I think by 2065 they’ll have convincing proof that uploading human minds into computers is possible, and they will either have done it or will know for certain it is achievable. I think that they will look back in horror at the millions and millions of people the richer Western societies have sent to their deaths from old age, knowing they could have all been saved with brain preservation. It is possible they will view anti-cryonics people and even ordinary doctors today with the same disdain that we view Nazi doctors. (after all, a doctor today who doesn’t freeze his patient’s brain when he dies is only marginally less responsible for a patient’s death than one who kills him on purpose. There is an ethical difference but the outcome is the same. )
One problem with this is that it would be progressive. “first the floor sweepers became useless, and I didn’t say anything. Then it was everyone with an IQ under 100, but I didn’t say anything. Then, it was…”
You would hope that people would realize that it was a matter of time for everyone to be useless, even the high functioning people on the right side of the bell curve.
Yes, and a lot of today’s “high functioning” people are going to find themselves completely useless in 2065. You think being a trained doctor makes you useful? Not since the robot doctors came out. There might be jobs programming the robot doctors that will require lots and lots of specialized medical knowledge, but the bottom might fall out of the market for most people with medical training.
A lot of people with highly-compensated skilled jobs are going to find themselves useless in the next 50 years. It’s not going to just be factory workers and street sweepers and burger flippers, it’s going to be Steve from accounting and Bob from marketing and Alice from product development.
Nodding approvingly as they herd the useless into killbot patrolled reservations doesn’t make much sense when you realize that you could wake up tomorrow and find yourself useless, like lots of your former co-workers, family, and friends.
In that time, Hitler will be regarded as a superhero alongside, Superman, Batman, Captain America, the Incredible Hulk, etc.
Oh wait, that’s Thailand, now.
While there was far less legal recourse for women in this situation, I don’t think this was “assumed” in general, or that “no one thought any of this was wrong.”
I don’t think that would actually amaze anyone. Nobody today says “Gosh, I’m so amazed human nature was pretty much the same in 1950.”
As much as this pains me to say I think a huge, huge, huge social change that will come in the next century and COULD come in the next fifty years is a radical shift to vegetarianism. umlaut had this in his list. I think there is a pretty good chance - at least 30% - that in 2065 people will be startled by how much meat we eat today. I’d say it’s likelier it’ll happen after 2065 than before, but I think it could happen that soon.
While this is may have something to do with an ethical shift, it’ll be more based on cost and resources. Farmed meat, as much as I adore it, is an insanely wasteful way to get calories.
Some Republicans think women can already do that…
Nor does anybody today say “I am amused by/incredulous about the idea that some people in 1965 were upset about interracial marriage”.
People would certainly look down on it, but you’re right. There’s nothing AMAZING about it. I mean, the Civil Rights movement is well covered in history classes.
How common people lived and thought is something ill-covered by a lot of history but 50 years ago is just too recent to really say people were much different, and such changes as have happened since then will inevitably be the subject not only of our history classes but of our stories - our movies, TV shows, novels and music.
If there is going to be anything that would legitimately surprise people it would be little things of very minimal political or social consequence. Littering, for example. We had a thread awhile back where someone expressed amazement about a scene in “Mad Men” where a family just casually leaves their picnic crap in the park. Indeed, that is how people acted back then, though - until very strong anti-littering laws, PSAs and eventually social opprobrium really cranked up in the 1970s, people littered to an extent that today would get you called out in public. The “Crying Indian” ad came out in 1971, and they didn’t run it then because littering wasn’t a problem; it was a huge problem that exploded after WWII, as people got richer, more mobile, and more convenience-oriented. The sides of roads looked like garbage dumps. People have generally forgotten that used to be the case, though, because it’s not a big thing anyone would make a movie about or mention in a history text.
So in terms of AMAZING people, what will probably amaze people in 50 years is that people used to smoke in businesses. It’s been wiped out so quickly and effectively that it’s already something we’re forgetting used to happen.
They are definitely gonna be pissed by climate change and our failure to jump on it more promptly.
They will wonder how anyone could call themselves a decent human being and vote Republican in that time period, as the Republicans will be widely understood to the chief obstacle to a fast response to climate change, as well as denying evolution and supporting homophobia and prolonging the Drug War, and most of all, opposing Basic Income long after the Robot Job Holocaust had rendered most people unemployable. Republicans will have as much public support as the Nazi Party and the KKK have now, and pretty much the same public image.
The Baby Boom generation, for being the chief supporters of the 2015 era Republicans, will be regarded as the Worst Generation, in contrast to the Greatest Generation of WWII.
People will wonder how people could have been stupid enough not to recognize the threat posed to employment by programmable computers whose skills can be upgraded and reprogrammed to take on new jobs as fast as they appeared. And the thought of calling someone a “Luddite” as an insult will be amazing to people of the future. Luddites will be considered people who saw into the future and took corrective action, a very good thing.
Why didn’t we have the forbearance to deal with the ISIS problem when it would have been easy.
Couldn’t you have said the same thing about slavery in the 1830s? “Slavery has existed as an institution for thousands of years, what makes you think that’s going to change in the next 50 years?!”
If you’re talking about in the us, probably not - Britain had the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. Greece, Chile, and Mexico all abolished slavery in the 1820s.
In the US, the Northwest Ordinance (1787) prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory in the US. The Missouri Compromise passed in 1820 and the entire purpose for its existence was balancing slave states and free states because slavery (and the end of slavery) was such a major issue.
Some ideologues or cynics might say it was never going away (and might be right, considering slavery still exists), but the end of slavery in the United States certainly would not be some completely ridiculous idea that no one could conceive of ever occurring in the 1930s. Some might have felt that way, but there were many that thought it a real possibility, for good or for ill.
That we let people with the dark triad run our most important institutions instead of aborting them, injecting them with the antidote, or just barring them from positions where they can do any serious damage after they’re discovered in the pre-job brain scan.
Alternate: that we had a bias against people with the dark triad, they’re go getters who get shit done.
Yeah, we do. I wasn’t born yet in 1965 and I am incredulous that there were actually laws back then against interracial marriage. Sounds bizarre and backward to me.
Yeah. What’s incredible isn’t that people were racist and sexist back in 1965. That’s fine. What’s bizarre is that there were actual laws against serving blacks and whites at the same establishment. It would be understandable if there were white businesses that didn’t serve black people, and if a black guy walked in there he’d very quickly realize his mistake. But it was LEGALLY MANDATED. As in, the racist powers-that-be were worried that businessmen would be more interested in making money from all kinds of customers than they’d be about enforcing segregation, so you have to make it illegal.
Plus a dozen states proudly making it impossible for black people to vote. That’s, you know, weird.
Why would they be puzzled by that? People today aren’t incredulous that people used to ride horses a lot.
Cite?
I’m guessing meat eating will still be pretty common in the Western World, but the meat will be grown in industrial vats instead of coming from a butchered animal. Traditional farm raised meat will still be available, but as an expensive (& controversial) artisanal product.
Here’s the wiki in case anyone else was clueless as to what that is.
Most of the stuff we learned about the Civil Rights movement managed to skip over stuff like that. Yes we were taught about how school segregation was mandated by law (not much about the de facto segregation in the North), but it never really groked that shopkeepers or restaurant owners could just serve both races if they wanted to.
Back in '85 or so, a coworker’s daughter saw “Eyes on the Prize” for the first time. She was amazed at the overt anti-black bigotry (esp the stuff about setting dogs on people) right there in Virginia. Virginia, of all places!!!
(for those outside the area, the commonwealth of Virginia wasn’t/isn’t exactly a hotbed of liberalism)
Northern Virginia (aka Suburban DC or “Yankee” territory, maybe)