@mgittle

"Limiting your reply to the only thing that was really off-topic...how convenient for you "

Ha. Glad you have a sense of humor about it. I think once one debater has given a pro, and the other has given a con, there are diminishing returns to going deeper. I think as long as people's basic temperaments can't change, debating the details generally doesn't help much.

"If there's purpose to human civilization, what is it and who defines it?"

I think we can define the purpose in the big picture, or in the small picture. In the small picture, people will probably give a variety of answers, but in the big picture, things are determined by the larger structure within which our species exists.

Give people control of their brains and you fix economic inequality. Until you give people control of their brains, you're just playing around with band-aids and pretending things might work out.

Advance medicine and you save millions of lives this year and every year for as long as human civilization will exist. Eventually, you cure the disease of aging, and things fundamentally change.

Get closer to human level AI and things fundamentally change.

I could give predictions for 2020, 2030, 2050, etc, but there are already great books on these topics. Kurzweil gives good overviews of the field. His predictions from 1999 for 2009 were pretty accurate. It's useful to have an idea where we're going. These things are beyond the control of hippies and religious fundamentalists to shut down.


People who want everything to stay the same forever are going to be disappointed.

DAMMIT!!! I've been keeping my own fire channel idea a secret forever. But you're a cool guy and at this rate I'll get to diamond by about 2050. So I'll support you...

And I agree with Hybrid that it should be called fire. Combustion sounds limiting and then people are just going to get in more arguments over what belongs there. Fire pretty much covers it.

Everything needs to be imagined before it can become reality, and these ideas are actually way beyond science fiction even now because they are being pursued actively with existing technology and sound scientific principles.

Surely it will be very difficult, but before dismissing these ideas, consider how much has changed in the last 100 years. Someone born in 1898 who lived 100 years would have gone from a pre-lightbulb world to seeing it in widespread use, survived two world wars, seen the development of air travel, radar, the harnessing of nuclear power, landing on the MOON (!!), regular travel to outer space via the space shuttle, the building of several space stations, the development of every modern cancer therapy, cloning, sequencing of the human genome, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Ultrasound, Xray tomography, computers going from nothing to ubiquitous use, the explosion of the internet, cell phones, and a kajillion other major advances I don't have time to list right now.

If nothing else, this series of videos serves to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers, but all indications are that the RATE of change is INCREASING. Why? Because better technology helps us do more, FASTER. Not to mention there are MORE humans able to do MORE, FASTER, thanks to new technology.

I could easily see this technology in use in 40 years, and while I wouldn't invest as a venture capitalist at this point, research funding agencies are wise to fund this research as it will spur advancements in material science, electronics, computers & AI, and engineering even if we don't have a 3D Sex Bot by 2050.

You know there is such a thing as aquaculture or fish farming.

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5883
"Nearly half of the seafood we eat today is farmed"

>> ^ryanbennitt:
Well, by 2050 we'll have 9 billion people, but by that time all our fish stocks worldwide will have collapsed completely from overfishing. We don't farm and cultivate the sea, we just hunt and poach the fish from it.

Well, by 2050 we'll have 9 billion people, but by that time all our fish stocks worldwide will have collapsed completely from overfishing. We don't farm and cultivate the sea, we just hunt and poach the fish from it. We're still getting better and better at fishing, using sonar, bigger nets, better ships, but just as the technology makes it easier to find fish, it is getting harder and harder to find them, fishermen are having to travel further and further to get their catches, ultimately this cycle is destined to total failure. So that's one source of food production that we will ultimately have to do without. Unless something changes...

>> ^Ryjkyj:
But I can't help but thinking that scientific and social advancements are great and all but why not just start promoting the idea that people need to have less babies?

I think you missed the point in the documentary where they mention that it doesn't work well to try to limit peoples population growth by promoting less babies. People get less babies when their countries develop and they have good access to contraception. Many developed countries are already experiencing near zero or even negative growth.

I think with improved technology the Earth can easily support many more billions. The UN predicts that the population will level out around 9 billion in the medium scenario.

http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf
Under the assumptions made in the medium scenario projection, world population will not
vary greatly after reaching 8.92 billion in 2050 (figure 6). In another 25 years, by 2075, it is projected
to peak at 9.22 billion, only 3.4 per cent above the 2050 estimate. It will then dip slightly
to 8.43 billion by 2175 and rise gradually to 8.97 billion, very close to the initial 2050 figure, by
2300.

However the people could be richer and the planet in better state if the population growth doesn't continue too much. So the best way to accomplish that is to help developing countries develop as quickly as possible and give free access to contraception if people can't afford it.

Koons is quantum, both totally full of sht and a genius. Anyone considered a famous artist for putting 3 basketballs in a fish tank is quite the fellow.

The record for longest human lifespan is currently held by Jeanne Calment, who lived to 122. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment

She did that with 20th century technology, and she wasn't even an intellectual or highly motivated.

We've already entered the age of organ regeneration... growing new organs from our own cell... and it's already saving lives. I think it will pass regulatory hurdles and come in to widespread usage within 10 or 20 years.

Genome sequencing is down from $250k a year ago to $5k now (http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006527.html). In 10 or 20 years most people will have their genomes sequenced, and medicine will no longer be a crap shoot.

Experts say that most drugs, whatever the disease, work for only about half the people who take them. Not only is much of the nation’s approximately $300 billion annual drug spending wasted, but countless patients are being exposed unnecessarily to side effects.

[Conventional] studies tend to be “one size fits all,” with the winning treatment recommended for everybody. Personalized medicine would go beyond that by determining which drug is best for which patient, rather than continuing to treat everyone the same in hopes of benefiting the fortunate few. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/business/30gene.html?ex=1388379600&en=a3e1de30bab852a6&ei=5124&partner=facebook&exprod=facebook

If you die in 2050, that sounds like a waste, because I think it's highly unlikely I won't live into the 2100s. Imagine where technology will be in 2100.

------------------------------
Re: 'world of criminals'

I think the idea of humans as possessing 'personhood' is a simplistic model. The deeper you dig in the cognitive sciences and the human sciences in general, the more clear it becomes that human thought outputs and behavioral outputs are just the result of deterministic mechanisms. Looking at humans as 'persons' isn't looking at a deep enough level of detail... and it makes us take things 'personally' -- as if the decision agents (in a game theory sense) we're interacting with are 'persons.' Humans want to be good... they just have simplistic, unmotivated brains.

Change the inputs, and the outputs will change. Embryo selection is borderline-practical today, and it's increasingly being used. My prediction is by 2030 5% of births (in wealthy countries) will be using it (for cosmetic and temperament improvements - e.g. reduced addictive behavior, greater motivation, less 'social learners' and more 'infovores'), and by 2060 60% of births will be using it. When those generations reach 25 years old, they'll be starting to influence society, which will be 2055 and 2085, respectively.

However, by 2055, I think we'll have neurotechnology that achieves most of the large goals of neurogenetic change: next-generation neuropharmaceuticals, neuroimplants, and changes to the organization of our neural tissue using stem cells.

I believe the future is humanistic and humanitarian. And the world is incompetent, waiting for us to influence the arc of history.

IMHO, anyway.

What do you think?


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In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
I think we're going to miss SENS by at least a generation. The way I treat my body I'm expecting to die around 40.

Doesn't it gnaw at you that, living in a world mostly populated by criminals, any good you do will primarily benefit them?

In reply to this comment by chilaxe:
Gorillaman, we're young enough that we have a decent chance of living to see the fulfillment of SENS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey).

Doesn't that make you want to do something with your life that's ingenious and constructive, helping out the common good, instead of just pursuing vendettas?

Hoax my ass, it is well known that 10,000 years ago the place I live in Alaska was under a mile of ice, and that bleeding heart liberal time travellers from the year 2050 arrived and started terraforming this entire hemisphere in order to prepare it for various forms of new taxation in our current era.

The 60s were better years. I highly doubt you'll have thousands of people in 2050 singing "If You Seek Amy"...

>> ^srd:
Other people call it Basic Income. It's a great idea that I deem could be viable in 10 to 15 years if we try to automate just about anything that can be automated. Only catch is, in our global economy, the entire world has to switch. Or at least all first world countries do.


I feel I'm getting a little off topic with this, but the point you make about automation is very valid. Eventually there wont be anything we can't automate, and by "eventually" I'm talking 2050 or earlier.

We're currently debating how much to pay people for unskilled jobs, but soon enough there won't be any unskilled jobs. Our current economic models will not work there. I'm guessing that it will lead to a much more socialistic economic structure, because there will be way more people than available jobs.

>> ^nickreal03:
This should be what Obama's Manhattan Project/man on the moon project should be. I think is doable in less than ten years if people wanted to make it happen.

Not going to happen. The US is already involved in the ITER project and the earliest prediction for ITER is a commercial reactor by 2050. And that's IF nothing goes wrong.

Current research is still working towards achieving net gain, which is a far cry from practical fusion power. People have been promising fusion power "soon" since the 70s. The fact is we're not even close to starting research on commercial fusion, and we don't know if a practical fusion plant is even possible.

Our energy needs grows exponentially, and when and IF fusion power becomes available, it will already be too late. We NEED research on renewable fuels and alternative energy such as solar power to bridge that gap, and putting our hopes on a hail mary like fusion is only an invitation to disaster.

>> ^nickreal03:
his guy really doesn't understand anything. The meaning of like is so obvious that it hurts. Fallow steps:
1. Find best mate you can. Marry it.
2. Have children.
3. Educate your children the best you can.
4. Help society by keeping yourself useful.
5. The more you know the most useful you can be.
6. Make people in higher positions than yourself accountable.
7. Demand everyone to get better all the time.
8. Make the world a sustainable one.
9. Think how the human as well as other spices can survive in the worse of events.
10. Execute some of those plans.
The rest is just details. Sorry this list could be compress to a single sentence but I let that to the reader.


While those are positive endeavors, none of them really give insight into the meaning or purpose of life (except possibly having children I guess). Those are more along the lines of self-fulfillment.

Many people feel like they have no direction or ultimate goal in life other than to survive and possibly be "successful", but that's just how life is. Other then a religious view of life, there really isn't a preset direction that a person or all of humanity is designed to take. That idea bothers a lot of people, which is why the search for the "meaning" of life is very important to many, whether it exists or not.

Personally though, the one thing I do foresee the human race creating that will change everything is Artificial Intelligence that completely surpasses the abilities of even the most brilliant human. That is the closest thing I can think of to a "purpose" of life, if you would really call it that.

If you're curious, the AI thing should happen between 2030 and 2050, though some estimates have it occurring even earlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

>> ^kulpims:
^@Pprt: "chinese are bleeding the richest continent in the world dry"...
man, you can't be serious and say those words at the same time, especialy if you are coming from europe or the states, as I assume you do. that's like a bunch of vampires feeding of a dying man and when one more joins in the rest of them shout "murder!"
sure, chinese approach to this neo-colonialism is more totalitarian and not so cleverly masqueraded under the guise of free trade, democracy and market capitalism as was that from their western rivals which I dare say have been systematically killing Africa for hundreds of years now. and don't even get me started on the weapons trade issue, we all know who's the biggest dealer on the block here...
and fuck peter hitchens and other such critics. where are they when american pharmaceutical companies are conducting experiments on african people or over charging them for drugs and vaccines they desperatly need. where are they when millions of people are being killed for some bullshit minerals used in our cellphones or oil or fucking diamonds or some other shit they might have that our corporations are willing and able to steal from them


I sense alot of sympathy (and some guilt) on your behalf. As Pooterius said, I also anxiously await the day Africans will put aside their petty tribalism and begin working instead of loafing about and conducting sporadic warfare. However, I am not so optimistic as to believe that Africans can accomplish this any time soon. And for goodness sakes, it is NOT our duty to fix their countries.

I detect a hint of thought that you believe that Westeners have somehow have taken it upon themselves to eradicate the African peoples with AIDS in order, I assume, to plunder their territory.

You may be interested to know that recent discoveries (last week, actually) suggest that AIDS is far older than previously thought (see here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v455/n7213/abs/nature07390.html), dating from possibly 1908. Decades before bioengineering was even conceptualized.

The stark truth is that Africans have been around for longer than us, and have adapted to their environment accordingly in temperament and constitution. They have higher levels of sexual hormones, a lower gestation period a "thrifty" gene permitting greater retention of nutrients and as ethnomedicine evolves, drugs will further target their distinctive biology.

As for comparing Chinese to Western colonialism, it would be an interesting debate, although I can assure you that the way the Chinese go about in 2008 would never fly in a Western country. They have actually stated their intentions of offloading some of the large Chinese population in Africa. Their latest plan is to dump 10 million excess Chinese by 2050.

Trancecoach that's just not true. Here's one study that estimates the extinction of one million species by 2050.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/01/0107_040107_extinction.html