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

Nepsotic 07-02-2015 02:33 AM

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

Havoc 07-02-2015 03:48 AM

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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!!

MA 07-02-2015 07:49 AM

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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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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.

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.

Bullet Magnet 07-02-2015 09:46 AM

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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.

Varrok 07-02-2015 10:33 AM

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

Bullet Magnet 07-02-2015 10:52 AM

What for?

Varrok 07-02-2015 11:04 AM

The whole point of IT is transferring and processing information!

Bullet Magnet 07-02-2015 11:38 AM

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

Varrok 07-02-2015 12:43 PM

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.

MeechMunchie 07-02-2015 05:09 PM

Just tie a message to a quark's leg

Phylum 07-02-2015 05:35 PM

It's one thing to theoretically encode information in a sub-atomically, but it's another completely to interpret that data with a real physical outcome. What are your hypothetical nanomachines going to do? Compute Fibonacci numbers?

Bullet Magnet 07-02-2015 07:30 PM

We're back to miracles here, people.

Phylum 07-02-2015 08:06 PM

So why not just accept that we're all going to live for eternity in heaven or hell?

Bullet Magnet 07-02-2015 08:20 PM

I'd only spend all my time trying to make them collide at high speeds to see what happens.

I hypothesise the generation of exotic new afterlives.

Havoc 07-03-2015 07:22 AM

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We're back to miracles here, people.

Just because that sort of stuff seems impossible now doesn't mean it always will be. We're just coming up with hypothetical ideas that assume humanity will some day reach that level of technology. Don't read so much into it.

Bullet Magnet 07-03-2015 08:01 AM

What's happening here is little different than taking ancient mythology and swapping out random nouns and verbs for scientific terminology. That doesn't make it science. It doesn't even make it science fiction. It's fantasy wearing a sci-fi hat. It's all the same mistakes human beings have made for centuries, except worse because you're encouraged to say that it is scientific. There are fundamental rules in the universe that must constrain our imagination if we want it to be real one day. For example: you can't model information of a given complexity in a medium that is less complex than the information, or even equally complex. In familiar terms, you cannot simulate a computer on another computer of equal or lesser power and complexity than your model. In nanotechnology terms, even truly advanced nanomachines have severe limits on what they can be made to do and react to because the processing power of individual atoms is quite limited. You can't invent a better atom.

Manco 07-03-2015 02:38 PM

Just watch me! *rushes to laboratory*

Varrok 07-04-2015 01:13 AM

I believe in times when ENIAC was popular BM would say that pocket calculator would be a miracle, citing the same argument.

Bullet Magnet 07-04-2015 07:19 AM

No. What I'm saying is that you don't realise how hard some of these problems are, and your imagined solutions require the violation of known laws of physics. I'd be happy to see them proven wrong and those limitations removed, but I know better than to wish them away and then extrapolate from there.

It's the equivalent of wondering "well, what if you could pick up the ball in soccer?" and then devising a revolutionary new tactic for the game. Interesting, sure, but don't anticipate every seeing it in play.

True genius is not in breaking the rules, it's in making the rules think it was their idea all along.