So basically he's predicting the film Titan AE, among other more noteworthy films that I have forgotten
Hawking: It's Space Or Bust For Humanity
- Thread starter Tom Goldman
- Start date
I agree with him, but it's probable that even if we do survive that long, that we'll just end building bigger bombs and fighting over the planets in a similar fashion, only with entire warring worlds instead of nations. Mutually assured destruction is still a possibility. We seem to enjoy fighting amongst ourselves like that.
If we keep polluting the environment, and like a virus, we will either be exterminated from the Biosphere or the other alternative is that we will have to be in simbiosis and adapt to our planet, without abusing our natural resources (cause that's what we are doing now using more than we really need).
Maybe if Nasa wasn't getting fucked up the ass from both political parties (mainly liberal, but republicans don't like the space program ether due to its anti-Christan values, what ever the hell that means) and the people were thinking more about humanity future and not earths (if they care about that at all) then maybe we could could actually of made the moon base in the next 10 to 15 years and eventually (but a very soon eventually) the moon colony shortly after, but then again, the only way that would happen is if the cold war continued, and we all know the result of that possibility.
I'm not talking about the wars with Indigenous peoples. I mean things like how the French and English fought so bitterly over control of North America, and then The American War of Independance, and even leading to things more recently like the Cold War and WWI and II. Having people spread out over long distances has never been a deterrent to war.wasalp said:
yeah i was about to say..humanity will blow itself away before the sun does...we have barely lived even a fraction of the suns length, we have a LONG TIME before we need to worry about that...thats like the millionth thing down from things that can destroy us.Korten12 said:
Hawking is right, I've had these kinds of thoughts before he wound up expressing them far better than I ever have. I think he puts too much focus on humanity's "aggressive and destructive instincts" and less on simple enviromental wear and tear by us being here. Our biggest danger is going to be the depletion of resources on the planet, once those are gone we're stuck here, and then if nothing else we all die when a big enough meteor eventually slams into the planet, or our sun simply dies (which will happen eventually).
I also think he undervalues the survival instinct ingrained in our species. Things like morality come into being for a reason. I don't think he considers the simple fact that when push comes to shove "pushing the button" in a global conflict is not something that is going to be gone into easily because pretty much everyone knows exactly what these weapons are going to do if a real exchange gets going.
What's more I also still maintain that ICBM fired WMD are on the verge of becoming obselete. If you look at modern tensions you'll notice that Russia was greatly concerned over being hedged in by a missle interception base in Poland (limiting it's abillity to fire into the EU), not to mention being all miffed about US missle interception technologies that violate Cold War treaties with the now non-existant USSR (where the treaties existed to ensure MAD). China has demonstrated anti-satellite lasers that can blind US satellites which are going to make our long range targeting efforts in a war with them difficult to say the least.
Steven Hawking is correct in of the fact that we are heading towards some major, armed conflicts. I have no doubt billions of people are going to die. I do not think the fate of humanity is in doubt because this will be largely waged with more "conventional" weapons which can kill very quickly and efficiently, but we aren't going to see thousand mile diameter swathes being rendered uninhabitable *that* much (though I'm sure it will happen to some extent).
The big question here is to ensure that the winner fought this war with the right objectives in mind, and that is to establish a single world goverment/culture for the survivors. Without that we'll never be able to successfully develop and deploy the technologies required for space exploration and colonization.
Where I agree with Steven Hawking is that spreading throughout space is nessicary for humanity. I means we won't be wiped out if a single star goes dead, or meteors hit a planet. We can develop colonization technologies for out population to spread at it's own pace, and of course find the resources we need to do so. Even if a unity falls apart and humanity fragments, being that far spread out means that the odds of everyone dying are minimal.
I also think he undervalues the survival instinct ingrained in our species. Things like morality come into being for a reason. I don't think he considers the simple fact that when push comes to shove "pushing the button" in a global conflict is not something that is going to be gone into easily because pretty much everyone knows exactly what these weapons are going to do if a real exchange gets going.
What's more I also still maintain that ICBM fired WMD are on the verge of becoming obselete. If you look at modern tensions you'll notice that Russia was greatly concerned over being hedged in by a missle interception base in Poland (limiting it's abillity to fire into the EU), not to mention being all miffed about US missle interception technologies that violate Cold War treaties with the now non-existant USSR (where the treaties existed to ensure MAD). China has demonstrated anti-satellite lasers that can blind US satellites which are going to make our long range targeting efforts in a war with them difficult to say the least.
Steven Hawking is correct in of the fact that we are heading towards some major, armed conflicts. I have no doubt billions of people are going to die. I do not think the fate of humanity is in doubt because this will be largely waged with more "conventional" weapons which can kill very quickly and efficiently, but we aren't going to see thousand mile diameter swathes being rendered uninhabitable *that* much (though I'm sure it will happen to some extent).
The big question here is to ensure that the winner fought this war with the right objectives in mind, and that is to establish a single world goverment/culture for the survivors. Without that we'll never be able to successfully develop and deploy the technologies required for space exploration and colonization.
Where I agree with Steven Hawking is that spreading throughout space is nessicary for humanity. I means we won't be wiped out if a single star goes dead, or meteors hit a planet. We can develop colonization technologies for out population to spread at it's own pace, and of course find the resources we need to do so. Even if a unity falls apart and humanity fragments, being that far spread out means that the odds of everyone dying are minimal.
I imagine in the next 3-4 decades most countries will eventually have the tech to build nukes, if not actual nukes themselves. Then its just a matter of time before someone nukes someone. I really doubt that we can survive 200 years on this planet.
It might help if we found alien life on another planet. Obviously we'll nuke them first, but hey ... the time we spend nuking them is the time we're not nuking ourselves. Yeah, I don't have much faith in humanity left. Anybody else remember the view Agent Smith provided on humanity in The Matrix?
<spoiler= Its after 1:45 in this clip, up to 2:50>
Also we could put Bush back in the White house, as a catalyst to the end of humanity.
It might help if we found alien life on another planet. Obviously we'll nuke them first, but hey ... the time we spend nuking them is the time we're not nuking ourselves. Yeah, I don't have much faith in humanity left. Anybody else remember the view Agent Smith provided on humanity in The Matrix?
<spoiler= Its after 1:45 in this clip, up to 2:50>
Also we could put Bush back in the White house, as a catalyst to the end of humanity.
Somewhere in that is a Twilight Zone reference. But OT: Let us first get into space, then build space colonies and lots of them, start wearing clothing from early 1900th century and build us some Mobile SUits!
At the rate we're going with rapidly expanding population and the degradation of the Earth's environment (not blaming humanity necessarily, but it is definitely becoming less hospitable to human population), I totally agree with you Mr. Hawking.
Yeah, but another theory goes thus. If we can't comprehend these aliens, if it's beyond the human measure, then I'm going to assume that him assuming that they'll be evil aliens trying to murder or enslave us all is a little off. Why not nice aliens? And who's to say they're actually so far beyond our scope as opposed to, say, us in 200 years? Y'know, when we're supposed to be able to go journeying into the galaxies far far away and set up a bar with Norm. In fact, and I feel amazing for being able to say this, Hawking's vision on this is surprisingly limited.The Disk Thrower said:
I'm assuming that, if an alien species is able to leave their own planet, that they've been able to explore the entirety of their planet and come across the same racial problems we have as a society. And probably, since they're so advanced, moved past them as human beings are trying to do. If they've gotten to the point where they've united as a species to move to the stars they've probably run across other alien species (unless we're just unlucky enough to be their first) and dealt with the individual species issue and gone through the whole racism part or, if they really are that intelligent, they probably just traded with them and avoided the racist problems altogether.
Just looking at our society and where it's going, socially, we can make multiple assumptions as to where their society will be in a couple hundred years, and if we're assuming they're more advanced than that, then we have to assume that they've had all the issues they care to with alien species. It's not like a video game where an alien planet will have one type of people. Again, looking at Earth, there are thousands of different cultures and thousands of different peoples that thrive on a shitload of different resources and have been formed around those resources.
Like I said. Hawking assuming that an alien species is innately evil is incredibly limited. And I'm done listening to another person ***** about how we're all going to kill ourselves soon. I don't care if they ***** through a computer or not. Though I do agree we should go into space, if just because it's furking awesome.
EDIT: That whole rant did start trying to counter the oppression part of your post. Saying they might not be. I just started jotting down thoughts after that.
Well...that's a buzzkill if ive ever seen one...Blueruler182 said:
but yeah
It is limited, considering, if we can manage to get to space in 200 years chances are we will have become under one great republic as well, I mean..it might not be the most stable..but it might be
