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!
marin139 Welcome to sciforums. Post long, post happy Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! 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 Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
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 offPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image! 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.....Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
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?Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! 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?!Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! 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 GalaxyPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image! 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"Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! bye!
I only pray to the consciousness just one level up from mine. After all, it is his/her survival too....Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
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
It is my favorite too...The only problem is how do you know, if we are not already inside a computer? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! 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, 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
I knew I was powerful, but THT powerful! Proud of myselfPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
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 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
