What Are You Optimistic About?

vix86 writes "Last year's "World Question" from The Edge was "What is your Dangerous Idea?" So to kick off the off the new year: As an activity, as a state of mind, science is fundamentally optimistic. Science figures out how things work and thus can make them work better. Much of the news is either good news or news that can be made good, thanks to ever deepening knowledge and ever more efficient and powerful tools and techniques. Science, on its frontiers, poses more and ever better questions, ever better put. What are you optimistic about? Why? Surprise us! "

Comments

Last Year's

[quanminoan]

If you missed last year's discussion here on the most dangerous idea you should read through it. There were some pretty interesting ideas...

Re:Last Year's

[arun_s]

To me, the most interesting question by far in EDGE has been the one on 'What do you believe to be true even though you can't prove it?' There were some really cool answers that year, e.g. this hilarious (but equally insightful) one from Leonard Susskind.

Unsurprisingly

[Anonymous Coward]

about finally getting laid! YAY!

Energy

[Scareduck]

I am optimistic on several major points regarding energy over the long term:

1. That mankind will wean itself of fossil fuels. This means massive increases in renewables, energy transport, and improved nuclear fission reactors/processes (breeder reactors and thorium fuel cycles, and ultimately, fusion).
2. Part of this process will be radical improvements in efficiency. Examples include stored thermal heat exchanges (underground water tanks for summer cooling and winter heating), coal gasification instead of conventional coal-fired power plants, hybrid and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and so forth.
3. Industrial civilization with continue and even thrive as a result, even unto the "developing world" countries of India and China.
4. As a result, anthropogenic climate forcing will cease to be an issue.

Yes, I know, I'm off my meds this week.

The defeat of the Neo-Cons

[fishyfool]

Just thrills me to death. It makes me optimistic for the future of the United States and we the people.

Re:The defeat of the Neo-Cons

[Loco Moped]

Put in another way: the one-party monopoly is over,

I'm sorry, but how is it possible that someone smart enough to post on /. can't see that there IS ONLY ONE PARTY? It's been that way for years. It's a GAME, folks - you know, like football, where the teams pretend to hate each other, then go out for beers together after the game. Which playbook they follow depends upon what color jersey they're wearing today. THEY ALL HAVE THE SAME AGENDA, just different ways to reach the common goal.

And the loser is always the same (us peons, aka citizens, aka disposable interchangeable taxpayers).

Re:The defeat of the Neo-Cons

[yolto]

As opposed to the spend-and-spend "conservatives" we've had lately?

Is science that optimistic?

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

The major drive of science in the last century was war. In this century it seems some of the most important science will be in trying to resolve the issues caused by our "optimistic" science of the past 100+ years. What I hope for the future is that we succeed in saving ourselves from ourselves. I'm not optimistic.

What I'm always optimistic about!

[Pao|o]

This year's the year I'm getting laid! I shall be no virgin anymore at the age of 27!

Space

[LordoftheLemmings]

I'm optimistic aboout the space program. With the new commercial intiatives, and some real goals for the moon and beyond, I'm hopefull that 2007 will be a good year for space.

The human race starts to decline

[Flying pig]

Yes, that's right. And no, I am being serious. Forget all this garbage about colonising other planets. Stephen Hawking's views on the subject don't matter - he is a physicist, not a biologist or an ecologist or an engineer, and has no idea of the impracticalities.

Our species is turning into a major problem for itself. It is subject to all kinds of ecological problems caused by population pressure exacerbated by the growing food and energy footprints of part of the world. What we actually need is to start to decline in numbers as a species, and fast.

We, as a species, will lose nothing by it. As Stephen Gould has pointed out, human beings of 30 000 years ago (when the population was tiny) were just as intelligent as those of today, they just lacked the means of recording and developing information that allow cultural development. If our population could somehow be knocked back to, say, a hundred million tomorrow, the survivors would be all the better for it.

Global warming would not be an issue; the population could relocate to environmentally benign areas without displacing others. No Middle East problem; there would be enough land for all in Palestine (you can view the entire Middle East conflict as ultimately being a war for land and hydrology.)

Of course, if I was one of the human beings who died for this to happen, I would not be very happy about it, at least at the time.

So this is my strange, twisted ground for optimism; we look ever closer to a plague or other factors which will reduce our population, and paradoxically this will best ensure the long term survival of human beings as a species - assuming this to be a good thing.

Note for Creationists - I know you don't believe that there were human beings 30 000 years ago, and personally I don't give a shit what you think.

A Choice

[Gamefreak99]

I would like either:

1) DRM to be ruled illegal
2) The RIAA and MPAA to explode

I'll take either, both would be icing :)