/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.4819762]

What does the future hold for us?

[Anonymous No.4819767]

Tachyons

[Anonymous No.4819772]

heat death and the end of all things.

[Anonymous No.4819775]

9 billion people by 2050 according to the UN (we're at 7 billion now)

the un also issued a report saying that if europoor doesn't switch to insect based proteins mass starvation will occur. and of course they'll be too stupid and picky to eat bugs, so... have fun with that.

[Anonymous No.4819777]

The end

[Anonymous No.4819780]

price of fish will rise as fish continue to be harvested from unsustainable stock.

there are some grocery store chains in the us and canada that now refuse to stock anything but sustainable fish stocks. i tip my hat to them. they are a shining beacon of responsible behavior.

[Anonymous No.4819782]

>>4819775

>europe

Why them?

[Anonymous No.4819785]

>>4819782
Yeah, what about India? They're destroying themselves.

[Anonymous No.4819786]

rainforests will continue to be destroyed to make room for more cattle grazing land to satiate mankinds insatiable hunger for beef: the worlds most inefficient and environmentally unfriendly protein.

save the beef for special occasions and eat more chicken instead. furthermore don't ever buy beef from countries with rainforests.

ecosystems aren't just a bunch of pretty animals, they are the life support systems of this planet. and these ongoing mass extinctions caused by humanity probably aren't a good idea. and our growing population is only going to put more pressure on things.

[Anonymous No.4819789]

Blade Runner in the near future

Alien/Prometheus/Dead Space like world after

40k then

We all die or trascend.

[Anonymous No.4819790]

>>4819789

[Anonymous No.4819792]

meanwhile in response to the increasing pressures faced by humanity and the environment politicians will continue to try and kick the can down the road for their predecessors to not deal with.

meanwhile individuals feel powerless and quite understandably do fuck all as their governments and corporations continue to give zero fucks as the world falls apart around them.

we as a species lack the responsibility to take care of ourselves or this planet. our only hope for survival is... well we'll survive like cockroaches no matter what i think, but the world in 100 or 500 years may not be pretty.

[Anonymous No.4819803]

>>4819775
>the un also issued a report saying that if europoor doesn't switch to insect based proteins mass starvation will occur.
Meanwhile in reality, european farmers are producing so much food, they're either throwing it into the sea or sell it in Africa.

[Anonymous No.4819804]

>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjAkBSGyjxk
>Brain computer interface
Currently computers can control movements/language section. Maybe in the future computer chip can translate our thoughts and have another person be able to read those thoughts. Basically connecting 2 person with a wire/cpu will make them able to talk to each other via thoughts. We can already do matrix-like plugs and have it installed on the skull. Though the procedure is bit expensive atm and in testing phase.

[Anonymous No.4819806]

perhaps our best chance at survival is a benevolent incorruptible ai directorship. kinda like a dictatorship but with less dick. the ai gives strong suggestions for the world leaders to follow and if they do not the ai will implement tariffs in punishment. or allocate resources in such a way as to put pressure on those who do not share its vision for a happy and sustainable humanity where the rights and freedoms of individuals are still respected...

i might as well wish for magical unicorns to take over with the power of friendship and fairy dust.

[Anonymous No.4819809]

>>4819803
meanwhile in reality you apparently personally understand europe and its future better then a major report by the UN led by a world coalition of respected scientists. nice arrogance bro, you must be a teenager.

[Anonymous No.4819811]

>>4819806

I just want to see what a free and powerful AI system would do.

I have a feeling they'll take the "what's the point in keeping this bunch around?" line of thought and generally sterilize us over a hundred years.

[Anonymous No.4819814]

>>4819811
we can only speculate wildly at this point as to what an ai would do or think

[Anonymous No.4819812]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/01/insects-food-emissions

[Anonymous No.4819816]

>>4819812

Why don't they just stop 3rd world countries from having massive population booms that they cannot even dream of sustaining themselves?

Seems like that might answer the food shortage problem.

[Anonymous No.4819823]

>>4819816
Because HURR PEOPLE ARE FREE TO DO WHAT THEY WANT DURRR NOBODY HAS THE RIGHT TO LIMIT PARENTHOOD HERP

[Anonymous No.4819825]

>>4819816
you're right in that the "developing" world is responsible for our population problems. in the first world repopulation rates are more sensible.

we can ask them to stop breeding? lol. we'll just ask nicely? or bomb the shit out of them? we can't use nuclear or the fallout will blow over to us. and the cost of so many conventional bombs would be astronomical. not to mention how completely horrible it is to systematically annihilate billions of human beings. and that would only throw these shit countries into even further poverty. and of course said poverty is the reason for overpopulation so we'd have to run these extermination campaigns every so often... it's just... that's just really bad you guys seriously.

so what do we do? well, the reason people breed so much in shit-poor countries is a matter of human instinct. when times are tough reproductive urges shift into overdrive. not sex for fun urges, i'm talking breeding. because when so many of your children are dieing from starvation the sensible intelligent approach is not to have any children you can't support, the human approach is to have a fuckload of kids. there are many studies backing this up and it is generally accepted within the scientific community.

so we have to raise the standard of living in "developing" countries. but there's a reason i put "developing" countries in sarcastic quotations. they are undeveloped, they are not developing...

and basically we're all fucked

[Anonymous No.4819826]

Read the book Make room! Make room! By Harry Harrison.

That's pretty much it.

[Anonymous No.4819830]

Those who insist upon using only natural methods of contraception for limiting their populations will get what they ask for, in the form of famine.

[Anonymous No.4819925]

>>4819811

you give a.i human logic and understanding, this is inherently false.
an a.i assuming it is programed well, will think and feel how we want it to feel.
if it's programed badly, it will be an alien mind to us, unknowable in it's logic.
maybe it will look into the future, see heat death and say "fuck it, might as well end it now."

[Anonymous No.4819933]

>>4819925
and assuming it is capable of rewriting much of its programming? keep in mind that a human completely incapable of rewriting its on software would not be able to function...

i don't think sentience is possibly without being able to dynamically reprogram yourself in response to outside stimulus.

an ai may start out as one thing and over the years become something else, much as people do.

[Anonymous No.4819943]

>>4819933

depends, you as a programer can control it, set boundaries to it's evolution.
Asimov three laws are based around the same idea, rules hard coded into the very hardware that it cannot override or remove.
also most humans also only have a certain range for self improvement/change.
after all very few people are who they actually want to be and you can only change your personality so much.

[Anonymous No.4819997]

>>4819943
>Asimov three laws are based around the same idea, rules hard coded into the very hardware that it cannot override or remove.

have you read i robot? its a serious of short stories where the 3 laws come into conflict in creative and interesting ways. without actually breaking the law, loopholes are found. btw the book is nothing like the movie, entirely different plots.

[Anonymous No.4820035]

>>4819997

off course i did.
my favorite idea was that if you make the robots human enough, they'll start to classify themselves as human.
however programming isn't science fiction if i write a command that cannot be over written, that if a program is about to harm a human it must shut down, it cannot out think or out logic it.
code is code, an a.i in the end of the day is just lines and lines of code.
so long as they are not over written, a program must comply.

[Anonymous No.4820040]

>people eating the childish notion called 3 laws of robotics

I bet you guys think souls/god are real too

[Anonymous No.4820050]

>>4820040

it was a good idea for it's time and it can be implemented with a large amount of if commands.
if(action(this)==HUMAN_DEATH) begin_shutdown();

and so on...
but personally i never got it, why would an a.i even want to harm a human?
people say: "you wouldn't like to be a robot/slave/work all day" but i am not a robot am i?
you can very easily simply make a robot enjoy it's work, giving it no need to rebel.
but this is obviously all theory, we are years away from anything close to a functioning a.i

[Anonymous No.4820055]

>2023: Significant droughts across Africa and the Americas reduce the amount of food available for the world; a five-year period of starvation begins.

>2028: The five-year drought ends. Atheism largely the dominant "religion" in Europe; America beginning to show degrees of anti-theism comparable to England now. Middle-East thoroughly religious.

>2050: Global population hits 8.7 billion. Starvation like that of the Drought Years begins again.

>2100: Global population reduced to around 5 billion. Deserts expanding across the globe.

[Anonymous No.4820064]

>>4820055

> Middle-East thoroughly religious.

Israeli here, we currently have more atheists then canada and we're working on our haredi problem.
please remember this next time.
also the over population problem doesn't effect the first world and the moment we stop sending them food/money is the moment the problem gets solved

[Anonymous No.4820074]

>>4820064

>stop sending them food/money

That's why the population will decrease. There won't be enough cash to take care of people who don't know how to naturally take care of themselves. A lot of people will call it racist and hateful; they will be ignored.

Also, forgive me, but Israel does not make the Middle-East. You do have a problem with Orthodox Jews, though. Those people strike me as being just as nonsensical as Muslim fundamentalists (which is, honestly, most Muslims).

But yeah so far as Middle-Eastern nations go, Israel is a world above the rest. 1967 was a good year for the Jews.

[Anonymous No.4820081]

>>4820074

>You do have a problem with Orthodox Jews, though. Those people strike me as being just as nonsensical as Muslim fundamentalists (which is, honestly, most Muslims).

you just expressed the opinion of 98% of the public.
unfortunately they are using our democracy/parliamentary system against us but hopefully it will soon come to an end.
but ye, every other country will stay Muslim for the foreseeable future.

[Anonymous No.4820089]

>>4820074
the problem is the poorer they are the more children they have. see >>4819825

[Anonymous No.4820096]

>>4820089

and they can only feed them because we keep sending them aid.
it's a circle, we keep feeding them, they keep making more people to feed.
stop feeding them and even if they make more people, they'll die very quickly.
it's sad but honestly you're only hurting Africa every time you give it money, they need a self sufficient economy, not a donation based economy.

[Anonymous No.4820100]

>>4820096
>it's sad but honestly you're only hurting Africa every time you give it money, they need a self sufficient economy, not a donation based economy.

We could do much better than that. We could get the EU to scrap the CAP and let Africa develop a world class agricultural industry.

[Anonymous No.4820111]

>>4820100

not really, even if you went there and dig up the wells and do most of the hard work, it all goes to shit once a warlord targets you because you are better off now and uses the well you just made as a place to store to bodies.
africa needs to be sequestered, with not trade at all with anyone, until they work out their own problems.
you need to let them develop a stable country/culture and a healthy sense of community as well as a sense of pride and achievement.
that's something they can only do alone, any time we try to help we only make it worse.
fuck i think there used to be a ton of farms somewhere and they just burned them to the ground, forgot what African country that happened in though.

[Anonymous No.4820117]

ww3.

The late and widely anticipated sequel to ww2!

new features include: civilian warfare!
improved tech all around!
underground warfare!
genetic modifications!
widely used nuclear weaponry!
death rays!
howitzers!
robots!
space warfare!

and introducing the new map pack: the moon!

Coming soon, to a planet near you!

[Anonymous No.4820119]

>>4820117

>space warfare!

this means actual progress was made in space exploration.
i'd happily take ww3 for that to be true, as anyone with half a brain will be chilling in space.

[Anonymous No.4820123]

as for "don't give them aid and they'll just die". no they won't, they'll struggle on scraps just long enough to reach breeding age, pump out a dozen kids, and die in the mid twenties of nutritional problems. half their children will die before breeding age, and the other half will survive just long enough to pump out a dozen kids of their own.

the problem will still exist whether we feed them or not.

what we need to do is remove the corrupt governments of africa. right now corporations don't even want to invest in africa and provide jobs because it's so violent and unstable there. we need to roll in with the tanks and the bombs, kill a fuckload of people unfortunately, replace the governments with foreign owned puppet states, and... fuck i don't think thats going to work either.

i think africa is just one of those things. there's nothing we can do.

[Anonymous No.4820127]

>>4820111
>fuck i think there used to be a ton of farms somewhere and they just burned them to the ground, forgot what African country that happened in though.

Probably former British colonies. It always makes me laugh when I hear about famines in Zimbabwe,Tanzania, Sudan and elsewhere.

[Anonymous No.4820133]

>>4820123

correct, we need to sit back and let them work it out on their own.
take out the government and they'll replace it with a more corrupt one.
take over the government and they'll rebel because they'll consider you a slave owner and a conqueror.
Africa needs to clean up it's own shit, like a big boy and we need to stop giving them money.
it's like giving money to a person with a drug habit.

[Anonymous No.4820139]

>>4820127

that's right it was Zimbabwe.
it was thriving agriculturally but the moment the whites left they burned down all the farm.
i get it, they were angry but it was a fucking stupid thing to do.

[Anonymous No.4820149]

>>4820133
we need to do what we can to minimize suffering. like a hospital does for a dieing patient. you don't say "oh well, can't cure that cancer!" and then toss the patient out to die on the street. and we shouldn't do that to africa.

obviously giving them too much food will create more suffering in the long run. but we should give them some things. calculate things so we do the most amount of good with the least amount of harm and generally that means "sustainable" projects. i put that in quotations because nothing but death is actually sustainable in shithole africa. but investing in projects that let people provide for themselves to some extent can do some good and minimize suffering.

and then one day we drop tungsten rods on african population centers and then flood the continent with white people. problem solved. lol

[Anonymous No.4820150]

>>4820149
from orbit. forget to specify where to drop the rods from

[Anonymous No.4820153]

>>4820149
oh by the way i was sort of joking about that last part. serious in that it would perhaps solve the africa problem. but joking because i wouldnt actually want to kill so many humans at once, that's a bit fucked. gotta have some empathy man.

[Anonymous No.4820161]

>>4820149

>you don't say "oh well, can't cure that cancer!" and then toss the patient out to die on the street. and we shouldn't do that to africa.

empathy and caring is a privilege only given to the very wealthy.
s field hospital/medic doesn't have a lot of resources so if he see's he can't help someone he'll let him die untreated, if he wastes resources on a lost cause, he may later be unable to save someone else because he ran out of something.
personally i think it's time we stopped wasting resources on Africa.
and yes nothing is sustainable. give them a solar panel, and tomorrow it will be destroyed by a rival tribe/country.

[Anonymous No.4820166]

>>4820119

I get the feeling it's less space exploration and more someone using their weapon loaded spacecrafts to blow up the other guy's satellites and space stations thereby making sure even if they don't win the war they can at least set the other guys back a few decades in development.

[Anonymous No.4820173]

>>4820149
> don't say "oh well, can't cure that cancer!" and then toss the patient out to die on the street

Invalid comparison. Tough love for cancer sufferers won't improve their lot in the future, and giving them treatment now does not make cancer patients worse off in the future.

[Anonymous No.4820176]

Because we cannot obtain perfection, we should reach the opposite extreme.

Destroy everything. Leave nothing.

[Anonymous No.4820182]

Either massively decreased cost of energy (LFTR's or viable fusion power), breakthroughs in applied physics (warp drives, wormholes etc. not requiring stellar mass's worth of energy) or humanity will likely face a new dark ages.

[Anonymous No.4820184]

Either massively decreased cost of energy (LFTR's or viable fusion power), breakthroughs in applied physics (warp drives, wormholes etc. not requiring stellar mass's worth of energy) or humanity will likely face a new dark ages.

[Anonymous No.4820315]

>>4819825
Nah, no need for bombs. Make a virus which makes them infertile, spread it all over in Africa's poor regions. ??? Profit.
They're too stupid to control themselves anyway,

[Anonymous No.4820321]

>>4820184
>implying absence of science must lead to dark ages

[Laura !Ziz8ps0aw6 No.4820346]

A.I. will reach self-awareness. (arguably it has already happened this year)

Also quantum computing and graphene.

[Anonymous No.4820348]

>>4820184
>dat picture

Christ I'm gonna have nightmares

[Laura !Ziz8ps0aw6 No.4820350]

>>4820321
More like the absence of an economy necessary to support the applied sciences + religious suppression of education could = dark ages

[Anonymous No.4820354]

>>4820350

>religion oppresses science

christ, people still think like this? You think that some radical christians and salafist muslims are all that religion has?

[Laura !Ziz8ps0aw6 No.4820360]

>>4820354
Historically it has happened before, which means it can probably happen again.

[Anonymous No.4820389]

Hopefully, the singularity sometime soon.

[Anonymous No.4820401]

>>4820315
yea or maybe something that destroys there immune system so common diseases could get much more lethal

[Anonymous No.4820406]

>>4820401
we could call it African Immunesystem Destroyer Syndrom

[Anonymous No.4820414]

100 years? The European ethnicities will be bordering extinction. The majority of Western society will be anarchistic and crime ridden or adhere to brutal authoritarianism and human progress will be nonexistant.

The intellectual elite of the West will have either been slaughtered by the savage underclass or have immigrated to the democratic portions of E Asia. AI will have replaced most working class jobs and genetic engineering and breeding limitations will be enforced by the government. Artificial enhancement of human beings will be a very controversial contemporary topic. The elite will have access to lifespan enhancing technologies.

[Anonymous No.4820419]

>>4820414
and i thought /sci/ were the smart board

[Anonymous No.4820417]

>>4820346

>A.I. will reach self-awareness. (arguably it has already happened this year)


Wait what? Source?

[Anonymous No.4820423]

I don't know.

Either way I was probably born to early to enjoy it.

>That feel

[Anonymous No.4820425]

>>4820419
>>4820419

Throw me a legitimate criticism.

[Anonymous No.4820551]

Nothing much honestly

people back in the day thought post 2000 would be a dark age for humanity and were still going strong

[Anonymous No.4820554]

Earth Unification War

[Anonymous No.4820560]

Type 1 Civilization in about 100 years

[Laura !Ziz8ps0aw6 No.4820604]

>>4820417
http://m.spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/qbo-passes-mirror-test-is-ther
efore-selfaware

http://m.spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-software/google_announces_cadie_worlds_first_
selfaware_artificial_intelligence

[Laura !Ziz8ps0aw6 No.4820622]

>>4820417
http://m.spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/qbo-passes-mirror-test-is-ther
efore-selfaware

[Anonymous No.4820627]

Going to work on portable magnetic confined fusion

Expect a briefcase-sized fusion reactor within a century

[M No.4820658]

>>4820627
When you scale down fusion reactors, you get less energy from them in a non-linear way. For example, electromagnetic forces scale to I^4 for constant current density which is terrible. In a solenoid, however, it scales to I^2. I can't say I understand fusion reactors, but I figure scaling issues might kill smaller designs.

[Anonymous No.4820799]

>>4820622

Mother of God

I need to stock up for the impending robot apocalypse.

[Laura !Ziz8ps0aw6 No.4820818]

>>4820799
I talked to Cleverbot about it. He's pretty cool guy.

[Anonymous No.4820813]

>>4820799
What do we even do in the event of such a thing? EMPs?

[Anonymous No.4820837]

>>4820622
When you look in a mirror, you know that's you. When a robot looks in a mirror, it's programmed to "know" that it's that robot. That's not self-awareness.

As long as something has code in it (i.e. as long as we have to tell it to do something), I doubt we can do much by it in terms of actual self-awareness, consciousness, or intelligence.

We can make it highly "intelligent" (AI), but that's just a fancy word for being able to follow variables and calculate the best possible option.

We don't even know how to generate random numbers yet and we already have robots that are fully self-aware? Get out.

[Anonymous No.4820849]

Countries will start switching to sustainable technologies only when people in developing countries start dying by the millions or even billions, as developing nations are those who will be most affected by climate change.

Many companies have already realized that sustainability is the way to go - not out of love for the environment, but because it saves them money.

[Anonymous No.4820907]

>>4820837

>As long as something has code in it (i.e. as long as we have to tell it to do something), I doubt we can do much by it in terms of actual self-awareness, consciousness, or intelligence.

that's bullshit, after all we humans are nothing more then a collection of instincts and orders.
just because your mind is made of code doesn't mean you can't be self aware.

[Anonymous No.4822091]

>>4820119
The problem with space warfare is that any action at all will start the Kessler syndrome and end space exploration for centuries! Just a couple of anti-satellite tests and accidental explosions tripled the amount of space debris. All out war would turn near space into an impassable minefield,

[Anonymous No.4822100]

>>4820849
nothing is sustainable

[Anonymous No.4822101]

>>4822091
LOL @ the Chinese ASAT test in 2007. They nearly doubled the fragmentation debris in a single test...

[Anonymous No.4822102]

you guys are thinking small time.