Is Stephen Hawking Right?

Treatment plants can do a very good job of cleaning human waste but in many instances they become overburdened, under maintained and need to be rebuilt every 25 to 50 years minimum to keep up with the population and new materials because the old materials deteriorate.

 

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That's true, human waste can be very corrosive, but you know it's a job that really needs doing and somebody has to do it (hope they get paid well?).

 

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Driving over shit (that has a ring to it). I think I watched a program that showed a process for making a large part of it into fertilizer, and I like that better than making roads out of it.

 

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saved from what?
bad intelligence?

 

200 years seem far too soon to end all of humanity but you never know. 2000 years seem more appropriate.

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Stephen Hawking: I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let's hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load.

I see great dangers for the human race. There have been a number of times in the past when its survival has been a question of touch and go. The Cuban missile crisis in 1963 was one of these. The frequency of such occasions is likely to increase in the future. We shall need great care and judgment to negotiate them all successfully. But I'm an optimist. If we can avoid disaster for the next two centuries, our species should be safe, as we spread into space.

If we are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy, we should make sure we survive and continue. But we are entering an increasingly dangerous period of our history. Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth, are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million. Our only chance of long term survival, is not to remain inward looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space. We have made remarkable progress in the last hundred years. But if we want to continue beyond the next hundred years, our future is in space. That is why I'm in favor of manned, or should I say "personed," space flight.


That's the whole article.

 

Maybe and maybe not, things seem to be moving along at a faster clip now that at any time in the past. We are using up resources that are not renewable and we are causing big changes to our biosphere that we really don't have a very good handle on. We still would have big problems stopping an asteroid or comet strike and a major coronal mass ejection (CME) that might strike Earth in the near future could set us back a 100 years and make life very tough. I could go on and on about a lot of very real possibilities that could put us way behind in our ability to ever get off this planet in any long term survivable way. But why not act as if we had all the time we will ever need, I probably won't be around to see it happen one way or the other.

 

First of this planet will survive us, the damage we have and will do are trivial compared to some mass extinction events in geological history. Also resources are plentiful, its just a matter of price and technology. Second the technological singularity will likely clean up the human problem in 200 years, on earth and beyond. Getting humans off this planet is ultimately as silly as trying to have chimps colonize space.

 

You believe in the following:

Technological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than human intelligence. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of technological singularity is seen as an intellectual event horizon, beyond which the future becomes difficult to understand or predict. Nevertheless, proponents of the singularity typically anticipate such an event to precede an "intelligence explosion", wherein superintelligences design successive generations of increasingly powerful minds. The term was coined by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who argues that artificial intelligence, human biological enhancement or brain-computer interfaces could be possible causes for the singularity. The concept is popularized by futurists like Ray Kurzweil and widely expected by proponents to occur in the early to mid twenty first century.

Then you say the following:

Getting humans off this planet is ultimately as silly as trying to have chimps colonize space.
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Colonizing space is simply having the knowledge and resources to get it done. It's hard to believe that you believe in the Technological singularity but think we won't ever be able to colonize space.:wtf:

 

still not clear how venturing into space will help solve the problems caused by bad intelligence

even he seems to concede that the problem is essentially internal

 

Who...?

 

We could just build....

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That way we can move into orbit and live, repair the planet as we do and then reinhabit the Earth when it renews itself.

 

I did not say we won't be able to, that is a strawman on your part, I said that its a stupid idea, that we shouldn't. Machines are far better suited to space then humans, space is our successor domain. Again would you want to colonies space with chimps?

 

Maybe it's your use of the terms “bad intelligence”? But anyway the point about getting off planet is not having all our eggs in only one basket. Even if nothing bad happens for thousands of years. Just knowing if something happens to the Earth, humans will still survive is important. My sense of self preservation is also extended to the human species as a whole and knowing we won't ever go the way the dinosaurs did would be a big help in how I feel about being human.

 

Personally I'd want to live on a planet, even if it's not the Earth. But it seems to me there will have to be some amount of living in space, before we will be able to find and reach a suitable planet and I'm sure there will be any number of volunteers that will be willing to do that job.

 

if the problem is bad intelligence (eg - inability to moderate living to an ecologically sustainable performance) we certainly will go "the same way as the dinosaurs" regardless of what ever sci-fi reality/fantasy one entertains

:shrug:

 

Maybe we will, but I'm not ready to throw in the towel just yet.

 

What a load of arrogant, egotistical toss.

We cannot survive in space. We'd need a planet. That planet, if it can support life, probably already does. It is not ours to take, and fuck up.

Humans are not important. The human race will die out eventually anyway, the expansion of the Universe will take care of it. So there is no point trying to prolong things at the expense of another planet. None.

 

If you really feel that way, maybe you should find a remote forest and go live there by yourself. After all humans are not important and therefore you are not important and you are going to die someday, so why not just end it now.

Your logic just plane all around sucks. If you don't like being human that's just to bad.

 

Well humans can build a space city and live there for a very long time as long as it was protected by Earths magnetic field. They could , as I have stated already, live there with artificial gravity and rebuild the planet they destroyed if it comes to that. At least they have a chance of repopulating this planet one day far away.