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I believe in a coming singularity. I pray for it the same way Christians pray for the Rapture.

>> ^dag:
I believe in a coming singularity. I pray for it the same way Christians pray for the Rapture.


I don't know if I understand exactly what you mean. The technological singularity?

Some mammals seem to have an instinct for danger, so I ask my fellow humans .. how do you feel?

I feel that danger approaching. I trust my intuition only to a certain degree.. but I feel this quite strongly, and have for a while. To be honest I've actually had a weird feeling since I was 10 years old that I wouldn't live past 22. I was born in 1990, so that's 2012. Ridiculous nonsense, surely, but I can't deny that I've felt that way even before hearing all the hype.

I don't think it would be one event.. it'd be a multitude of events combining to require an outcome that will revolutionize the current social system/civilization. A global currency, at least, I expect. Actually I just read an article about that.. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aSp9VoPeHquI

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Yes.

>> ^burdturgler:
>> ^dag:
I believe in a coming singularity. I pray for it the same way Christians pray for the Rapture.

I don't know if I understand exactly what you mean. The technological singularity?

I think there have been major social upheavals every 30 years or so in human society ever since the industrial revolution (1864 - Civil War, 1900 - Gilded Age, 1930 - Great Depression/WWII, 1960 - Civil Rights/Vietnam, 1980 - Ronald Reagan/Monetarist revolution, 2000's Iraq/Great Recession). I think we're seeing another upheaval now, I just hope it won't get quite so bad as some of the others in my list -- I hope we're going to end up comparing the 2010's more to the 1960's than the 1930's or 1860's. I suspect I'll live through one more major upheaval, assuming my lifespan ends up being somewhat average, and assuming the rate of social change isn't accelerating.

There's a part of me that thinks Kurzweil is right about a Singularity coming -- that the rate of technological advancement will speed up exponentially, and exceed our wildest expectations. I think there's a nonzero chance I'll live long enough to see the start of such a thing, but I think it could just as easily be a century or two away, and not decades.

I do think environmental issues are going to become a massive, unmistakable concern sooner rather than later. I don't think it will be the end of humanity or anything like that, but I suspect we're going to have to either rapidly retool our economy once people snap out of denial, or have a big economic crash coupled with major crop shortages and famine, and then rapidly retool our economy. I would even argue that environmental issues have played a nontrivial role in the current economic hardship, and that the time has come to really start enacting plans for moving away from fossil fuels, and start looking into more medium-to-long term issues like biodiversity and fresh water supply.

As for the freak globe-spanning natural disasters, there's no way to know about those. They could as easily happen tomorrow as they could a couple million years from now. Hopefully those will wait until post-Singularity when we'll be better equipped to deal with something like that...

If you take enough drugs the end of the world won't be so bad.

An asteroid is likely, though it seems our space geniuses have us covered in predicting their approach, so changing their course will probably be doable. The sun burning out will certainly happen, and life will die, but we obviously won't see that. Humans may evolve into something else and thus ending our species through evolution. Or humans may kill each other.

Either way, the reverse big bang is coming and no one is gonna stop that!

>> ^dag:
Yes.


It sounds like your mammal instincts aren't worried about the whole "Superhuman intelligences may have goals inconsistent with human survival and prosperity." thing. Which is fine. I mean, I wouldn't pray for it. Because I wouldn't pray for an artificial intelligence (that most assuredly will not think the same way humans think) to be in control of anything that might affect humans and wtf .. am I really saying this? Did the communicator on my jetpack malfunction?

Could this actually be a problem for humanity in 50 years? Yes. If humanity exists in 50 years.
In my mind, the "singularity" is just as inevitable as an asteroid impact. It's just a matter of time.

I've long held the belief that we try way too hard to keep everyone alive and that it will eventually kill us.

We rely more and more on medicine to keep us healthy rather than our own immune systems. Look at the people around you and ask yourself how many of them could survive in the wild like an animal. People who should have been filtered out by natural selection are living long enough to reproduce, creating new generations of people who couldn't survive on their own. A species should get stronger and better adapted the longer it exists. We're moving backwards, getting fatter, weaker, lazier and stupider with each generation. We've relieved ourselves of all pressure to evolve.

On the other hand, we're putting a lot of evolutionary pressure on viruses and they're damn good at evolving. At some point we will force the emergence of something that spreads too fast and kills too quickly and we won't be able to create a cure soon enough.

That's a super spooky picture of the city falling into the abyss. Shiver.

I'm firmly of the believe that we'll continue to muddle on in our way, and things will change, but will do so gradually, such that we barely notice... until we take stock and realize how much has actually changed over our lifetimes.

I would love for the colonization of Mars to begin in my lifetime, but sadly, that's not going to happen.

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I'm looking forward to uploading my mind to the hive. There will be enough simulated space, that only historians will rent robot bodies to explore the now verdant and humanless earth.

>> ^blankfist:
That's a super spooky picture of the city falling into the abyss. Shiver.


I am fucking done with you and the "spook" jokes now. You've done it on my profile, in the sift lounge and everywhere else. You're either a racist or an immature asshole. Either way, I've had enough.

People have been predicting the end of the world in one way or the other ever since the dawn of time.

I do believe there will be some great upheavals but nothing that would lead to a extinction level event.

>> ^burdturgler:
>> ^blankfist:
That's a super spooky picture of the city falling into the abyss. Shiver.

I am fucking done with you and the "spook" jokes now. You've done it on my profile, in the sift lounge and everywhere else. You're either a racist or an immature asshole. Either way, I've had enough.


I think you should drain your tits, you sensitive estrogen woman. Apparently freedom is too difficult for a delicate girl like you to handle.

Eventually the sun will stop or the milky way will collide with andromeda - I think that can be described as an event. But anytime soon? Hell no.

While we're on this stupid theme, here is a great clip I duped this morning that needs more votes!

http://www.videosift.com/video/GRAN-TORINO-Eastwoods-last-acting-role-movie-scene

i believe in my overactive imagination and relentless paranoia.
the apocalypse is nigh.

Wow, what an astonishing display of utter pessimism from you guys. I hadn't expected my humanist optimism to be such an isolated view of the future.

For instance, saying that the sun blowing up will "cause all life to end" as a sort of nonchalant obviousness is pretty defeatist. For one, the scientific consensus so far is that it won't happen for a couple billion years. Do you really think we won't be able to develop decent interstellar spacetravel in 2.000.000.000 years?

Reminds me of a survey where something like 75% of people thought homo sapiens would be extinct in less than 2 centuries. I mean jeez.

I'm with you on the sense of impending global doom, though, sure. I just happen to think we're damned hard to eradicate. We're just living in interesting times.

The times have always been interesting. I see no reason to think we're in much more real danger of total eradication than we ever have been. An asteroid might get us, but anything less abrupt and I'm pretty confident in our ability to adapt very quickly.

As for the technological singularity, I for one am not holding my breath. Consciousness is not very well understood, I think creating it will turn out to be quite a challenge. And what kind of consciousness would a programmed entity have? Animals are driven by urges, doing things they find rewarding, avoiding things they find painful. A computer, though it may learn rules, does things because its rules tell it to. Is there a difference? Quite possibly. I suspect an artificial mind will need to be programmed to like and dislike things.

And I'm most definitely not holding my breath on mind uploads. How do you upload something you can't even pinpoint? I see no reason to think the mind exists as a separate entity, it can't just be siphoned out of the brain and transferred into another medium. Maybe if you could gradually replace parts of the brain with artificial components, you could eventually end up with a human mind in a machine without a break - a death - in between. In any case, my intuition tells me we're going to find out the mind is a hell of a lot more complex than the transhumanists hope, and a hell of a lot less magical than we tend to think.

End of days is a spooky concept. This poll scares me.

killer asteroid? it's more likely we'll do it to ourselves first. some asshole's gonna nuke some other asshole and start a world-wide chain reaction ... or some terrorist will kidnap blankfist and force him to fart, and then all living things will die covered in ass gravy ... shiver

I don't think the world will ever end but whether the world or humanity will end (at whatever point) are two entirely different questions.

>> ^xxovercastxx:
I've long held the belief that we try way too hard to keep everyone alive and that it will eventually kill us.
We rely more and more on medicine to keep us healthy rather than our own immune systems. Look at the people around you and ask yourself how many of them could survive in the wild like an animal. People who should have been filtered out by natural selection are living long enough to reproduce, creating new generations of people who couldn't survive on their own. A species should get stronger and better adapted the longer it exists. We're moving backwards, getting fatter, weaker, lazier and stupider with each generation. We've relieved ourselves of all pressure to evolve.
On the other hand, we're putting a lot of evolutionary pressure on viruses and they're damn good at evolving. At some point we will force the emergence of something that spreads too fast and kills too quickly and we won't be able to create a cure soon enough.


When that happens, I'm hopping a jet back home, then blowing up the runway. Nice to know y'all.

Every generation thinks it's going to be the last. Humans are dumb.

This poll is confusing as hell. The question is:
The question is .. how many of you feel (for whatever reason) that there will be some event "soon" that will change life for humanity as we know it now?

And one of the answers is:
An event is coming, but it won't have great impact on humanity.

How does that answer make any sense? I put that an event will happen, but not any time soon. Part of me feels like I might have just given credit to crazy Christian mythology of a judgement day. All I really wanted to express is: Humanity will not last forever. Anyone who thinks it will is fooling themselves.

1. In 3.5 billion years, the sun will evaporate all of the oceans and the Earth will turn into Venus and will not be habitable.
2. In 5 billion years, the sun will run out of hydrogen fuel.
3. Eventually the entire universe will experience heat death. Most scientists believe that it will continue to expand indefinitely, causing the universe to approach absolute zero temperature and a state of maximum entropy.

i have had my lawn chair out waiting to watch it all go down the pooper.
anyone ready for another beer?...
overcast has a eugenics flair to his end solution.lets thin the herd a bit so we dont get eliminated by uber'evolved-virus.he actually has a point,it just has that "brown shirt" feel to it../shivers.
as for myself i like to think its gonna go down like the book of john states.not because i believe in a mushroom induced hallucination,but rather to watch the faces of all the bleating sheep when the "rapture" comes.dumb-founded christians roaming aimlessly in the streets mumbling " i was a good christian wasn't i? why didn't the lord take me?".
now THAT is entertainment.
meh.../shrugs.end of the world?or end of humanity?
somebody already quoted carlin but it deserves to be said again.
"the WORLD ain't going nowhere...WE ARE.pack your bags folks we are going away".
i think keenan maynard said it best:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Tool-nema

We're all killing ourselves with chemicals already. Think about all the shit that people ingest and put on their bodies. No wonder cancer is up like what %1000.

Ultimately, I think our herd size will be drastically reduced by a massive mega-cancer. Everyone who doesn't have the one, life-saving anti-cancer gene will begin to die at younger and younger ages, to the point where anyone without the gene will die before having a chance to reproduce and pass it along.

Then the million people who are left will have to figure out what to do with all the extra parking spaces.

AJAX FAIL.

By "A long time" i mean billions of years from now when the universe recycles itself.

The absolute nature of the options is a bit off-putting. I feel that some sort of cataclysmic event is inevitable, and while I don't expect it any time soon, I wouldn't say "absolutely not this decade".

Same time tomorrow?
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Secret-Policeman-s-Ball-The-End-of-the-World-1979

Voting for this poll ended with the majority of users voting An event will happen, but not any time soon. (beyond 10 yrs).