capitalism only really functions well (with regulation) in a world where resources are limited and a lot of manpower is needed to get things done. Thanks to technology, it's only a matter of time before resources are so easy to come by and manufacture into needed things that the supply and demand model will be obsolete.

I suspect that within 100 years, if not sooner, manual labor will be a thing of the past...unless you're an artist or something. Robots will be able to do virtually everything..and better than humans are capable of.

The only people who will still need to have jobs are engineers and maybe technicians, but even then, eventually robots will be able to repair themselves so maybe not even technicians will be needed. Hell, given enough time, nurses and many health care jobs won't be needed anymore because basic healthcare could be delegated to robots.

It's just a matter of time. We're already starting to see the effects of automation in the workforce, we just don't need as many people to get things done. Hell even technical jobs aren't safe because as computers get better and better, They'll be able to analyze certain things better than humans.

The question just becomes what do you do about it? A whole new economic model will be needed. Because we'll eventually be living in the world where unless you're in the academic top tier, you're just not going to be needed in the workforce. At the same time, again, because of technology, we're going to have the ability to feed and clothe AND shelter you for a minimal amount of effort so the prospect of being able to being born, living, and dying without ever NEEDING to work is a real possibility in the not so distant future.

Isn't that what you would call...a utopia? You want freedom? there it is. You'll be able to spend your time doing what you WANT to do instead of what you HAVE to do just to survive. I suspect at some point, there will have to be SOME procreation laws put into place to keep the population growth in check. But hell, even that won't be so bad once we have the ability to colonize other planets.

People will still work, they'll just do it because they want to do it, but they'll be jobs where they're not a necessity or anything. even in an age where a replicator can make all your food, people will still want to cook, or do other artisan style jobs.

But hey, we'll still need defense, gotta blow up or deflect any stray asteroid that comes near us. or just send a bunch of robots up to mine the rock to smitherines so we can use the resources to build our mighty space fleet and our other grand works That Dyson Sphere won't build itself after all

In other words, the human race....has won. isn't that a good thing?

They are a go cause I have a Space Star.

>> ^ChaosEngine:

>> ^gwiz665:
I want a dyson sphere. Get some people on that, could ya?
Been working on it in my shed. The design is pretty much done, I just need a tiny bit more materials.
and a spare star

>> ^gwiz665:

I want a dyson sphere. Get some people on that, could ya?

Been working on it in my shed. The design is pretty much done, I just need a tiny bit more materials.

and a spare star

I want a dyson sphere. Get some people on that, could ya?
>> ^ChaosEngine:

>> ^gwiz665:
Nuclear is not perfect, but it's the best we have right now. Coal and Oil are much worse. Wind, Solar and Geothermal are better, but not nearly the same scale as Nuclear.

There are several issues with nuclear and Chernobyl/Fukushima style disasters are frankly the least of them.
Leaving aside the obviously thorny issue of waste management, the other issue arises when you amortise the cost over the total lifetime of the nuclear plant. It's just not that cheap in terms of energy or money to build, run and then decommission.
As for renewable energy, it's nowhere close to providing the energy levels we need yet. Also there are other environmental issues with some renewable energy generation methods as well. Hydro requires large dams (concrete is an eco-nightmare) and can destroy habitats. Geothermal can affect the landscape (subsidence and sapping geysers are two common effects). Lots of people complain about wind turbines as visually unappealing (personally I find the aesthetically pleasing). I'm not saying renewable technologies are bad, merely that there are still issues with them.
In real terms, fusion is where it's at.

Is there any money to be made?

Now, building a Dyson Sphere, that's where the big bucks are. I wanna be the creator of "Big Sun", the biggest energy company in teh world. I'll be rich, RICH. If it weren't for those meddling kids.

Personally, I think Kurzweil's theories are the answer to why the sky isn't full of Dyson spheres. There's just no point in building such a large structure just to harness the power of a naturally occuring star.

When your entire civilization exists as information bouncing around inside a computer, you hardly need any real energy at all, because everything is so extremely efficient.

As for why SETI can't find anything, I'm pretty sure it's because we're looking for radio signals, which are probably just a transitional technology -- they're fine for a civilization limited to a single planet, but even a civilization spread throughout a solar system would really want something that could cheat the light speed limit.

Or maybe we're really God's chosen people, and the only sentient beings around, which makes our reckless abuse of our only home planet seem all the more depressing.

>> ^alizarin:
He makes allot of assuming that using all possible resources is the basis of everything. Our population is going to top out - our technologically advanced cultures already have negative population growth when you subtract immigration. And maybe we'll choose not to create a megalomaniacal AI. What else are we going to need the energy from a Dyson sphere for?


>> ^alizarin:
He makes allot of assuming that using all possible resources is the basis of everything. Our population is going to top out - our technologically advanced cultures already have negative population growth when you subtract immigration. And maybe we'll choose not to create a megalomaniacal AI. What else are we going to need the energy from a Dyson sphere for?


There's really not a lot of assuming here. Our current society practically worships the complete use of a resource as wastefully as possible. The conversion from crude oil to refined is only around 90% efficient. And yes, you are correct, most industrialized nations see a negative population growth. However, we are about 5 billion people over populated for our planet so that's not really a bad thing.

What will we need energy for? Who knows. Then again, 200 years ago did people think we'd need energy for tv's, electric cars, laptop computers, mobile phones, etc? Who knows what's next! We could need energy for bio-mechanical suits or propulsion of space ships. Maybe the power we need to create stable wormholes is the equivalent of all the energy we produce on earth today. Hell, the replicators you see on Star Trek TNG would require tremendous amounts of power without a storeroom of atoms to build from. With enough energy, we can just build our own atoms. Teleportation would require tremendous amounts of energy if possible.

Basically, we don't know what we'll need energy for, all we know is we'll need more of it. All we can say is following current trends that in 100 or 200 or more years we'll need a LOT more power than we need today.

He makes allot of assuming that using all possible resources is the basis of everything. Our population is going to top out - our technologically advanced cultures already have negative population growth when you subtract immigration. And maybe we'll choose not to create a megalomaniacal AI. What else are we going to need the energy from a Dyson sphere for?

I'm still waiting for Dyson Spheres. Everything else is just decoration.

>> ^NetRunner:
Aging death was created through natural selection amongst the original immortal organisms, IMO.

Aging death was not likely an evolutionary selection. DNA has improved its ability to replicate without error and to self-repair, not the other way around. But of course, there are still things that muck up DNA beyond its capabilities (e.g., excessive UV radiation). So biological systems still break down frequently.


Maybe the key is for us all to get very, very small. That or lots of space travel. Or Dyson Spheres. I think based on our society right now, we're more likely to digitize and shrink down, since it's cheaper, and we're all about cost effectiveness.
Eventually we'll do the Dyson Sphere, but probably not until we've hit some unimaginably high population, like 100 trillion people maybe.

I think you've got the answer in the first part there. By the time we have the technology to build a Dyson sphere, we won't need it.

Aging death was created through natural selection amongst the original immortal organisms, IMO.

Before aging, evolution took too long. Once a species started having death through aging, the ancestors would cease to consume resources, allowing its slightly more evolved young to have more. In a short period of time, species with short lifetimes would evolve much more quickly, and gain tremendous advantage over species with long lifetimes.

That's why the dominant life form on earth is bacteria and viruses, to this day.

Humans might be able to come up with a way to make our evolution self-directed, and possible within individual living organisms (ourselves), which would make death unnecessary from an evolutionary standpoint.

Depending on how we deal with the carrying capacity of the Earth when people are immortal will be key in how we settle the question of what we do with immortality.

Maybe the key is for us all to get very, very small. That or lots of space travel. Or Dyson Spheres. I think based on our society right now, we're more likely to digitize and shrink down, since it's cheaper, and we're all about cost effectiveness.

Eventually we'll do the Dyson Sphere, but probably not until we've hit some unimaginably high population, like 100 trillion people maybe.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

^That's my personal belief on why we don't see the ETs. When the virtual becomes as real as the real - civilizations turn inward. If you can create a virtual galaxy simulated down to the atomic level - why bother with real space. For one thing FTL travel would be no problem in the simulated galaxy.

For that matter, we may be living in one now. To simulate a galaxy at the atomic level- we're talking about Dyson spheres of computronium.