Stephen Hawking Asks The Internet a Question 1171
An anonymous reader writes "Dr. Stephen Hawking received about 15000 answers to a question he posted 2 days ago on Yahoo Answers. His question was 'How can the human race survive the next hundred years?'." I imagine you can do better than 'It Can't.' How would you answer Dr. Hawking's question?
Your Answer, Stephen (Score:5, Insightful)
'How can the human race survive the next hundred years?'
Birthcontrol, ween of dependence on high energy consumption and colonise the solar system, because we sure aren't going to get along forever on this rock alone.
Educate the World (Score:5, Insightful)
Given those three issues, it seems probable that we may not make it another hundred years without severe loss of life. I don't think the loss of life will be complete with the death of all humans but I think there is a high probability for a large loss of our populations in one country or another. I don't mean thousands like natural disasters but I mean a hundred million or more.
We'll survive, just not at a luxury like we've known. Honestly, if a lot of major religions and their leaders could start coming to terms with each other. You know, make it so that it's not like a death sentence when you don't believe in God or Allah? You could also reveal to everyone that our leaders should be more like Gandhi and less like Hitler. That would probably help with those first two problems. In every country, to be a successful politician you need a lot of financial support. Unfortunately, the ideal people leading us are those with no interest in padding their own pockets.
As for the third problem you listed, we're screwed. We're screwed because our numbers are reaching epic proportions that the earth cannot sustain and there's really no way around it aside from birth control. I don't support enforced birth control as far as the Chinese have taken it but you have to admit it certainly curbed their population growth rate. If nature fails us or vice versa, things will be pretty bad though I doubt we would become extinct entirely.
Of course, there are an infinite number of universes and I'm sure there exists one which doesn't have any of those three problems
*loads a bullet into the chamber of his handgun*
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:2, Insightful)
Jaysyn
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:2, Insightful)
Simple (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
One Day at a Time (Score:5, Insightful)
There have been plenty of forecasters of doom saying that the earth would run out of space, food, energy and whatnot and the population continues to expand.
We'll muddle our way through the next 100 years just like we have the few thousand prior to this one.
Re:Educate the World (Score:5, Insightful)
Small Scale (Score:4, Insightful)
Talk about a vague question (Score:5, Insightful)
If he wants a more detailed answer than that, he should ask a more detailed question. As any historian can tell you, the "social, political, and environmental chaos" he refers to is absolutely nothing new. The only difference between then and now is that our toys are bigger and shinier.
Pick any period in human history, and I think you'll find that it's easy to define "social, political, and environmental chaos" that worked against the residents of the period. In fact, the conditions that humans have found acceptable in past periods of history are regularly referred to as "squalor" in this day and age. Yet there are precious few examples of civilizations that were wiped out by such conditions.
Yes, the human race makes a lot of messes. Sometimes we stumble across messes that aren't our own doing. Any way you cut it, though, humans will always react to a problem before it reaches the level of self-destruction. Our instict for survival is too strong to do otherwise.
Don't underestimate us (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:2, Insightful)
You got one right out of three - congratulations !
No, I do not see colonization of anything without high energy consumption. Most things you do in space would require gobs of power - whether it comes from your own nuclear source or Sun is immaterial.
As for birthcontrol - why (unless the couple is not ready for children yet..)?? Space is just that - space, lots of it. With asteroid belt having an entire planet disassembled into small nice pieces with huge surface area.
Global feritlity crisis (Score:3, Insightful)
Exacerbating this is the profile of who is reproducing. In our welfare state, we pay the least functional and arguably least intelligent segments of our population (this is not racist - 75% of welfare recipients are not african americans) to sit around and breed. The only part of the population demographic that is growing is the poor and dependent.
The crisis of the next 100 years will not be global warming or toxic waste or nuclear fallout. It will be vast armies of stupid belligerent parasites with their hands out demanding to be fed and clothed by a shrinking pool of intelligent functional human beings.
The next world crisis is the crisis of de-evolution!
To survive, we must institute emergency programs of tax relief and education to encourage intelligent people to BREED, for the sake of humanity.
It can't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes the correct answer is really boring.
Re:simplicity (Score:5, Insightful)
but I think that consumption purely for the sake of consumption is our biggest problem.
I vehemently disagree. Messes are a problem, not consumption. Why do we have this new puritanism taking over in certain places? I don't want conservation. I want to live in a Utopia of plentiful abundance, and there is no intrinsic reason why we can't have it.
The solution to all our problems is more technology, not less. You claim to be a "metropolitan technologist", but you appear to be a "guilty metropolitan technologist". Well, I say we shed the guilt and embrace civilization. We just need to make being less messy a higher priority.
Female education + extreme sports (Score:1, Insightful)
Second, provide free extreme sports for guys between the ages of 15 and 25, without safety equipment.
My answer.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Humanity has shown itself capable of adapting to an incredible variety of situations, conditions, and hardships. One way or another, I am quite confident that humanity will endure through the next one hundred years.
That being said, the circumstances of this continued survival may be quite different or unpleasant compared to what many people experience today. I believe that humanity needs to come together in a constructive manner and really address some of the many problems we as a species face, from global climate change to the vast poverty, hunger, and disease suffered by much of the world. Until a truly unified approach is taken by all the world's nations, any progress will be piecemeal and incremental.
Alternatively, as you yourself suggested, human colonization of extra-terrestrial worlds by a subset of humanity is an option, however under today's socio-political climate, such an endeavor would likely be limited to a few of the world's more wealthy nations.
Re:Educate the World (Score:2, Insightful)
And it will probably be around 40 when you realize just how dumb you were in high school.
How about do nothing? (Score:2, Insightful)
Does anyone really think that there is even the slightest chance of the human race becoming extinct in the next 100 years? (Excepting act of God events like a large asteroid strike or supervolcano) Even the most dire global warming alarmists don't predict the extinction of mankind in the next century.
I expect that in 100 years civilization will look a lot like it does today. India and China will be richer, the US and Europe will be a little poorer and the geeks of the future will have some toys that would make us green with envy.
The real question is, how can any of us reading this survive another 100 years?
Science and Technology (Score:3, Insightful)
I think in the coming century, we'll continue to see the world's population increase. It will come in a different kind of environmental revolution; we won't just be changing the environment around us anymore, we'll start changing the environment in us. We'll become more resilient, self-relient, and broaden the conditions in which we can exist in an enviroment and when that happens, we'll be able to inhabit new places on the globe and start to move beyond.
Humans need a crisis to change (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple (Not Quite) (Score:5, Insightful)
100,000 years ago up until the 1930s, there were no nuclear bombs. We only had technology to inflict localized damage on our fellow man and planet. Now there are enough nukes to wreck the planet, advancement in biology such that we now have the capability to create biological weapons on a wide scale. Also, in the last 200 and 300 years, industrial society has exploded and we've seen rapid deforestation and ecological carelessness on a massively wide scale.
The situation is vastly different, and failing to acknowledge that is naive.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:simplicity (Score:4, Insightful)
I feel we need to raise the price of items to make it more economical to fix it than to trash it, or simply tax the item to make it cheaper to fix then to trash.
-- tim
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:simplicity (Score:4, Insightful)
What is that?
Plentiful food, a place to stay, and little to no threat of death?
Take a look around. Plenty of housed, fat, old people, and getting fatter and older!
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
Although the only way to make it really work would be to have forced abortions a la the Chinese authoritarian state.
There is an easier, and far more traditional solution. Have a war.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:4, Insightful)
Brutal honesty in my opinions here, but one can only assume that of that 10-14b, anywhere from 5-7b will be Muslim, 8-9b will live in countries currently engaged in either international or civil war, hundreds of millions will die each year of famine or genocide, global consumption of natural resources will more than double the levels they are now, wars will be fought over clean water (on top of other natural resources) and the distribution of wealth will be equally unevenly distributed as it is now - if not more.
To boot, major population areas will sustain the majority of growth, leaving sparsley populated areas still sparsely populated. Realization of the down-side of peak oil will have long hit, we will have seen poverty strike hard due to a crash in the international economy, etc., etc.
It's a grim outlook for sure. Certain populations aren't sustaining because quality of life is increasing, and people are not doing their part having their 2.5 children to sustain growth. Poverty usually sees upticks in populations (as do post-war times).
But with an acknowledgement of global warming but no plan to combat it, no centralized focus on greener technologies including renewable energy, increasing poverty, stupidly fast industrialization of nations that sustain world-majority populations, and wars still being fought based on religion - where can anyone expect to be in 50 years?
I certainly hope for a better future than this. But I live in the wealthy, greedy, oil-hungry 300m-person United States. My country accounts for shitloads of wealth with less than 1/12 of the population of the earth. I'm sure I'll be better off than anyone living in the middle east, China, India, etc.
On top of that, the following things will come to pass: realization and fighting over natural resources as we can only sustain growth in China and India for so long; a conflict and resolution concerning North Korea, and so on.
Oh, and the US may lose it's position as the world market leader... but that seems inevitable at this point in time too.
Re:simplicity (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:2, Insightful)
With only a few exceptions religions purport the idea of being kind to one another and living in peace and harmony, yet even to this day religion has been the largest source of death and despair this planet has ever seen. From crusades, to jihads...religion continues to be the single largest point of friction in this world, because it always promotes the idea that it's followers are different and more important and special than anyone else...
Um, no. The answer is more sex and more children (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh my god talk about hyperbole and idiotic moderators. The human race isn't going to die out. I mean come on. There may well be a few billion deaths, but there are billions more humans on the planet so lets face it, we're not facing a global extinction event...
The question you should be asking is how do I make sure that my family are the survivors in the coming tough times... Make sure the genes continue.
Only 100 years? Trick question! (Score:3, Insightful)
The human race has evolved in such a way that now we are capable of really fucking up the planet and eventually extinguishing all life on it. But let's see what mechanisms we have for that.
On one hand, we have nuclear weapons of gargantuan power. If we start a nuclear war, we can easily kill half of the population and make life incredibly miserable for those who survive... but wait, that implies that billions of people will actually survive, so the race isn't really eliminated.
We have also produced technology that is capable of affecting the planet in a serious, perhaps irreversible way. The effect that mostly concerns us now is global warming. Because of our actions the weather may go really wacky, potentially causing the death of millions. The ice caps may melt, slowly sinking a very significant portion of the land, precisely where most of the population lives. But that process will take many, many decades, and even though millions may die, most people will have time to move away. This will cause the overpopulation of the current high lands, with enormously devastating effects. Furthermore, eventually the climate changes may make the planet completely inhabitable (at least by humans), but that will take several centuries to take place. Meanwhile, the human race will survive.
We can go on and on, analysing the different ways that we may fuck up. But we will always find the same answer: in order to actually eliminate the human race we have to make all our habitats inhabitable, and we still can't do that within 100 years from now. We need something like a giant meteor striking the planet or the sun exploding, or some other phenomena out of our control.
My point is: Stephen Hawking is a very smart guy, but this time he managed to make a question that is wrongly formulated:
Duh, how can the human race not survive the next hundred years?
Re:simplicity (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Simple (Not Quite) (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems that many people interpreted the question (as may have been intended) to be: "How can the human race survive the next 100 years and come out the other end comfortable and thriving?"
Well, let's think about that. Pick any 100 year span in history. I would bet that, at the end of any 100 year span, most of humanity is merely surviving in really adverse and sucky conditions. A small fraction of the whole of humanity actually thrives. That is as true today as ever.
Maybe the question should rightly be interpreted as "How can the small fraction of humanity which is today thriving continue to thrive through the next 100 years and never mind the people who are already scrabbling for survival today." Because that's really the only question anyone has ever truly asked.
What's up with Stephen Hawking? (Score:3, Insightful)
Einstein's Answer (Score:2, Insightful)
How do you promote this kind of compassion? Can you teach it in a school? We need to care about our communities but instead we have become more and more isolated.
Re:Global feritlity crisis (Score:3, Insightful)
Children are not expensive unless the parents make it so. It is possible for two people to have two incomes without the large overhead of day care. It is not necessary to live in a 4 bedroom, 3,000 sq. ft. home, drive two $35,000 cars, and sacrifice further to send children to private schools or college. My personal experience has shown me that the single largest impact in a child's life is the role model provided by the child's parents. Being the spawn of two relatively poor parents and forgoing many luxuries for 18 years, I can say it was worth it for me. Raising children to be honest, strong, and independent gives them the skills they need to make a decent life on their own as an adult.
I respect my friends that never had children, and envy them in a way. I can also state that now, at the age of 46, I've catching up with them. I have a beautiful home (just purchased a year ago), a great job, and wonderful friendships with my now adult kids. My retirement may not be as high, but by the time I'm 65 I'll have plenty in my 401k and won't care about Social Security or Medicare. I can now travel and look forward to the next 30 years of my life with great anticipation.
The comment about dying a little is just mean spirited. You don't die for your children, you live for them and through them. Sacrifice?? Selfish people sacrifice, generous people give without expecting anything back. My 19 year old daughter has brought more life into my life than I thought possible, and helped me to understand what it is like to feel 19 years old at my age. And laugh at those around me who die each day because they refuse to live.
By all means, if you don't like children and don't want to raise them, follow through on your desires. If you view raising of children as a sacrifice, you will probably resent them and have no end to your troubles and they will also resent you.
Just don't belittle others for their choices.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
And when our resources are exhausted the planet will blow up? No, we will still be here, and when it gets closer to resource being exhausted things will happen. It is not an optimal situation to do it last minute, but when we are truly almost "out" of oil the cost of recycling tires and leeching shale will be financially viable (just 2 examples). It is just going to get more expensive and people will start demanding that our corporate overlords start innovating when the price is right.
In a word... (Score:3, Insightful)
Enjoy Soylent Physicist, now with anti-oxidants!
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
However, the Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Hindi, and Buddhist faiths in many ways were developed as a way to cope with the inequities, privation, brutality and sufferings of our civilization. They weren't so much for explaining natural phenomena (though some of that exists in each of them) they were to try to keep people sane and give them hope. Unfortunately, coping with a system that doesn't work is not a good thing. Religion has soothed us and forestalled our dealing with foundational cultural problems that are now threatening to destroy our species.
In other words, I view the revealed religions not as a necessary development for our species to survive, but a necessary development for our species to endure the system it set up for itself in our anthro-centric agrarian society. And a system this flawed should not be endured, it should be scrapped in favor of another attempt. But it appears we will endure it long enough to destroy ourselves. If we somehow came to realize as a species that this is the only world that matters, perhaps we would belatedly at least try to start over and treat this world with the respect it deserves.
The problem as I see it is that we still live according to a civilizational system that is hopeless. There simply is no way for our species to survive in this system. It has to be thrown out entirely and we have to build a new system which reevaluates our place in relation to our habitat. I don't claim to know what system might work, but I'm fairly certain it would involve removing mankind from the center of the universe and placing us instead as mere participants in, instead of rulers of, the world.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
incredibly depressing (Score:3, Insightful)
If the first fifty posts here constitutes our "best and brightest" the human race is doomed for certain. Majority of the posts mention "population". Haven't our attitudes toward population created the majority of our present mess in the first place? And what lever do we have to influence population (and global distribution of wealth), over such a short time window (four generations), that doesn't light more fires than it puts out? Certainly population must be *understood* to formulate any useful ideas, but that's about as far as wisdom dictates.
What I believe must happen is that we come up with many thousands of small ideas that do more to put out fires than start them. Even if you chase a non-convergent series across the x-axis, it isn't going to stay put long enough to matter.
The real thinking involves determining which kinds of interventions are convergent (on average, to a best guess, or with good prospects surrounding constuctive failure--the mine fields of good intentions abound) and which interventions are not (and not necessarily through any fault of their own, but with full acceptance of how "each of us is smarter than all of us" and all that poster-slogan implies).
If I were to reason by analogy to the manifest failures of the human condition that lead us to this point in time, I would guess that the easy redemption slips through our fingers as it always does. We'll end up in the situation where the solution or its mechanisms are fully understood, but the news of the solution is perpetually one step behind the shock front it could have mitigated.
I see this shaping up as a foot race between human resourcefulness and ingenuity and the resonating stress fronts: resources, politics, environment.
My view is that we should be focussing our attention on running the best foot race we can possibly run when it comes to crunch time. What are the mechanisms that aid or impinge on this vital capacity?
I'm still contemplating this problem. I have one certain item on my list thus far: the patent system. As the patent system stands, we have routed one of our most potent weapons--our technical ingenuity--across the Manitoba marsh lands (read about the Great Canadian Railway). All the smart people will have constructive ideas, and all of the constructive ideas will be hung up in the patent system, which is bad enough, and the truly reprehensible litigation environment that surrounds it. Did anyone see that remark yesterday that certain personal awards were upheld in the tabacco verdict, while one was overturned because the statute of limitations had expired as the legal system spun its wheels with great precedent and determination into the soft wet sand?
The usual human response is to fix an institution such as our patent and legal system only *after* its liabilities have culminated in catastrophe. The problem is that we can already the future setting up such that the prime catastrophe is the world around us, and the bloody-mindedness of our legal system is just the *secondary* catastrophe that we will soon have the pleasure of addressing after the berms are breached.
That's the kind of circumstance that stretches human resourcefulness to the breaking point at the exact moment in time the human race can least afford it.
In my view, it's a clear failure of the American constitution that the American legal system was not constitutionally mandated to achieve *proactive* self-reform.
And worst of all, the American legal system is being globalized following exactly the same model as the American power grid. Only Quebec had the good sense to DC couple their grid to that horrible mass of wires and dominoes (and do not fail to observe the contributions of the regulatory and legal environment in shaping the engineering decisions and sand-sucking ostrich behaviours).
Presently, through the global treaty process, American legal process is being aggressively exported using the club of economic integration with the world's most consumeristic popu
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
And we really need to get radical governments like Iran, and North Korea to stop wasting their money on arms and military and focus on raising the standard of living in their country. I don't see how North Korea can think having a long range missle is good. So, who are they going to launch it at? The USA? That would be a ticket to getting wiped off the planet for sure.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:2, Insightful)
Drug addicts don't move to cure their addiction. They move to get away from their dealer, who has a financial interest in keeping them hooked. Addicts understand that they will always wake up wanting a fix. That's something considerably more bearable when someone isn't knocking on your door trying to move product.
You're out of your depth, Steve... (Score:3, Insightful)
I cannot understand why war, overpopulation, global warming and other doomsday theories dominate your views on social science. The fact is that intelligence does not make you an authority on anything requiring knowledge outside your sphere.
War
War is, to me, the only thing likely to be the end of civilization besides an extinction level planetary impact, as over time, advances in science increasingly enable us to affect our environment and control energy using the levers of natural law, but whether this can be universalized over time to the extent that a country like North Korea could destroy the usefulness of the entire world to humans and counter attempts by all the others wanting to detect and thwart those efforts is yet to be seen. Getting back to reality, each country has a somewhat static threshold for war which is governed by a combination of roughly three things from the top of my head:
-The resources at hand to fight the war
-The collective will of the populace, as expressed by the sum of all its knowledge, ignorance, logic and insanity
-The will of the leadership, as expressed by the knowledge, ignorance, logic and insanity of the leadership
Sooner or later, however you see it, enough of all of those things erode to the point of being unwilling to continue with war, someone surrenders or is obliterated, and then the population continues to survive despite whatever costs are incurred.
The fact is that civilizations will continue to decide that someone else shouldn't have the freedoms they have, shouldn't exist, or should exist under their rule, and those who would be subject to those whims SHOULD fight! Anyone who says that there should never be war either thinks that fascist countries should always get their way, or thinks that there obviously are no countries that would destroy or take over a peaceful nation. That's just utopian bullshit.
Overpopulation
It is a fact that as a civilization becomes more advanced and established that the birthrate shrinks. We in the united states require immigration even to keep our population growth even with our death rate. How does a 1.5 children per two adults equal population growth? China and Japan are heading towards massive population shrinkage, even to the point of crisis.
Global Warming
I guess I'd rather not go into global warming, but there is debate as to man's level of involvement on that front. Further, the effect is along the lines of lots of death in third world countries, massive shifts in land values leading to lots of bankruptcy in more developed countries, and possibly other natural disasters. There are some theories about how the flora and fauna would be affected, but the earth's mammalian population seems well suited to survive ice ages and climate shift as evidenced by the past.
Fabric of the universe? Sure, go for it. Cause-headed ignorance and feel-good statements only good for warm fuzzies? Leave it to the idiots with the super-short memories.
Re:Globally Ban Religion and Reduce Consumerism (Score:3, Insightful)
Mu (Score:4, Insightful)
What will we do to survive the next hundred years? My answer: we'll keep doing what we've been doing: make new stuff, cure some diseases, find new ways and reasons to kill each other, and overall, everything will more or less balance out, and we'll survive the next 100 years without trying, in any particular way, to survive. I mean, as long as people keep eating and fucking, we'll probably be around.
My personal plan is to keep eating fast food, use the bathroom as needed, enjoy the benefits of modern medicine, and live another ~40 years. I imagine my descendants will do the same, and after a couple rounds of that, we'll be at the 100 year mark, safe and sound.
At a micro level, all humans, individually, will eat food, drink lots of fluids when we get sick, treat injuries, etc.--in other words, do all that human-nature stuff which, almost by definition, living beings do on an individual basis to survive. On a macro level... I don't know, maybe I'll raise my kids and pay some taxes.
As for the question "What can I, J. Random Slashdot User, do to prevent Bush from nuking the world and ending human existence," the answer is "absofuckinglutely nothing." So what's the point of this question again?
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you considered that arrogance could be your opiate?
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: arrogance being an opiate, I'm certain it can be for some. I tend to think that there is some arrogance in atheists, as absolute certainty in the nonexistence of God is probably as foolhardy as absolute certainty (not any evidence). In that sense I think atheists and believers have a lot more in common than they think.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
I expect that when we run out of oil, unless we've developed a good replacement in time, you'll see a mass migration to rural areas.
--- SER
wrong question (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:5, Insightful)
I think your point is valid to some degree but I think its because another inexorable drive has reached critical mass. Technology. Information is available to all and is free. We've developed sophisticated ways of waging war. What once required the might of a country now requires nothing more than some cash and enough dedicated people to fill your average classroom. The BARRIERS TO ENTRY are too low. It makes EVERYONE a threat.
A theory floats around about why we've never heard from another species. It proposes that they all reach a point at which they use their own technology to destroy themselves. In other words, no civilization can survive its own technological advancement past a critical juncture.
We've been on the brink of it since the dawn of the atomic age.
So, in hindsight, the post I originally responded to wasn't too far off. At some point, organized religions are going to have to concede to something else... some other unifying force. However, I don't think banning religion or making it a forceful change is going to work. People have to evolve.
My mom always said not to argue with fools. I never understood what she meant as a child. She explained it to me further - that when you discuss something with someone, you're at the mercy of the person in the group with the least ability to comprehend. The group can only move forward with consensus when that person does so. So in a group, you're not at the mercy of the top of curve so much as at the mercy of those at the bottom. Here in the US, Bush's appeal is somewhat an indication of this.
Not to label religious zealots as fools, but we can't move to another place until the zealots decide, one way or another, to not be zealots anymore.
Re:simplicity (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:4, Insightful)
Wars today are no more frequent than they have been at any point in history, and I expect them to decrease (among developed nations only, because of economic interdependency). Even the worst environmental crisis wouldn't kill *everybody*.
In the worst-case scenarios I see, a pair of world wars* kill millions and melting ice caps displace 1.5 billion living on the worlds seacoasts as we move towards the end of the 21st century. I don't think both are necessarily going to happen, but even if they did that's a far cry from wiping out the species.
Even in the case of a full-on nuclear exchange, places like New Zealand and Madagascar are both low population and not particularly strategically located. Both could become reasonably self sufficient and survive with a fairly large population.
* Two world wars: US-Taiwan-India vs. China and Western Christian nations + Israel vs. Islam. They could happen simultaneously if the India/Pakistan conflict pushes the islamic world into an alliance with China.
A far more relevant question is how can the human race prosper and continue to grow? The fact is, I think it will.
Yes, we are running out of oil. But as the price goes up (and it will), other technologies will become competitive. Coal Gasification is frankly not that far away in economic competitiveness, and it can produce enough petrolem for a couple hundred years. We'll switch to it around the time US gas prices hit $6 or $7 per gallon. That will give us plenty of time for fusion and orbital solar power to become developed. We won't run out of energy.
Global warming will probably screw the 25% of humanity living near the seacoasts. Developed nations will build garganutan coastal dikes, and a billion southeast asians will have to move late in the 21st century. That will suck, but it won't significantly affect the global population.
I frankly doubt major world wars between developed nations. The world economy is far more interdependent than it was in 1936. China and the US can't afford to war with each other because both economies would collapse.
The USA will become the 3rd-largest economy, falling behind China and India both in productivity and in science. Much depends on whether or not America can accept this new position without deciding it needs to kill people over it.
Malthusian disaster scenarios are *always* counterbalanced by market forces. When a resource runs scarce its' price goes up, making alternatives viable and spurring research into alternatives. This will be true of everything from energy to food. The poor will get stuck with the short end of the stick, but that's not exactly new or news.
I think there will probably be some nasty terrorist incidents as nuclear and biological technology becomes cheaper and more widespread. Those will be bad, but they won't threaten the existence of the species as a whole.
People have chanted "doom" for centuries. Instead, life has always been nasty, messy, and full of tragedy, but goes on nonetheless. The 21st century will be no different on average, the nastiness will just manifest itself in different ways. But it won't wipe out the species.
The ONLY threat I see truly wiping out all of humanity is an asteroid impact. And that's no more likely in the 21st than at any other point in history. Maybe less, because now we are reaching the point where we could contemplate doing something about it.
Re:Change (Score:1, Insightful)
I am not sure why anyone who believes we are about to run out of oil would be living in a city. You will end up at the mercy of the government and other parties outside of your control for basic subsistence along with the psychological subservience necessary for such an arrangement. There seems to be this idea that the only people who will be affected by oil shortages are suburbanite McMansion owners with a 50 mile commute and that somehow cities will remain untouched. If I believed transportation energy costs were about to skyrocket why would I move to a place without access to soil, the water table or sunlight?
In a manufacturing based society with poor communication systems and cheap transportation costs it makes sense to centralize and move to a city. In an information based society with good communication systems and expensive transportation costs it makes sense to decentralize.
Thank you! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not going to list every imaginable end-of-the-world scenario and debunk it, but instead i will note that all the answers i've seen so far imply a serious lack of imagination. People are really incapable of picturing the world spinning 100 years from now... after they're dead and buried. Well it will spin and it'll be a whole lot better then now. After all, that's what we are all working for right? At least most of us here in slashdot.
And as a conclusion, when I think about 100 years in the future the image that pops into my head is Kusanagi Motoko. True, it's a personal image, but I'm glad I can picture a future that is at the same time strange and beautiful.
The answer is the question (Score:2, Insightful)
I Think A Lot Of People Have Missed The Point (Score:2, Insightful)
The question is too broad and essentially meaningless. It is, at best, an unanswerable rhetorical question.
That said, the question is still important. Not because there is an answer (there are, in fact, several correct answers), but because by asking it, Dr Hawking is using his stature to attempt to raise social consciousness just a tiny bit. This is a case where the act of asking the question is more important that obtaining an answer. It's like asking, "What is the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything?" Yeah, yeah... the answer is 42. A non-sensical answer to a non-sensical question. But by asking the question, movement is created. Some paths lead towards suicide (or, if you're pessimistic, all paths lead towards suicide) but asking the question causes people to move about, discover things, and make changes.
So how will the human race survive the next 100 years? I don't know. I do not even know that we will. But by asking the question, a certain amount of energy is introducd to the system that could very well create a path for the survival of our species. ...for just a bit longer.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:2, Insightful)
Education.
Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Survival of the Equal (Score:3, Insightful)
Why?
Ever notice how quickly poor and undernourished people reproduce? As an instinct for survival of their genes.
By equalizing Social Elements, racism and separation of social elements will dwindle, thus providing people with a positive existence, and resulting in more commonalities such as knowledge sharing, and working toward common goals.
By equalizing Financial Elements, the human existence will focus heavier upon the right to live, the right to exist, and will therefore work toward a common goal.
By equalizing physical elements such as starvation and poor water supplies (resulting from the above) -- people will survive, and will reproduce less.
Humanity will work towards common goals, and will lessen outright demented war efforts and we will find ways to solve our common problems such as the environment, and our reaching out into space.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
It is a simple and obvious fact that neither the existence nor the non-existence of a deity can be proven based on evidence gathered from a human perspective. So some people look at the evidence available to them and conclude that God probably exists, while others such as yourself conclude that He probably does not exist. Until either side can prove their conclusion, which is impossible, it is all just speculation. Given that different people have different evidence before them (transcendent experiences or whatnot) it seems quite logical that they might come to different conclusions. To imply that people who disagree with you have failed to use their intelligence or, as you do later when responding to alucinor, to assert that their experiences can only be symptoms of mental illness is both arrogant and offensive.
As for your question regarding the things religion is needed for, I fail to see how that is a useful question. Can you name anything for which atheism is needed? For what are automobiles needed? For what is
Dodgy question (Score:2, Insightful)
First off, it's a loaded question. It implies that something needs to be done for us to survive the next 100 years. In answering the question we are buying into his assumption. Now, I don't know whether it is a valid assumption, but I think we should be conscious of what we buy into in answering the question.
Secondly, he already has an answer in mind - he thinks that for the human race to survive we need to colonise the solar system. So in essence, this isn't an attempt to generate meaningful answers, it's a way for him to persuade us there is a problem that needs addressing.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
We have a relatively small number of people who are willing to cite their religion as justification for already-present murderous tendencies, and a small number of gullible people who have been brainwashed into believing that doing so is the right thing to do. Don't believe the vocal extremists who claim to represent the majority of a religion, and definitely do not heed people who try to convince you of this lie to suit their own dark agendas.
The world would be a darker, bloodier place than it is if we still had crusades. We do not. We have a small minority of extremist nutcases, and no religion has a monopoly on those.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
The city with the population of 100,000 who can have tons upon tons of food delivered to them on a single train
OR
The 1,000 texas ranchers, each of which have no neighbors within a mile of their homes?
Where do you think the 'tons of food' comes from? It doesn't just magically appear in a grocery store or a warehouse. It comes from those ranchers and farmers with no neighbors within a mile of their home. If you are out in a rural area, food is not as much as an issue as a city. You can grow your own grains, veggies and fruit; you can eat the tasty cows running around your ranch; or you can hunt wild animals. You can burn wood, straw or even cow dung to heat your house. You can go barter a bag of corn for one of your neighbor's pigs. And what about clean water? A rancher will have a well out in the middle of nowhere. Many rural people have access to relatively clean rivers and lakes. The cityfolk can only hope the water and sewer department can afford to keep running their plants. If oil is extremely expensive, that will translate to higher costs for clean water, heat and electricity. Even if the electric plant burns coal, it still has to get the coal on trains that uses expensive oil products. And If farmers can't afford to put fuel in their trucks and tractors to continue large-scale farming (the food has to reach those food-filled trains somehow), do you really think they are going to send what little they can harvest off to the 'big city' and let their own families and neighbors starve first?
In a crisis situation, a city is the last place I'd want to be.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:2, Insightful)
Then after their standard of living is raised to an "acceptable" level, it's okay to start wasting money on arms and military? Or should these countries never be allowed to play in the world arms game at all? Is the game limited to a fixed number of players? They came late so they can't play? Do the rules say only civilized players can test weapons?
Well, assuming by 'waste money' you mean 'Spends more than needed to keep the country from getting invaded', the rules are:
If there are people hungry, you don't get to waste money on the military.
If there are people homeless, you don't get to waste money on the military.
If there are people without medical care, you don't get to waste money on the military.
If there are people who can't safely walk down their street, you don't get to waste money on the military.
Re:simplicity (Score:3, Insightful)
They took it back, and I spent four times as much at a bike shop on a schwinn. (This was before the name got bought by pacific bicycles, and started appearing at walmart.)
I've beat the crap out of that thing ever since on some nasty trails, and I've only really had to do routine maintanence on it. One part broke outright, but the bike shop fixed it for free.
It's been said that it takes a rich man to buy cheap goods, and in a lot of cases (ie, walmart goods) it's true.
Walmart stuff breaks so often on you that you need to buy things alot more frequently. If you spent two or three times as much at the outset on an item, and occasionally maintained it, you'd never have to replace it.
That's why I buy very, very few things at walmart. Stuff were the durability is hard to screw up (and even then they suprise me from time to time.) I just don't want to keep rebuying the same things.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:5, Insightful)
I just believe in the empirical. If God comes down from Heaven and starts talking to me tomorrow, I'll believe in God. I just like having proof of something before I let it shape my worldview. I'm silly like that.
The difference is that if you eat McDonald's every day, it will probably kill you, but it won't have any direct effect on me. However, if some nut with a suitcase bomb steps onto my subway train with a plan to get his 72 virgins, that is very much everyone else's problem. If you want something a little more close to home, look at the control that Christians are intent on exercising on other peoples' decisions about gay marriage, drugs and abortion. Or the insistence that everyone else's children be taught fairy tales in biology class. Or the fact that the Christian voting bloc was the swing vote that put that monkey idiot president of ours in power. If you're more "spiritual" than "religious," more power to ya. But I've found that the vast majority of religious people out there are little more than sheep.
I agree that the world is magnificent, and that people haven't been taking very good care of it. But that's neither here nor there. Painting things with such broad strokes (world good, man evil) doesn't seem very helpful to me.
Christianity was, in fact, a cause of serious turmoil in Rome. The Spanish are infamous for their particularly cruel brand of Catholicism, and there have been dozens of feuds in Western Europe caused by some petty disagreement between Christian sects. And the Cold War wasn't a war, but many viewed it as a conflict between God's America and the godless, cold communist state.
Would you disagree with any of the following?
I'm not talking about individuals; I'm talking about sociological trends.
Huh? They're not at all alike. Politics is a necessary evil that comes with a government run by a hierarchy of people. But it's better than anarchy. There have been times throughout history when church and state were one, but law and order come from the "state" part, and secular governments function jus
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:2, Insightful)
And don't give me noncense about how helping people is the best way to live a happy fulfiled life - you are just prooving my point, if you are only helping people because it helps you, then you are doing exactly what I said: living for your own pleasure. I just so happens you are helping people along the way, but that's not why you are doing it.
Someone please mod parent up. This post so well summarizes the problem of theism: what exactly the "believers" just don't get.
It's not about "happy" or "fulfilled". Those are irrelevant.
If you want to look at it from a personal perspective, you find this truth: people tend to treat you the way you treat them. Help your neighbour, he's likely to help you. Ignore him and he's more likely to ignore than help you. Rape him and you're very likely to get acquainted with a baseball bat or similar object of retribution (unless he's much smaller than you and you live in a chaotic society where he has no support structure; but then you are both barbarians anyway so the point is moot). Very simple. This is based on how our instincts are built. This is how we, and most animals, work. It's about survival. In a modern society nice people fare better than the punks and idjits. Reciprocation.
But ultimately a thinking person, past the basest of needs and wants of individual survival, sees a bigger picture: it's about evolution - survival of the species, if you will. As individuals we expire in a relatively short time. During that time we have the opportunity to contribute to the evolution of the species, "leave our mark" if you will. Improve things for the generations to come. For some that realizes as bringing up their kids smarter and better than they themselves were; for some the realization is a scientific achievement (which may be in the form of improving society, in order to facilitate others' evolutionary work), or contributing to such. For many it's a combination of these. Again, this is how we're wired: for reproduction, in physical or abstract form, and ensuring the survival of our offspring (and thus our own genes).
You don't need an abstract deity in order to determine a reasonable value structure and to find meaning to your life. All you need is a working brain, and a post-barbaric society where you have the opportunity to utilize the said organ.
Look at any old religion's holy scripture (Scientology and such are modern day con jobs, they don't count). Read with the above reasoning in mind, one can (usually without squinting too hard) see a group of smart and well-intentioned people trying to write down a code to help their less civilized brethren to work towards the common-good goals I outlined above. Since they knew the brethren are not as educated and civilized, they needed to include a "because this really big and strong guy tells you to" clause to justify the code.
God is a crutch in a civilized society. Think and you will find the reasons why.
And the answer to Stephen's question: the best thing we can do to ensure mankind's survival is to eliminate the unavoidably jilted thinking (think, you'll see why it is unavoidably jilted) of the theists.
Start aggressively on step 1 now, and we might see the fruition of step 3 in about 2 centuries (about 3 generations of old codgers dead and buried).
Disgusting! (Score:3, Insightful)