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
humanity is doomed look at humanity today we are dying off I heard that this is the first generation to have a lower life expectancy then previous generations due to the obesity, humanity fights wars people lie and cheat thier way to the top with attitudes like that humanity can't survive and now that you are seeing new deseases being created like west nile, bird flu, SARS, and mad cow. let's not forget the massive weather changes occuring look at katrina last year or the tsumani the year b4. and with counties like the US and north korea with nuclear weapons threatening each other we have no hope.
I love the idea of colonizing Mars or other planets, but let's be real. We evolved here on Earth, and there will never be anyplace else for us. We didn't spend hundreds of millions of years evolving to live anywhere else.
We may be able one day to design some sort of life form suitable for other environments, such as space, or another planet, but it wont be us. We'll die off when our environment no longer can support us.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
They're like veal!
Ray Kurzwiel has said for a number of years that accelerating returns on technology development will lead to a merger between biology and technology at the atomic level. This will enhanced state of physical being and shared consciousness will make many of the worlds problems irrelevant.
What you probably think of as "hyper-consumption" is not intrinsic to the human condition.
That started only about 8,000 years ago, with the rise of "modern" agriculture and what we think of as "civilization", as best as anthropologists can tell, somewhere in the Fertile Crescent.
It is all these varieties of "civilized man" that that are toxic to their surroundings (to varying degress), not "man" himself.
Placed in a truly historical perspective, the hyper-consumption you appear to feel is intrinsic to homo sapiens sapiens, in fact, only appears in the most recent tenth of a percent or so if the species' history.
My god. Reading all the comments to this question is as scary as the original question. On the other hand, I shouldn't be surprised given all the misinformation floated around our society.
Rather than reply to the individual responses (we'll muddle along, technology will take care of it, it's all doomsday predictions), I'll focus on one reply.
So, we've managed through the last 100 years and thus, by shear force of logic, we'll manage through the next 100 years. Now that's an interesting argument. Try the same on yourself: "I've lived the last 10 years, so I'll live through the next 10 years." Then apply the logic again and again. Surely you see the logic flaw in this argument.
Quoting from Paul Hawken's "The Ecology of Commerce", "...one species--our own--out of 5 to 30 million species...is directly and indirectly claiming 40 percent of the earth production for itself. ...If, as predicted, our population doubles sometime in the next forty or fifty years, we will usurp 80 percent of the primary production of the planet, assuming no increase in the standard of living. If our standard of living doubles in the next forty years--the accepted projection--we will quadruple our impact, a physical impossibility."
We are living the result of the Industrial Revolution. We continue to focus on growth. Some are saying indirectly in their replies that growth is infinite. That, or they care about nothing beyond the 100 year timeline. Yet we know growth is not infinite. We run up against resource limitations. Technology will not solve this, not according to the application of technology today. Technology will certainly play a part in the eventual solution, but it is not itself the solution.
Pages and pages, reams, of data show that we are close to reaching the resource limitation if we have not already. In answer to those who look soley to technology, consider this: our ability to produce ever more crops on the same amount of land using technology or chemicals has reached the point of diminishing return. It takes more and more effort to get out less and less gain. It will soon become economically unfeasible to support the current trend.
Which takes us to the issue of waste -- both physical and toxic. Excepting the recycle bins you put out by the front door, everything we consume including food and material goods, produces extraordinary mounds of waste to create it and becomes waste when we're done with it. The process of creating goods pushes stunning amounts of toxins into the air, soil, and water. Every system known to man has "carrying capacity" -- the ability to absorb energy output and turn it into something else. By all measures we will reach the earth's carrying capacity in the next 40 years (not 100) and some suggest we've already passed that mark. The result of surpassing carrying capacity is devastating. Things don't stabilize; they crash.
To those who say it is all doomsday talk. I suggest you research the data and spend some time thinking over the outcome of the status-quo, rather than towing the party line. Stephen Hawking has spent his life understanding systems, including the birth and demise of systems. If he asks the question "How are we going to survive the next 100 years?", don't make the mistake of categorizing it as an academic curiousity. He's much smarter than all of us, and frankly in his shadow, those who yell "doomsday" appear childish.
So what's the answer to his question? Education, yes. Awareness, yes. Ultimately, it is mimicking those systems which have survived for thousands upon thousands of years. We must switch from a linear, cancerous pattern in which resources are assumed to be limitless, and instead we must devise cyclical patterns in which everything we create can in some way, at some point, be fed back into the system as energy (meaning "not waste but material for consumption by another element in the cycle"). I honestly don't know the answer more than that or even how we are going to break our linear pattern in favor of a cyclical one. But I do believe that if we don't solve it in our lifetime (yes, that soon), then we can expect a dire future.
My anwser: "Duh... Don't Worry. Humanity will survive."
In 2106: Slowly humanity has learned that real power is its ability to maintain, sustain and create. Causing pain and destruction is frowned upon, war is no longer profitable. None of the national governments of today will still exist. A multitude of organized religions will no longer cause (political) division. There is a kind of government, although we would not recognize it as such. Humanity has learned to let go of these childish things. The original internet was lost a long time ago, but an improved new wireless network is being deployed worldwide. Humanity is spreading out over the planet, in time it will have distributed itself nearly evenly around the world in small communities. The last desert has come to life, the whole planet looks like a beautiful garden. People are happy. Everyone loves to create and learn stuff, people still read and write books; more then ever before. Food, clothes, energy, and shelter will never become a problem again.
What I cannot create, I do not understand
The only way for us to survive is to grow up spiritually. As long as significant portions of the population live under the belief that the world is guided by magical beings who are somehow looking out for their little regional tribe of true believers, we're doomed. These fantasies marginalize everyone outside of the tribe and color them less than human.
There is no daddy or mommy god hovering over us guiding us to some otherworldly paradise where the chosen will be rewarded and the outsiders punished. These ideas just justify killing those who believe differently.
Once we get over this notion and realize that we're all humans living on a small ball of rock and water we might have a chance of lifting our eyes above the rim of our individual limits. Then we'll go beyond childhood and become something mature, whose nature we can only guess at right now.
As long as it really IS cheaper to be wasteful, then that's exactly what people will continue to do! And that also illustrates the fact that things aren't nearly as "dire" as some of the environmentalists and promoters of "less technology/simpler lifestyle" want you to believe.
... yet. When the landfills realy DO get filled up enough though, you'll see this change itself without any legislation or govt. incentives necessary.
At some point, our tendencies to embrace the disposable, short lifespan consomer goods will lead us to a situation where they're no longer the cheaper option and *that* is when you'll see change come about.
It's fine to preach about how much stuff we're tossing into landfills and trying to guilt people into changing, but all that does is push back the timeline a little bit on when it won't make economic sense anymore. A real *solution* can only come about when the best choice really becomes conservation.
Let's take, for example, recycling of glass bottles. Right now, it uses *more* total energy/resources to recycle them than it's worth. There are places that accept glass containers for recycling (though you won't get paid anything for dropping off the glass), but they're typically profitable only because of government tax breaks and subsidies. Glass is largely made up of sand, and we've got no shortage of sand. Meanwhile, think of all the diesel fuel or gasoline used to transport the waste glass around, etc.
As another example, cellphones. Currently, there's just no compelling reason for most people not to toss out an old one and get a new one (often free with a phone contract!) every 2 or 3 years. Totally wasteful and pointless, really -- except for the fact that you pay so much for the usage of the device, it makes little sense to put all of that towards some beat-up, feature-lacking phone that's starting to fall apart on you. The whole business model encourages the disposability of the hardware. It would change if consumers started getting rewarded for turning in their old phones for credit. The question is, are old cellphones really worth enough to make this a profitable option for cell companies to offer it? Apparently not
Just this ashtray. And this paddle game, the ashtray and the paddle game and that's all I need. And this remote control. The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that's all I need. And these matches. The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control and the paddle ball. And this lamp. The ashtray, this paddle game and the remote control and the lamp and that's all I need.
"Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey?"- Peter Gabriel
Just curious if anyone has any reliable data about whether it actually is possible (outside of a event similar to that which may have created the moon) to extinguish the entire human race.
Even when looking at something as dramtic as the K-T extinction event, can we reliably predict that some small number of humans would not be able to survive?
Population growth is not necessarily a good thing, especially when the demands of population exceed sustainable resources. That currently includes most of our food which needs fossil fuels to achieve the high levels of production which keep us from starving and the long supply chains which literally span the globe to keep us from starving. In many regions, staple food items are no longer produced.
Also in many areas, the carrying capacity is already exceeded, breeding or importing more people will only make that problem worse. Some credible (at least to me) biologists and ecologists posit that we've already exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet. Most can see that in regards to renewable resources and sustainable development, we're probably pretty far over the red line. The question is, have we crossed the point of no return yet?
Sure a redistribution of wealth might ease the pain for a few years or months, but it doesn't address the issue of diminishing resources needed for our civilization and increased population pressure on these remaining resources. Jared Diamond's book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed gives an interesting analysis of the current situation. As an amateur anthropoligist and dyed-in-the-wool misanthrope, after extensive travel, dialogues and reading, I myself arrived at a more pessimistic prognosis than he did, based mostly on different case studies and a few years before even hearing of him. Agree or disagree with his conclusion, it's still a very interesting read. Alternatively, a softer, lighter read might be his earlier book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Unlike some other technologies, societies do not generally degrade gracefully. In the case of most readers here, neither arable land nor the appropriate skills remain to "wind back" to an agrarian society. The land most easily farmed with muscle power has long since been paved.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I can't find my preferred Heinlein quote, but this will do:
When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere. Robert A. Heinlein
To survive the next hundred years we have to have a system that rewards and punishes the proper people instead of the near opposite that we have now. For not working you get welfare, For not following laws you get free room, food, physical therapy and education. For not taking care of yourself properly you get free medicaid.
The problem is that none of this is free. It requires resources to provide this and that means real costs in terms of money, energy and effort that has to come from somewhere. Now it's fine if somebody out there who feels bad for such people, or guilty, or whatever, chooses to supply money, energy or effort to whomever they wish. But what we do right now is punish everybody regardless of what they would choose. We mandate that everybody else pays for such resources even though they're the ones who make the intelligent choices and sacrifices that led them to being able to provide their own resources. Oh, you're like me? You can take care of yourself... You don't want to carry everybody else's burdens on top of your own and give them an easy ride compared to yours... Too bad. You, like me, are their slave. And yes, it's slavery. We are being forced to spend at least one third of our productive time working for no pay to ourselves.
And the problem is that the people that are incapable of taking care of themselves are consuming more than the rest of us can possibly provide. And they're demanding more every single day.
So what needs to be done? Simple. Stop promising to provide all this crap unless it's earned. Nobody gets anything unless they pay for it somehow. Do people die under such a system as I propose? Yes. Lots of them. Millions actually. Smokers die because they have substantial medical needs later that they cannot afford. Drug addicts die because there won't be any free rehabilitation centers and services for them. Old people die because they failed to save enough money when they were young and productive. Millions, at first. (and by the way last I checked, everybody still dies some time so don't pretend like this is some horrible outcome that could have been prevented.)
But I see the question as flawed. "What do we have to do to survive the next one hundred years?" is short sighted. Hell, survive the next 100? Simple. drain the earth. Consume all the oil as fast as you want. Be as inefficient as possible. Deforest and extinguish as many plants and species as you require for what you need now. Pump as much pollutants in to the air as you need to in order to produce what you need now, in just this moment. Yep, the earth will last the 100 years you requested.
The real question is "What do we have to do to survive indefinitely?" (barring such items as the death of the sun.) And to do that we have to have sustainable resources, economics, politics and policies. Taking from those who have to give to those who have not does not fit this model. Oh, sure you can find me a few truly unlucky people who, if given a gob of resources would flurish and use it wisely indefinitely; maybe even be able to generate a surplus to help another person. For every such person you show me I'm sure I can find a dozen stupid, lazy slobs, each of whom would happily consume wastefully the gross product of a dozen efficient, hard working people while providing nothing in return. We need to stop feeding such people and let them be weeded out from the gene pool so that what we are left with is efficient productive based people.
You're reading this and thinking... "He can't be serious, can he?" Yes... I am. Read my sig. It sums up a simple policy that goes a long way towards surviving indefinitely, let alone just the span of a single lifetime.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
The human race will survive in the same manner as they have since their days in the cave (or garden, depends on your preferred mythology)... by the skin of their teeth, in chaos and strife.
Hail Eris.
Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
Everyone has to make a good faith effort to...
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
okay, okay. i didn't make this up. i just realize its inherent truth.
it will never happen. if it did, though, society will have proved the biblical god can't exist. 100%.
i don't know when humanity will set out to annihilate itself, but i know it will eventually. it could be within 100 years or 100 years or more. but it *will* happen.
Mark 13:
"19 For in those days there will be tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the creation which God created until this time, nor ever shall be. 20 And unless the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh would be saved;"
even if i didn't believe this verse, i'd still see the writing on the wall. the PRIMARY fruit of science and education are more efficient death machines. this is undisputable and no amount of lipstick will make this pig look beautiful.
If the first fifty posts here constitutes our "best and brightest" the human race is doomed for certain. Majority of the posts mention "population". Haven't our attitudes toward population created the majority of our present mess in the first place? And what lever do we have to influence population (and global distribution of wealth), over such a short time window (four generations), that doesn't light more fires than it puts out? Certainly population must be *understood* to formulate any useful ideas, but that's about as far as wisdom dictates.
What I believe must happen is that we come up with many thousands of small ideas that do more to put out fires than start them. Even if you chase a non-convergent series across the x-axis, it isn't going to stay put long enough to matter.
The real thinking involves determining which kinds of interventions are convergent (on average, to a best guess, or with good prospects surrounding constuctive failure--the mine fields of good intentions abound) and which interventions are not (and not necessarily through any fault of their own, but with full acceptance of how "each of us is smarter than all of us" and all that poster-slogan implies).
If I were to reason by analogy to the manifest failures of the human condition that lead us to this point in time, I would guess that the easy redemption slips through our fingers as it always does. We'll end up in the situation where the solution or its mechanisms are fully understood, but the news of the solution is perpetually one step behind the shock front it could have mitigated.
I see this shaping up as a foot race between human resourcefulness and ingenuity and the resonating stress fronts: resources, politics, environment.
My view is that we should be focussing our attention on running the best foot race we can possibly run when it comes to crunch time. What are the mechanisms that aid or impinge on this vital capacity?
I'm still contemplating this problem. I have one certain item on my list thus far: the patent system. As the patent system stands, we have routed one of our most potent weapons--our technical ingenuity--across the Manitoba marsh lands (read about the Great Canadian Railway). All the smart people will have constructive ideas, and all of the constructive ideas will be hung up in the patent system, which is bad enough, and the truly reprehensible litigation environment that surrounds it. Did anyone see that remark yesterday that certain personal awards were upheld in the tabacco verdict, while one was overturned because the statute of limitations had expired as the legal system spun its wheels with great precedent and determination into the soft wet sand?
The usual human response is to fix an institution such as our patent and legal system only *after* its liabilities have culminated in catastrophe. The problem is that we can already the future setting up such that the prime catastrophe is the world around us, and the bloody-mindedness of our legal system is just the *secondary* catastrophe that we will soon have the pleasure of addressing after the berms are breached.
That's the kind of circumstance that stretches human resourcefulness to the breaking point at the exact moment in time the human race can least afford it.
In my view, it's a clear failure of the American constitution that the American legal system was not constitutionally mandated to achieve *proactive* self-reform.
And worst of all, the American legal system is being globalized following exactly the same model as the American power grid. Only Quebec had the good sense to DC couple their grid to that horrible mass of wires and dominoes (and do not fail to observe the contributions of the regulatory and legal environment in shaping the engineering decisions and sand-sucking ostrich behaviours).
Presently, through the global treaty process, American legal process is being aggressively exported using the club of economic integration with the world's most consumeristic popu
1. Focus on Genectic Engineering. If we can GM ourselves, we should be able to have people who are GM'ed enough to withstand anything we can throw at ourselves. 2. If God truly has a plan for us, then obviously he won't let us all die so do whatever you want. Unless his plan is to let us all die, in which case there's not really anything we can do to stop it. So just have faith, that always works out well doesn't it? Why actively do something when simply believing things will be OK is good enough?
How to solve the population problem:
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
I wrote a whole big post on interdependence. But I like this guy's answer better: "learning from the past". I can't believe he hasn't gotten any mod points yet.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
I'm glad this got more responses than the Wii name change news...
But with the ability to destroy the planet, is it more important to give control of this power to the apathetic public or to give it to a few powerful leaders who actually care?
Its good that people still respond intelligently to issues like this.
Were noone educated, it's a near certainty that human live would survive many centuries.
With highly educated people we may have a better chance to live millions of years (by getting off the earth before some natural disaster strikes); but over the next hundreds of years education will increase risks (through manmade disasters) rather than help things.
Dear Mr Hawking,
I cannot understand why war, overpopulation, global warming and other doomsday theories dominate your views on social science. The fact is that intelligence does not make you an authority on anything requiring knowledge outside your sphere.
War
War is, to me, the only thing likely to be the end of civilization besides an extinction level planetary impact, as over time, advances in science increasingly enable us to affect our environment and control energy using the levers of natural law, but whether this can be universalized over time to the extent that a country like North Korea could destroy the usefulness of the entire world to humans and counter attempts by all the others wanting to detect and thwart those efforts is yet to be seen. Getting back to reality, each country has a somewhat static threshold for war which is governed by a combination of roughly three things from the top of my head:
-The resources at hand to fight the war
-The collective will of the populace, as expressed by the sum of all its knowledge, ignorance, logic and insanity
-The will of the leadership, as expressed by the knowledge, ignorance, logic and insanity of the leadership
Sooner or later, however you see it, enough of all of those things erode to the point of being unwilling to continue with war, someone surrenders or is obliterated, and then the population continues to survive despite whatever costs are incurred.
The fact is that civilizations will continue to decide that someone else shouldn't have the freedoms they have, shouldn't exist, or should exist under their rule, and those who would be subject to those whims SHOULD fight! Anyone who says that there should never be war either thinks that fascist countries should always get their way, or thinks that there obviously are no countries that would destroy or take over a peaceful nation. That's just utopian bullshit.
Overpopulation
It is a fact that as a civilization becomes more advanced and established that the birthrate shrinks. We in the united states require immigration even to keep our population growth even with our death rate. How does a 1.5 children per two adults equal population growth? China and Japan are heading towards massive population shrinkage, even to the point of crisis.
Global Warming
I guess I'd rather not go into global warming, but there is debate as to man's level of involvement on that front. Further, the effect is along the lines of lots of death in third world countries, massive shifts in land values leading to lots of bankruptcy in more developed countries, and possibly other natural disasters. There are some theories about how the flora and fauna would be affected, but the earth's mammalian population seems well suited to survive ice ages and climate shift as evidenced by the past.
Fabric of the universe? Sure, go for it. Cause-headed ignorance and feel-good statements only good for warm fuzzies? Leave it to the idiots with the super-short memories.
Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, how I love it. - Gen. George Patton
The Earth isn't infinite. Neither is any species. Try to think in terms of birth-infancy-youth-adulthood-death when reading this question, and replace the word "we" with "civilization".
Humanity may survive for many centuries, or millennia to come, but will our civilization?
There's only one way it can- it has to grow. A "steady-state" world is a fools game. It invites stagnation, which is ultimately a dead-end road. The species becomes complacent, and dies.
In order to grow, we have to find and exploit more and more energy. Constantly. Energy fuels civilization via technology. Technology is freedom. Don't think so? Just look at how technology has changed the lives of everyday people throuought history. With enough energy, virtually anything is possible.
The oil, coal and uranium we get from the Earth will either run out or poison our own habitat one way or another- eventually. Probably within about a hundred years or so. If we wait until then, it's too late. Remember, energy cannot be created. It's either there, or it isn't. And it takes energy to develop technology.
Wind? Waves? Geothermal? Maybe as stopgaps, but not sufficient to fuel continued growth.
Fission? Not enough uranium, unless you want to spread nuclear weapons technology around the world via fast breeder reactors.
Fusion? If anyone can ever get it to work, and what about all that dangerous radioactive tritium that's bound to leak out all the time?
If we humans squander all the energy we've found in the ground, without using it as the stepping stone it needs to be, to get to a cleaner, inexhaustible energy source, then we and our civilization are surely doomed to return to the stone age and dissapear like the Neaderthals did before us. Then, a few million years into the future, after another layer of oil and coal deposits are layed down, perhaps the squid or some other intelligent, tool-capable beast will rise and become the next sentient life on earth.
Kardashev postulated that planet-based energy is only the first stage of a civilization. The second stage uses all the energy from a star. Third stage uses all the energy of a galaxy. Let's not give up now, we've got a hell of a long way to go!
We could enforce conservation of our existing, dwindling energy resources by raising the price of oil and coal (via government action, of course) to three or four times - no, ten times it's current low value, and dedicate a significant portion of the remaining energy to getting real, abundant alternatives.
Don't think energy prices are low? Look at your ceiling. See the lights? the ones being powered by a coal fired generator many miles away, that uses coal that was transported over many miles by train to get to the generator, The coal that we had to rip a mountain apart to get to? That's a lot of work and energy being squandered just to replace the light that's already available on your building, light that's a few feet away, pouring down from the sun, only to be blocked by your roof.
Why do we do it that way? Because we need those lights at nighttime, and it's too expensive to install dual lighting systems- you know, skylight windows. Those are too expensive. A freaking window. That's what I mean when I say energy is way too cheap.
Is anyone doing any research into quantum energy sources? What about tapping the Higgs field? Could there be a better way to utilize E=MC^2 than just making hot water to power a steam/turbine engine? There's got to be a better way to liberate the energy locked into normal matter. Who's looking into that?
NASA studied space based solar power in 1976 and again in 1995. They shelved it each time. Why? Why can't we tap the unimaginably huge amount of sun generated energy that's just wafting by between the Earth and the Moon? It's not a question of how- we know several ways how. It's a question of cost and politics. What technologies need to be improved, invented,
I gather from the context that "smarter" there was meant to be "more educated" instead.
It's also society's role to police itself and ensure that problems are nipped in the bud and problem individuals don't reproduce. Prior to 1900, nearly every society that I've heard of had some sort of initiation or competency test, whether over or de facto, to sort out who could reproduce and who could not. Some even had the additional requirement that an individual actively cull as part of that step. In other words, there one could not marry without taken an enemy off the planet. However, more generally, some test or ordeal had to be passed to move from child status to adult.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
The good doctor breaks a longevity record every second he lives... I'll have whatever he's having!
Matt.
The morality of each of those motives may rightly be questioned (yes, even hunger, you cheeto-eating, lard-bellied, WoW-playing dweebs!), but there is no "consumption for consumption's sake".
Sure there is...
Consumption for comsumption's sake is demonstrated clearly by people buying bigger and bigger SUVs...
A suburban housewife driving a Hummer? Ridiculous...
If you need a clearer example than that you should take off your $500 sunglasses...
Goofy, Geeky Gifts and More!
This question makes it sound like it's a foregone conclusion that we *won't* survive the next hundred years, and what can we do to change that.
What will we do to survive the next hundred years? My answer: we'll keep doing what we've been doing: make new stuff, cure some diseases, find new ways and reasons to kill each other, and overall, everything will more or less balance out, and we'll survive the next 100 years without trying, in any particular way, to survive. I mean, as long as people keep eating and fucking, we'll probably be around.
My personal plan is to keep eating fast food, use the bathroom as needed, enjoy the benefits of modern medicine, and live another ~40 years. I imagine my descendants will do the same, and after a couple rounds of that, we'll be at the 100 year mark, safe and sound.
At a micro level, all humans, individually, will eat food, drink lots of fluids when we get sick, treat injuries, etc.--in other words, do all that human-nature stuff which, almost by definition, living beings do on an individual basis to survive. On a macro level... I don't know, maybe I'll raise my kids and pay some taxes.
As for the question "What can I, J. Random Slashdot User, do to prevent Bush from nuking the world and ending human existence," the answer is "absofuckinglutely nothing." So what's the point of this question again?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Vastly different? In your dreams of deluded grandeur my slashdot friend, in your dreams of deluded grandeur.
Oh oh! MY lifetime is the most different and radically changed evAr! Absolutely nothing like it has come along ever before!
Yes our ability to inflict damage has increased, but so has our population. Consider that the death we can cause has grown in proportion with our numbers.
Nature has always been a larger force than the human mind. Volcanos, asteroids, infectious diseases, supervolancos, etc. all could wipe out far more humans than we could ever dream to. We flatter ourselves with the belief that we could do more.
I'm just having fun picturing how absolutely smashed he must have gotten in order to ask such a question on Yahoo Answers.
I'd settle for letting natural selection take out the stupid ones. Like when some kid goes to great lengths to climb over the fence and into the bear cage at the zoo. Right now we shoot the bear, which is totally unfair. We're shooting the bear for doing a public service! We should reward the bear by shooting the parents and toss them over the fence as dessert and let the bleached bones stand as a warning to the legions of future stupid people looking at the fence and thinking it would be fun to climb over.
And giving families money when one of their relatives pulls a pop machine over on themselves because they were trying to steal from it or climb on top of it. Totally wrong. We should require, by law, that the next person to happen on the scene jump up and down on the pop machine until the bozo trapped underneath is good and dead, then make the family pay for a new pop machine and bury the dumbass in the old one after a week long open casket public display.
Every time I watch the neighbor kids flying down the road on their four wheelers, standing on the foot pegs, with no helmet and think that if they flipped it and ended up drooling down their chin for the rest of their life the family would probably sue and claim the four wheeler was unsafe. These are the people with flocks of mis-matched children in their yards. Each adult will have three or four kids, all from different partners. And drive a gigantic pickup truck that gets 9 miles to a gallon that they use to haul their race car to the track on weekends, all the while complaining about the high cost of gasoline. Hey, you don't suppose large numbers of people driving giant pickup trucks so they can haul their gas toys around on weekends might be contributing to the high cost of gasoline do you, Jethro?
Natural selection is there for a reason.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
If overpopulation and overconsumption is the problem...
Considering that within that time frame the average age at death will be over 100, I don't see any problem within 100 years. Children being born today will most likely be alive in 100 years so this is just 1 generation. Mr. Hawking knows this and is setting people up. 100 years is just a blip on the geologic time scale. Unless there is a LARGE meteor strike people will still be arguing "How will we survive the next 100 years?"
The same way it did the last 100 years. ,didn't your cars use leaded gas and had no pollution controls at all? The factories could dump anything into the water, the air, or on the ground back then.
One day at a time.
I was talking with a friends grandmother the other day. She told me that she wouldn't want to have kids today because the world had gotten so bad.
I asked her why she felt that way. She is extremely liberal and here is what I got.
1. All the wars. We didn't all the wars back then.
2. All the new disease.
3. All the pollution.
4. All the racism and bigotry.
5. The government snooping on everyone and taking there freedom.
So I asked her what year she had her first child. It was 1955!
Good grief... I asked her what about Korea, Lebanon, and the Suez Crisis. Not to mention the Cuban Missile crisis just around the corner.
I asked her if she worried about her child getting polio and ending up in an iron lung.
I asked
Racism? I forgot there wasn't any in 1955.
The Government? What about McCarthy?
The world isn't perfect but people groups and governments are using fear to control you. The future actually looks a lot better now than it did 50 years ago. And a hell of a lot better than it did in 30's.
Yes we must work hard to make it even better and to solve our problems but that is the same as it ever was.
As I said one day at a time.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Whatever happened to the good old days, when the bubonic plague and smallpox were the only biological weapons to worry about and a month's wages were a pound of salt? When civilization could barely defend itself against the onslaught barbarian hordes and half the population was enslaved? When wars would drag on violently for decades rather than last as cold-standoffs with very few casualties on either side? When those god-damned genetic engineers wouldn't design custom vaccines and insulin-producing potatoes? If only those greedy industrialists wouldn't provide enough jobs to keep us out of chains, enough food to fatten even our poor, and enough technology to put a significant portion of our species' sum total of knowledge into the hands of anyone with a library card and ten fingers to type with. If only they wouldn't provide us, in each successive year, with ever greater value at ever lower cost.
Who are we to kill trees so that we may live?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The question is without realism. With six billion people on Earth it would be almost impossible to kill everyone. But far from that being a negative thing, mass destruction can be a boon for humanity. As Darwin showed, the evolution of a species is driven by the death of entire segments of the population. Those who survive are more suitable to the environment (In our case, "the environment" isn't just the ecosystem but also the social, political and technological environment we create around us). Additionally, given our ability of self-change we've moved beyond genetic evolution and would more likely evolve by changing our ways rather than physically adapting (e.g. learning to not develop nuclear weapons rather than evolving a physical immunity to radiation). Hopefully we'd learn that the first time. A little death and anarchy now and again is a good thing. In the grand scheme of things, it keeps the human animal on its toes.
Put LSD in the water. After everyone has a psychadelic experience and their mind expands past the confines of the next American Idol winner, the world will work together a little bit more.
Though even if that doesn't work, should be one helluva trip...
Looking at the way some of the national governments handle things, it almost looks like many leaders are kind of secretly hoping that a pandemic will help them avoid addressing the population problem. However, we still need some kind of planning in place otherwise, the population curve will recover in a few decades just like it did with the Black Plague.
For good and bad many things in society have changed since the turn of the previous century. One mixed blessing was that in the old days when one had to pass an ordeal to become and adult and receive adult privileges and responsibilities. The good side of those was that desirable societal traits were enabled and undesirable dampened. Ok, now debate what is desirable and undesirable. One thing that has certainly been undesirable, but has nonetheless grown, is the separation between action and responsibility, or even authority and responsibility. For example in housing, it's not the greedy developers that parcel land in substandard locations or use substandard materials and workmanship that suffer, but the poor slobs that for various reasons have to buy them. Or for example, the decision to expose a population to very harmful pollutants, seldom has immediate biological (reproductive or ability to thrive) repercussions for those behind the decisions. However, many other similar examples abound of individuals and group escaping responsibility for acts and decisions harmful to the group at large.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
The human *race* will survive just fine, by adapting to whatever happens, as we've done for a hundred thousand years... although usually when people ask this kind of question they are really asking "Can my way of life as I know it continue to be feasible?" or "What will things be like for future generations?"... If the world heats up, the ice caps melt and 95% of the land floods, then the Nepalese will repopulate it when the waters drop. If the world overcrowds and wars are waged over resouces, then some people will survive. If we see a worldwide pandemic that kills billions, those immune or unaffected will live on.
Humans are not in any danger of going extinct in the short term. Whether or not *you* or any of *your offspring* or *your way of life* survive whatever happens is another story.
I believe that the most important technology that we don't yet have is the creation of self-contained ecosystems, akin to what Biosphere 2 was attempting to create. A more general problem that we also have very little knowledge of is ecosystem engineering; that is, how to make a sustainable and habitable environment for humans and support organisms (crops, etc.) exist within an unlivable environment, such as other planets, the ocean floor, interplanetary space, and even remote areas of earth. By "sustainable" in this context I mean that it should be mostly self-sufficient and able to scavenge energy and resources from the local environment, without needing constant external resupply. Even "easy" terrestrial environments, like the Antarctic settlements, rely on frequent supply shimpments.
After Biosphere's relative failure, it seems that many scientists have lost heart in our technological ability to achieve these goals. This is in spite of the fact that self-contained ecosystems are nearly ubiquitous in popular science fiction, and that most, if not all, of the scientific principles at play are fully understood. There may not be immediate economic incentives to research this now, but there aren't economic reasons to be in space yet either. Both are necessary for human progress, and probably ultimately human survival.
If we are ever going to colonize other planets, build sea-floor settlements, or even try to repair the damage we've done to our own ecosystems... the technology for ecosystem engineering is a strong prerequisiste, and it's comparably not that hard or expensive, either. The Biosphere 2 cost "only" ~$150 million to develop and build, whereas the 2005 budget for the Space Shuttle program was $5 billion. Practical technology takes time time, trial, and error to perfect. So why have we let a single error dissuade us?
Oh, and we need to cure Lou Gehrig's too. Haha, sorry Stephen, just a little fun at your expense.
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
I am not sure we should bother of the surviving of human race. It seems we we are in our top stage at the moment. The main problem is we are so bounded to our biological roots that we are not able to move somewhere forward. I mean the most of today's progress is still based on our archaic instincts like need of food, sex, role in group etc. No other solution than to make some AI without such instincts and maybe it find a completely new sense of existence we are not aware imagine now. Anyway you agree or not the whole planet is streaming to that point. Just one example what is the progress of possibility to see movies on your phone? In fact it does not mean nothing so important for a single man (moreover in case he watches porno on it) but it means something very important for developing of a new technology. And more and more of new technology will bring AI in the end.
You ignore parasites.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
What's up with the freak out reaction anytime somebody suggests we consume less? It's the same thing as consuming mindfully.
This "will we survive" question really grabs us and gets our attention. But its the wrong question. The better question is "What IF we survive? Then what?" So what if we survive? Will we continue to muddle along killing each other, indulging our greed and selfishness, abusing our planet, living in fear both of real and imagined threats, and generally wasting our lives unable to fully appreciate the joy of living because we're so self-absorbed? Clearly we should take action to prevent the abortion of the human experiment, but that isnt really the point of being alive. To be truly alive isn't to be wrapped up in concerns about future survival, its to take good care of what we have here-and-now: if we do that, the future takes care of itself.
Too many living beings for too little water! Africa as the future planet scenario.
Scenario1: Do nothing = Survival of the Smartest
Scenario2: LifeRaft = Life boat a population offPlanet
Scenario3: ActNow = Draconian police, religious, moral and ethical programs
Scenario4: ActLater = Civil/Military chaos under Private/Religous power
1000yr? Do nothing
500yr? LifeRaft
100yr? ActNow
100? Overthrow Global Economics/Institute e-COnomics manage inputs/outputs so that environment profits
Not viable, but I'm pretty sure WWIII will come because we won't.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Excellent post.
One problem with your post-scarcity theory: it won't last. The world population is expected to double over the next 100 years. I'm not sure technology will be able to deal with the scarcity issues that quickly. Especially for things like clean water, oil, and land. I expect there to at least be some serious wars as these resources become more scarce.
I'd also like to mention humanity's penchant for powerful people to create scarcity in order to increase their power. While technology has helped us counteract that nicely over the past 50 years, I'm not confident that it will continue to do so long term.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
The real question is if the market can correct this or if the market will dig such a deep hole that it doesn't react until the shit hits the fan.
You nailed it! That is the billion dollar question. It's also the primary divide between the two halfs of our (U.S.) population.
Basically coinciding with their successful period.
Think about that. We were naked apes for 992,000 years. We were masters of the planet for 8,000. What happened? We changed the environment around us.
It's all Krista's Fault.
Doom and gloom predications have been coming and going for centuries, yet somehow, humanity still continues to make generation over generation progress
Actually, that's more long-term, but... We've got all our eggs in one basket here. If something bad happens it could wipe out humanity. We need self-sufficient colonies on the Moon and/or Mars so if a calamity befalls Earth we can back-populate once it becomes inhabitable again. We should also be prepared to terraform Mars, if something renders the Earth permanently uninhabitable.
Of course, nobody is even willing to fully fund a program to find and/or deal with objects that could collide with the Earth and potentially cause extinctions, so the chances of a much more expensive colonization program getting funded are slim to none.
He proposes a question, and goes back in time to answer it before it was asked!
To survive more than another hundred years or two[1], first we have to solve the Artificial Intelligence problem, and then we have to figure out how to encode our human minds into computer programs. Once humans exist as software that can run on digital computers, in robotic bodies, etc., whether or not Earth can support human biological life anymore will be irrelevant. Furthermore, we'll then be able to make ourselves very small, immortal, and space-hardy. Once we've done that, we can spread like demon seed throughout the universe.
|>oug
P.S. Please don't claim that if we give up our human bodies, we won't be "human" anymore. Biologically speaking, that may be true, but philosophically, it is not. What makes us human is our minds, not our bodies. If this weren't the case, the term "brain dead" wouldn't have much meaning to us.
Footnote 1: Human beings, are, no doubt, like ants, and can survive in biological form until the sun burns out, but it seems unlikely that we'll be able to do so as a technological society for long periods of time. It seems more likely that we'll keep knocking ourselves back to medieval times, as depicted by Vernor Vinge in A Deepness in the Sky.
Naysayers make their livings writting books.
The rest of us innovate and change, but then others complain again.
Progress happens. A perfect example is water. One of the latest use of carbon nanotubes is to act as a perfectly calibrated microporous desalinization and purefication system. A recent university demonstration of the prototype filter pointed to being able to likely lower the cost of desalinization by half.
Electricity can run 80-90% of the cars in the country and the electricity can be produced by nuclear powerplants with minimal impact. The electric distribution is in place to distribute electricity nationwide. Batteries have doubled their efficiency in power per unit volume over less than a decade, and are continuing.
Smaller devices that consumers use are the norm, along with recycyling. That puts less strain on materials supplies.
Man collectively has no choice but to innovate. There is no way that the innvations can be spread equally across the planet, as various governments have structured their systems to limit education, growth, and the acceptance of new methods in many ways.
Innovation is not just a choice; it is the ONLY choice.
Since mankind is no more capable of regulating its population than rabbitkind, Nature will take care of it in the most efficient manner: a major epidemy seems unavoidable within a few years, and for the few survivors, life will be great: plenty of space, no more pollution and a gradual return to an enjoyable climate.
...exactly the same way humanity survived the last hundred years?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Certain individuals in power make too much money and have too much power from scarcity to let it go away.
m.
I don't think survival is the important part of the question, especially for such a short time (well, 100 years is only one generation), and we are good survivors. The important part is the "how", i.e. what circumstances, life quality, political and economical climate, human rights, energy situation will our grandchildren have. And honestly, I'm not optimistic. All I can think of, is really not good. Still, hundred years can be a relatively long time, just think back what was here a hundred years ago, and we just might not be able to even concieve the level of changes these hundred years could bring us. I just hope we (well, not we as persons but we as a population) will live to see it without many epidemics, religious or political wars, energy crises and Earth turning into a semi-Arrakis (i.e. desert planet without spice). Then we'll do fine.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
The best answer I can think lies in Sam Harris' "The End of Faith".
Of course the human race will survive the next 100 years. Short of an extinction event like an astoroid strike, full scale nuclear war etc, human beings can weather pretty much anything thrown at us. The real question is whether or not our civilization can survive. Disease, famine, war, the greenhouse effect, these could kill millions or even billions of people. Governments would be thrown into shambles and anarchy would reign as people reverted to animals, cannibalism would become a necessity in many parts of the world, but as long as there is at least a handful of people, the human race will live on. However, it will be completely different society than what we have now and as the population grew they would create their own civilizations. As Ian Malcolm says in Jurassic Park "...life find's a way".
This was my reply:
"I think that the human race is the most incredible creation of nature (or god). Our resilience is truly remarkable and a true virtue of our very nature. For thousands of years, we have lived in turmoil. We've struggled throughout history for more power, more control, and more security. All through that time of killing, suffering, and senseless destruction, we have prevailed and improved ourselves. I would argue that the violence today is disturbing, but I am still happy that I am alive today and not the dark ages where cruelty was truly uncensored. I can see the future for mankind displaying true greatness. We have begun the exploration of space, a truly remarkable feat. We have populated and explored almost every livable corner of this planet of ours. We are constantly in pursuit of knowledge and seek to understand the universe around us. The more I think of what humanity is, the more awe inspiring it really is to me. We can accomplish the impossible.
I have strong faith that the next 100 years will be a golden time for us. We are on the verge of the next leap in our advancement. We have conquered, explored, discovered, and we can now start to live.
Violence is around us today, but I would argue that most of us would feel more secure in the world we live in now than a world where humanity was not in control. We are young, we are learning, and we are doing well.
Instead of worrying about what will happen in the next 100 years, I am excited for the prospects of what could and will happen. Even through the turmoil that we will go through on the way to success."
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right. --Isaac Asimov
How would the human race NOT survive the next hundred years? It would take some work to not survive that long.
100,000 years ago up until the 1930s, there were no nuclear bombs.
I agree and would add to it an even bigger fundamental problem.
100,000 years ago there was also no widespread pollution of our waterways. We cannot live off the land anymore without our technology to purify water and process waste. If the power runs out, these things will come to a halt and we'll be drinking river water with feces and dead bodies floating in it. Doesn't sound like much fun.
Eventually things will clear up and those remaining can frolic in the woods wearing loin cloths and eating freshly killed dear. Personally I think it's a shame we didn't just stay that way and save ourselves the trouble.
Luck equals that no massive disaster comes by before we can prevent it.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Here's my reply, pasted from what I actually sent from the Yahoo Answers page:
It depends on how we solve the problems we face. We have one very good tool for solving any problem: natural selection.
It doesn't always have to be life and death of a species or mutation. It can be memetic evolution. For instance, the meme (idea) of huge, gas-guzzling Sports Utility Vehicles is not sustainable, and has been selected out simply because hybrids and pure electrics will continue to work when SUVs don't. And by "work" I don't necessarily mean SUVs will completely stop working because there is NO more gas -- simply, as gas prices go up, people will start to care about wasting gas.
Here's another one: As people got sick of being brainwashed and bombarded by advertising, the Digital Video Recorder was a welcome change. Some advertisers are starting to realize that the model of bombarding the consumer into buying a product no longer works, and are trying the revolutionary idea of creating advertising that people actually want to watch. Even people who hate Macs can't help but laugh at the latest Mac vs PC ads, and wonder why Microsoft, with all its billions, can't come up with better advertising.
The point is not that Macs are better, but that I ignore most ads, are annoyed by most others, but love watching the Mac ads, even twice a commercial break, even as I mainly use Linux and am frustrated by the Mac OS. And with more and more people buying DVRs, you'd better make the ad worth watching or no one will watch.
Now, since humans seem to be motivated much more easily by the stick than the carrot, I can't imagine that we will actually proactively take any steps to avoid impending doom. I can only imagine that the threat of whatever impending doom will have to get serious enough that, eventually, the people most able to eliminate that threat will start taking steps to eliminate it. And when we are motivated, we, as a species, are very creative.
Sometimes the people most able to eliminate a threat are powerful politicians or military leaders, as is the case with nuclear threats. Sometimes they are an entire country or society, as is the case with stupid TV or the use of fossil fuels.
Of course, no one can say whether this will ultimately save us. For instance, there are any number of phenomina in this universe which could eliminate whole planets easily, with very little warning at all. In Frank Herbert's Dune series, Leto II, the God Emperor of Dune, rose to that status and oppressed all human culture, spanning hundreds if not thousands of worlds, for over three thousand years, just to apply that stick so hard that we would never forget it. As a direct result of his hydraulic monopoly on the Spice (necessary for space travel), alternatives for Spice production and alternatives to the Spice itself were developed. And as a direct result of his oppressive rule, humankind finally had a lust for freedom so strong that, in an event called the Scattering, we accelerated outward, spread humans so far and wide and gave them such wild independance that there was no longer a single point of failure.
This was done because apparently Leto saw a threat to humanity that we would never perceive as a whole until it was too late. He effectively served as a vaccine for the whole human race against a threat only hinted at in the books I've read so far (I'm up to halfway through Heretics of Dune).
I do not know how anyone could pull that off in the real world that exists today. Perhaps it would work with the Internet -- a virus (in the old sense of the word, also a trojan, worm, and spyware) could probably cause significant damage to almost every Internet-connected computer today, and such an act would, despite being highly illegal and destructive, result in a much more secure Internet and much less chance of such a virus actually destroying our information systems completely in the future (think y2k bug, only done deliberately by human terrorists).
However, in order to really survive the next hundred years, more specific questions must be asked, questions to which I don't know the answer, or even the question.
Unless the answer is fourty-two. I know that one.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The answer is this: walk away.
/enough/ yet. That's right. We just have to have more control. Then it'll alllll be better. Onward Christian soldiers."
/no hurry/.
That's it. Just walk away. We need to give up this ridiculous and disastrous clinging to a way of life that is not sustainable. We are a tribe who has conquered the Earth, and believes that it has the right to go right on conquering. And we say "Oh, things suck right now? That's just cause we haven't conquered
This is not to say that there isn't a way human societies and tribes can work together to move forward in our knowledge and make life better for all. But we have to realize that where we are now is not better. And we all have to realize it. Without every member of our tribe coming to this realization together, the few still believing in these ways will only rise to try to conquer it all over again.
We are not the only humans to try this way of life that we've lived for the last 8-10 thousand years. The Anasazi tried it. The ancient Mayas tried it. They were smarter than us. They said, "Ok, we gave it a shot, but this sucks. Screw it." And they went back to living in ways that worked. Maybe many generations down the line they'll try a new way of structuring societies. And maybe that will work out better. Maybe not. But there's
At any rate, I don't have any specific answers for how we can survive the next hundred years. How each person lives should be the way that works for them. But I do have a way we can not survive the next hundred. And that's the way we're going right now.
I talk about this author a lot, but only because I believe he introduces these ideas in a very clear and understandable way. I recommend this book highly. At least give the excerpt a shot.
Slashdot is probably not the best place to be trying to put these ideas forward. But by the gods, I'll tell it to anyone who will listen.
Tilting at windmills always,
userlame
I'm gonna party like it's 2099.
Because nothing gets people to work together more than a common cause against people that are different than themselves. Sad but true.
People today are stressed out, and need efficient tools to get back to themselves, from the ever-quickening world around them. With breathing excercises, yoga, meditation and knowledge about the Art of Living, Art of Living Foundation lead by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is one of the biggest hopes for the human race.
:
First you use the techniques and knowledge to become energetic, happy, relaxed, peaceful and loving. Then it will overflow and you start caring and sharing with others. We are anyways one World Family, and the most fulfilling actions we can possibly do is to do service to others.
Quotes from Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Some feeling came into you, unpleasant feeling, and you said, "Should not come, it should not come!" Doing that, you are resisting it. When you resist, it persists. Just observe. See, "Oh!" Go deep into it. Dance; stand up on your feet and dance. Be intoxicated; move intoxicated.
--Sri Sri Ravi Shankar,
Fountain of Joy.
So what if somebody recognizes you: "Oh, you are a wonderful person." So what? In that person's mind that thought came and went. It is also finished. That mind has gone. Maybe they keep an attraction for you for some days, some months, so what? That also goes it also goes.
--Sri Sri Ravi Shankar,
Seva and the Art of Enthusiasm.
From the AOL website: http://www.artofliving.org/
In a quarter of a century, the Art of Living and its sister organization, International Association for Human Values, have touched the lives of more than 20 million people in 147 countries. Founded by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the international humanitarian and educational organization strives to strengthen society by strengthening communities and individuals. The Art of Living has achieved a sense of peace at the individual and societal level through seminars for stress relief, youth empowerment, workplace development and trauma relief, as well as workshops for prisoners and prison guards, drug rehabilitation programs and sustainable rural development initiatives.
In the coming years, the Art of Living will be scaling up its projects in the following areas: peace initiatives, value-based education, sustainable rural development and women's empowerment.
Peace Initiatives
The foundation will bring the Art of Living course to many more communities mired in conflict and work with them to provide peaceful solutions. The organization is also looking forward to working with militant groups in areas such as Kashmir, Beslan and Iraq by encouraging them to pursue their goals through nonviolence rather than violence.
Educational Programs
Also, Art of Living will increase the capacity of its educational programs by building more schools that impart value-based education. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar often says that the universal human values of love, compassion and sharing need to be instilled in young minds to ensure that the world is more peaceful tomorrow. The foundation envisions a peaceful future in which youth are actively engaged in society and work to help their communities' progress and develop.
Rural Development
Aside from value-based education, the foundation will scale up its economic development projects, which provide vocational training for rural youths that allow them to make a gainful living. The 5H program will continue to help strengthen local government and make local government leaders more accountable toward their constituents.
Women's Empowerment
And lastly, the foundation believes empowering women economically and socially will help build stronger families, and in turn, stronger communities. Art of Living works with women in Asia and Africa and plans to set up more women's cooperatives, as well as help facilitate the process wherein women are able empower themselves.
Sources:
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Sri_Ravi_Shankar
AOL International website:
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Despite the chaos, survival, in its most primitive form, should be no problem for humans. Unless a natural disaster (extinction by meteor impact) or world-scale unresolvable conflict occurs (possibly resulting in nuclear war), we will not have any problems meeting the basic survival needs (food, water, shelter, etc).
Of course, this says nothing about how our society will be like in a hundred years. We could be back to being four-legged savage hunters by then. But basic survival should not be a problem.
Consumption for comsumption's sake is demonstrated clearly by people buying bigger and bigger SUVs... A suburban housewife driving a Hummer? Ridiculous...
Ridiculous to you. I can effortlessly imagine that a suburban housewife bought the hummer for the reasons of prestige, safety, enjoyment, and comfort. Are you saying that all of those reasons are completely bogus? That there is no suburban housewife who would drive a Hummer for any of those reasons?
Are you going to argue that a suburban housewife feels A) no additional prestige or negative prestige, B) no additional safety or negative safety, C) no additional enjoyment or negative enjoyment, and D) no additional comfort or negative comfort through the act of buying a Hummer?
Instead of seeing the reasons why one might buy a Hummer, you are blinded by your contempt for those who would do it and concluding that they are merely "consuming for consumption's sake". In other words, they're mindless and evil morons for not seeing the world the way that you do.
If you need a clearer example than that you should take off your $500 sunglasses...
Obviously if I disagree with you, then I must be one of the evil, hated rich. My sunglasses cost $9. Function over form, dipshit.
Regardless, I do need a clearer example. Give me an example of a person buying something solely for the sake of buying it. Make sure that you can prove that there is no reason that they would buy it except for the sole reason of buying it. And try and do a better job of masking your bitter disdain and false feelings of superiority.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
"How can the human race survive the next hundred years?'."
Empathy and forethought.
When we consider that other humans will suffer directly and indirectly from our actions, we automatically assume accountability and responsibility. With this consideration, we automatically think before every action. We evaluate consequences, and we make a choice, a conscious decision, to take an action.
It is much harder to fire a gun if you weigh the consequences of the subsequent death and injury, if you examine the other party's physical pain, the loss to their family, and the potential to lose your own freedom.
It is much harder to ignore the poor, the elderly, the starving, if you imagine them as people like yourself, people that go without food, without clean clothing, without friends and family, without self-respect because they must beg in the streets or give up one expensive medicine to afford another.
It is much harder to cheat on an exam if you think about the subsequent curve, that the other students will cheat to keep up with cheating, that you will suffer at your job with incompetent cheaters as your coworkers, that you will cheat yourself of an education you paid for.
It is much harder to make fun of people, to scar your peers psychologically, to be a racist and a bigot, if you project yourself into their shoes, if you stop and ask yourself how they feel in their circumstances, faced with their choices, faced with your words and taunts.
It is not a matter of selflessness. With empathy, we still have choice. I can look at the beggar and feel pity, but also continue to believe that my money is still more helpful given to a charity rather than to a panhandler. I can look at a test of nonsensical problems and still fudge it if I feel the professor is asking unrealistic questions.
But now I use the faculties provided to me by evolution, by education, by years of social conditioning -- my mind. I think. I choose. I can choose to be helpful, I can choose to be selfish, but in both cases, I have chosen responsibly. I have chosen the consequences. Yes, I may continue to choose that shooting a clerk is worth the $40 in the cash register, but I believe that, in many such cases, if you had asked the perpetrator before they entered that store, "Would you kill someone for $40 if there was an alternative?", they would say no.
If we train people to ask themselves those questions before they act, then we will survive the next century. We will move forward on a foundation of empathy and forethought, building on the recognition that humans will be preserved by the very thing that distinguishes us as humans -- our big brain. Our ability to project, to think ahead, to think beyond ourselves -- these will be our saviors, a solution instead of a bandaid.
Like we have control over anything the networks of humans do. Opportunities for theses networks to interact better and for good will evolve at a higher probability then for evil. Changes in 100 years will be gradually faster and good. So, no worries, be good at what you do.
And after all this, I saw this post, just a page or two above mine (on the Yahoo Answers page):
And I started reading.
As much as the Internet just seems to be the armpit of human intellect, it seems like all it takes is asking the right question and... wow.
Sometimes, when a community starts to really shine, it's almost a religious experience. I'm by no means a religious person (agnostic), but if I were to believe in God, this is how I think He'd talk to us -- "God" would be the collective intellect of humankind. Sometimes, when Slashdot is full of nothing but +5 Insightful, or when Wikipedia explains in a few paragraphs something I've been wondering about for years, it's like staring into the face of God.
Before you post something yourself, read through the rest of Slashdot, and read through some of the posts in TFA. You might be surprised.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
There's only one question: "are we stupid enough to completely destroy ourselves the next 100 years"?
It's hard to destroy the human race. We'ld need an unsurvivable nuclear holocost to kill us all off; and that would take hard work and co-ordination to pull off. We could only do it if we're really, really stupid.
On the one hand, we say "never underestimate the power of human stupidity". On the other hand, if are really collectively that stupid, by what miracle do we manage to dress ourselves in the morning?
I suspect we'll survive the next 100 years like we did the last thousand; by doing dumb things, but not dumb enough to kill us all off.
I know!! I know!!
Man who prays and asks the LORD for help can righteously overcome ANY obstacle. (famine, disease, pollution, exctinction, overcrowding, crime, you name it)
Ask and ye shall receive.
Knock and it will be opened to you.
Faith can move mountains.
With God all things are possible.
Combine those things with OPTIMISM, and remember that Jesus Christ said ALWAYS forgive, NEVER retaliate; BLESS and PRAY for your enemy. LOVE your neighbor as yourself, LOVE your enemy, LOVE the LORD.
When you forgive, it results in YOUR being forgiven. When YOU give, YOU receive. WHEN YOU BLESS YOUR ENEMY, YOU YOURSELF ARE ALSO BLESSED!
And remember that Christ said that the love of money is the root of all evil. That means be wary of valuing money more than the welfare of your fellow man, or the planet that he lives on. Be prepared and willing to sacrifice of your own time, money and resources in order to make the world a better place.
Jesus also said keep the 10 Commandments. If we all kept the 10 Commandments we'd be in good shape, (but that's not enough.) Don't worship false gods, don't commit idolatry, work 6 days and keep the sabbath day holy (7th day = _saturday!_ Look, JESUS WAS A JEW. Jews keep the saturday sabbath! No excuses.), don't take the LORD's name in vain, don't kill or steal or commit adultery, don't bear false witniss, don't covet your neighbor's wife or possessions or servants, honor your parents.
AND don't have sex outside of marriage. That would keep std's in check and reduce the expansion of things like hiv.
Don't use witchcraft or sorcery, don't use omens or divination.
Learn to recognize when you're being tempted to sin, and pray for the strength to resist!
The most important virtue is love.
I've seen a heavenly sign. I saw a double rainbow, 360 degrees, 2 concentric rainbows ALL THE WAY AROUND THE SUN in San Francisco at high noon when there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Others witnissed the very same event. That was around 2001.
You want man to survive? Seek and ye shall find. Seek the LORD. Have FAITH!!!
God Bless You, Stephen Hawking!
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
How have we survived the last 50 years. 45 we had the bomb, Russia got it soon after, Cuba missle crisis, 67's 7 day war, strife, famine, political unrest, bad presidents in the USA (remember, carter and ford both makes Bush looks like a good president), destruction of the USSR, assasination attempts by the KGB, Terrorists attacks of all types, Hijackings, Cheyna, Afghanstan, Iraq, Kuwait, Israel, Palestine, Chernoybl, Taiwan. Over population of countries in Africa and countries like India, religious fever that cause men to do insane things (both against religions (1939-1945, guess the country, and to spread their doctrine, 1939-1945, (as well as korean war, and vietnam war))
Yet among all of this, there's not been a nuclear attack in 61 years, After 2 bombs in the span of 10 days... How could you imagine 60 years with out one after hearing about the attacks.
The answer of how to survive the next 100 years is simple. Evolve. We will always have war, but at the same time, the world has moved on from the military ages. We have reached the information age, what was the future in the 50s and 60s. Anything you want to know and need to know you can gain in seconds, true HAL doesn't talk to us directly but we can garner anything now instantly. We can learn about the war and the strife and the famine that was always there.
Perhaps that's why everyone thinks this is the end, it's not that there's more war than ever before. It's that we get more information about the war than ever before. We can never give up the information streams we get now, that would be counter productive, but what we as a world have to realize is that we are now connected in ways that was impossible just 11 years ago(Internet), we have access no one in the world had 21 years ago(ARPAnet). The problem is that we can't take the information we recieve now the same way we took the information we recieved then. We shouldn't keep flying off the handle every time someone sees a problem because we haven't considered the source and implications. And it's not just us the average joes. It's US the people of the world, the media, the goverment, the corporations, and those who sit around and think all day for a living.
But in reality, the way we will survive is to adapt and evolve in how we deal with our information and situations we find ourselves in, and we'll only do that one day at a time, and willing to try new things or change the way we think.
I think the first step is to not give religious organizations preferential tax treatment. The rest should write itself.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
I think most people seem to equate America surviving with the rest of the world surviving. In the end I think the not-so-democratic nations like England and Britain will outlast us. The insanity of our nation will be omnipotent and omnipresent. At least you can assassinate the queen (or other ruling figure).
... It's like in the global doomsday movies. It's always the americans that step forward, take charge and save the world.
.. shudder ..
If things go far enough a skew, I actually believe that the US will act, except they wont be the heroes hollywood make them out to be. The US has never been timid about killing of a few foreigners to protect national interest. If the environment is threatened, and resourcess become sufficiently scarce, it could become national interest to wipe out the competition.
W and God will save America.
The question is not how can we survive the next 100 years but how we can do so without drastic changes in the way Western society functions and without widespread suffering throughout the planet. We're not dinosaurs; the fact that we aren't going to be able to drive to the out of town supermarket to buy food that's been flown in from around the world doesn't mean we're all destined for starvation. Subsistance farming is not rocket science!
It's hard to imagine a way out that doesn't involve a lot of people dying though.
Well...I hope it'll all be peaches & cream. But I'm afraid the end time is near.
The cataclysmic apocalypse referred to in the scriptures of every holy book known to mankind. It will be an era fraught with boundless greed & corruption where global monetary systems disintegrate leaving brother to kill brother for a grain of over cooked rice. The nations of the civilized world will collapse under the impressive weight of parasitic political conspiracies which remove all hope & optimism from their once faithful citizens. Around the globe, generations of polluters will be punished for their sins. Unshielded by the ozone they have successfully depleted, left to bake in the searing naked rays of light.
Wholesale assassinations served to destabilize every remaining government, leaving the starving & wicked to fend for themselves. Bloodthirsty renegade cyborgs created by tax dodging corporations wreak havoc. Pissed off androids tired of being slaves to a godless & gutless system, where the rich get richer & the poor get fucked over and out, unleash total world wide destruction by means of nuclear holocaust, annihilating the terrified masses, leaving in its torturous wake nothing but vicious, cannibalistic, mutating, radiating, and horribly disfigured hordes of satanic killers, bent on revenge, but against hope, there are so few left alive.
Starvation reins supreme, forcing unlucky survivors to eat anything & anyone in their path. Massive earthquakes crack the planets crust like a hollow egg shell, causing unending volcanic eruptions. Creatures of the seven seas, unable to escape the certain death upon land, boil in their liquid prison. Disease then circles the earth, plagues & viruses with no known cause or cure laying waste to whatever draws breath, and human-kind having proved itself to be nothing more than a race of ruthless scavengers, fall victim to merciless attacks at the hands of interplanetary alien tribes who seek to conquer our charred remains.
Get me offa this rock!
|plastic....or gasoline?|
Increase funding in science and technological research/education so we can build mobile fusion reactors or other renewable sources of energy and better agricultural technologies to sustain the population. Unfortunately, more thought, money, and time are spent on things like entertainment because there is more immediate profit.
Spending money on defense sometimes has the good side effect of creating these new technologies that benefit humanity, but a disproportionate amount of the money goes into missles/bombs, nukes, warships/tanks/jets/heli's, and conventional arms. As long as we have cowardly war mongers as leaders this will not change.
The only thing you have to fear is fear itself.
Yup, hot babes need to get down with some nerds. Hey Natalie, wanna save the planet?
Actually, you can't live off the land and live as long as we think you should.. oh wait you couldn't do that before. Since living off the land, the average life span could be measured in a couple of decades. By the age of 20 you were OLD. Since living off the land left you no time for technology, medicine, childhood or art.
Generally the case is as stated, "We can't."
However, I have a quite extreme solution to prevent the eventual doom of mankind, technological singularity, that is, kill all scientists.
Of course, that won't happen, and I've already prepared a red carpet for our new AI overlords.
> Therefore, many see birth control as the only way to minimize what they feel is an undesirably large terrestrial population.
No need to worry about population. Show me a single country with a) prosperiety, b) stability (i.e. prosperous for at least a generation) and c) population growth among the native population. You won't. Without immigration no major economic power would be even sustaining their population The answer is therefore obvious, export capitalism, the rule of law and the various republican/parlimentarian forms of government that make material wealth possible for large numbers of people. Small elites can be wealthy under almost any form of government but examples of widespread wealth in the absence of political liberty.
Close the freedom gap and you solve the poverty problem, solving the population problem as a bonus. Additional bonus is freedom loving prosperous people don't tend to have much time for or interest in the ravings of charismatic madmen preaching suicide/genocide. And that is where I see the #1 threat to human survival as a species.
Democrat delenda est
Just like iron ships are out of the question, and always will be, because iron is heavier than water? (Most people believed this before 1832).
Just like heavier-than-air flying machines are out of the question, and always will be? (Most people thought this before 1905)
Just like flying faster than the speed of sound is out of the question, and always will be? (Widely believed before 1947)?
Now, if you'd said that traveling faster than light is out of the question, and always will be, that's different. Unlike the other cases, here there is very good physics that leads us to the conclusion. But you can still get to the stars by traveling slowly; it just takes a very, very long time to get there.
I didn't see anyone mention it yet but the singularity (Kurzweil postulates several, take your pick) seems a definite possibility in the next 100 years.
barring a global nuclear war, humanity is going to survive the next 100 years. Its fun to speak with quiet awe of all the impending dooms facing humanity, but a degree or two of temperature difference or a couple billion people here or there aren't going to threaten the survival of the species.
Nothing will, short of irradiating the planet. And the threat of that in the next 100 years seems no greater than was the threat of it in the past 100 years.
We could run entirely out of fossil fuels tomorrow, we could have almost non-stop conventional war for the next 100 years (which would make it hard to distinguish from the last 100 years, or most 100 year periods, really), global warming could do every single horrible thing that's been predicted by the most pessimistic scientist and then some. Humanity's not going anywhere.
Think of it from the perspective of an exterminator. You've got billions of household pests that, though very vulnerable to the elements, are also impressively able to adapt themselves to harsh climates and survive in places that seems completely uninhabitable, like the arctic circle or downtown Detroit. This infestation is very entrenched. and it's going to be very hard to deal with it in the timeframe of basically the lifespan of a member of the species.
Right now, there's some baby being born in Gaza. That kid is going to be around in 100 years, and is going to look back on this post and say "boy, we dodged a bullet there". Assuming somebody doesn't shoot him between now and then. Then, in all likelihood, he's going to post a question on Slashdot about how we're ever going to get through the next 100 years.
I believe, as others have said, that we need to stop consuming! We need to stop being such a consumerist society, and this has been one of my long term beliefs. When the XBOX 360 came out, people would buy one, and then go to the back of the line, and offer to sell the one they had bought, for 200$ more than what it had originally cost. I remember, a story about 6 friends who bought four 360's and bragged about it as they left, but someone followed them, as they went inside for lunch, they left the smallest kid outside, to guard the xboxes, when the people who followed them showed up, with a handgun to boot. The stalkers stole all 4 xboxes.
If none of you have seen this link, please visit it: www.thecorporation.com it is a good explanation of how corporations work, and why they are not a good thing. I believe in anarchy, and I would like to see this government abolished, and rewritten. Rights, corporations would not have any rights, unlike they already do, we would have a democracy, and not a representative democracy as we do now. One problem is that corporations have the rights that a person does, and only a small select few in the company can exercise that right (the executives, CEO's co founders etc.). A large corporation can sue anyone, and can sue much more people, more effectively, than a single person ever could (with the exception of Bill gates, or some other very rich individual). These companies can afford the top lawyers, and win any case. I think it is a shame, that a corporation can win any legal battle, just by investing in the most expensive lawyers. The poor have absolutely no good defense, and a poor chance at that, to defend themselves from these greedy corporations, like the RIAA, and MPAA. Another problem, is the social problem, of people letting other people think for them. That is, me letting someone else decide what is right for me, and what I can, and cannot do, for example. It is my belief that our school system could be drastically improved, if there was some sort of mechanism to cause children to learn in school, and succeed, before high school. I, as a child, failed every grade, and was in special ed for this, I am still in high school, and I was never 'held back' once. Often, the teachers in school, pre school, or first grade, ask the parents to hold their children back, if they do not pass the first grade effectively. Well, why is this not happening in upper grades? It's simple, it is assumed that a child can handle themselves after the first grade, and no one gives a damn about children. I can tell you I am 15, and the load of sarcastic, age racist, idiot replies this post will get can show you this. You people make me sick. It has been said that children are left to fend for themselves, from a particularly early age. Look at the columbine massacres, did anyone try to help those kids then, and prevent it from happening? People, who are age racists (and no, shut the fuck up, that is not a misappropriation of the word, that is indeed, exactly what you are.) are not helping things, and this absurd, hate of everything younger than you is not helping anyone. It is the principle in america, that children are not elligible, to do certain things, such as drive, drink, smoke, have sex, etc. until a set age, yet you neglect us, and force us to fend for ourselves from very early on. You won't listen to us, you won't help us, and you won't let us do anything you don't consider appopriate, yet you will not care for your own children, you are hypocrits, and you are precisely why this nation is in a downfall, and why children fail in school. George bush is owed more creidt than he is given, with the No child Left behind act, he shows that he recognised that children were not even trying, or learning before high school, by holding them back, and giving them a reason to pass, you ensure they will succeed in high school, and beyond. The act may have been a failure, but it was a step in the right direction (if, it was not effective). The other parts of the act, putting restrictions on schools, not givi
It's managed hundreds of thousands of years already despite all its faults, I don't see why the next hundred will be anything special in that regard.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Surely you mean sheer numbers?
I'm wondering whether there's a deeper joke intended by the "from the what-is-your-name dept.".
After all, it's the first thing Dr. Sbaitso asks you about, in a similar voice.
And I dont think the grand plans of our forbearers have really turned out the way they planned. Planning is a good idea and it helps groups of people pull in similair directions (or gives them something to pull against). But I think we have survived thusfar despite the planning. I believe we will survive the same way we always have.
Humans will survive by accident.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
I've been reading for 10 minutes, in the answers in yahoo and then here on slashdot, and not a single (modded) answer "Of course it will survive!". You sir are _very_ right. Right now we are at the best of our history with resources unimaginable until 200 years ago. If, and a say _if_, somehow, we'll hit a real crisis (and I really don't think we will) a reduction of 80% in our production capabilities would mean... tadam... no games consoles, no new blockbuster movies, no new cars etc. The basic things necesary for our survival are so cheap it's almost imposible to run out of them, globally. A meal at McDonalds may cost 10$, but the ingridients, bulk, cost about a buck. And the cheapest caloric equivalent would probably be a penny or less. With 100$ one could buy food for a couple of years. So people are trying to tell me there is a chance we won't SURVIVE?!
I'm not going to list every imaginable end-of-the-world scenario and debunk it, but instead i will note that all the answers i've seen so far imply a serious lack of imagination. People are really incapable of picturing the world spinning 100 years from now... after they're dead and buried. Well it will spin and it'll be a whole lot better then now. After all, that's what we are all working for right? At least most of us here in slashdot.
And as a conclusion, when I think about 100 years in the future the image that pops into my head is Kusanagi Motoko. True, it's a personal image, but I'm glad I can picture a future that is at the same time strange and beautiful.
Only by asking ourselves (the masses) that very question. He didn't just post it to his closest or wisest peers. Maybe this was the answer Dr. Hawking already had.
The next 100 years? This movie show what we'll do: http://www.threeleggedlegs.com/view/?what=humans
I must say that i agree to a certain extent,
on the other hand, consider this,
do you know how species become extinct sometimes ?
One day at a time
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
With only a few exceptions religions purport the idea of being kind to one another and living in peace and harmony, yet even to this day religion has been the largest source of death and despair this planet has ever seen. From crusades, to jihads...religion continues to be the single largest point of friction in this world, because it always promotes the idea that it's followers are different and more important and special than anyone else...
You identified the real problem, but failed in your identification of the solution by saying that we should abolish religion.
The real problem is that mankind is instinctually a pack animal. We look for similarities and shared values between people who are members of our community and differences between us and people who are not. Religious prohibitions on dress, food, etc. are an expression of this sentiment and not the cause of it.
Getting rid of religion won't eliminate the problem. People have given into base animal instincts to kill the "other" without religion as a divider. The February Revolution of 1917 that threw out the Tsar and eventually gave birth to the Soviet Union was the peasants as "Us" and the royalty as "Them." Religion was not a part of it. The Cultural Revolution that Mao used the reseize power was fed entirely by stirring up resentment against intellectuals and the party elite that was putting him to pasture. Religion wasn't even a consideration.
Relgion is used as a prop by hate-filled and ambitious men looking to seize power everywhere, but it's not the source of the problem, and history shows us that people can be stirred easily to madness without it. Getting rid of religion would eliminate it as a force of charity, justice, and compassion without getting rid of the essential desires that drive men to kill and die in the name of cause they feel is greater than themselves.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The question is too broad and essentially meaningless. It is, at best, an unanswerable rhetorical question.
That said, the question is still important. Not because there is an answer (there are, in fact, several correct answers), but because by asking it, Dr Hawking is using his stature to attempt to raise social consciousness just a tiny bit. This is a case where the act of asking the question is more important that obtaining an answer. It's like asking, "What is the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything?" Yeah, yeah... the answer is 42. A non-sensical answer to a non-sensical question. But by asking the question, movement is created. Some paths lead towards suicide (or, if you're pessimistic, all paths lead towards suicide) but asking the question causes people to move about, discover things, and make changes.
So how will the human race survive the next 100 years? I don't know. I do not even know that we will. But by asking the question, a certain amount of energy is introducd to the system that could very well create a path for the survival of our species. ...for just a bit longer.
Kill all the lawyers and politicians. That's how we'll survive.
I have nothing to say.
because natural human thinking is flawed and chaotic, people ought to be taught Critical Thinking. I already posted a lengthy answer on this. Here it is republished to Slashdot:
It won't be easy. If chaos is the problem, then order is the solution. Human beings are not predictable to scientific theory and formulas, they are more complex than that. Your question is difficult to answer without going into non-science related areas like philosophy, religion, emotions, critical thinking, and psychology.
It is a given that human beings are not computers that can be reprogrammed. However, human beings can be taught and educated. If the human race is to come to order, we would need to be taught and trained in order. It would have to succeed where religion, philosophy, psychology, etc have failed. I talked about critical thinking previously, which I believe may be a possible answer. Critical thinking is not biased by religion, philosophy, emotions, and allows a human being to order their thoughts and find a better way of thinking. Yes the current methods of thinking are flawed, and hence we have a chaotic method of human thinking. Critical thinking is not all logic, but it does use logic. Critical thinking is not about ignoring your emotions, but by using your emotions to sense things and as a thinking tool.
With chaotic thinking, human beings cannot follow a budget or control their spending which leads to poverty. With chaotic thinking human beings try to solve their conflicts with violence. With chaotic thinking, human beings cannot properly take care of themselves and allow their health to get worse. With chaotic thinking human beings only think of themselves and not of others. With chaotic thinking human beings waste energy, food, and other things.
With critical thinking, human beings learn how to follow a budget and save money nd learn to live within their incomes and also help out others financially. With critical thinking human beings learn that there are other ways to settle conflicts than violence, and that violence should be a last resort and that compromise can be taken before violence. With critical thinking human beings learn to be responsible for their actions and behavior, which leads to fewer health issues. With critical thinking, human beings learn how to help out other human beings and be kind and generous to them. With critical thinking, human beings learn how to manage their resources to save energy, food, etc.
Many colleges teach critical thinking, but not everyone follows it. If critical thinking was taught in grade school and high school, as well as free classes offered for adults who lack college educations, maybe more people can become critical thinkers?
To make the answer to your question simple, we just need to change our way of thinking and learn to think about everyone else in the world and how to take responsibility for our actions and behaviors.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Communism has killed over 100 million in the last 100 years alone. Religion doesn't even begin to come close.
As long as it really IS cheaper to be wasteful, then that's exactly what people will continue to do!
That is the result of a capitalist community, because, at the end of the day the Utility is calculated in terms of money, so in the same way corporations look to maximize their utility by making processes on the cheapest way, so consumers (people) are continuously looking for ways to minimize their (monetary) loss.
This trend will just trend when the communities realize that the Utility function they have been using, based on "Wealth" may provide satisfaction for them in the short/medium term but does not provides satisfaction for the society in long term. Of course some people already know but do not care.
Then, there is the trend of trying to quantify those non-money related issues to put them a "price". As a friend of mine told me (he has a PhD in sustainable development) how much do you value that the Amur Leopard is still walking in Russia?, some people here may understand the vaule, but tell that to the CEO of any NASDAQ company.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Deforestation? There are more trees here in the USA at least than there were 100 years ago.
Nuclear bombs? Not enough to obliterate the USA, much less the world. Oh they'd probably mess up civilzation a bit, but they wouldn't kill every one nor wreck the planet.
Man does not possess the power to destroy the planet, many asteroids have tried, none have succeeded. Nature is far stronger than we are and we are in more danger from another said asteroid than anything we can come up with.
I forgot the links.
Critical Thinking Web Site
Book on Critical Thinking
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Assuming, of course, that policy to help the environment is a good thing. Not starting wars is probably a good idea too, some think.
I think most of these replies were from some kind of Nigerian Bank President or Pharmacy Company ;)
I can't think of any event that has happened that would wipe out the human race.
Cause billions of deaths? certianly. People can survive, and we are everywhere.
Now, we may be in caves, but it will be people who know that house, cities, jets, computers, egtc. can be built, so they will progress faster. Granted, it would be 50-100 years to get to the industrial age again.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I could go on for pages on what would need to be done to assure or survivial. But I am going to side step that and go to this instead. So far in human history we have had the God's and the Governments control us and keep us in line. Know I am a believer in God. But I do not believe in a church. Human have fear. To overcome this fear we have faith. What every human needs is to stregthen their faith. And we also need to work on our falicy of when something deosn't geos our way that it is wrong and our faith was missed place. In other word humanality needs to be stregthed. With faith and humanilty the human race can survive forever. Problems could easily be worked out. Most of our problems come from our instutions that we create because we do not have enough faith or humanilty. What was the purpose to creat governments or churches. It purpose was to stregthen these things but it acts as a crutch and makes us weaker over time. We need to the faith to believe that the human beside me deosn't want to kill me. It is just that simple. Churches and Governments will never have a place in a modern human race. We will have morals and we will have the faith and humanilty to go with those morals. Remember our churches and our governments are set up to take place of our morals and to take place of our faith and humanilty.
...by having plenty of unprotected sex. That should get us through the next hundred years easy. However, to get through another thousand years or two with any semblance of human civilization, we will need to rediscover God.
As for survival of the human species, barring a collision with something big enough to break the planet apart, or the explosion of the Sun, there is nothing that can wipe us out. The thing that can come closest is the next ice age, which will only kill 99% of us, leaving millions -- plenty for purposes of continuing the species.
One thing is certain - barring a few lucky accidents, in a 100 years the human race as we know it will be dead. Everyone. That's a fact. Enjoy your day!
Female literacy is one of the key factors in determining birth rates.
Increased female literacy allows women greater access to information on birth control and also higher statuts in society leading to greater control over reproductive decisions. To reduce population growth teach girls to read. This is an abstract of a study discussing factors impacting birth rates such as female literacy. Here is a little bit more info.
I won't argue that religion has been used to justify awful behaviour, but "the largest source"? I think you may be overlooking nationalism. For examples of fevent nationalism run amok, see WW1 and WW2. Talk about your blood baths. In WW1 it wasn't uncommon for countries like England to lose tens of thousands of men a day. With that comparison, Al-Queda seems to pose a threat closer to that of your average serial killer than to a war.
So has nature. As I recall, some 75000 years ago the global population of humans shrank down to a few thousand individuals[1]. Supervulcano at work. Bioweapons? Nature has them. Pick one. Repeat after me: "Black death".
Now look at the world today. Mankind will manage. Unless there is a bacteria or a virus that will kill every human on this planet AT ONCE, or the climate changes to a state where no higher mammal can survive, there will be people around. A few thousand will do.
[1] This was found out by analyzing a "genetic bottleneck" via mitochondiral DNA.
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
As long as it really IS cheaper to be wasteful, then that's exactly what people will continue to do! And that also illustrates the fact that things aren't nearly as "dire" as some of the environmentalists and promoters of "less technology/simpler lifestyle" want you to believe.
No, it doesn't. All it illustrates is that, from the perspective of the human race, individual consumers act as greedy algorithms. We look for the maximal local benefit, and fail to see the path to the greatest overall benefit.
Take fossil fuels, for example. In the short-term, the cheapest thing is to just burn everything for fuel as fast as possible and dump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In the long run, we'll eventually need to ration oil for use in fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, and plastics, and the temperature will be so hot that we'll be burning even more energy just to stay cool. The net expense of goods and day-to-day life will be higher than if we had more rationally allocated resources and looked beyond prices to the total costs of our actions on humanity and the world around us.
Proper long-term planning and management of resources will give us the best result on a 100 year timeline, but we only look to today to make our decisions.
Personally, when everything goes to hell in handbasket over the next 100 years, I hope that this time period is remembered as a history lesson for the rest of humanity's time in this universe for why short-term, local-maximum obsessed thinking is a foolish way to go about things. That is, assuming civilization survives the conflict and mass migrations after the sea levels rise and the old glacier-fed rivers dry up.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I believe that the human race will be able to, through increased technological developement, adapt to any hardships barring complete disasters. Remember: just because the situation looks grim now, doesn't mean it's at all impossible to ride through. A few decades ago, no one could have predicted the technological (and not the least, technological _infrastructural_) achievements we now have.
There are many civilization-ending (but not species-ending) things that can happen, but short of a massive meteor strike, I can't see any way that the entire human race could be wiped out in a hundred years.
Maybe the question should rightly be interpreted as "How can the small fraction of humanity which is today thriving continue to thrive through the next 100 years and never mind the people who are already scrabbling for survival today." Because that's really the only question anyone has ever truly asked.
Ok. I believe that the Earth can support 50-60 billion humans easy. Most of the apparent problems actually have solutions today. You want a really nasty Neo Nazi approach? Let's have our "free" state of citizens that are on top of the world number about a 1 million they are in charge of those other let's make it 60 billion. Is that fair? Nope. We are going to make this bad for most people. The average human lives their live in a small box doing just above sweat shop labor and never, ever lives the box. They get their food from the food box, have a single toilet, and small cot. We'll be slightly kind and give them all OverLord Net to ask for instruction from their very real Gods. Oh, most of Earth is a beautiful paradise without a hint of humanity. All those 60 billion live under ground in several large arcologies. The Neo-Nazi Gods have nano tech and live near forever above ground and get the produce made by all the rest.
If the human race is to survive: social, financial, and physical elements must be equalized.
Why?
Ever notice how quickly poor and undernourished people reproduce? As an instinct for survival of their genes.
By equalizing Social Elements, racism and separation of social elements will dwindle, thus providing people with a positive existence, and resulting in more commonalities such as knowledge sharing, and working toward common goals.
By equalizing Financial Elements, the human existence will focus heavier upon the right to live, the right to exist, and will therefore work toward a common goal.
By equalizing physical elements such as starvation and poor water supplies (resulting from the above) -- people will survive, and will reproduce less.
Humanity will work towards common goals, and will lessen outright demented war efforts and we will find ways to solve our common problems such as the environment, and our reaching out into space.
If we all work together and hit that "report abuse" button for the post that starts with "Unity Through LOVE.", we might survive another day.
...hippies
Their source:
"The People, LIFE, and everything outside & inbetween"
The world needs a human population of around a million people - no more.
Getting there from here is the entire problem.
With a million people, our gene pool would be plenty large enough - we'd have enough skills to cover all the bases and make modest scientific and cultural progress - our polluting ways would be scarcely noticable - we'd be unable to occupy enough of a niche in the ecosystem to damage any part of it irreperably. There would be enough people to make a handful of decent cities - for people who like that kind of thing - but there would be enough land that if you wanted to live 100 miles from your neighbour, you could certainly do that.
We just don't need more people than that. But how do we get there from here?
www.sjbaker.org
It's pretty obvious Dr Hawking isn't interested in the answer, or at least not the answers bandied about by people on the forums.
First off, it's a loaded question. It implies that something needs to be done for us to survive the next 100 years. In answering the question we are buying into his assumption. Now, I don't know whether it is a valid assumption, but I think we should be conscious of what we buy into in answering the question.
Secondly, he already has an answer in mind - he thinks that for the human race to survive we need to colonise the solar system. So in essence, this isn't an attempt to generate meaningful answers, it's a way for him to persuade us there is a problem that needs addressing.
Try our best not to anger our alien overlords!
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
IIRC it takes about 1 liter of gasoline to dispose of a corpse. Less if you build massive pires which will burn on body bodyfat.
There is about 1 car for every 2 people in the USA. Assume the average tank is 14 gallons and is half full...
Rural areas will survive. Some urban areas as well. Those places where the indoctranation (wait for the government to take care of things) has taken to well will be nightmares.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
First, kill all the lawyers.
Oppose autocracy, communism, fascism, any form of violent religious,ethnic, or political intolerance, police states everywhere and fight for human rights wherever they are abused the most, giving women everywhere the basic rights equal to men. Undermine non-democratic and corrupt countries, particularly stopping weapons development and trafficking by the same. Open up markets to everyone everywhere. Stamp out piracy, banditry, and slavery. Make governments accountable to subjects but discourage them from destabilizing their economies through excessive debt, taxation, regulation, and bureaucracy. Governments should refrain from taking control over large amounts of land and property by any means. Privatize whenever possible and bring patents and copyrights under control. Do nothing to curtail freedom of speech, religion, the right to defend oneself, freedom of movement, or the right to work. Provide for a public education where it is feasible, but do not make it compulsary, much less create a monopoly. Governments and private entities alike should fund research and education, and make almost all of it available to everyone
If a lot of this sounds familiar, it's because you might be lucky to read about it in a fairly decent newspaper every once in a while, nestled between all the garbage. The truth is, humanity is basically on the right track and isn't going away any time soon if thousands of years of history is any guide. The people who get all worked up about meteorites, terrorism, plagues, climate change, pollution, poverty, overpopulation, the energy crisis, etc, etc, etc need to worry about their own lives for a change.
People at the poverty line live better and longer then kings did. They would live longer if they ate less. Which was true for what % of kings and queens in human history?
What we need to do is export capitalism to the third world in a meaningfull way (which would require good government in the third world). That is the only thing that will bring their birth rate down (there are many historical examples of prosperity bringing birthrates down to below replacement).
I don't have time to go on as you are no doubt closed minded regarding the whole issue and I am wasting my time arguing with a fool.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I can't think of any event that has happened that would wipe out the human race.
The moon was probably created when a Mars-sized object struck the Earth. Such an event would beyond a doubt kill every living human, including the few people residing in Earth orbit.
In my opinion, this question is essentially three questions:
1) What threatens the survival of the human race?
2) What are the immediate and root causes of the threats?
3) What actions would address these causes?
To some extent, we may be able to get away with addressing threats in a cosmetic way, but this is unsatisfactory as more than a stop-gap, as treating symptoms alone will inevitably lead to fresh problems.
*Threats*
So, what potentially threatens the survival of the human race?
My answers are
1) Climate change
2) Nuclear war
3) Global economic collapse due to the end of the oil age or running out of some other essential resource
4) Massive natural disasters such as a large enough asteroid impact
For simplicity, I'm including near-destruction of the human race as being covered by the question- after all, a few hundreds or thouands surviving with stone age technology wouldn't be much better than us all being wiped out.
(2) does not presently seem an immediate threat, and I have no idea how to prevent (4), so I'll leave those to your other correspondants.
*Causes*
The immediate causes of climate change are well documented- hydrocarbon consumption is undoubtedly the major factor at work. Most solutions to this problem hence focus on finding alternative energy sources. Unfortunately, this seems to be happening at a slower pace than we need it to.
Many seemingly insane economic decisions contribute to the problem. The Guardian last year ran a story about how most of the UK's recyclable waste is shipped to China, because it is cheaper to recycle there and they need the resources. ~80% of the UK's jobs are in the service sector these days- we import consumer goods and food rather than producing them locally. The same is true of most economically dominant countries. This involves polluting the atmosphere no end. The commuter society and low energy-efficiency in housing are also large contributing factors.
As a side note, I have been informed by an engineer in the nuclear industry of my aquaintance that most of the UK's nuclear power stations (Mr Blair's solution) are horribly inefficient for producing power, because they are designed to maximise plutonium production.
There's the immediate causes, but it definitely bears asking why we have the economic structure we have. Goods are shipped in from overseas not because of a lack of labour or resources in the UK, but because of the cost of labour. It is far cheaper to employ people in so-called "third world" countries to do the work. This situation has arisen because of the function of neo-colonialism.
In the 1950s and 60s, the old global system of European imperialism collapsed, giving way to a new system. It is no longer possible to invade and indefinitely occupy a country, as Iraq and Afghanistan are showing us at this very moment, and Vietnam and Afghanistan (again!) did for a previous generation. The Arab rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, and the Algerian war of independence are other key examples.
This posed a problem for the Imperial powers, or rather the ruling classes of those powers, who did not want to lose their privileged economic position. Instead, they turned to two old tools of the British Empire- (1) what British strategists called "the Arab Facade" in the post-Ottoman Middle East- maintaining friendly local puppet rulers instead of ruling directly. You can even allow elections, as long as the "right" candidate wins, or you have the ability to apply pressure to whoever happens to win. (2) Advantageous trade deals. Instead of ruling politically, you can rule economically. For example, Nigeria sells all, yes all, of its oil to foreign countries, then buys back what it needs for domestic consumption at inflated prices.
As a result, it is far far cheaper to employ labour in the economic periphery. This has led to a situation which mirrors that of the Roman Empire after the Punic Wars- flooded with cheap goods from Sicily and elsewhere, th
It's 42
I just wanted to put my two cents in and say, that we need to kill all the Sales and Marketing people on the planet in order to survive.
Well, the majority of us will still be playing tennis, enjoying golfing on the weekends, and living in a world of unlimitted bounty. We will continue enjoying travel, vacations, new casinos, etc.
Overall, the American economy will continue to grow, with the increasing competitiveness of USA prison slave labor vs China near slave labor.
Global ice melts will lead to new opportunities in coastline redevelopment. Warmer weather may lead to increased crop production for agriculture. The real estate market will boom with large scale population relocations. Construction and housing will grow for all of this increased population.
The future is a boom time of opportunity, stop seeing 'problems' and see the new opportunities coming down the lane.
there's a difference between human survival and life as we know it. There may not have been nukes back in the day but there were asteroids, quakes, and natural events in general. We've lived in a time where nature has been peaceful. We could nuke the whole worlds tomorrow and there would be surviors and thousands of years down the road from then, new civilations.
Basically coinciding with their successful period.
Wait, what? Humans have always been an extremely successful species. Humans lived all over the planet! Few to no natural predators. We can eat almost anything. We can and do live everywhere. We are non-specialized enough to survive almost anything. How in the hell can you say we were not successful prior to this tribe?! Because we were naked? Apes we were not and are not. Apes are apes. Apes became apes the same way humans became humans. And the same way frogs have become frogs today. And the same way oak trees became oak trees today. Etc, etc. By living in the ways that worked.[0]
Think about that. We were naked apes for 992,000 years. We were masters of the planet for 8,000. What happened? We changed the environment around us.
All life changes its environment merely by living in it. You are talking about this tribe's fetish for control. That's a much different thing. Please explain to me how living in your way is better than living in the ways of humans 15 thousand years ago. 50 thousand. 200 thousand.
Masters of the planet? Hardly. But look where the quest to become as much as gotten things. "Think about that."
[0] Side note: This is how evolution occurs. And we have removed ourselves from that system by throwing it out the window and saying "No, we've outgrown that now. There's only one way to live and it's like this. All humans will now live this way, or not live. All life will now follow our rules, or not exist." The mythology of our tribe instills all these things in you. It says that all these billions of years of life and now, here we are. Phew, we made it. You can all stop now, no more evolving stuff needed. This is how it is meant to be, and we'll take it from here. The world was made for man (ahem, Man), and Man was made to conquer and rule over it. Life cannot go on like that. Try to live like that and you will be forever damned, and thrown out from the garden of life which brough you here. In fact the cousins of our ancestors back in the fertile crescent knew this. They even tried to warn others about it with a fascinating little story. You've probably heard about Adam and Eve. Man and Life.
If the main threat to a 100-200 year window for human survivability is OTHER HUMANS, then the answer is malefically obvious. You'd have to be fast and stealthy and remove 99% of the world's population before they catch on to it. Obvious tool would be, ah, small and self-propagating and organic... and just to be on the safe side, make it cause sterility in the event there are those naturally resistant (yeah, they're safe... but they'll die and not pass on their little advantageous mutations). You'd have the countermeasures and set up a redoubt or two. I think Chernobyl has shown us how fast the natural world can rebound, if you remove human meddling.
And if *I* can think of this... you can be sure as Hades that others have, as well. It may just be too early. Maybe Countermeasures are not up and running. Maybe you want a slightly higher technical base before you remove cheap and autonomous and self-replicating humans.
I have nothing to add to your reply, I only wanted to state that it's good not to feel like the only blasphemer. :)
Synthesize nutrients out of waste + cold fusion power and the entire land surface of the planet is easily inhabited - Trantor style (see: Asimov's Foundation series) - add to that space elevators and the fusion power can import enough metallic building material from the asteroid belt to cover the seas with condominiums.
It's not a future that I want to live in, so I'm not planning on sticking around for more than the next 100 years or so.
Look at Europe, Russia, and Japan. They don't grow. Think about why.
Both men and women work. Life is expensive. There is no time or money to spare on kids. (misery)
Think about why life is expensive. It is expensive because the supply of resources does not meet the demand at any lower price.
The third world is growing because it can. Growth will stop, as it did in the first world, or by a return to having more death. Growth will stop as soon as the demand for additional resources causes enough misery.
I'm not talking 'matrix' here. I'm very serious - Humans are not well designed for the universe we find ourselves in. We are well enough designed for the niche we occupy for the moment - as long as that niche exists - we live in a manger with a limited supply of hay.
But we are uniquely equipped to create beings that will be well designed, and capable of improving their own design, for a more 'universal' existence.
What we need to work hard at is being sure they are not indifferent to our existence (they will not be hostile - why should they? We will represent no threat to them).
Technology isn't just the 'answer to our problems', it's the only reason we exist at all.
After all, we've survived the last 40,000 years without a plan, I'm sure 100 years isn't going to need any more.
Task Mangler
Prof. Hawking,
Your question is not really a genuine question. You know the answer already...you just want the rest of us to think about this issue in detail.
We can't predict the future. We don't know what we don't know. The world can solve all it's current problems tomorrow and be an even more livable place. Yet, soon afterwords some as-yet-unknown phenomena might occur which can cause extermination of the human race. Could be an asteroid strike, a massive solar flare up, a nearby..as-yet-undetected black hole, or something else which we are yet to discover. It is unlikely to be due to human factor, as even in a full-scale nuclear war, some humans, somewhere, will survive and move the human race forward. Let's face it, as much as we try, we cannot exterminate every one of us.
Us humans can and should work towards reducing as much of the "unknowns" as possible by making massive and unprecedented investments in science and technology. For example, only 1% of the asteroids and their paths are known thus far. What about the other 99% ? How do we not know that one of them is on a direct collision course with Earth ? Let alone the space, we haven't even explored our oceans completely as yet. What's cooking down there ? Maybe an aggressive alien force has already assembled there and is planning for D-Day. Sounds implausible, but can it be ruled out 100% ?
Hundred years is too long. We can't be 100% sure whether the human race would still exist tomorrow.
Thanks for the good work !
Varun Mathur
Carefully.
Seriously, though, the answer is quite simple. Change human nature so that murder is unthinkable, procreation is self limiting to available resources, self productivity is as vital as breathing, tolerance is second nature, and any injustice to anyone is intolerable to everyone.
How to go about making that happen, well, that is a problem of a different order. I confess I'm at a loss.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
I hate to tell you, but 'peak oil' is a fraud. Most reputable scientists believe in the abiogenic theory of oil. In other words, it's a natural process within the earth that produces petroleum in a very similar way that natural gas is produced.
a toil
We have even been able to produce petroleum in a lab through a process called 'thermal depolymerization' - http://www.discover.com/issues/may-03/features/fe
For more information on abiogenic petroleum here are some resources:
Black Gold Stranglehold - by Jerome R., Ph.D. Corsi, Craig R. Smith
WND Books (October 14, 2005) ISBN: 1581824890
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_oil
Libertas in infinitum
I hate to tell you, but 'peak oil' is a fraud. Most reputable scientists believe in the abiogenic theory of oil. In other words, it's a natural process within the earth that produces petroleum in a very similar way that natural gas is produced.
a toil
As of 2003 we have even been able to produce 'synthetic' petroleum in a lab through a process called 'thermal depolymerization' - http://www.discover.com/issues/may-03/features/fe
For more information on abiogenic petroleum here are some resources:
Black Gold Stranglehold - by Jerome R., Ph.D. Corsi, Craig R. Smith
WND Books (October 14, 2005) ISBN: 1581824890
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_oil
Libertas in infinitum
Build wind turbines where wind turbines can be built, bird kill be damned.
Require high energy effeciency standards for all buildings.
Impose a large CO2 tax on all fossil fuels (natural gas, coal, oil, etc).
Build more and more solar as the costs come down, especially in cities.
Invest in hydroelectric energy storage for wind and solar energy systems (highly efficient).
Hand out condoms, make birth control pills and morning after pills cheap and easy to get especially in the third world, allow women to decided when they want children (most likely they will have fewer and have them later, decreasing the human footprint)
Make small sex ed pamphlets that encourage the use of birth control products and hand them out for free (because, lets face it, horny teenagers will never try abstinance. They aren't wired that way.)
Convert large sections of the rainforest to charcoal and bury it in the ground around the rainforest, creating a CO2 sink. The Charcoal will trap nutrients and encourage the growth of new rainforest, another CO2 sink. This method can seriously reduce the damage of CO2 induced global warming by sinking the CO2 in solid form. Also opens the land for sustainable agriculture.
Outlaw the suburban sprawl. Design cities around mass transit and make streets narrow and make owning a car a pain in the ass rather than a neccesity.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
I am a (L)libertarian. The premise of libertarianism is that my rights end where yours begin.
Therefore, killing an unborn child is against the principles of libertarianism because they infringe on the rights of another human; the unborn child.
There are a few fine points.
-Medically, human life cannot sustain itself much before the first trimester of pregnancy. Therefore first-trimester abortions tend to be a grey area because the question of one killing another individual, or just a group of dependent cells comes into play.
-Under medical or health conditions which jeopardize the mother's life or health, there might could be exceptions.
-Not all libertarians feel this way and you will find that some place the life of the unborn child lower than the life of the mother. Because of this division, abortion is rarely discussed among libertarian circles and will never be a platform issue.
-Some libertarians are Constitutional conservatives and believe that no matter what, these decisions should be made at the state level, not at the federal level.
-Most, if not all libertarians believe that no matter what, the gov cannot force or demand an abortion, nor should they be in the 'business' of abortions. Most that are 'pro-abortion' tend to follow the line that 'it should be an individual matter up to the parties involved' and that the government shouldn't have anything to do with it.
I personally fall into the category that believe that it is an infringement upon the rights of the unborn child.
Libertas in infinitum
Fair enough. However, at best we can only say that it is not necessarily intrinsic to the human condition. Since we can only evaluate based on observed levels of consumption, we might more fairly say that the practice of agriculture allowed humans to increase their consumption. Think about it: 50,000 years ago the tribes that survived were the ones who horded resources for themselves - primarily because if they never quite knew when or how their next meal was coming. It was always better to eat first and store it in your body where it a) couldn't be stollen, and b) wouldn't turn rancid. The introduction of agriculture and (semi-)reliable stores of food, and more recently mass amounts of foods low in nutrient value, coupled with the instinct to eat fast and large has led in part to the midwestern belly so lamented in public health circles. (Along with, of course, an increasingly sedintary lifestyle.)
All this is related more generally to the consumption of goods generally, the acquisition of material wealth being derivative of a survival instinct: men 'need' fast cars and loud stereos to impress women so that they can mate. They 'need' patio sets so as to warm their dens and provide a comfortable environment for their offspring.
Or maybe they don't. Who knows, and who am I to say? I only meant to suggest that people remain more fundamentally primal than we like to admit, that civilization is but a thin veneer, and that you can see the cracks - in this case the wanton degredation of the environment - quite easily.
I was in New York over the weekend, and walking to a friend's office in Chinatown he speculated that part of the reason the community there litters so freely might be because only just a few hundred years ago any and all litter there would have been organic, and therefore not such a problem. I would add, that the issue of scale also seems critical: the Island of Manhattan could probably absorb the refuse of a large Chinese village without much trouble, but there are 11,000,000 (?) people living on Manhattan, and how many more working and visiting there during the day?
Ideas don't kill ... people do:
I expect you meant communistic dictatorships anyhow.
not "How can the human race survive the next hundred years?" ... "
but "Why should
Of course we are predisposed to survival, individually and as a group with shared DNA. We are programmed for that.
We are also intelligent and capable of temporarily rising above our programming. At these times we should consider the big picture. Does the world, the solar system or the universe benefit in any way from our existence? A truly intelligent, non egotistical species, seeing what we have done, would surely opt for self-elimination.
...omphaloskepsis often...
If the future is extraterrastial, maybe The Bible is true about Heaven?
Well, according to the Mighty MC Hawking a good start might be to "F&*^ the Creationists..." since they seem to be spreading "straight-up fairy tales even children don't believe" and they can't grasp that the "Earth isn't a closed system, its powered by the sun. F&*^ the damn creationists, Doomsday, get my gun..."
Have babies.
For such a smart guy, that's an amazingly dumb question.
Next time you're trying to convince people, try using a reference that dosen't directly contradict your point:
The modern scientific consensus on abiogenic origin petroleum is that while there is evidence for it, most modern geologists do not support this for the vast majority of petroleum deposits within the Earth.
That said, eventually something definitely will destroy the ability of humans to reside on the earth. It's not just likely, it's certain. The only certain hope for the persistence of the race is...
Redundant offsite backups. Duh.
The nihilist in me says let it go.
My inner optimist makes me tell my kids: "There's going to be a starship. You want to be on it."
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I wonder why Hawking is asking that particular question? I mean, he IS a genius. Most if not all of the answers he'll get have got to be things he's already considered in depth. Is he fishing for something outrageously new? Testing the water? Or maybe just getting the public to think about it seriously?
The question to ask is not "how", but "why". Why should the human race survive the next N years. What difference would it make if it didn't? To whom?
This is, I think, the most adequate answer to the original question. You need to know what you're trying to achieve before you start pondering the ways to achieve it.
Properly speaking, if there are 30 billion suffering starving plague infested anarchist cannibals left on an overheated Earth after the 100 years, the problem is solved.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
No, wars are mostly waged for control over the lives of men, sadly by using the controlled men as weapons. Resources, diplomatic gaffes, cultural differences and religion are only excuses -- except that religion is just another way men control the lives of other men.
G.P. post is also wrong. Moving away from the city will not solve all of a drug addict's problems. It will however prevent him from being vaporized by the asteroid/nuclear weapon/etc that strikes the city shortly thereafter, if he moves far enough, much to the detriment of the surviving gene pool.
The scale of disaster that Stephen Hawking is talking about is escaping you hand-wringers. Is there a mathematician among you to explain this to his slower brethren?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
survival depends on the human race cooperating
with each other instead of fighting each other.
j
I have a very hard time believing that someone so smart would ask such a silly question.
Of course we've survived quite a lot. Everything from the severity of creation, war, impacts from space, the dark ages, etc. We will survive the next 100 years and the next 1000 years the same way we survived all those years before. We will meet and struggle through all the challenges we encounter.
But the question that was asked sounds like someone in search of an easy way out. There is no quick fix or magic wand and never has been. Hawking knows this so I find it hard to believe that he would ask such a thing. He should be among those who best understand our ability to face challenge and overcome it. Sometimes we do that in a ham handed fashion but we do it nontheless.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
our mutual survival depends on our cooperation.
j
Given the number of answers, the better question is; "How WILL humanity survive"... The answer being... probably trying to read all of the answers posted to that newsgroup... I mean, come on, couldn't you make it a multiple choice question for us religious types, at least?
The human race will survive the next hundred years the same way it survived the last hundred years. Which is to say, mostly by accident, in spite of yourselves
We need to learn from the evolution of human civilization.
1. The early human life was driven by animal passion, groups of people hunting and living in jungles.
2. By thinking and experimenting some of them settled down along rivers and agreed to follow certain rules.
3. These rules are meant to curb the animal nature and channel human energy into synergy with fellow human beings.
4. That evolved several stages to reach today's nation states and global economy based on market forces
But, we are beset with the problems arising out of market forces' shortcomings. Drawing a parallel to the above:
1. Market forces are based on human greed and selfishness. Each one is trying to maximize his gains and spend the earnings as he/she wills.
2. Some governments, societies work on curbing this greed setting up massive welfare states. Most of them are in an experimental stage, not widely adopted.
3. We need to have rules to curb the consumption pattern by individual choice. There need not be governmental or societabl controls, but individuals should be educated to treat the resources accruing with themselves as social resources. Each one should spend their resources as a government would spend its income, maximizing the returns to the society, not on ever increasing individual consumption.
4. Evolving in this form, we will reach a post information technology civilization, where everyone works on his favourite occupation, no one starves and there is no unnecessary consumption.
Man kind can survive next 100 or even 1000 years by making a jump out of the current consumption driven growth.
yAthum UrE yAvarum kELir All the places are our place, everybody is our kin. (A Tamil Poet - 2000 years ago)
Hello All Slashdotters, This entire creation of God never gets destroyed. We r all immortal. The concept of death is that the soul departs the current body and takes birth in a new body and the cycle continues. One full cycle is of 5000 years each of which has 1250 years sub cycle. The last cycle is in motion now and will end approximately close to Nostradmaus's prediction. After the 5000 year cycle we all go back to where we came from. And when the next cycle starts each of us come and join at different points of time. This fundamental problem that is facing us- why was this created at all? whether it was created? if so when? what purpose does this serve? how long will it continue etc cannot be answered using our mind or intelligence. The only way it can be solved is by meditation of which India is the best place to learn. Everyone who has taken a birth can try and solve this. There r no prerequisites of a science degree. Regards, Seeker of truth.
It shouldn't!
The human race will survive for the next 100 years, unless we bomb all life from the planet. The question he is wanting to ask is how human socienty will survive.
So the answer is very easy. Survival of the fittest. Darwin in the works. 100 years is only 4 generations. Even if billions are killed, enough will be alive to get the human race live on.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Eric Hawk
If your assumption is that the earth will be rendered uninhabitable for human life, two options come to mind. I do not believe it is reasonable to believe that humanity will be able to become a space-faring species during the next century. These options, far-fetched as they seem, seem more reasonable.
1. Preserve a number of human organisms sufficient to avoid genetic bottlenecks within a "safe environment" on earth. This could be a self-contained biosphere-type of environment or a manner of suspended animation. Even if the earth is rendered uninhabitable for humans, it is likely that some forms of life will survive (extremophiles, for instance). Hopefully, the tendencies of evolution will eventually "re-terraform" the earth, allowing humanity to once again inhabit the planet.
2. More imaginatively, we may reconcile our selves to our extinction upon earth, and give extra-terrestrials the knowledge to recreate humanity. This could be done by preserving human tissues and all of our information regarding our genome here on earth, hoping that other "archeologists" will find this information. We may also send this information to many other worlds which seem likely to harbor civilizations, in the form of physical samples, but more realistically, as radio transmissions describing our physical forms and genetic makeup. It is an open question whether other civilizations would wish to recreate a civilization which exterminated itself. It is a hope depending upon the benevolence and wisdom of beings which avoided self-distruction.
When people of the foreing nation, of the different cultural approach, talk about "birth control" of their neighour countries and the neighbor communities, I say: Your nation is doomed. Why you anglo-saxons judge for the whole world ? Why you "civilize" others ? Why won't you concentrate on your own problems ? What if the people of the foreign country like the way they live ? You invade innocent counties, make people homeless, starving, take their resources for yourself and talk aloud how you help them to "create democracy". Your democrazy is the low of gold, it is not what NORMAL people want. Fix your own system before trying to embrace it on others. Remember, not all people are like you. Not everybody gets on his/her knees when it sees a richer person. Everybody respects divinity in man, but you equal it to mony in the pocket. Even the dollar has the word "God" written onto it. You are very crazy country. Stop trying to solve world wide problems, concentrate on your own's. If you want to help, collaborate with others in real partnership spirit.
Ha ha!
:-)
:-D
:)
So it is you!
Have been wondering who have been spamming our mailinglists
Yes, BE happy NOW
Ok, then.. Gouranga!
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Let's be clear. Survive does not necessarily mean that our civilisation as we know it would make it through, nor does it imply that relatively large numbers of humans won't die off.
It is highly likely that no matter what we do to the planet and ourselves that a million years from now we could have a race of homoxxxxxxx which could trace direct descent from homosapiens as we are now. Little comfort to most though.
The inversion of the question reads: "How can the human race completely destroy itself in the next hundred years?"
The answers is: it can't. There will allways be survivors. They will live on and continue the human race.
So to answer Hawkings question: "do nothing, continue living."
Yes, I am the one with the legendary sig.
square the speed of light, take some mass and..
The term human race... We may survive, at least a few in case of a natural disaster (social and political problems will never actually wipe out the entire human population, we value our lives too much). However, any natural disaster which was significant enough to cause such a change would probably cause huans to change (yay, darwin), so either we'll live on quite disfunctionally, or we'll mutate.
I don't like the idea of moving to mars btw, but that's purely due to a certain writer's insistance that I will.
I know what happens before life and what The Afterlife is, and I know what signs have been placed on this Earth, by myself in The Prelife, of course, to prove to ME how I should live MY life now and what will await ME for MY greatness in The Afterlife. To test MY morality, which I conclude was MY intent after the fact, I commit immoral acts, judge the consequences, and repent to MYSELF. I know that there was a higher purpose and the lost quality of life for anyone who perceives themselves as
Maybe if we start creating rulesets (kind of like laws) that we could feed to computers instead of judges,
;-)
the computer could evaluate these millions of rulessets in seconds, resulting in a verdict that we should always follow
(if we don't we should change the rulesets, but we should always follow the verdict).
Maybe we wouldn't understand why the computer came to this decission (it is to complex for us to grasp),
but if we know that the rules we fed the computer are correct, the answer should also be correct.
The big problem in politics is that too much power makes people corrupt, because they can't handle it
(communism anyone?). Computers don't have that problem because they are not self-aware.
It would be nice if everyone could submit patches to this code, and if you don't like the direction it is going in, you can always fork your own tree. The computer evaluating all this would somehow take this into account, because it would still be a valid (though minority) view on things. This would result in a more evolutionary system. Certain code-tree's would die out unless they merge with other tree's, etc. You would not have to depend on someone to represent your views (democracy), but you would be governed based on your own views (in relation to the rest of the world, offcourse).
This system would be (more) fair to all citizens off the world ensuring everyone has a roof above their head and food on the table (since this is so fundamental for all people).
Just some thoughts, hope you don't find them to scary
Sorry for posting this as AC,
JOC.
The next 100 years probably won't be a problem, as long as there are no more world wars. The problem is how to survive for the next 2,000 och 10,000 years, or more.
The human race is a very primitive tribe, emotionally and mentally. We are still animal-like and aggressive. To survive, we will have to change. To do this religion needs to be eradicated through education and enlightenment, and replaced with something more rational and useful. But what? I have no idea.
Life on earth will go on with or without us. If we are unable to adapt to our natural environment, maybe we deserve to become extinct.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
If everybody, on a daily basis, did their very best to learn how to eat shit and smile, that would be a good start.
It's cheaper to build new goods than to replace old ones because it uses less resources. I know it seems contradictory, but in the age of industrialization products can be built with almost no labour cost. The most resource intensive part of producing almost anything is labour. What you want to do is devalue labour. I don't think you've fully considered the ramifications of what you've proposed here. People are expensive to keep alive. It's what we spend literally all of our resources doing. So when you say that we should use more labour to do the same amount of work, you're talking about increasing the amount of resources used, not decreasing it.
While I admit that decreasing the amount of resources we use is important, that should be done by using our existing resources more efficiently. One of the things I've noticed is that people often fail to appreciate the value of a quality item, which is less likely to break. I think people only need to learn to spend their money more wisely, waste would be less of a problem.
Nature has empowered females to choose mates who are best compatible for the purpose of passing on the most effective immune system. It's done by sense of smell. By choosing males who have dissimilar immune systems, they pass on the benefits of two immune systems. This system competes well against the pathogens seeking to overwhelm us, which are also evolving. Females who mate with a male with a similar immune system are failing to compete. If this uncompetitive system becomes the norm, the pathogens will win. To prevent this, nature causes some of the progeny of these uncompetitive matings to become effectively sterile. I.E. Homosexual. In general, homosexuals do not produce progeny, thus don't pass on their parent's behavior. Females choose males with a similar immune system if they are already pregnant, or on the birth control pill, which mimics pregnancy to the body. As more civilizations become advanced to the point where females control their fertility with oral contraceptives, they will end up mated to men they met while on the pill, and when they decide to become pregnant, they will usually have his baby, with the uncompetitive immune system, which nature will deal with. So, ironically, homosexuality will save the world by crashing the population.
Birth control is not necessary as economic opportunity expands. Population growth within economically advanced countries has dropped on its own WITHOUT government intervention. Some places have even experienced negative growth rates. Economics rules politics. It is not the other way around. As the rule of law spreads, opportunities for people to work, make a living, secure housing, and raise a family will expand. Likewise, once a person has mortgage, their desire to have numerous offspring diminishes. And, as a bonus, they are much less likely to strap a bomb on themselves and kill you because you have different beliefs.
Atheism seems to have achieved the amazing rank of "most lethal mind-set", and I say amazing because it's had some fairly feirce (literally) competition.
The justification Atheists seem to most often use is either "for the common good" rather than being kind to one another, so I guess they stand out as one step less dishonest than the herd. OTOH they as a group are generally as greedy or at least as pushy as many of the bigger "religious" (usually, political or business) competitors.
BTW, this is all anti-Constitution big time for many Western countries. Either way. And those dox exist for good reasons.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
>Perhaps a world in which people cannot police themselves needs a "god" and fear of eternal rebuke in order to keep them in line.
>If religion is this opiate that the masses need, and it is abolished, what do we replace it with? Meds?
How about personal responsibility, with no chance to gain salvation eternally just by "opening your heart" to figments of somebody else's inmagination? How about a realistic world view, without blinders to shield us from inconvenient truths, a view that shows us to the true scale with which we relate to the universe: tiny but infinitely precious. At its mercy, with nothing but chaos, entropy, and random chance determining things, and nothing but ourselves and each other to protect us.
Not living this life as if it's a practise run for an eternity in heaven or just another in a long run of incarnations, but the one chance we each have to make a positive impact on the only sources of compassion and memory & creativity we know of -ourselves and maybe a few other advanced life forms on this one mudball.
I think that giving up on bronze-age childish mythologies would be a very large step in the right direction to help ensure species survival.
No imaginary friends to help us or correct us, so we've got no choice but to go ahead and make history with sensible choices and hard work.
A far longer and brighter future awaits us, if we work for it Unless you prefer that a few of us ascend to heaven while the rest of the world convulses in some mad gods' nightmare for our fates. Some like this view, especially since they're convinced that they're the ones who'll be saved and go to heaven without dying -and that's the key to religion's drawing power: fear of death. Couldn't we do better?
Space waits for us to take what's been called the greatest step a species has taken since the evolution of the lung. But if we just go on fighting wars to protect our right to depend on foreign oil and keep true to our own mythologies, we may run out of the slight extra wealth and time we need to start seeds growing out there.
John Frazer
Boulder, Co.
marssociety.org
But Mr. Fuller came up with a pretty good answer over 30 years ago. His timing might be a bit off, but the basic premise is sound. And if you want to make a serious attempt to find a solution, you need to go much deeper into the real basics. Ignore his advice and you will pay the price.
What?
I was a born-again Christian for over 20 years and thought the same way as the above poster. I left religion / christianity about 6 years ago and I have to say I have never been happier! I realize now how very much I was missing the point (much like above poster)! Atheists aren't violent criminals doing thing for selfish needs, that does not make sense... but that is what the religious mindset teaches you to believe. You believe this to the point where you can only see "good" as coming from following the Bible, which is utterly ridiculous. Many so-called Christians go the opposite way and become evil for the very reason that they can no longer tell that true morals are not based on some set of rules from a God on high. Morals come from living and learning... education. You do good, people do good to you. There is nothing to gain if everyone is out for themselves! This is why I see Christianity as so hyprocritcal these days... they are exactly what they think the secular world is... evil! And they can't see past that.
Meh.
There is certainly an issue here. We have examples of societies that died out. The people of Easter Island decided to build statues and fight rather than improve cropland and improve crop yeald. The Norse in Greenland died out while the Thule thrived on Greenland. We now have tools that did not exist before the 1940's capable of killing every human on the planet. My solution includes two sections. First is what to do for the population of Earth. Second to prevent extinction (not as a solution for the problem of those on Earth) is colonies off Earth. The colonies need to be no less than 2000 people each, and need to be independant of Earth for all basic needs. Commerce with Earth should be for luxuries and exchange of knowlage. Locations could be Luna, Asteroids, or Mars, or any combination of these. This does not solve any problem for Earth. It just keeps total war or biological genocide from taking the whole species. The solutions for those on Earth.... 1. Population. Each person gets one birthright, and each child born uses up the birthright of one of the parents. Bearing any child by a couple that has used their birthrights would result in the forced sterilization of both adults. A nation could opt to lottry off birthrights sufficient to keep a stable population. 2. Resources. Nations required to live within their means. Any nation useing more resources than is produces to be automatically trade sactioned by all other nations till back within their means. Famine and wars caused by such sanction should be viewed as normal untill that nation is back to producing all basic needs for every person residing there. Each state in the US should face the same rules beteen the several states. California needs to decreasse population till it can procure water in state for all the citizens there. The US needs to produce an energy surpluss, we can not afford to be importing engergy/oil. The world populaton needs to come down till the market demand is well below the natural production of lumber, fish, and other resources. 3.Education. Continue to raise the level of eduction across the globe. Make finding efficient solutions to problems easy to find. This requires easy access to the internet and network neutrality. Education is what will make it possible to raise the standard of living for more people while learning to live within their contry's resources. Education also makes tolerace possible. It reduces the evils of organized religion. And makes trade more efficient. 4. Tolerance. If we do not teach tolerance, and celebrate diversity, we fuel those views that would resort to nuklear and biological disaster. One does not need to be African, European, Native American, or the like to celebrate the cultures and accomplishments of each, or of the rest of the cultures and peoples of Earth. Failure to choose to support our fellow man, is to choose to support those that push hate and values that lead to global disaster for all. Failure to control population, resource depletion, increase education, or increase tolerance, will result in the very real need for off world colonies.
Humanism and realism over faith and delusion. Two hands working beats millions praying every time.
P.S. the reason why Einstein was so consumed with trying to fit his theory of relativity with the rest and the reason why the string theory is having a hard time coming together is because Einstein was wrong (and he knew it) about gravity traveling at the same speed as light. We may not be able to see the light anymore but we still feel the gravity. So that's where all your missing matter in the universe went.
The way it has survived previous resource scarcity;.... War.
I would think his answer to this question is more precisely answered by:
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." - A. Einstein
Plenty of reasons: They might hurt you back being one of the top ones. Another being that the happiness you got would probably be short-term compared to the misery of years in prison. The vast majority of people know why anarchy is a bad idea; if you don't I'm not sure how you managed to figure out the operation of a computer.
So, because somebody tells you that A) you have a soul B) other people also have souls C) both your soul and the souls of others are eternal, and presumably D) after death, you will be judged based on your actions in life, you have refused to live the life that you apparently want to? You are one scary piece of work! What else will you believe if the people in the big building with stained glass windows and a cross on top (minor assumption there, sorry if I guessed wrong) tell you? How about if they say it actually IS okay to do what you want to, but only with little boys? Some of them did, most likely there are some who still do.
I'm an agnostic, not an athiest (I'm not SURE I'm right; I don't subscribe to any dogma. I do believe in evolution over intelligent design, and a few similar things, however... and I don't believe in souls.) I don't think my life is miserable because I control myself. I have no desire to find myself on the business end of the justice system, or to live my life on the run. While desire to have sex is natural (regardless of whether the other person wants it or not) you'll get a lot more long-term benefit from finding a loving life partner then you will from forcing yourself on somebody and going through the consequences.
Basically, what this post boils down to is that you have no personal ethics, but don't hurt people because your religious leaders/texts tell you not to. The thought of causing people (or "just a bunch of meat, with no real existance - they sure think that they are real, but what do I care? They are just a bunch of nerves blinking, no different then a computer") pain and suffering doesn't bother you at all. But, because they supposedly have a soul your fun is suddenly off-limits? You also show a nearly complete inability to see the big picture, or have no regard for law and society in general (which brings up the question of why you would have any for religious law...) Oh, and you can't spell.
No surprise this is posted AC, but whever modded this up should be ashamed.
I apologise to anybody offended by my irreverence with regard to churches, Christianity, etc. I was trying to make a point, and deliberately wrote more roughly than I would to anybody I had any reason to respect. And no, I don't disrespect people based on religion.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Dear Stephen,
I am pretty sure, 5000 or 2000 years ago people did ask this very same question and didn't believe the world would turn after their death. So I think your question is not about how the human race can survive but how nowadays people see the future out of their lifetime reach.
In case I am wrong I think you did ask the wrong question. It will not be "how can they survive" but "how will they survive".
I am pretty sure the human race will last longer than most other species on this planet. The human being is weak in almost every aspect but it is strong in one -- it can do lots of things, not good but to an acceptable level. And it has creativity to overcome its shortcomings.
I am pretty sure I would not survive the world of 2106 but I am not supposed to. And to be honest -- I don't want to.
cb
How can the human race survive the next hundred years?
The same way it survived the past 100 years. In a haphazard messy way. Actually, the person on Yahoo who said "one day at a time" had it right I'd say.
BTW, to the people who said "on other planets" (in particular one who said something to the effect of "if you're really Hawkings, then you'll already know this") the fact is, and Hawkings of all people would agree, the nearest inhabitable planet is probably generations away at the speed of light. The only alternative to M-class planets would have to be carefully controlled colonizations that draw materials from other sources than the earth itself, and I really shouldn't need to mention that the costs of maintaining even just one colony that way really are likely to be such that even with future technology it's more feasable to just keep living on the earth until we finally figure out how to blow everyone up at the same time so no one is left to start another war. Sorry Star Trek fans, but, moving 9.9x the speed of light just isn't going to happen (not due to lack of technology, but, due to the fact that as far as anyone has been able to determine, it's physically impossible for normal matter to move that speed) -- in fact, moving 0.99x the speed of light is probably never going to happen (the amount of energy needed to increase speed moves up exponentially and by the time you hit something like 0.99, even if the amount of mass is equivalent to that of a grain of salt, you're talking about more energy than can likely be produced.)
The fact is, until someone figures out some unknown trick of physics that would allow us to do what currently is beyond impossible, we're pretty much grounded on earth. Even the idea of controlled environment colonies is just infeasable once you factor in the costs needed to maintain them -- not to mention the fact that a controlled environment would be easily upset by external factors such as meteors, weather, etc and if you stick a bunch of ordinary humans in there, someone WILL manage to blow an airlock open or some moronic thing like that.
Of course, the point I'm getting to is that everyone seems to be living as if there is another earth waiting for us only next door and we're pretty much wrecking this one. 100 years is just 100 more years of trashing it and each other. We'll live 100, but, 1000? I have my doubts. So, simply put, we'll live the next 100 years exactly the same as we live this one with the names and technologies changed to protect the innocent.
...Religion is nature's very own birthcontrol.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
"It reminds me of actors who give political speeches. It's not their field of expertise, but people listen to them anyway."
Good grief. Is this what gets taught in civics nowadays?
What is with this idea that keeps cropping up in public discourse, and on the Internet, that of all places should know better? That somehow "non-experts" are not allowed to be politically active?
In a democratic republic, politics is and should be *everyone's* area of expertise. *Especially* if you're not an expert. That's what democracy means.
Requiring politics to only be conducted by experts has been tried before, and still is the default option in many places of the world. It's gone by various names: monarchy, aristocracy, dictatorship.
Good luck with that.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Devnull, I disagree strongly with many of the ideas in your post, and I'm surprised that you make such aggressive claims with so little evidence.
First, your discussion of the advances scientists bring to society. You laud scientists, and not priests, for bringing us technology. But producing technology is not the job of a priest. You might as well castigate a teacher for failing to put out house fires. Second, the religious analogue to a scientist is not a priest but a practitioner of religion. (Only a fraction of religious believers support a professional, celibate, spiritually authoritarian priesthood.) And the fact is, that it was primarily practitioners of religion who brought us all three of the advances you list. Indeed, all of our greatest scientists--Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and the list goes on--have been deeply religious men and women.
Even if we take up the argument on your terms, that is, looking for the value of religion in the technological achievements of celibate clergy, the contributions of monks to our most basic technology--written language--is quite significant. And that's not to mention their work in fields such as mathematics, architecture, viticulture, and art.
You offer no evidence for your claim that "religion has generally been the biggest impediment to scientific progress." Whether or not religion has impeded scientific progress is an interesting question upon which reasonable men may disagree, but it seems clear that it could not possibly be the biggest impediment. What about the fact that most humans throughout history have been illiterate? Scientific experimentation is an expensive luxury; don't you think that poverty is a greater impediment to science than religion, if indeed religion is an impediment at all?
You say that religion has been used by "a manipulative few to gain control over and wealth from the gullible masses." This is true, but it is a fault of political rulers, not of religion. Technology is also used to kill and control. Shall we abandon science because it leads to the discovery of information that can be misused? It is the misuse of science and religion that should be condemned. It would be foolish to slander an honest pursuit such as religion or science because it is abused by irresponsible and immoral rulers.
We agree that political control and its concomitant economic benefits are one use of religion, but your contention that control is religion's "main use" is impossible to prove, and, I believe, incorrect. If we measure how often religion is used for any given purpose, the billions of people who use religion in their personal life to better understanding their identity and their connection to God surely outweigh the "manipulative few" who use it maliciously. And even in the realm of politics there are wonderful uses of religion: it was religious conviction that gave Gandhi the strength to free a billion people from colonial rule; religion motivated Martin Luther King; evangelical Christians, first in England and then in America, spearheaded the first movements to eradicate slavery on moral grounds. And besides, when political leaders do use religion for nefarious purposes, they generally use it for its instit
consumption purely for the sake of consumption is our biggest problem.
I whole-heartedly agree with you. However a capaitalistic market will not correct this. I recently looked a a book "Your call is important to us", which gives an illuminating discussion about companies such as WalMart.
Capitalism has many good traits. It encourages efficient production of (fairly) high-quality products. It provides incentives for the seller to match the demands of the buyer.
However, when viewed in terms of an "optimization problem", it is not an unbiased solution. The general public lacks the knowledge and motovation to demand the things necessary to cure today's problems. *Most* people would rather pay $5 less per shirt than spend a few hours researching how it was made and then choosing to purchase a more expensive (non-sweatshop) produced one.
In terms of cars. Are you going to buy your wife/spouse a moped just to save the environment? Well, not if you live in an area populated by 18wheelers, SUVs, and Hummers.
And what about advertising? Consumers don't really mind mass unsolicted postal mail and newspaper ads. Advertisers like them because they don't have to pay for the environmental costs (other than the low price of purchasing the paper). Do you see what I'm getting at? Capitalism is not helping these things.
...
That was supposed to be a rhetorical question, I think.
But what's telling here is "We are going to make this bad for most people." No ruling class succeeds by intending to make things bad for the underclass. They succeed by intending to make things better for themselves, which is very different. Whether or not things are bad for the underclass or not doesn't matter, but it usually works out that the underclass is worse off than it could/should be if the intention is to make things better for everyone.
In many modern societies (those that consider themselves democracies), the belief is that individual effort pays off and anyone can become a member of the ruling class. Anecdotally, this is true, but by and large you will remain in the class you are born into no matter what you do. The elected governments who continually stack the deck in favor of the ruling class are reelected partially on this belief: "When I'm in the ruling class, I want to have all those perks."
Today, it's not the ruling class who's entirely to blame for how the entire society fails to thrive. It's also those who vote (or don't) and make their voices heard (or don't). It's the Mac zealots and the Linux fanboys and the M$ junkies and the n00bs all together.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Forty-two.
"Just because you're eloquent doesn't mean you aren't a fucking crackpot." -Wavebreak
Long term survival of the human race can be augmented in a number of ways. First, the old rules still largely apply; chiefly, MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). MAD kept the Cold War cold since an attack by one side would have meant a rapid counterattack by the other (mutual suicide). But in the 21st century, enemies will not only be kept in check by MAD, but can be preempted entirely via economic cooperation. In addition to economic growth and country-based division of labor, globalization provides the mechanism of collaboration which obviates nation-state warfare and renders it obsolete among participating countries. Thus, the objective of any future leader: expand this participation by making globalization a reality in areas where it is not (Andean nations in S America, Mideast, sub-Saharan Africa, etc), thereby spreading economic prosperity and preempting enemies via economic collaboration. Such collaboration further leads to the spread of ideas, including personal freedoms and women's rights, leading to a version of Tom Friedman's flatter world that is truly worldwide.
Every time I see it, it makes me sick. Some person who achieved a goal that thanks god... for what? When I was homeless and starving, tired and hopeless, did some curly haired MF hand me a cheeseburger and some advice... no. Why should I believe and worship something that I have never seen, never felt, never been able to speak to for guidance or support. If you take a step back and think about it, it sounds like interacting with an e-mail from Nigeria. You want me to do all these things for an invisible character that promises bliss yet delivers absolutely nothing. Is there a single shred of evidence in all of history that any "higher power" swooped down and actually helped... no. Keep your faith talk to yourself, those of us that have experienced the bowels of god's wonderful creation firsthand have little tolerance for your wishful thinking. A few times I have opened myself up to a higher power out of sheer dispair... I was 100 percent open to the idea, I thought that maybe I should jump on the train since all these people seem to be doing so well on it. Amazingly nothing happened. The only benefit I can see of religion is the positive feelings some people feel by believing in something positive. However if you're in a serious crisis god won't be doing the work to fix you, in the end it will be you, not by chance or by faith, but by your own internal power. Positive thinking coming from a supposed higher power will certainly help some of us, but I find it hard to believe its the determining factor.
Once we get over the stigma, its the only real solution. From controlling the population, to stopping deforrestation and all the damages these issues involve.
Just remember, don't eat the brain, or 50 years down the track your brain may very well look like cheese.
axis discrepancy indicates hexagons beyond control anomaly
Make lots of backups ;).
He said "survive" didn't he?
I'm extremely surprised that someone has yet to answer this correctly:
Simply put, Mr. Hawking, the human race can't survive the next 100 years. In fact, the human race can't even survive the next two years, for, you see, the Sony Playstation 3 will be released at such an amazingly high price that it will cause the crash of not just the United States' economy, but every economy in the world (yes, even Haiti's). There's really just no chance for us.
Ask yourselves then, Sony: did the world really need the BluRay format?
Sorry, but this was obligatory.
God: you screw up for a few years, in spite of having no concrete evidence of my existence. You are condemned to an ethernal unimaginable punishment.
....
Me: Thank goodness you are perfect. Imagine if you were imperfect
Religious nuts, one ought to love them....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The origin of famine and hunger is political.
Combine political leaders in poor countries that profit from having a hungry population with the shameful and disgraceful subsidies for the agricultural sector in rich countries, add the shameful practices of food producers that prefer to let food to waste than to sell it cheaper, and you'll realize that there is enoough food but little will.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
We are the mammal that is reproducing at the fastest and most furious level.
The genetic variety combined with the different environments we live in is creating new posibilities (for example, people of pale skin, an anomality in human evolution, will disappear in the turn of a few hundred years, which is a dumb inconsequential example, but illustrates that we don;t fully appreciate the consequences of human intermixing at a global scale).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
He just asked a question that he probably didn't know the answer to himself, and that knew would generate a lot of discussion. I think he did exactly what many politicians are too scared to do, and what many actors just didn't think of.
You wouldn't want it to happen to you. You don't need religion to figure that out. If you need religion to have a conscience, and to feel love for people and not want to harm them because you know what it's like to be harmed, well, that's just pretty pathetic.
Religion doesn't give us the ability to control ourselves. That our brains have a higher level of consciousness than other species does.
Most, if not all, actions are self-serving. Even those that let others move in with them rather than go homeless do it because they wouldn't want to be homeless. Those people understand their influence on their environment and their fellow humans and recognize that everyone else has that same influence. It's simple, rational behavior to help others if you would want help in that situation. You act as if that's a bad thing.
You think Atheists that control themselves are stupid? I'd call them enlightened. Or rational. If you can't see that we all affect each other without external guidance from a book or a religious figure, you have no place in calling others stupid.
is because they wouldn't make any money from it. Your TV, and for that matter most publications, will never tell you anything substantial about conserving. Ever.
Ok, look here Dave, this is getting silly. There are so many factual and logical errors in your statements, I hardly know where to begin. First off, ARAB != MUSLIM. Secondly, in the specific case you mentioned (Darfur), the conflict is between mostly Arab (Muslims) and non-Arab (Muslims). In fact, to quote for the very same article you used at Wikipedia:
Since 2003 it has been one of the principal actors in the increasingly bloody Darfur conflict, which has pitted the Arab-identified Sudanese against the non-Arab muslim population of the region.
In other words, this is not a religious war pitting militant Islam vs. any other religion.
For the record, I am an Indian-born, Hindu-raised, Canadian athiest so NONE of this is relevant to me personally except for your obvious butchery of knowledge, reason and logic. In case the point was lost, this is exactly why the world disagrees with Americans about virtually everything.
-- People who think they know it all, really annoy those of us who do!
ditto, fellow blasphemer!
b
All we have to do to save humanity, is care about humanity. Stephen is in the minority here, most humans hate humanity, and hate each other and would rather die killing their enemies than die saving the planet and the species.
It's a matter of will, it's not a matter of methods. We have the technology to save humanity easily, we have enough surveillace, we have enough meds, whatever we need we have or can build, we have a global economy now.
Religion is not the answer nor is it the problem, Religion is as natural as science and math. If you want to follow science you are religious in the way Einstien was in believing that the universe can be solved by science and or math. If you want to believe in God the science proves there is a God, if you don't want to believe in God, then there are no answers, no solutions, and everything is random. It's not going to make a difference if people believe in God or not, the reason people have wars is simply, they enjoy it, they want to have wars, they like to hate, and it doesnt matter what God, the economy, science, or math says about it. It's an emotion, and it's irrational.
If humanity is to survive, humanity has to focus on survival. Lets see, we should be spending most of our money in life extending technologies. We should be spending most of our brain power on improving the quality of life. We should spend more time helping kids, especially kids in poor countries who can be adopted. We should spend more time on education, so that everyone can have the knowledge they need to protect themselves.
I don't think it's going to happen, someone like Mr. Hawking, and maybe a few of us geeks will decide to care about life and the species, but it's not we who make the decisions here. We work for people who make the decisions, often they are a lot older, seniority and rank decide many isues.
The point is, it's not a matter of ideas, it's not a matter of convincing the majority of the worlds population to care about the species. It's a matter of convincing the select few decision makers to care about the species and the planet, and that is impossible.
Since we are going to die out, the best thing you can do, if invest in the types of businesses which will profit from chaos, and profit as the world dies in front of you. It's not going to save the world, but at least you get to die in comfort. If the world does not end, you'll lose your money, but you'll keep your future.
Birth Control would certainly slow the destruction down, but it's not a long term solution, it's a bandaid. The problem is, humans have emotional diseases. If the species is simply too emotional to exist, the result is the species kills itself.
It is certainly possible that our species can simply be too emotional to be rational. A rational species, would ignore all emotion, very much like ants and bees, and focus on what is important. Protecting yourself, protecting your family, protecting your country, and protecting your species. If you are emotional then you'll easily be confused into attacking your species, attacking your country, attacking your family, and attacking yourself.
It is possible that we can cure the human diseases which plague our species, but we enjoy being emotional too much to be rational. All of us have emotional vices, some of us have too much love to the point that we do something irrational like die saving others. Some of us have so much hate that we die killing others. And then you have the whole range of emotions in between that don't make much sense.
Currently, we don't really focus much on being rational, or on teaching young people to be rational. You can teach people the obvious math that 1+1=2, but if you don't explain the reasons why or the philosophy or even the religion behind it, it's not going to make a person rational.
Why should a person care about the species? If you remove the emotion from it, it's rational to care about yourself, caring about the human family, or about your brother or sister, is caring about yourself, and that is always rational. If every human cared about the people they dislike on a basic human level, the species would be fine. The only way the species will survive, is if we act like a family. You can start by treating your brothers and sisters of slashdot like family, And progress it to country, and then global.
Otherwise, nothing is going to change, people will hate their brothers and sisters, and hate themselves in the process. At this point our option is to hate ourselves to death, or change the rules so that we increase quality of life. We are working now to destroy ourselves, not to improve quality of life, or to improve length of lifespan. We are already a dead species. Mr. Hawking if he wants to change this, he's showing heart, but he's not really showing much intelligence if he think's random geeks on Slashdot can change this. To be honest, he should be meeting with decision makers, business owners, politicians, and billionares, millionares, the royal families, and discuss the issue with them. Maybe he can meet with Al Gore while he is at it, but I don't think WE geeks can do anything at this point, we have little to no power. If someone here does have power, then go ahead and discuss this issue, otherwise focus on making money and surviving and let Mr. Hawking spend his remaining years working on this.
I think brainpower and ideas arent the issue, I think surviving is the issue. Learn to survive, and help your friends and family survive, help slashdot survive, and thats about all you can do.
Is that we have different people willing to kill huge numbers of different people. Religion has nothing to do with how people feel about other people, it cannot change a persons emotions, only a persons thinking. You cannot through religion force a person to love or hate their neighbor, You cannot teach emotion. Religion is just an excuse to kill people, if you want to kill of course you need the excuse to do it, and hey if God tells you to do it, thats the perfect excuse.
"However, at best we can only say that it is not necessarily intrinsic to the human condition."
.... ;^)
... ) And even if you could, why would you?
Also fair enough -- my point here would be that "not necessarily intrinsic to the human condition" means the same thing as "definitely NOT part of human nature" -- and if its not part of human *nature*, and there've been successful human societies WITHOUT it, then there its not INEVITABLE that a human society become hyper-consumers to be successful. My message is one of HOPE, you see, not despair, for that way lies madness.
For if we are fated to perpetual growth in both our number and in the amount we consume (after all, to be a hyper-consumer, we must consume MORE as compared to whatever measure we use to gauge our own consumption, which typically will mean the consumption of other humans, who, if they share our delusion about the hyper-consuming nature of humans, will then compare to US, which will spur THEM to consume more, and so on and so on) AND we live in a finite universe, what possible ultimate outcome can we hope for our race except ruin?
*steps down from pulpit*
All that said, another (minor) correction:
"Think about it: 50,000 years ago the tribes that survived were the ones who horded resources for themselves"
This is not strictly INCORRECT -- especially in light of your later comments about hoarding in one's on body -- but it represents a pretty inaccurate mental model for the situation 50,000 years ago. Namely, the tribes that ACTUALLY thrived 50,000 years ago, near as anthropologists can tell, are the ones who waged war most successfully on their neighbors. Yes, those we think of "noble savages" were, in most cases (and most especially in areas where many tribes competed for "resources"), quite warlike, cruel, and brutal, at least as regards members of other tribes (My, how things have changed, huh?
And the "resource" most fought over was, of course, *LAND*. And that's why its so misleading to say hunter-gatherers "hoarded" resources -- to people that DO NOT collect all their food up in warehouses and grocery stores and then lock it away from each other, the world is MADE OF food -- everything a human hunter gatherer sees -- with a typical human's ability to eat both so high and so low on the food chain, in such variety, and gain sustenance from said eating -- in his world is his food, or at the least it's the food of SOME of his food. To a human living in a world made of food, to speak of "hoarding" of food is a bit of a non-sequitur. How can one "store" or "hoard" the world in which one lives? (Within one's own body does make some sense as an answer to this, as you've pointed out
However, to be more strictly accurate, I'd encourage you to think rather in terms of the competition between tribes to (mostly) monopolize the (human) use of a region -- that is a more accurate model. "Hoarding" has a connotation of "storage", which really just doesn't much apply to the way most hunter-gatherers lived.
To bring this around to the original point, I'd agree that "competition between humans for desired things (land, food, whatever)" may well be intrinsic to human nature (or, more probably, just "any nature", as opposed to "human nature") -- but the evidence suggests hyper-CONSUMPTION is NOT.
And, if you'll allow me to wax even MORE long-winded, this is the crux of the point -- the KEY difference between "us" and "them" is NOT in the way we "hoard", or even "how we consume", it is ACTUALLY in "how we compete". What happened 8,000 years ago, with the STYLE of agriculture that started being practiced (what anthropologists recognize as "agriculture" actually started much earlier), was that we decided to become not just "those who compete" but rather think of ourselves as "those who make the rules for competition".
If we define "agriculture" as "the encouragement of desired plants to grow in a certain area", then what started being pra
Religion is an evolutionary construct. No one came up with it, it evolved. No 'religion' will ever work for very long as a unifying construct, as every religion there is undergoes schisms. They also syncretically mix with other religions. The Muslims and Hindus in India are prime examples of how the religions affected each other. Hindus (pagans, once very libertinish) became much more conservative, and the wild-eyed muslims (once they'd gotten done killing all the buddhists in northern india) sycretically rubbed up against the hindus and they started getting along.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
one of the 15000 or however many answers included this gem: "Who are we to decide the fate of another celestial body and deface it by tara-forming it to our will, when we have not taken responsibility of our own original planet." Ya gotta love that tara-forming! The US would not have the Gold Medal in Women's Figure Skating in the 2002 Winter Olympics without it!
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
You say rubbish.
s panol/rutinas/ept.asp?t=mpob00&c=5262
The most annoying thing is the air of complacency while saying this nonsense like if you were an expert in the matter.
Go to the official source, you'll need a translation tool:
http://www.inegi.gob.mx/est/contenidos/e
I will point out only a couple of statistics:
Indicador 1990 1995 2000 2005
Tasa de crecimiento medio anual de la poblacion 2.6 2.0 1.9 1.0
Tasa global de fecundidad 3.2 2.9 2.4 2.1
those are the population growth and fecundity rates respectively. Note the trend downwards.
Your picture of Mexican families with hoards of children is out of date by at least 40 years.
Many religious Mexicans have known for long time that the Pope and the religious authorities may not necessarily be well informed about practical matters.
The religious leadership in Mexico has always aligned itself against the popular causes in the country (they were against Mexican independence, they propped up Mexican puppet Emperor Maximilan of Habsbourgh and dictator Porfirio Diaz and have been in general a very visible block to the progress of the poor).
What the Pope has to say about earthly matters is politely listened too but swiftly ignored if it is bullshit, as the statistics above clearly ahow.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Hey faulker, there are kids reading this!
Besides, I personally know him.
He visits my house once a year and tells me to @&$R his @*#$ and then he'll give me toys
Let Mother Nature sort it out. She'll thin our ranks as needed and then its merely left to the survivors to try and do better the next time around.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Wow, is a good question, what amazes me is how many people answered. I got this question on my yahoo sign in page. I'd like to learn how all this started, to begin with.
" Things exist for a reason - or did anyway... because they served a function. "
Yep. The human appendix once served a purpose. But it doesn't any more. It's still there, but it's nothing but a deadly liability, a useless booby-trap that can blow up and kill you at any time without returning the least benefit for the life-threatening risks that it exposes us to.
Religion is the same. It's time the human race had a religionectomy!
One of the things that really pisses me off is that I CAN fix things, but i often can't get parts.
I broke the USB assembly on my laptop, but i couldn't find anywhere to buy a new one so I ended up being unable to replace it.
I had a problem with my DVD players D/A converter, but philips wouldn't send me a new one.
At one point I bought a couple of broken cellphones so I could salvage parts to fix my own phone.
Perhaps we could mandate that manufacturers must make fairly priced spare parts available for some number of years after releasing a product. That would probably push up the costs of new goods and make it easier for existing products to be maintained.
> 1. There is a strong correlation between countries becoming more secular or progressive, and the development of technology.
> 2. More secular states tend to be more prosperous and technologically advanced than theocracies.
> 3. Religion has traditionally been an impediment to the development of science.
Yes, but check your birthrates. The birthrates in theocratic societies are much higher than those in the 'enlightened' world, where for various causes (availability of abortion, women's rights, relative cost of raising children) they have seen a relative decrease. If you view human society as an evolutionary process, the theocratic societies are more fertile, grow faster, have more adherents.
We fly in outer space, have nearly instantaneous global communication networks, and have nations growing up with a dependance on the technology. This technology... with a single blast you can decimate the environment of a region and also infrastructure within a blast radius. Support for things like distribution of food, medical services, communications and banking infrastructures. With multiple cities the problem intensifies. And with enough nukes, you can have wonderful climate change from the effects of nuclear winter. The thing is, with our technology we have the power, and the power doesn't necessarily involve legions of men, or viruses which can be quarantined and vaccines built for. This power doesn't rely on the chance of natural disaster of which I never refuted in the first place. I suppose I should've proceeded my response with "nature willing," but I figured that would be implied. This power and threat is something which may be controlled by an extremely small subset of fallible human beings in the position to effectively "flip the switch." Delusions of grandeur? I'd be happy if that's all it is, but I'm afraid the threat is all too real, sir.