Hello,

I am new to this forum; this is my first post. This subject might already have been discussed but I haven'n found it so here goes.

Let's say people in the future live to the age of 200 or even beyond. This would make the population of the world grow to yet unseen proportions. How would we make sure everyone could get food and housing etc? We can't even manage it today. I wan't to make clear that I am thrilled by the possibilities of life extension but I think we have to prepare ourselves.

Discuss!

colonization of other planets and star systems

Welcome to sciforums. Post long, post happy :)

I agree with Avatar. The fact that people were living longer would mean that individual greats could accomplish more.
This would lead to the bolstering of mankinds abilities.

Not only would colonization of other worlds be attractive, it would also be viable.

There's a thread which speaks of what do we do with mars?
There's the answer :)

Let's say people in the future live to the age of 200 or even beyond

Just because a person would have a higher life span does not mean the person would actually get there. What is the life span now? 85-100, and how many people actually make it there. You would still have decease, accidents and war and terrorism to kill em off:D Just my thoughts anyways....

Oh and Welcome to Sciforums!!! May you find plenty of wit and wisdom among these pages.


Groove on

The family that have 6 childen are not 6 times unhappy than the family with one child. So we will manage. India has 1/3 the area and 3.33 times the population. Which means, we could absorb a lot more people - provided everybody works to produce food and shelter.

Food: If we can use the present US food production techniques, all over the world, we could easily feed 10 times our total population. This does not count new methods in genetics, sea farming, frankenfish, giant tomatos, protein from chemical process and so on.

Shelter, Clothes etc: Shelter could be a problem. There may not be any single family housing. 50 story house could be the norm.

When population reaches 10 billion, I recommend, reducing the size of humans to no more than 5 feet using gene therapy. Any taller or fat, you pay a tax.....:D

The more people the more war! Yay!

Keep in mind, unless we figure out how to colonize Mars, we've begun a bad situation here. It use to be that every so often a new area would pop up for modern civilization to spread to (as the Matrix so beautifully put; like a disease), but we haven't gotten a new area in quite some time. Soooooo, let's hope we get up there economically, and quickly!

Be careful when you say colonization of other star systems.with increase in population surely we can find a way to live on mars or on moon perhaps,but come to think of it,Jupiter?
I think 99% of all the solar systems are Binary which means having two stars associated with them,which means we"ll have adapt to such amounts of heat,which in long will only occur due to radical evolution,otherwise the possibilities are bleak.

there are several places on Earth that are yet to used in a full fledged way.eg Antartica,Arctic regions are explored but not used as in a way countries are.there's a lot more work to be done on our world itself.As Km said gentic engineering usage can be of tremendous help to increase food production.



bye!

I think Satellite type colonies can be used for that purpose.constantly around the earth,Use deep down Ozone by some proceedure and surviving.
what do you think?;)



bye!

we have to spread outside solar system to endure the time our civilization exists. major solar sytem cataclism may leave us without a home. and there are many star systems with one central star. take Alpha Centauri..... and I'm sure humans can addapt well. and with future technology, god knows what we could do?!:)
and as for orbiting colonies around earth -> it doesn't solve the raw matterial problem, only makes it worse. first mars, then Alpha Centaury, then whole Galaxy;)
Cheers!

If we find out that sun could go nova in the year 3550, hopefully by then, we would have developed technology such as molecular food replicators, travel through subspace, wormhole or something, fusion energy and psychic power through genetic enhancements.

If we can develop fusion energy cheaply, we could do a lot nore to survive. If a meteor stikes and wipes out the top layer most life on earth, humans could survive.

However, if something happens now, we are not prepared very well. I would like to see if we can put all knowledge in DVD-ROMs just in case we have a "Jerimiah" type situation.

I think, we have gone through several major catastrophes in the last billion years on earth. If a civilization grew up just enough (before satellite technology) and an iceage started, then all is lost to be started all over again....

I dont really know Much about astronomy,but i believe we have relatively calculated that most of the stars heavier than Sun Go Nova,so i cant really say its going to happen.if it does,well then i think we"ll be in another Universe guys.may be another Dimension,
But remember Km pray to Vishnu that its not exactly what happened in Movie "EVENT HORIZON";)




bye!

I only pray to the consciousness just one level up from mine. After all, it is his/her survival too....:D

Responsible contraception first. The catholic church must be forced to change its policy.

Floating cities. The oceans cover 2 thirds of the planet surface. We have plenty of room.

Food: More manufactured foods like Quorn. Phase out animal products since their usage of land is several orders of magnitude worse than vegetable products.

Rotating space cities that can maintain 1G. The planets like Mars do not have adequate gravity and our biological bodies will suffer significant disorders for thousands of years before we evolve to adapt.

Of course my favorite is to have everyone uploaded so we can rid ourselves of these weak biological bodies. That way we can live on almost any planet or moon or environment and have no need for food.

Cris

Of course my favorite is to have everyone uploaded so we can rid ourselves of these weak biological bodies. That way we can live on almost any planet or moon or environment and have no need for food.

It is my favorite too...The only problem is how do you know, if we are not already inside a computer? :D

If we are not...the time is not far off...may be another 200 years at the rate of Moore's law....for sure....

kmguru,

If we are not...the time is not far off...may be another 200 years at the rate of Moore's law....for sure....We should discuss our estimates on this. You have consistently taken a conservative view on this.

In terms of hardware I see human brain equivalence within 15 years if Moore's law holds. But what will probably drag its feet will be the AI/Emulation software.

But even then if we can develop basic AI seeds that can learn and develop themselves then even the pace of AI software development should grow at a geometric rate, especially with ever increasing computing power.

I'd place effective uploading within 50 years. Now I realize I may be biased by a strong hope rather true objectivity, but when I look back at the past 50 years and look at the geometric progress then I do not think I will be too far off target.

And the Itanium family is going in the right direction - increased parallelism on the same chip, with an apparent lower clock speed but with a real effective increase in real power.

A human neuron only fires at around 200 times a second, but with 100 billion of them in the human brain.

If my math is correct then 10,000 x 2GHz Intel Pentium 4 loosely coupled CPUs in an MPP configuration should be able to emulate the human brain now. But 10,000 is just too many for us to configure right now.

By 2015, if Moore’s law holds, we should have the equivalent power of a 200GHz chip. And that means we would only need to couple 100 of them together to achieve human brain equivalent power. That to me seems very achievable. I.e. within 13 years from now.

Of course software will be behind, and scanners that can accurately scan and digitize the human brain will also most likely be behind. But if true AI coupled with the faster hardware can be directed to solve these problems, then 50 years for effective uploading still seems like a realistic target.

Cris

By 2015, if Moore’s law holds, we should have the equivalent power of a 200GHz chip. And that means we would only need to couple 100 of them together to achieve human brain equivalent power
I knew I was powerful, but THT powerful!
Proud of myself:D

Cris:

Let me tell you why I am so conservative.

In 1977, I came across a pamphlet by HP abot their future vision of HP-65 calculator where the author dreamed of a gadget that acts as an avatar (my word substitute) for a business executive that talks to it and finds the meeting place inside a convention building (GPS link!). Since then, I have been holding to that vision and have been tinkering with PDP-8, PDP-11, Altair etc. I thought, I would have done that by now. Did not happen. Nobody else has it either.

Now, I am hoping to set a preliminary infrastructure in place in about 5 years. If I am optimistic, I can have the first AI prototype done in about 20 years. So, 50 years is a good number to get there. But I am very conservative because, life is not linear. There will be other factors that will not converge to go in that direction within that time frame. We do not even know, if we will have a third world war.

The first prototype can only be done by the military that can take a risk to allocate the resources. The only other person that has the resources is Bill Gates. But he is so busy covering his ass that he wont have time to tinker. That leaves me. I have the knowledge but not the financial resources yet. But, I am plugged into the business world, so there is some possiblities.

If we remove the military, Bill Gates and Me or people like me - from the equation and no disasters happen to create a setback, then following Moores law, we should have the hardware ready to rock in less than 50 years (provided there is still a demand for the computers to upgrade every 18 months. The way I see it is that chips at 5 GHZ will hold the line for atleast 10 years or more, because you will have the same Office XP with version 5 and lots of bells that you do not need. I am typeing this on a simple text based window and even can not copy an web page into it.

So, the exponent will flat line for a while, until someone creates the right infrastructure for the needs to change. There are too many variables between now and 50 years ahead. Saying that everything will move in a certain predictable pattern whether it is an exponential pattern or not - may not happen. If the government dictates how the software is designed and sold, that will set everything back for another 50 years. Neither the government nor the business want to replace stuff every 18 months. They go by 10 year upgrade cycles - if they can help it and 20 is what they want.

On top of that human IQ has probably not changed in a 1000 years. So even if the machines get ahead, we will be doing the same stupid stuff - that is a constant. For example, companies that have recently gone Chapter 11 could have avoided with a few simple changes in their business practice. An outsider could see that, but they could not. Even when they are told at the CEO level, they ignored it (actually they passed the buck to a stupid underling who put the company in dire straight to begin with).

Therefore my pessimism....too many variables.

Unforeseen problems delay projects + Unforeseen solutions speed discovery = future unknown.

Things predicted to take twenty years won’t be available in fifty.
Things predicted to take fifty years will be available in twenty.

Twenty years is chosen as that is a limit for expert prediction. Five to ten years represents the time for lab products and discoveries to become market products. Add ten years as an expert’s predictions of what will be discovered or produced in a lab rapidly diverges from reality. For long-range predictions experts are too conservative. Experts are aware of the difficulties in their fields but are not aware of end-run solutions that will come from other fields. Sci-Fi authors are better than experts at twenty-year predictions.

Changing discovery environment:
Significantly more people across the world are working in knowledge fields. These people have far better tools to access, manipulate, and create knowledge. Sharing of information and collaboration are greatly enhanced. Individual biological IQ may not be significantly different but functional world-mind IQ is greatly enhanced.

(Individual biological IQ should show jumps as biomedical knowledge translates into brain boosters.)

This hamster agrees with Kmguru that there are too many variables. Long-range prediction is guessing.

More on Moore's Law - Cris will love this

Intel Exec: Moore's Law Keeps Going and Going
Tuesday, March 19, 2002
By Patricia Daukantas,
GCN Staff Writer

Intel Corp.'s chief technology officer today predicted the exponential growth of chip transistor density will continue at least another decade.

Pat Gelsinger, the first keynote speaker at the FOSE 2002 trade show in Washington, said Moore's Law, the 1960s-era prediction by Intel chairman emeritus Gordon Moore that transistor density would double every 18 to 24 months, has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Computers have been gaining 10 times the processing power every five years, he said, while the so-called price-performance ratio has decreased almost as fast.

Gelsinger said he has "absolute confidence" that the IT industry will continue to exploit Moore's Law over the next 25 or 30 years. Recent research developments, such as a 10-nanometer terahertz transistor with a dielectric layer just three atoms thick, will lead to new IT products later this decade, he said.

By 2010, the typical desktop computer will have a 30-GHz processor that performs 1 trillion instructions per second. Handheld computers will run at clock speeds of 5 GHz, faster than today's high-end systems, Gelsinger said.

The Pentium 4, Intel's current 32-bit processor, has enough design headroom to reach 10-GHz clock speeds, Gelsinger said. Intel is now delivering its second-generation 64-bit Itanium CPU, code-named McKinley, for products that will come out later this year. McKinley's clock rate exceeds 1 GHz. The chip has 3M of onboard cache.

Gelsinger and a colleague demonstrated linking 32-bit Pentium III Xeon rackmount servers through a 2.5-Gbps InfiniBand fabric to an 800-MHz, 64-bit Itanium system and a McKinley server.

Reported by Government Computer News, http://www.gcn.com

Kmguru,

Superb, I hadn't seen that article.

With that level of confidence then my estimate of a 200GHz chip by 2015 doesn't seem too unrealistic, and may even be conservative.

My company already builds systems that loosely couple hundreds of processors together into MPP configurations. I have little doubt that the connectivity bandwidth will be considerably more by 2015 to match the higher speed processors.

This gives me enormous confidence that linking 100+ X 200GHz cpus together will give more than enough power to reach human brain processing power.

Now, the software, will that develop at a reasonable pace?

Thanks
Cris

Cris,

I am in the initial stages of talking to a company to do some Knowledge Management (SigmaLink) work for their internal use. I made a proposal to provide a similar service to their clients. If something like that occurs, then I can setup a large MPP cluster with a lot of NAS to convert the clients Information to Knowledge. If we get 10 clients, at first, I can setup the standard Information Warehouse with data access softwares. Later, I can tinker with software and architecture to create an expert system. After that, I have an architecture, I have been noodling for 5 years, I am going to try. No promises, but this just might work.

km,

Awright, go for it.

I'm taking a different approach and plan to stay within a large computer manufacturer. I reasoned that I'm never likely to be able to afford the large configurations on my own.

Best of luck. I really don't care who gets there first as long as someone gets there soon.

Cris

Well, uploading your consciousnes into a machine sounds great, unless it begins a 4000 year war!!!!:

Ironically, it was the Core's ultimate victory, the victory over death itself, that brought about the downfall of its paradise and started the war that would decimate a million worlds.

"The immortality process, known as "patterning," involved the electronic duplication of brain matrices, allowing the transfer of consciousness into durable machines. Effectively it meant immortality, and the Core decreed the process mandatory for all citizens in order to ensure their safety.
However, there were many citizens unwilling to toss aside their bodies so casually, many indeed who regarded patterning as an atrocity. They fled to the outer edges of the galaxy, forming a resistance movement that became known as the Arm. War began, though it was never officially declared by either side.
The Arm developed high-powered combat suits for its armies, while the Core transferred the minds of its soldiers directly into similarly deadly machines. The Core duplicated its finest warriors thousands of times over. The Arm countered with a massive cloning program. The war raged on for more than 4,000 years, consuming the resources of an
entire galaxy and leaving it a scorched wasteland.
Both sides lay in ruins. Their civilizations had long since vanished, their once vast military complexes were smashed. Their armies were reduced to a few scattered remnants that continued to battle on ravaged worlds. Their hatred fueled by millenia of conflict, they
would fight to the death. For each, the only acceptable outcome was the complete and utter annihilation of the other."

http://www.cavedog.com/totala/ovr_frame.html

Just being human and looking at the worst that could happen ;)

But seriously ( :rolleyes: ), everyones looking outside, Mars, moon, Jupiters moons, floating cities etc. But there is still plenty of space inside.
There´s a LOT of rescourses near the core of earth and perhaps in the future we´ll be able to start mining them, also there would be a lot more living space down there. We could expand our cities downward and upward, ofcourse there is a risk that the tunnels would collapse, it would require much planning.
Also ofcourse moving earth below the cities would require a lot of work, but perhaps less than going into Mars (atleast with the current technology) or building huge platforms into sea or space.

There would already be enough food to feed the population of earth, the only problem is how it´s shared, but you cannot really expect humanity to become a communist utopia? Supporting starving people requires a lot of money and altough we are perhaps giving more humanitarian aid today than ever before... still people are dying.

IF we could live for 150-200 years it would probaply cost a lot and so only the upper class could have it, and that would make the gap between the rich and poor even wider... but still it doesn´t mean that it shouldn´t be invented if we could. :o

There´s a LOT of rescourses near the core of earth and perhaps in the future we´ll be able to start mining them, also there would be a lot more living space down there. We could expand our cities downward and upward, ofcourse there is a risk that the tunnels would collapse, it would require much planning.

Well, technically there is more space as you go outward of a sphere. I suggest everybody moving up and leaving earth for growing food and heavy machinaries. We may not be able to sustain 100 billion people on earth. So if half of them move to cyberspace - that will help. Then we may have to figure out if someone can go biological by creating a husk (a la 6 days) for a few years. If we can find a way to create artificial gravity, we could live on the moon too...

"Well, technically there is more space as you go outward of a sphere."

Yes, but there isn´t such a crowd in 100 meter below earth. ;) A lot of people could still be housed there. There was a report in sciene magazine about somekind of Super Skycrapers, which would be over a kilometer tall and would be intependent.
They could grow theyr own food, hundreds of thousands of people could fit in them and you wouldn´t have to leave the building in your lifetime if you wouldn´t want to.

To upward or to downward, now there´s a question :p

Ofcourse you can continue to expand on sides... but in the end, no matter where you expand... someday you won´t be able to expand. But there´s no need to worry about that for a LOOONG time... and there´s always moon, mars and the moons of the Jupiter... there is the asteroid belt from which you could mine rescourses to build somekind of floating cities.

But it really doesn´t have to be this way, perhaps someday the population growth will stop even in the developing countries... perhaps when we all get our mandatory Longevity Vaccine shots, population growth is somehow controlled or perhaps we´ll have a lot more space to expand by then.

Who knows... it´s simply impossible to predict the far future... who could have thought of PC´s and mobile phones in the year 1900... who could have thought electricity or televisions in the year 1500? Whatever we´ll do, whatever we´ll become... most probaply it will be something beyond our imagination.
Altough I don´t know, we have become more and more aware of the future and that in time our societies and technology will most probaply change a lot... therefore have we become somehow more mature in our predictions of the future?
We no longer imagine flying machines or alien invasions from mars... we imagine moon colonies, self-aware machines, fusion power and gene technology.
But those are works in which we have already taken a few steps... can we really imagine something totally new, something that we haven´t started study yet... something that we have no connection at all?
Will our predictions always look stupid in the future? :confused:

But those are works in which we have already taken a few steps... can we really imagine something totally new, something that we haven´t started study yet... something that we have no connection at all?
Will our predictions always look stupid in the future?

Social prediction of the future is not that difficult. Humans have not changed that much in 10,000 years. But the specific technology is difficult to predict though some of them have been predicted in ancient times. For example, the magician or god in Veda days (8500 BC) talk about view plates where they can see distant objects in real time. That sounds like television type gadget. There is a whole lot of gadgets from "Puranas" we are just beginning to design.

Another item that I remember from the old books is that when the people from Mizar landed on earth, they had a tricorder type device that catloged all the flora and fauna on this planet and its actions on the human body that is now a matter of record in the Vedas. We still do not have the technology today to create a digital human for chemical and protein interaction testing.

For example, the magician or god in Veda days (8500 BC) talk about view plates where they can see distant objects in real time. Another item that I remember from the old books is that when the people from Mizar landed on earth, they had a tricorder type device that catloged all the flora and fauna.

Wow... I´m impressed and thank you for correcting my mistake. :)

Also I´m sorry it took a... while to reply into this post, I have to admit that I´m not as commited to this discussion page as I should be. :(

Longevity is such a hard matter because there are so many aspects in it. I´m personally very confused these days and can´t really make a hard opinion against or for this subject, even though I´m interested.
I would say that if people could live 150-250 years it would surely create huge problems but it would also have a huge potential... just like fission reaction or computers.

But if we have the ability... why not use it? Perhaps it is fear (which is sometimes even reasonable) that limits us, so that we don´t use our full potential.

Yang,

The Core versus Arm war, the machine people against the bio people, assumes that intelligences between the species would be equal. And that is where the analogy fails with the current expectations.

The power of computer technology is increasing at a non-linear rate and the achievement of power equivalent to that of current humans seems certain and within a few years. It will take longer to master the emulation of human brains and the hope is that parallel development of AI will help us solve those problems by using similar computing power.

We then face the other issue of accurately scanning the human brain and the transfer to the durable substrate. Again this will likely happen after we have adequate computing power, maybe.

By the time all the ingredients are ready, computing power will have likely exceeded the minimum to achieve human intelligence. IOW the first uploaded brains will start with intelligence greater than they had as bio beings.

But more significantly is that it is unlikely that the technology would be frozen at that point. As we see with the computer revolution now, the hardware is ancient within 6 months of release. Those who are uploaded will very likely take part in a never-ending sequence of upgrades. Any real humans who chose to stay as bio beings will be seen by the new robo-sapiens as significantly inferior in terms of intelligence and capabilities.

In the same way that a human has little problem outthinking a dog then robo-sapiens will be able to achieve the same with homo-sapiens. The idea of a war between homo’s and robo’s being on an equal footing is nonsense. It would be like you playing a game of chess with an ape – there would simply be no contest.

But uploading offers more than just immortality it offers an independence of the planet. Even if humans were to create a colony on Mars the issue of long term adjustment to a much lower gravity presents a massive problem. We know now that astronauts who spend months in space suffer considerable bone and calcium loss. While some gravity will lessen that effect it will nevertheless cause real problems long term. Issues of an atmosphere and food production are even bigger problems.

An upload in the form of a robo-sapien has none of these limitations. Even massive acceleration, a vacuum, etc, would not present any problems. The only issue will be maintaining a power source and avoiding truly corrosive surroundings.

I don’t see that humans will be the ones to reach and break the final frontier, that will be the realm of robo-sapiens. Perhaps some people might choose to remain human in which case their best hope of survival might well be to inherit the Earth, until that is, the next major asteroid hits it.

Cris

Jesus,
i didnt know uploading was being discussed here.

aaaaaaaaaarrrrgh...
missed it.:mad:



bye!

Zion,

But it's my favorite subject. I sneak it in anywhere and everywhere.

Cris

Cris,
i was angry for not being present in the discussion.this subject is also one of my favorites.
did i give wrong expression?:(
sorry if i did.because i want this stuff to continue.


bye!

yeah me too.
someone in other thread,something enviornmental,i think it was Stryders thread.i had bought this Uploading idea.it never lets anything down.
best of all the solutions,true Nirvana...;)



bye!

Yes, zion - Cris sneaks mind uploading idea every chance he gets. Because we are many years away for testing, I think, we should first try the genetic enhancement of our species. It is a stop gap measure but can provide a time compression for our mind-uploading project.

The first set of genetic enhancement should include physical well being meaning the body can repair itself superfast with available food and air and that the $800 Billion dollar medical industry (in US alone)would reduce to $8 Billion.

That need to be accomplished in say next 20 years. Then we need to work on enhancing our brain power with total recall and better computation. There have been math prodigies that can multiply very large numbers on the fly. So, we know, it can be done - all we need is a little twiking. Towards the end of this cycle, we will be ready to transfer our mind to a machine host.

So...get to work....

Km,

Just spreading the idea around a bit so people can begin to get used to it.

And you are dead right - get to work.

:D

Cris,

Instead of "Mind Uploading" why not "Mind Parallel Processing".

Since we have so much talk of "In 10/20/30 years time..." and "when we can build something with X number of 200ghz processors". Why not build something that can act as an extension to your mind, not just a method of storage but a way to increase processor cycles.

It's known that for the highest speed systems you have two choices, something high powered and fast which enduces heat and needs venting, or something similar to your own biological system.

If you merge the two, you could have a computer partially using your mind to process data at speed without the necessary heat consequences, although I'm very sure you would need a laboratory of people to begin with to get the system to learn how to cater to the human mind.

With this method it would make a system more affordable, and would increase the speed at which the eventual thing your looking for Cris can happen. (since vast quantities of data will have already been partial worked upon.)

The first thing that came to mind with this topic was the usefulness of such a mechanism. Elderly folk in society are side-lined, hog hospital resources and are a general financial burden for society to deal with....the spectre of more elderly people with conservative politics, tastes etc is dire. Imagine waiting 100 years for an inheritance - the murder rate will sky-rocket!! It sounds warm and fuzzy for loved grandparents and parents to live forever but the reality of a planet and developed world having to deal with the realities is gruesome. As we age, the cell replication makes increasing errors thus problems develop - multiply that scenario x double time and it's just too awful to contemplate (IMO)

As we age, the cell replication makes increasing errors thus problems develop - multiply that scenario x double time and it's just too awful to contemplate (IMO)

Somewhere I read that cancer cells do perfect duplication indefinitely. So the mechanism exists for perfect duplication or close to it for the life of a subject.

In the scale of the planet and the universe, 100 years or 1000 years is still insignificant. As the intelligent specis, if you suddenly find a pill that extends to increase your lifespan and quality to 1000 years, I do not think you want to have a child in the first 30 years. May be wait for 300 years....just the time scale will be different.

Elderly folk in society are side-lined, hog hospital resources and are a general financial burden for society to deal with....the spectre of more elderly people with conservative politics, tastes etc is dire

IMHO, it is you who has the conservative opinion - cannot see past your own fixed ideas yet say the same about the elderly? No offense intended. Any topic with long life assumes that the life will be healthy and vibrant. Stop the clock at age 40 for example for 960 years....

At our present rate of progress, the society will not function with old methodology and specialization. The exponential state of silos of knowledge could not be integrated without people that understand many silos - that means instead of 2 years of experience one may need 10 years in several field and that requirement will increase exponentially....

Already I see that in my line of work. For example companies ask for the following expertise for just one person:

1. 3 years in Business Objects
2. 3 years in Oracle 8 or 9i
3. 3 years in Informatica
4. 2 years in Java J2EE
5. 3 years as a database Adminstrator
6. 3 years in MPP or SMP hardware
7. 3 years in Erwin
8. 3 years in UML design

for a "database architect"

Can you find such a person?

No wonder we have 300,000 job openings that no one can fill and therefore we have to import H1B people and still left with 300,000 jobs....

Welcome to sciforums, Tong Tied.

Elderly folk in society are side-lined, hog hospital resources and are a general financial burden for society to deal with....the spectre of more elderly people with conservative politics, tastes etc is dire.

Respectfully, think that they too once had these problems and probably these veiwpoints. They started as you did, only they are a little further down the line than you. Unless things change drastically, and Cris's hopes become reality, you too will face this problem in the future. (Being one of those that hog the hospital resources)

Imagine waiting 100 years for an inheritance

It is theirs to do with as they see fit. It might go to their cat instead of their heir. You have a lifetime to develop your own inheritance just as the elderly had. Do not wait for someone to give you. It is not your "right" to expect something that you did not work for. If your parents see fit to give it to you then accept it gracefully, if not then it was never yours to begin with so you have lost nothing.

Already I see that in my line of work. For example companies ask for the following expertise for just one person

It will not get better either. As systems become more complicated and businesses strive to meet the demand, their demands are higher. No one wants to pay to educate someone up to speed. They would like to get it up front without having to delay several years before an employee is of use to them.

A problem we are facing is that the baby boombers are ageing into the elderly. There are not near enough of the younger generation to replace those that will retire in the next 20 years. This is driving business to automate, sublet noncritical business functions, and try to make some way of coping with the shortage of hireable employees that is coming. There will be drastic changes in the way things are done as we try to cope with less people to do the work. I would imagine that we will see changes in the immigration polices that now shape our world for those qualitified. I would also expect to see the retirement age to be extended as they try to keep those already trained and of use to them.

"Earth's capacity to support our species is approaching the limit. We already appropriate by some means or other 40 percent of the planet's organic matter produced by green plants. If everyone agreed to become vegetarian, leaving little or nothing for livestock, the present 1.4 billion hectares of arable land (3.5 billion acres) would support about 10 billion people. If humans utilized as food all of the energy captured by plant photosynthesis on land and sea, some 40 trillion watts, the planet could support about 16 billion people. But long before that ultimate limit was approached, the planet would surely have become a hellish place to exist. There may, of course, be escape hatches. Petroleum reserves might be converted into food, until they are exhausted. Fusion energy could conceivably be used to create light, whose energy would power photosynthesis, ramp up plant growth beyond that dependent on solar energy, and hence create more food. Humanity might even consider becoming someday what the astrobiologists call a type II civilization and harness all the power of the sun to support human life on Earth and on colonies on and around the other solar planets. Surely these are not frontiers we will wish to explore in order simply to continue our reproductive folly."

Edward O. Wilson, The Future Of Life, 2002

The problem in linear thinking is you dont see the curve and fall off the cliff....great men have this habit too....

We had the information, but we could not see or imagine it was coming...(the WTC attack ie)...connecting the dots when you can not see the dots...well...monsters in the dark...that is for children....

Dont worry about the population - India and Pakistan (Iran and Iraq etc) will see to it that it is reduced by 1 to 2 billion in short order....

"For every person in the world to reach present U.S. levels of consumption with existing technology would require four more planet Earths" - Edward O. Wilson, The Future Of Life, 2002

The key word here is "existing" technology. The book does not assume the exponential nature of technology revolution, paradigm shift, discontinuos process, step functions, complexity, etc etc. but focuses on consumption. But the book does have a point in a linear way. We will fix that....

The author's background:


Edward O. Wilson

Edward O. Wilson has made major contributions to a number of fields, including the behavior and evolution of social insects, chemical communication, and the evolution of social behavior. His interest in living organisms, especially ants, stems back to his childhood and to his undergraduate studies in evolutionary biology at the University of Alabama. He received his Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University, where he is now Pellegrino University Research Professor and Honorary Curator in Entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Among his many honors are the National Medal of Science, two Pulitzer Prizes (for On Human Nature, 1978, and The Ants, 1990, with Bert Hölldobler), and the Tyler Prize for environmental achievement. Other groundbreaking books include Consilience and Sociobiology.

And I thought we are mammals....:D

I did like his thoughts on Consilience which is more close to my thinking....

kmguru,

Thanks for the reply. Well, we both know that population growth is exponential rather than linear. Wilson gave an simple puzzle-analogy which I've used once before in this forum to make the point about exponential growth:

Suppose a certain water lilly planted on a lake doubles its size each year, until after 30 years it has spread to fill the entire lake. In which year did the lilly cover exactly half of the lake?

Michael

kmguru,

Like yourself, I'm just as astounded at our breathtaking progress in technology. I think it is a mistake however to "bet the farm" on the chance that we will come up with a way to feed ourselves before we fill the fishbowl.

May I also remind you that merely possessing a technology sufficient to divert human disaster is not at all the same as actually using this technology. We likely have the means today to avert famines and much death from disease in Africa, yet we don't have the will to do so.

Wilson speaks to the issue that death by starvation is only the last phase of the terror brought about by insufficient resources. War and other political strife surface long before people actually begin to fall over due to hunger. He argued that the half-million people recently hacked to death in Rwanda was in some measure: a product of the highest birth rate in the world, population density, and allocation of resources.

As you suggest, technology might well be our saviour. If we should tame fusion power next year, I for one would rejoice. Better technology certainly can't hurt us.

Regards,
Michael

"Suppose a certain water lilly planted on a lake doubles its size each year, until after 30 years it has spread to fill the entire lake. In which year did the lilly cover exactly half of the lake?"

That is a tricky question. Let us see, do we use Consilience math to answer that or high school math? Since we all are in high school...On 30th year the lily filled up the entire lake. Are you sure it filled up the lake? And what happened to the human observer? He did not cut off a few to give it to his girlfriend?...no...bummer...did bugs eat up the stuff?...no...double bummer...why did not the animals who saw it fill up do something about it?...they did not care?...ah! those happy lilies...do you know, they have this sweet smell...wonderfulful creation...too bad they can grow no more...so you think the year before they were only half size? Wow...do I get a prize?...:D :D

Orthogonal:

Before you get mad at me...I am glad you brought up these ideas here and I would love to chat with you. Let us do this in another thread (you start - if you read the book) . Wet1 is welcome to join there too. I would like to connect the dots...like Consilience and the Future of Life - both of Wilson's book and how it applies to our present situation including terrorism, and life in general on this planet including threat of nuclear war....

with love and regards

kmguru,

Hmm...now do I understand you to be saying that the same human mind that is able to grasp and use quantum mechanics to its benefit, is somehow unable to understand human population dynamics? Please explain why the human mind is unable to fathom such knowledge.

Gosh, I also don't understand why you might fixate on Wilson's background as an entomologist (yes, he studied ents!). How would excellence in the field of insect study preclude a man from voicing a rational opinion about human conditions? Einstein, and Feynman both spoke well on issues far removed from physics.

Yes, I also liked Consilience very much. You admit that Consilience was more to your liking thanThe Future Of Life. No doubt the message in this last book is more somber. I hope his warnings turn out to be overblown. Still, nothing that I've read from this author makes me doubt his integrity as a scientist or as a commentator on public policy. He strikes me as a particularly well-balanced, perhaps even a brilliant man. Why he's not even a Yankee, he's an Alabama boy. :)

Michael

kmguru,

Mad? Not for a moment. I'm only happy to have a rational person to talk with! As usual, I doubt we even have much of a disagreement here. Keyboards are a poor substitute for sitting across from each other over coffee.

Best wishes to you, and I hope to hear from you again down the line.

Kind Regards,
Michael

Orthogonal:

Thanks for understanding. As you said...keyboards are not a real subtistiture....Once we understand each other, which really means when I say apple, you understand the context to your context that is a result of my previous reply...(the old saying...you know that I know that you know...) then everything becomes clear.

I normally post in 3 levels. One for immidiate topic at hand and how it might have come across for the members. Second, in a more general context and the third layer from the complexity (that Wilson talks about Consilience) stand point. It is in the third level that you and I agree on. But we can argue on the other levels because most people wont get it (it is the old bell curve thing...)

Besides even if we agree on the larger context - we still need to argue on little things to make life more interesting....right?

The reason I emphasized the ant stuff is to point that his valid reasoning for masses do not hold water at third level. But it may be necessary to jolt the public so that people will be serious and act accordingly. There are two recent examples that can be analogies:

1. India & Pakistan Nuclear threat: We were really close to such an event in the last few weeks. There was no solution in hand except one. Pull out all the foreigners from both countries. That would put a big damper on their economy. They knew that. And it worked. While the threat is not over...we are safe for the time being.

2. The FBI fiasco was necessary to change the government reorganization. Otherwise it would not have been possible. And unless we have another big one (God forbid) that change may not be implemented.

So, if Wilson's book let people start thinking then...that act itself will benefit in the long run to avert the disaster. But as I said, from a complexity theory standpoint...these are paths to a better future and we are going to avoid the distaster scenario....due to the butterfly effect.

Peace....

I read The Future of Life a couple of months back. Great read. I am looking forward to Consilience.

There was a short story by Vonnegut that had to do with this, along the lines of large extended families cramped in tenements, inheriting choice places to sleep once the elders finally died off. Some kind of commercially available blue juice was drank to prolong life (ironically the lethal injections for pet euthanasia is blue), and some of the grandkids were caught watering it down for grandpa, tattled on by other grandkids, and so they moved up the hierarchy. Funny stuff, but I can't think of the title right now.

I think longevity at first will be the luxury of the affluent, and it will be available to the middle class to some degree. It will probably always be a class issue. Hopefully, as first-world countries practice more birth-control, people who live longer will control their offspring. If every couple has two kids only, and if you live to see 200, you would only have, at most, barring accidental death, about twenty descendants living during your lifetime, if all practiced the same population control. If population were controlled in those parts of the world today where many children are born (though few live to ripe old age) every day, where there is little or no birth control, then perhaps earth could sustain a greater population of elderly.

However, it seems that not that many people in the world have much to offer the world more than raw production and consumption. Many affluent Americans are shallow people concerned about career, family, what's on tv, what can the world do for me. Most Americans are too apathetic to vote. Do we need people like this living even longer, when they won't even take the steps when they're young and healthy to extend the life they can be assured of getting now? A friend of mine is unconcerned with a healthy diet and quitting smoking, and he jokingly thinks medicine will save him. I love the guy, but he represents the mindset most people in the industrialized world have.

On the far future aspect of this thread, I'd say that if we don't figure out faster than light travel or teleportation to distant systems in the next millenium, we're probably going to have to go through some serious downsizing. Maybe we can live underground/ on the moon/Mars, but man, that's gonna be rough... what about the savannah hypothesis? How about that

In regards to this Core/Arm uploading stuff, does this have to do with the Hyperion books? No doubt we'll develop intelligent programs and "personalities," but the human mind uses chemicals (in addition to electric states) with billions more permutations of state that a computer with ones and zeros cannot emulate, or even if particle-spin or photonic computers are developed, they will never represent humanity as it was. Perhaps a new intelligent form of life will develop, pass the turing test, but where's the transformation? What part are they doing for entropy?

John Le Coq

Originally posted by le coq

On the far future aspect of this thread, I'd say that if we don't figure out faster than light travel or teleportation to distant systems in the next millenium, we're probably going to have to go through some serious downsizing. Maybe we can live underground/ on the moon/Mars, but man, that's gonna be rough... what about the savannah hypothesis? How about that


IMHO, we will be closer to 3001: Space Odyssey in the living conditions than Moon base. Space is very large. There is no reason, why we can not live in geo orbit. That can pack a lot of people for several thousand years until we create mind uploading to small sugar cubes....:D

Uh, a little thought about longer life. I wonder if I wouldn't get so tired of living I might desire death when I get old. Seems like a position taken by a lot of the old grannies and grampies I know. Maybe they're just weird.

Originally posted by Zero
Uh, a little thought about longer life. I wonder if I wouldn't get so tired of living I might desire death when I get old. Seems like a position taken by a lot of the old grannies and grampies I know. Maybe they're just weird.

It is happening to my mother-in-law who is waiting to die - atleast talking in that theme to shock us...

IMHO, if one is busy and productive and enjoying life...then there is still so much to learn, so much to see...I think I could live a thousand years and never get bored if my health is in good shape. I would like to see people land on Mars or setup colonies...create artificial intelligence...travel in hyperspace (I had a lucid dream about that)...someday meet ET...solve hunger and disease and so on. The Universe is a true wonder that we can not assimilate even in a ten thousand years....

Yeah, but I might feel differently if I had cancer and I were 100 years old or something. I might feel the desire to live!