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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?
The only solution I can think of involves legalizing, rather, mandating drugs and banning clothes...
My name is Wootzor von Leetenhaxor
The planet is viable now. To say it isn't is to ignore the highest lifespan average of humanity, EVER. Right now humans are living longer better lives than ever in the history of history.
More humans mean greater distribution of labor. More distribution means more specialization which leads to greater technical achievements which lead to things like, but not limited to, 100% of the population living off of food farmed by 2% of the population.
How is the planet exactly not viable?
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
There are about three good comments in this discussion that are along these lines, but yours is the best.
It seems Hawkings question is really, how do we keep our "world" (planet, society, etc.) as stable/stagnant as possible. That won't happen. It never has.
We may well face some drastic climate changes in the next 100 years (many are certain about that), but the human race has faced that before and survived by wearing mammoth hide or migrating. We may face ravaging disease, but we've seen that too. War? Yep. Will the population decrease at some point in the next century? Probably. We've been due for a correction for some time now.
About the only forseeable event we haven't already survived is global radioactive contamination. However, the odds of that happening - and leaving no habitable corner of the world where humans can survive long enough to reproduce - are slim.
Will you or I survive the next hundred years? Most likely not. Will our children? Most likely. Will some human? Almost definitely.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
You're addressing our current problems. This question posed by Hawking is so vague that you have to predict future problems to come up with an answer.
... j/k
A few of them are:
What happens when/if we massively extend lifespans using nanotechnology/genetic engineering? That is somewhat covered under birth control but not exactly. You eventually run into the question of WHO you want to reproduce. Maybe not in the next 100 years though.
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned populating the ocean yet, it seems more practical that flying to Mars.
Another thing, suppose we get to the point where nanotechnology and artificial technological implants are common. We could be facing attacks within each individual person. It brings new meaning to Personal Firewall.
What are we going to do when we run out of IP numbers?
I have a feeling that our energy consumption problems that we face today will work themselves out long before 100 years. It is too obvious of a problem for it to last that long. The number one thing there being remove dependence on the middle east, which we are already working on. Then remove dependence on fossil fuels, which is going to take a good bit longer, but I have a feeling that it will happen much sooner than 100 years from now. Go ahead and come back to flame me 100 years from now if I'm wrong.
And don't forget the predicted coming problem of mass Segway usage. We will have to redesign all of our cities to deal with THAT plague.
So, basically what I'm saying here is that we have no idea what our problems are *ACTUALLY* going to be that far into the future. Technology is changing too fast for us to have any idea of what will actually be possible. Think about just 40 years ago, not very many people would have been able to predict a global network of computers, but they were all thinking about the kinds of problems that flying cars would cause in the year 2000.
From the loud squelching noise, the strong ensuing smell, and most obviously, from the shit in your eyes.
It's basic strategy though. Don't put all your resources (in this case people) in one point of failure. If anything were to happen to Earth (nuclear war, rogue asteroid, etc.) then the entire species would be wiped out in one fell swoop. The benefit of spreading out is that humanity would still survive, even if one planet didn't. Within 100 years? Who knows... Horse & Buggy to Space Travel was quite a leap for 100 years. Space Travel to Space Colonization doesn't seem to be any bigger.
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
If you preach your particular brand of religion as being the One True Way, you lose steam if you backpedal and say that those other guys' religious views are just as valid. T
That's not what the GP is saying. There's a big difference between "can't we all just get along" and "your opposing view is just as correct".
Aside from that, the vast majority of religious people of all faiths get along just fine with each other. The problem, as usual, lies with the fringe nutjob extremists, and to them, it doesn't matter what their mainstream religious leaders do.
True, but it means you can put that intelligence to better use.
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.
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.