What's the biggest thing humanity should be worrying about?

…as in, What should we, collectively as a species, be most concerned about in regards to our survival? I ask because there are so many causes vying for my attention, I’m never sure what it is I should be most terrified of…

Climate change?
World war?
Meteor, comet, or some other thing from space?
An apocalyptic volcanic eruption, earthquake, or other natural disaster?
Lack of viable energy sources?

Or are social, economic or political things what we should be worrying about…

Growing religiosity?
Idiocracy-style lowering of intelligence?
Ever-increasing inequality, resulting in a dystopian future where tiny elite rule over the proletariat?

Or anything else?

Many thanks in advance :slight_smile:

Climate change could take us out (hard to say), but the scariest thing in our future is nanotechnology. If you think weaponized viruses are scary, they don’t have anything on programmable weaponized viruses. Someone will build one to take out all people of German heritage at 00:00 January 1st, 2045 but release it into the wild 15 years earlier so that it has time to spread. Boom, Germany is empty farmland for the taking, and within the year AVG Free is something you inject.

You should fear none of it because all of the concerns you listed WILL happen. No sense in wasting time fearing the inevitable.

Perhaps the developing resistance of bacteria to antibiotics should be one of the more significant concerns.

Probably our own ignorance. We don’t know what the biggest problems for us will be in the future, and we don’t really know how to solve the problems we’re facing at present. If we knew when volcanoes might erupt (and knew how to deal with them), knew which meteors are likely to hit us (ditto), or knew how best to avoid war, then they wouldn’t be problems.

This is somewhat like the problem in the military. The generals always prepare to fight the last war, and then are surprised when a different one comes about.

Whatever “humanity” prepares for it is almost guaranteed that something else will come about.

The only thing we have to worry about is worry itself.

I don’t know. It lacks the impact of the original.

How to handle the transition to the singularity.

And that’s what worries me.

I’m gonna say the “growing religiosity” one because I think nothing can match religion for evil potential. Most things sort themselves out reasonably soon if there’s no religion involved.

I actually like to imagine what humankind would have been like without religion. I bet we’d have cured cancer and had the World Wide Web 10,000 years ago.

I think this one is, and I’m not talking just about the passive one, but the ignorance that fights back, and with some elements of religion in there.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post/bobby-jindal-and-volcano-monitoring-2009-02-25/?id=bobby-jindal-and-volcano-monitoring-2009-02-25

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” - Pogo. (Walt Kelly (1913–1973) )

Religions.

Well, I have to push down a little on that idea, not all religions and not all religious people abuse their own faith to justify the dismantling or the denial of science and scientific research.

Same thing it was 50 years ago: nuclear holocaust.

Catastrophic asteroid events occur very rarely (on the scale of humanity), but we can accomplish the same destruction at the press of a button.

No other threat comes close.

For immediacy that one is hard to beat. Although even with the latest issues with Ukraine and the Crimea nuclear global war is less of a worry after the end of the cold war.

I still expect to see one big blast going off killing thousands somewhere on earth during my lifetime, unfortunately.

I can’t imagine there could be any question about this.

The threat of nuclear war hangs over us like Dyogenes (sp?) sword and threatens to extinguish all human life on this planet. So, it has to be the number one concern for most all of us.

What can we do about this threat? Gosh! I sure do wish I had an answer. Any kind of answer. But I don’t and that makes me feel so incredibly inadequate.

Here we all are. We are living in this situation in which we may all die at any time and, for the most part, we are powerless to do anything about it. That, IMO, is truly the greatest human dilemma we have ever faced.

What to do? I would love to hear from any of you that may have some ideas. I’m so sad to say that I have none.

I’m so very sorry. But I just do not have any kind of adequate idea what to do.

Damocles. That’s a bit more than just misspelling. :wink:

Entangle ourselves economically and peevishly spy on one another to make sure no one’s up to anything nefarious.

As much as I am a libertarian, I cannot fathom the idea that we shouldn’t exercise our global presence to prevent rogue nations from getting nukes. Pakistan alone scares the bejeezus out of me.

Will climate change kill the human race? It’ll make life harder for us, kill some and destroy trillions in wealth. But it alone probably won’t destroy the human race.

Aside from terrorists or maybe NK, I don’t know who else would set off a nuclear weapon. The world has already survived 2 nuclear weapons in Japan as well as several tests.

The odds of an apocalyptic natural disaster (meteor, volcano, etc) in the next 100 years is extremely unlikely considering that these things occur on timelines of millions of years.

I don’t think growing religiousity is a problem. isn’t Islamism just another failed attempt (like pan arabism) to overcome feelings of inferiority? If so, it seems like that ideology could be on the way out. That is just a guess though.

Idiocracy seems irrelevant, because tools to enhance our cognition will become affordable and safe within the next 50 years.

Inequality sucks, but it isn’t going to kill everyone. It may lead to destructive last ditch ideologies (like communism). But in the age of information, democracy and human rights (at least moreso than 100 years ago) I’m guessing the most extreme ideology we will see is socialism, not communism.

The world has a few hundred years of coal, and I think of natural gas also. Plus if we need it we have thousands of years of nuclear energy. Coal and natural gas can be converted into gasoline to run cars. Solar and wind keep dropping in cost, as do auto alternatives to gasoline. Peak oil could be a problem.

I don’t know what hte biggest threat we face is though. Honestly, I’d say super smart robots this century. Lets hope they are benevolent.