Where are we going....as a species?

[RobsanX]

earth will reach it's carrying capacity soon enough. the way we've been going and have always been going we have royally boned this planet. i just don't understand why people don't address the issues that are important albeit "taboo"; overpopulation. i don't five a shot were senator weiner has been sticking his slong, let's talk about things that matter. arrogance. i'm futched up.

This is one aspect of the abortion debate that nobody will discuss. What would our country look like today with 50,000,000 more unwanted children, adolescents, and adults?

[RobsanX]

I'll just throw this here. Be forewarned, I will use the F-word multiple times. I feel it is germane to the thought process and other lesser words just don't convey the rawness of reality....

Humanity is about 1 thing and 1 thing only.. Fleshlighting.

We go to school to be smarter and to learn how to socialize with other so that we can Fleshlight.

We get a good education in order to get a good job to attract better Fleshlighting partners.

We co-habitate with another so we have ample opportunity to Fleshlight.

We Fleshlight to make babies and then raise them to go out into the big bad world to Fleshlight.

When we are tired of Fleshlighting our significant other, we Fleshlight someone else even though we have promised not to.

We continue to gather more stuff that makes us even more Fleshlightable.

We lie cheat and steal to get stuff to Fleshlight.

We even Fleshlight people of the same sex because Fleshlighting is Fleshlighting fun.

Until society as a whole gets it's head wrapped around the Fleshlighting problem, we will continue to Fleshlight one another over in order to Fleshlight more. The sad truth is that no one really gives a Fleshlight.

Here you go. I made your post more family friendly.

[HK11]

If you gave every person on earth 1/4 acre of land we would only use 10% of the landmass and people would have more room than they do in cities now.

In other words everyone in the world could live on a landmass the size of Australia, leaving 1/2 of Queensland empty and the rest of the world unoccupied.

Granted that would probably suck. But I think the fears of overpopulation are designed to keep to many "peons" from producing children.

[CoderGuy]

I think it's only a matter of time before we have a Human Centipede in every neighborhood (Google it).

As for intergalactic space travel, that's a ways away... in the mean time I say let's launch some of these wackos out into orbit to "monitor space junk".

[truthwolf1]

Because of political gain/dollars our politicians have sold us out and the end result will be doom for quite a few decades for many of us and our children. We will be looking at a more illegal hispanic and middle eastern demographic with more of a current Russian living situation with multiple family members and friends living together.
The standard of living will continue to drop with globalization for everyone in America but rise considerably for those in manufacturing countries.

No more middle class but a poor working class and many, many criminals. It is going to start looking like Russia within the next 5-10 years.

[BadAxe]

Things will never change for us as a species till we give up living for the almighty dollar and turn our attention to another way of living. One that respects the earth, and human beings as a species, and is not all about power and money. Till then, those with the power and money will do everything they can to keep the world as it is, with everyone hating everyone, wars all the time, and destruction of everything humans need to survive (air, water and soil). And until the mindless sheep that are thr majority see thru all the BS of this world and revolt, then no, I do not see how our species will make a turn for the better without a catastrohpic event.

[devilock76]

I will say this, it is not the most pleasant theory but I maintain it is true. As a whole, destruction is the only way human kind has ever learned to create equilibrium with its environment, including self destruction.

We consume consume consume, and thus we consume life, and the lives of our own. It is unfortunately our way and we show no signs of really evolving away from that. For a while we learned to spin it better and since many never saw or could write about the nature of it...it went not really noticed in its full horror. The advent of the internet and a camera everywhere is doing something different though. It is showing the nature of it to the world and creating a record of it. It might one day be how we learn to change.

Ken

[Ainkor]

Things will never change for us as a species till we give up living for the almighty dollar and turn our attention to another way of living. One that respects the earth, and human beings as a species, and is not all about power and money. Till then, those with the power and money will do everything they can to keep the world as it is, with everyone hating everyone, wars all the time, and destruction of everything humans need to survive (air, water and soil). And until the mindless sheep that are thr majority see thru all the BS of this world and revolt, then no, I do not see how our species will make a turn for the better without a catastrohpic event.

As I was driving to work this morning I was thinking about something much along this line. Someone else in the thread mentioned how well most animals work together and I think it's surprising how humans don't.

Communism (utopian) society is an interesting concept, but human nature screws it up.

Imagine if tomorrow what we needed we got and what we produced we gave away. I can imagine all sorts of havoc from that but in the end, that's the only thing that would foster a cooperative society.

We are not mentally evolved enough to be able to grasp something of that nature but it is fun to day dream.

[PipenSnus]

Where are we going as a species? Buckminster Fuller summed it up very well: Utopia... or Oblivion. There really are no other choices. Either we get our act together as a species, or Mother Nature wipes the slate clean (and the human race with it), and starts over.

[Ansel]

We're all going to hell in a hand-cart, in the words of the late great Mike Dickin RIP.

[c.nash]

I didn't read all the posts, but I saw that video awhile back.
I have no problem watching it because I am not squeamish or anything, but yes it is wrong. Especially for the fact that they always picked easy targets, someone who can't fight back or can't call for help. It's pretty sick.

Now on to the question... Honestly, I don't see the world as having changed... probably ever... Things like this have always gone on in different manners. With technology comes new ways of doing it and of course more recognition and advertisement for these types of things.
Do I think things will change and get better? Probably not, maybe in a small sense the world might become a better place overtime but you are always going to have some people that just don't have judgment or any morals to keep them straight and fitting to society. There will always be outcasts and people who just don't fit the moral code of the rest of the world.

[sgreger1]

As I was driving to work this morning I was thinking about something much along this line. Someone else in the thread mentioned how well most animals work together and I think it's surprising how humans don't.

Communism (utopian) society is an interesting concept, but human nature screws it up.

Imagine if tomorrow what we needed we got and what we produced we gave away. I can imagine all sorts of havoc from that but in the end, that's the only thing that would foster a cooperative society.

We are not mentally evolved enough to be able to grasp something of that nature but it is fun to day dream.

I am sorry but I have to butt in here to point out how completely wrong this assertion is that humans don't work together. Animals work together in packs etc, but they fight amongst each other as often (if not more) than we do. And humans work together all the time, everything you see around you, every structure ever built, every trade route ever established, every food or resource distirbution system ever set up is the product of humans "working together". And we are animals, we are driven by our own self interests just like the animals are, it's just that for us it's money that interests us. That is the currency of man, because we have elevated ourselves above just acquiring food and territory like the animals do. But it's all the same, and there is very little that sets us apart from the animals, EXCEPT for the fact that we work together SO WELL that we have built our own little habitat just for humans within the existing natural one.


In such a short time we have risen from the forest and built our own world, we have accomplished what the animals could not and molded the habitat to us instead of adapting to the habitat. And humans unknowingly just continue the cycle of evolution by creating and using technology. Technology is just humans taking existing systems, improving upon them, and then using whatever works best. All systems in this realm are evolutionary. The problem is that evolution doesn't pick and choose the winners, and we are more than likely going to burn ourselves out (read as: nuclear war) before we get a chance to really pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and get out of this ditch.



And even if we do continue to progress, eventually we will give birth to the next step of evolution, the singularity in which we create artificial inteligence smart enough to do what we do: take existing systems and improve upon them. Eventually AI will come around and the first model will be able to make a better version of itself, then that better version will improve upon it's own design and produce a better version etc etc, until eventually the machines have elevated to a level of activity that exceeds humans by so much that we will be seen as animals to them, just like we look at the monkeys today as a mere "common ancestor". They will see us as a common ancestor, but nothing else, their ability to process information will be so exponentially greater that we will literally be like monkeys to them, of little use.


Them not being biological entities gives them the significant advantage that they can go through 1,000 iterations of improvement/evolution a million times faster than us biological organisms that require a long birthing and maturation period. Changes to our harware come about ever few million years, whereas self improving AI can advance itself every day of every week and rebuild it's own harware and software from the ground up each time. Before long they will have left us in the dust just like we did with our other bipedal ancestors such as the cromagnons and homo erectus / homo florensis so many thousands of years ago.


We are but a link in the chain of an ever changing and constantly evolving system, and random carbon particles assembling themself into self aware beings (therefore allowing the universe to become self aware and look back out and reflect on itself) is a significant step, but only one of many. Enjoy your time while you're here because humans will not always run things, we will hit our ceiling eventually and then the next best life form will take over, the one who is better adapted. It's how it has always worked and how it always will work, this conversation is like listening to dinosaurs arguing over whether or not a meteor will come and kill them one day or if they will instead take over the universe with space flight... little do they know, their contemplation is in vein because their fate is already sealed.



This is an evolutionary system. Small charged particles slowly organized into larger more complex systoms of things like carbon atoms, who formed into things like the first single celled organisms, who then became humans. Do you really think it stops there? And all the while, unbenounced to the human race, we have been "working ourselves out of a job" as it were by investing so much in the advancement of technology, because eventually it will lead to us giving birth to the next link in the chain, who will go on to eventually create the nex tlink and the next until every sun in the known universe has burned out and the whole thing collapses bakc on itself back to a single point, only to be reborn again in a giant bang. Then we get to do it all over again. So enjoy your golden age humans, it is short and it's days are numbered.


Signed,
Your future robotic overloards

[devilock76]

As I was driving to work this morning I was thinking about something much along this line. Someone else in the thread mentioned how well most animals work together and I think it's surprising how humans don't.

Communism (utopian) society is an interesting concept, but human nature screws it up.

Imagine if tomorrow what we needed we got and what we produced we gave away. I can imagine all sorts of havoc from that but in the end, that's the only thing that would foster a cooperative society.

We are not mentally evolved enough to be able to grasp something of that nature but it is fun to day dream.

This is a bit long but we aren't that different from animals according to this excellent lecturer:

Ken

[devilock76]

Discussion on aggression begins at 12:20, discussing animals doing just what we are discussing here.

The entire lecture is incredible but if you want the quick reference point...

Ken

[Ansel]

The answer will be on Ted.com