FTL will not save us

[Alex Zeller]

I'm not sure why people assume we will always live on a planet. Once you move past that mindset you realize there's a lot of room for population growth. Right now the limiting factor is getting objects into space. Like almost everything as the need arises people will focus on solving the problem. Then it'll just be those with the means will be the first to move leaving those who can't afford to behind. Think about all the advancements made in your lifetime. Most happened recently because the speed of advancements is increasing.

[Lee DeRaud]

I'm not sure why people assume we will always live on a planet. Once you move past that mindset you realize there's a lot of room for population growth. Right now the limiting factor is getting objects into space. Like almost everything as the need arises people will focus on solving the problem. Then it'll just be those with the means will be the first to move leaving those who can't afford to behind. Think about all the advancements made in your lifetime. Most happened recently because the speed of advancements is increasing.

SkyNet power-up in 5...4...3...

[Kevin Jenness]

I'm not sure why people assume we will always live on a planet. Once you move past that mindset you realize there's a lot of room for population growth. Right now the limiting factor is getting objects into space. Like almost everything as the need arises people will focus on solving the problem. Then it'll just be those with the means will be the first to move leaving those who can't afford to behind. Think about all the advancements made in your lifetime. Most happened recently because the speed of advancements is increasing.

You're so right. It won't be long before we advanced people discard our meatsacks for transhuman digital existence and leave the indigenous indigents on this outmoded used-up dirtball.

[Lee DeRaud]

You're so right. It won't be long before we advanced people discard our meatsacks for transhuman digital existence and leave the indigenous indigents on this outmoded used-up dirtball.

Some of us are ahead of that particular curve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dd_qiuWxPs

[Kevin Jenness]

It's happening right here in the People's Republic of VT. https://terasemmovementfoundation.com/

[Kev Williams]

I'm not sure why people assume we will always live on a planet. Once you move past that mindset you realize there's a lot of room for population growth. Right now the limiting factor is getting objects into space.

"They" say we'll soon be putting people on Mars. Myself, I see a few bigger hurdles than actually getting there, like those pesky necessities such as oxygen and water, and last time I checked, we still haven't perfected the water thing HERE yet...

[Alex Zeller]

"They" say we'll soon be putting people on Mars. Myself, I see a few bigger hurdles than actually getting there, like those pesky necessities such as oxygen and water, and last time I checked, we still haven't perfected the water thing HERE yet...

Assuming we are living on a space station of some sort solar power will be plentiful. That means processes that turn waste water back into clean water that don't make sense now can be viable. The same with oxygen. So it'll be more on how to recover resources than where to get new resources. We really haven't dedicated a lot of research into living in space en masse. A number of issues need to be worked out, like growing plants, raising animals, and gravity but if we move that direction problems will be solved. In about 8 years we went from JFK's moon speech to actually landing on the moon. Just think, the computer used for guidance on that first rocket weighed 70 lbs and had 64k of memory running at 43 khz. A new smart phone has something like 2 trillion times more power. Yet they did it in less than a decade. If we try 20 years from now who knows what we would accomplish.

[Tom Bender]

So " technology will save us" doesn't work for me. Living in space is extremely inconvenient if it is possible at all. Consider living forever in the space station. Sure it could be upgraded but if a significant population could be accommodated it would be really inconvenient. Remember that everything would need to be extracted and lifted form our tiny blue planet, at least for the foreseeable future. The earthbound simulations have not given hope.

[Ron Citerone]

When are you gonna come down?
When are you going to land?
I should have stayed on the farm
I should have listened to my old man…
EJ

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

faster than light travel already occurs. Velocity is all relative. A star hurdling through the cosmos at the half the speed of light is going the speed of light to a star going the opposite direction at half the speed of light. Whether we will ever achieve the speed of light in relation to Earth assumes that the traveler is moving away from earth and the earth is standing still. what if each are moving away from each other at half the speed of light? A star or meteor could be coming at us faster than the speed of light, and of course, we would never see it coming. Which brings up another question, if something is moving at exactly the speed of light, does the light it sends out in the direction of travel get compressed into some super concentrated light?

[Doug Garson]

Or would that meteor moving at the speed of light away from you be invisible? What about one degree off moving right away?

[Rick Potter]

Sorry to be simplistic, but population will be controlled the way it always has been.


War.

I remember reading in a very famous book, "there will always be wars and rumors of war" as well as "the poor will always be with us".

[Mark Hennebury]

Humans are opportunistic predators by nature.

It seems to me that the pyramid is the basis of civilization.

It is human nature to build pyramids, not just stone ones, but civilization itself is a pyramid construction.

It is not just the super rich that are the problem, it is human nature in general.
We are all exploiters by nature, with the desire to get ahead, to own stuff, to prove our value and show others that we are special.
and dependant on what level in pyramid you are will probably dictate your opinion of the system.

Every business is a pyramid.

Make something, sell it, make some more, sell them, hire some help make some, keep repeating, now you have your own pyramid started.
Business operates this way, so do governments and religions; Ever increasing population at the bottom is required to sustain the ever increasing profits at the top, religion managed this by banning contraception, and brainwashing minds , countries depend on continued population growth, through births and immigration, to cover the pensions and social security payments etc..
Nobody wants this to stop. It would destroy the system. The system requires masses of desperately poor, to fill the factories and work for pennies, it requires the middle class to have enough money to buy all the stuff made by the poor, so all of those at the top can buy mega-yachts.

It has always been this way. You have to keep the poor, poor, so that they are desperate enough to work in the sweat-shops, to make all of the latest fashionable crap that we don’t need, but will continue buying.

The only problem with pyramid schemes is when you run out of people, if you cant continue to fill the ever increasing base required to sustain the structure and it will grind to a halt and collapse. The problem with our system is not a lack of population, it’s a lack of natural resources to maintain the population that maintains the system; We don’t have an ever expanding planet and resources to maintain this system, we have worked this horse to death. The planet cannot cope with the demands placed on it by us. This pyramid scheme ( as they all are) always was unsustainable, and it will collapse.

The banks have worked hard at taking money from people and keeping the poor, poor.
They invented the “Credit Score”
Wealthy pay the least amount for borrowing money and poor people pay the most, which makes it even harder for those who are struggling; not exactly a level playing field is it. But desperate people will agree to anything, and the poor will continue to pay outrageous interest to the money lenders.
We have minimum wage in some countries, we need that because if we didn’t have it, employers would pay you even less!

The system has worked since the beginning of time, but the current population growth rate, the mass production output, the stripping of natural resources and the waste is so totally out of balance with the nature of this planet, and you would have to change the system to fix it, and I don’t see how humans will do that, because the ones that have the power to make the changes are the ones at the top of the pyramid…… and they really, really want to stay there. It would require a more balanced system which requires a change in human nature, a more compassionate system, more sharing and helping rather than exploiting. It would require us to stop buying tons of new crap and fix, maintain and recycle. It requires us to act like a good family that looks out for and after each other, and not act like the competitive opportunistic assholes that we are.

I think that Artificial intelligence is our best hope. Put a computer in charge. This could develop a balanced sustainable system, devoid of the human greed, arrogance and indifference. We need a system to manage the planet, fairly and without prejudice, religion and politics, and humans just aren’t up to it.

The thing is humans are incredible smart, and incredibly stupid, why? What is the reason for the stupidity? how is that good for our survival as a species? It’s great to support the system, but the system is destroying our home, and enslaving a large proportion of society. Many live lives of poverty and deprivation, others deal with better living conditions, but still cope with constant stress of struggling to survive. At the extremes we have this;

Wherever we go, there we will be.
If we don’t fix human stupidity it comes with us everywhere we go.
We may travel at the speed of light but we will never outrun human stupidity.
The planet and its finite resources is not the problem, our infinite stupidity is.
People have a lot of negative traits ...and they use them all.
This is the world that we have created.

Owner: Robert Knok
Price: $4.8 Billion
Solid. Gold. At $4.8 billion, the History Supreme, owned by Robert Knok, is the world’s most expensive, largest superyacht in the whole world. At 100 feet in length, History Supreme took three years to build, using 10,000 kilograms of solid gold and platinum, both of which adorn the dining area, deck, rails, staircases, and anchor. If that weren’t luxurious enough, the master suite features a meteorite rock wall, a statue made of Tyrannosaurus Rex bones, a 68 kg 24-carat gold Aquavista Panoramic Wall Aquarium, and a liquor bottle adorned with a rare 18.5-carat diamond.

slum2.jpgfavelas.jpg1.-HISTORY-SUPREME-4.8-BILLION.jpgblenheim-palace-867689_1920-2.jpg

[Kevin Jenness]

Mark, I agree with much of what you have said, especially We may travel at the speed of light but we will never outrun human stupidity.


I take issue with you on a couple of points.

1)It has always been this way.

2) I think that Artificial intelligence is our best hope. Put a computer in charge.

There have been societies that are not pyramidal and grossly exploitive of their part of the planet. Maybe going forward we can learn from them.

Until the Renaissance in western Europe economies were directed by either tradition or command. Due to a unique confluence of historical factors capitalism evolved, an economic system that allowed for the development of productive resources such that the vast masses were not dependent on hunting and gathering and society was able to provide food and shelter (and eventually even leisure) for a growing population ad infinitum- so far. Capitalism works through minimally directed market activity that allocates resources to the most demanded occupations through the profit motive (Smith's "invisible hand"), far more efficiently than a planned economy. Capitalism has taken over almost the entire world, even the former communist regimes, although in most cases it is modified and regulated by varying degrees of government control.

Unfortunately, capitalism does a far better job of producing wealth than distributing it fairly (a debatable term) and without significant regulation externalities such as pollution and climate change are not considered part of the cost of doing business. And profitable activities are not necessarily socially desirable. The AI you posit is as likely to reflect the values of Faceberg as Lao Tzu. We need somehow to arrive at a system that has the productive power of capitalism to provide for human needs without destroying the ecology of the planet that sustains us.

How is this to happen? I wish I knew. I do not believe that population growth driven by less developed societies will slacken until their economies have grown to the point that it makes sense for families to voluntarily limit their numbers, as has happened in our "advanced" countries (although coercion as in China may accomplish that in some areas). Getting to that point without overwhelming the earth's carrying capacity will be difficult. We do have an immense capacity for technological innovation including resource substitution and renewable energy that may get us through this period. That same ability has put us in a position to reduce the world to an ash heap through nuclear war, and to spread hitherto obscure plagues throughout the globe. Mere accident may accomplish the population reduction that some think is required.

I suspect the fantasy of spreading our blighted race throughout the universe is as likely to resemble the genocide of The Marching Morons as anything. Until we figure out how to live sustainably on this fragile green globe it would be folly to export our problems.

[Mark Hennebury]

Kevin

We are very smart and have incredible abilities to make changes, but we seem held back tremendously from our potential, by the negative side of human nature, and our inability to see what is in front of us.

In a struggle to understand the basis of our stupidity, and in keeping with the topic of the thread I came up with this;

The Starship Enterprise.


Picture if you will, your head is the bridge of the Starship enterprise.
The windows are your eyes
The crew observe and record data as it appears in front of the window.
You are captain Kirk.
On this bridge you don’t get to look out the window, your chair faces a monitor on the back wall.
Kirk relies on the video stream on his monitor to get his information and make decisions.
The crew are the history of you, your experiences and interpretations of them, your hopes, fears, ambitions and biases, everything that is you.
The crew discuss and interpret incoming data and make a video to send to the Captains monitor and the Captain, believes, trusts and acts upon it.

The crew have no concept of right or wrong, they just take the information, interpret it through their own perspective, make a video to pass along, if there is missing information, they just make it up, so that they have a complete video.

So we don’t actually see what is in front of our eyes, we see a made up version of it.
We rarely get to see things as they are, unfiltered, without our own unique interpretation, for that we would have to turn around and bypass the crew to look directly out of the window ourselves.

To truly see things as they are without seeing through our own preconceived view is hard…. not impossible, but hard.

Trust no one…. Least of all yourself.

Warp Speed ahead

I should add that this is my argument for the world run by a computer.

Mark, I agree with much of what you have said, especially We may travel at the speed of light but we will never outrun human stupidity.


I take issue with you on a couple of points.

1)It has always been this way.

2) I think that Artificial intelligence is our best hope. Put a computer in charge.

There have been societies that are not pyramidal and grossly exploitive of their part of the planet. Maybe going forward we can learn from them.

Until the Renaissance in western Europe economies were directed by either tradition or command. Due to a unique confluence of historical factors capitalism evolved, an economic system that allowed for the development of productive resources such that the vast masses were not dependent on hunting and gathering and society was able to provide food and shelter (and eventually even leisure) for a growing population ad infinitum- so far. Capitalism works through minimally directed market activity that allocates resources to the most demanded occupations through the profit motive (Smith's "invisible hand"), far more efficiently than a planned economy. Capitalism has taken over almost the entire world, even the former communist regimes, although in most cases it is modified and regulated by varying degrees of government control.

Unfortunately, capitalism does a far better job of producing wealth than distributing it fairly (a debatable term) and without significant regulation externalities such as pollution and climate change are not considered part of the cost of doing business. And profitable activities are not necessarily socially desirable. The AI you posit is as likely to reflect the values of Faceberg as Lao Tzu. We need somehow to arrive at a system that has the productive power of capitalism to provide for human needs without destroying the ecology of the planet that sustains us.

How is this to happen? I wish I knew. I do not believe that population growth driven by less developed societies will slacken until their economies have grown to the point that it makes sense for families to voluntarily limit their numbers, as has happened in our "advanced" countries (although coercion as in China may accomplish that in some areas). Getting to that point without overwhelming the earth's carrying capacity will be difficult. We do have an immense capacity for technological innovation including resource substitution and renewable energy that may get us through this period. That same ability has put us in a position to reduce the world to an ash heap through nuclear war, and to spread hitherto obscure plagues throughout the globe. Mere accident may accomplish the population reduction that some think is required.

I suspect the fantasy of spreading our blighted race throughout the universe is as likely to resemble the genocide of The Marching Morons as anything. Until we figure out how to live sustainably on this fragile green globe it would be folly to export our problems.