Humanity in 300 years?

[Octoberist]

I predict there will be a war called 'War War 1'.

 

[Superwoman Prime]

Or, if we're a bit luckier:

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Either technocrats take control of society and it ends up like Star Trek or greedy plutocrats increade the gap between the haves and the have-nots and it ends up like Elysium.

I'm leaning towards the latter unless we manage to use super intelligent machines to fix humanity's problems.

 

[Midnyte_Sun]

As soon as we find sustainable energy, most wars over land and resources will be over and hopefully we will be colonizing Mars and already sending probes to far off planets in search of life.

 

[Feenix]

I'd say humanity would cease to exist.

Someone, somewhere, will push that little red button and start a nuclear war.

Too many countries with too much firepower hate each other.

 

[Pink Ranger]

There's only one way to answer this question:

 

[Thundercrack85]

As soon as we find sustainable energy, most wars over land and resources will be over and hopefully we will be colonizing Mars and already sending probes to far off planets in search of life.

I don't know. I think as long as humans exist, there will be wars.

 

[Teelie]

Some of you are way too pessimistic and negative.

 

[NickNitro]

Who thinks we'll be alive in 300 years? It was 1714 300 years ago.

Just think about how long 300 years is in humanities time.

In 1714 Tea is introduced for the first time into the American Colonies. In August, King George I ascends to the English throne, succeeding Queen Anne.

I don't think we could comprehend what kind of advancements humanity will be at in the year 2314.

It's crazy to think about what a blip 300 years is though in the lifetime of the Universe.

 

[RetrogradeOrbit]

When I was a lot younger, I really believed we could have a Star Trek like future where Humanity had gotten past its petty differences and made the world a better place for everybody.
I recall something that Gene Roddenberry used to say about the 24th century and I think it went something like "There will be no hunger, no greed and all children will be able to read."

Unfortunately, the things that I have seen in the intervening years has made me realise that Humanity is never going to get past its greed and other "shining" qualities.
As long as people want to have more than others and use other people to accomplish that goal.

We are just going to stay the way we are, fighting one another over land disputes, religious differences, racial hatred and so on.
It's rather a shame really.

Will we be around in 300 years? I'd think it is likely. But I sometimes wonder what kind of world it will be.
Especially if global warming is for real. In 3 centuries, we could be in the grip of another ice age.

 

[NickNitro]

Has everyone here seen Elysium? Thats how we are going to wind up.

The world is going to become soo over populated that the 1% will build an orbiting space station above Earth with the ideal conditions, a Nirvana. No sickness, no disease, they will live a peaceful life Monitoring and policing the planet, while the rest of the population is left to scavenge the Earth for a menial existence.


We are going to destroy our natural habitat with our incessant primal need to divide and conquer. Its inevitable because the ones in power, are the ones with the violet tendencies. The ones in power will always be the ones with their own agenda.

 

[Mike_D202]

It makes you wonder how people 300-500 years ago predicted how humanity would be around this time.

 

[NickNitro]

300 years ago there was slavery........they probably thought there would still be slavery.....

 

[KevanG]

Well they predicted the end of the world every couple of decades, especially around the end if a century. I'm sure that they thought by 2000 we'd have THE RAPTURE!!! We've only had it, what?, three times since then?

 

[Teelie]

Every century is like this. The world is going to end, humanity is going to die, or there will be more wars, more death, more negative everything. We're all doomed! Doooooomed!!!

Instead it's become the opposite (20 minute video). Violence is at a literal historic low point is the gist of it. The current era we live in is the most peaceful in recorded history (which is obviously not to say we're peaceful, we're just better off than before). Or that it's hard for humans to kill other humans. So people have to be desensitized to it and it still makes it difficult to actually kill another person.

I can dig up some more examples but I'm not able to find the article itself at the moment.

So for all this "we're ****ing ourselves over" talk, you really are taking the most pessimistic route.

 

[KevanG]

We're all gonna die!



It's easier to say we're annihilating ourselves due to easier access to information about it without them posting any type of history to compare it to when these statistics are shown in the media. The fact that we can see that we're ****ing over the planet doesn't really help much with that mentality either.

 

[Teelie]

And despite the extreme poverty in some countries, virtually the entire planet is no longer as poor as it used to be. Even the poorest of the poor are comparatively better off than the poor who came before them.

 

[NickNitro]

Who thinks we'll achieve Technological Singularity in the future?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

Ray Kurzweil: The Coming Singularity
[YT]1uIzS1uCOcE[/YT]

And despite the extreme poverty in some countries, virtually the entire planet is no longer as poor as it used to be. Even the poorest of the poor are comparatively better off than the poor who came before them.

Are you sure about that statement? I think the gap between the poor and rich have always been the same, the world around them has just changed.

 

[Teelie]

It is. They are still poor but compared to those who were say a century ago, they are better than they have been. The rich are naturally levels of magnitude beyond those who came before but even the poorest among us have a higher level of health and wealth.

I'll find the link for citation. For now there is this.

By almost any measure, the world is better off now than it has ever been before. Extreme poverty has been cut in half over the past 25 years, child mortality is plunging, and many countries that had long relied on foreign aid are now self-sufficient.

So why do so many people seem to think things are getting worse? Much of the reason is that all too many people are in the grip of three deeply damaging myths about global poverty and development. Don't get taken in by them.

MYTH ONE: Poor countries are doomed to stay poor.

They're really not. Incomes and other measures of human welfare are rising almost everywhere—including Africa.

MYTH TWO: Foreign aid is a big waste.

Actually, it is a phenomenal investment. Foreign aid doesn't just save lives; it also lays the groundwork for lasting, long-term economic progress.

Many people think that foreign aid is a large part of the budgets of rich countries. When pollsters ask Americans what share of the budget goes to aid, the most common response is "25%." In fact, it is less than 1%. (Even Norway, the most generous nation in the world, spends less than 3%.) The U.S. government spends more than twice as much on farm subsidies as on international health aid. It spends more than 60 times as much on the military.

MYTH THREE: Saving lives leads to overpopulation.

Going back at least to Thomas Malthus in 1798, people have worried about doomsday scenarios in which food supply can't keep up with population growth. This kind of thinking has gotten the world in a lot of trouble. Anxiety about the size of the world population has a dangerous tendency to override concern for the human beings who make up that population.

Letting children die now so they don't starve later isn't just heartless. It also doesn't work, thank goodness.

It may be counterintuitive, but the countries with the most death have among the fastest-growing populations in the world. This is because the women in these countries tend to have the most births too.

I largely edited out most of that article but the link gives you the full picture.

 

[KevanG]

There's always been a gap between poor and rich and there always will be. Even in Star Trek which is held up to be nearly the perfection of what we could achieve still had a gap. The high mucky mucks in Starfleet always got the best rides and invites to the best places and most attention where the regular folks used public transportation and lived like they do now, just much cooler.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Who thinks we'll achieve Technological Singularity in the future?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

Ray Kurzweil: The Coming Singularity
[YT]1uIzS1uCOcE[/YT]

It's inevitable.

The only question is if it will take 25 years or 50.

I think there will be a race toward advanced artificial intelligence as nations seek a competitive advantage. This will result in machines so smart they can upgrade themselves. Soon after every complex human problem will be easily solvable.

 

[KevanG]

We really need to program them to be nice to us once they take over. That way it's less Terminator and more Matrix.

 

[Pink Ranger]

Has everyone here seen Elysium? Thats how we are going to wind up.

Have you ever read Philip k. Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch? It describes a world that's kind of like Elysium in reverse.

I think it will be a situation where the Earth will become intolerable to live on unless you are rich, meaning the less privileged will be compelled or forced to live offworld, and endure the worse conditions and higher mortality rates that come with that. Similar to how immigration has worked throughout Earth's history.

 

[NickNitro]

Could it be possible that our future will be soo inconceivable that any one of our ideas, from scientists, SciFi creators, are soo off base that when it happens we'll be completely unprepared?

Have you ever read Philip k. Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch? It describes a world that's kind of like Elysium in reverse.

I think it will be a situation where the Earth will become intolerable to live on unless you are rich, meaning the less privileged will be compelled or forced to live offworld, and endure the worse conditions and higher mortality rates that come with that. Similar to how immigration has worked throughout Earth's history.

No I haven't but that is extremely interesting. The rich would just ship out the general public into the cosmos to fend for themselves? Man that's rough.

 

[KevanG]

It's not like it hasn't happened before. Look at the science fiction from the 30's to the 60's. They had guesses going in so many directions that most of them are incredibly funny to look back on. Some were scarily accurate but many were totally out there but you could see why they thought that way and how we might have been able to take that path.