for shame. . .some people might have to give up their golf courses just to make new farm land . . . . Rocket River
Good lord. Go read a book about the state of the planet in 1500 or 1918, and then read The Pragmatic Optimist. Humans have a lot of reasons to see completely upward trends. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/jbkSRLYSojo?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Start at 0:31 if you want to skip the software preamble. Now, if you're a living organism on Earth who's not a human, a human crop, a human pet, or a human pest? ... The sky is truly falling, and half of those species will be gone in 50 years, at current rates. Mass extinction time.
Four years later and I still say over population is the biggest threat at the moment, unless we master interplanetary travel soon and start to colonize other planets.
We can't even create a biosphere on Earth without everything in it dying. Colonization won't be viable for decades if not an entire century.
The Singularity The Singularity is a common matter of discussion in transhumanist circles. There is no clear definition, but usually the Singularity is meant as a future time when societal, scientific and economic change is so fast we cannot even imagine what will happen from our present perspective, and when humanity will become posthumanity. Another definition is used in the Extropians FAQ, where it denotes the singular time when technological development will be at its fastest. Of course, there are some who think the whole idea is just technocalyptic dreaming. ... The first three possibilities depend in large part on improvements in computer hardware. Progress in computer hardware has followed an amazingly steady curve in the last few decades [17]. Based largely on this trend, I believe that the creation of greater than human intelligence will occur during the next thirty years. (Charles Platt [20] has pointed out that AI enthusiasts have been making claims like this for the last thirty years. Just so I'm not guilty of a relative-time ambiguity, let me more specific: I'll be surprised if this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030.) link
I've seen that video before and yes there are things that appear hopeful but I think we have reasons to be worried. While technology, lifespan and wealth improves there are many basic problems that we don't seem to have the will to deal with. Problems that take decades to accumulate and take a very broad base and long term to change to deal with.
Correction: viruses, which aren't really living organisms Parasites in nature tend to coexist with their hosts and don't tend to kill them off
Be worried all you like, but we are living in by far the best times of human history. Democratization of information and the ease with which knowledge is spread is unprecedented and it only showing signs of rapid acceleration. Yes, one should always try to be cognizant of dangers trends, but we are able to recognize, communicate, and analyze these dangers with amazing speed. I think you are being dismissive of how quickly society is changing relative to how slowly it changed a century ago.
If you have some free time watch this vid. While not a discussion on capitalism he does talk about trial and error and capitalism is kind of like the trial and error of economic systems in my eyes. <object width="526" height="374"> <param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param> <param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"></param> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talk/stream/2011G/Blank/TimHarford_2011G-320k.mp4&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/TimHarford-2011G.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=512&vh=288&ap=0&ti=1190&lang=&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=tim_harford;year=2011;theme=tales_of_invention;theme=unconventional_explanations;theme=not_business_as_usual;event=TEDGlobal+2011;tag=business;tag=creativity;tag=culture;tag=society;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;" /> <embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgColor="#ffffff" width="526" height="374" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talk/stream/2011G/Blank/TimHarford_2011G-320k.mp4&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/TimHarford-2011G.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=512&vh=288&ap=0&ti=1190&lang=&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=tim_harford;year=2011;theme=tales_of_invention;theme=unconventional_explanations;theme=not_business_as_usual;event=TEDGlobal+2011;tag=business;tag=creativity;tag=culture;tag=society;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"></embed> </object>
if we are being observed by another world far away, they're probably thinking that we probably won't survive as a species in the next 200 years. we are terrible at maintaining the environment and staying peaceful
Compared to history, I don't think that's true at all. Certainly with regards to staying peaceful, the world is probably more peaceful now than anytime in history. Environmentally, we're certainly more aware than we were 30 years ago or during the industrial revolution, for example.
