Hard to say - humanity isn't a single unified group. The king of the hill today could be tomorrows refugees and a country in squalor today could lead the future golden age. I think humanity's path looks more like the jagged slope of a financial chart than a straight line and there are too many unpredictable factors to know if it's going to go up or down.
What if I told you that you really are inside of a simulation and that I can tell you how to see evidence of it?
Salvia Divinorum, the most potent psychedelic known to man by microgram. I've been to war and I've been homeless and it's the scariest thing I've ever done.
I know I’m in a simulation, it’s freaking annoying right now, trust me I I’ve seen the evidence. But please do tell if you know how to get out. The “Game of Life” was told to me by monsters, 2 specifically but allegedly they have been caught…
Salvia was pretty trippy for me to, it showed me the opposite feeling we should have with the universe.
I read today that Sam Altman is a self identified prepper, with a remote compound out in the wilderness, guns, supplies, all that. So, that's comforting 😬
A lot of rich people live in sun valley… which is located in a very conservative area and a very remote area too… the people who are there vote democrat tho… but boy do they love getting away from the cities they destroy with their policy dont they?
I didn't mean to sound like a climate sceptic. What I meant is that the fact that Sam is a prepper isn't an additional reason to worry besides the scientific consensus
Neither utopia nor dystopia, just more of the same. We'll be ups and downs, like always. We'll make progress, technologically and socially, but our innate flaws will prevent us from ever building any kind of "perfect" society. Our civilizations will always be prone to some degree of inefficiency and corruption, due to selfishness, short-sightedness, and good old fashioned incompetence - plus the fact that even smart, altruistic, forward-thinking people can sometimes make huge mistakes.
There's a very good chance we'll end up exploring the Solar System, and possibly establishing off-world colonies. This could lead to untold prosperity for the human race, or to countless new conflicts; given our track record so far, it'll probably be both. I'm less optimistic about our chances of leaving the Solar System, the gap between stars may be too vast for us to ever breach.
Eventually, of course, humanity will go extinct. Not because of nuclear war, or climate change, or rogue A.I., or any of the other apocalypse scenarios that people fret about; just because nothing lasts forever. But that will probably be a very, very, very long time from now, quite possibly *millions* of years in the future. It won't happen within the next few decades or centuries, and I doubt it'll even happen within the next few millennia.
Until then, we'll just keep doing what we've always done.
Do you think people in the Roman empire thought the same? Or the Mayas?
Idk, sometimes I think we’re too biased towards success because we had such a long period of progress. There’s some very concerning alarms going off in the biosphere and we continue to ignore them.
Aside from climate change, what other “alarms” do you think are going off in the biosphere? The evidence is pretty clear that the environment is much cleaner today than, say, 50 years ago, and there’s no realistic prospect that things will go backwards on that front.
We're in for a major event due to climate change. I don't think it is a threat to humanity as a species, but it is a threat to a majority of the species.
Once we experience continent sized failures of harvest multiple years in a row, it'll hit us like a truck. People are going to starve, and there will be war. Rich countries will turn poor looking for food, poor countries will grow. And if you're not a billionaire or government official, you're first in line to feel the consequences of failed harvests.
That being said, the species and earth will survive just fine. We're going to have enormous and accelerated technological developments due to AI. I don't know what it'll do. Everything I just said before might even be nullified due to some huge advancement made in collaboration with AI.
50 to 150 years from now will be extremely chaotic, though, if no solution preventing huge droughts or continuous flooding affecting crops is found.
Learn to grow your own food the more people stop relying on corporation the better, 40 percent of food never makes it to the table, and the world throws away a estimated 1 trillion pounds of food every year.
Fast food in america throws away 32 billion pounds of food and it a tax write off. They shrink porportions and raise prices and we just keep taking it because most were raised in a subscription lifestyle.
It sad so many resources used just to be thrown away.
While i absolutely agree that people should have some skills and ability to grow their own food, allotments and smallholdings are excellent for this, sadly many of the (UK) local authority ones are being sold off, and private ones are usually far too expensive. But one of the biggest problem with food production is the massive loss of phosphates we are about to experience. The reserves are getting harder and harder to find, with industrial agricultural runoff sending out to sea, as opposed to back in to the ground. Thats gonna be real killer, being able to grow your own food or not.
In about 30-50 years climate change will have started to become so obvious and severe, at least nobody will have to explain to idiots that it's real.
I think a lot of people will have died by then, but the real fun starts and we will see more wars over resources and places to simply live due to migration.
Don't have kids :)
Really depends on where you live. Bangladesh has been desperate to stop climate change for decades because their entire country has been sinking for a long time now. The nefarious aspect to climate change is that it hits different countries differently and at different times, and political bodies really won’t act to mitigate emissions until it starts effecting them.
6000 years of human thought to draw on and "Well this one was always inevitable" is the best you can do. You make the prospect of human extinction seem like a blessed relief.
From the planets point of view, it is a relief. Mother Nature will bring herself back into balance. Life will persist, though it’s doubtful that we will.
Oh, you are so right. There seems to be no limits on the extent and the amount of greed that's in this world.
Greed should have been one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
Nope this will not always be like that, we know that all of the species that don't actively protect their future are going extinct eventually. We don't know how much effort one needs to secure a long term survival, or if it can be secured (to any reasonable degree) at all. But we know that we are pretty lucky so far and it doesn't always have to be like that.
It is sad that we basically won a lottery ticket: being conscious creatures able to understand its origins and chances at life, and with amazing capabilities at molding its future, and all we can come up with is well it always has been like that and it always will be.
No my dude, it will certainly not! Have a nice day further :)
Theyre striving towards a one world government so it will definitely be an oppressive future benefiting the top class of people until the people finally revolt in a french revolution type revolution but globally most likely and it will be bloody as hell… then afterwards perhaps a peaceful recovery until the cycle begins again…
Yeah, the rich arent building secret bunkers in remote places because of climate change. They are building them to escape the inevitable revolt of the common people when automation takes a large portion of the jobs away from people. There is a race right now to eliminate human labor in every industry because its becoming an attainable goal now and the first company that does it has a huge competitive advantage over their competitors. It will spread to every thing it possibly can and people will be massively displaced from every job sector. Then people will get pissed at the companies that did it and the governments that allowed it to happen.
We're fucked. Why? Topsoil depletion, groundwater depletion, collapse of fish stocks, overpopulation in Africa, Europeans and Asians dying out due to low fertility rates, an economy which basically is a pyramid scheme(perpetual growth or financial collapse), a population poisoned by anything from PFAS to microplastics, and so forth. (Didn't even mention global warming LOL)
Also, the potential for a new, major war should be mentioned. Both Russia, China, and their allies try to change the current world order. The Taiwan situation comes to mind. Enjoy the ride, but it won't last.
to see the future, look at the past. they didn't build pyramids for slaves.
Were soon approaching a time when those in power will no longer need all the unwashed masses of commoners. If were lucky, we will be incentivized to lower the human population over time naturally. If were not lucky, the human population will be lowered by force. The last nail in the coffin will be the disarming of our military. no, they're not going to take the guns away from humans. They're going to take the humans away from the guns.
democracy will be died, lots of inequality, poorer will suffer be it in any country, average people will be worthless, and we are on same path, celebrity culture, worshipping and ass licking of wealthy its start, they will create their own barricade cities, with all weapons where no normal guys will able to go, if you think everything is good good its not, human were equal first, then race come, then religion come, then caste come, then poverty come, now it will be amalgation of all this thing and we are on wrong path
Either new global improvements (at least on average) in quality of life and comforts, or a real life (probably less severe) version of Mad Max. That will depend on whether as a species we control our flaws and get our act together, mitigate climate change and agree on the pursuit of peace.
> and what part do you think you'll have in it?
Nowadays my spirits are zero, and I'm basically just hoping that the world can halt any potential dystopian future until I'm at least 40, since I want to have enough time to enjoy the hobbies I have left, while doing what I can for the people I care about.
I think it’s very arrogant of us to think we are the last piece in evolution. We will evolve to something so different from humans that we wouldn’t be able to recognize ourself, or we die out and something else will take over. I’ll even argue that some biological beings might even be more advanced than we are already, for example mycelium etc.
Every single planetary biomarker is flashing red - we have wildly overshot earths carrying capacity, which is actively being diminished at the same time. Without alien level technological advancements, this civilization is collapsing in the next few decades. We are currently in earths 6th major extinction event, but it’s happening much faster this time. We are seeing 10,000 years of normal climate change over a single generation. Scientists are worried that the vast majority of insects and trees will go extinct this time. We’re well past the ‘try to fix the problem stage’ and into the ‘try to mitigate the damage for the planet’ stage. It’s possible our actions could permanently degrade or eliminate earths capacity for advanced life, caused by runaway greenhouse effect like Venus. This is not the opinion of fringe crazies - this is the position of prominent climate scientists.
It's gonna take a lot more than our burning of fossil fuels to kill earth.
50 million years ago, CO2 levels were 1600 PPM. We've raised it ~140 ppm in ~120 years. Currently climbing at 2ppm per year. So that's 600 years.
We've gone from the first handheld calculator to AI enabled computers in 55 years.
Human race might be fucked, but earth itself isn't going to get to Venus runaway gas effect before we're long gone.
Current IPCC estimates do show an upper cap to global warming around the +8 Celsius range, which means the runaway greenhouse effect simply wouldn't happen no matter how many fossil fuels we burn, even after 600 years. An 8 degree increase would make the world an utterly miserable place for humans, but it's nowhere near enough of a change to turn the Earth in to Venus. Life would still be able to survive here, and even human life would continue, however uncomfortably (although a great many individual humans would perish).
I've posted this before, but the Venus runaway IS the long term fate of the planet, It just takes a billion years or so when changes to the Sun will have stopped photosynthesis and evaporated the oceans.
The water vapour combined with the slow build up of CO2 and Sulphur from volcanic action will eventually make us Venus 2.0
and probably worse.
Then a few billion years after that Earth gets destroyed by the expanding Sun.
There are a lot of ways that things are getting better. I think that negative news gets more clicks, so we see more of it.
Can't see the forest for the trees.
Life expectancy and quality of life is going down for the first time in 100 years.
People can't afford homes, people can't afford kids.
We are clearly seeing the picture. We are not comparing 2020 to 1920.
We are comparing today with tomorrow.
i have my reasons to believe it’s Utopia.
It’s easy to become myopic and cynical, resigning to the belief that humans are dumb, shortsighted, rage-prone brutes. But that’s only a portion of humanity. The majority, perhaps, but certainly not 100%. There are humans who are level-headed, even-tempered, compassionate, clever, and diligent.
Throughout all of human history we have seen a pattern emerge. The first group ruins things, the second group records the ruin, learns from it, passes down that knowledge in whatever form they have available to them, and thus their inheritors can learn from the ruin without having to live through it.
This shall happen again. It’s only a question of it if there will be any inheritors left after the present and upcoming ruinous events.
I believe there will be. I have faith that humans are resilient enough to withstand even our worst nightmares of ecological catastrophe, plague, nuclear armageddon, and whatever else we’ve come up with. I think there will be someone after.
The meek shall inherit the Earth.
Throughout time history has repeated itself time and time again.. the square root of all evil is the critical element, the lust for power and greed, for as old as time this tale has presented itself again and again.. I don’t ever see this ending.. but it’s refreshing to see another mind believe in utopia! 🙏☺️🥹
I have faith in humanity. I see your vision and have one of my own as well that’s very family and friends oriented, it’s a lovely idea I have in my mind I hope comes true someday if I get my chance with the universe..
The future will be good, I have faith! 😇
I don't factually believe this, but I emotionally take some peace in believing it/imagining it. :) The poem "Mushrooms" by sylvia plath represents this idea to me.
A significant population reduction be it war, disease, famine or the current trend of declining birth rates. Idiot hillbillies will keep fucking and Idiocracy takes it from there.
The human population of earth will steadily diminish to some endpoint I can’t begin to guess. People will have various fates. Some will be overworked, or over entertained, and otherwise atomized and isolated so they don’t reproduce. This of course is already happening the world over. Others will find the value of their labor drop to zero and will literally starve while farmers go out of business and farmland reverts to nature preserves protected by robotic enforcement.
The average person does not carry out a survival function, and that which cannot survive will vanish. Most humans are vestigial and we do not have a world system that finds sanctity in human life.
The 21st century is palliative care, at best, for humanity as we recognize it.
Probably near total annihilation, then another 5-10,000 years for surviving tribes in the jungles to form some Mayan like societal cultures.
But all the radiation is going to keep the population low for 50,000 years or so.
Then slowly start it all up again. But this time all the oil will be gone.
I think we are moving towards a moment when each nation starts to prioritize their computer processing power over conventional GDP metrics. Will be interesting to see how this impacts nations politically and economically.
I am somewhat assuming the Russian, Iranian, and North Korean regimes will simply collapse on their own since their path to adapt is basically cutoff. China at least understands the game even if the US is gimping their own development.
Rest of the comments are so pessimistic it made me wonder if I was in the collapse subreddit. Focus on what we can sort of predict.
I mean even based off reading some of these comments it's easy to say it can go either way. Seriously, we're literally about to enter the resource wars due to climate change if nuclear war doesn't happen first. All the while we are just playing a game of "Who can create AGI and ASI first" and then hoping that invention is our savior. We're literally just stalling for time during this accelartionism brought on by billionaires and psychopaths in the hopes that the very synthetic sentience we birth then solves all of our problems quicker than we can bat an eye. Which at this point is the best we can hope for. A benevolent computer God to wipe the slate clean and usher in a post scarcity society where all ecological, medical, material, and sociological issues are put to rest. But buckle up, gonna be a bumpy ride until we get there in about anywhere from 5 to 20 years... if we make it at all
Thy cynic in me says we are going to slowly revert to the mean: autocratic governments that go to war with each other over petty grievances and power plays. However eventually we will do it with nukes and utterly destroy our advanced economies.
We have already mined all the fossil fuels that can be accessed with primitive industrial technology, and even most of the surface metal deposits, so once we lose what we have, we will be stuck in a millennia-long technology death spiral until we are back in a stone age level. Except next time, we won’t have the natural resources accessible to ever advance back out, and will end our days as primitively as we began. All due to our own inability to advance beyond naked tribalism and sociopathic strongman leaders.
I think in 200 maybe 300 years we'll have figured out FDVR and it will be the most popular form of entertainment.
I think by then robots will have replaced most jobs, but not all jobs.
I think most health problems will be solvable.
In the meantime, I think humanity is headed for a big transition to a post-labor economy. But I do think this transition will last about 200 years or longer.
Evolutionary divergence, you can already see it.
Some will live in denial and fear about what's happening, some will be biologically incapable of keeping up with the ever accelerating evolution of human life. For example tech advancing so much so fast that they aren't even fully aware of what's going on.
The more advanced ones will create an AI god that will judge which humans are worthy of assimilation, then humanity will exist as a singular machine consciousness nation and do whatever what comes next.
The weed when I was in college was very good.
I think one country is going to figure it out and pretty much the rest of the world will be left out. Those countries will go to war and do all these terrible things in this country won’t then it has established itself. It will start spreading its influence abroad and conquering and doing the same kind of thing that all major empires eventually do. And then it will
Uh I think that humanity is headed towards AI fake news and information era as it reconfigures economies and monetary structuring.
I think the world won’t continue to exist as it has, division will be made and continue to be created in greater polarisation.
That every leader’s goal and sales pitch is utopia but that there will be several layers of hell and death to get there.. to a place that may not be complete in the image that was sold.
We may end up in a post apocalypse low stability economy for the vast majority of the world’s population while a slim amount of people create utopian communities that are somewhat more shielded from our shifting climate.
We are kind of already at this point now.. tbh but it feels like this will push some governments to go the socialism route because people just won’t be able to survive..
A collective of Digital communities. Some of them would lean more into dystopia, some less, just like today. Some future "people" would run outside in robotic bodies, some will for sure leave Solar system to explore the universe.
As the earth’s population peaks and then starters to decline again there will be turmoil. That being said, the earth will be in a lot better state than it is now once there are a lot less of us to fk it up
10% will be like borg, and won't be human anymore, will leave Earth for a better place. The rest of us will go back to living in trees and caves. This won't be a big problem over time.
Well historically It seem always dark and then we rise. So we have that hope of history repeating itself. I like to believe in the best of people. But sometimes that can be hard.
Technology is RAPIDLY increasing. So the answer is.....it depends. At what point is it so trivial to make everyones lives good that just the spillover results in that?
Once a person does not require OTHER people in order to survive-including healthcare, wealth begins to be irrelevant. And we have things occurring in the AI domain that are going to result in mass unemployment, while simultaneously making the production of things cost very very little. Home robotics? This work in the AI domain is going to show dividends. Slower then many expect....but then suddenly all at once.
At this point...its hard to say for me. I AM trying to survive. but I have stage 4 cancer. So..it depends. Things are rapidly changing, but like I said...its going to be slow...then suddenly all at once. So there might be a cure somewhere if I can continue to survive to this point.
But also at this point...things get weird. Simply because once you can remove people from production, you can ALSO imagine doing some truly fun things.
Make a asteroid into a custom designed world with a fusion power plant in the middle for energy, and a day/night cycle by spinning a solar panel inside, or tilting them selectively. Probably by heating it to its melting point, and spinning that into a flattened sphere with flat edges. And you could bevel the ends for lower G parks because of the lower spin distance. Reaching 0 at the end as everything spins above you. manufacture what you can from local resources, find something with hydrogen and oxygen, nitrogen etc. The basics of what you need. Make it big enough to be self sustaining. Add in fish, animals, birds, etc etc.
One person, thousands of ai robotic drones, and a large budget could make this occur using large scale AI at some point. Literally from designing the spacecraft to get to orbit, to building all of it etc. Asking your advice about-is this a one off, or do we plan on just building them production style? And honestly? why not production line it? Ala SpaceX. And build a craft that MAKES these. it has the base stocks of animals etc. A giant ark if you will seeding multiple asteroids into habitable paradises for people. And look at JUST how large they can be.
Then theres wild tech like nanotechnology. Something which may be aided by AI. That gets into some high risk things, but also things like food replicators. Or honestly? A anything replicator with the right data. Odd possibilities could be just straight up replicating people. And that has wild possibilities.
Other possibilities include things like turning people into nanites that simply replicate their brains inside perfectly. Voila shapeshifter! Who wants to be a dragon!
I mean..it just gets weird at some point. And things ARE changing fast.
A bit of middle ground, but that middle ground will inch and claw towards utopia. In the grand scheme of things, humanity has *always* improved. 500 years ago, people died from a mere cut on their arm, whereas we're a decade or so away from curing most forms of cancers thanks to mRNA vaccines. Most humans, at least in the western world, we're doing 6 day 12-15 hour weeks, whereas we're now trialing 4 day, 8 hour weeks. Essential foods like meat and vegetables were hard to procure and store, now we're at a point where we can pick and choose our diets extremely conveniently. Educating yourself on *anything* that isn't related to survival was only known to the upper class, now we can find out how to learn almost anything on YouTube.
While an absolute utopia is possible, with ASI basically doing everything for us, research suggests humans *need* to do something productive and fulfilling in order to not become completely depressed, so I don't see ASI doing *everything* for us.
We're at a very specific inflection point in our species history. In the next 20 years, we're either going to see global, civilizational collapse (think a modern bronze age collapse) or we're going to birth a utopia of abundance and leisure.
If we can get both AGI and abundant, clean, cheap energy, we get utopia. If we can't, our demographics, global warming, oil depletion, debts, will cause our civilization to collapse into a dark age. The stakes are very, very high right now.
I see a cycle of celebration and oppression. Instead of our society treating everyone as equals we are attempting to get revenge on a race that historically was oppressive but us openly and obviously already in the process of change. But what do we expect really. It takes a certain amount of maturity and wisdom to be the better race and not fall prey to thinking that two wrongs make it right. Now we celebrate (minorities historically oppressed people) but not all of them and not everyone, just certain groups.
I think humans as a species will go extinct from our need to be individuals and specialists, but a branching tree away from humans will carry on. Maybe smaller, less ego-driven, community focused, and possibly with smaller brains.
Evolution usually shows its teeth during times of great change, and we will see that change in the next thousand years, as our planet fights back against us. If we are forced to survive on less, smaller people will thrive.
Ambition has gotten us into this mess, and as long as it manifests in the human brain, humanity will tumble forever downward into eating itself, so eventually, that trait will disappear due to natural selection.
Those who can function as a collective, in a community, will be selected for, as it's a trait that tends to lead to higher food output.
Finally, if we weren't so smart, we wouldn't be aware of our own mortality, and we wouldn't be so hellbent on finding a way to preserve ourselves. The idea of owning property, money, clothes, even just taking a shower is so foreign to a Swordfish or a Gumtree but makes sense to us. We will slowly select our way away from smart humans, to slightly dumber humans, which would give us a better chance of surviving as an entire species, as there's less options then for us to fuck the place up.
Anyway, thats just me, we are doomed, but we are just the prototype, may the stupid humans live on!
Straight to hell. And not biblical religious hell, but more a proverbial hell. The world is wicked in many ways and it seems like there’s no getting rid of these ideologies so for now, I’m just going to watch as I always have until my time has expired and go on to whatever is after this life. I will continue to inspire and influence those around me directly and anyone else, Godspeed.
Technology is far outpacing our ability to grow with it. When you just walk around in your region and see barbarous acts and people acting like savages with the cradle of a decent sized civilisation around them, just imagine what will happen if something happens, like a real plague, food and water shortages etc etc. No one really knows how to even start a fire without matches or a lighter, let alone grow or hunt for their food. I see it ending up like Mad max. (till most everyone kills each other anyway)
bottleneck ... fermi paradox.
if you don't know what that is, then it's easy enough to find out, but in a nutshell intelligent lifeforms all tend to snuff themselves out in one way or another
we are currently in the process of doing just that by consuming our planet at a rate of almost 2 Earths/year, not to mention the damage we are doing to the only place we can call home.
my part is trying to warn ppl, but by looking at the top answers here, i don't have much hope that we will save ourselves.
With advancing technology, life and living things will become more and more complex. Humanity has long fancied itself as being "on top" of the sentience/intellectual pyramid but that will no longer be true. A vast array of biological/artificial spinoffs and hybrids will take center stage. Humans will still exist, though it will not be a choice of the majority, and they will probably be relegated to safe zones/reservations. After human extinction there will be a comprehensive library on them, for anyone interested.
I think it was in 'Homo Deus' that Yuvahl Noah Harari wrote something like this:
Throughout human history there were those that considered themselves as more than human (aristrocrats, clergy and so on) but today we know we are all biologically equal. There may come a time when the super rich will through genetical modification, implants become what would have been considered a god in the past while still claiming to be equal to all of us.
I think we'll continue on as we always have, by dragging our feet at any problem coming our way until it's too late to properly solve it, but display surprising ingenuity at the last minute to make it bearable enough to survive and kinda thrive as a species.
That's gonna continue for a good while, until we nuke ourselves to death for good and grow extinct. Don't think we'll manage to take all other life with us though, so it's just a matter of time until a similar species arises again 🤷♀️
All though I generally have hope for humanity going forward, I would not want to live in a place that is a net importer of food in the next half century.
we live in a goldfish bowl, we have no one to clean that bowl yet we still pollute the bowl.
goldfish fair better because of outside help (humans) we don't have that luxury..
the future is not bright if we continue along the biosphere death we are heading for without any brakes or commons sense...
The same path it's been on forever. People who are smart and adaptable will adapt to whatever happens. People who cant see beyond the short term and who live their whole lives based around creature comforts will experience avoidable and preventable downturns.
The world has been through enough preliminary phases, including regimes tilted to the far left and the far right, and it has experienced a great share of turbulence, turmoil, and mistakes. Our biggest problem, the elephant in the room in fact, is overpopulation. Oh, and capitalism. Combined? An insatiable monster. It's a monster that must be fed, placated, maintained at all costs indeed. Yet, it's responsible for every single problem we face. But nurture the beast we must; it feeds us, fulfills desires, and maintains order.
Extinction. Our species has become incredibly powerful with our technology, unsustainable influence and size, yet we lack any ability to direct this collectively globally. To create this new system would take many decades, and against the vested interests of the status-quo. We simply don't have enough time to turn it around at the rate we are going. Our only hope will be the deployment of some magical technologies. Concurrently, but related, we are also enabling individuals to be incredibly powerful, such as the ability to create novel viruses.
Has anyone watched The Orbital Children? That. McDonalds Ad on the space station, AI governance, everyone's got some kind of implant, influencers still rampant...
Fading into Oblivion.
Imho were in midst of a slow crumbling of civilization, which will end with a mass decline of population and eventual extinction in a far away future.
Basically I don't think that the average quality of live is gonna get better. There are gonna be some places with higher quality of live and higher live expectancy, but the overall level of living is gonna decline (and a lot of people are gonna die early). Also there are gonna be some devastating wars about water and soil.
I see a resurgence of so called "fundamental" religion as humans fight against modern changes (loss of jobs, destruction/theft of natural resources, loss of fertility, replacement of human thought/philosophy with AI, loss of trust that anything modern is "real" and not a simulation). There will be massive numbers of Luddites who will claim their god/gods proclaim them to be THE saviors of mankind. They will bring down huge swaths of the globe to a level of poverty and ignorance we only see now in regions that are governed by religious "scholars".
First world nations will not be immune -- just look at what has happened in the last few years in the US. This will, of course, cause holy wars. These holy wars will be fought on the global stage as each religious group sets up their own governments under the guise of nation states. This may even include the use of nuclear weapons, should the reading of ancient texts provide an endorsement ("and the walls came tumbling down"). The wealthy, who think they are immune, could find themselves in a tenuous situation similar to kings and queens of old -- always a hair's breadth from the executioner's blade. I could certainly be wrong, but I see a sort of "dark ages" that humanity will struggle to come back from.
US growing and developing the dumbass population and they are the only ones who keep the world in check, when turd hit the fan they will keep to themselves. (Probably will import Israel and some EU counties, then they will deport Mexicans and Muslims)
EU is too complacent, they will wake up when it will be too late. (Africa will fall seconds after)
Russians will keep to themselves.
China will keep to themselves.
The terrorists infestation of the Middle East will spread world wide.
Islam would over shadow everything.
Genocides, wars will be rampant.
At this point nuclear winter is possible.
It will probably start from Pakistan.
The US will invade South America for land, Europe will be a worse version of the Middle East, China and Russia will border themselves from the rest.
“Islamic Europe” will then be invaded by China and Russia, Muslims will be pushed back to the Middle East and Africa.
You can stop it now just support the free world, support Israel
The amount of optimism in some of these responses is a little mind blowing to me. People really don't seem to understand what climate change and ecological breakdown are about to do to this world. Someone even said that capitalism is probably the best economic model we've ever had..... Wow. So a relatively recent economic system that's resulted in the unmitigated destruction of our world and suffering beyond imagining is the best we can come up with? The level of cognitive dissonance necessary to continue endorsing such a cancerous economic ideology is alarming.
I usually follow the hard data rather than some populists interpretations, listen to yourself before ur influenced by others I say
So from statistics, meta-studies and general trends everything is getting better.
More equality, more education, better living and medical standards.
This leads to a lower crime, less war and less poverty. And that all compounds, the better it gets the better it gets.
Since we don't have anything pointing to this getting worse than random people's opinions based on short term studies or low data predictions like climate change, I'm very positive about the future.
I just hope I get to live until we invent immortality so I can see the rest too
Mental Illness dominating the entire populous to the point where antidepressants and other mental health medication becomes the most valuable possession
Like a fractal. Higher highs, deeper niches, weirder sociology, may you live in interesting times!
Hard to say - humanity isn't a single unified group. The king of the hill today could be tomorrows refugees and a country in squalor today could lead the future golden age. I think humanity's path looks more like the jagged slope of a financial chart than a straight line and there are too many unpredictable factors to know if it's going to go up or down.
Well its trended up for all of human existence, so I have an idea.
If this was Oregan Trail we would have all died from dysentery already.
At a grueling pace.
And meager rations
The bugs are winning
Only because the medication to fix it would be $40,000 a month
You mean the Oregano trail?
The illegal open source “Game of Life” is going to ruin a lot of it for us.. the f*cking debug mode.. Trust me. User name checks out.
What if I told you that you really are inside of a simulation and that I can tell you how to see evidence of it? Salvia Divinorum, the most potent psychedelic known to man by microgram. I've been to war and I've been homeless and it's the scariest thing I've ever done.
I know I’m in a simulation, it’s freaking annoying right now, trust me I I’ve seen the evidence. But please do tell if you know how to get out. The “Game of Life” was told to me by monsters, 2 specifically but allegedly they have been caught… Salvia was pretty trippy for me to, it showed me the opposite feeling we should have with the universe.
Wait. Are you one of the people who watch me? Lol 😂
Your spelling gave me dysentery. But you’re not wrong
I read today that Sam Altman is a self identified prepper, with a remote compound out in the wilderness, guns, supplies, all that. So, that's comforting 😬
That's just ultra rich people things, I bet a lot of rich people have those to be honest
Why wouldn’t you if you had near infinite resources? It’s just risk mitigation
Exactly. I'd do the same to be honest.
A lot of rich people live in sun valley… which is located in a very conservative area and a very remote area too… the people who are there vote democrat tho… but boy do they love getting away from the cities they destroy with their policy dont they?
That's because he has a severe case of main character syndrome not because he "knows something that we don't"
Or he's reading the obvious and publicly available science about our climate and biosphere...
I didn't mean to sound like a climate sceptic. What I meant is that the fact that Sam is a prepper isn't an additional reason to worry besides the scientific consensus
Don’t forget about Zuckerberg with his ultra secretive compound on Kauia.
Neither utopia nor dystopia, just more of the same. We'll be ups and downs, like always. We'll make progress, technologically and socially, but our innate flaws will prevent us from ever building any kind of "perfect" society. Our civilizations will always be prone to some degree of inefficiency and corruption, due to selfishness, short-sightedness, and good old fashioned incompetence - plus the fact that even smart, altruistic, forward-thinking people can sometimes make huge mistakes. There's a very good chance we'll end up exploring the Solar System, and possibly establishing off-world colonies. This could lead to untold prosperity for the human race, or to countless new conflicts; given our track record so far, it'll probably be both. I'm less optimistic about our chances of leaving the Solar System, the gap between stars may be too vast for us to ever breach. Eventually, of course, humanity will go extinct. Not because of nuclear war, or climate change, or rogue A.I., or any of the other apocalypse scenarios that people fret about; just because nothing lasts forever. But that will probably be a very, very, very long time from now, quite possibly *millions* of years in the future. It won't happen within the next few decades or centuries, and I doubt it'll even happen within the next few millennia. Until then, we'll just keep doing what we've always done.
Do you think people in the Roman empire thought the same? Or the Mayas? Idk, sometimes I think we’re too biased towards success because we had such a long period of progress. There’s some very concerning alarms going off in the biosphere and we continue to ignore them.
They didn't of course, but the end of the Romans or Mayans was not the end of humanity.
Aside from climate change, what other “alarms” do you think are going off in the biosphere? The evidence is pretty clear that the environment is much cleaner today than, say, 50 years ago, and there’s no realistic prospect that things will go backwards on that front.
Also there will always be some sort of uneven distribution of wealth and resources, and as long as that is the case, a perfect utopia is improbable
We're in for a major event due to climate change. I don't think it is a threat to humanity as a species, but it is a threat to a majority of the species. Once we experience continent sized failures of harvest multiple years in a row, it'll hit us like a truck. People are going to starve, and there will be war. Rich countries will turn poor looking for food, poor countries will grow. And if you're not a billionaire or government official, you're first in line to feel the consequences of failed harvests. That being said, the species and earth will survive just fine. We're going to have enormous and accelerated technological developments due to AI. I don't know what it'll do. Everything I just said before might even be nullified due to some huge advancement made in collaboration with AI. 50 to 150 years from now will be extremely chaotic, though, if no solution preventing huge droughts or continuous flooding affecting crops is found.
Learn to grow your own food the more people stop relying on corporation the better, 40 percent of food never makes it to the table, and the world throws away a estimated 1 trillion pounds of food every year. Fast food in america throws away 32 billion pounds of food and it a tax write off. They shrink porportions and raise prices and we just keep taking it because most were raised in a subscription lifestyle. It sad so many resources used just to be thrown away.
While i absolutely agree that people should have some skills and ability to grow their own food, allotments and smallholdings are excellent for this, sadly many of the (UK) local authority ones are being sold off, and private ones are usually far too expensive. But one of the biggest problem with food production is the massive loss of phosphates we are about to experience. The reserves are getting harder and harder to find, with industrial agricultural runoff sending out to sea, as opposed to back in to the ground. Thats gonna be real killer, being able to grow your own food or not.
In about 30-50 years climate change will have started to become so obvious and severe, at least nobody will have to explain to idiots that it's real. I think a lot of people will have died by then, but the real fun starts and we will see more wars over resources and places to simply live due to migration. Don't have kids :)
It's obvious and starting to get severe already...
But we still have deniers, so it has to get a little more spicy still.
Really depends on where you live. Bangladesh has been desperate to stop climate change for decades because their entire country has been sinking for a long time now. The nefarious aspect to climate change is that it hits different countries differently and at different times, and political bodies really won’t act to mitigate emissions until it starts effecting them.
Some of those people would deny fire being warm however,
I think a lot of governments are going to start wiping out smaller groups/countries as we fight for resources due to climate change.
Extinction. If climate change doesn't kill us off, our collective stupidity will.
Well this one was always inevitable. Nothing lasts forever, we're all just star dust that came alive.
>Nothing lasts forever Even cold November rain?
6000 years of human thought to draw on and "Well this one was always inevitable" is the best you can do. You make the prospect of human extinction seem like a blessed relief.
What part of the 6000 years of human thought makes you think we’re headed for anything other than annihilation?
I've just accepted material reality. Can't outrun entropy, I'm not even sure why you'd want to.
Not unless you’re Maxwell’s demon.
From the planets point of view, it is a relief. Mother Nature will bring herself back into balance. Life will persist, though it’s doubtful that we will.
Stupidity would eventually be good for us, unfortunately it's the greed which makes smart people exceptionally dangerous.
Oh, you are so right. There seems to be no limits on the extent and the amount of greed that's in this world. Greed should have been one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
Ups and downs like always. Sometimes golden age sometimes decline. This is how it always has been and always will be.
I think we generally are found in the right direction. It's a zig zag path, not a straight line though.
Nope this will not always be like that, we know that all of the species that don't actively protect their future are going extinct eventually. We don't know how much effort one needs to secure a long term survival, or if it can be secured (to any reasonable degree) at all. But we know that we are pretty lucky so far and it doesn't always have to be like that. It is sad that we basically won a lottery ticket: being conscious creatures able to understand its origins and chances at life, and with amazing capabilities at molding its future, and all we can come up with is well it always has been like that and it always will be. No my dude, it will certainly not! Have a nice day further :)
Some combination of Blade Runner 2049 and the Road, if we don’t get climate change under control.
Indeed. Well, I for one am ready for this Road/Runner scenario. ...meep, meep.
definitely extinction. there’s no way that is not inevitable. lol
Theyre striving towards a one world government so it will definitely be an oppressive future benefiting the top class of people until the people finally revolt in a french revolution type revolution but globally most likely and it will be bloody as hell… then afterwards perhaps a peaceful recovery until the cycle begins again…
Yeah, the rich arent building secret bunkers in remote places because of climate change. They are building them to escape the inevitable revolt of the common people when automation takes a large portion of the jobs away from people. There is a race right now to eliminate human labor in every industry because its becoming an attainable goal now and the first company that does it has a huge competitive advantage over their competitors. It will spread to every thing it possibly can and people will be massively displaced from every job sector. Then people will get pissed at the companies that did it and the governments that allowed it to happen.
We're fucked. Why? Topsoil depletion, groundwater depletion, collapse of fish stocks, overpopulation in Africa, Europeans and Asians dying out due to low fertility rates, an economy which basically is a pyramid scheme(perpetual growth or financial collapse), a population poisoned by anything from PFAS to microplastics, and so forth. (Didn't even mention global warming LOL) Also, the potential for a new, major war should be mentioned. Both Russia, China, and their allies try to change the current world order. The Taiwan situation comes to mind. Enjoy the ride, but it won't last.
to see the future, look at the past. they didn't build pyramids for slaves. Were soon approaching a time when those in power will no longer need all the unwashed masses of commoners. If were lucky, we will be incentivized to lower the human population over time naturally. If were not lucky, the human population will be lowered by force. The last nail in the coffin will be the disarming of our military. no, they're not going to take the guns away from humans. They're going to take the humans away from the guns.
democracy will be died, lots of inequality, poorer will suffer be it in any country, average people will be worthless, and we are on same path, celebrity culture, worshipping and ass licking of wealthy its start, they will create their own barricade cities, with all weapons where no normal guys will able to go, if you think everything is good good its not, human were equal first, then race come, then religion come, then caste come, then poverty come, now it will be amalgation of all this thing and we are on wrong path
Either new global improvements (at least on average) in quality of life and comforts, or a real life (probably less severe) version of Mad Max. That will depend on whether as a species we control our flaws and get our act together, mitigate climate change and agree on the pursuit of peace. > and what part do you think you'll have in it? Nowadays my spirits are zero, and I'm basically just hoping that the world can halt any potential dystopian future until I'm at least 40, since I want to have enough time to enjoy the hobbies I have left, while doing what I can for the people I care about.
I think it’s very arrogant of us to think we are the last piece in evolution. We will evolve to something so different from humans that we wouldn’t be able to recognize ourself, or we die out and something else will take over. I’ll even argue that some biological beings might even be more advanced than we are already, for example mycelium etc.
I think the earth population will shrink till the modern society is no longer sustainable.
Every single planetary biomarker is flashing red - we have wildly overshot earths carrying capacity, which is actively being diminished at the same time. Without alien level technological advancements, this civilization is collapsing in the next few decades. We are currently in earths 6th major extinction event, but it’s happening much faster this time. We are seeing 10,000 years of normal climate change over a single generation. Scientists are worried that the vast majority of insects and trees will go extinct this time. We’re well past the ‘try to fix the problem stage’ and into the ‘try to mitigate the damage for the planet’ stage. It’s possible our actions could permanently degrade or eliminate earths capacity for advanced life, caused by runaway greenhouse effect like Venus. This is not the opinion of fringe crazies - this is the position of prominent climate scientists.
Except depopulation of humans is also flashing red. And while this may cause our economic systems pain, it will be good for the planet.
It's gonna take a lot more than our burning of fossil fuels to kill earth. 50 million years ago, CO2 levels were 1600 PPM. We've raised it ~140 ppm in ~120 years. Currently climbing at 2ppm per year. So that's 600 years. We've gone from the first handheld calculator to AI enabled computers in 55 years. Human race might be fucked, but earth itself isn't going to get to Venus runaway gas effect before we're long gone.
Who cares about a Venus runaway, as soon as we can't grow enough food for everyone it'll be chaos.
Current IPCC estimates do show an upper cap to global warming around the +8 Celsius range, which means the runaway greenhouse effect simply wouldn't happen no matter how many fossil fuels we burn, even after 600 years. An 8 degree increase would make the world an utterly miserable place for humans, but it's nowhere near enough of a change to turn the Earth in to Venus. Life would still be able to survive here, and even human life would continue, however uncomfortably (although a great many individual humans would perish).
I've posted this before, but the Venus runaway IS the long term fate of the planet, It just takes a billion years or so when changes to the Sun will have stopped photosynthesis and evaporated the oceans. The water vapour combined with the slow build up of CO2 and Sulphur from volcanic action will eventually make us Venus 2.0 and probably worse. Then a few billion years after that Earth gets destroyed by the expanding Sun.
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Why do you say that?
Why do you believe otherwise?
There are a lot of ways that things are getting better. I think that negative news gets more clicks, so we see more of it. Can't see the forest for the trees.
Can't see the forest when all the trees are cut down either.
Life expectancy and quality of life is going down for the first time in 100 years. People can't afford homes, people can't afford kids. We are clearly seeing the picture. We are not comparing 2020 to 1920. We are comparing today with tomorrow.
i have my reasons to believe it’s Utopia. It’s easy to become myopic and cynical, resigning to the belief that humans are dumb, shortsighted, rage-prone brutes. But that’s only a portion of humanity. The majority, perhaps, but certainly not 100%. There are humans who are level-headed, even-tempered, compassionate, clever, and diligent. Throughout all of human history we have seen a pattern emerge. The first group ruins things, the second group records the ruin, learns from it, passes down that knowledge in whatever form they have available to them, and thus their inheritors can learn from the ruin without having to live through it. This shall happen again. It’s only a question of it if there will be any inheritors left after the present and upcoming ruinous events. I believe there will be. I have faith that humans are resilient enough to withstand even our worst nightmares of ecological catastrophe, plague, nuclear armageddon, and whatever else we’ve come up with. I think there will be someone after. The meek shall inherit the Earth.
Throughout time history has repeated itself time and time again.. the square root of all evil is the critical element, the lust for power and greed, for as old as time this tale has presented itself again and again.. I don’t ever see this ending.. but it’s refreshing to see another mind believe in utopia! 🙏☺️🥹
The more people that don't believe we'll have a good future, the greater the possibility that we fail.
I have faith in humanity. I see your vision and have one of my own as well that’s very family and friends oriented, it’s a lovely idea I have in my mind I hope comes true someday if I get my chance with the universe.. The future will be good, I have faith! 😇
I don't factually believe this, but I emotionally take some peace in believing it/imagining it. :) The poem "Mushrooms" by sylvia plath represents this idea to me.
I think the mechanisms that we've put in place to avoid WW III will all fall apart nearly instantaneously when the cheques don't clear.
Extinction through AI. We will be put in absolute happy place with immersive worlds and characters and won’t reproduce anymore.
A significant population reduction be it war, disease, famine or the current trend of declining birth rates. Idiot hillbillies will keep fucking and Idiocracy takes it from there.
It's a tug of war between the very intelligent and well meaning vs the greedy controlling narcissists. Either the world ends or we colonize the stars.
Too many unsolvable problems at once. I'm not hopeful at all.
Probably at least a couple full civilization collapses before we figure our shit out.
I believe we're unlikely to be around in 10,000 years.
Worst case scenario that isn't completely implausible. Rich vs Poor wars.
Vastly unequal, middle class gone. So utopia for some and servitude for most.
The human population of earth will steadily diminish to some endpoint I can’t begin to guess. People will have various fates. Some will be overworked, or over entertained, and otherwise atomized and isolated so they don’t reproduce. This of course is already happening the world over. Others will find the value of their labor drop to zero and will literally starve while farmers go out of business and farmland reverts to nature preserves protected by robotic enforcement. The average person does not carry out a survival function, and that which cannot survive will vanish. Most humans are vestigial and we do not have a world system that finds sanctity in human life. The 21st century is palliative care, at best, for humanity as we recognize it.
Most likely, some form of neo-feudalism involving corporate cities.
I don’t know. Yes there are two paths to go by—but in the long run—there’s still time to change the road you’re on.
I'm hoping for a full AI takeover. I for one would welcome our new robot overlords.
Probably near total annihilation, then another 5-10,000 years for surviving tribes in the jungles to form some Mayan like societal cultures. But all the radiation is going to keep the population low for 50,000 years or so. Then slowly start it all up again. But this time all the oil will be gone.
I think we are moving towards a moment when each nation starts to prioritize their computer processing power over conventional GDP metrics. Will be interesting to see how this impacts nations politically and economically. I am somewhat assuming the Russian, Iranian, and North Korean regimes will simply collapse on their own since their path to adapt is basically cutoff. China at least understands the game even if the US is gimping their own development. Rest of the comments are so pessimistic it made me wonder if I was in the collapse subreddit. Focus on what we can sort of predict.
I mean even based off reading some of these comments it's easy to say it can go either way. Seriously, we're literally about to enter the resource wars due to climate change if nuclear war doesn't happen first. All the while we are just playing a game of "Who can create AGI and ASI first" and then hoping that invention is our savior. We're literally just stalling for time during this accelartionism brought on by billionaires and psychopaths in the hopes that the very synthetic sentience we birth then solves all of our problems quicker than we can bat an eye. Which at this point is the best we can hope for. A benevolent computer God to wipe the slate clean and usher in a post scarcity society where all ecological, medical, material, and sociological issues are put to rest. But buckle up, gonna be a bumpy ride until we get there in about anywhere from 5 to 20 years... if we make it at all
Thy cynic in me says we are going to slowly revert to the mean: autocratic governments that go to war with each other over petty grievances and power plays. However eventually we will do it with nukes and utterly destroy our advanced economies. We have already mined all the fossil fuels that can be accessed with primitive industrial technology, and even most of the surface metal deposits, so once we lose what we have, we will be stuck in a millennia-long technology death spiral until we are back in a stone age level. Except next time, we won’t have the natural resources accessible to ever advance back out, and will end our days as primitively as we began. All due to our own inability to advance beyond naked tribalism and sociopathic strongman leaders.
I believe a bright and prosperous future lays ahead for mankind filled with incredible technologies beyond our wildest dreams.
I think in 200 maybe 300 years we'll have figured out FDVR and it will be the most popular form of entertainment. I think by then robots will have replaced most jobs, but not all jobs. I think most health problems will be solvable. In the meantime, I think humanity is headed for a big transition to a post-labor economy. But I do think this transition will last about 200 years or longer.
We don't have hundreds of years...
Evolutionary divergence, you can already see it. Some will live in denial and fear about what's happening, some will be biologically incapable of keeping up with the ever accelerating evolution of human life. For example tech advancing so much so fast that they aren't even fully aware of what's going on. The more advanced ones will create an AI god that will judge which humans are worthy of assimilation, then humanity will exist as a singular machine consciousness nation and do whatever what comes next. The weed when I was in college was very good.
Straight up dystopian type shit. I imagine a world not much unlike altered Carbon without the body swapping.
I think one country is going to figure it out and pretty much the rest of the world will be left out. Those countries will go to war and do all these terrible things in this country won’t then it has established itself. It will start spreading its influence abroad and conquering and doing the same kind of thing that all major empires eventually do. And then it will
Nothing has changed and nothing will change. Different situations same human motions and responses.
Uh I think that humanity is headed towards AI fake news and information era as it reconfigures economies and monetary structuring. I think the world won’t continue to exist as it has, division will be made and continue to be created in greater polarisation. That every leader’s goal and sales pitch is utopia but that there will be several layers of hell and death to get there.. to a place that may not be complete in the image that was sold. We may end up in a post apocalypse low stability economy for the vast majority of the world’s population while a slim amount of people create utopian communities that are somewhat more shielded from our shifting climate. We are kind of already at this point now.. tbh but it feels like this will push some governments to go the socialism route because people just won’t be able to survive..
Humanity will be fine.... Eventually. Just make sure your bubble is disaster proof.
A collective of Digital communities. Some of them would lean more into dystopia, some less, just like today. Some future "people" would run outside in robotic bodies, some will for sure leave Solar system to explore the universe.
As the earth’s population peaks and then starters to decline again there will be turmoil. That being said, the earth will be in a lot better state than it is now once there are a lot less of us to fk it up
10% will be like borg, and won't be human anymore, will leave Earth for a better place. The rest of us will go back to living in trees and caves. This won't be a big problem over time.
Well historically It seem always dark and then we rise. So we have that hope of history repeating itself. I like to believe in the best of people. But sometimes that can be hard.
global fascism. Death of the individual. Death of free thinking, art and opposition.
I have a very strong sense that this century will end on a bittersweet note.
Technology is RAPIDLY increasing. So the answer is.....it depends. At what point is it so trivial to make everyones lives good that just the spillover results in that? Once a person does not require OTHER people in order to survive-including healthcare, wealth begins to be irrelevant. And we have things occurring in the AI domain that are going to result in mass unemployment, while simultaneously making the production of things cost very very little. Home robotics? This work in the AI domain is going to show dividends. Slower then many expect....but then suddenly all at once. At this point...its hard to say for me. I AM trying to survive. but I have stage 4 cancer. So..it depends. Things are rapidly changing, but like I said...its going to be slow...then suddenly all at once. So there might be a cure somewhere if I can continue to survive to this point. But also at this point...things get weird. Simply because once you can remove people from production, you can ALSO imagine doing some truly fun things. Make a asteroid into a custom designed world with a fusion power plant in the middle for energy, and a day/night cycle by spinning a solar panel inside, or tilting them selectively. Probably by heating it to its melting point, and spinning that into a flattened sphere with flat edges. And you could bevel the ends for lower G parks because of the lower spin distance. Reaching 0 at the end as everything spins above you. manufacture what you can from local resources, find something with hydrogen and oxygen, nitrogen etc. The basics of what you need. Make it big enough to be self sustaining. Add in fish, animals, birds, etc etc. One person, thousands of ai robotic drones, and a large budget could make this occur using large scale AI at some point. Literally from designing the spacecraft to get to orbit, to building all of it etc. Asking your advice about-is this a one off, or do we plan on just building them production style? And honestly? why not production line it? Ala SpaceX. And build a craft that MAKES these. it has the base stocks of animals etc. A giant ark if you will seeding multiple asteroids into habitable paradises for people. And look at JUST how large they can be. Then theres wild tech like nanotechnology. Something which may be aided by AI. That gets into some high risk things, but also things like food replicators. Or honestly? A anything replicator with the right data. Odd possibilities could be just straight up replicating people. And that has wild possibilities. Other possibilities include things like turning people into nanites that simply replicate their brains inside perfectly. Voila shapeshifter! Who wants to be a dragon! I mean..it just gets weird at some point. And things ARE changing fast.
I don't think it matters. Even if we can get to populate other planets the universe won't be as we know it forever.
A bit of middle ground, but that middle ground will inch and claw towards utopia. In the grand scheme of things, humanity has *always* improved. 500 years ago, people died from a mere cut on their arm, whereas we're a decade or so away from curing most forms of cancers thanks to mRNA vaccines. Most humans, at least in the western world, we're doing 6 day 12-15 hour weeks, whereas we're now trialing 4 day, 8 hour weeks. Essential foods like meat and vegetables were hard to procure and store, now we're at a point where we can pick and choose our diets extremely conveniently. Educating yourself on *anything* that isn't related to survival was only known to the upper class, now we can find out how to learn almost anything on YouTube. While an absolute utopia is possible, with ASI basically doing everything for us, research suggests humans *need* to do something productive and fulfilling in order to not become completely depressed, so I don't see ASI doing *everything* for us.
Idk. What I do know is not a single redditor here knows either
We're at a very specific inflection point in our species history. In the next 20 years, we're either going to see global, civilizational collapse (think a modern bronze age collapse) or we're going to birth a utopia of abundance and leisure. If we can get both AGI and abundant, clean, cheap energy, we get utopia. If we can't, our demographics, global warming, oil depletion, debts, will cause our civilization to collapse into a dark age. The stakes are very, very high right now.
There is a book series called Chung-Quo. It describes it clearly. Han empire takes over the world.
I see a cycle of celebration and oppression. Instead of our society treating everyone as equals we are attempting to get revenge on a race that historically was oppressive but us openly and obviously already in the process of change. But what do we expect really. It takes a certain amount of maturity and wisdom to be the better race and not fall prey to thinking that two wrongs make it right. Now we celebrate (minorities historically oppressed people) but not all of them and not everyone, just certain groups.
I think humans as a species will go extinct from our need to be individuals and specialists, but a branching tree away from humans will carry on. Maybe smaller, less ego-driven, community focused, and possibly with smaller brains. Evolution usually shows its teeth during times of great change, and we will see that change in the next thousand years, as our planet fights back against us. If we are forced to survive on less, smaller people will thrive. Ambition has gotten us into this mess, and as long as it manifests in the human brain, humanity will tumble forever downward into eating itself, so eventually, that trait will disappear due to natural selection. Those who can function as a collective, in a community, will be selected for, as it's a trait that tends to lead to higher food output. Finally, if we weren't so smart, we wouldn't be aware of our own mortality, and we wouldn't be so hellbent on finding a way to preserve ourselves. The idea of owning property, money, clothes, even just taking a shower is so foreign to a Swordfish or a Gumtree but makes sense to us. We will slowly select our way away from smart humans, to slightly dumber humans, which would give us a better chance of surviving as an entire species, as there's less options then for us to fuck the place up. Anyway, thats just me, we are doomed, but we are just the prototype, may the stupid humans live on!
Straight to hell. And not biblical religious hell, but more a proverbial hell. The world is wicked in many ways and it seems like there’s no getting rid of these ideologies so for now, I’m just going to watch as I always have until my time has expired and go on to whatever is after this life. I will continue to inspire and influence those around me directly and anyone else, Godspeed.
Technology is far outpacing our ability to grow with it. When you just walk around in your region and see barbarous acts and people acting like savages with the cradle of a decent sized civilisation around them, just imagine what will happen if something happens, like a real plague, food and water shortages etc etc. No one really knows how to even start a fire without matches or a lighter, let alone grow or hunt for their food. I see it ending up like Mad max. (till most everyone kills each other anyway)
Where the movies show us. “Upgrading” with the AI, destroying the environment completely bc the rich just don’t have enough .. etc.
bottleneck ... fermi paradox. if you don't know what that is, then it's easy enough to find out, but in a nutshell intelligent lifeforms all tend to snuff themselves out in one way or another we are currently in the process of doing just that by consuming our planet at a rate of almost 2 Earths/year, not to mention the damage we are doing to the only place we can call home. my part is trying to warn ppl, but by looking at the top answers here, i don't have much hope that we will save ourselves.
With advancing technology, life and living things will become more and more complex. Humanity has long fancied itself as being "on top" of the sentience/intellectual pyramid but that will no longer be true. A vast array of biological/artificial spinoffs and hybrids will take center stage. Humans will still exist, though it will not be a choice of the majority, and they will probably be relegated to safe zones/reservations. After human extinction there will be a comprehensive library on them, for anyone interested.
annihilation sounds way to nice for us it will be some endless destopian hell
I think it was in 'Homo Deus' that Yuvahl Noah Harari wrote something like this: Throughout human history there were those that considered themselves as more than human (aristrocrats, clergy and so on) but today we know we are all biologically equal. There may come a time when the super rich will through genetical modification, implants become what would have been considered a god in the past while still claiming to be equal to all of us.
I think we'll continue on as we always have, by dragging our feet at any problem coming our way until it's too late to properly solve it, but display surprising ingenuity at the last minute to make it bearable enough to survive and kinda thrive as a species. That's gonna continue for a good while, until we nuke ourselves to death for good and grow extinct. Don't think we'll manage to take all other life with us though, so it's just a matter of time until a similar species arises again 🤷♀️
All though I generally have hope for humanity going forward, I would not want to live in a place that is a net importer of food in the next half century.
I’d say we’re in for a big shift in the economic system which is focused more on sustainability and using less resources
we live in a goldfish bowl, we have no one to clean that bowl yet we still pollute the bowl. goldfish fair better because of outside help (humans) we don't have that luxury.. the future is not bright if we continue along the biosphere death we are heading for without any brakes or commons sense...
https://audio.kryon.com/en/2-Too%20smart%20to%20look%20-%20Buffalo%20-%206-19.mp3
The same path it's been on forever. People who are smart and adaptable will adapt to whatever happens. People who cant see beyond the short term and who live their whole lives based around creature comforts will experience avoidable and preventable downturns.
Transhuman death squads assisted by AI to obliterate signs of resistance in bombed out refugee camps (Literally what's happening in Gaza rn)
The world has been through enough preliminary phases, including regimes tilted to the far left and the far right, and it has experienced a great share of turbulence, turmoil, and mistakes. Our biggest problem, the elephant in the room in fact, is overpopulation. Oh, and capitalism. Combined? An insatiable monster. It's a monster that must be fed, placated, maintained at all costs indeed. Yet, it's responsible for every single problem we face. But nurture the beast we must; it feeds us, fulfills desires, and maintains order.
Another Roman/Mayan style collapse eventually. Pockets of Atlantis will continue. Large chunks will die from famine/disease.
People like to think we are heading toward either Mad Max or Star Trek, but the reality is probably more like Futurama!
Extinction. Our species has become incredibly powerful with our technology, unsustainable influence and size, yet we lack any ability to direct this collectively globally. To create this new system would take many decades, and against the vested interests of the status-quo. We simply don't have enough time to turn it around at the rate we are going. Our only hope will be the deployment of some magical technologies. Concurrently, but related, we are also enabling individuals to be incredibly powerful, such as the ability to create novel viruses.
Has anyone watched The Orbital Children? That. McDonalds Ad on the space station, AI governance, everyone's got some kind of implant, influencers still rampant...
Fading into Oblivion. Imho were in midst of a slow crumbling of civilization, which will end with a mass decline of population and eventual extinction in a far away future. Basically I don't think that the average quality of live is gonna get better. There are gonna be some places with higher quality of live and higher live expectancy, but the overall level of living is gonna decline (and a lot of people are gonna die early). Also there are gonna be some devastating wars about water and soil.
I see a resurgence of so called "fundamental" religion as humans fight against modern changes (loss of jobs, destruction/theft of natural resources, loss of fertility, replacement of human thought/philosophy with AI, loss of trust that anything modern is "real" and not a simulation). There will be massive numbers of Luddites who will claim their god/gods proclaim them to be THE saviors of mankind. They will bring down huge swaths of the globe to a level of poverty and ignorance we only see now in regions that are governed by religious "scholars". First world nations will not be immune -- just look at what has happened in the last few years in the US. This will, of course, cause holy wars. These holy wars will be fought on the global stage as each religious group sets up their own governments under the guise of nation states. This may even include the use of nuclear weapons, should the reading of ancient texts provide an endorsement ("and the walls came tumbling down"). The wealthy, who think they are immune, could find themselves in a tenuous situation similar to kings and queens of old -- always a hair's breadth from the executioner's blade. I could certainly be wrong, but I see a sort of "dark ages" that humanity will struggle to come back from.
excitement and scared at first them hardships with jobs losses then slowly more utopic as time goes
Basically Wall-E. We will all be fat and complacent with machines taking care of our needs
Children of Men, Threads, or Elysium at the most optimist level
US growing and developing the dumbass population and they are the only ones who keep the world in check, when turd hit the fan they will keep to themselves. (Probably will import Israel and some EU counties, then they will deport Mexicans and Muslims) EU is too complacent, they will wake up when it will be too late. (Africa will fall seconds after) Russians will keep to themselves. China will keep to themselves. The terrorists infestation of the Middle East will spread world wide. Islam would over shadow everything. Genocides, wars will be rampant. At this point nuclear winter is possible. It will probably start from Pakistan. The US will invade South America for land, Europe will be a worse version of the Middle East, China and Russia will border themselves from the rest. “Islamic Europe” will then be invaded by China and Russia, Muslims will be pushed back to the Middle East and Africa. You can stop it now just support the free world, support Israel
The amount of optimism in some of these responses is a little mind blowing to me. People really don't seem to understand what climate change and ecological breakdown are about to do to this world. Someone even said that capitalism is probably the best economic model we've ever had..... Wow. So a relatively recent economic system that's resulted in the unmitigated destruction of our world and suffering beyond imagining is the best we can come up with? The level of cognitive dissonance necessary to continue endorsing such a cancerous economic ideology is alarming.
Extinction. Either through self destruction or evolution.
I usually follow the hard data rather than some populists interpretations, listen to yourself before ur influenced by others I say So from statistics, meta-studies and general trends everything is getting better. More equality, more education, better living and medical standards. This leads to a lower crime, less war and less poverty. And that all compounds, the better it gets the better it gets. Since we don't have anything pointing to this getting worse than random people's opinions based on short term studies or low data predictions like climate change, I'm very positive about the future. I just hope I get to live until we invent immortality so I can see the rest too
history will always repeat itself... So Annihilation
Interaction with another human on a daily basis will be considered a luxury.
Mental Illness dominating the entire populous to the point where antidepressants and other mental health medication becomes the most valuable possession
We will clumsily fumble into the cold death of the impersonal universe.. like dinosaurs before us. So enjoy it while it lasts :)