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Bulhakov
2013-06-21, 06:54 AM
I'm working on a realistic hard sci-fi future setting for years 2050-2100. Any suggestions on ready made scientifically accurate world descriptions or ideas to pitch in?

What are your visions of the world in 50 years? Are we all plugged into matrix-like MMOs? Are we colonizing Mars? Are humans genetically perfect and forever young (or at least the elite few who can afford the miracle cures)? Does the singularity happen? Are AI's making even smarter AI's or enhancing our own brains? Are the AI's benevolent? Or maybe everything is pretty much the same, maybe we're dumber, but have even smarter phones?

What about computer progress? 50 years ago we invented the first semiconductor chips. With the exponential growth of processing power, we should be able to fully emulate a human brain on a supercomputer in 10-20 years, and on a home PC in 30-40. It's highly likely that in 50 years a mobile phone will literally be smarter that its user (or even sooner with cloud computing).

The question is - what will be done with that level of augmented intelligence - just entertainment? or something more?

One interesting proposal - an AI/brain augmentation "app store":
"iPolyGraph - get instant alerts when someone is lying* to you!"
"iBrain - download knowledge and skills** direct to your hippocampus"
*99% effective against iLie
**additional fees for Professor and Master level packages

What about biological improvements, longevity, designer babies, etc.? Is GATTACA a likely scenario? We're already hearing of gene doping in professional sports, so how many years till it's available at the local gym or the NBA is filled with genetically optimized Michael Jordan clones?

Energy? Ecology? Fossil fuels will have largely run out (at least from the easy to rich places) and will need to mined from greater depths or arctic platforms.

Totally Guy
2013-06-21, 07:08 AM
Downloading and 3D printing will be our standard way of buying physical things and certain recyclables would be able to be converted back into 3D printer matter. Items made by hand or in an old fashioned way will be considered art in addition to whatever else they are. People that can make things will be respected for their artistic abilities.

Killer Angel
2013-06-21, 07:12 AM
It depends. You could pick many elements of Gibson's cyberpunk...

keep also in mind the possible scenarios due to earth's overpopulation.

Yora
2013-06-21, 07:22 AM
I say read Ghost in the Shell, or watch any of the anime. The manga was written in the late 80s, but it still looks a lot like what the world could very likely look like in one or two generations.

The primary use of technology to augment bodies will probably overcomming disabilities. Artificial limbs and artificial eyes would be the most prominent, and the technology for has already been around for a couple of years. It's just super-expensive, often not very reliable, and not very accurate. But as with any technology, that is merely a matter of time until they will be cheaper and have better performance.
Less visible would be brain implants, that compensate for brain damage and nerve defects, but those "only" allow people to act "normal", which they otherwise could not.

The giant walking robot concept is nonsense for a number of reasons which I won't repeat here. But the human-sized military or industrial robot for high danger tasks is a completely different thing. The main reason you would want a human shaped robot is to have him work in an environment that has been designed for use by humans. Stairs, doors, drawers, handguns, keys, and so on have all been designed for people. If you design your robot like a human, there won't be anything that a human can do, but the robot can not. Even if you never thought in advance, that a robot might have to use a certain device.

For combat, a human sized robot could work well next to human soldiers, since he would fit through the doorways they fit through, can climb the stairs they climb, and so on. What good would be a 4 meter tall spider robot, if he can't follow you inside buildings where you are searching for enemies? Same thing with civilian disaster relief robots.
Instead of making full robots, you can also make super-heavy suits of armor. Might be a better solution in situations where remote control would be impractical.

I've had some classes on population numbers, growth rates, and so on, and I think there is a very strong pattern that every society experiences a huge population boom as they enter an industrialized state, but once the country is completely industrialized and transforms in a service economy where the industry is automated, there will be a steep decline after just 50 years or so. All countries that are now post-industrial have very strong downward developments in population, all the fast growing nations are still in the stage of argrarian societies becoming industrial. Only the starting points are different, the speed of the process is always about the same.
So China, India, Nigeria, and Brazil will most likely reach the maximum in a few decades and then also see a slow decline in population starting. 50 years from now seems like a good estimate for when the global population reaches is peak. Unless something completely changes in post-industrial societies, I think world population won't continue to grow after that, but actually go down. And another 50 years later, that might actually cause a significant shrinking of the world poulation. Japan has just reached its peak and it's estimated that by 2100, Japan will have about as many people as it did in 1900. At only one third of the current number.
And as I see it, Japan simply is the country that goes through this whole process first. Most countries will experience the same eventually, and I wouldn't be suprised if it happens to the world as a whole as well. But I won't, because that would probably be still some 200 years from now. For 2060, I think some 10 to 14 billion people might be plausible, but by that point, most countries will have to seriously start to worry what to do once all their current 25 year old become 75 year olds.

Bulhakov
2013-06-21, 07:25 AM
Settings I'm already familiar with and considered taking a bit from each:
- books by Neil Stephenson and William Gibson
- cyberpunk and shadowrun rpgs
- a few manga/anime settings (GitS, Akira)
- Deus Ex
- Transmetropolitan

Rhynn
2013-06-21, 07:29 AM
Read Neal Stephenson, especially Diamond Age and Snow Crash. Wild yet plausible (and very meticulously thought-out) visions of the future. Diamond Age deals with nanotechnology (including nanotech 3D printing; every home has a printer unit fed by matter blocks) and Snow Crash deals with virtual reality (and basically exactly predicted Second Life).

Edit: Damn you!

Yora
2013-06-21, 07:37 AM
Another thing:

By 2060, the US will probably be one of the big countries, but no longer a leader. Just a big country like many others, like Japan or France are now.

Europe will either consist of a tightly unified European Confederacy, or just a bunch of tiny countries with few, if any, global significance. If they don't work together, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, will be as significant as Finland or Ireland are today.
It's something that is easy to miss for Europeans, but European global dominance is a freak event in world history, that really lasted only for two centuries at the most. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Europeans were very strong in the Americas, but that was only because over 90% of the population had died from disease. The Americas were basically a post-aopcalyptic wasteland where invaders would not encounter any organized resistance. Colonization of Africa and Asia only started in the late 19th century, because Europeans simply did not have the power or resources to invade the african and asian kingdoms before that. That was only possible with industrialization, which again, happened quite recently.
Compared to other parts of the world, Europe is small, has a small population, and mostly lacks resources. The only advantage we have is technological knowledge, and that advantage will disappear in the next 10 to 30 years. A single central european economy might be able to compete, but the tiny national european economies won't be relevant when being compared to China, India, Brazil, or the US.

If there is an interest in space exploration, I predict that by 2060, people will at least be experimenting with building space ships in space. The most difficult part of space travel is to get the spacecraft off the Earths surface and into orbit. The rest is almost a cakewalk compared to that. So everything that could be manufactured in space, should be made in space. Human crews, food, and complex electronics would still come from Earth, but the big hulks of the spacecraft and the fuel should be made entirely in space. The moon has huge amounts of what is basically fuel for fusion reactors. I think having a fuel producing plant on the moon by 2060 could be quite plausible. If people on Earth think it's worthwhile to do a lot of space travel.
Getting metal from asteroids and making spaceship hulls might probably not be common by 2060 yet, but having some experimental prototype projects going on might not bee too far off.

Rhynn
2013-06-21, 07:39 AM
If they don't work together, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, will be as significant as Finland or Ireland are today.

Hey! I, uh, we... we used to make good cell-phones? Until that got gutted by corporate raiders...

Bulhakov
2013-06-21, 07:55 AM
Thanks for the great posts so far, there are just so many factors and world "flavors" to consider...

cultural aspects - will the islamization of Europe continue? will religion generally turn more into tradion/culture as the belief in the supernatural diminishes in each generation?

space - will corporations be the main space entrepreneurs? Is a Google camp/base on the moon feasible?

transhumanism - implants augmenting our memories, senses or thought processes seem much more world-changing than robotic limbs

virtual reality indistinguishable from reality - how much time will people spend having sex and slaying monsters in their personal xbox/ps holodec/matrix?

Kitten Champion
2013-06-21, 08:47 AM
It depends on your level of cynicism.

There are two reasonable routes - Looper and Minority Report - removing the more magical aspects of precognition or telekinesis.

Looper, while there's technical advancements here or there, the overwhelming narrative is social breakdown and the decline of Western civilization, and the majority of people are not privy to the major benefits of contemporary technology. You'll see growing economic powers in South America and South East Asia who will be amid redefining their whole infrastructure to new efficient heights, and lots of toys for the new 1%. Expect a lot of emphasis on defence/security/surveillance technology, particularly for urban settings. Probably robotics and telepresence technology will become mundane.

In Minority Report styled-future, you've got generally a positive outcome. Infrastructure is renewed with green technology into a very efficient urban-intense civilization. You'll get things like vertical farming, genetic modification on humans for medical purposes and beyond as well as further perfection of bio-engineering for agricultural development, solar/wind/geothermal/tidal/nuclear energy has overtaken the majority of the energy market, and civilizations would be already adapting to intermittent natural devastation like drought and super-storms. Factories will be heavily automated, and on a micro-level the aforementioned 3D printer will make retail more of a matter of buying the proper pattern. Space tourism will be an attainable thing, and there might be private/public space stations or orbital arcologies which take the nanotech hyper-efficient model to make actual living spaces - or at least the start of those projects for the long term.

In both cases I'd expect computer trends would carry on, and there would be at least very convincing psuedo-AI and incredible processing power in reasonably small packages - or perhaps there will be exorbitantly powerful centralized super-computer complex which you can buy access and storage on and access via a modestly powerful terminal.

Grinner
2013-06-21, 08:56 AM
cultural aspects - will the islamization of Europe continue? will religion generally turn more into tradion/culture as the belief in the supernatural diminishes in each generation?

Islamization is another word for cultural diaspora. This sort of thing always happens when two cultures and their religions interact tightly.

The second part is trickier to answer. In a word, yes. The question is really: What will be its function? The human brain is built for religion, and human neurology isn't going to change anytime soon. Moreover, churches haven't been governing bodies for centuries now, and this trend may certainly carry over into other religions as well. I think that they will continue to be a source of cultural and moral values, however, and there's little reason that people will cease to follow them completely.

If you're concerned about a "Science vs Religion" deathmatch, no, that's not going to happen, because the two are not incompatible. What some people don't realize is that they ask two fundamentally different questions.


space - will corporations be the main space entrepreneurs? Is a Google camp/base on the moon feasible?

I find the phrase "follow the money" very convenient, for if the payout is sufficient enough to justify the expense, people will do the impossible. In this case, you need to ask yourself how would it be profitable for a technology company to maintain a complex on the moon?

If they got into the energy industry, they might be interested. I could also see some oil tycoon establishing a moon base after petroleum resources are depleted. Depends on how popular profitable nuclear energy becomes.

Edit: Also, we will probably have physically gone to Mars by then, just to say we did it, if nothing else.


transhumanism - implants augmenting our memories, senses or thought processes seem much more world-changing than robotic limbs

Cultural expectations aside, people don't tend to mutilate themselves for the sake of a few kicks and giggles. Cheaper options certainly encourage that, and the idea has some merit. I don't think that it will be exactly widespread by 2060, though.


virtual reality indistinguishable from reality - how much time will people spend having sex and slaying monsters in their personal xbox/ps holodec/matrix?

Again, follow the money. Traditionally, VR setups are very expensive and very unsatisfying. In-brain implants would require a very dangerous and very expensive surgery, limiting the market for those sort of things.

OverdrivePrime
2013-06-21, 09:01 AM
Watch about 2 hours of Michio Kaku (http://mkaku.org/) talking about the near future. You'll be set.

Start with "The World in 2030. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=219YybX66MY)" It's about an hour long.

viking vince
2013-06-21, 09:49 AM
I read an article yesterday, report that some hi muckey-muck at Google expects that human brains will be able to be stored electronically in the next 35 years.

Rhynn
2013-06-21, 10:03 AM
I read an article yesterday, report that some hi muckey-muck at Google expects that human brains will be able to be stored electronically in the next 35 years.

:smallcool: Called brain-taping in GURPS Cyberpunk. Combine this with artificial electronic brains, machine-body interfaces, and efficient, cloning, and you have immortality.

Edit: That reminds me, Bulhakov, I really recommend Transhuman Space, the GURPS setting. It is awesome. It's all about well-thought-out near-future hard science fiction. It's sort of post-cyberpunk, inside the solar system, etc. Very interesting vision, one of the best SF settings I've read.

Bulhakov
2013-06-21, 10:30 AM
Thanks Rhynn !!!

The gurps setting seems like just what I was looking for! I'm going to torr... I mean look for them in a store right away.

As for brain implants - I agree those might be further in the future and unlikely. The closest tech I foresee is brain simulation and weak AI.

However, even if no breakthrough technologies are coming in the field of implants/brain interfaces, just with the trends in electronics and software we can foresee that in 50 years we'll have a nearly human equivalent (or in some fields superior) weak-AIs running on machines smaller than a smartphone.

What will debates look like then if our phones will not only be able to search for information, but be able to make better arguments than ourselves?

Madfellow
2013-06-21, 10:45 AM
I've been reading this fascinating book, The World In 2050, that's dedicated entirely to this subject. It examines four "global forces": population, climate, resources, and globalization. I wish I had a link of some kind to share, but I guess you'll just have to look it up at your local library. Basically, the gist of it is this:

Population: It will continue to rise rapidly for the next 40 years, but will start to slow down and level off close to mid-century. At that point the global population will be around 9 billion and still growing, but not as rapidly as it is now. Most of that growth will be in the eastern hemisphere. Most western nations actually have declining growth rates, but are still growing due to immigration and the natural inertia of population sizes.

The eastern hemisphere will see a gigantic boost in economic output, spawning numerous global superpowers in Asia, but per capita the West will still have the wealthiest citizens.

Resources: We're running out of them. All of them. Fossil fuels, metals, fresh water, you name it. Everything will start getting rarer and more expensive. Oil fields and mines will empty, rivers will be dammed, and all of Earth's natural resources will essentially all be claimed. Water is perhaps the biggest problem, with numerous nations in the eastern and southern hemispheres becoming stressed for fresh water due to their rising populations and urbanization. Their survival will depend on trade for food and water with the West and the North.

Climate: Global warming will continue. That's inevitable, but the degree to which it will continue is entirely dependent on human actions in the coming decades. There are many climate models that predict varying degrees of change, but they all agree that temperatures will rise, icebergs will melt, and that the northern hemisphere will be hit harder than the South.

In the northern hemisphere, polar biomes will shrink and more temperate biomes will slowly advance northward. Farmland and agricultural productivity will follow them. As the glaciers melt, northern countries will gain new access to underwater resources including fossil fuels and metals. Missing glaciers will also mean that naval transportation will become viable in the Arctic Ocean, if not in the winter then at least in the summer.

What this all boils down to is that the world will be divided into two major power centers: East Asia and the Arctic Ocean. EA will be crowded, starved, and dry, but economically powerful. Classic Cyberpunk setting right there. AO will be a growing economic power with a smaller population, milder climate, and wealthier citizens. More like post-Cyberpunk.

Grinner
2013-06-21, 11:01 AM
Resources: We're running out of them. All of them. Fossil fuels, metals, fresh water, you name it. Everything will start getting rarer and more expensive. Oil fields and mines will empty, rivers will be dammed, and all of Earth's natural resources will essentially all be claimed. Water is perhaps the biggest problem, with numerous nations in the eastern and southern hemispheres becoming stressed for fresh water due to their rising populations and urbanization. Their survival will depend on trade for food and water with the West and the North.

I've had an idea about this for a while now. Despite the best efforts of activists, we still throw away a lot of recyclable materials.

Perhaps, in the future, some wealthy entrepreneurs will buy up landfills and begin mining scrap plastics and metals from them. The rest of the garbage could be burnt in incinerators as fuel.

Madfellow
2013-06-21, 11:03 AM
I've had an idea about this for a while now. Despite the best efforts of activists, we still throw away a lot of recyclable materials.

Perhaps, in the future, some wealthy entrepreneurs will buy up landfills and begin mining scrap plastics and metals from them. The rest of the garbage could be burnt in incinerators as fuel.

I think that's already starting to happen. I've read a few articles about oil and mining companies that have drawn up plans to start extracting stuff from old landfills.

Edit: Oh, and something I forgot to mention. A majority of personal vehicles are expected to be electric by mid-century, with larger vehicles running on natural gas. Electricity and natural gas will be like stepping stones between fossil fuels and hydrogen power. Alternative energy sources will see expanded use, and our reliance on oil will lower, but unfortunately our high energy demand will require an expansion in coal use. :smallfrown:

Kitten Champion
2013-06-21, 11:28 AM
I don't think people want brain implants.

Not because of squeamishness with the concept - I strongly doubt it would look anything like the cyberpunk aesthetic suggests - but because further technological development is simply a given in our collective mindset. Who would want to have a machine which will soon be obsolete inserted fairly deeply into their very physiology? I love my computer, but it's already straining to run current software, I'll have to replace it in 2-3 years if not sooner.

Besides, given what a pain DRM is now, imagine it on this level.

Something like nanoscopic devices you can program, use, and flush out of your body with your natural processes seems plausible. Consider it from the perspective of a corporation making them - designed obsolescence would make them highly marketable - as you'll keep getting a return on them and can sell them at a moderately reasonable price.

I can't see any major change in our economic and politic systems coming in such a short time-scale. While I don't think Shadowrun-esque oligarchies of corporations is what we'll be facing, but I don't think our political leaders and institutions will be nearly as powerful as they are today. The private/public line is pretty blurred already, and we're setting the framework for an increasingly more liberal attitude on corporate freedom.

I would say, on the issue of religion. It's going to decline. Not the faiths and essential beliefs, but the institutions. It already is in many places. This may be anecdotal, but I know plenty of new-aged converts and squishy monotheists my own age or younger who want that meaning but feel the fallibility or limitations of theological organizations weighs those options down. With humanity in general growing more and more aware of one another, the more mechanical faith which has cemented previous generations into their parent's religion due to that being everything they know isn't going to be the default state. We're going to see more faiths and philosophies, but less religion.

Grinner
2013-06-21, 11:33 AM
We're going to see more faiths and philosophies, but less religion.

Very well put. Kudos.

warty goblin
2013-06-21, 12:12 PM
I don't think people want brain implants.

Not because of squeamishness with the concept - I strongly doubt it would look anything like the cyberpunk aesthetic suggests - but because further technological development is simply a given in our collective mindset. Who would want to have a machine which will soon be obsolete inserted fairly deeply into their very physiology? I love my computer, but it's already straining to run current software, I'll have to replace it in 2-3 years if not sooner.

Besides, given what a pain DRM is now, imagine it on this level.

There's also the issue that I am entirely a product of the squishy bits in my head. I don't want people messing about in there, because then I'm not really me anymore.

Rhynn
2013-06-21, 12:36 PM
There's also the issue that I am entirely a product of the squishy bits in my head. I don't want people messing about in there, because then I'm not really me anymore.

Ah, the Electronic Brain of Theseus.

If your brain can be replaced, one neuron at a time, by artificial neurons which provide identical function and change nothing, then once all neurons have been replaced, are you still the same person?

Also, people already get brain/neural implants. Brain implants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_implant) and neural interfaces (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_interface) are already here, and are freaking exciting technology. Granted, so far it's mostly to treat diseases, conditions, and injuries, and not really in the cyberpunk idiom, but I personally would freaking love a retinal display and a computer operated by neural interface.

So careful who you tell that brain implants make you stop being you, even if you only mean something other than actual brain implants... :smallamused:

I find it odd to say no breakthroughs are coming since we've already had some. Breakthroughs just aren't sudden, dramatic, or sexy; but if you compare to 20 years go, there have been huge breakthroughs and advances.

Fouredged Sword
2013-06-21, 12:42 PM
Organ replacement is seriously a thing. It's expensive, but if an organ is failing, they can clone you a new one in 2-3 months. Almost any injury is able to be recovered from if you can survive those 2-3 months, in intensive care if need be.

Data is bought right out for all communication, and there isn't anywhere not connected to the grid unless it is deliberately shielded.

You need to charge your cellphone maybe once a month or so, unless it is so tiny you can't hold it. The same goes for any electronic device. If you interface it with your hands, the batteries are big enough to last weeks.

Individuals can process tons of data through automatic systems. Mass data mining comes to the masses, you just buy access to the private companies who horde information.

A computer is just now build that has as many internal connections as a human brain.

warty goblin
2013-06-21, 12:45 PM
Ah, the Electronic Brain of Theseus.

If your brain can be replaced, one neuron at a time, by artificial neurons which provide identical function and change nothing, then once all neurons have been replaced, are you still the same person?

Obviously yes, but this hypothetical is about as meaningful as asking if there's a disease with no symptoms that cannot be detected, are you sick?


Also, people already get brain/neural implants. Brain implants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_implant) and neural interfaces (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_interface) are already here, and are freaking exciting technology. Granted, so far it's mostly to treat diseases, conditions, and injuries, and not really in the cyberpunk idiom, but I personally would freaking love a retinal display and a computer operated by neural interface.
I can think of literally no reason I would want a neurally operated computer or a display inside my eyeball. It solves no problems that I have, and would at best make a few tasks marginally easier.

Rhynn
2013-06-21, 12:53 PM
Obviously yes, but this hypothetical is about as meaningful as asking if there's a disease with no symptoms that cannot be detected, are you sick?

I think you may have missed the point of the paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus)... basically, at what point does a change make a thing cease to be a thing, especially if it still functions as the thing?

The point is that it's not a question with a real concrete answer.


I can think of literally no reason I would want a neurally operated computer or a display inside my eyeball. It solves no problems that I have, and would at best make a few tasks marginally easier.

My laptop solves no problems I have, either, and it's still awesome. Besides, it doesn't have to solve problems you have; it can solve problems that, say, people who work underwater have. For everyone else, it's just a convenience. Computers didn't originally solve problems that most people had, either, they solves very specific and fairly rare problems, and now look at them...

Seriously, computer & Internet with no external devices. I can't wait. And nobody can even tell I'm surfing po--oooolice blotters rather than paying attention to them.

Grinner
2013-06-21, 01:20 PM
Organ replacement is seriously a thing. It's expensive, but if an organ is failing, they can clone you a new one in 2-3 months. Almost any injury is able to be recovered from if you can survive those 2-3 months, in intensive care if need be.

It's a shame that there's a risk of cancer attached to the price tag.

Fouredged Sword
2013-06-21, 02:49 PM
I think cancer will be much less of a problem in 50 years than it is today. It will likely still be a serious killer in 50 years and may even kill a greater percentage of our population, but only because injury, sickness, and organ failure will be significantly less dangerous.

Also, if an organ becomes cancerous, the treatment can be full removal of the organ. Also, with retroviruses and genetic manipulation of the seeding stem cells, one could ensure that the cells have all the native cancer safeguards in place and screen for genetic degradation as well as implement new safeguards as science moves forward. A replaced organ could have a significantly lower cancer risk than the rest of you, depending on how science progresses.

Maintaining the brain and prevention of metal degradation will be much more serious of a problem.

I would not be surprised if we saw lifespans reaching into the 200's.

Of course we could have a pandemic, but that is also less of an issue than one would think. Seriously, we freak out over a sickness that kills 10,000 people now. The last flu epidemic killed a hundred million people in a world with far fewer people. That would be highly improbable with modern medicine. Death from sickness has move from a common day occurrence that kills daily to a boogieman that we fear, but rarely see.

Kitten Champion
2013-06-21, 03:14 PM
I can think of literally no reason I would want a neurally operated computer or a display inside my eyeball. It solves no problems that I have, and would at best make a few tasks marginally easier.

When I was watching Microsoft's big reveal for their X-Box One, and they proudly showcased this voice-activated control scheme, I couldn't help but look down at my remote and ponder the depths of human laziness.

I don't want to turn my head into a glorified smartphone.

For such a device, it would need to be consciousness-raising. An artificial eidetic memory, heightened sensory acuity, increased mental processing, possibly a more vivid imagination - something that can change the basic human experience.

warty goblin
2013-06-21, 03:32 PM
When I was watching Microsoft's big reveal for their X-Box One, and they proudly showcased this voice-activated control scheme, I couldn't help but look down at my remote and ponder the depths of human laziness.

I don't want to turn my head into a glorified smartphone.

I don't even want to turn my phone into a glorified smartphone.


For such a device, it would need to be consciousness-raising. An artificial eidetic memory, heightened sensory acuity, increased mental processing, possibly a more vivid imagination - something that can change the basic human experience.
Perhaps it's just me, but I'm really very happy with my brain as it currently works. So long as it's fed well and exercised regularly, it provides excellent service. An upgrade in speed wouldn't be worth the ads.

And let's face it, non-medical brain implants are gonna come with ads and ICP (in consciousness purchasing) options. "The answer to 'where did I leave my keys' is you by Pepsi. For just $.99, enjoy the sensation of drinking a Pepsi now. Think 'yes Pepsi' to accept. Thank you for your patience. The solution to 'where did I leave my keys' is 'at home on top of the toilet' Thank your for using ThinkSmart: brought to you by Pepsi."


The good news is I'll probably be too dead or old for it by the time that sort of thing appears.

Grinner
2013-06-21, 03:36 PM
And let's face it, non-medical brain implants are gonna come with ads and ICP (in consciousness purchasing) options. "The solution to this problem has been brought to you by Pepsi, and will appear after this brief message. For just $.99, enjoy the sensation of drinking a Pepsi now. Think 'yes Pepsi' to accept. Thank you for your patience. The solution to your problem is..."

That's like asking someone to not think about pink elephants. :smallwink:

warty goblin
2013-06-21, 03:39 PM
That's like asking someone to not think about pink elephants. :smallwink:

As I said, with luck I'll be too old or too dead.

Emmerask
2013-06-21, 03:39 PM
Of course we could have a pandemic, but that is also less of an issue than one would think. Seriously, we freak out over a sickness that kills 10,000 people now. The last flu epidemic killed a hundred million people in a world with far fewer people. That would be highly improbable with modern medicine. Death from sickness has move from a common day occurrence that kills daily to a boogieman that we fear, but rarely see.

The problem is that the world is far more connected then before, which means containment is extremely hard and maybe even impossible.
Also becoming immune to antibiotics is not that far of a stretch of the imagination.
If its something like H5N1 becoming immune with its ~60% mortality rate then we are talking about billions of deaths plus all the infrastructure will come crashing down.

So a Pandemic really is a serious threat and is the most likely scenario which will end human civilization in its current form.

Kitten Champion
2013-06-21, 03:49 PM
Perhaps it's just me, but I'm really very happy with my brain as it currently works. So long as it's fed well and exercised regularly, it provides excellent service. An upgrade in speed wouldn't be worth the ads.

And let's face it, non-medical brain implants are gonna come with ads and ICP (in consciousness purchasing) options. "The solution to this problem has been brought to you by Pepsi, and will appear after this brief message. For just $.99, enjoy the sensation of drinking a Pepsi now. Think 'yes Pepsi' to accept. Thank you for your patience. The solution to your problem is..."


The good news is I'll probably be too dead or old for it by the time that sort of thing appears.

Yeah. Philip K. D*ick was certainly paranoid among other things, but if there was a chance to have your dreams infested with advertisements, and if you turn them off or fail to complete a DRM check you won't be able to sleep, they'd do it. I guess, getting a cracked version is the solution.

Still, I think if everyone competing for your job had a perfect memory and 10-20 points of IQ (as much as I hate and distrust the quantification of intelligence) on you, it could become a thing. Although that'll be for my potential children or grandchildren to theoretically ruminate over.


Maybe I've watched Gattaca too many times.

Emmerask
2013-06-21, 03:59 PM
To me that eventually we all drop dead is not a bug, its a feature!
Its the only way we rid our society of all the *******s.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-june-12-2013/back-in-black---future-technology @03:58 :smallwink:

Sith_Happens
2013-06-21, 05:40 PM
The crowd at E3 2063 will be whipped into a frenzy as Valve announces a release date for Half-Life 2: Episode 3 (but not Half-Life 3, that one's still in concept stages).

For many people, this will be the only brief respite from their depression after the horrible flop that was Sherlock Series 3 earlier that year.

fireinthedust
2013-06-21, 05:59 PM
1) No energy: Sorry kids, we're not going to have oil, coal will be mostly gone by then, and we'll have run out of currently-usable uranium. I'm told Canada has thorium, which we'll be able to use later, but it won't be ready in 50 years.

we will have ethanol, which is basically alcohol that can be added to our current fossil fuels. We'll increase production, I think, of plant matter to grow Ethanol, and it'll be a big harvest sort of thing. Still, we'll be scaling back dramatically, and industrial will be the big user of this stuff.

Hopefully we'll have manufactured photovoltaic cells that are much better by then, and homes will be fairly self-powered: solar, wind, some water wheels, plus ethanol, and lots of hydro-electric grid power. heck, electricity from seawater-harvested hydrogen could also be involved.

2) Smaller communities: less cars on the road means closer-knit communities. we may have info-sharing tech, but travel will be less frequent. I'm thinking villages. Gardens and local farms should have produce, plus there are likely big companies that make the big stuff we buy in stores, like foodstuffs, ethanol, coffee, etc.


3) Agelessness: I'm really hoping we start using adult-harvested stem cells to "clone" organs to replace old ones when they've worn out. I also hope we look into cell apoptosis and ways to get around natural cell death. The Ideacity presentation by the methusalah foundation annoyed me, as they're pitching calorie reduction as the way to extend life; senescence is not just about the junk in your system, it's a fault in the way cells age and stop regenerating: becoming anorexic is not going to extend your life.
Anyway, we'll be extending life at that point. yes, less fossil fuels, but hopefully we'll put some real brainpower into longterm investments like extending youth rather than extending old age, while we've still got the energy resources. 100% population health issue, people!

I think this will happen, btw, as the Zoomers have all the money, and they just now realized they won't live forever, the jerks. Ergo, lots of work to stop this whole ageing-thing.


4) A big war: it's really close, and unless we switch to ethanol or other technologies (I like nuclear a lot, and think we need to figure out a way to get energy from "toxic waste" the way we do from Uranium 235/238/Plutonium), then we're going to see the last shreds of oil and coal bickered over by the big powers: US, China, Russia. Proxy wars, likely, though for some reason the US fights them directly these days (ie: US in Iraq for oil, instead of getting one nation to attack them for us).

The more we move to get renewable energy supplies in place, the less vulnerable the world is to large-scale war down the road.


5) Bicycles are going to get bigger in North America as oil gets more expensive.
EDIT: by which I mean more popular, not physically larger.

Bulhakov
2013-06-21, 06:29 PM
As for energy, I'm considering an optimistic scenario with electricity to spare, either from renewable sources, nuclear or fusion reactors.

As for possible reasons for brain implants (these might be much further in the future than 50 years though).
Imagine:
- backing up your brain so you can later copy it to a cloned/nanoassembled body
- having perfect eidetic memory, ability to recall every detail of every event in your life with full clarity
- having the ability to search that perfect memory (e.g. recall every time you've seen someone's face)
- downloading knowledge, languages, other people's memories and/or skills (and conversely selling your own)
- controlling your perception of time (making a long trip pass in seconds or a pleasant/crucial moment last hours)
- having telepathic conversations with friends
- brainstorming with hundreds of experts on a subject within a blink of an eye and arriving at an optimal conclusion (the experts might not even have been aware of your consultation, as they rented out some of their brain processing power and gave answers subconsciously)
- having a telepathic/emphatic link with a pet
- enjoying entertainment so real, you're not sure if you're in a simulation or not
- piloting nanobot swarms in your body while sleeping to eliminate cancerous growths, stimulate muscles or do simple medical maintenance

Emmerask
2013-06-21, 07:06 PM
What I see is
-implanting the urge to buy xyz
-the ability to scan your thoughts ie perfect big brother system
-scientific and cultural standstill (or significant slowing) due to people rigidly insisting on their "believes" and since they live forever new ideas have little chance to flourish
-poor people (ie the vast majority 90%+) having to sell/or rent their brainpower

In the end we have a few super rich superintelligent (additional brainpower) superstrong (nanobot enhanced) superhumans that live forever (upload to new body)...
and a majority of (practically) slaves.

You may see that I am not an optimist when it comes to humanity :smallwink:

TuggyNE
2013-06-21, 07:17 PM
That's like asking someone to not think about pink elephants. :smallwink:

You see the brilliance, I'm sure. :smallamused:

Extra_Crispy
2013-06-22, 12:57 AM
In 50 years I see cybernetics more the grown body parts. Replace the limb with a better stronger version, plus they are not that far away from full cybernetics now. I dont see the brain enhancements though. The biggest trouble with cybernetics now is that the nerves transport their signal electronicly but when a nerve meets a nerve that changes to chemical and the next nerve changes it back to electricity. The brain stores so much stuff chemically. As far as I remember, i could be wrong, but memory is basically chemically stored but continues to go in circles around the nerves thus long term memories constently change from chemical to electronic and back, refreshing them over and over and allow people to have memory. Short term memory is purely electric and if it is deemed good enough to store then gets converted to chemical and joins the circle. Devices that read thoughts almost like a EEG machine will defently be around. Something like a hat or even a wig that can read your thoughts and say drive your car for you while you lay down or move that robotic version of you to the store so you dont have to get up. Much like Serrogates. After all now we had a guy fly a toy helocopter with just his mind and a computer reading his thoughts

In 50 years the social levels will be much more striking with the top few % being able to afford all this tech and improving thier lives while the majority of people will be bairly scrapping by and will live not much differently than now.

As for long lives. I read a few years ago that they have found the "death gene" In cells on our DNA they found a "tail" that slowly falls off as we age. As the tail gets shorter the cells reproduce less, are more prone to errors, and are basically much less healthy, thus the person is less healthy and is closer to death. They found this by researching Progeria. People that had Progeria lost the "tails" much quicker. If they can figure out how to keep the tail on they could very quickly double and tripple life times, barring other genetic and enviromental problems. In 50 years that is a possibility but again I see it as a product of the rich and everyone else not being able to afford gene therapy.

Gamgee
2013-06-22, 01:45 AM
Downloading and 3D printing will be our standard way of buying physical things and certain recyclables would be able to be converted back into 3D printer matter. Items made by hand or in an old fashioned way will be considered art in addition to whatever else they are. People that can make things will be respected for their artistic abilities.

Money will fall out of use for something else. Most likely favours and services as opposed to money. Depending on how far in the future money is useless or falling out of use and there is high inflation since it takes a lot of money to buy anything since its usually just cheaper to pirate physical stuff.

Just read Eclipse Phase. :smallsmile:

SuperPanda
2013-06-22, 02:46 AM
I've had an idea about this for a while now. Despite the best efforts of activists, we still throw away a lot of recyclable materials.

Perhaps, in the future, some wealthy entrepreneurs will buy up landfills and begin mining scrap plastics and metals from them. The rest of the garbage could be burnt in incinerators as fuel.

There was a note about this in David Brin's Earth. Recycleable materials were one of the things the "junk-rush" of landfill mining was about. They companies were also after al the used diapers for their methane as a fuel source, old electronics for the traces of copper and gold, and just about anything else of value.

Another thing for Earth that is going to be here before very long (arguably it might be here already) is the end of privacy. Camera's, microphones, social-media, and what not means that people will be ever-increasingly watched and recorded everywhere they go. Big Brother might tap into that, but it is more likely that private citizens (like neighborhood watches) will do it. Data-mining that will be used for everything. Employers will use it pre-interview to decide if they want a person like that, police will use it in investigations, governments will use it, face-book-stalking will be a lot more literal in that regard.

Real privacy is going to become very rare, and very expensive.

Ravens_cry
2013-06-22, 03:15 AM
50 years, space travel will still be expensive, though not as expensive but companies will be the major players for getting people into LEO and, hopefully, beyond. Science missions will still be the perview of government bodies like NASA and JAXA, who will rely on automated probes of increasing sophistication.
In 50 years, I see major improvements in prosthetics and brain-machine interfaces, though it will still be mostly for medical reasons. I think smartphones will still *look* much the same, but they will have much more impressive capabilities, such as near realtime language translation. Quantum computing will be out of the lab, but not in the hands of the home consumer with the exception of cryptography.
Fusion power will, *sigh* still be 50 years away, and directed energy weapons will have niche uses, but won't replace bullets, artillery and missiles any time.
We use biofuels, provided by the same companies that gave us fossil fuels.
Coal will still be with us, plenty of reserves of that left.
Renewable energy will be bigger, though, again, the purview of major corporations.

Avilan the Grey
2013-06-22, 02:04 PM
Not having read all of this, this is my personal guess.

First of all, it tends to be the items we DON'T imagine that actually makes it. Remember 50 years ago, we would all have jetpacks, atomic flying cars and robot maids. Instead we got the internet, the ipad and free porn for everyone.

The Internet will stay, and will be developed. Basically everything will be connected BUT there will still be a large group that does not have it (only a third of the people in the world have internet now, btw). But for those who have it, everything is online all the time. Including tons of things that actually don't need to be, like toasters and ovens.

The Internet will no longer be free. What I mean with that is that it will be just as regulated and monitored as anything else. It will be illegal to use any kind of anonymity or encryption that the government cannot decrypt.

Cars will exist just like today. They will, however, probably be electrical. And online. And constantly monitoring their own speed, position and everybody else's as well. You will not be able to speed, at least not over a percentage over the speed limit where you are. The cars will also automatically break or steer away to avoid accidents.
The police will have access to the car's log when they stop you.

We will have had at least one major war.

Famine will still exist.

Millions of people will still die from curable diseases.

There will not have been any major breakthrough in Energy (no cold fusion). But because of energy crisis, NIMBY is no longer legal. Governments can, and will, just throw you out if you don't want a wind park on your lawn.

Sea levels will have risen, but not as high as predicted.

There might be a few "futuristic" buildings, but most people will still live in the same buildings we do now.

Grinner
2013-06-22, 04:41 PM
Another thing for Earth that is going to be here before very long (arguably it might be here already) is the end of privacy. Camera's, microphones, social-media, and what not means that people will be ever-increasingly watched and recorded everywhere they go. Big Brother might tap into that, but it is more likely that private citizens (like neighborhood watches) will do it. Data-mining that will be used for everything. Employers will use it pre-interview to decide if they want a person like that, police will use it in investigations, governments will use it, face-book-stalking will be a lot more literal in that regard.

I have to disagree here, for I can think of a few reasons why the little guy is going to get the short end of this stick. Most of them involve blackmail.

Edit: Besides, maintaining surveillance requires time and money, things which most people are in short supply of. Unless they're doing it professionally, they're probably not going to do it, and if they're doing it professionally, it certainly won't be for the neighborhood watch.

Avilan the Grey
2013-06-23, 06:33 AM
I have to disagree here, for I can think of a few reasons why the little guy is going to get the short end of this stick. Most of them involve blackmail.

Indeed, to me it is obvious that the authorities will be the ones monitoring.

Aux-Ash
2013-06-23, 10:18 AM
I think cancer will be much less of a problem in 50 years than it is today. It will likely still be a serious killer in 50 years and may even kill a greater percentage of our population, but only because injury, sickness, and organ failure will be significantly less dangerous.

Also, if an organ becomes cancerous, the treatment can be full removal of the organ. Also, with retroviruses and genetic manipulation of the seeding stem cells, one could ensure that the cells have all the native cancer safeguards in place and screen for genetic degradation as well as implement new safeguards as science moves forward. A replaced organ could have a significantly lower cancer risk than the rest of you, depending on how science progresses.

Maintaining the brain and prevention of metal degradation will be much more serious of a problem.

While we're improving medicine with leaps and bounds I doubt 50 years is going to make that much of a difference.

Cancer is going to be bigger, mostly due to an older population, and be a big killer. Some of them we're going to have some preventive measures in place to combat, most notably cervical cancer. Others we're going to get a much clearer picture on what their causes are and be developing more refined ways to treat such as breast and prostate cancer.
But oncology is still going to be a huge field in medicine, no less so than today.

Similarily, there's still going to be enough accidents and crime to keep emergency rooms and surgery on their toes and we'll still be looking at expensive and intensive measures taken to prevent deaths due to these causes. 50 years is far from long enough to make either cause less significant than today.

Infection too is not going to be any less prevalent. In fact, it's probably going to become more so if the current trend with resistance continues. We have good measures in place to limit them, we keep them under a very watchful eye and we're looking at measures to go around these resistances. Developing medicines for human use takes a massive amount of time and developing a resistance does not. The antibiotics we first used en masse 70 years ago is already approaching being completely useless.
But I'm fairly certain that in 50 years time we're probably looking at higher mortality due to infection, rather than lower.


I would not be surprised if we saw lifespans reaching into the 200's.

That's not likely to happen. We might see the rare 120-years old person, perhaps even reaching for 130, and have some serious discussions on whether it's moral to let people live that long. But 200 is still way off. Despite replaceable organs and stem cells.
Remember, at that age it's not individual organs so much as everything that ought to be replaced. Including bones, joints, skin and even, likely, brain tissue.


Of course we could have a pandemic, but that is also less of an issue than one would think. Seriously, we freak out over a sickness that kills 10,000 people now. The last flu epidemic killed a hundred million people in a world with far fewer people. That would be highly improbable with modern medicine. Death from sickness has move from a common day occurrence that kills daily to a boogieman that we fear, but rarely see.

We have good measures in place to prevent serious outbreaks though. The last great pandemic had great help by massive troop transports and war hospitals, slow communications, no real vaccination programs, pre-modern sanitation and cramped living conditions. Most of those are not issues in large parts of the world any longer.

Unless society crumbles, we're unlikely to be taken by suprise by any great disease. Especially one we got reasonably good tabs on, like influenza. It's feasible they kill a bunch of million, especially in an older population. But more than that is unlikely, unless it completely takes us unawares and we have no idea of transmission and treatment.


The problem is that the world is far more connected then before, which means containment is extremely hard and maybe even impossible.
Also becoming immune to antibiotics is not that far of a stretch of the imagination.
If its something like H5N1 becoming immune with its ~60% mortality rate then we are talking about billions of deaths plus all the infrastructure will come crashing down.

So a Pandemic really is a serious threat and is the most likely scenario which will end human civilization in its current form.

H5N1 (influenza B) is a virus and antibiotics is thus not applicable anyways. Antibiotic resistance is a serious issue, yes, but it applies to bacteria. Most notably MRSA, VRE, ESBL and similar.

Virus pandemics are serious, resistant bacteria is serious, resistant malaria is also extremely serious. But neither is apocalyptically bad.
Viruses spread quickly and can hit hard, especially in our connected world as you point out, but they're going to hit economy harder than demographics. And once they've passed, we'll be immune to that strain.

Resistant bacteria is worse, since it's going to hit hospital care hard. It already is, in fact. Especially oncology, geriatrics and surgery is going to have to take up measures to combat it. And it's in those fields you're going to see it kill most. It might severly limit intensive surgery (and dispel some notions about cybernetics, by making such procedures too dangerous) and cull our elders. But it's not going to wipe out society.

Malaria though... that one is bad if resistance takes root. There's lot of people living in malaria territory and with global warming we might see malaria spread into areas we're we've been spared in for a long time. It spreads quickly and has a high chance of reinfection, so it's something that could turn out real bad.

Unless something dramatic happens though, we're not going to see any sweeping and sudden changes in civilization because of any disease.

---

On a less medicinal note however, is that it's well worth pondering what increased automation and robotics (and indeed, the 3d printer) will have for socio-economic effects. If much traditional industry can be replaced with robots or entirely, what will all those people it employs be doing? Just how big can a service economy be? I imagine it's something that will becoming increasingly pressing the next few decades and I imagine we'll see a political movement focused on promoting human labour and trying to prevent automation.

Fouredged Sword
2013-06-23, 10:53 AM
On that note, I have an amateur theory that we are headed to a post labor market. Raw materials will be the primary constraint on production, rather than labor. Most of the workforce will be redirected to non-tangible services. I expect to see a continuing decline in hours worked per week and in increase in the leisure time per capita in all nation as third world countries become more modernized and the raw materials they contain become more and more valuable.

I think Malaria and many other dieases will be successfully be ended through enrichment of the countries that are havens for the disease. Culling of insect populations that carry the disease, increased protections to prevent transmission, and fully suppressing the virus in carriers will allow a focused country to create a negative infection rate and eventually cull the disease.

Aids will likely follow for much of the world. We already have a negative infection rate in the USA, and much of the first world will soon follow. Eventually the base infected population will be small enough to remove some of the genetic diversity in the virus population and allow the world to effectively vaccinate the disease.

VeisuItaTyhjyys
2013-06-23, 11:15 AM
That's like asking someone to not think about pink elephants. :smallwink:

"Speed round, name ten things that aren't Jackie Chan."

"Uh, toothpaste, pizza, lamps, Jackie Chan."

Spiryt
2013-06-23, 11:34 AM
I don't really get 130 years lifespan and stuff...

It's not like humanity is progressively eating better and leading healthier lifestyles, quite the opposite in many cases, in fact.

Without some dramatic change of health understanding among general 'population', people stuffing themselves with more chemistry and drugs will probably actually have negative effect.

Frozen_Feet
2013-06-23, 12:35 PM
Ah, the Electronic Brain of Theseus.

If your brain can be replaced, one neuron at a time, by artificial neurons which provide identical function and change nothing, then once all neurons have been replaced, are you still the same person?


Will anyone here be the same person five years from now, expect by history of having once been that person?

paddyfool
2013-06-23, 01:32 PM
2050

Population: Around 9 or 10 billion, if nothing drastic has changed.

Health
The average age will be significantly higher, and that means that the diseases of old age will be increasingly important. How healthy we are depends to a very large extent on how good we get on managing the diseases of old age... and not only cancer, but also the cardiovascular (e.g. heart disease & stroke), neurodegenerative (particularly Alzheimers), and locomotor (e.g. osteoarthritis) problems. Regenerative techniques, a la stem cell manipulation, should very likely help with some of these at least a little, but with the major caveat that we all know what happens when the stem cells get too keen (cancer).

Whether or not we manage to achieve some population-level change in the general health behaviour issues of today's population (e.g. sedentary lifestyle, obesity etc) will also matter quite a lot - whatever flashy techniques you use, fundamentally a lot of peoples' health will still be affected by how they live. (The history of actual medical interventions for obesity etc. has so far been that a great deal of things have been tried, but nothing's really worked without causing something worse, with the possible exceptions of orlistat & bariatric surgery, neither of which are without their own problems).

Greater independence will increasingly be encouraged and enabled with managing your own health; partly because the costs of doctors per capita for an ageing population will be very hard to manage.

Communicable diseases as problems will largely be confined to those that are really quick to develop resistance to new interventions and cannot be effectively vaccinated against or otherwise prevented; a lot of the rest will have been pushed ever further to the margins, or will exist as ongoing nuisances that occasionally you have to treat.

Politics/economics: Anything precise more than ten years in advance in this domain is wild speculation, but in general, the USA, Europe, Japan etc. will all be smaller players than they were, with many currently "middle-income" countries firmly ascended into high-income, high-power status, and many currently low-income countries up-and-coming in the middle-income bracket.

Technology: The great unknown.

Subcategory of tech: transportation: I'd expect the current rise in bicycle use in western nations, and the drop in car use, should both continue for a while. Not sure about as far ahead as 2050, though.

Space: Depends massively on whether, as previously commented-on, we've managed to find a way to make it profitable.

Climate: North pole ice effectively gone in summer by 2025, with increasing shipping each year along the Northern sea route (already on the rise now), and later along the Northeast passage then directly across the North Pole. Some degree of rise in sea level, a fair bit of weather pattern change, and alteration in growing areas for different crops and wild plants.

Edit: Religion: Not touching this, partly because the figures on what's going on today are all screwy anyway. (For instance, Christians, Muslims, the non-religious, scientologists, the Ba'hai, various other religions and subcategories of the same all claim to be the fastest growing, with varying degrees of justification).

(Can you see my bias as a medical student here?)

Bulhakov
2013-06-23, 04:31 PM
As for medicine/genetics I'm thinking sooner or later someone is bound to invent that magic anti-fat pill. Furthermore I hazard a guess that we will be able to specifically target where our fat deposits and where it doesn't.

As for anti-aging, the current recent into telomere protecting drugs is promising and it's a good bet we'll find something that works in 50 years.

paddyfool
2013-06-23, 05:03 PM
As for medicine/genetics I'm thinking sooner or later someone is bound to invent that magic anti-fat pill. Furthermore I hazard a guess that we will be able to specifically target where our fat deposits and where it doesn't.


Only time will tell, I suppose.



As for anti-aging, the current recent into telomere protecting drugs is promising and it's a good bet we'll find something that works in 50 years.

Telomere degradation is only one small part of the whole process of ageing, however. Stopping this wouldn't be a magic solution to the general issue. It also might well have serious side effects - different cells are timed to die at certain points; if they develop the trait of not dying when they're meant to, that's (once again) generally part of turning cancerous.

Spiryt
2013-06-23, 05:30 PM
As for medicine/genetics I'm thinking sooner or later someone is bound to invent that magic anti-fat pill. Furthermore I hazard a guess that we will be able to specifically target where our fat deposits and where it doesn't.
.


But that's pretty much the whole problem IMHO.

There's no point in "targeting fat"... Fat tissue is wonderful thing, it stores energy, produces hormones etc.

People are overly fat, because they have minimal amount of activity, they eat horribly, their cardiovascular system is close to dead, they sit too much, stuff themselves with drugs, nicotine and so on. Usually have hormonal problems as a result of above anyway.

Such person is simply unhealthy, and high BF% is simply one of symptoms.

Forcing organism to burn off fat by some external manipulation may help esthetically but it won't actually cure anything at all.

Only unbalance organism further.

In some cases there's simply no 'magical pill'.

Grinner
2013-06-23, 05:45 PM
Mitosis and apoptosis. Life and death. It's all part of a healthy, balanced multicellular existence.

Let's say you perfect the human cell cycle, though. Your cells replicate perfectly in every respect, and they die when necessary, avoiding weird growths. You'll still get cancer and die, even then, due to background radiation mutating your DNA. There are proteins that do DNA repair, but you can't eliminate the risk 100%, even with extensive genetic modification.

When it's all said and done, I don't think we're going to benefit from these advances as much as we hope. Many of the genetic modifications may not work on a fully grown organism, because much genetic damage would have already been done.

Mando Knight
2013-06-23, 06:16 PM
You see the brilliance, I'm sure. :smallamused:

If advertising forces me to pay a buck to taste the wrong cola, I'm going to learn to counteract them.

Fouredged Sword
2013-06-23, 06:33 PM
Cancer could be treated with targeted viral attacks that home in on the mutated sections of the DNA and cause the cell to become an immune system target or any number of possible solutions. Treatment could be as simple as a preventative shot taken yearly to maintain genetic purity.

Obesity could be treated by altering or controlling the gut flora. You see the crudest start to this with gastric surgery, and I suspect that the process will improve and become less and less invasive and will have fewer and fewer side effects until the procedure is nothing like the form used today, and will be used in less and less extreme cases. One would simply go in for a metabolic tune up that keys your metabolism to your lifestyle.

I cannot predict what the solution to cancer or obesity will be, but I suspect that we will have made significant headway on solutions as that tends to be the trend of humanity.

You live a better, longer, happier (depending on the metrics), healthier life than the people who lived fifty years ago. They lived a better, longer, happier (depending on the metrics), healthier life than the people who lived fifty years before them.

There have been kinks in this pattern, (fall of the Roman Empire and the dark ages for the western world), but by in large this trend as held basically throughout human history. My money is on the long term trend of humanity. I am an optimist that way.

Kaun
2013-06-23, 07:46 PM
If i could recommend a couple of interesting books that might help inspire you;

Halting State by Charles Stross (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_State)

Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End)

Both amazing reads and both set in the near future with out straying into cyberpunk territory.

Adds some interesting perspective to the possibilities the future may hold.

Cealocanth
2013-06-23, 11:18 PM
There are a lot of good suggestions here that are based on the ways modern technology might advance in the future, but at the rate that science is progressing today, there are sure to be some things present 50 years from now that were nearly unthinkable today, and 100 years from now the entire scientific scene is likely to have changed. In the 1960s, who would have thought that the internet would turn into what it was today? In the 1850s, who could have predicted the creation of the atomic bomb? While scientific accuracy is important in an escapade like this, don't be afraid to try to make up with this unpredictability of the future.

It's probably a good idea to start with scientific exploits that are just barely budding today, and see where predictions say they'll go. Things like nanotechnology, synthetic biology, etc. If things like the internet and eco-sciences are prevalent now, in 50 years, either they will become so well integrated into society that they have started new scientific exploits of their own, or they will fade into the background, giving way for some new thing to stand at the cutting edge of scientific exploit.

Granted, while we are destined to make large amounts of progress in the field of space exploration or electrical engineering, older subjects like these reached their heyday before this year, and are not likely to make a comeback unless some other exploit occurs and brings it along with it. Perhaps the advent of nanotechnology helps bring about a new space race, or the application of quantum physics allows us to completely reinvent the way we power our world. Just some examples, but the fact that you are picking a time that exists just outside of our realm of prediction makes it very difficult to accurately predict what may come to pass. If you were to pick, say, 200 years in the future, scientific exploits would be so far beyond our measure that you could make anything up and explain it with technobabble. 10 or 20 years in the future? At that point we can just take a modern trend that is on the rise, and imagine the short term implications of it. 50-100 is harder for reasons already stated.

So in other words, this is quite an exploit you have attempted here, and I wish you the best of luck. :smallsmile:

Connington
2013-06-23, 11:42 PM
I wouldn't expect the average human life expectancy to go up by more than ten years or so in the developed world (ie, late eighties, early nineties). Progress on cancer and certain other problems looks promising, but what we're looking at in extreme old age is basically full body shutdown, which is obviously hard to avert.

On a generational note: Millennials in 2060 are going to be in the position of the Silent Generation today, somewhere between 60 to 80. In other words, a pretty significant chunk of us will still be around. Oh, and the massive Baby Boom generation would have started to die off about twenty years ago. Expect a lot of nursing homes, medical specialists, and golden oldie stations to go out of business in the 40s and 50s.

As far as energy goes, renewable power might finally start fulfilling its promises. There's been a really stark price drop (http://i0.wp.com/cleantechnica.com/files/2013/05/price-of-solar-power-drop-graph.jpg) for solar power over the last 35 years, and it's still going, albeit not quite so fast. Don't think solar panels on every house though, it makes the most sense to blanket a few sections of desert and upgrade our electric grids. On a related note, water will be an issue in the future, but once we have a cheap way to desalinate seawater it goes back to being essentially free.

3D printing seems to be moving faster than we expected. It's probably not going to revolutionize society but it will have a huge impact on the retail sector. Food and complex electronics are probably further off on the horizon, but things like furniture or clothes shopping will probably be more about picking out a good looking pattern and buying/downloading the plans. Luxuries excepted, of course. Small companies will find life easier when they simply have to sell their ideas, as opposed to maintain warehousing, shipping, etc. On the other hand, if we start integrating cheap computers into everything, that might slow the commercialization of 3D printing down. Or it might mean that you buy the mini-computers separately and plug them in.

How piracy and DRM goes is anyone's guess, but it's not going to be a niche issue for long. The idea that huge swathes of things will always be easily had for free is understandably popular, but it's just as likely that corporations figure out how to secure their property behind heavy duty encryption.

I really wouldn't expect money to fall out of use anytime soon, as someone suggested. At least no without massive social upheaval. We abandoned barter systems and favor economies for a good reason. Cash does everything that barter and gifting does just fine, it's simpler to keep track of, you never have a mismatch of needs and wants (Why should I give Farmer Bill anything? I already have food for a year!) and the terms of negotiation are simpler (I don't have to worry if Farmer Bill's pigs are sickly or whether I should give him a larger gift for that one thing he said I didn't have to pay him back for).

It's also unlikely that money will go entirely digital, because paper money is the only thing an identity thief can't steal and the only way of giving someone money that doesn't require them both to accept some bank or payment service. There will be attempts to get rid of paper money though, because that last one is what makes it attractive to criminals.

As far as religion goes, it's never going away, for good or ill. However it may recede in the developed world into a cultural marker (The English hardly ever go to church, and the church they don't go to is Anglican) but most of the major world religions are seeing huge growth in the third world. You might see a new religion or two to pop up (in addition to the usual crop of tiny cults), but it won't be a huge deal.

Concerns about European countries and the United States losing their national character to immigrants are pretty unlikely. Birth rates will tap out as immigrants rise in status. I'd expect American Hispanics to assimilate to the point that it's no different than being Irish or Italian today, and European Muslims slightly less so.

If you're looking at human modification and those "what it means to be human" questions, genetic engineering is going to be the big issue. In fifty years there may be some groups just starting to grow some things that look like they came out of a comicbook, but the real issue is going to be perfectly human babies that are selected by their parents. A lot of families are going to start planning their pregnancy so that their child absolutely does not carry the risk of a genetic disease, and will probably experiment with genes thought to be linked to intelligence, creativity, good looks, height, and so on. Couple with money to burn will be looking into more directed genetic planning if they're feeling daring. This is all going to be hugely controversial, especially with people who can't afford it.

Our progress in space is near impossible to predict because it relies on governments and large corporations spending huge amounts of money that they won't see back in their lifetime. It's probably going to happen in leaps and spurts, but it requires the right people in place at a time when they have money to burn, like the US in the 60s.

Avilan the Grey
2013-06-24, 01:25 AM
I wouldn't expect the average human life expectancy to go up by more than ten years or so in the developed world (ie, late eighties, early nineties). Progress on cancer and certain other problems looks promising, but what we're looking at in extreme old age is basically full body shutdown, which is obviously hard to avert.

Two things about aging:

1. According to genetic studies it was concluded that we now live longer than "intended", at least some people. The reason for that statement is that our physical aging stops at approximately 95 years of age. Up until then the body and health becomes more and more fragile, but past that limit, we actually stop aging. What kills us after that are accidents and sickness.
This means that without a significant scientific breakthrough and only improvements in regular healthcare, we can postpone death but only when we are really old and sick to begin with. Do we really want to live until 150-200 years of age, but basically being the Professor from Futurama all those years?

2. However, there ARE scientific progress made on the anti-aging bit. Science has already isolated the aging gene, and the aging gene of several organisms that do not, in fact, age and have much more perfect cellular reconstruction.
A breakthrough might actually be possible within the next 25 years.
The question, of course, then becomes ethical. Do we want to have our genetic information altered and is it a good thing to live forever with all what that implies (overpopulation etc).
It is also not actually certain that our brains can handle an enormous lifespan. We might go crazy, or start to forget our childhoods etc, when we have lived long enough...

Fouredged Sword
2013-06-24, 06:39 AM
Note on aging. We add to the human life expectancy every year. The rate of life expectancy growth also increases every year. Science advances faster and faster each year and mortality progresses at the same rate.

Unless we have a significant change in the dynamic (and we may well have such a change) we will get into an interesting situation that we are increasing the human life expectancy by more than one year per year.

This means that we will actually be advancing science fast enough to keep ahead of mortality, and life expectancy will be meaningless. It will be impossible to predict with any meaningful accuracy the time period to expect someone to die, as by the time they reach that point, science will have solved many of the problems they could be suffering from.

People will still die. Young people die after all, but people will die suddenly and lingering sickness may become something very rare.

This will revolutionize the way we think about life expectancy.

paddyfool
2013-06-24, 12:32 PM
Note on aging. We add to the human life expectancy every year. The rate of life expectancy growth also increases every year.

Actually, no, it doesn't. Overall, it looks pretty steady among both the world overall and among a sample of rich countries that I just picked to look at... but the country that's been at the top of the league tables for life expectancy for a while (Japan) now seems to have arrived at a plateau. (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN/countries/1W-GB-US-JP-SG-SE?display=graph)

Fouredged Sword
2013-06-24, 01:46 PM
I see your data, and think you may have a valid point. I do not remember the name of the TED talk, but there is one that focuses on this issue. I think you would find it interesting.

I am not sure about the relevancy of the Japan statistic yet. In a time frame of decades, a three year stall on one data point may turn out to be a statistical anomaly. I talk of trends, not absolutes. We will have to see if we do indeed hit a wall in development, as the chart you have linked suggests, or if we find the stall is temporary.

Connington
2013-06-24, 05:02 PM
The problem with looking at life expectancy charts is that it just shows you that people are getting to old age more frequently, it doesn't tell you if the boundaries of old age are being pushed. It's like those old statistics about french peasants living on average to the age of 20. It wasn't because men of that age were decrepit elders, it was because most people died in childhood. If you made it to 20, you had a pretty good shot at making it to 60. If you look at how many more years a person at age 70 could hope for, you see a much slower increase in life expectancy.

Sith_Happens
2013-06-24, 05:07 PM
"Life expectancy" is an extremely nebulous term, at least in the aggregate. As much of the "increase" will come from more people living to old age as it will from old people actually living longer.

EDIT: Ninja'd.

Talakeal
2013-06-24, 05:11 PM
I once did a bit of research for an RPG to figure out how old most members of a species that was immune to aging would actually be.

The conclusion I came to based on real life statistics for age and cause of death is that the average lifespan would be about 260 years before dying from unnatural causes.

I can't remember if I included death by disease or merely violent deaths, but suffice it to say that even if we cure natural aging people will not be living forever unless we find some way to actually bring people who have died from injuries back to life or figure out some form of teleportation / stasis that can get people to a hospital before succumbing to serious injuries.

Ravens_cry
2013-06-24, 06:57 PM
One very recent invention that could make some huge changes is we have recently gained the ability to inject oxygen (http://mediclopaedia.com/post/49449703562/oxygen-microparticle-injections-the-microparticles) intravenously. There is many emergency situations where the only reason the patient dies is because they don't have oxygen getting to their brain and those hungry little brain cells just die, leading to massive brain damage at best and death at worst. Things like CPR have only about a 1-10 chance of working, but this, this could change that.

fireinthedust
2013-06-25, 04:52 AM
As for anti-aging, the current recent into telomere protecting drugs is promising and it's a good bet we'll find something that works in 50 years.

Ninja'd!


Telomeres are so cool. I'm hoping it works, I really do. Aging is the gorilla in the room, and we really need the boomers to focus us on it.

caden_varn
2013-06-25, 04:53 AM
One very recent invention that could make some huge changes is we have recently gained the ability to inject oxygen (http://mediclopaedia.com/post/49449703562/oxygen-microparticle-injections-the-microparticles) intravenously. There is many emergency situations where the only reason the patient dies is because they don't have oxygen getting to their brain and those hungry little brain cells just die, leading to massive brain damage at best and death at worst. Things like CPR have only about a 1-10 chance of working, but this, this could change that.

While this will be helpful, I'd think in many cases the issue is the heart not beating rather than the person not breathing. No heartbeat, no blood circulation, so the oxygenated blood cannot get to where it is needed.

That said, defibrillators seem to be getting easier to use and are available much more widely, so combine the two and you may see a big increase in survivability.

Krazzman
2013-06-25, 06:07 AM
I just skimmed the OP and didn't read any of the following post by users.

Realistically to picture the world as it will be in ~2060 would contain too many mentions of racism, chauvinism, dark thoughts and sadly realism.
If you really want to read it you can PM me and if I have time I'll write it but just to nudge it: go watch PETA videos of how meat is "harvested", then watch a documentation about KZ's this should say enough about how things are handled now and how they probably will be. I'll try focusing on the more neutral stuff.

Wolrd view:
Geologically vast changes CAN happen. Geologically spoken are some minor changes. But depending on where you live it can change drastically.
The Ozonlayer either get's ripped apart due to further overproduction of meat and other things and the skincancer risk is higher or it will be healed due to either an invention converting the bad things into good or getting rid of the sources of the damage.

Food:
Meat now is too cheap. Both in price and quality. I don't care if you like meat because it's tasty. The problem is the mass production of this. Seriously spoken: pick up "Eating Animals" and watch some PETA videos, they might be nut's from time to time but it's a good way to see how our food is produced now and you can spin your future from there. At least in Germany I nearly laughed looking over our weekly expenses. Meat is cheaper than anything else.
Now how will this be in the future? Either due to some epidemic (animals getting resistant against the medication we give them to let them live long enough to "harvest" them, or some other explanation) there will be not much meat anymore, getting expensive and most people can no longer afford anything but a near vegan diet. Another possibility could be that there is going to be a sort of Shadowrun-esque food replacement that is cheaper in production that meat and will replace nearly everything. Hopefully replacing even milk so that it isn't needed any longer in medication and candy.
Drink:
Either they built and invent new waterclearing "machines" (don't know the word for them) or they stop being so careless about our water consumption. There are articles about water pollution and how long we can "recycle" our water.
Speaking of Water...
Pollution:
Grows Worse. There is already an amount of garbage in the seas that would be, summed up, 8 times the size of germany. An Island of Garbage as big as that?

Religion: we shouldn't speak about it due to forum rules.
Politics: see Religion.

If you want to know more:
Look for geological articles to inform you on how "Nature" will change in the next years. Look at how food is produced and what steps are in motion to get solutions to this (yes even watching PETA). Look for Political things like PRISM or examples of stupidity like calling the Internet "Neuland". Wikileaks.
Look into the evolution of earth. Look up the Orwell theory and the other guy who said that we will be kept small with the things we like.

I hope this helps you. The future won't be much darker than our present is but looking back at the past helps to understand that it still be dark.

Grinner
2013-06-25, 06:27 AM
...Look up the Orwell theory and the other guy who said that we will be kept small with the things we like..

Elaborate, please. Do you mean something like bread and circuses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses)?

hamishspence
2013-06-25, 06:34 AM
The Ozonlayer either get's ripped apart due to further overproduction of meat and other things and the skincancer risk is higher or it will be healed due to either an invention converting the bad things into good or getting rid of the sources of the damage.

I'm pretty sure the hole in the ozone layer has nothing to do with meat production and everything to do with CFCs.

Now, if other refrigerant gases are also problematic, I could see them eventually being controlled or banned as well.

Krazzman
2013-06-25, 06:45 AM
I'm pretty sure the hole in the ozone layer has nothing to do with meat production and everything to do with CFCs.

Now, if other refrigerant gases are also problematic, I could see them eventually being controlled or banned as well.

AFAIK Methane is one of the Top5 Ozonekillers. And Cows and other Animals are IIRC fed things that are for a faster growing which also leads to more Methane Production.

What does CFC mean?

Similar to Bread and Circuses but it was a theory of someone else that actively said that governments will "control" us through things we like to keep us from protesting and stuff. But for the love of all that is holy I can't remember the guys name...

jedipilot24
2013-06-25, 07:04 AM
Those of you who are predicting doom for the ozone and the environment are clearly uninformed.
CFC means chlorofluorocarbon. It's a molecule of chlorine, fluorine, and carbon.

There is no 'hole' in the ozone; the thinning that does go on is a natural phenomena that has nothing to do with either us or with global warming. And climate change? It's been going on for longer than the human race has existed and our contribution is marginal at best. Certainly it wasn't the human race that ended the last ice age because back then we were a bunch of nomadic hunter-gatherers with no technology except for fire and the spear.

If climate change ever did spiral out of control like the fearmongers want you to believe, the Earth has mechanisms in place that will compensate, such as the Canadian Shield. All that frost would melt and flow into the Atlantic and shutdown the Atlantic Conveyer Belt, causing global temperatures to drop. Think of the Earth as a giant thermostat. Cold is much more stable than warm.
Also, carbon dioxide is a very inefficient greenhouse gas. Methane is far more efficient.

The icebergs breaking off the polar icecaps are completely insignificant because that is always happening. What did the Titanic hit?

If all the sunspots on the sun suddenly vanished, the Earth would enter an ice age and do so completely independent of anything we were doing.

Then there's Yellowstone, which would also send us into another ice age; and technically, we're overdue.

So why are so many scientists claiming that we are harming the Earth's climate? Because that's the only way that they can get the research grants. If they admit that climate change is a natural phenomena that we have very little impact on--poof, there goes the funding.
Always follow the money.

paddyfool
2013-06-25, 07:25 AM
The problem with looking at life expectancy charts is that it just shows you that people are getting to old age more frequently, it doesn't tell you if the boundaries of old age are being pushed. It's like those old statistics about french peasants living on average to the age of 20. It wasn't because men of that age were decrepit elders, it was because most people died in childhood. If you made it to 20, you had a pretty good shot at making it to 60. If you look at how many more years a person at age 70 could hope for, you see a much slower increase in life expectancy.

True that. And apparently the rate of increase in senescent life expectancy (years of life you can expect to carry on living after the age of 70) was only about 1.5 years per decade between 1960 and 2000 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2772142/).


One very recent invention that could make some huge changes is we have recently gained the ability to inject oxygen (http://mediclopaedia.com/post/49449703562/oxygen-microparticle-injections-the-microparticles) intravenously. There is many emergency situations where the only reason the patient dies is because they don't have oxygen getting to their brain and those hungry little brain cells just die, leading to massive brain damage at best and death at worst. Things like CPR have only about a 1-10 chance of working, but this, this could change that.


While this will be helpful, I'd think in many cases the issue is the heart not beating rather than the person not breathing. No heartbeat, no blood circulation, so the oxygenated blood cannot get to where it is needed.

That said, defibrillators seem to be getting easier to use and are available much more widely, so combine the two and you may see a big increase in survivability.

What may also be quite relevant, at least to the hospital setting, is that we're getting better at using ECMO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracorporeal_membrane_oxygenation) (aka providing an artificial external substitute for your heart and lungs if they stop working and can't be made to start working again quickly). And we're getting better at rehabilitating people after they've had serious issues that have landed them up in that state, but still, it's by no means all the time or for all conditions.


...

Always follow the money.

About the only bit of what you posted that I'd agree with. Interesting to see where the money comes from for the denialist groups, isn't it?

Emmerask
2013-06-25, 07:30 AM
I would not call out anyone uninformed without knowing it for a fact... its more a matter of whom you believe rather then being without information :smallwink:

On one hand there has been a lot of tempering of data, making stuff look worse then it actually will be etc with the pro climate change scientists.
And it is pretty clear that without bad predictions for the future their research money would dry up.

On the other hand however most (maybe even all) the anti climate change scientists have had their research money either from oil companies (and similar) directly or via proxy... so they also would lose their research money if agreeing with climate change.


In the end you need to ask yourself a simple question:
If the anti climate change scientists are proven to be correct and we did reduce our co2 emmisions for "nothing" will it hurt more then if the pro climate change scientists are correct and we did nothing?

/edit oh and what you said about the earth regulating itself, that is completely true, however this regulation will lead to hundreds of millions of dead so I dont know if that is such a strong silver lining on the horizon :smallwink:

Salbazier
2013-06-25, 07:37 AM
Global warming are ozone depletion are different issue. I never heard of any natural mechanism that can deplete ozone layer.

Spiryt
2013-06-25, 07:40 AM
In the end you need to ask yourself a simple question:
If the anti climate change scientists are proven to be correct and we did reduce our co2 emmisions for "nothing" will it hurt more then if the pro climate change scientists are correct and we did nothing?




It will hurt some, and not the others. Like everything in politics.

All kind of, especially smaller, companies, countries, industries etc. really cannot afford 'emissions saving' technologies, and all kinds of limits, handicaps, fines are absolutely destructive for him.

And some people are actually claiming that global warming will be rad, Vineyard in Scandinavia again, and so on.

Emmerask
2013-06-25, 07:52 AM
Oh Im not denying that it will hurt some a bit, the question I asked will it hurt more.

So on the one hand we have a very small economic growth reduction, on the other the possibility of billions of homeless, starving and dead due to flooding and climate change. I know what I would be willing to sacrifice.

And even if humans have nothing to do with climate change, the reduction in co2 has created a market for alternative energy sources (solar, wind, tidal etc) and with a market there comes faster advancement in these fields.
Seeing that oil is a limited resource this is an important step in any case.

Krazzman
2013-06-25, 08:47 AM
All kind of, especially smaller, companies, countries, industries etc. really cannot afford 'emissions saving' technologies, and all kinds of limits, handicaps, fines are absolutely destructive for him.


Simple rule for "emmissions" is 3 times is no time. If they get out of the frame they are dedicated through 3 times it is counted as if they haven't stepped out of it yet.

I get "Mess up once - ok but fix it!" but "Mess up trice - I hope you learned after that, didn't you?"

And as I said: from what I read, biased or not, is what forms the points I wrote here.

Silverionmox
2013-06-25, 09:00 AM
There have been kinks in this pattern, (fall of the Roman Empire and the dark ages for the western world), but by in large this trend as held basically throughout human history. My money is on the long term trend of humanity. I am an optimist that way.

The long term trend of humanity is hanging around in small bands as hunter-gatherers. The last ten millenia are highly exceptional.

hamishspence
2013-06-25, 09:56 AM
AFAIK Methane is one of the Top5 Ozonekillers.



There is no 'hole' in the ozone; the thinning that does go on is a natural phenomena that has nothing to do with either us or with global warming.

I'm pretty sure that neither methane nor "natural phenomena" are the cause of ozone depletion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion

Autolykos
2013-06-25, 10:04 AM
1) No energy: Sorry kids, we're not going to have oil, coal will be mostly gone by then, and we'll have run out of currently-usable uranium. I'm told Canada has thorium, which we'll be able to use later, but it won't be ready in 50 years.
Actually, the technology to use thorium as nuclear fuel has been around since the 70s. We're just not doing it. Main reason for this is that our current nuclear infrastructure is built around the uranium fuel "cycle", and that's mainly because this infrastructure can be easily re-purposed to build nukes - which is what the US, USSR and UK really wanted to do with it, and the rest just inherited their know-how.
I expect this to change when uranium 235 is getting rarer, though (there's actually less U-235 on the earth than gold). India and China are already trying hard to get it to work, with India mixing thorium with uranium fuel and burning it in conventional reactors and China designing molten-salt type reactors from scratch (or, more probably, using Weinberg's plans from the 70s).
We have plenty of thorium, and no other use for it (the Chinese are actually sitting on a huge pile of it because it's a common by-product of mining rare-earth metals). Plus it pretty much all occurs as a single isotope that we can use in reactors, so there's no enrichment needed, and almost no long-lived transuranic waste (only fission products with a half-life around 100 years, max). It would probably last more than long enough until fusion power is practical and economic, and at that point, energy won't be much of an issue. From the physical perspective, that is - politically it might be different, as fusion power will probably require reactors in the range of tens of gigawatts to be economical, and centralizing vital infrastructure that much leads to a whole can of problems.

Ravens_cry
2013-06-25, 10:05 AM
While this will be helpful, I'd think in many cases the issue is the heart not beating rather than the person not breathing. No heartbeat, no blood circulation, so the oxygenated blood cannot get to where it is needed.

That said, defibrillators seem to be getting easier to use and are available much more widely, so combine the two and you may see a big increase in survivability.
Not to mention a little C (Sans P)R.
Defibrillators, unlike in Hollywood, are only good if the heart is, well, fibrillating. That is, beating erratically and inefficiently. Defibrillators actually stop the heart in the hope it restarts in a more normal, healthier beat pattern. They actually do squat for a nonbeating heart.

Fouredged Sword
2013-06-25, 10:57 AM
On the other hand, we are developing better and better technology to maintain a chance of reviving a person after complete heart failure. Through rapid cooling we have extended the window of revival to 20 or 30 minuets. If we paired that with direct oxygenation of the brain, we could possibly extend this even further.

Heart attacks are getting individually less and less dangerous as we get better and better technology to fix them.

TuggyNE
2013-06-25, 07:48 PM
Actually, the technology to use thorium as nuclear fuel has been around since the 70s. We're just not doing it. Main reason for this is that our current nuclear infrastructure is built around the uranium fuel "cycle", and that's mainly because this infrastructure can be easily re-purposed to build nukes - which is what the US, USSR and UK really wanted to do with it, and the rest just inherited their know-how.
I expect this to change when uranium 235 is getting rarer, though (there's actually less U-235 on the earth than gold).

Ironically, it's actually the reverse: breeder reactors tend to produce richer fuels, which are far more suitable for weapons. Conventional reactors (LWR, BWR) require something like 5% U-235, while weapons require upwards of 90%. However, the techniques required to extract and enrich the various byproducts of breeders (including plutonium) can be scaled up, making it possible to produce weapons-grade fuel from otherwise completely unsuitable material. So one of the major obstacles to breeders has been the fear of nuclear proliferation.

Autolykos
2013-06-26, 06:55 AM
Ironically, it's actually the reverse: breeder reactors tend to produce richer fuels, which are far more suitable for weapons. Breeder reactors are a later design from a time when all major powers already had a nuclear program running. At that point, their focus wasn't so much getting their hands on fissile material (they had that already). It was making sure that nobody else gets it, while still producing some more. So it's natural that they wouldn't want a technology in civilian hands that could produce plutonium with a simpler infrastructure than absolutely necessary (especially if they don't control it).

The "problem" with Thorium OTOH is that it's almost completely unsuitable for nukes. Th-232 is itself not fissile, it is bred to fissile U-233 in the reactor. So you'll never have a significant amount of nuclear fuel on site, it is not in a form that's easily accessible, and even if you managed to take it away, the reactor would stop. To make matters worse (for building nukes), the critical mass of U-233 is way higher than that of Pu-239, you can't breed it further as it is already fissile, and it will have impurities of U-234, which gives off gamma radiation with a short-ish half life. Gamma rays and electronics don't mix well, and I certainly wouldn't want faulty electronics in a nuke that's lying around waiting to be used.

Beleriphon
2013-06-26, 09:36 AM
What this all boils down to is that the world will be divided into two major power centers: East Asia and the Arctic Ocean. EA will be crowded, starved, and dry, but economically powerful. Classic Cyberpunk setting right there. AO will be a growing economic power with a smaller population, milder climate, and wealthier citizens. More like post-Cyberpunk.

Finally Canada shall claims its rightful and might place in the world!

Grinner
2013-06-26, 09:46 AM
space - will corporations be the main space entrepreneurs? Is a Google camp/base on the moon feasible?


I find the phrase "follow the money" very convenient, for if the payout is sufficient enough to justify the expense, people will do the impossible. In this case, you need to ask yourself how would it be profitable for a technology company to maintain a complex on the moon?

So...uh, found something interesting last night. Yes, apparently Google does have an energy division (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Energy).

I think the Google moon base proposal is back on the table.

Sith_Happens
2013-06-26, 01:16 PM
Finally Canada shall claims its rightful and might place in the world!

Considering that Canada is by far the US's largest oil supplier, that's actually more plausible than you think.

Fouredged Sword
2013-06-26, 01:22 PM
I actually see America doing ok as the world oil infrastructure collapses water wars in the middle east.

Yes, it will hurt, but we have plenty of coal, and I think we end up switching to natural gas for power production and liquid coal for fuel.

Hopefully it won't come to that, but I think the US has more fossil fuel resources than most people think, but they are just in a form that is not the default the world is used to using.

TuggyNE
2013-06-26, 05:40 PM
Breeder reactors are a later design from a time when all major powers already had a nuclear program running. At that point, their focus wasn't so much getting their hands on fissile material (they had that already). It was making sure that nobody else gets it, while still producing some more. So it's natural that they wouldn't want a technology in civilian hands that could produce plutonium with a simpler infrastructure than absolutely necessary (especially if they don't control it).

Breeders have been around from the 1950's (USA, 1951; UK, 1957; USSR, 1955). That's not very "later".


The "problem" with Thorium OTOH is that it's almost completely unsuitable for nukes. Th-232 is itself not fissile, it is bred to fissile U-233 in the reactor. So you'll never have a significant amount of nuclear fuel on site, it is not in a form that's easily accessible, and even if you managed to take it away, the reactor would stop. To make matters worse (for building nukes), the critical mass of U-233 is way higher than that of Pu-239, you can't breed it further as it is already fissile, and it will have impurities of U-234, which gives off gamma radiation with a short-ish half life. Gamma rays and electronics don't mix well, and I certainly wouldn't want faulty electronics in a nuke that's lying around waiting to be used.

Surely the reason for the difficulty in getting Th-232 breeding going can't possibly be due to technical difficulties (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#Disadvantages_as_nuclear_fuel), or unexpected new uranium reserves, or higher startup cost? No, surely it's because The Man wants all reactors to be suitable for making nukes (despite already having more nukes than they know what to do with), except for reactors in other countries, which are discouraged from it because, uh, reasons?

Come on, really. :smallannoyed:

Autolykos
2013-06-27, 05:56 AM
No, surely it's because The Man wants all reactors to be suitable for making nukes (despite already having more nukes than they know what to do with), except for reactors in other countries, which are discouraged from it because, uh, reasons?Now cool down already. I'm not saying it's a complete conspiracy or something. I've just outlined why our current technology took a path to a nuclear energy source that's less safe, produces more long-term waste and has fewer available fuel. Nuclear power IS a by-product of bomb production, not the other way round, and the military set the first switches for the rails this development took (Admiral Hyman G. Rickover was one of the most influential figures in the early development of nuclear power).
Any different technology has to play catch-up, and funding it will take a lot of money until it's even on par with current stuff. With the opinion the public has of nuclear energy thanks to Chernobyl and Fukushima, that's not going to happen unless we have no other choice (and it may well be too late then). Which is a shame, IMHO.
EDIT: The "disadvantages" page actually proves my point instead of refuting it. Mastering the uranium fuel "cycle" was way harder, we've only solved it already (well, mostly). And a few of the disadvantages are actually advantages if you play them right (for example the point that it's easier to achieve criticality with uranium fuel will come to bite you once things go wrong).

Haarkla
2013-06-30, 08:13 PM
Another thing: Europe will either consist of a tightly unified European Confederacy, or just a bunch of tiny countries with few, if any, global significance. If they don't work together, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, will be as significant as Finland or Ireland are today.

A single central european economy might be able to compete, but the tiny national european economies won't be relevant when being compared to China, India, Brazil, or the US.

I dont think you understand economics. A single centralised European economy would be a lumbering dinosaur. Look how well smaller countries such as Singapore and South Korea have done. Compare the Asian Tigers with India or even China. Europe will have more economic clout divided into smaller more flexible units.

P.S. Germany alone will almost certainly have a larger economy than Brazil in 2060.

Ormur
2013-07-02, 05:51 PM
I used to be worried about peak oil but now I'm more worried about not having peak oil. Fracking, unconventional sources of oil and in extremis coal turned to oil now seem like they might more or less maintain our current supply even if energy prices will rise. Doubtlessly renewable energy will take up a bigger share as it gets cheaper and fossil fuels remain expensive but the world in 2050 might still run mostly on stuff we dig up from the ground, including of course nuclear fuel.

The problem with this is that global warming might get really bad, the effects are already being felt. The worst case scenario might make the world completely unrecognisable in 2100 which puts the toughest adjustment in your time frame, people migrating en-masse to Canada, Siberia, N-Europe and even Antarctica. Even if we're optimistic about the predictions and technology keeps pace I'd expect a bunch of huge civil engineering projects to save lowlands, protect cities from flooding, genetically engineered crops adapted to new conditions, more extreme weather and systems in place to protect people from it and even ambitious geo-engineering projects with unintended consequences, like pumping sulphur in the atmosphere or iron in the seas.

Turning to economics we might actually have much less need for labour, most of which would be services and maybe trades, even a lot of educated white collar information workers might be replaced by advanced computers. If we're optimistic that means more leisure but that probably requires state intervention or some rather more radical changes in society because the pessimistic scenario is the free market simply depressing wages, massive unemployment, with only those with the most sought after skills having anything like middle class status and exorbitant profits for the owners of capital or raw materials and that's probably a recipe for social unrest, even revolutions.

Autolykos
2013-07-03, 05:09 PM
I think we'll get every last bit of oil out of the ground, even where it is uneconomical from an energy perspective (like oil sands). And after that, we'll probably make synthetic oil on a large scale (making it from coal is pretty disgusting, but the best we currently have). Oil is currently the source of energy that's easiest to handle, transport and store, so most of our infrastructure depends on it. Plus most of industrial chemistry needs to be reinvented when oil runs out. The "good news" is, that we already burned more than half of it, so global warming won't spiral completely out of control after we've finally burned the rest (would probably suck to live in Africa, though...).


because the pessimistic scenario is the free market simply depressing wages, massive unemployment, with only those with the most sought after skills having anything like middle class status and exorbitant profits for the owners of capital or raw materials and that's probably a recipe for social unrest, even revolutions.If you look closely, you can see that happening already.

May you live in interesting times. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOrvGDRLT7A)

Talakeal
2013-07-04, 04:08 PM
I think we'll get every last bit of oil out of the ground, even where it is uneconomical from an energy perspective (like oil sands). And after that, we'll probably make synthetic oil on a large scale (making it from coal is pretty disgusting, but the best we currently have). Oil is currently the source of energy that's easiest to handle, transport and store, so most of our infrastructure depends on it. Plus most of industrial chemistry needs to be reinvented when oil runs out. The "good news" is, that we already burned more than half of it, so global warming won't spiral completely out of control after we've finally burned the rest (would probably suck to live in Africa, though...).

If you look closely, you can see that happening already.

May you live in interesting times. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOrvGDRLT7A)

Its my understanding that global warming is just getting started, as there are tons of greenhouse gasses trapped under the arctic ice that will be released once the ice melts.

Also, there is a lot more carbon stored in coal and peat than there is in oil, and once oil is gone we will simply switch to those.

So if global warming continues at its current rate we will all be dead from heat long before we run out of fuel.

Autolykos
2013-07-04, 04:59 PM
If you look at the long-term history of earth's climate, anything akin to "heat death" isn't very plausible. It definitely won't be pretty; I do expect massive famines, flooding of densely inhabited coastal areas, large-scale migration and probably a bunch of wars resulting from that. But the earth will still be habitable afterwards, and pretty much all industrialized nations are in cold enough climate that they can deal with it. If England gets the current climate of Australia, they'll cope. Australia does now. They, on the other hand, might be screwed. Really ugly, yes. End of humanity, no.
It's basically the same thing Albert Bartlett hints at in the above lecture when he says "Zero population growth is gonna happen." He just goes at it from the side of growing population, not shrinking earth's capacity for humans.

Talakeal
2013-07-04, 05:13 PM
If you look at the long-term history of earth's climate, anything akin to "heat death" isn't very plausible. It definitely won't be pretty; I do expect massive famines, flooding of densely inhabited coastal areas, large-scale migration and probably a bunch of wars resulting from that. But the earth will still be habitable afterwards, and pretty much all industrialized nations are in cold enough climate that they can deal with it. If England gets the current climate of Australia, they'll cope. Australia does now. They, on the other hand, might be screwed. Really ugly, yes. End of humanity, no.
It's basically the same thing Albert Bartlett hints at in the above lecture when he says "Zero population growth is gonna happen." He just goes at it from the side of growing population, not shrinking earth's capacity for humans.

I said if temperature increase continues at the current rate, not that it will. Obviously once it gets bad enough to start ruining human civilization we will stop burning fossil fuel at the current rate, and it will eventually balance out*. But my point was that we will never get to a point where we are saved from pollution because there isn't any fossil fuel left to burn.

*: Unless something happens where the system reaches a point where it is self perpetuating like on Venus. I have heard that the Russian permafrost melting and letting out all the trapped gasses might cause something like that on Earth, but have no idea how reliable that is.

Frozen_Feet
2013-07-05, 04:07 AM
Even in the worstcase scenario like the feedback loop you described, the overall temperature will rise just by +16 degrees Celsius, or roughly to the level it was in the Jurassic period.

Still enough to end civilization (and possibly humanity) as we know it, but it won't be the end of life on earth. :smallwink:

paddyfool
2013-07-05, 08:29 AM
Yeah, global warming isn't an end-of-the-world scenario; it just promises to be a really nasty nuisance. (Unless you're planning to ship goods between Europe and East Asia in summer, that is. (http://barentsobserver.com/en/business/2013/06/preparing-record-season-northern-sea-route-06-06))

Autolykos
2013-07-05, 08:31 AM
I said if temperature increase continues at the current rate, not that it will.Yup. And I say it can't. Not because I count on humanity getting smart*, but because of physical necessity.

I'd agree with the estimate that earth will look roughly like in the Jurassic period if we burn all our fossil fuels. Could humans survive on that earth? Yes. Could seven billion humans survive on that earth? Most definitely not.

*It proved to behave pretty stupid many times before, once conflicting interests get involved.

Ionbound
2013-07-05, 09:16 AM
Change of Subject

In 50 years, I'd bet a decent amount that we will have cheap anti-matter and FTL. Now, before you all look at me like I'm nuts, google the Alcubierre Drive. It's a ftl drive that, as far as we know, works. The only issue with it is that it requires an insane amount of energy to work, but IIRC the current model only takes the energy of about three sun-like stars, whereas the old one required the energy of the universe. This is where antimatter comes in. If we can figure out a way to cheaply manufacture antimatter, it will solve a lot of problems. Energy worries? Antimatter generators. Space travel? If you can get enough antimatter, it will allow the Alcubierre drive to work.

hamishspence
2013-07-05, 09:37 AM
Actually, all such hypothetical drives, seem to require negative matter, not just antimatter, to work.

Negative matter would be repelled by gravitational forces, rather than attracted as are matter and antimatter.

And no-one knows where to start, when it comes to producing negative matter.

warty goblin
2013-07-05, 10:51 AM
Change of Subject

In 50 years, I'd bet a decent amount that we will have cheap anti-matter and FTL. Now, before you all look at me like I'm nuts, google the Alcubierre Drive. It's a ftl drive that, as far as we know, works. The only issue with it is that it requires an insane amount of energy to work, but IIRC the current model only takes the energy of about three sun-like stars, whereas the old one required the energy of the universe. This is where antimatter comes in. If we can figure out a way to cheaply manufacture antimatter, it will solve a lot of problems. Energy worries? Antimatter generators. Space travel? If you can get enough antimatter, it will allow the Alcubierre drive to work.
If you need the energy of about three suns, you need an amount of antimatter best described as completely ridiculous. Unless you happen to have handy ways of converting entire suns into anti-matter, and also a pile of spare suns sitting around.

That said, the actual energy requirements for the Alcubierre Drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive) have been brought down to the reasonable. Outstanding issues are that it requires matter with negative mass, which has no reason to exist. It also may be impossible due to energy conditions. Aside from that, the warp bubble may vaporize anything inside it via Hawking radiation before collapsing, and/or be impossible to steer or stop while potentially also vaporizing anything nearby in the event you can stop.


FTL ain't happening folks. Get used to the idea of never going anywhere.

Emmerask
2013-07-05, 10:57 AM
With our current understanding of physics yes it seems quite impossible.

However maybe (hopefully) a lot of it is just wrong/not quite correct, or there are alternatives not yet thought about, a universe in which we are forever confined into our small corner and never being able to actually explore it would really be kind of sad :-/

warty goblin
2013-07-05, 11:15 AM
With our current understanding of physics yes it seems quite impossible.

However maybe (hopefully) a lot of it is just wrong/not quite correct, or there are alternatives not yet thought about, a universe in which we are forever confined into our small corner and never being able to actually explore it would really be kind of sad :-/

The 'physics might be incorrect so FTL' argument has always struck me as requiring a very specific level of wrongness. Which is to say more a wish, less an argument.

And personally I'm quite glad it appears the rest of the universe will be spared us. We've made enough of a mess of the planet we can get our hands on.

Emmerask
2013-07-05, 11:21 AM
And personally I'm quite glad it appears the rest of the universe will be spared us. We've made enough of a mess of the planet we can get our hands on.

While I do not like what humanity currently represents, I do think we can and will change for the better over time...long long time... or we will annihilate ourself at one point one way or another ^^

Either way we would spare the universe our current culture of ... <might be against forum rules> even if it is explorable due to ftl:smallwink:

deuterio12
2013-07-05, 11:43 AM
FTL ain't happening folks. Get used to the idea of never going anywhere.

At least not before we can start building underwater cities.

It still cracks me how people think we have any chance of colonizing barren pieces of heavily radiated rock so far away even light has trouble reaching it, when we still haven't been able to colonize 70% of our planet, aka the bits covered by water, that's actually a handy resource and does take care of the radiation problem.

paddyfool
2013-07-05, 12:35 PM
At least not before we can start building underwater cities.

It still cracks me how people think we have any chance of colonizing barren pieces of heavily radiated rock so far away even light has trouble reaching it, when we still haven't been able to colonize 70% of our planet, aka the bits covered by water, that's actually a handy resource and does take care of the radiation problem.

Heh, good point indeed. I wonder how long it'll be before someone tries to set up the first proper long-term undersea human habitat... such short-term ones as we've built have been pretty interesting (http://mentalfloss.com/article/25925/under-sea-5-underwater-human-habitats), and it should be a damn sight cheaper & easier than the ISS...

EDIT: The projects of a Polish company called Deep Ocean Technology might also interest you (http://www.gizmag.com/water-discus-underwater-hotel-maldives/27875/)...

Autolykos
2013-07-06, 05:01 AM
Negative matter would be repelled by gravitational forces, rather than attracted as are matter and antimatter.As far as I know, nobody has yet verified experimentally whether antimatter has a positive or negative gravitational mass. But if one of the two leads to strange results (like FTL drives that could violate causality) while the other doesn't, that's pretty strong evidence already.

Driderman
2013-07-06, 05:07 AM
I'm working on a realistic hard sci-fi future setting for years 2050-2100. Any suggestions on ready made scientifically accurate world descriptions or ideas to pitch in?

What are your visions of the world in 50 years? Are we all plugged into matrix-like MMOs? Are we colonizing Mars? Are humans genetically perfect and forever young (or at least the elite few who can afford the miracle cures)? Does the singularity happen? Are AI's making even smarter AI's or enhancing our own brains? Are the AI's benevolent? Or maybe everything is pretty much the same, maybe we're dumber, but have even smarter phones?

What about computer progress? 50 years ago we invented the first semiconductor chips. With the exponential growth of processing power, we should be able to fully emulate a human brain on a supercomputer in 10-20 years, and on a home PC in 30-40. It's highly likely that in 50 years a mobile phone will literally be smarter that its user (or even sooner with cloud computing).

The question is - what will be done with that level of augmented intelligence - just entertainment? or something more?

One interesting proposal - an AI/brain augmentation "app store":
"iPolyGraph - get instant alerts when someone is lying* to you!"
"iBrain - download knowledge and skills** direct to your hippocampus"
*99% effective against iLie
**additional fees for Professor and Master level packages

What about biological improvements, longevity, designer babies, etc.? Is GATTACA a likely scenario? We're already hearing of gene doping in professional sports, so how many years till it's available at the local gym or the NBA is filled with genetically optimized Michael Jordan clones?

Energy? Ecology? Fossil fuels will have largely run out (at least from the easy to rich places) and will need to mined from greater depths or arctic platforms.

For an idea on how some sci-fi ideas will develop, I suggest reading Michio Kaku's "Physics of the impossible".
Also of note might be that apparently, some scientists believe that the key to clinical immortality is discovered in about 35 years.

Grinner
2013-07-06, 09:06 AM
Also of note might be that apparently, some scientists believe that the key to clinical immortality is discovered in about 35 years.

Discovered, perhaps. Implemented, no.

warty goblin
2013-07-06, 09:15 AM
Also of note might be that apparently, some scientists believe that the key to clinical immortality is discovered in about 35 years.

It baffles me that people somehow think this would be a good thing.

Emmerask
2013-07-06, 09:43 AM
Also of note might be that apparently, some scientists believe that the key to clinical immortality is discovered in about 35 years.

Well the thing is that these predictions even by people working in that particular field are not at all precise.



It baffles me that people somehow think this would be a good thing.

Agreed, I think this will be the single worst thing that could ever happen to humanity.

Frozen_Feet
2013-07-06, 12:17 PM
Heh, good point indeed. I wonder how long it'll be before someone tries to set up the first proper long-term undersea human habitat... such short-term ones as we've built have been pretty interesting (http://mentalfloss.com/article/25925/under-sea-5-underwater-human-habitats), and it should be a damn sight cheaper & easier than the ISS...


The underlined part. Is wrong. Technological problems of going to and maintaining a colony at the bottom of the sea are as bad as going to low orbit.

Okay, maybe it will be slightly cheaper if we learn to utilize natural energy sources like volcanic vents. But seriously, underwater adventures are not easy. Crushing pressure, poor visibility, problems with air, etc. etc.



Agreed, I think this will be the single worst thing that could ever happen to humanity.

I can't, for the life of me, understand why you think this.

I don't think biological immortality will be a particularly good thing, mid you. I just can't imagine why you'd rate it the worst, above, say, a nuclear world war.

Driderman
2013-07-06, 12:37 PM
Discovered, perhaps. Implemented, no.


Well the thing is that these predictions even by people working in that particular field are not at all precise.




Agreed, I think this will be the single worst thing that could ever happen to humanity.

Certainly, but it still gives an inkling of how things might be in 50 years if experts believe something will happen in 30.
Also Henrik Schärfe, the model for the danish geminoid, believes that we'll have robots on the street in 10-20 years. Of course, he's "just" a professor in communications so he isn't an expert on the mechanical aspects, but I assume he's at least in the loop considering his close cooperation with leading roboticists.

Grinner
2013-07-06, 01:01 PM
I can't, for the life of me, understand why you think this.

I don't think biological immortality will be a particularly good thing, mid you. I just can't imagine why you'd rate it the worst, above, say, a nuclear world war.

Overpopulation or social and intellectual stagnation. Take your pick.

warty goblin
2013-07-06, 01:06 PM
Certainly, but it still gives an inkling of how things might be in 50 years if experts believe something will happen in 30.
Also Henrik Schärfe, the model for the danish geminoid, believes that we'll have robots on the street in 10-20 years. Of course, he's "just" a professor in communications so he isn't an expert on the mechanical aspects, but I assume he's at least in the loop considering his close cooperation with leading roboticists.

People have been predicting stuff like this for decades. Private helicopters for everybody, personal robot lackeys, space elevators, moon colonies, cold fusion and immortality pills have remained anywhere from ten to fifty years out for quite some time now. Yet we still drive gasoline, groundbound cars everywhere, live solely on Earth, keep on dying, and the only fusion we can effectively do involves atomic bombs.

Instead we got smart phones and the internet. Which basically nobody saw coming.


Futurists are like the Oracle at Delphi, but much less smart. The Oracle was wise enough to make very open ended predictions, and so was always correct after the fact. Futurists are just the combination of intelligent, stupid and arrogant required to make very specific predictions, which are nearly always proved wrong with time.

FabulousFizban
2013-07-06, 02:36 PM
Read Otherland by Tad Williams, it's uncanny.

Frozen_Feet
2013-07-06, 02:39 PM
Overpopulation or social and intellectual stagnation. Take your pick.

Neither of which requires, or necessarily follows from, biological immortality. I still rate both below nuclear world war anyway. :smalltongue:

Fouredged Sword
2013-07-06, 08:09 PM
One upside of human immortality is that it makes getting to another star system much more likely. What is one hundred years of travel when you can spend a thousand years creating a new civilization on another planet.

warty goblin
2013-07-06, 11:07 PM
Neither of which requires, or necessarily follows from, biological immortality.
I think the binary does follow pretty readily from immortality. Old people do not, as a rule, come up with lots of great new ideas, and tend to be pretty set in their thinking.

Now if people die very rarely, either you have a correspondingly minuscule birthrate, or the population grows without bound. If you opt for a low reproduction rate, you end with a very large proportion of the population being really very old, and ergo not really doing much in the way of innovation. If you don't throttle the birthrate down hard, you get runaway overpopulation.


One upside of human immortality is that it makes getting to another star system much more likely. What is one hundred years of travel when you can spend a thousand years creating a new civilization on another planet.

A tenth of your lifetime spent sitting in a tin can breathing reprocessed farts.

Autolykos
2013-07-07, 04:27 AM
I think the binary does follow pretty readily from immortality. Old people do not, as a rule, come up with lots of great new ideas, and tend to be pretty set in their thinking.I think your estimate is pretty likely, but not a necessity. Keeping your mind fresh and open, be it by drugs or mental exercise, may well be required to prevent the mental degradation old people tend to have if nothing else gets them first. So the day you stop thinking might quite literally be the day you start dying.

A tenth of your lifetime spent sitting in a tin can breathing reprocessed farts.YMMD.

Frozen_Feet
2013-07-07, 05:18 AM
I think the binary does follow pretty readily from immortality. Old people do not, as a rule, come up with lots of great new ideas, and tend to be pretty set in their thinking.

Not exactly true as far as I know. Young people might be innovative, but they lack experience. It is middle-aged people, who've had enough time to master their skill sets, who actually keep this world afloat. Besides, I'm sure that if I went through the list of Nobel winners, I would find a good portion of people who made their discoveries well into adulthood or middle-age.

Old dogs can learn new tricks. This is a proven thing.

Emmerask
2013-07-07, 08:14 AM
Neither of which requires, or necessarily follows from, biological immortality. I still rate both below nuclear world war anyway. :smalltongue:

For me it logically follows and based on that assumption I rate it as the worst, yes even above a nuclear world war.

Complete stagnation of our current culture of economic growth > everything and subsequent destruction of the environment etc (cant write the rest due to forum rules).

Our current culture will hopefully be seen as little more then barbaric by future generations (which due to my believe will only happen without immortality).

This social standstill that would last forever would imo be a worse fate then total annihilation of the human race by Nuclear war.

And if enough humans survive the war to rebuild a society one can not deny the facts that as terrible as global catastrophes where, they where always followed by a longer or shorter period of great Human advancement both cultural and scientific.

So even if its terrible there is a sliver of hope at the horizon after such a war, there is none with total standstill.
If you do not believe in this social and scientific standstill of course then Nuclear War is worse then immortality :smallwink:

warty goblin
2013-07-07, 09:19 AM
Not exactly true as far as I know. Young people might be innovative, but they lack experience. It is middle-aged people, who've had enough time to master their skill sets, who actually keep this world afloat. Besides, I'm sure that if I went through the list of Nobel winners, I would find a good portion of people who made their discoveries well into adulthood or middle-age.

Young or middle aged, the distinction isn't particularly important here. The point is not old, and if you start trotting out the immortality pills, everybody's gonna be old. Not older, downright ancient.


Old dogs can learn new tricks. This is a proven thing.
It's also a fairly well observed fact that old scientists don't.

paddyfool
2013-07-07, 10:14 AM
It's also a fairly well observed fact that old scientists don't.

Ahem. (http://www.ibtimes.com/breakthrough-discoveries-mostly-older-scientists-study-finds-366420) That observation may be a little bit behind the times...

warty goblin
2013-07-07, 10:19 AM
Ahem. (http://www.ibtimes.com/breakthrough-discoveries-mostly-older-scientists-study-finds-366420) That observation may be a little bit behind the times...

Forty is middle aged, not old by any sane standard. How seventy or eighty year olds are winning major prizes?

paddyfool
2013-07-07, 01:47 PM
48 on average, which suggests that a good share are older than that.

warty goblin
2013-07-07, 02:32 PM
48 on average, which suggests that a good share are older than that.

No it doesn't. The average, devoid of any other statistic, carries no information about the spread, skew or shape of a distribution. It's quite possible that although the average has increased, the median has not.

It's also worth noting that the paper itself suggests that these aren't nearly the level of breakthrough advancement previously observed.

Ormur
2013-07-07, 09:20 PM
If science is mature there are going to be fewer revolutionary breakthroughs. It might also mean it takes more time to catch up with everything you need to know before making a breakthrough yourself.

I'd also assume actual clinical immortality would mean a pretty radical change in how our brains were to develop over our lifespan, it would have to regenerate constantly just like our skin, albeit at a slower pace. Still you might not even be the same person at age 150 as you were at age 50 and would you even remember your youth at age 250?

Anyway I'm really sceptical of immortality being just around the corner. I'd assume it would have to be genetically engineered from the start. Besides didn't someone earlier in this thread say clinical immortality with today's accident/murder/infection rate would really only average at about 250 years.

deuterio12
2013-07-08, 06:29 AM
No it doesn't. The average, devoid of any other statistic, carries no information about the spread, skew or shape of a distribution. It's quite possible that although the average has increased, the median has not.

It's also worth noting that the paper itself suggests that these aren't nearly the level of breakthrough advancement previously observed.

Depends on what you consider "breaktrough".

Funny thing about Science, one thing is coming up with a big, revolutionary "mind blows up" idea. That indeed usually happens when scientists are young.

Another thing is refining said idea to something that is pratical, useful and widespread. And that takes years or even decades of boring work. The devil's in the details.

Anyway, I fully agree that no few to no new births would lead to stagnation.

One thing is learning new tricks, another is being willing to change the status quo, fully discarding the old ways and embracing completely fresh concepts. It's easier to fill an empty cup that one that's already filled.

Somebody pretty smart once said the only way civilization changes is by teaching the new generations new ideas while waiting for the old generations to die out.



Anyway I'm really sceptical of immortality being just around the corner. I'd assume it would have to be genetically engineered from the start. Besides didn't someone earlier in this thread say clinical immortality with today's accident/murder/infection rate would really only average at about 250 years.

I've seen quite a bit of people claim that "immortality" will be reached by finding a way of copy-pasting our minds into new bodies, and you can keep back-up copies of your mind stored to get back even if you're crushed to pulp by some accident.

That however rises the question if a copy is really you. It may have your toughts, even your body, but I would say it's still another being, and the previous you is still dead.

Frozen_Feet
2013-07-08, 07:26 AM
The only way such a copy can be "really you" is if there is a metaphysical concept analogous to soul. If we stay within purely naturalistic viewpoints, no, the copy isn't you, but then again, it's questionable if the person who you are now is the same who you were five years ago.

This is the prime reason why I don't really see striving for immortality a particularly meaningful goal. Sooner or later, every piece of your body has been replaced, old memories have faded and new ones have taken their place, and your personality will have adapted to whatever body and environment you are in. There is a tangible point after which your old ego demonstrably has died, so you really got to ask yourself a question:

Why the heck didn't I just get kids?

Seriously. Having offspring is one form of biological immortality as it stands. When enough time has passed, the immortal "you" will be just as different from you of now, as your hypothetical children will be.

deuterio12
2013-07-08, 07:47 AM
Indeed, the main part that immortality-seekers seem to miss it's that there always comes a point where's it's simply more efficient to start over from scratch than trying to patch up a decaying system. Entropy's a b****, and there's no escaping it.

Grinner
2013-07-08, 08:30 AM
This is the prime reason why I don't really see striving for immortality a particularly meaningful goal. Sooner or later, every piece of your body has been replaced, old memories have faded and new ones have taken their place, and your personality will have adapted to whatever body and environment you are in. There is a tangible point after which your old ego demonstrably has died, so you really got to ask yourself a question:

Why the heck didn't I just get kids?

The Ship of Theseus. Take a ship and start replacing every part on it, one by one. At what point is it no longer the same ship? Similarly, roughly every seven years, every cell in your body has been replaced by newer generations of cells. At what point are you not you anymore?

hamishspence
2013-07-08, 09:10 AM
I'm told brain cells in particular are not replaced- which is why people grow senile with them dying and no cells replacing them.

Fouredged Sword
2013-07-08, 09:17 AM
Layman here, but this is what I understand.

Brain cells are replaced, but more slowly than most cells. Senility is caused be many things, such as degradation of a part of the neuron structure or an imbalance that develops in the brain chemistry. These things develop as part of aging and happen regardless of cell division. Also, as you reach the end of your cells native life cycle, your cells stop replicating nearly as much. This can cause senility through cell death as well.

Grinner
2013-07-08, 09:18 AM
I'm told brain cells in particular are not replaced- which is why people grow senile with them dying and no cells replacing them.

Not quite. They replicate at a much slower rate.

This article (http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/06/atomic-bomb-tests-confirm-formation-of-new-brain-cells/) has some odd insights, though.

Edit:
Brain cells are replaced, but more slowly than most cells. Senility is caused be many things, such as degradation of a part of the neuron structure or an imbalance that develops in the brain chemistry. These things develop as part of aging and happen regardless of cell division. Also, as you reach the end of your cells native life cycle, your cells stop replicating nearly as much. This can cause senility through cell death as well.

Emphasis mine.

That's the Hayflick limit. I'm no expert either, but my understanding is that telomere degradation causes each successive generation to divide a little less cleanly until they stop dividing altogether.

deuterio12
2013-07-08, 09:28 AM
Not quite. They replicate at a much slower rate.

This article (http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/06/atomic-bomb-tests-confirm-formation-of-new-brain-cells/) has some odd insights, though.

Only on a very specific part of the brain, and even then at snail's pace.

Pretty much all the gray matter inside your head is and will be the same trough most of your life.




Emphasis mine.

That's the Hayflick limit. I'm no expert either, but my understanding is that telomere degradation causes each successive generation to divide a little less cleanly until they stop dividing altogether.

The rate at which they divide goes down (old people do heal slower than young), but they don't stop. You'll always die sooner if they're not multiplying fast enough to make up for natural decay.

Grinner
2013-07-08, 09:32 AM
Only on a very specific part of the brain, and even then at snail's pace.

Which part?

hamishspence
2013-07-08, 09:38 AM
Here's a list of average cell ages:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/17/the_odd_body_cell_age/


If we look at the adult human body at age 40 from head to toe, the list goes something like this:

Brain cells of the cerebral cortex (the grey matter) are with you from birth.
Brain cells of the visual cortex (the array of cells in the front of the brain used for vision) are with you from birth.
Brain cells of the cerebellum (the structures at the base of the brain) are slightly younger than you are.
Intercostal muscle cells are about 15.1 years old.
Gut lining cells are about 5 days old.
Gut cells other than the lining are about 15.9 years old.
Skin cells are about 14 days old.
Red blood cells are about 120 days old.
Bone cells are about 10 years old.

And this source:
http://askanaturalist.com/do-we-replace-our-cells-every-7-or-10-years/
adds a type of heart cell, and fat cells, to the list:


Fat cells are replaced at the rate of about 10% per year in adults. So you could say that on average, human beings replace all their fat cells about every ten years.

Cardiomyocyte heart cells are replaced at a reducing rate as we age. At age 25, about 1% of cells are replaced every year. Replacement slows gradually to about 0.5% at age 70. Even in people who have lived a very long life, less than half of the cardiomyocyte cells have been replaced. Those that aren’t replaced have been there since birth.

Ormur
2013-07-08, 09:41 AM
If we're talking about copying our brains, quite apart from the ontological implications, it would be easier for people to live on in some simulation within the cloud or whatever than getting a new body I'd imagine.

I also wonder how that would be accomplished, that is to say how the organic structure of our brains and indeed entire bodies could be mapped digitally with enough detail to faithfully replicate our consciousness and sense of self. 50 years seems very optimistic since raw computing power is nowhere near enough.

Grinner
2013-07-08, 10:20 AM
I also wonder how that would be accomplished, that is to say how the organic structure of our brains and indeed entire bodies could be mapped digitally with enough detail to faithfully replicate our consciousness and sense of self. 50 years seems very optimistic since raw computing power is nowhere near enough.

People have thought of a few approaches to the problem of digital immortality.

Perhaps the simplest is the destructive method. In essence, it involves cutting the brain into thin slices and copying each individual slice. What worries me is that this technique could damage the delicate neuronal structures. Besides that, the brain is not a staid network of cells; there's chemical and electrical components as well. Additionally, there's very likely to be internal components unique to each neuron. How do you copy that?

Frozen_Feet
2013-07-08, 12:13 PM
The Ship of Theseus. Take a ship and start replacing every part on it, one by one. At what point is it no longer the same ship? Similarly, roughly every seven years, every cell in your body has been replaced by newer generations of cells. At what point are you not you anymore?

Let me quote Wikipedia here:


One solution to this paradox may come from the concept of four-dimensionalism. Ted Sider and others have proposed that these problems can be solved by considering all things as four-dimensional objects. An object is a spatially extended three-dimensional thing that also extends across the fourth dimension of time. This four-dimensional object is made up of three-dimensional time-slices. These are spatially extended things that exist only at individual points in time. An object is made up of a series of causally related time-slices. All time-slices are numerically identical to themselves. And the whole aggregate of time-slices, namely the four-dimensional object, is also numerically identical with itself. But the individual time-slices can have qualities that differ from each other.

If you are referring to a ship or body as a material entity, then no two time-slices of them are the "same". This is a trivial observation - you changed the parts, remember? Of course they're not the same. :smallamused:

The only thing that links those time-slices together, is their common history. But if you examine how things move through time close enough, you realize that (pretty much) all things share a history. Existence of no single thing is binary - it shades in and out of multiple other existences. There is no fundamental, no Platonic ideal that makes you a "you". Ego is just an illusion born from regarding only a part of the time-space-continuum at a time. As far as we talk from purely naturalistc point of view, you are just an ever-changing blob of energy. Everything in you, is defined solely by your physical relation to other objects, and since those relations are not constant, neither are you.

Things change, turning from something to something else. The boundaries are not binary logic - rather, they are fuzzy logic. The ship is first 90% "ship of Theseus", then 80%, so on and so forth until nothing in it is the same anymore. The question you should be asking is not "is it the same?" It is "how much of it is the same?"

Grinner
2013-07-08, 01:15 PM
If you are referring to a ship or body as a material entity, then no two time-slices of them are the "same". This is a trivial observation - you changed the parts, remember? Of course they're not the same. :smallamused:

The only thing that links those time-slices together, is their common history. But if you examine how things move through time close enough, you realize that (pretty much) all things share a history. Existence of no single thing is binary - it shades in and out of multiple other existences. There is no fundamental, no Platonic ideal that makes you a "you". Ego is just an illusion born from regarding only a part of the time-space-continuum at a time. As far as we talk from purely naturalistc point of view, you are just an ever-changing blob of energy. Everything in you, is defined solely by your physical relation to other objects, and since those relations are not constant, neither are you.

Things change, turning from something to something else. The boundaries are not binary logic - rather, they are fuzzy logic. The ship is first 90% "ship of Theseus", then 80%, so on and so forth until nothing in it is the same anymore. The question you should be asking is not "is it the same?" It is "how much of it is the same?"

I'd say the question is more one of identity, but that's cool too.

Talakeal
2013-07-08, 02:50 PM
Species wide immortality will improve the lives of individuals and individual immortality will improve the species.

As people grow older their health, appearance, ability to work, physical fitness, and even mental faculties diminish. No one enjoys this process. No one wants to see their loved ones grow old and die. The economy is strained by having to take care of all these senior citizens who can no longer provide as much as they consume.

Mass immortality will not improve the lot of the species as a whole, only the individuals within. However, selective immortality, available only to the greatest minds, while the masses continue breeding and dying off normally, would eventually produce great gains for the society.

hamishspence
2013-07-08, 02:53 PM
Problem is- great intelligence doesn't always correspond to goodness.

I could easily see such a system slowly, over a very long period, becoming exceedingly oppressive.

Talakeal
2013-07-08, 03:03 PM
Problem is- great intelligence doesn't always correspond to goodness.

I could easily see such a system slowly, over a very long period, becoming exceedingly oppressive.

Yeah, it almost certainly would. The best thing for INDIVIDUALS is mass immortality. The best thing for the progress of the SPECIES if selective immortality. Unfortunately mass immortality would hurt the species in the long run, and selective immortality would create a system that is terrible for the majority of individuals.

Grinner
2013-07-08, 03:08 PM
Mass immortality will not improve the lot of the species as a whole, only the individuals within. However, selective immortality, available only to the greatest minds, while the masses continue breeding and dying off normally, would eventually produce great gains for the society.

And this is exactly what I was afraid of when I said social stagnation. The adoption of technologies is not based upon how useful they are. It's based upon how marketable they are. Now, if you could guarantee someone eternal youth, barring violent death, how much would you charge? Seeing as you have a unique and highly desirable product to offer, you could charge whatever you want. But more importantly, who could afford it?

Whatever has happened in life, death has always been the great equalizer.

Sith_Happens
2013-07-08, 04:21 PM
Technology does tend to get cheaper over time, but by then it could already be too late.

faustin
2013-07-09, 01:34 AM
Mass immortality will not improve the lot of the species as a whole, only the individuals within. However, selective immortality, available only to the greatest minds, while the masses continue breeding and dying off normally, would eventually produce great gains for the society.

Wrong. The new, fancy toys always go for the rich and privileged, not for the "worthy". And no matter the original intention, the result on the long run would be a world ruled by degenerated "gods" keeping all the wealth, power and advanced technology for themselves while ruling the masses like cattle.

Frozen_Feet
2013-07-09, 03:22 AM
All this talk about stagnation makes me chuckle. You can't have a true, stagnant system unless it is in balance with its environment.

Consider sharks, or turtles. They've been roughly the same for millions of years, because they fit their niche well so there no pressure for evolving. Only sudden changes caused by humanity have really began to threaten their existence.

If biological immortality leads to a "stagnant" human society that survives for even one million years before being destroyed by sudden change of environment, I say that's pretty much a win for us.

I do not believe any of the dystopian nightmares imagined here will be such a society, though. Societies like Faustin described above are too ripe for social unrest. Historically, no such society has made it to 1000 years, let alone anything more.

And don't "but modern technology!" me. The infrastructure required to create and maintain that "advanced technology" is reliant on these "cattle-like masses" working their asses out for it. If the ruling elite becomes hated enough, no amount of violent potential will stop the wheels of production from grinding to halt. After that, the society is torn apart by internal tensions and collapses.

deuterio12
2013-07-09, 04:42 AM
Technology does tend to get cheaper over time, but by then it could already be too late.

Becoming cheaper is not enough. We currently are producing enough food to feed everybody in the planet. The populations in modern countries literally gorge themselves to death while wasting mountains of perfectly fine food. Yet there's still lots of people dying of hunger out there.

(actually, plenty of times food is destroyed in purpose to artificially rise the prices.)

Nuclear energy was also suposed to bring power so cheap that nobody would have to worry about the electric bill again. We all know how that one turned out.


All this talk about stagnation makes me chuckle. You can't have a true, stagnant system unless it is in balance with its environment.

Consider sharks, or turtles. They've been roughly the same for millions of years, because they fit their niche well so there no pressure for evolving. Only sudden changes caused by humanity have really began to threaten their existence.

If biological immortality leads to a "stagnant" human society that survives for even one million years before being destroyed by sudden change of environment, I say that's pretty much a win for us.

Thing is, sharks and turtles don't usually go around killing each other.

Let's take China as an example. Just half a millenia ago, it was by far the most advanced country in the planet.

Then for some unclear reason they decided they had advanced enough. Progress stagnated, and at one point it was actually decreed a capital crime to actually invent something new.

The rest of the world kept progressing, and then we had China almost being completely torn apart by foreign powers, until it threw its old policies out and started to modernize itself as fast as possible.

Basically, if history shows us something, is that if a group of humans become stagnant, another group of humans will be more than happy to stomp over them to take their resources.



I do not believe any of the dystopian nightmares imagined here will be such a society, though. Societies like Faustin described above are too ripe for social unrest. Historically, no such society has made it to 1000 years, let alone anything more.

And don't "but modern technology!" me. The infrastructure required to create and maintain that "advanced technology" is reliant on these "cattle-like masses" working their asses out for it. If the ruling elite becomes hated enough, no amount of violent potential will stop the wheels of production from grinding to halt. After that, the society is torn apart by internal tensions and collapses.
And that's where modern mass media comes in. The guys in power are not only watching you thanks to high tech. They're also deciding what you watch. Making sure that even if the ruling elite is hated, there's something else out there that's even more hated, a distraction for the people's frustations.

There's a good reason why sports player receive such enormous paychecks just for throwing/kicking a ball. They're really good at atracting people's atentions. Keeping them distracted and entertained.

More advanced technology does make it easier to keep the "cattle-like" masses in check, not necessarily trough violence. Let them use facebook/twitter/other social media. You'll be eavesdropping it all, saving you the trouble of coming up with another way of finding out what they're thinking. You can also keep tabs on your agents all around the globe. Being instantly warned of any changes to the situation, then instantly relaying orders to take measures before the problem gets too big.

Frozen_Feet
2013-07-09, 06:09 AM
Basically, if history shows us something, is that if a group of humans become stagnant, another group of humans will be more than happy to stomp over them to take their resources.

Well, yes. That's another reason why your dystopian eternal governments will fail. :smalltongue: For a "stagnant" society to survive for more than a couple of centuries it must be in peace both internally and externally.

Grinner
2013-07-09, 06:27 AM
Well, yes. That's another reason why your dystopian eternal governments will fail. :smalltongue: For a "stagnant" society to survive for more than a couple of centuries it must be in peace both internally and externally.

Just look to the example of third world dictators. Some guy kills the king and takes the throne, promising a more prosperous future or something like that. Then, he becomes the very thing he previously deposed. There needs to be balance yes, but there needs to be something more.

Moreover, do you really want to be on the receiving end of natural selection?

Talakeal
2013-07-09, 02:27 PM
Wrong. The new, fancy toys always go for the rich and privileged, not for the "worthy". And no matter the original intention, the result on the long run would be a world ruled by degenerated "gods" keeping all the wealth, power and advanced technology for themselves while ruling the masses like cattle.

Not sure how i can be "wrong" when you are ignoring the premise of my argument. I said that IF immortality was only available to the "worthy" it would imrpove the species, not that immortality WILL only be available to the worthy. In reality humans manage to screw up everything, i am well aware of this.

Although, many social darwinists would argue that the rich and privelaged are the "worthy", as only the truly great could ever come by said wealth.

Emmerask
2013-07-09, 02:42 PM
Although, many social darwinists would argue that the rich and privelaged are the "worthy", as only the truly great could ever come by said wealth.

Have they never heard about such simple things as inheritance?

Frozen_Feet
2013-07-09, 06:37 PM
Moreover, do you really want to be on the receiving end of natural selection?

You imply we all somehow aren't.

Reality check: natural selection never goes away. Selection pressures just change. Culture can alter these pressures, but it is never the sole factor. Furthermore, not all ways in which cultures do that are intentional, desireable or even realized.

From a certain point of view, the fact that my cousin is happily engaged whild I struggle to find a girlfriend is another manifestation of selection.:smalltongue:

Grinner
2013-07-09, 07:12 PM
You imply we all somehow aren't.

Reality check: natural selection never goes away. Selection pressures just change. Culture can alter these pressures, but it is never the sole factor. Furthermore, not all ways in which cultures do that are intentional, desireable or even realized.

From a certain point of view, the fact that my cousin is happily engaged whild I struggle to find a girlfriend is another manifestation of selection.:smalltongue:

I implied no such thing.

There's one very important point here. My status as an employed, first world citizen gives me a comfortable if not luxurious lifestyle compared to that of the archetypal starving African orphan. As such, I am basically immune to many natural threats such as starvation or treatable disease. But, if my society should decay or rip itself apart through civil war, then these protections will go with it. I will once again be vulnerable to those threats in addition to the others.