Even in our primitive state now we alredy have idea’s on how to counter a meteor on a collision path to Earth. Will life truely stop if the temperatute drops to -100 degree C? I think we can devise ways around environmental changes - this is feasible even in our present time probably.
A lot of people have brought up us killing ourselves - a good point.
I’m wondering if someone knowledgable would comment - I suspect in the course of the next billion years the societies of the world will become more homogenized. The boom in technology advances in communication have already seen this to a degree. I know the popular opinion is to have a bitter mistrust of humanity, but I think it’s reasonable to think we will have this problem licked. From where we’ve come (i.e. the dark ages, spanish inquisition, colonization etc) we’re already giant steps forward. The world, aside from a few notable exceptions, is relatively in peace. I don’t want to start 50 posts now about how this may or may not be true - that isn’t the intent of the post. Point noted though a war or several wars could destroy us all.
Love me not; your point of view is… negative. I think all of those items were concerns over the last millenia,yet even as barbaric as we have been over that time - we’ve still made pretty good progress!
Elucidator; I am not following. Could you elaborate? I think it’s a worthwile endeavour to consider if we will become Gods. Perhaps that is what we were made for? Perhaps God left us because we are now able to take care of ourselves and define our own morality (not unlike a parent finally lets his child have their freedome to make their own choice)? Perhaps our ancient ancestors realizing we had discovered EVERYTHING could not handle that fact - the thirst for knowledge had become everything to them - so they recreated this solar system, our planet, and us as microorganisms and then committed suicide - leaving us hteir descendants the pleasure to rediscover everything? Who knows but it’s fun to think about!
I think at the level of technology all our social rules and inhibitions would be entirely different. Once we reach that level of understanding and accomplishment we will have transcended our current forms, and no doubt be unrecognizable as human.
Therefore humans will not become gods. Will human descendents become gods? Perhaps, but they won’t be recognizable as humans.
I hope so. Perhaps my having been raised Mormon biases me toward this, but I hope that the human race, or at least human descendants, eventually achieve the Extropian goal. If only because I don’t want to die, but I also don’t want to live forever with things the way they are now.
I hope so. Perhaps my having been raised Mormon biases me toward this, but I hope that the human race, or at least human descendants, eventually achieve the Extropian goal. If only because I don’t want to die, but I also don’t want to live forever with things the way they are now.
My first dual-post. My first attempt at posting it gave an error, so I tried again, and apparently it went through twice. I feel so … so ALIVE! Wheeeeee!
Gods? Feh, depends on your definition of God. IMO, that would point to humans being able to construct delusional societies upon invisible pink unicorns. I think that’s a standard we can live up to.
Being serious - it’s hard to think about what we could invent in the future. We musn’t overestimate, (This is 2001, and we’re not living in gigantic, floating domes yet? Grr!) but there’s a long way we can go, to be sure.
A year or so ago I read that, by today’s standards, the 21st century will experience the equivalent of 20,000 years worth of technological and scientific advancement, because the rate increases exponentially. I assume that this figure assumes that we can keep from destroying ourselves, and that we can keep ourselves fed and keep up a high enough standard of living so that we have enough leisure time to pursue research and development and the like.
Anybody remember where this extremely interesting idea came from, and whether or not it’s valid? If it’s even close to accurate, it’s exciting to think what the late 21st century will bring.
I kind of agree with your optimism chorpler… but then I figure we are still ape-like in our social relations and ambitions. We are nothing but animals with technology.
Until we develop more humane and less violent socieities instead of high tech toys we wont be really advanced.
I read his whole thread and didn’t see him mention that.
Yes, that is a good point that if there isn’t a God, then there can be conflicts that are detrimental, caused by religious fanatics, but to imply that belief in god(s) is detrimental is oversimplification and only looking at negative aspects, like fanaticism, and ignoring the good that also comes from religion and its believers.
Before we worry about what humans might have become 5 or 6 billion years from now, we have to prove that we will be around for it to matter.
The oldest organism, in terms of remaining more or less unchanged throughout its existence, is blue-green algae, which, IIRC, has been around for most of the 4 billion years the earth has existed. Nothing of any higher complexity has lasted anywhere near that long.
What we may accomplish before we burn ourselves out is impossible to imagine. But consider this: If we actually managed to colonize other stars, and then lost the means to support the technology that kept us in touch with each other, each world’s humans would eventually evolve into separate species.
Well, we have to wonder. If God doesn’t exist, then the good effects of religion are simply an extended placebo effect. If this turned out to be the case, and religion proven to have a net positive effect, would you want to keep on using a placebo effect to get good results?
Well, Rashak Mani, my hope is that science/technology will help us develop more humane and less violent societies. Once we figure out why we behave the way we do, I hope we can modify that behavior. And not just obvious mental illnesses and criminal aggression, but even normal human behaviors and ailments that is suboptimal, like aging, or chronic pain, or useless depression and anger and jealousy and fear. Of course, there are plenty of circumstances where negative emotions and other suboptimal are necessary and even good things to have. So obviously there are complex issues to be worked out.
Or maybe we’ll get lucky and God will come down and help us out! That would be handy.
well of course if it was proven that there is no diety/dieties of any kind I would become an athiest and see religious pursuit as a wast of time, although I would still adhear to basic Judeo/Christian values.
But sticking to this thread, I’d have to say that the longer that we are around, the more we will become masters of the world around us, and will deffinatly be seen by Gods by todays standards. I mean, right now, we can pretty much predict the weather, but we can’t controll it. I bet in a few thousand or more years, we will. Right now you either have to be an austronaught or a millionair to go into space (Damn I wish I was a millionair and could pay for just a day aboard the international space station) but I think the in the future, trips to space will be common, kind of like that line in Futurama - Fry: “That clover helped by rat fink brother steal my dream of going into space! Now I’ll never get there …”
Leela: “You went there this morning for donuts.”
Sam Stone, I didn’t read that book but I read ‘The end of science’ by John Horgan. (1996)
In his book there’s a five page interview with Tipler who states that the Omega point is what would happen “if intelligent machines converted the entire universe into a gigantic, information processing device.” Which would get more and more powerful as the universe collapsed but would regenerate a new reality or something. - “it would recreate or ressurect anyone who has ever lived for an eternity of bliss.”
Horgans answer, in short, is that creation itself is the Omega point, or Universe desperately fleeing from itself “because its lust for final knowledge has brought it to the brink of eternal nothingness, and that if it dies, everything dies; being itself will vanish.”
Life is full of difficult questions that require lots of thought. Religion stifles thought by feeding us easy answers and claiming infallibility. Advances in technology will raise new moral issues and religion will almost certainly give us a wrong answer:
juan2003 you’re focusing on radicals and fundamentalists. I’m sorry that you have such a poor view of religion and fail to see that there are plenty of clear thinking, rational people who also happen to hold a religious belief and have no problem with things like inoculations and heart transplants, and think that it’s ridiculous to argue against them in the name of God.
Rooves, I think any society of immortals would really have to place severe restrictions on what, if any, reproduction was allowed.
Or they would have to develop other technologies to a level approaching godhood anyway – they would have to be able to build huge living structures like Dyson spheres or ringworlds, or at the very least terraform a lot of planets, and be able to get there quickly – no lousy relativistic spaceflight. And even then, as Isaac Asimov pointed out in numerous essays, at the current rate of reproduction it wouldn’t take long (a matter of a few thousand years, IIRC) for us to fill up the known universe with people. But then again, with the recent information about how big the universe really is, who knows how long it would really take, particularly if we could find a way around the speed of light limit.
In one of my short stories, humanity, after filling up the known universe, is forced to find alternate (i.e. parallel) universes to colonize. Robert J. Sawyer’s new book, Hybrids, has a very similar subplot. (And I strongly recommend everybody read it, as well as the first two books in the series – Hominids and Hybrids – just on the general principle that Robert J. Sawyer is really, really great.)
The Discover Channel had a program where these scientists prodicted what the world would be like in 200 million years. It was a world of rain forests populated by strange birds and insects. As I watched it I wondered “what is the point of this program?” If it comes true nobody will be around to say “Boy they sure were on the money”, plus the birds and insects were designed on a “Boy, wouldn’t this be weird” sort of premise. Personally, I just hope things don’t get too outta wack for the next 25 years.
