Envisioning the world of 2100
- Thread starter RAMA
- Start date
They change it back two years later.
Human civilization has collapsed and we are all ruled by Apes who have been made super intelligent by human scientific experiments.
Orang-Utans sip on earl grey tea and nibble on crumpets served on silver trays by human servants who wear sarongs.
Chimpanzees go to funfair where they fling feces at a chance of dunking humans in water.
Gorillas make young human adults wear diapers and teach humans sign language.
I bow to our future Ape overlords !
Orang-Utans sip on earl grey tea and nibble on crumpets served on silver trays by human servants who wear sarongs.
Chimpanzees go to funfair where they fling feces at a chance of dunking humans in water.
Gorillas make young human adults wear diapers and teach humans sign language.
I bow to our future Ape overlords !
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I know you guys are just having fun, but how about actually discussing the linked article?
What, you can't just look for something that interests you and discuss it? I'm not asking for a research paper here, just less spam.
Optimistic, I'll give you that (especially the FTL part).
But I've never been really keen on the "trans-humanism" bit.
But I've never been really keen on the "trans-humanism" bit.
I wouldn't make many predictions that far out, because each decade out adds more uncertainties. 2030 isn't too hard to envision, and perhaps we could hit 50/50 predicting 2050.
For a few predictions, the world will probably switch mostly to thorium power or fusion, with few additions to hydro-electric. Solar and wind might peak in the not-too-distant future, as they'll remain more expensive in maintenance and land area and are hard to harden against natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes. IR laser power beamed from space is another possibility.
Science, technology, and medicine will obviously advance by leaps and bounds.
Almost all of the world will have advanced to the washing machine and gas cooker stage of technology (a very important milestone that frees up enormous labor).
Western Europe will include several small Muslim countries, and perhaps France itself will face a Muslim majority - or there will have been another nasty war.
The leader of North Korea will be Kim something something.
For a few predictions, the world will probably switch mostly to thorium power or fusion, with few additions to hydro-electric. Solar and wind might peak in the not-too-distant future, as they'll remain more expensive in maintenance and land area and are hard to harden against natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes. IR laser power beamed from space is another possibility.
Science, technology, and medicine will obviously advance by leaps and bounds.
Almost all of the world will have advanced to the washing machine and gas cooker stage of technology (a very important milestone that frees up enormous labor).
Western Europe will include several small Muslim countries, and perhaps France itself will face a Muslim majority - or there will have been another nasty war.
The leader of North Korea will be Kim something something.
If a child born today will be 88 in 2100, that child will have had an entire life to make the world a better place in 2100. It's his responsibility, not ours. The generation in power has to make sure things don't get FUBAR between now and 2020. The generation after that has to keep things intact until ~2050 and even the generation mentioned in the OP will really only be in control until ~2080. The succeeding generations will have a far better understanding of the needs of their time than we will. Our best thinking could create massive problems down the road. Choking, sooty pollution used to be viewed as a good thing, a symbol of productivity and advanced technology less than a century ago.
It's fine to think about the future, but thinking there is a lot we can do, aside from climate change mitigation, is false. Also, futurists need to really get off the idea of "exponentially faster" development. There will be no singularity.
It's fine to think about the future, but thinking there is a lot we can do, aside from climate change mitigation, is false. Also, futurists need to really get off the idea of "exponentially faster" development. There will be no singularity.
I can't speak for STR, but I expect energy and resource crises to put the brakes on this "exponential growth" idea. What we are doing is simply not sustainable, and any notion that we will reach the Singularity in time to avoid the effects of such shortages is little more than fantasy.
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.
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.
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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.
I have a prediction: At the most basic level, there will be humans who live, who work, and who love in 2100.
No it IS the 22nd century. Years are measured as floating point values, not integers.
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.
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.
