Stephen Hawking Asks The Internet a Question 1171
An anonymous reader writes "Dr. Stephen Hawking received about 15000 answers to a question he posted 2 days ago on Yahoo Answers. His question was 'How can the human race survive the next hundred years?'." I imagine you can do better than 'It Can't.' How would you answer Dr. Hawking's question?
Your Answer, Stephen (Score:5, Insightful)
'How can the human race survive the next hundred years?'
Birthcontrol, ween of dependence on high energy consumption and colonise the solar system, because we sure aren't going to get along forever on this rock alone.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:2, Insightful)
Jaysyn
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:5, Interesting)
For the record, I'm not religious or even a believer, but I do think that much of human civilization follows a similar paradigm to evolution. Things exist for a reason - or did anyway... because they served a function. If religion is this opiate that the masses need, and it is abolished, what do we replace it with? Meds?
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:5, Insightful)
I think your point is valid to some degree but I think its because another inexorable drive has reached critical mass. Technology. Information is available to all and is free. We've developed sophisticated ways of waging war. What once required the might of a country now requires nothing more than some cash and enough dedicated people to fill your average classroom. The BARRIERS TO ENTRY are too low. It makes EVERYONE a threat.
A theory floats around about why we've never heard from another species. It proposes that they all reach a point at which they use their own technology to destroy themselves. In other words, no civilization can survive its own technological advancement past a critical juncture.
We've been on the brink of it since the dawn of the atomic age.
So, in hindsight, the post I originally responded to wasn't too far off. At some point, organized religions are going to have to concede to something else... some other unifying force. However, I don't think banning religion or making it a forceful change is going to work. People have to evolve.
My mom always said not to argue with fools. I never understood what she meant as a child. She explained it to me further - that when you discuss something with someone, you're at the mercy of the person in the group with the least ability to comprehend. The group can only move forward with consensus when that person does so. So in a group, you're not at the mercy of the top of curve so much as at the mercy of those at the bottom. Here in the US, Bush's appeal is somewhat an indication of this.
Not to label religious zealots as fools, but we can't move to another place until the zealots decide, one way or another, to not be zealots anymore.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
We have a relatively small number of people who are willing to cite their religion as justification for already-present murderous tendencies, and a small number of gullible people who have been brainwashed into believing that doing so is the right thing to do. Don't believe the vocal extremists who claim to represent the majority of a religion, and defin
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
However, the Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Hindi, and Buddhist faiths
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you considered that arrogance could be your opiate?
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: arrogance being an opiate, I'm certain it can be for some. I tend to think that there is some arrogance in atheists, as absolute certainty in the nonexistence of God is probably as foolhardy as absolute certainty (not any evidence). In that sense I think atheists and believers have a lot more in common than they think.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe in God, obviously, so I was set off a bit. I shouldn't really care, though, how other people think. Actions are what matter, after all.
I do agree that religion is foolish; I see it as a way of objectifying God, reducing him into an idol, a utility. And as a utility, religion is indeed unnecessary.
God is just a part of me, though. I don't know WHAT he is as much as WHO he is. He's at the core of who I am, and to deny God would be to deny my own existence. I don't feel any handicapped by this any more than I feel that breathing or a pulse is a handicap, or that my love for my wife is a useless reliance and a weakness.
God and I are good friends. He communicates with me on a daily basis, using events in my own life around me as his vocal chords.
And I doubt mean to make it sound as if I have a special connection that elevates my status, because the way I see it, God is not above me or you. There is no hierarchy, so there is no elevation of status through association.
It's merely an instinct. I tried denying it for years, but I eventually had to come to accept it as intrinsic to who I am. That's the kind of creature I am. Perhaps you are just different sorts of creatures.
I see the scientific, testable aspect of God as being Love. That we can all share, despite our internal universes that define who we are.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, I'll bite.
Atheism is, in my opinion, a higher evolutionary state than theism. If you want to talk about progress, the secular, scientific worldview has brought us all kinds of advancements in virtually every aspect of life. Scientists, not priests, discovered electricity, developed antibiotics, found a way to travel to the moon; the list goes on and on. If you look back at human history, religion has generally been the biggest impediment to scientific progress. Its main use was (and continues to be) as a device allowing a select, manipulative few to gain control over and wealth from the gullible masses. Religion has had a role in almost every war in human history, and there's been a clear trend over the past few centuries: The more secular a country is, the less likely it is to go to war.
It's popular among secularists these days to placate believers by saying that science and religion can coexist, but I don't believe that's true. The progressive believers, those who no longer believe in stoning disobedient children to death, for instance, are deliberately ignoring a portion of what they consider to be the word of God. The extremists, on the other hand, may find themselves at odds with the modern world, but they're the ones who are truly being faithful to their beliefs.
I'd also like to add that the human mind has the capability to convince itself of the veracity of some incredible horseshit--look at Scientology, for instance. Heaven's Gate? Jonestown? These people were all sure they were right about the nature of the universe, just as you appear to be. The only difference between your beliefs and theirs is that yours are more widespread.
Take a step back and look at the modern world objectively. Religion threatens us in a very serious way. Islamic terrorism is a threat now, but it's nothing compared to what it will be when nuclear weapons technology becomes more advanced and widespread. It doesn't help that the world's only remaining superpower is being run by what the Muslims (and some of us) see as a villain straight out of central casting.
Believing in God, in my opinion, is no different than believing in Santa Claus. It may be comforting, but no matter how much you want to believe it, a fat man in red is not going to make presents appear in front of the tree in your living room. The world would be so much better off if people would just see it for what it was.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:5, Insightful)
I just believe in the empirical. If God comes down from Heaven and starts talking to me tomorrow, I'll believe in God. I just like having proof of something before I let it shape my worldview. I'm silly like that.
The difference is that if you eat McDonald's every day, it will probably kill you, but it won't have any direct effect on me. However, if some nut with a suitcase bomb steps onto my subway train with a plan to get his 72 virgins, that is very much everyone else's problem. If you want something a little more close to home, look at the control that Christians are intent on exercising on other peoples' decisions about gay marriage, drugs and abortion. Or the insistence that everyone else's children be taught fairy tales in biology class. Or the fact that the Christian voting bloc was the swing vote that put that monkey idiot president of ours in power. If you're more "spiritual" than "religious," more power to ya. But I've found that the vast majority of religious people out there are little more than sheep.
I agree that the world is magnificent, and that people haven't been taking very good care of it. But that's neither here nor there. Painting things with such broad strokes (world good, man evil) doesn't seem very helpful to me.
Christianity was, in fact, a cause of serious turmoil in Rome. The Spanish are infamous for their particularly cruel brand of Catholicism, and there have been dozens of feuds in Western Europe caused by some petty disagreement between Christian sects. And the Cold War wasn't a war, but many viewed it as a conflict between God's America and the godless, cold communist state.
Would you disagree with any of the following?
I'm not talking about individuals; I'm talking about sociological trends.
Huh? They're not at all alike. Politics is a necessary evil that comes with a government run by a hierarchy of people. But it's better than anarchy. There have been times throughout history when church and state were one, but law and order come from the "state" part, and secular governments function jus
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, I believe there is a God. I wake up, and I feel like I'm staring him in the face all day. I can't give you any more evidence for God than I can give you for myself as a true consciousness. But instinctively I know God is with me just as I can say, "I am".
If that somehow makes me crippled in other people's eyes, then so be it. But God is a part of me, and to deny that would be to deny who I am.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Interesting)
I will give you a personal reason, if not for believing in god I would be a violent criminal.
I don't see anything wrong with raping someone, or stealing from them - after all they are just a bunch of meat, with no real existance - they sure think that they are real, but what do I care? They are just a bunch of nerves blinking, no different then a computer. So what if I hurt them, they'
Disgusting! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
It is a simple and obvious fact that neither the existence nor the non-existence of a deity can be proven based on evidence gathered from a human perspective. So some people look at the evidence available to them and conclude that God probably exists, while o
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly.
It's not spirituality that's killed anyone, or even faith in God. It's blind faith in humans that say they know what God wants.
No one should ever listen to anyone who says they know what God wants.
Which, in the end, is why I have to go with Jesus on this whole 'religion' thing. Read what he said, and you'll notice he wanted you to do two things: Love God, and love everyone else. That's it, those are the only things you should do in the name of his religion or even not do in the name of his religi
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
And we really need to get radical governments like Iran, and North Korea to stop wasting their money on arms and military and focus on raising the standard of living in their country. I don't see how North Korea can think having a long range missle is good. So, who are they going to launch it at? The USA? That would be a ticket to getting wiped off the planet for sure.
Abolish religion? No, just tax it. (Score:5, Informative)
I think the first step is to not give religious organizations preferential tax treatment. The rest should write itself.
Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you have better data than these?
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_pop_gro_rat- people-population-growth-rate [nationmaster.com]
Its basically the former Soviet Union people that are decreasing in population because they drink too much, and the women are wise enough to not want to fuck them anymore. Aside from that, we are growing!
Supposedly, human po
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:4, Insightful)
Brutal honesty in my opinions here, but one can only assume that of that 10-14b, anywhere from 5-7b will be Muslim, 8-9b will live in countries currently engaged in either international or civil war, hundreds of millions will die each year of famine or genocide, global consumption of natural resources will more than double the levels they are now, wars will be fought over clean water (on top of other natural resources) and the distribution of wealth will be equally unevenly distributed as it is now - if not more.
To boot, major population areas will sustain the majority of growth, leaving sparsley populated areas still sparsely populated. Realization of the down-side of peak oil will have long hit, we will have seen poverty strike hard due to a crash in the international economy, etc., etc.
It's a grim outlook for sure. Certain populations aren't sustaining because quality of life is increasing, and people are not doing their part having their 2.5 children to sustain growth. Poverty usually sees upticks in populations (as do post-war times).
But with an acknowledgement of global warming but no plan to combat it, no centralized focus on greener technologies including renewable energy, increasing poverty, stupidly fast industrialization of nations that sustain world-majority populations, and wars still being fought based on religion - where can anyone expect to be in 50 years?
I certainly hope for a better future than this. But I live in the wealthy, greedy, oil-hungry 300m-person United States. My country accounts for shitloads of wealth with less than 1/12 of the population of the earth. I'm sure I'll be better off than anyone living in the middle east, China, India, etc.
On top of that, the following things will come to pass: realization and fighting over natural resources as we can only sustain growth in China and India for so long; a conflict and resolution concerning North Korea, and so on.
Oh, and the US may lose it's position as the world market leader... but that seems inevitable at this point in time too.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
I submit that these are two contradictory proposals. Urban concentrations will be the hardest hit by a severe oil shortage. No oil, for urban areas, means no heating and no food. If you live in a rural area, you'll have more
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
The city with the population of 100,000 who can have tons upon tons of food delivered to them on a single train
OR
The 1,000 texas ranchers, each of which have no neighbors within a mile of their homes?
Where do you think the 'tons of food' comes from? It doesn't just magically appear in a grocery store or a warehouse. It comes from those ranchers and farmers with no neighbors within a mile of their home. If you are out in a rur
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:4, Insightful)
Wars today are no more frequent than they have been at any point in history, and I expect them to decrease (among developed nations only, because of economic interdependency). Even the worst environmental crisis wouldn't kill *everybody*.
In the worst-case scenarios I see, a pair of world wars* kill millions and melting ice caps displace 1.5 billion living on the worlds seacoasts as we move towards the end of the 21st century. I don't think both are necessarily going to happen, but even if they did that's a far cry from wiping out the species.
Even in the case of a full-on nuclear exchange, places like New Zealand and Madagascar are both low population and not particularly strategically located. Both could become reasonably self sufficient and survive with a fairly large population.
* Two world wars: US-Taiwan-India vs. China and Western Christian nations + Israel vs. Islam. They could happen simultaneously if the India/Pakistan conflict pushes the islamic world into an alliance with China.
A far more relevant question is how can the human race prosper and continue to grow? The fact is, I think it will.
Yes, we are running out of oil. But as the price goes up (and it will), other technologies will become competitive. Coal Gasification is frankly not that far away in economic competitiveness, and it can produce enough petrolem for a couple hundred years. We'll switch to it around the time US gas prices hit $6 or $7 per gallon. That will give us plenty of time for fusion and orbital solar power to become developed. We won't run out of energy.
Global warming will probably screw the 25% of humanity living near the seacoasts. Developed nations will build garganutan coastal dikes, and a billion southeast asians will have to move late in the 21st century. That will suck, but it won't significantly affect the global population.
I frankly doubt major world wars between developed nations. The world economy is far more interdependent than it was in 1936. China and the US can't afford to war with each other because both economies would collapse.
The USA will become the 3rd-largest economy, falling behind China and India both in productivity and in science. Much depends on whether or not America can accept this new position without deciding it needs to kill people over it.
Malthusian disaster scenarios are *always* counterbalanced by market forces. When a resource runs scarce its' price goes up, making alternatives viable and spurring research into alternatives. This will be true of everything from energy to food. The poor will get stuck with the short end of the stick, but that's not exactly new or news.
I think there will probably be some nasty terrorist incidents as nuclear and biological technology becomes cheaper and more widespread. Those will be bad, but they won't threaten the existence of the species as a whole.
People have chanted "doom" for centuries. Instead, life has always been nasty, messy, and full of tragedy, but goes on nonetheless. The 21st century will be no different on average, the nastiness will just manifest itself in different ways. But it won't wipe out the species.
The ONLY threat I see truly wiping out all of humanity is an asteroid impact. And that's no more likely in the 21st than at any other point in history. Maybe less, because now we are reaching the point where we could contemplate doing something about it.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:5, Interesting)
I suggest that the human race will survive the next 25 years or so by muddling along in its time honored traditions barring, of course, some unforseen global catastrophe. Problems like overpopulation, environmental degredation, warfare, disease, global warming - these are serious problems but problems the human race has shown itself to be capable of dealing with as long as one is not overly concerned about collateral damage. And when looking at something like the survival of the human race, a few billion here or there kind of falls into the noise.
Considering the longer term (25-75 years out) future of the human raises some more interesting concerns
One of the questions I find compelling is how human social, cultural, political, and economic networks will survive and behave in a post-scarcity economy. For about 15 years the inflation adjusted costs of manufactured goods has continued to decrease. Just in time manufacturing, custom fabrication, these trends all point toward a transition to an economy based on 'how to do/build things' rather than 'things' alone. I have yet to see any cogent model of how human networks will adapt to this transition, and I therefore belive that this transition has the potential to be quite disruptive.
Another consideration is how the definition of 'human' may change as a result of technological progress and environmental demands. If anything, I suspect that the answer to the question 'how will the human race survive the next 100 years?' is, in the long term, quite simple.
Change what it means to be human.
Terrifying, and extraordinarily difficult to predict, but in the long run the *only* way species survive is by changing - and the potential for that change to be mediated by technology in humans drastically accellerates the potential timeframe. Some relatively simple changes are already filtering into human culture almost invisibly - laser eye surgery, fairly serious cosmetic modifications, cochlear implants, hair transplants, hair removal, sex reassignment, prosthetics, longterm drug therapies, gene therapy; I could go on and on.
Sometimes the only way to solve an intractable problem is my changing the terms of the problem itself. Just as Alexander the Great trumped generations of philosophers by cutting the Gordian Knot in half instead of untangling it, it may be that the only way to truly insure the long term survival of the human race is by changing what it means to be human.
Post-scarcity (Score:3, Interesting)
One problem with your post-scarcity theory: it won't last. The world population is expected to double over the next 100 years. I'm not sure technology will be able to deal with the scarcity issues that quickly. Especially for things like clean water, oil, and land. I expect there to at least be some serious wars as these resources become more scarce.
I'd also like to mention humanity's penchant for powerful people to create scarcity in order to increase their power. While technology has helped
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Interesting)
Just how "long" a run are we talking here? 100 years is not all that long as far as evolutions is concerned, barring sudden epidemics and the like. Some species have been pretty much the same for millions of years, and they don't even have access to technology to help them along. I'm sure that future scientific achievements would very likely lead to changing the definition of what it m
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Interesting)
The one child policy = chuck the baby girl down a well because ancient custom says boy must be first born.
So there are a lot of teens hard up to find the chicks.
least that's what my forced to sit on a plane for 8 hours with nothing more to do than watch 60 min addled brain remembers
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't thin there is any way we will be living in space in the next 100 years. Also, I don't think moving is the solution to our problems.
I don't see us all moving to other planets, moons and space communinities, I just see an extension and survival of Man through that avenue. This planet will be exhausted at the rate of consumption.
It's like the drug addict who thinks that moving away from the city will solve their drug addiction. The problems we have aren't a result of where we live, but how we live.
And it's energy, per capita, which is mostly How We Live. It isn't just the SUV guzzling gas, but the appliances at home and all the goods we purchase which require energy to manufacture, package and distribute. The USA is consuming commodities at a blazing rate, but China with it's vast population will match that in short order. Economics will play a part, as China and India consume more goods and energy the costs (as they are already doing in most goods) will rise and reduce consumption simply because people won't be able to have it all anymore, but choose from fewer things which are important to them. The big adjustment is going to be when petroleum runs scarce. Everything will change as the cost of petrol increases. Sadly, there will also be increased competition for land as is expected much low lying lands will flood thanks to the warmer climate.
Be wary. Wars are waged more over competition for resources than any other reason.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
And when our resources are exhausted the planet will blow up? No, we will still be here, and when it gets closer to resource being exhausted things will happen. It is not an optimal situation to do it last minute, but when we are truly almost "out" of oil the cost of recycling tires and leeching shale will be financially viable (just 2 examples). It is just going to get more expensive and people will start demanding that our corporate overlords
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Informative)
Um, no. The answer is more sex and more children (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh my god talk about hyperbole and idiotic moderators. The human race isn't going to die out. I mean come on. There may well be a few billion deaths, but there are billions more humans on the planet so lets face it, we're not facing a global extinction event...
The question you should be asking is how do I make sure that my family are the survivors in the coming tough times... Make sure the genes continue.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Informative)
A few of them are:
What happens when/if we massively extend lifespans using nanotechnology/genetic engineering? That is somewhat covered under birth control but not exactly. You eventually run into the question of WHO you want to reproduce. Maybe not in the next 100 years though.
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned populating the ocean yet, it se
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Insightful)
Although the only way to make it really work would be to have forced abortions a la the Chinese authoritarian state.
There is an easier, and far more traditional solution. Have a war.
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Interesting)
Space is not the only requirement for human life. You also need an extremely small temperature window, oxygen, water, some companionship, and a wide enough range to keep from going mad.
We live in a virtual paradise, a cornucopia of vast amounts of various chemicals and elements. Tim
Re:Your Answer, Stephen (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Final Solution (was:Your Answer, Stephen) (Score:3, Informative)
More humans mean greater distribution of labor. More distribution means more specialization which leads to greater technical achievements which lead to things like, but not limited to, 100% of the population living off of food farmed by 2% of the population.
How is the planet exactly not viable?
Thank you! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Final Solution (was:Your Answer, Stephen) (Score:3, Interesting)
Educate the World (Score:5, Insightful)
Given those three issues, it seems probable that we may not make it another hundred years without severe loss of life. I don't think the loss of life will be complete with the death of all humans but I think there is a high probability for a large loss of our populations in one country or another. I don't mean thousands like natural disasters but I mean a hundred million or more.
We'll survive, just not at a luxury like we've known. Honestly, if a lot of major religions and their leaders could start coming to terms with each other. You know, make it so that it's not like a death sentence when you don't believe in God or Allah? You could also reveal to everyone that our leaders should be more like Gandhi and less like Hitler. That would probably help with those first two problems. In every country, to be a successful politician you need a lot of financial support. Unfortunately, the ideal people leading us are those with no interest in padding their own pockets.
As for the third problem you listed, we're screwed. We're screwed because our numbers are reaching epic proportions that the earth cannot sustain and there's really no way around it aside from birth control. I don't support enforced birth control as far as the Chinese have taken it but you have to admit it certainly curbed their population growth rate. If nature fails us or vice versa, things will be pretty bad though I doubt we would become extinct entirely.
Of course, there are an infinite number of universes and I'm sure there exists one which doesn't have any of those three problems
*loads a bullet into the chamber of his handgun*
Re:Educate the World (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Educate the World (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Educate the World (Score:3, Funny)
Hell yeah! Make 'em actually take those things offroad for once
simplicity (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:simplicity (Score:5, Insightful)
but I think that consumption purely for the sake of consumption is our biggest problem.
I vehemently disagree. Messes are a problem, not consumption. Why do we have this new puritanism taking over in certain places? I don't want conservation. I want to live in a Utopia of plentiful abundance, and there is no intrinsic reason why we can't have it.
The solution to all our problems is more technology, not less. You claim to be a "metropolitan technologist", but you appear to be a "guilty metropolitan technologist". Well, I say we shed the guilt and embrace civilization. We just need to make being less messy a higher priority.
Re:simplicity (Score:3, Interesting)
The intrinsic reason we can't is that the universe as far as we can tell is finite. However, I think we agree more than we disagree. Our biggest problem is that it's cheaper to be wastefull than to handle it properly.
Re:simplicity (Score:5, Funny)
re: You hit the nail on the head.... (Score:3, Interesting)
At some point, our tendencies to embrace the disposable, short lifespan consomer goods will lead us to a situation where they're no longer the cheaper option and *that* is when you'll see change come about.
It's fine to preach about h
Re:simplicity (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:simplicity (Score:4, Insightful)
What is that?
Plentiful food, a place to stay, and little to no threat of death?
Take a look around. Plenty of housed, fat, old people, and getting fatter and older!
Re:simplicity (Score:4, Insightful)
I feel we need to raise the price of items to make it more economical to fix it than to trash it, or simply tax the item to make it cheaper to fix then to trash.
-- tim
Re:simplicity (Score:3, Interesting)
Similarly, what about things like energy efficient washing machines and low current LED lighting? Sometimes it makes sense to toss something that works fine for something new. What if I junked my 19mpg diesel pickup for a 50mpg hybrid? Is society better or worse off?
Besi
Re:simplicity (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:simplicity (Score:3, Insightful)
They took it back, and I spent four times as much at a bike shop on a schwinn. (This was before the name got bought by pacific bicycles, and started appearing at walmart.)
I've beat the crap out of that thing ever since on some nasty trails, and I've only really had to do routine maintanence on it. One part broke outright, but the bike shop fixed it for free.
It's been said that it takes a rich man to buy cheap goods, and in a lot of cases
Re:simplicity (Score:3, Informative)
How can the human race survive the (Score:3, Funny)
By installing Linux of course!
Simple (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Simple (Not Quite) (Score:5, Insightful)
100,000 years ago up until the 1930s, there were no nuclear bombs. We only had technology to inflict localized damage on our fellow man and planet. Now there are enough nukes to wreck the planet, advancement in biology such that we now have the capability to create biological weapons on a wide scale. Also, in the last 200 and 300 years, industrial society has exploded and we've seen rapid deforestation and ecological carelessness on a massively wide scale.
The situation is vastly different, and failing to acknowledge that is naive.
Re:Simple (Not Quite) (Score:3, Informative)
Okay, well my country, Canada, is a major world exporter of wood and wood products. Forestry is an incredibly important industry. We must be deforesting our country at an unbelievable rate! Let's see... save the rainfores
Re:Simple (Not Quite) (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems that many people interpreted the question (as may have been intended) to be: "How can the human race survive the next 100 years and come out the other end comfortable and thriving?"
Well, let's think about that. Pick any 100 year span in history. I would bet that, at the end of any 100 year span, most of humanity is merely surviving in really adverse and sucky conditions. A small fraction of the whole of humanity actually thrives. That is as true today as ever.
Maybe the question should rightly be interpreted as "How can the small fraction of humanity which is today thriving continue to thrive through the next 100 years and never mind the people who are already scrabbling for survival today." Because that's really the only question anyone has ever truly asked.
Pandemic (Score:3, Interesting)
would do the trick.
Just one... (Score:5, Interesting)
Kill off a couple billion, and we'll be good to go for a while.
The same way we survived the last 50 (Score:2, Interesting)
The answer (Score:3, Funny)
Once the world government becomes reality it will immediately transform the economic system from highly internationally competitive firmly capitalistic to more reasonable more socially oriented system.
We will not change (Score:2)
One Day at a Time (Score:5, Insightful)
There have been plenty of forecasters of doom saying that the earth would run out of space, food, energy and whatnot and the population continues to expand.
We'll muddle our way through the next 100 years just like we have the few thousand prior to this one.
Change (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Change (Score:3, Interesting)
Small Scale (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Small Scale (Score:4, Informative)
It seems Hawkings question is really, how do we keep our "world" (planet, society, etc.) as stable/stagnant as possible. That won't happen. It never has.
We may well face some drastic climate changes in the next 100 years (many are certain about that), but the human race has faced that before and survived by wearing mammoth hide or migrating. We may face ravaging disease, but we've seen that too. War? Yep. Will the population decrease at some point in the next century? Probably. We've been due for a correction for some time now.
About the only forseeable event we haven't already survived is global radioactive contamination. However, the odds of that happening - and leaving no habitable corner of the world where humans can survive long enough to reproduce - are slim.
Will you or I survive the next hundred years? Most likely not. Will our children? Most likely. Will some human? Almost definitely.
Talk about a vague question (Score:5, Insightful)
If he wants a more detailed answer than that, he should ask a more detailed question. As any historian can tell you, the "social, political, and environmental chaos" he refers to is absolutely nothing new. The only difference between then and now is that our toys are bigger and shinier.
Pick any period in human history, and I think you'll find that it's easy to define "social, political, and environmental chaos" that worked against the residents of the period. In fact, the conditions that humans have found acceptable in past periods of history are regularly referred to as "squalor" in this day and age. Yet there are precious few examples of civilizations that were wiped out by such conditions.
Yes, the human race makes a lot of messes. Sometimes we stumble across messes that aren't our own doing. Any way you cut it, though, humans will always react to a problem before it reaches the level of self-destruction. Our instict for survival is too strong to do otherwise.
Re:Talk about a vague question (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed, but this is a rather important difference in regards to Hawking's question. Our big shiny toys put unprecedented powers of destruction in the hands of very few people. We are quite capable of destroying ourselves now in a way that would not have been easy in the past.
Take that situation, and add in the gradual ending of cultural isolation (is there any culture in the world that is isolated any more?) -- we m
Pick any period in human history, (Score:4, Interesting)
Pick any period in human history, and you'll also find a large number of people actively working to cause the end of their particular civilization.
Why is Iraq's fabled "land between the two rivers" a dry dusty desert?
Why is North Africa, the ancient Mediterranean's breadbasket and father of great cities, hardly able to grow enough food to feed its own populations?
Why did the Chacoans up and suddenly disappear after claiming so much of the harsh American Southwest for their cities and farms?
Why did the ancient Mayans leave their cities that required so much labor to construct in the middle of a jungle?
Humans can have an amazing impact on their environment, but it's easy to forget that while we appear to be the masters of Nature. But the two work on completely different timescales.
Re:Talk about a vague question (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope - there's one other enormous difference. In the past, there was always someplace for advancing technology to revolutionize. Technological advancements occured locally, lead to population growth, and the overpopulated colony spread to relatively inefficiently used lands, applied their new technology, and took over (or failed in many cas
Global feritlity crisis (Score:3, Insightful)
Exacerbating this is the profile of who is reproducing. In our welfare state, we pay the least functional and arguably least intelligent segments of our population (this is not racist - 75% of welfare recipients are not african americans) to sit around and breed. The only part of the population demographic that is growing is the poor and dependent.
The crisis of the next 100 years will not be global warming or toxic waste or nuclear fallout. It will be vast armies of stupid belligerent parasites with their hands out demanding to be fed and clothed by a shrinking pool of intelligent functional human beings.
The next world crisis is the crisis of de-evolution!
To survive, we must institute emergency programs of tax relief and education to encourage intelligent people to BREED, for the sake of humanity.
Re:Global feritlity crisis (Score:3, Insightful)
Children are not expensive unless the parents make it so. It is possible for two people to have two incomes without the large overhead of day care. It is not necessary to live in a 4 bedroom, 3,000 sq. ft. home, drive two $35,000 cars, and sacrifice further
It can't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes the correct answer is really boring.
My answer.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Humanity has shown itself capable of adapting to an incredible variety of situations, conditions, and hardships. One way or another, I am quite confident that humanity will endure through the next one hundred years.
That being said, the circumstances of this continued survival may be quite different or unpleasant compared to what many people experience today. I believe that humanity needs to come together in a constructive manner and really address some of the many problems we as a species face, from global climate change to the vast poverty, hunger, and disease suffered by much of the world. Until a truly unified approach is taken by all the world's nations, any progress will be piecemeal and incremental.
Alternatively, as you yourself suggested, human colonization of extra-terrestrial worlds by a subset of humanity is an option, however under today's socio-political climate, such an endeavor would likely be limited to a few of the world's more wealthy nations.
Science and Technology (Score:3, Insightful)
I think in the coming century, we'll continue to see the world's population increase. It will come in a different kind of environmental revolution; we won't just be changing the environment around us anymore, we'll start changing the environment in us. We'll become more resilient, self-relient, and broaden the conditions in which we can exist in an enviroment and when that happens, we'll be able to inhabit new places on the globe and start to move beyond.
And the Internet responds (Score:3, Funny)
Humans need a crisis to change (Score:5, Insightful)
The Obvious post from the /. crowd (Score:3, Funny)
Only 100 years? Trick question! (Score:3, Insightful)
The human race has evolved in such a way that now we are capable of really fucking up the planet and eventually extinguishing all life on it. But let's see what mechanisms we have for that.
On one hand, we have nuclear weapons of gargantuan power. If we start a nuclear war, we can easily kill half of the population and make life incredibly miserable for those who survive... but wait, that implies that billions of people will actually survive, so the race isn't really eliminated.
We have also produced technology that is capable of affecting the planet in a serious, perhaps irreversible way. The effect that mostly concerns us now is global warming. Because of our actions the weather may go really wacky, potentially causing the death of millions. The ice caps may melt, slowly sinking a very significant portion of the land, precisely where most of the population lives. But that process will take many, many decades, and even though millions may die, most people will have time to move away. This will cause the overpopulation of the current high lands, with enormously devastating effects. Furthermore, eventually the climate changes may make the planet completely inhabitable (at least by humans), but that will take several centuries to take place. Meanwhile, the human race will survive.
We can go on and on, analysing the different ways that we may fuck up. But we will always find the same answer: in order to actually eliminate the human race we have to make all our habitats inhabitable, and we still can't do that within 100 years from now. We need something like a giant meteor striking the planet or the sun exploding, or some other phenomena out of our control.
My point is: Stephen Hawking is a very smart guy, but this time he managed to make a question that is wrongly formulated:
Duh, how can the human race not survive the next hundred years?
What's up with Stephen Hawking? (Score:3, Insightful)
In a word... (Score:3, Insightful)
Enjoy Soylent Physicist, now with anti-oxidants!
incredibly depressing (Score:3, Insightful)
If the first fifty posts here constitutes our "best and brightest" the human race is doomed for certain. Majority of the posts mention "population". Haven't our attitudes toward population created the majority of our present mess in the first place? And what lever do we have to influence population (and global distribution of wealth), over such a short time window (four generations), that doesn't light more fires than it puts out? Certainly population must be *understood* to formulate any useful ideas, but that's about as far as wisdom dictates.
What I believe must happen is that we come up with many thousands of small ideas that do more to put out fires than start them. Even if you chase a non-convergent series across the x-axis, it isn't going to stay put long enough to matter.
The real thinking involves determining which kinds of interventions are convergent (on average, to a best guess, or with good prospects surrounding constuctive failure--the mine fields of good intentions abound) and which interventions are not (and not necessarily through any fault of their own, but with full acceptance of how "each of us is smarter than all of us" and all that poster-slogan implies).
If I were to reason by analogy to the manifest failures of the human condition that lead us to this point in time, I would guess that the easy redemption slips through our fingers as it always does. We'll end up in the situation where the solution or its mechanisms are fully understood, but the news of the solution is perpetually one step behind the shock front it could have mitigated.
I see this shaping up as a foot race between human resourcefulness and ingenuity and the resonating stress fronts: resources, politics, environment.
My view is that we should be focussing our attention on running the best foot race we can possibly run when it comes to crunch time. What are the mechanisms that aid or impinge on this vital capacity?
I'm still contemplating this problem. I have one certain item on my list thus far: the patent system. As the patent system stands, we have routed one of our most potent weapons--our technical ingenuity--across the Manitoba marsh lands (read about the Great Canadian Railway). All the smart people will have constructive ideas, and all of the constructive ideas will be hung up in the patent system, which is bad enough, and the truly reprehensible litigation environment that surrounds it. Did anyone see that remark yesterday that certain personal awards were upheld in the tabacco verdict, while one was overturned because the statute of limitations had expired as the legal system spun its wheels with great precedent and determination into the soft wet sand?
The usual human response is to fix an institution such as our patent and legal system only *after* its liabilities have culminated in catastrophe. The problem is that we can already the future setting up such that the prime catastrophe is the world around us, and the bloody-mindedness of our legal system is just the *secondary* catastrophe that we will soon have the pleasure of addressing after the berms are breached.
That's the kind of circumstance that stretches human resourcefulness to the breaking point at the exact moment in time the human race can least afford it.
In my view, it's a clear failure of the American constitution that the American legal system was not constitutionally mandated to achieve *proactive* self-reform.
And worst of all, the American legal system is being globalized following exactly the same model as the American power grid. Only Quebec had the good sense to DC couple their grid to that horrible mass of wires and dominoes (and do not fail to observe the contributions of the regulatory and legal environment in shaping the engineering decisions and sand-sucking ostrich behaviours).
Presently, through the global treaty process, American legal process is being aggressively exported using the club of economic integration with the world's most consumeristic popu
The Pill, for men. (Score:5, Funny)
How to solve the population problem:
You're out of your depth, Steve... (Score:3, Insightful)
I cannot understand why war, overpopulation, global warming and other doomsday theories dominate your views on social science. The fact is that intelligence does not make you an authority on anything requiring knowledge outside your sphere.
War
War is, to me, the only thing likely to be the end of civilization besides an extinction level planetary impact, as over time, advances in science increasingly enable us to affect our environment and control energy using the levers of natural law, but whether this can be universalized over time to the extent that a country like North Korea could destroy the usefulness of the entire world to humans and counter attempts by all the others wanting to detect and thwart those efforts is yet to be seen. Getting back to reality, each country has a somewhat static threshold for war which is governed by a combination of roughly three things from the top of my head:
-The resources at hand to fight the war
-The collective will of the populace, as expressed by the sum of all its knowledge, ignorance, logic and insanity
-The will of the leadership, as expressed by the knowledge, ignorance, logic and insanity of the leadership
Sooner or later, however you see it, enough of all of those things erode to the point of being unwilling to continue with war, someone surrenders or is obliterated, and then the population continues to survive despite whatever costs are incurred.
The fact is that civilizations will continue to decide that someone else shouldn't have the freedoms they have, shouldn't exist, or should exist under their rule, and those who would be subject to those whims SHOULD fight! Anyone who says that there should never be war either thinks that fascist countries should always get their way, or thinks that there obviously are no countries that would destroy or take over a peaceful nation. That's just utopian bullshit.
Overpopulation
It is a fact that as a civilization becomes more advanced and established that the birthrate shrinks. We in the united states require immigration even to keep our population growth even with our death rate. How does a 1.5 children per two adults equal population growth? China and Japan are heading towards massive population shrinkage, even to the point of crisis.
Global Warming
I guess I'd rather not go into global warming, but there is debate as to man's level of involvement on that front. Further, the effect is along the lines of lots of death in third world countries, massive shifts in land values leading to lots of bankruptcy in more developed countries, and possibly other natural disasters. There are some theories about how the flora and fauna would be affected, but the earth's mammalian population seems well suited to survive ice ages and climate shift as evidenced by the past.
Fabric of the universe? Sure, go for it. Cause-headed ignorance and feel-good statements only good for warm fuzzies? Leave it to the idiots with the super-short memories.
Mu (Score:4, Insightful)
What will we do to survive the next hundred years? My answer: we'll keep doing what we've been doing: make new stuff, cure some diseases, find new ways and reasons to kill each other, and overall, everything will more or less balance out, and we'll survive the next 100 years without trying, in any particular way, to survive. I mean, as long as people keep eating and fucking, we'll probably be around.
My personal plan is to keep eating fast food, use the bathroom as needed, enjoy the benefits of modern medicine, and live another ~40 years. I imagine my descendants will do the same, and after a couple rounds of that, we'll be at the 100 year mark, safe and sound.
At a micro level, all humans, individually, will eat food, drink lots of fluids when we get sick, treat injuries, etc.--in other words, do all that human-nature stuff which, almost by definition, living beings do on an individual basis to survive. On a macro level... I don't know, maybe I'll raise my kids and pay some taxes.
As for the question "What can I, J. Random Slashdot User, do to prevent Bush from nuking the world and ending human existence," the answer is "absofuckinglutely nothing." So what's the point of this question again?
wrong question (Score:3, Insightful)
Important tools come from the Bible (Score:3, Funny)
Man who prays and asks the LORD for help can righteously overcome ANY obstacle. (famine, disease, pollution, exctinction, overcrowding, crime, you name it)
Ask and ye shall receive.
Knock and it will be opened to you.
Faith can move mountains.
With God all things are possible.
Combine those things with OPTIMISM, and remember that Jesus Christ said ALWAYS forgive, NEVER retaliate; BLESS and PRAY for your enemy. LOVE your neighbor as yourself, LOVE your enemy, LOVE the LORD.
When you forgive, it results in YOUR being forgiven. When YOU give, YOU receive. WHEN YOU BLESS YOUR ENEMY, YOU YOURSELF ARE ALSO BLESSED!
And remember that Christ said that the love of money is the root of all evil. That means be wary of valuing money more than the welfare of your fellow man, or the planet that he lives on. Be prepared and willing to sacrifice of your own time, money and resources in order to make the world a better place.
Jesus also said keep the 10 Commandments. If we all kept the 10 Commandments we'd be in good shape, (but that's not enough.) Don't worship false gods, don't commit idolatry, work 6 days and keep the sabbath day holy (7th day = _saturday!_ Look, JESUS WAS A JEW. Jews keep the saturday sabbath! No excuses.), don't take the LORD's name in vain, don't kill or steal or commit adultery, don't bear false witniss, don't covet your neighbor's wife or possessions or servants, honor your parents.
AND don't have sex outside of marriage. That would keep std's in check and reduce the expansion of things like hiv.
Don't use witchcraft or sorcery, don't use omens or divination.
Learn to recognize when you're being tempted to sin, and pray for the strength to resist!
The most important virtue is love.
I've seen a heavenly sign. I saw a double rainbow, 360 degrees, 2 concentric rainbows ALL THE WAY AROUND THE SUN in San Francisco at high noon when there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Others witnissed the very same event. That was around 2001.
You want man to survive? Seek and ye shall find. Seek the LORD. Have FAITH!!!
God Bless You, Stephen Hawking!
keeping down population growth is not so hard (Score:5, Interesting)
Increased female literacy allows women greater access to information on birth control and also higher statuts in society leading to greater control over reproductive decisions. To reduce population growth teach girls to read. This is an abstract of a study [nih.gov] discussing factors impacting birth rates such as female literacy. Here is a little bit more info. [overpopulation.org]
Survival of the Equal (Score:3, Insightful)
Why?
Ever notice how quickly poor and undernourished people reproduce? As an instinct for survival of their genes.
By equalizing Social Elements, racism and separation of social elements will dwindle, thus providing people with a positive existence, and resulting in more commonalities such as knowledge sharing, and working toward common goals.
By equalizing Financial Elements, the human existence will focus heavier upon the right to live, the right to exist, and will therefore work toward a common goal.
By equalizing physical elements such as starvation and poor water supplies (resulting from the above) -- people will survive, and will reproduce less.
Humanity will work towards common goals, and will lessen outright demented war efforts and we will find ways to solve our common problems such as the environment, and our reaching out into space.
Re:Near earth asteroids (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Globally Ban Religion and Reduce Consumerism (Score:3, Insightful)