Envisioning the world of 2100

[YellowSubmarine]

The idea that you can endlessly extrapolate from a short period of our development is absurd. When we approach the physical limits of the universe with our technologies, the exponential growth will hit a stone wall. Even if that doesn't happen, if aliens came and gave us a technology that's a billion years ahead of us, the exponential curve will commit suicide and eat her own babies.

The whole idea that anything looks exponential, therefore it must be exponential, is flawed. If we applied that to human population, which doubles in 50 years, we'd be 2 trillion by 2400. A curious fact, but a logistic curve looks exactly like an exponential one, together with an infinite number of other curves. The only thing that makes you favour the exponential is Occam's razor – it's simpler. Well, in this case, it's just too simple to fit even what we know.

There are physical limits both in the direction of miniaturisation, and in the direction of scale. There's a hard limit set by plank distance, plank time and the numbers of particle in the universe. You can never ever go beyond that. Even if those limits can be broken, you will probably just reach another one. Your best option to somehow witness endless exponential advancement is if you got extinct every time you hit the wall, thereby surviving only by the virtue of quantum immortality in a universe where the wall doesn't exist, and this doesn't sound comforting at all regardless of whether MWI makes sense or not.

[throwback]

As for knowing everything, we would need a computer that could process to the 10 x 123. However, according to one scientist, the most advanced computer could process to 10 x90. The difference between these two numbers represents what we will never know.

I have a prediction: At the most basic level, there will be humans who live, who work, and who love in 2100.

[Carcazoid]

I bet we still don't have a dang flyin' car like we were promised.

[Crazy Eddie]

B.J. wrote:

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<pedantic> The year 2100 is still in the 21st century, not the 22nd. </pendantic>

No it IS the 22nd century. Years are measured as floating point values, not integers.

YellowSubmarine wrote:

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The idea that you can endlessly extrapolate from a short period of our development is absurd. When we approach the physical limits of the universe with our technologies, the exponential growth will hit a stone wall. Even if that doesn't happen, if aliens came and gave us a technology that's a billion years ahead of us, the exponential curve will commit suicide and eat her own babies.

The whole idea that anything looks exponential, therefore it must be exponential, is flawed. If we applied that to human population, which doubles in 50 years, we'd be 2 trillion by 2400. A curious fact, but a logistic curve looks exactly like an exponential one, together with an infinite number of other curves. The only thing that makes you favour the exponential is Occam's razor – it's simpler. Well, in this case, it's just too simple to fit even what we know.

There are physical limits both in the direction of miniaturisation, and in the direction of scale. There's a hard limit set by plank distance, plank time and the numbers of particle in the universe. You can never ever go beyond that. Even if those limits can be broken, you will probably just reach another one. Your best option to somehow witness endless exponential advancement is if you got extinct every time you hit the wall, thereby surviving only by the virtue of quantum immortality in a universe where the wall doesn't exist, and this doesn't sound comforting at all regardless of whether MWI makes sense or not.

People get easily dazzled by technology these days, when all they're really looking at is a sudden orgasm of technological progress that occurred really in the last sixty years or so. There's nothing to indicate this is anything more than an industrial growth spurt that won't eventually plateau and remain relatively static with only minor improvements for the next couple of centuries (which is pretty much what happened after the paradigm shifts in the bronze age, the iron age and the opening of the industrial age). IOW, we're at the very beginning of the Silicon Age and we think we've got it all figured out; we're probably another two hundred years short of the Utility Age where all of our technology is converted to programmable swarms of virus-sized robots.

For 2100, I am making three predictions
1) Rich people will get richer
2) Poor people will get poorer
3) The United States of America will collapse into a puff of irony.

[T'Girl]

newtype_alpha wrote:

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For 2100, I am making three predictions
1) Rich people will get richer
2) Poor people will get poorer
3) The United States of America will collapse into a puff of irony.

By the year 2100 (last year of the 21st century), the entire world will be what we current call "developed," as in the developed world.

1) The rich will be richer still.
2) The middle class will be rich.
3) The (majority of the) poor will be middle class. But for political reasons will continue to call themselves the poor.
4) A small number of the poor still won't have figured out the system, and will be actually "poor."

If the United States still exists in 2050, it will remain in existence is 2100. If it has effectively disappeared by 2050 then what will be present in 2100 will be a balkanized land mass of pocket welfare states barely hanging on, situated right next to multiple small, wealthy, well armed super powers.

[Admiral Buzzkill]

A lot like the world of 1900, and that's if we're lucky.

Some people will have gadgets they're attached to and that occupy their time, though.

[RoJoHen]

I find it impossible to pretend to have any idea what the world will be like 100 years from now.

All I have to do is pretend that I lived 100 years ago and ask myself the same question. What will the world be like in the year 2000? The world has changed so much in the last 100 years. Advents in technology alone have been absolutely incredible. I can't even begin to imagine what will come in the 100 years to follow.

[Crazy Eddie]

T'Girl wrote:

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By the year 2100 (last year of the 21st century), the entire world will be what we current call "developed," as in the developed world.

1) The rich will be richer still.
2) The middle class will be rich.
3) The (majority of the) poor will be middle class. But for political reasons will continue to call themselves the poor.
4) A small number of the poor still won't have figured out the system, and will be actually "poor."

If the United States still exists in 2050, it will remain in existence is 2100. If it has effectively disappeared by 2050 then what will be present in 2100 will be a balkanized land mass of pocket welfare states barely hanging on, situated right next to multiple small, wealthy, well armed super powers.

Are you really not aware that your first set of predictions is utterly inconsistent with the second?

[Ryan8bit]

YellowSubmarine wrote:

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The only thing that makes you favour the exponential is Occam's razor – it's simpler. Well, in this case, it's just too simple to fit even what we know.

I don't think that's really Occam's razor. It's not just about picking what's simplest, but on what makes the least amount of wild assumptions. I'd say a logarithmic curve makes less assumptions, and an exponential curve makes too many.

Regardless, even if the predictions of when it happens are on a slightly different curve, that doesn't rule that level of technology out. There are many more problems with the concept of a singularity, mostly with the correlation that processing power equals intelligence.

[Cutter John]

I have to side with Newtype. I suspect the US will go the way of 18th century France, or Blade Runners future. The rich and powerful living behind walls or atop tall buildings in luxury, while the rest of us struggle just to survive while supporting them.

I miss the days when I was young and still optimistic about the future.

[YellowSubmarine]

Ryan8bit wrote:

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I don't think that's really Occam's razor. It's not just about picking what's simplest, but on what makes the least amount of wild assumptions. I'd say a logarithmic curve makes less assumptions, and an exponential curve makes too many.

I guess you mean logistic, since a logarithmic curve is identical to an exponential curve with switched axes. A logistic dependency is more complex, making more assumptions, by all counts:
- A logistic dependency is just like an exponential dependency with saturation accounted for. The former assumes there's saturation, the latter doesn't.
- The formula is more complex to write, the curve is more complex to draw.
- When generalised, it has more parameters.
- The exponent is the mathematical function. It's pretty much the simplest and it is pretty much everywhere.
- And most of all: A logistic function has an exponential function in its definition.

A logistic curve is simpler than an exponential curve in the same way that crashing on Mercury unaided is simpler than landing on Mercury with retrorockets – not at all. It's the latter that assumes the rockets will actually fire.

[T'Girl]

newtype_alpha wrote:

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Are you really not aware that your first set of predictions is utterly inconsistent with the second?

How so? The first prediction is world wide, the second involves only the US. If we continue to exist as a nation things will be good, consistent with the world wide prediction.

If the nation dissolves, then portions will succeed, while others will be worse off, but will still be "developed" by the current meaning, but at the same time struggling in comparison to their neighbors. Think UK and Germany, verses Greece and Spain.

[Crazy Eddie]

T'Girl wrote:

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How so? The first prediction is world wide, the second involves only the US. If we continue to exist as a nation things will be good, consistent with the world wide prediction.

Which is just a complicated way of saying "Everything will get better... unless it doesn't."

[Ryan8bit]

YellowSubmarine wrote:

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A logistic curve is simpler than an exponential curve in the same way that crashing on Mercury unaided is simpler than landing on Mercury with retrorockets – not at all. It's the latter that assumes the rockets will actually fire.

It's not about simplicity. That's not what Occam's Razor says. It's about making the least amount of assumptions.

One thing that we see in many different aspects of the world is growth eventually plateauing. We don't see a whole lot that just keeps on exponentially growing. With that knowledge, a logistic curve (not logarithmic, my bad) is the one that most commonly occurs. That doesn't make it right, but it is more probable than exponential, which makes too many assumptions, and most of all invokes something similar to the gambler's fallacy.

[Robert Maxwell]

An exponential curve assumes endless advancement of technology and infinite resources. That alone makes it highly suspect. Technology can only advance to the extent that resources allow, and we are approaching a crunch in numerous resources over the next several generations: oil, fresh water, phosphates, rare earth metals, the list goes on. A logistic curve therefore makes plenty of sense. It is foolish to think our technological growth will never top out.