valcik
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
I don't think demand for textil is tied up magically to capitalism, blame rising consumerism in modern societies for that.
This video lowkey makes me feel like Fallout is accurately predicted the future
- Thread starter KanadaRiots
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So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
Can't have consumerism if you have nothing to consume, though.
And if the desire to consume is punishable by GULAG.
Memes aside, consumerism is kinda tied to capitalism, mostly because most forms of communism don't really allow for it by restricting the markets.
Well Hass. You as a scientist (sort of ... you're probably the NMAer that's the closest to it) will hopefully at the very least appreciate the fact that we might soon enough find out the answer to the Fermiparadox.
Meh. Humanity won't die out anytime soon. If push comes to shove, survival instinct will kick in and while many people might die, the species will carry on by any means necessary. Previous extinction events killed because all the species had nothing but their claws and teeth and nothing but rudimentary instincts to work with. Humanity IS the extinction event, and we have a little bit more at our disposal to help us survive. And there are still enough resources easily accessible to climb back up and leave this planet, if actually possible.
I don't think the Fermi paradoxon is answered by a little ecological collapse after just a few thousand years of human life. Humanity is really good at surviving.
I don't think the Fermi paradoxon is answered by a little ecological collapse after just a few thousand years of human life. Humanity is really good at surviving.
Even if 2000 of us remain inside glass bubbles underground some venutian hellscape we will persist. I kinda like that idea. We got some real potential for hellishly drawn out nightmarish poetic darkness, weve been around a while, but we could be looking at millions of years more - several million 
Very true. We can inhabit areas beyond our biological means to do so. Clothing alone provides a distinct altering advantage we have over the environment. Now we can traverse areas with different pressures that would be fatal to us such as deep underwater and space. If we were determined enough to do so, we could likely find a way to live there, at least somewhat. Humans with determination and tools can do a lot.
The drive for survival is a very strong one.
valcik
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
The point is that customer base don't have to resort to consumerism in capitalist system. On the contrary, any responsible society could have regulated demand and decrease production in capitalist system by refusing any unneccessary/overabundant commodities on their own, that's the beauty of it. Obviously hoomans are too stupid to behave responsibly.
I wouldn't be so sure about the survival of humanity. We did see a lot of communities and societies collapse in our history after all. The number of smaller and larger communities that simply died or had to give up is staggering trough out our history. All it took for some was one really shitty harvest or crop failure and the winter months meant the death for everyone. Hell just look at the last 300 years and how many communities which tried to start villages in the US died.
Just before his death in 2010 at the age of 95, Professor Frank Fenner left a chilling warning for future generations, saying the end is on the horizon for humanity.
Dr Fenner became a prominent figure in the scientific community when his work throughout the 21st century led to the eradication of smallpox – a milestone in modern human history.
After helping to wipe out one thing, he then predicted that another will soon disappear – humans.
I am not saying it's going to happen but I wouldn't say it's that unlikely either. The chances for our species to disappear might be much higher than we think. Let us say it's a 40% chance or just 20%, I mean that would be pretty high. Imagine if you had a plane with a 20% chance to fail. Would you use it? We should not forget that we're currently on the way in to the 5th or 6th mass extinction event. In my opinion we are a lot more vulnerable than we think and we have absolutely no clue what kind of effect the possible global collapse of the eco system will have on us humans and this planet. And that's the biggest risk in all of this. We're entering uncharted territory here with humanity as the test subject. Keeping human beings in well enough conditions to actually sustain a population requires many favourable conditions and despite what Zegh says living in some dome in the deep sea is not very beneficial to the well being of humans. It is not our natural habitat after all. It's not really feasible. Not in the long run. There are many places which are inhospitable for humans and if those become the norm things might look very grim at some point. We evolved under very peculiar circumstances with a very specific environment well the one we have and we kinda do everything right now to destroy this habitat. Sure we can simulate some of the conditions and we can create an artificial environment where humans can survive like small research stations in the arctic. But it requires quite a lot of sophisticated technology to make it work, well educated and trained personal and infrastructures and it still leaves us with a lot of issues that we have absolutely no clue in how to solve them. Experiments show that humans actually don't cope to well in such limited environments. NASA is still trying to figure out how to deal with the psychological difficulties associated with living in isolated and confined conditions for an extended period as preparation for possible future missions to mars. The long term effects on our mind are apparently devastating and not something that's easily fixable trough the use of technology. And suddenly it all becomes a lot less feasible. All it takes is one person going crazy or even just one mistake and the whole group is dead. We live in environments with perfect ecological conditions and we already see people displaying very serious psychological issues that drive them in to mass shootings or severe psychosis and such. What do you think will happen once people are actually forced to live in a potentially hostile environment where every mistake could mean a terrible death? The suicide rate might go up the roof! Our mind is a pretty fragile construct when you look at it and we're not made for living in such extreme conditions. Besides to have some technology and to actually make use of it are quite often two very different things. Just look at Elon Musks idea of getting whole cities to Mars and all his other pipe dreams. Possible in theory. But it would be a suicide mission.
But the biggest issue here though might be simply the exhaustion of natural resources. Regardless what we do what ever if we decide to build underground bunkers or deep sea bubbles or what ever but everything requires one way or another energy and resources. And quite a lot of it if we're actually talking about a population that's large enough to sustain it self without the risk to run in to severe birth defects due to inbreeding. So even with that big brain of ours that can come up with all kinds of creative inventions if the resources are depleted they are well depleted. So no cities underground or colonies in the deep sea I am afraid if we can not maintain the infrastructure to keep it running.
Heh. We're facing a possible global mass extinction event. A little ecological collapse. Alright.
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I don't think all of the Earth will be uninhabitable. As long as there are thousands of us in livable areas of the Earth we need water, food, shelter. Disease won't be as prominent if people aren't living in cities and traveling the world. We don't need cars and whatnot. We could be set back to a time with sticks and foraging and hunting until people get enough to start cultivating land for crops and livestock. Life might be fragile but when it comes down to survival a lot changes.
Not trying to get political about the shootings but I've always had the feeling that if we were all farming for ourselves working from sun up to sun down, believing in superstition, having a less dense population, and we don't have instant global communication, then we might have less craziness. You don't have time to destroy everything around you when you can't go to McDonald's to survive. A mind occupied with day to day survival could probably make a big difference.
If the Earth was fully scorched in nuclear fire, that would be very different and then we have to worry about super limited environments.
I'm not saying the future of our ability to live here comfortably is good. It's not. But I don't think we're going to just wipe out that quickly or easily.
Life, uh, finds a way.
Not trying to get political about the shootings but I've always had the feeling that if we were all farming for ourselves working from sun up to sun down, believing in superstition, having a less dense population, and we don't have instant global communication, then we might have less craziness. You don't have time to destroy everything around you when you can't go to McDonald's to survive. A mind occupied with day to day survival could probably make a big difference.
If the Earth was fully scorched in nuclear fire, that would be very different and then we have to worry about super limited environments.
I'm not saying the future of our ability to live here comfortably is good. It's not. But I don't think we're going to just wipe out that quickly or easily.
Life, uh, finds a way.
I knew you wouldn't get the hyperbole.
But as I said, humanity is the extinction event. It won't kill itself so easily, though. You'd be amazed what people are able to do if it's about survival. It will not be pretty, though.
If the world turns into the Sahara, we would theoretically just be a planet of Tuaregs, with a population density of zero point zero zero zero something, everyone living in Antarctica, lest we litterally boil into vapor anywhere else.
Or, conversely, if it turns into ice, we´ll live like Inuits, pop dens zero point and-so-on, everyone crammed together alongside Equator.
If the world becomes water world, we´ve seen the movie - it´s a really bothersome existence for the very few involved (apart from those living in the green-promised-land-island)
but yeah - let´s go all out, just to cover everything:
Even if the world turned into Venus, there would be enough fore-warnings, for centuries, that a small elite would make sure they could live there, like that guy in that movie about that planet
Now, don´t get me wrong Crni - none of this means we will function like we function now, I´m not saying "itll be fine" or "it wont be so bad", I´m saying that our species really has no reason to _die out_ - not even if our planet litterally turned into a flaming ball of actual literal fire. We have materials that can withstand fire, and technologies that can create air. Poof! =D
Hell, let´s go further: We could survive even with NO planet, all gone, nothing, no planet anywhere, just empty space. We could sit inside an atmospheric container, eat protein sludge like in The Matrix, just made from recycled people or someshit, or completely synthesized stuff, drink our own pee etc.
And before you go "10 billion people surviving in a space ship, I find that highly unlikely!" I´m not talking about 10 billion or 1 billion or 100 million or 10 million or 1 million or 100 thousand or 10 thousand or 1 thousand
But as a species, we really CAN persist. Without nature shaping us, or affecting us (as a species) much, there´s no real reason we would even "evolve into something else". This surviving elite could be highly genetically manipulated though, in our/their favor of course. We could change ourselves to need very little to survive. We could for example stop moving, stop standing up, we could survive spending energy doing little more than blinking. All this becomes more thinkable in particular if we have centuries of time to prepare - which we probably do - well, elites do. I *do* count the super privileged elites as "human species" after all.
We really can persist for millions of years, depending on our ability to maintain and continue to develop the technology that keeps us alive. Materials etc. I believe in us. I think we can do it! Hundreds of millions.
Also, don´t get me wrong - I feel super-sorry for the rest of the planet, that just had to die away and disappear, like a burp forgotten in space.
(PS: I´m looking forward to having to rehash all of this a couple of weeks or months from now. It´s one of my favorite types of musings!)
Or, conversely, if it turns into ice, we´ll live like Inuits, pop dens zero point and-so-on, everyone crammed together alongside Equator.
If the world becomes water world, we´ve seen the movie - it´s a really bothersome existence for the very few involved (apart from those living in the green-promised-land-island)
but yeah - let´s go all out, just to cover everything:
Even if the world turned into Venus, there would be enough fore-warnings, for centuries, that a small elite would make sure they could live there, like that guy in that movie about that planet
Now, don´t get me wrong Crni - none of this means we will function like we function now, I´m not saying "itll be fine" or "it wont be so bad", I´m saying that our species really has no reason to _die out_ - not even if our planet litterally turned into a flaming ball of actual literal fire. We have materials that can withstand fire, and technologies that can create air. Poof! =D
Hell, let´s go further: We could survive even with NO planet, all gone, nothing, no planet anywhere, just empty space. We could sit inside an atmospheric container, eat protein sludge like in The Matrix, just made from recycled people or someshit, or completely synthesized stuff, drink our own pee etc.
And before you go "10 billion people surviving in a space ship, I find that highly unlikely!" I´m not talking about 10 billion or 1 billion or 100 million or 10 million or 1 million or 100 thousand or 10 thousand or 1 thousand
But as a species, we really CAN persist. Without nature shaping us, or affecting us (as a species) much, there´s no real reason we would even "evolve into something else". This surviving elite could be highly genetically manipulated though, in our/their favor of course. We could change ourselves to need very little to survive. We could for example stop moving, stop standing up, we could survive spending energy doing little more than blinking. All this becomes more thinkable in particular if we have centuries of time to prepare - which we probably do - well, elites do. I *do* count the super privileged elites as "human species" after all.
We really can persist for millions of years, depending on our ability to maintain and continue to develop the technology that keeps us alive. Materials etc. I believe in us. I think we can do it! Hundreds of millions.
Also, don´t get me wrong - I feel super-sorry for the rest of the planet, that just had to die away and disappear, like a burp forgotten in space.
(PS: I´m looking forward to having to rehash all of this a couple of weeks or months from now. It´s one of my favorite types of musings!)
The issue Zegh, is that we're all arguing out of ignorance here.
Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents "a lack of contrary evidence"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true. (...)
But there is hardly anything else one can do here I am afraid.
Who's saying that's not a likely outcome in the near future when tensions grow? Like let us say in 30 or 50 years. We might witness a global nuclear war as outcome from severe social and political disruption. Even just a local nuclear conflict like between India and Pakistan could have already devastating effects on a global level. With tensions rising due to shortages in basic resources like water and the effects of possible mass migrations (we're talking about hunderds of Million people) due to collapsing ecosystems whole regions could be destabilized and thrown into disarray. And if there is one thing we know humans do not really function as very rational beings in such situations. Seriously just look at the shit that's happening right now. We're actually thinking loudly about cases where the European Union and the British Isle could fall apart. If someone told you 15 years ago, yeah you know Scotland might decide to exit Britain and the EU could dissolve would you have believed that? And now this seems a possible scenario for the future.
I am not saying we have to die out. I am just saying the chances for it to happen might be much higher than we like to believe simply because we have no chance to know all the factors that play a role here. We're moving trough a sea of ignorance and that's the issue! There is simply (naturally) a hell of a lot of uncertainty here because we're talking about the future. And no one can say what the future will actually bring. What we're doing right now though is to simply add a lot more additional uncertainty trough our behaviour as a species. And this is definitively not beneficial. And what's making it worse is that we have this habit of living/thinking like we would live for ever - it's a psychological effect or we would go crazy if we constantly reminded our self about our mortality it's like a safe guard of sorts. I mean every scenario seems impossible till it actually happens. We never really think about actual death till we're confronted with it like trough cancer for example where someone tells you that you have only 1 or 2 years to live at most. And a lot of the things we're discussing right now are not outright impossible like a nuclear war for example it's just improbable from our current position but even that is all just guessing. The further you move in to the future the more unclear and blurred is the image.
Yes life finds a way. But there is no law or rule that says it has to find one with us taking part in it. We have a very (extremely) egocentric view on the world and the universe. And it shows.
But yeah it definitively will not be pretty.
Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents "a lack of contrary evidence"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true. (...)
But there is hardly anything else one can do here I am afraid.
It doesn't have to be strictly uninhabitable. Just not providing us with enough calories to survive is already enough. There are ample examples trough out the history of colonialisation where settlers well simply died. And we're not even talking about hostile environments here. The people just simply couldn't find enough calories to sustain them self trough the harsher periods like winter months. And surviving trough that is much harder than people imagine!
Gathering enough resources to get trough the day is fucking difficult. There is a reason why on average no one reached further than the age of 40 in ancient times. I quote, according to historical mortality levels from the Encyclopaedia of Population (2003), average life expectancy for prehistoric humans was estimated at just 20 – 35 years. And we're talking about conditions here that are somewhat favourable! Moderate climates for the most part and stabile environments without extreme changes in weather. The prehistoric human has probably walked on average 40km each day to gather enough food just to sustain him self. Humanity was already once very close to extinction in the past. Some scientists estimated there might have been no more than 10 000 individuals left at some point in human history.
Gathering enough resources to get trough the day is fucking difficult. There is a reason why on average no one reached further than the age of 40 in ancient times. I quote, according to historical mortality levels from the Encyclopaedia of Population (2003), average life expectancy for prehistoric humans was estimated at just 20 – 35 years. And we're talking about conditions here that are somewhat favourable! Moderate climates for the most part and stabile environments without extreme changes in weather. The prehistoric human has probably walked on average 40km each day to gather enough food just to sustain him self. Humanity was already once very close to extinction in the past. Some scientists estimated there might have been no more than 10 000 individuals left at some point in human history.
Sure I agree with that. This was the habitat we experienced for thousands of years either farming or as hunters and gatherers. But those are not the conditions we're talking about. Like I said imagine you're forced to live with a community of 300 or 400 people somewhere in a fallout-like shelter in an artificial environment where you know that a step outside is pretty much impossible. Not a very enriching live I guess. Like I said NASA is conducting a lot of research in to it.
Who's saying that's not a likely outcome in the near future when tensions grow? Like let us say in 30 or 50 years. We might witness a global nuclear war as outcome from severe social and political disruption. Even just a local nuclear conflict like between India and Pakistan could have already devastating effects on a global level. With tensions rising due to shortages in basic resources like water and the effects of possible mass migrations (we're talking about hunderds of Million people) due to collapsing ecosystems whole regions could be destabilized and thrown into disarray. And if there is one thing we know humans do not really function as very rational beings in such situations. Seriously just look at the shit that's happening right now. We're actually thinking loudly about cases where the European Union and the British Isle could fall apart. If someone told you 15 years ago, yeah you know Scotland might decide to exit Britain and the EU could dissolve would you have believed that? And now this seems a possible scenario for the future.
I am not saying we have to die out. I am just saying the chances for it to happen might be much higher than we like to believe simply because we have no chance to know all the factors that play a role here. We're moving trough a sea of ignorance and that's the issue! There is simply (naturally) a hell of a lot of uncertainty here because we're talking about the future. And no one can say what the future will actually bring. What we're doing right now though is to simply add a lot more additional uncertainty trough our behaviour as a species. And this is definitively not beneficial. And what's making it worse is that we have this habit of living/thinking like we would live for ever - it's a psychological effect or we would go crazy if we constantly reminded our self about our mortality it's like a safe guard of sorts. I mean every scenario seems impossible till it actually happens. We never really think about actual death till we're confronted with it like trough cancer for example where someone tells you that you have only 1 or 2 years to live at most. And a lot of the things we're discussing right now are not outright impossible like a nuclear war for example it's just improbable from our current position but even that is all just guessing. The further you move in to the future the more unclear and blurred is the image.
Yes life finds a way. But there is no law or rule that says it has to find one with us taking part in it. We have a very (extremely) egocentric view on the world and the universe. And it shows.
Sometimes I am just do not sure if you're serious or not. Sorry for that.
But yeah it definitively will not be pretty.
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The last bit was a joke. It's what Ian says in Jurassic Park.
I think I am becoming autistic.
valcik
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
Seriously?
That's how Muad'Dib explained the limits of his power in Herbert's Dune, LOL.
