Stephen Hawking: Humanity won't last longer than 1000 years on Earth.
140 replies, posted
[QUOTE=abcpea;51388046]what are you?[/QUOTE]
[img]https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/47/11/8a/47118a508f247e9e6a5cbbe010ea81f0.jpg[/img]
[QUOTE=AtomicWaffle;51386345]Bear in mind that we're exporting cleaner tech to those countries, something China is already exploring as it'll give them leverage and influence over the 3rd world. I'd put my money on pragmatism any day of the week.[/QUOTE]
this how we die
with a bear in mind that kills us
[QUOTE=Turnips5;51385379]I'm gonna say 50[/QUOTE]
My bet is on 8. On a 'unrelated' note, who's gonna incorporate Vault Tec for us?
Enter global warming, super viruses and total nuclear war. Despite all those there will be habitable, secluded places left, and I'm willing to bet, people to live there.
Those three are only really threats to current civilization, which absolutely would be demolished, but remote tribal societies would be largely unaffected and ready to rebuild in a few hundred years while the crap blows over.
I think you'd need a cataclysmic extinction event the like that which killed the dinosaurs in order to get rid of us for good.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;51388065]I don't know if that's true though?
I mean a giant meteor strike is one option, but we also have a multitude of "Super Volcanoes" on earth that could rapidly, and seriously redefine the concept of "life" on earth, especially for people. It sure would take a few years of decline to reduce the population that much though, you do have a point there, but that's not much of a security blanket in my eyes.[/QUOTE]
Well, I was talking about survival, not just an easy ride through apocalypse though. Even with all the manufacturing destroyed, we would still have plenty of means to go through various troubles using the existing stuff as well as, indeed, our knowledge. I may not know how to make a transistor, but i sure know how to get generators working, how to repair some basic electronic stuff, i know how to use medicine, we have a lot of canned food that won't stale, warm and light clothes and so on. Just to compare - around 200-300 years ago in the event of a global catastrophe all people could have counted on was some primitive stuff not so different from the one that was used by our tribal ancestors.
[QUOTE=antianan;51388333]Well, I was talking about survival, not just an easy ride through apocalypse though. Even with all the manufacturing destroyed, we would still have plenty of means to go through various troubles using the existing stuff as well as, indeed, our knowledge. I may not know how to make a transistor, but i sure know how to get generators working, how to repair some basic electronic stuff, i know how to use medicine, we have a lot of canned food that won't stale, warm and light clothes and so on. Just to compare - around 200-300 years ago in the event of a global catastrophe all people could have counted on was some primitive stuff not so different from the one that was used by our tribal ancestors.[/QUOTE]
Yeah I get what you're saying but a lot of that sounds like eeking out the last few years of life for people, not really moving on to reestablishing society.
It's a hard topic to imagine what the end of the world looks like, so it's hard to imagine how we'd deal with that, but I find it unlikely we'd really recover to anything like we're at now
I'd be surprised if global society as we know it lasts past the end of the century. Take for example the effects of climate change on agriculture. I've seen some studies and models predict that even within the next 15 years certain equatorial countries will see a 30% drop in crop yields.
In very short order we're looking at mass emigration from countries which are already quite hot.
If you think the current immigration crisis is bad, think about what will happen when large swathes of Mexico, Africa, South America, and the Middle East can no longer support the majority of its population. The global panic will be unreal.
[QUOTE=antianan;51387603]Except that it's only a pretty far fetched theory(not the bottleneck itself, the Toba eruption explanation). But anyway, the difference is that today's humanity is much less dependent on nature than ever before and can survive some catastrophic events that almost certainly would have killed the entire mankind some centuries ago.[/QUOTE]
We are much less dependant on nature now because we drift away from it
it some apocalypse happened and we were to be drawn back into nature we wouldnt last a chance because we are too reliant on our own artifices to actually know how to work with logs, rocks etc.
[QUOTE=The mouse;51385382]I think he's underestimating the ability of Mankind to survive and adapt. The ability to adapt is the reason we've survived the last 10,000 or so years, [b]I fail to see why we couldn't last well over 1,000 years.[/b][/QUOTE]
Because we are not invincible, we are animals like any other on Earth, and we exist within nature and depend on it for our survival-- we are not above it.
I really doubt that [i]Stephen Hawking[/i] is underestimating the abilities of mankind. If anything, you're just being optimistic about what's in store for us. It's a normal reaction people have to hearing this kind of distressing news. "Oh I'm sure we'll figure out a way to survive/it won't be so bad/maybe things will turn out alright/etc." It's the same line of thinking as "Too Big to Fail" and "God Himself Cannot Sink This Ship".
Oh well. We'll find out the hard way.
So basically he meant this:
[video=youtube;7W33HRc1A6c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c[/video]
[QUOTE=Govna;51388502]I really doubt that [i]Stephen Hawking[/i] is underestimating the abilities of mankind.[/QUOTE]
Why? He's not an authority in it.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;51388519]Why? He's not an authority in it.[/QUOTE]
He knows more about it than your average person does, thanks to his position in academia and his contributions to world. And that's kind of an understatement. He's a genius who has also expressed sensible political opinions and concerns before. There's no reason to doubt him, especially when the overwhelming consensus in the scientific community is that we're headed for trouble in the future thanks to climate change, resource depletion, overpopulation-- not to mention the scores of other problems that occur with these things-- etc.
Again, we're not gods, and thinking that we can "science away" all of our problems is foolish. There's always a point of no return where things are too far gone to come back from, where we have no ability to recover.
[QUOTE=Govna;51388561]He knows more about it than your average person does, thanks to his position in academia and his contributions to world. And that's kind of an understatement. He's a genius who has also expressed sensible political opinions and concerns before. There's no reason to doubt him, especially when the overwhelming consensus in the scientific community is that we're headed for trouble in the future thanks to climate change, resource depletion, overpopulation-- not to mention the scores of other problems that occur with these things-- etc.
Again, we're not gods, and thinking that we can "science away" all of our problems is foolish. There's always a point of no return where things are too far gone to come back from, where we have no ability to recover.[/QUOTE]
I disagree. Famous physicists have a history of making claims about the future with no basis in fact. Saying he's "expressed sensible political opinions and concerns before" is basically saying "I already agree with this view on things therefore I don't need good evidence to convince me of what he's saying." I [I]do[/I] agree that there are plenty of huge problems facing humanity today that we need to deal with, but that are likely to completely wipe out the species in the next millennium. Modern humans have been around for about 40-50 millennia already. I think to think that ours is particularly threatening is arrogant.
And thinking he's a "genius" and hence incapable of being wrong on something like this is akin to hero worship. Hawking has famously made big claims [I]in his area of expertise[/I] and been wrong (or at least later admitted he now thinks he was wrong).
I don't really think we should go to any other planets. Investigate them, sure, but actually live there? I don't think it's a good idea. We were given the opportunity to live on this planet, for whatever reason, by whatever is out there, and if we blow it then we blow it. It's a lesson. The next planet would just get trashed as well.
That's why it's so important to preserve and appreciate this planet, and all it offers us in its natural state. Stop treating it like a template.
Except the corollary rub here is there is quite a basis of fact. We're in the middle of an ongoing extinction event, and we're actively helping it along on an absurdly huge logistical scale.
why does being really good at theoretical physics make this dude qualified to speak about sociopolitical conflict and resource scarcity?....
Anyone who Says "Not my problem, Ill be dead anyway"[B] I hate you.
[/B]
You dont care about our legacy as a species???
This attitude is extremely self centered and the reason we are fucked now in the first place
[QUOTE=27X;51389280]Except the corollary rub is here is there is quite a basis of fact. We're in the middle of an ongoing extinction event, and we're actively helping it along on an absurdly huge logistical scale.[/QUOTE]
Previous extinction events which weren't characterized by a sharp event (unlike the Cretaceous–Paleogene event) have taken millions of years. The current extinction event has already been going for 12,000 years. So why this millennium? Sure we're helping it along, but what reason is there to suspect the entire race will be gone in the next millennium?
I think if anything, we may face a massive change to contemporary human life in the next millennium and possibly the deaths of a large percentage of our population (in fact, probably 100% of the currently living population :v:) but I don't see any good reason to suspect that it will be the end of humanity entirely. We're the smartest things to ever walk the earth, as far as we know. We're resilient. I think it's easy to understate the challenges we face, but I also think Hawking is overstating them.
He also said AI would kill us. Really starting to doubt anything he says. Does he even still do physics work?
[QUOTE=Destroyox;51389413]He also said AI would kill us.[/QUOTE]you sure are in a haste to dismiss that idea considering how we don't even have true sentient AI yet.
Our emotions of Morality and love are result of the need to breed, the social nature of our species (which we needed to survive) and chemicals in our brain.
AI would not have this, its not gonna feel bad for killing us, it would just make logical sense to wipe us out in the interest of self preservation.
In a way, morality is a silly remnant of our caveman times, but our laws and society are all based around it today, then again I myself feel bad for my family and friends but AI would exhibit no such behavior as this behavior is somewhat pointless and illogical in the grand scheme of things.
[QUOTE=Destroyox;51389413]Does he even still do physics work?[/QUOTE]
He does. He published (i.e. posted on ArXiv) a pretty interesting paper at the beginning of this year.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;51389395]Previous extinction events which weren't characterized by a sharp event (unlike the Cretaceous–Paleogene event) have taken millions of years. The current extinction event has already been going for 12,000 years. So why this millennium? Sure we're helping it along, but what reason is there to suspect the entire race will be gone in the next millennium?
I think if anything, we may face a massive change to contemporary human life in the next millennium and possibly the deaths of a large percentage of our population (in fact, probably 100% of the currently living population :v:) but I don't see any good reason to suspect that it will be the end of humanity entirely. We're the smartest things to ever walk the earth, as far as we know. We're resilient. I think it's easy to understate the challenges we face, but I also think Hawking is overstating them.[/QUOTE]
The context being we're creating logistical paradigms beyond our ability to control them in the "right" terms of scale. We actually aren't all that bright either. We have pretty awesome intuition and great pattern sorting and discriminatory software, and that's where the smartness directly ends, and we really don't have adequately long enough life spans to see cause and effect on the scale we need to keep things stable, and those paradigms are going to be magnified as we approach Singularity, not lessened.
The current slew of issues we're in have been quantitatively known and circumscribed for an entire generation line, for 70 years, and we have done exactly jack shit about it other than platitudes and rhetoric, and a half assed attempt to transition to electric cars. Not terribly positive signs for the long term outcome.
[QUOTE=Vegetable;51389097]I don't really think we should go to any other planets. Investigate them, sure, but actually live there? I don't think it's a good idea. We were given the opportunity to live on this planet, for whatever reason, by whatever is out there, and if we blow it then we blow it. It's a lesson. The next planet would just get trashed as well.
That's why it's so important to preserve and appreciate this planet, and all it offers us in its natural state. Stop treating it like a template.[/QUOTE]
this seems like a rather silly mindset to me. Our species pretty much has to move off planet at some point guaranteed. Our population increases exponentially every year, and with that will eventually arise massive problems. no we don't have to abandon and give up on earth but why should we not look into living on other planets? what's the point in limiting ourselves to here?
[QUOTE=mdeceiver79;51385598]We didn't have nukes, super intensive farming, massive sea pollution, man made global warming for most of that time.
That said I dunno why Stephen Hawkins opinion on the matter is that important, hes a theoretical physicist and knows his shit in that field but that doesn't mean he knows everything about everything.[/QUOTE]
Doubt he has much else to do other than reading, observing and theorizing on his free time.
[QUOTE=Destroyox;51389413]He also said AI would kill us. Really starting to doubt anything he says. Does he even still do physics work?[/QUOTE]
You can say that humans can't survive more than 1000 years with the way the planet is changing, but also predict that if AI continues to advance the way it does, and the way humanity employs it (military technology) there's a good chance it's going to pull a terminator and turn on humanity. There's no absolute "YOU HAVE TO PICK ONE THING THAT'LL KILL US OR YOU'RE BULLSHITTING", there's multiple things that can and potentially will end humanity when the conditions are met. Both theories can be completely right but a meteor nails the earth and ends us before either event comes to fruition, he wasn't essentially WRONG about how the progress would end
[QUOTE=Sunday_Roast;51391118]Doubt he has much else to do other than reading, observing and theorizing on his free time.[/QUOTE]
He is also so influential that I'm 100% certain he has talked to leading experts with everything he brings up.
[QUOTE=Firetornado;51389435]Our emotions of Morality and love are result of the need to breed, the social nature of our species (which we needed to survive) and chemicals in our brain.
AI would not have this, its not gonna feel bad for killing us, it would just make logical sense to wipe us out in the interest of self preservation.
In a way, morality is a silly remnant of our caveman times, but our laws and society are all based around it today, then again I myself feel bad for my family and friends but AI would exhibit no such behavior as this behavior is somewhat pointless and illogical in the grand scheme of things.[/QUOTE]
Why do people always talk about sentient AI as if they know how it will be like? We're the ones who will design it in the first place. How it behaves will be entirely dependent on how we build it.
[QUOTE=_Axel;51397885]Why do people always talk about sentient AI as if they know how it will be like? We're the ones who will design it in the first place. How it behaves will be entirely dependent on how we build it.[/QUOTE]
It's possible we were made by another intelligent design, so it's possible we can create another intelligent design
[QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;51386848]Yeah or ecosystem is fucked, we need to go to another planet with no ecosystem :downs:
Like I get that spreading to other planets increases the species survivability but the prospects on Mars are much bleaker than on earth[/QUOTE]
This is such a good point and I wish more people realised this.
I get that living on Mars or whatever is a cool concept, and I'm all for space exploration and what have you, but saying "this planet is fucked, let's just go to another" is monumentally flawed thinking. Things will not be easier in space, in fact everything will be much, much harder.
Literally every scientist and expert that I've heard speak on this topic has said that we should be looking at fixing the problems with our planet rather than getting ready to jump ship. Things aren't looking great for our future here, and if we don't quit fucking around with emissions and pollution and all that shit, the average living conditions of everybody will only get worse. Our species evolved on this planet, we've adapted to live here, but now we're making the environment unsuitable for ourselves.
If we can't even maintain the status quo here, on a planet we have always existed on, with all of it's history available to us constantly, [B]why does anyone believe that we will be capable of terraforming a planet that is completely unknown in comparison to Earth[/B]. Not to mention the horrible reality that there will be entirely new forms of bacteria and other biological threats and complications with living on another planet.
It's like failing the tutorial level and wanting to go to the next, harder level, or struggling to ride a scooter, giving up and then buying a sports bike with a fuckhuge engine on it and just expecting everything to work out.
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