Just a thought, if you anthropomorphize the planet...if you imagine that disease and other natural human limiting factors are a planets immune response...at what point do we become a virus. Just like in the video, it's horrifying to imagine an organism invading a cell and using it as camouflage. What type of virus do we become when we rewrite the genetic code of other organisms, resulting in our unchecked growth which eventually destroys the host?

I'm sure that malaria would think it unethical not to evolve in a way that would ensure the survival of future generations.

Dear Future Generations: Sorry has been added as a related post - related requested by newtboy on that post.

This isnt just the US economy. The Digital World will make many jobs obsolete everywhere. In a few decades there will be not enough manual work left to make a living for everyone.

Which means ... there will not be enough spending capacity left to generate enough revenue for a lot of industries. When no one has work, no one has the money to buy stupid crap they really dont need, so entire industries will go bancrupt which means more jobless people which means even less disposable income.

In Davos, on the World Economic Forum, for the first time there was a decent and serious discussion about possible solutions for this developement. From heavily investing in education for future generations to different models of basic income.

"They" know that something has to be done. There has to be some form of wealth distribution or everything will go up in flames.

@Bernie:
As a European Bernie isnt THAT much a leftie. He wont win the nomination, but the more he gives Hillary a hard time, the more influence he will have on her future social and economic policies. May be he'll even end up in her government.

Exactly! the implications are huge in the understanding of evolution and even society, since say, the selfish gene in humans/red hair/disease/etc can be triggered or turned off, or say that there is an extra feedback mechanism in males´offspring! It could explain the enormously fast adaptability in the evolution of species and the programmed role of males in society and their EXPERIENCES/fears/emotions! Sperm production (gametogenesis) is constant in males, and nature is no dummy; one could hypothesize nature finds feedback mechanisms into genetics to compete and gain advantage with other males, even for future generations (?). This should have huge implications if the proper research is continued and these very interesting hypotheses and other´s are seriously questioned.

Because Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the rest... "CO2 is good for the Earth, it helps plants" (ignoring that most plants are absorbing about as much CO2 as they can already, and ignoring the bigger problem that very little of the Earth is green, and no walls or ceilings to keep the CO2 where plants are), "compact fluorescent bulbs are stupid, they have mercury in them!" (ignoring that the mercury in them and the mercury put into the air by the power plant is less than the mercury put into the air by the power plant to power regular bulbs). And the news media paints it as a debate, having one climate change scientist debate one climate change denier (though the media still refuses to call them deniers and paints them as skeptics) and this isn't just the right wing media, almost all the media in the US presents it as a debate. They don't present the fact that a 97% consensus exists.

Then there is religion. They talk how insane it is to assume that humans, made of God could destroy God's work. That we can't damage the Earth as God made it... of course they take the idea of destruction literal, and not in the way people actually mean when they say it's destroying the Earth. They also don't care about the repercussions of future generations as "Jesus is coming soon, well before any of this will matter"... more or less an actual quote. They believe also that God has granted mankind all authority over the Earth and not that it was stewardship over the Earth, so we can and should do whatever we want.

There's also ignorance. The media, especially the right wing media, portray the idea of climate change as presented is being presented as being only 100% caused by humans, they claim that the pro climate change scientists won't acknowledge any part of it might be natural. The media is playing it as an all or nothing scenario, either humans caused it all, or caused none of it. This isn't what any scientists are saying. They are just pointing out the natural uptick vs the uptick we are seeing is explained by human burning of fossil fuels, and that's what the 97% consensus is about, the uptick we are observing vs what would be expected naturally. But not understanding, and thinking science is ignoring all possible natural causes, they deny the whole thing.

Heck, just look at the media uproar over the supposed mini ice age that is coming in 2030 or so. Of course the actual paper never mentions an ice age or climate at all, and neither did the presentation. The problem was the press release for presentation mentioned the Maunder Minimum and linked to the Wikipedia article about it, and from there the media assumed that would mean a new mini ice age, even though the mini ice age during that time was started before the Maunder Minimum. Nobody in the climate change community is really calling for a mini ice age (just like it was never widely thought in the 70s that we were heading for global cooling, it was understood even then it was warming, the cooling thing came from an article in Time if I recall correctly, not exactly a peer reviewed science journal) come the 2030's, at best we may get a very small slow down of the warming, but CO2 levels are 40% higher than during the Maunder Minimum. Anyhow the media tends to mislead the public with things that wasn't actually said. The right wing media machines especially know that their audience won't vet their sources or information and will trust them and talk about conspiracies to hide the truth. Heck most of the media never even cleared the air over climategate emails, so most of the deniers still cite the climategate emails as a valid thing, even though in context and with scientific understanding none of the climategate claims are valid, and in fact still point to global warming... (http://www.iflscience.com/environment/mini-ice-age-hoopla-giant-failure-science-communication)

There's also the change from "global warming" to "climate change" which they don't understand to be an escalation of the term, and think instead it's toning it down.

Dear Future Generations,

We have no fucking clue WHY, either.

Sincerely,

The Year 2015

To play devil's advocate, there's a reasonable argument to be made that polygamists really aren't worthy of marriage equality.

His point is absolutely valid. People are born homosexual, people choose to be polygamous. It might be that as a society we make an arbitrary decision that polygamy is not ok. Maybe future generations will decide that it is ok.

Personally, I don't give a damn what consenting adults get up to, but I think it's pretty important not to let the issue of SSM equality get sidetracked by the orthogonal issue of polygamous marriage.

If you want to campaign for polygamous marriage, go for it, but I think it's reasonable to pick your battles and in the USA, change happens slowly. It was over a century from the emancipation proclamation to the Civil Rights Act.

I'll quite happily say that SSM is a more important (but unrelated) issue than polygamous marriage.

I'm actually very liberal. So much so that I consider Democrats too conservative.

When the right wingers talk about 'the civil war not being about slavery', that's part of the rhetoric that 'the south was not racist'.

I'm not making that statement.





I am saying that :

- Both the south /and/ the north were racist.

- Neither cared about the fate of black people.

- The war started over secession (to which slavery was only a contributing factor, among many much more important [to the people in authority] factors).

- After the war was on, the north used the subject of slavery to their benefit.
A) Freeing slaves in only the rebelling states, in order to incite slave revolts and use that to military advantage. (if the northern authority wins, then the emancipation becomes southern law. If the confederate authority wins, then the emancipation is meaningless. So confederate slaves were given a personal incentive to help the northern authority win)
B) Paint the south internationally as 1 dimensional caricatures of evil (war propaganda), to cut off the south's supply of foreign made arms (because they didn't make their own).

- After the war was over, most of the slave owning states had been emancipated, and the north had claimed to be champions of liberty, so in order to save face they had to emancipate slaves in the remainder of the south (plus it was no skin off of their back, so it was easy to do).

(The southern states that had been allowed to keep their slaves could not then protest their emancipation, for they were few and weak - and would get no help from the other southern states that they themselves hadn't helped during the civil war (resentment/reciprocity)).

- When writing schoolbooks at that time, the rhetoric/propaganda was repeated, and generations of people grew up repeating it, perpetuating it for future generations (like religion).

-scheherazade

This is why you need to kill fossil fuels and bury her in your backyard. Then, once we starve to death, future generations can dig her up again.

No.
I was raised in Houston, surrounded by hyper religious family, friends, and public. I went to a really good private school and learned how much they ignore, don't know, or pretend is magic to continue believing their beliefs. I had to make my own way, mostly, and learn to distinguish between fact and propaganda (religious, political, etc). Many people don't have that ability, since often it means analyzing data by one's self, and many don't even know what is data and what is propaganda.

People have an adverse reaction when evolution and other scientific 'fact' are called into question by religious people for religious reasons because we've already had the trouble of wading through the confusion and BS to find 'fact', and having more BS nonsensical rhetoric poured into the mix to attempt to confuse those who have not learned yet makes us angry with the spreaders and sad for the future generations.

If someone doesn't understand my lack of a need for god or Jebus, it's a hard thing to consider accepting.
(or to say it another way... Who are you to question god's wanting me to not believe in him?)

That's awesome. Since 13 is typically the middle-to-beginning of puberty for girls and, assuming she has control of her 70mph fastball (probably) and can field too, I'd bet she'll be hanging tough with the boys for another three to five years at least. It will be very interesting to see where it takes her.

Kudos to her for enduring the obstacles, putting in the hard work, and most importantly for setting an excellent example for future generations.

I would like to see a shift in the general public's interest towards sports where finesse, coordination, and mental acuity can totally supersede brute strength and speed. Unfortunately, race car driving is the only competitive sport that immediately comes to mind, but surely there are others.

edit: Oh, and I apologize for using this as a soapbox, and I don't mean to detract in any way from her accomplishments or to imply this newscast or SI is evil, but as a counterpoint, I also always feel a little disgusted when the media (with their Nike, Reebok and Gatorade funding) draws a direct analogy to gender equality through athletics. It's a dangerous straw man... but meh, not everything on TV and magazines is responsible for solving serious social problems. It's just entertainment, so I'll shut up about it now.

Climate change-The hot-topic for a new age of ineffectuals...something for the insects to rally-around and discuss which produces nay but fodder for the same passive-aggressive types who are being seduced by their desire to trade practical action (whatever that could be) for polemic intercourse with themselves and others like them on the internet....

....people who are passionate to a fault and use forums like this to espouse their anger and frustration with tomes of keystrokes AT and not WITH others they deem unworthy, those ignorant and simpering few with opinions or observations dissimilar to theirs (and lower than 130 I.Q.'s....*cough), who know they are helpless to act to stop the high-speed train of planet-fucking (wage-slave-required and dutifully induced through the programming by adepts of semantic mind-fucking).This delusional empowerment, with all the invisible superpowers of new 'information' gives them the license and ability to do absolutely nothing to correct or marginally disrupt the pace of the so-labeled change while becomming better dicks in doing-so.

This fan-driven subject of climate change they use not only to deride those with any dissenting opinion and doubt regarding the mechanics and unfolding of what our big, blue marble is handing the creatures onnit, but also and most evidently obvious, to bolster their own superiority and self-satisfaction in their ability to process the distraction of disinformation/information/datum-ad-nauseum, and then condense it into how clever they can be in being complete assholes without breaking rules of accepted decorum so they can hear themselves bark, howl, and foment.

Smug, helpless, and irritatingly predictable in their helplessness to do anything more effectual than to add more used motor oil to the bonfire of their own vanity.

I would ask these irritating bugs what ARE you prepared to do to alter the course of the 'changes' in the 'terminal climate' described above? Recycle and drive a hybrid? Sacrifice anything but another trip to a polling-station? Oh I know, sit at your computer keyboard and grow more incensed while going-on with your business of spouting and shouting from a mountain of trash that you add-to daily by converting oxygen to more life-giving C02 and buying shit you don't need with paper you are forced to trade for 'bads and disservices??'

Thought so.

Fuck global warming in it's ass and let the planet shake and quiver with change as humans and/or their own slave-like actions continue to feed the earth-furnace. The bigger fish to fry and serve head-on have you by the short and curlies and we're all bio-fuel for future generations

@Engels
I've watched a lot of friends who I grew up with be disappointed with their lives because their parents and the media raised them to be foolish. I'm compassionate and a realist.

Tyler Cowen's book Average Is Over makes a convincing case on the decades ahead. There is no more "treading water" to stay in the same place. If you don't work to improve yourself and your living standards, your living standards will decline.

Plan ahead for what the economy is going to be like once continuing automation, declining IQ in future generations across the West, and increasing globalization have tripled the current unemployment rate.

Seems a logical next-step to fastidiously render the 'really tiny minority in our society' into dog food. The 'elite' are a cancer: Irradiate them, excise them, and place their offspring in the prisons they've built for us.

To these unseen perpetrators of the destruction of the planet and the souls and spirits of us regular folks should be delivered a message for future generations in the form of say, a monument. Yes, a monument similar to the wall of names of the fallen in wars (lest we forget)-

Here includes the names of all the wealthiest families the fascist human refuse that they are, their offspring, their legacy of anti-creation, anti-humanity, anti-life-

These people need to be annihilated, and the memory of their existence forever burned into the collective unconscious.

Destroy the fruits of their crimes and most importantly, end their bloodlines. Bury them, burn them, kill them all.

Otherwise, the planets' fucked.

The only reason people become grumpy old folk is because experience gives them the insight to discern quality from tripe, and because the older you get in our culture the further away you become from the honest, cultural evolutionary changes.
All we hear at our age is the shit that's pushed out on the radio (if you even still bother with that). That media has been shit since before we were born. If you had the time and ground-level access to the culture younger people are brought up with today, you'd find just as many wonderful, legitimate sources of art, culture and change as when we were discovering it in our youths.
Teach people to assess things honestly if they're put in front of them by someone else. Is Youtube telling you what the hottest 100 videos are? The manipulation is pretty obvious, even if the wolf is wearing a different sheep this time around.
Look to the origins of whatever is the current greatest thing to find the true art, and as soon as a genre or medium finds popular appeal to the point that it's exponentially mass-produced and formulaic, move on to discover the next thing. You'll never grow old that way. Don't get angry! Get wise! (and more importantly, raise future generations to have that wisdom as well.)