Where will humanity be in the next 10 years?

[The End]

Hell, I'll do the math according to Moore's Law.

By 2022, according to Moore's Law, there will be a commercially available computer with *drumroll*

15, 000, 000, 000 transistors.

You have to be just a tad shortsighted not to see the implications of that sort of leap in computer power.

 

[SuperFerret]

Replace "a tad shortsighted" with "someone who isn't remotely computer savvy enough to know what a transistor does" and yeah.

 

[SuperFerret]

Also, having that technology isn't really that big a deal at this point. Having more powerful computers isn't enough. It's what will be done with it that does. Take your social media point, for example. Social media has exploded in usage since 2004, and yeah, sometimes it's come in handy like in the Egyptian protests you cited as an example, but let's face it, most of social media is used for dicking around, and not anything remotely useful to humanity. So, yeah, technology will be better, but humanity will be as it has always been.

 

[Teelie]

Where will humanity be at lunchtime?

Hopefully eating lunch.

 

[The End]

Also, having that technology isn't really that big a deal at this point. Having more powerful computers isn't enough. It's what will be done with it that does. Take your social media point, for example. Social media has exploded in usage since 2004, and yeah, sometimes it's come in handy like in the Egyptian protests you cited as an example, but let's face it, most of social media is used for dicking around, and not anything remotely useful to humanity. So, yeah, technology will be better, but humanity will be as it has always been.

What does that even mean?

We used to die in our 20s and 30s as an average life expectancy. Now its in the 80s and getting higher.

Education, health, access to energy, all of these and more, have improved dramatically - completely different from the 1800s, and even over the last 10 years these things have gotten better.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, we lived in caves and painted on walls; but even 200 years ago the average daily life of a human being was completely different than what it is now.

I don't know what you mean when you say humanity has always been the same. Take a person from the 18th century and plant them almost anywhere in the world and they wouldn't recognize anything of our civilization and society.

 

[SuperFerret]

Details, man, details.

Humanity has always been the same. If you don't understand that humans will always be lazy, self-centered, distrustful and violent, then I can't help you. The question you're asking here is not "Where will humanity be?" It's "What will the world around us be like?" or "Where will civilization be technologically?"

 

[MrMaooz]

Society changes, but people remain the same.

 

[The End]

Look, you can't pound your chest on declarations of an eternal unchanging nature of humanity and state it as fact; its completely ignorant.

The only constant on human nature is that it changes. When once people believed the Earth to be thousands of years old and the Earth to be the centre of the Universe, that changed. When once people believed other races to be lesser, that changed. When once slavery was common and accepted, that changed. When once child labour in the west was common and accepted, that changed.

You're stating profound ignorances and trying to state them as 'common sense'; when every single indicator for tracking the progress of human well being shows that you're wrong, and by a huge factor. 'Humans don't change' is an utterly vacuous, demonstrably ridiculous statement considering our place in history, how much we understand about the universe and our place in it that we didn't understand before, how much we understand about morality that we didn't understand before, and how much more literate and healthy people are when they weren't before. Facts. You can take your empty declarative statements and shove them. They're steeped in ignorance.

We did not spawn into the 21st Century with everything that we know just as it is.

 

[Superwoman Prime]

Details, man, details.

Be very careful with lines like these. They can be thrown back in your face.

Humanity has always been the same. If you don't understand that humans will always be lazy, self-centered, distrustful and violent, then I can't help you. The question you're asking here is not "Where will humanity be?" It's "What will the world around us be like?" or "Where will civilization be technologically?"

Technology doesn't affect people, and never will?

 

[The End]

Replace "a tad shortsighted" with "someone who isn't remotely computer savvy enough to know what a transistor does" and yeah.

This is the problem. Willful ignorance. You have more access to information than any ancestor before you and you completely squander that opportunity. Now I'm not saying that you have to become an expert in the field of computer science; but just a little reading goes a long way, and I specifically took the time to lay out a lot of what this means, even with video descriptions, on the very first page of this thread.

If there is a problem with human nature, willful ignorance is a prime example of that problem.

People giving opinions all the time on matters that they haven't spent 1 second to actually read up on. The first, uninformed, prejudiced opinion is good enough. Well, no, it isn't good enough - we can do a lot better, we live in the information age.

 

[Superwoman Prime]

The internet is clearly for dicking around.

Online classes? Learning professions? Finding missing persons faster than ever? Naw. Doesn't happen in SuperFerret's Little Bizarro World.

Technological advancement doesn't amount to anything. Medicine has remained stagnant for thousands of years.

And we still live in huts.

 

[SuperFerret]

Be very careful with lines like these. They can be thrown back in your face.



Technology doesn't affect people, and never will?

Not on the level I'm talking about, no. You get the same kinds of people regardless of the technological level of the time.

This is the problem. Willful ignorance. You have more access to information than any ancestor before you and you completely squander that opportunity. Now I'm not saying that you have to become an expert in the field of computer science; but just a little reading goes a long way, and I specifically took the time to lay out a lot of what this means, even with video descriptions, on the very first page of this thread.

If there is a problem with human nature, willful ignorance is a prime example of that problem.

People giving opinions all the time on matters that they haven't spent 1 second to actually read up on. The first, uninformed, prejudiced opinion is good enough. Well, no, it isn't good enough - we can do a lot better, we live in the information age.

Ooohh... I'm sorry for not knowing what a transistor is, it's not really something that comes up in my day to day life, and is pretty much not something I need to know. (Good news about the information age, everything is a Google search away, so if I wanted to know, I could look it up.)

And that initial opinion is good enough, because (1) this debate and our opinions on the matter of the hypothetical thought experiment you've offered don't matter, as history is going to unfold regardless of the outcome, and (2) we're talking about two completely different things here, and your point on willful ignorance is spot on. Look at history, look at the people. The surroundings change, but the people don't, not at their core.

 

[SuperFerret]

The internet is clearly for dicking around.

Online classes? Learning professions? Finding missing persons faster than ever? Naw. Doesn't happen in SuperFerret's Little Bizarro World.

Technological advancement doesn't amount to anything. Medicine has remained stagnant for thousands of years.

And we still live in huts.

Just because you can use your hand to give a thumbs up, doesn't mean that giving thumbs ups are it's primary usage. Twitter can be used to organize protests and spread important news messages, but it's mostly used for nonsense.

 

[The End]

Ooohh... I'm sorry for not knowing what a transistor is, it's not really something that comes up in my day to day life, and is pretty much not something I need to know.

Yet you felt the need to comment on the thread anyway; and make vague, nonsense statements like "people don't change at their core". If people are more literate and healthy now than they've ever been (and they are), then what on Earth are you talking about? You can keep your claim vague and undefined and pat yourself on the back for 'common sense' sounding statements that mean nothing. People clearly do change. There exist people who's ancestors were slavers, who themselves would never dream of inflicting such a thing on another human being. Of course people change. It's evolution. And our nature reflects the environment we're in; and our environment is ever changing due to improving technologies. I'm not just disturbed by how empty your statements are but the level of certainty in which you give them.

This can be an interesting discussion but you're not really adding anything to it.

 

[SuperFerret]

And?

 

[Superwoman Prime]

The environment alters us as a species. And we alter the environment.

Your argument that humans remain fundamentally what they have always been. . . is utterly false.

 

[The End]

All the indicators show that we change.

Maybe I'm being too harsh but overly cynical/pessimistic people (particularly the ones that don't seem to be basing their opinions on something definitive) really annoy me. I mean truly, its a big irritation. I hypothesize that such people use it as a cover for something else. But no real way to test that.

Anyway, moving on.

I'm watching Her (2014). Interesting movie.

 

[Superwoman Prime]

Need to watch that sometime. Speaking of becoming emotionally invested in AI:

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

Though designed strictly as a mechanism to support "natural language conversation" with a computer,[9] ELIZA's DOCTOR script was found to be surprisingly successful in eliciting emotional responses from users who, in the course of interacting with the program, began to ascribe understanding and motivation to the program's output.[10] As Weizenbaum later wrote, "I had not realized ... that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_effect#cite_note-Weizenbaum1-11

 

[Superwoman Prime]

Think of the political implications of advanced AI. Android Rights are bound to be an issue even if hyper-conservatives want to argue against the possibility of androids possessing sentience, higher thinking, etc.

Debates will rage on the definition of consciousness. But ironically, the ELIZA Effect renders it beside the point.

 

[The End]

That's a pretty interesting. Man, people are going to have such strange reactions even just over the next few years as natural language understanding in computers get better. Willing to bet people will start arguing that computers have sentience and can feel long before they actually do (if they ever do).

Her (2014) was an interesting film but I don't think it would go down exactly like that. I think if they could create an AI I don't think they'd limit it to an OS on a desktop computer they'd HAVE to give it the ability to sense and interact with the physical world around it. Her was very touching, anyways.

 

[Thundercrack85]

Once more I think people are being overly optimistic / unrealistic.

Or Kurzweilian.

Most of these emerging technologies will need more time.

 

[Spider-Fan83]

you have more faith in humanity then I do, if you think we'll still be around in 10 years

 

[The End]

The only real thing I'm unsure about is AI. Other technologies, like tactile virtual reality, seem very feasible.

 

[The End]

you have more faith in humanity then I do, if you think we'll still be around in 10 years

If I had a dolla for every person that thought the world was ending in their lifetimes ... !

 

[Silvermoth]

I reckon self driving cars will almost be ready by then. People will be seriously talking about how to build roads and enhance use ability expecting them to come by then