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?

Comments

Your Answer, Stephen

[ackthpt]

'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.

Re:Your Answer, Stephen

[BewireNomali]

huge numbers is relative. there are six billion people on the planet. an argument can be made tha organized religion has been inordinately successful. Too successful.

I think your point is valid to some degree but I think its because another inexorable drive has reached critical mass. Technology. Information is available to all and is free. We've developed sophisticated ways of waging war. What once required the might of a country now requires nothing more than some cash and enough dedicated people to fill your average classroom. The BARRIERS TO ENTRY are too low. It makes EVERYONE a threat.

A theory floats around about why we've never heard from another species. It proposes that they all reach a point at which they use their own technology to destroy themselves. In other words, no civilization can survive its own technological advancement past a critical juncture.

We've been on the brink of it since the dawn of the atomic age.

So, in hindsight, the post I originally responded to wasn't too far off. At some point, organized religions are going to have to concede to something else... some other unifying force. However, I don't think banning religion or making it a forceful change is going to work. People have to evolve.

My mom always said not to argue with fools. I never understood what she meant as a child. She explained it to me further - that when you discuss something with someone, you're at the mercy of the person in the group with the least ability to comprehend. The group can only move forward with consensus when that person does so. So in a group, you're not at the mercy of the top of curve so much as at the mercy of those at the bottom. Here in the US, Bush's appeal is somewhat an indication of this.

Not to label religious zealots as fools, but we can't move to another place until the zealots decide, one way or another, to not be zealots anymore.

Just one...

[TheRequiem13]

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.

One Day at a Time

[PackMan97]

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.

Talk about a vague question

[AKAImBatman]

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.

It can't.

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> I imagine you can do better than 'It Can't.'

Sometimes the correct answer is really boring.

Humans need a crisis to change

[spiffery]

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.

Re:Simple (Not Quite)

[damacus]

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.