Oddworld Forums - what do you think the meaning of life is?

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- - what do you think the meaning of life is? (http://www.oddworldforums.net/showthread.php?t=21993)

The idea is that if something horrendous happens to Earth or one of it's colonies, humanity will live on elsewhere. Sucks to be on the doomed planet, though. That's the main humanitarian flaw. The people actually living on Earth or her colonies aren't going to sit about satisfied that they are just one egg in one basket. They want to live real lives and leave a real legacy. When doom comes to Terra Nova, the people there are going to work just as hard to survive as we would on an Earth as our only haven. And the tragedy would be equivalent.

Just think about tragedy on the Earth today: if everyone on a particular continent was wiped out, how many of us would find comfort in the knowledge that there are other continents? I guess none. No, we'd have done all we could to prevent it, and do all we can to stop it from happening again. Survival by distance is not to be relied on.

How about survival by numbers though? 7 billion and counting on this planet alone. Imagine a few dozen colonies on planets that may be several times the size of earth and we're talking maybe trillions of humans. The odds of going extinct are significantly reduced with numbers like that unless the entire universe blows up at once. In which case, who cares, because the universe ceased to exist anyway.

That is why Mao organised the Chinese population boom. His plan was that in the even of nuclear war, even sustained strikes on Chinese soil could not kill everyone. Then in the aftermath they would still outnumber the surviving forces in the rest of the world, and could flood out to claim their lands for China.

His plan sucked for all the people he expected to die in those nuclear strikes.

Again, the survival-by-numbers purpose of colonies is a shit plan. We should have higher hopes for ourselves than merely survival by gaming the numbers. Do remember that those numbers are people, not resources to be spent and sacrificed. They want to live. They will have an interest in averting their particular disaster, and we should be working towards that kind of ability, rather than by hedging our bets.

Besides, the extinction of one colony will be little different to the extinction of them all. Communication between worlds is difficult. You couldn't have a conversation with someone on Mars, for example. You could send messages, but when the planets are near one another that is at best a twenty minute delay between replies, and at their furthest it's hours. Colonies in different systems entirely may as well be silent. Travel between them will also be rare within a system, and impossible for any real practical purpose between different systems. We can of course imagine some new method of travel that isn't limited by current physics, but that's little better than factoring a miracle into your calculations. Even the ability to colonise other worlds is unlikely to come with the ability to run and maintain a single interplanetary civilisation. Maybe one day. I think we'd be more likely to see an Independent Martian Nation than a Human Systems Alliance.

Any planetary colony is going to be genetically distinct from all other colonies due to the founder effect. It will develop its own unique culture in response to and in spite of the various unique challenges faced by human life on that planet, and the unique socio-cultural-historical phenomena that will arise there. They will develop their own scientific advances and technology, manufacturing processes, political systems, artwork and more. It seems likely that communicating much of this offworld will be prohibitively difficult. Given long enough, evolution will make its mark on the people and animals there in ways not seen on other worlds. All this will be unique to that one world, even though humans may exist elsewhere.

And the destruction of that colony is absolutely unacceptable. What can they do to prevent the loss of all that they are? Colonise yet more planets? That isn't going to do the trick. Those colonies will become unique just as theirs was. No. For them, Terra Nova must be where they make their stand, just as Earth must be where we make ours. If we colonise other worlds we'll need better reason to do so than simply finding spare baskets for our many eggs.

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We can of course imagine some new method of travel that isn't limited by current physics, but that's little better than factoring a miracle into your calculations.

This is by and large the reason science isn't more interested in colonising planets, too. You send those people off and they're gone forever*. Any kind of communication gets more and more delayed. If you land on a nearby habitable planet it would take 4 years to send a message over radio, and another 4 years for them to return anything. They can't send anything back to us unless they also take the tools to manufacture rockets. Even then, by the time we tell them we need something will we still need it? How would we even know they got the message?

Like BM said, life on another planet would be completely distinct from us. You might think we'd have the peace of mind that they were alive out there somewhere, except we wouldn't because even if you receive a message of them they could still have all died years ago.

Also why humans? Why not put zebras on another planet? I'd be more interested in seeing life extended to other planets. If we're thinking on a universal scale, then we're not just some species, we're alive like so much else on this goddamn rock. Why not preserve life, rather than just our relatively insignificant species?

Also everyone is assuming humans not going extinct also means civilisation lives on, and I think that's pretty optimistic.

edit: *Not to mention that it might be their kids or grandkids or great great grandkids etc. that actually arrive, so you have to wonder about the genetics and inbreeding. We don't want some 3 toed, buck-toothed banjo player being the first human to colonise another planet.

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the world really isn't big enough for all of us, and it will only get worse. we need to tighten our trousers as a race and take a step toward fucking realism; we cannot all happily co-exist here. there isn't enough fucking room. expand. colonise other planets. learn, or die horribly.

Rubbish. Total rubbish. Any reputable expert in human geographics and population says that the number of humans on planet Earth will probably rise to about 10 billion, then level out. There's more than enough resources on this planet to handle that many people if we stop being so goddamn wasteful.

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Also everyone is assuming humans not going extinct also means civilisation lives on, and I think that's pretty optimistic.

The long-term future of our species sans technological civilisation is the same as any other species sans technological civilisation, so the survival of civilisation and of humanity is more or less the same thing.

Unless of course, we can hope for a new technological civilisation to pop up later on. I'm sure it could, provided there is a convenient, highly efficient and easily-accessible energy source still available to them. The sort that should only ever be used to boot-strap a civilisation up to proper energy sources and under no circumstances whatsoever used indefinitely by a lazy population unmoved by far-sighted thinking.

Yeah that's kind of what I was getting at in a roundabout way. If civilisation isn't going to last forever, all of the technology in the world isn't going to stop us from going extinct.

Theoretically it could, there's even theories on how we can make ourselves immortal. It's to do with some bullshit that I can't remember. Cells or whatever. Something.

Something to do with repairing the ends of our chromosomes as they get eroded away by cell replication I think. Naked mole rats do that. Minutephysics said so.

Does anyone subscribe to the transhumanist style of thought that says human existence can be best preserved by uploading our consciousnesses to computers/ robots, so that we might continue until entropy literally breaks us down?

I like that idea.

Yes, except you'll die if you transfer the data from your brain to a robot and let the brain die.

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Ben Morgan does. Talk to Ben Morgan about it. Ben Morgan is a smart guy.

The main problem with that idea is Step One: A Miracle Occurs.

A miracle? Like the Big Bang?

It makes the Big Bang look perfectly inevitable (though to be fair, it probably was).

Well, knowing of no other as modern species as us, I'd say we are a kind of miracle. It's hard to say when we will stop progressing technologically. Probably at the point we stop trying.

So you stop your cells from breaking down or whatever and live forever, but how does your brain cope?

I'd rather live out my life and then die in time. Immortality, or even greatly extended lifespans, would be stupid.

I prefer the concept of gradually replacing the human body with synthetic organs, effectively reducing or eliminating death by organ failure (aside from the brain). The human body is essentially just a machine, if you would be able to replicate the function of key organs (like we currently can on large scale with bypass surgery or dialysis) you'd be prolonging the human lifespan significantly. On paper anyway, there's still the issue of the brain eventually deteriorating or developing mental illnesses. I don't really know how long a human brain can be kept alive under ideal circumstances.

With an artificial body you would quickly learn how much you depended on natural healing to cope with daily wear and tear.

Well there's no reason an artificial body couldn't replicate some natural self-repair systems, but the more you imitate biology the faster you arrive at the same problems that we face now.

I think it's to more about cells being able to replicate with 100% efficiency.

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With an artificial body you would quickly learn how much you depended on natural healing to cope with daily wear and tear.

Nano bots dude! Nano bots!!

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It's not actually a far-seeing perspective though. Right now, the rate at which we can get human beings off-world is outstripped by several orders of magnitude by the birthrate. I don't see that changing much even in a fantastic sci-fi future. Planetary colonisation is not a solution to overpopulation for this reason. At best, we'll get a tiny population of human beings on a new planet (the genetics of which will be fascinating. I expect that they will be almost entirely white, like old science fiction was, unless India and China overtake Europe and the US. Actually, that's pretty likely), which, if successfully nurtured, will grow and develop until we have two overpopulated planets.

But how about escaping from environmental change? Anywhere we find to live will have to be Earth-like, and I know all about terraforming. I know that even the best terraformed planet will be unlike Earth in peculiar ways (gravity, solar radiation, magnetic field protection etc) and will take so much more time to accomplish than we can expect to have before the arrival of an impending disaster. I should think, though, that if we can make another planet Earth-like, then we would be able to make the Earth Earth-like too. However, deliberately altering the Earth's climate on that scale, even to fix it, well... that's an experiment we would be really dumb to try. Exactly as dumb as fucking up the Earth in the first place.

We can ruin the Earth one way or another and flee to a new one. That is what decades of science fiction has taught us to hope for. I say that this is dumb. We should hope for something much better. In this scenario, we are not escaping from the problem, we are bringing it with us. People! Those fuckers! We are exactly the kind of species that can ruin its home, bring a privileged few into space to find a new one, painstakingly construct a new home from scratch, and learn absolutely nothing from the experience. Whatever problem we are running from, we can expect to create anew at our destination.

No. Colonise the galaxy if you can, sure, I'm all down with that. But I see no scenario where humanity survives at all in which the Earth has not also survived.

I think it is time, in more ways than one, that we move away from the narratives of our future that we told ourselves in the last century. They aren't healthy, they aren't likely. Most of the promises we made for science and technology did not come true and in the world our parents have forged for us, they probably won't. We have so many problems right here that won't go away simply by assuming that they one day will. Our ideas for the future skip over that fight. Optimism is entirely unjustified. I really mean that. There is not a single solution to any of the problems facing humanity that can be successfully implemented without three crucial elements: non-corrupt government, accountable leadership, and a general approval for the performance of civic duty, and we need all of these globally. We will die here on this rock without them. What are our odds? The Earth will be both our cradle and our grave without a serious rethink, and science and technology by themselves are not enough. It's not enough to have solutions, you have to be able to employ them and be willing to pay the cost of doing so. We are spoiled, petulant, and privileged. I suspect that we will collectively refuse to do anything of the sort.

Try listening to all these while you play your videogames. Also, argue with the voices in your head all day long. They are clever, but they're also full of shit.

yeah man, you're right. i was just dreaming. and thank you, the voices have died down as of late but i like what you said. i'll bear that in mind, man. thanks.

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Can someone please fill me in on the great secret as to why having Space Colonies means we don't go extinct in your ideal futures?

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to be completely honest i was just making conversation. i don't fucking know, the fuck you asking me for? think i actually think about what i say? no way, man.

but seriously i have no idea, i was stoned and it seemed like an interesting topic.

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Does anyone subscribe to the transhumanist style of thought that says human existence can be best preserved by uploading our consciousnesses to computers/ robots, so that we might continue until entropy literally breaks us down?

I like that idea.

i think that idea is fucking terrifying.

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Nano bots dude! Nano bots!!

This is another one of those "a miracle occurs" moments.

The common concept of nanobots is of microscopic robots doing awesome things.

What nanotechnology is actually about are complex molecular assemblies of artificial design with particular chemical properties. A virus shell is basically a natural nanobot.

The complexity required for operational nano-scale repair and combat drones is not possible with the resolution of atoms.

Technically, there are some sort of sub-particles smaller than atoms. If we could use them to transfer information...

The whole point of IT is transferring and processing information!

Yes, I'm just wondering what the connection to subatomic particles is.

I mean, conventional technology is based on electricity and logical (physical) gates, but it could work with any sort of fast-moving force and gates/receptors. There are lots of energy inside them atoms. I believe we might try to find if we could do some nano-gates and therefore the real (and by "real" I mean what a stereotypical person thinks they are) nanomachines could be built.

How? If only I knew, I wouldn't be here, sitting on the internet forums.

Just tie a message to a quark's leg