Population 7 billion. Changes ahead.

by Lion Cask 91 Replies latest social current

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  startingover

  Thanks for the list BTS. The prospect of that is exciting to me. However, if what you say comes true, the result will be more and more people. In my lifetime I have seen the things I enjoy doing severely restricted because too many others enjoy it too. I don't see any solution for that situation with exponential growth. I feel that no matter how advanced we become as humans, one colossal natural disaster could change everything.

  Another thought, being in the transitational phase of many of the things you mention, life for some could become like it was for Tom Hank's charactor and the mouse in the movie The Green Mile. Or in my case, I will just miss the threshold to benefit from the new life extending technology.
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  BurnTheShips

  JWoods, you have a PM.

  BTS
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  BurnTheShips

  The prospect of that is exciting to me. However, if what you say comes true, the result will be more and more people.

  Hi startingover. I disagree. Look at what has happened in most of the technologically advanced societies: birth rates have either reached or fallen below replacement levels. Even US population growth would be extremely low without immigration. The nations with rapid population growth are the poorer, less advanced ones.

  Or in my case, I will just miss the threshold to benefit from the new life extending technology.

  Take good care of your health, more and more of the things that can kill you will be fixable. If you can hold on long enough, you may be able to get over the hump. We already know how to dial back the biological clock in our cells.

  This is not theory, the clock can be dialed back. It has been done in other species and in vitro with human cells. We are doing with human stem cells too.

  However, since the FDA doesn't classify aging as a disease, it won't approve an agent to cure it as a a marketable medicine.

  People are trying to find a workaround by identifying a natural agent to use instead, thus making a run around the FDA blocks.

  http://www.sierrasci.com/

  BTS
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  BluesBrother

  I only know that mankind has record of being extremely poor at foretelling the future. If things were foreseen, the effects of them have been misjudged.

  We had just as well wait and see, or let the next generation see
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  Lion Cask

  7,000,000,000,000 I think that's three too many zero's.

  The above figure would be 7 trillion

  Quite right, I've used too many zeros. It should be 7,000,000,000. Seven milliard British scale. My bad for not proof reading my OP before hitting the submit button.

  I, too, like BTS's optimism because I believe it to be directionally correct. One needs only extrapolate scientific advances that have happened even over the past 20 years to expect there will be wonders we can't even imagine 50 years from now. There will also be challenges we can't imagine.

  The single largest unresolved issue is energy. There's hope for fusion, but it's by no means a slam dunk. Green energy alternatives like wind and solar and tidal are fine, but they are only capable of supplementing more traditional supplies, not replacing it, and even then at much higher cost.
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  BurnTheShips

  I, too, like BTS's optimism because I believe it to be directionally correct.

  We are at ground level, it is easy to get distracted by the near term problems, and there ARE near term problems. However, if you step up to 40,000 feet and gaze down, whatever the problems that have arisen in history, the general arc of it is upward and forward.

  There's hope for fusion, but it's by no means a slam dunk.

  Sure, but in the meantime we can have as much clean, non-weaponizable thorium (not uranium) based nuclear fission as we want, and we can start right now.

  BTS
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  james_woods

  Thanks for the message, Burns - will try to email you later this afternoon.

  And will include a picture of the Ferrari!
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  BurnTheShips
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  Lion Cask

  However, if you step up to 40,000 feet and gaze down, whatever the problems that have arisen in history, the general arc of it is upward and forward.

  Yes, BTS, but is it sustainable? Under current conditions I would say not. There is also the question of who will be in charge. China and India are emerging as the two new world economic superpowers. But who will be the world's military superpower 50 years from now? A hundred years ago it was the British Empire. The British Empire gave way to the USA and the USSR. Now there is only the USA, and if you extrapolate the arc of advancement in asia out 50 years the USA will have given way to China.
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  Mad Sweeney

  I think about what startingover said regarding enjoyment of life being curtailed by crowds. Anyone been to a ski resort in the last couple decades? They're a nightmare. Theme parks? Same deal. The beach? Forget about it.

  We may be able to keep upwards of 10 billion people comfortably fed on this planet but at what cost to quality of life?

  Or will earth become like the spaceship in Wall-E, with everyone just sitting in a chair 24-7 living a virtual life? If that's the case, why not just plug in to the Matrix and give up the body entirely? I don't think that's a future we want.

  We need to not give up on space. There's a big universe out there, and perhaps already an active community of intelligent beings in our galaxy just waiting for us to join them. Who knows? One thing we DO know is that there's a LOT more room out there and if we can colonize even our own system, that could ease up on our planetary space limitations.

  Also, there's the ocean. While I'm still in SF/Dreaming mode, anyone see The Abyss? Maybe we're not the only intelligent life on earth.

  There's still a lot left to discover.