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That's exactly right. And if some effective incentives and education aren't put in place to encourage a lower population rate, those populations will continue to increase. I don't think we're going to see many "third world countries" becoming "first world countries" any time soon.
I agree, why rush it? That's the mystery question. Unfortunately, there are loads of out of date traditions that have been around for ages and are not so easy to break. Why do some people start having children at the age of 15 or younger, and others wait until they are in their 20s or 30s? The point I was trying to make is that even if extreme longevity were available to everyone on the planet who wanted it, what's to stop them from limiting the size of their families? Think about societies that practice polygamy.
Sure, parts of China seem rather backward, but as a nation, China has moved up to become an important world economic power. It's getting hard to find something that isn't "Made in China" anymore. Technologically speaking, I think they're still lagging, but not by much. They're catching up fast. But you're quite right, they do have issues to deal with, which is no easy task considering the size of their population.
Only because information technology is the only point you're emphasizing. But you can't say that exponential growth only applies to information technology. Global population growth is not occuring linearly. It's exponential. Please show me how it is anything other than exponential.
Thailand is considered a "developing nation". That said, urban cities like Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Khon Kaen, they are as progressive and modern as any city in the U.S., although they're also a hodge-podge of wealth and poverty. Out of the cities in rural villages where most of the country's population live, while conveniences can be found, life is still like a step back in time. Thailand is one of the largest exporters of rice. The hilltribe villages are about as close to third world conditions as can be. Thailand is a mix of old and new.
Wouldn't that be cozy? There's plenty of room, but not for trillions of people. You're not taking into account places that are simply not habitable. Care to live on the Matterhorn or Mt Everest? How about the tundra, or the Sahara? You're also not taking into account that huge areas that are vital to the planet's ecosystem would have to be razed. Plenty of room to live comfortably? I guess you could squeeze lot of people into buildings that are a mile high and the size of Rhode Island though. Go for it. I don't think I'd be too happy in a world that looked like it came straight out of the films "Heavy Metal" or "Bladerunner".
I'm an optimist as well and I also like to look at the potential of the future. I just happen to have a different view, and frankly, I have no idea what will happen or not happen.
Sorry to disagree, but Kurzweil does not have a crystal ball to peer into the future. They are his views as a futurist. He may be right, or a least close on some things, but then again, he might be wrong. we won't really know for sure until we get there.
"Fasten your seat belts. We're about to make the jump into hyperspace." Tune it out all you want, but unless you're a photon, or the universe itself, there isn't enough energy to "break the light barrier". That doesn't necessarily mean that there can't be shortcuts or alternatives. For instance, if an advanced scanner to scan every atom in your body and converted into information, then it's possible to beam that information to somewhere else at the speed of light (not breaking it). Of course, there's have to be a receiver on the other end, and there'd probably be two of you in the universe, you and a copy of you. Guess which one gets to take the trip? Or it might be possible (still speculative) to develop a spacecraft that can slide through space-time. It doesn't need to travel faster than light speed to get to a destination. Maybe there's a way to open a wormhole and make it stable. In any case, better hope you don't land in the middle of a star or a black hole though. That could be most embarrassing as well as an abrupt end to any hope for an extreme longevity.
I'd like to see it all as well, but as you indicated earlier, that probably won't happen any time soon.
A population of a trillion people is a bit of an exaggeration we won't be reaching those numbers anytime soon. Current projects have our population increasing to around 9-10 billion by the year 2050 a far cry from the trillion you're suggesting. By that time colonization programs of Mars and the Moon will likely be underway.
My two cents? I want to live forever, too. Of course, after a period of time, that opinion could change, say, after few hundred years or a few thousand years...
A population of a trillion people is a bit of an exaggeration we won't be reaching those numbers anytime soon. Current projects have our population increasing to around 9-10 billion by the year 2050 a far cry from the trillion you're suggesting. By that time colonization programs of Mars and the Moon will likely be underway.
It wasn't me who made that suggestion. The OP seems to think the Earth can easily accomodate and support trillions and trillions of people (in the future) with the help of technology.
It may be that there will be a few people on Mars and the Moon by 2050, but I seriously doubt that could be thought of as colonization, at least in terms of being a destination for immigration and permanent settlement by then. My guess is that it will be more like Antarctica -- as scientific outposts.
I have a mental picture of a world in which people can be kept alive forever, and somebody figures out that slave labor is a economical way to get things done.
How would you like to build pyramids with your bare hands 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, for millions of years, with a whip keeping you moving fast? Or row ships across the ocean, or pull plows.
Some nations actually have shrinking populations. I do not think life span will ever expand beyond 150; most of the lengthening of life expectancy at birth was due to elimination of childhood disease.
Well maybe not forever but I intend to live a very long time, thousands of years or more.
I decided to start this thread here because it has to do with science and the progress of information technology. There is a book called "The Singularity is Near" and a documentary called "Transcendent Man" by Ray Kurzweil. This is the teaser from youtube:
In it he discusses the law of accelerating returns and More's Law that say information technology grows at a exponential rate. When I was a kid in the 1970's computers took up a whole room. Now my cell phone has more computing ability then that computer did and in 20 years computers will be the size of a blood cell. That will allow us to have super strong immune systems and help us be even smarter as our biology will blend with nano technology. They have already found the aging gene and fat gene and are working on being able to stop and even reverse them. Then by 2029 computers will be as intelligent as humans and by 2045 a single computer will be as intelligent as all of the humans on earth combined. We will, also, have virtual reality that will be as real as "the real world". Picture the hollow deck on Star Trek but a 1,000 times better in my life time. I can't wait. This is the best time to be alive!
"We demonstrated that we were able to reverse the process of aging for human adult stem cells by intervening with the activity of non-protein coding RNAs originated from genomic regions once dismissed as non-functional 'genomic junk'," said Victoria Lunyak, associate professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.
I think one of the worst possibilities involving immortality is one most people may not think of. Say I'm hiking alone somewhere in the woods that doesn't see a lot of foot traffic, and I fall into a sink hole. I'm still alive, but even if I'm not injured let's say there's no way I can climb back out. I'm in a remote enough area that no one is likely to hear me yelling for help, and let's also assume I don't have a cell phone. I'm just trapped with no hope of rescue. Well in my current mortal body, I'll eventually die in that cave. Yes, that would be a bad way to die, but at least it would end.
If I were immortal, and assuming this immortality was such that starvation wasn't an option, it would never end unless the land eventually changed in a manner that allowed me to escape. But that could take eons. And chances are, the landscape wouldn't change in a manner that would facilitate my escape, but would instead change in such a way that makes escape even less likely (like a cave-in). So there I am, trapped in the ground for thousands of years, or maybe more! No one to talk to, nothing to do, just alone with nothing but my thoughts and maybe the occasional subterranean critter. You may say, "Oh sure, but what are the odds I'd get trapped in the first place?" Well if you had an eternity to live, I'd say the odds would be pretty good that eventually, somewhere, somehow, you'd wind up trapped for one reason or another.
But let's say you manage to somehow wait it out until escape is possible. If you were trapped for, say, 100 years, civilization will be quite a bit different when you emerge. However, you'd probably be able to adapt eventually. But what if you were trapped for 1000 years? Or 10,000 years? What was happening 10,000 years ago? Well, agriculture was starting to be a big deal, for one. Imagine how different society would be once you emerged from your trap. And if you were trapped for many tens of thousands of years or millions of years, society wouldn't be the only thing to have changed. Humans themselves would probably be physically different. Or even more likely, humans would be long gone, and whatever ancestor of humans were around (if any) would be foreign to you, and to them you would be a freak/monster/etc.
I think one of the worst possibilities involving immortality is one most people may not think of. Say I'm hiking alone somewhere in the woods that doesn't see a lot of foot traffic, and I fall into a sink hole. I'm still alive, but even if I'm not injured let's say there's no way I can climb back out. I'm in a remote enough area that no one is likely to hear me yelling for help, and let's also assume I don't have a cell phone. I'm just trapped with no hope of rescue. Well in my current mortal body, I'll eventually die in that cave. Yes, that would be a bad way to die, but at least it would end.
I don't think science will ever solve mammals going without food or the continuous need to fuel our trillions of cells as once the energy source has been utilised as ATP and burned up as carbon dioxide our cells energy factories the mitochondria will just shut down and hence death by starvation.
And then of course there's the ''need for water'' factor for continous life .
I don't think science will ever solve mammals going without food or the continuous need to fuel our trillions of cells as once the energy source has been utilised as ATP and burned up as carbon dioxide our cells energy factories the mitochondria will just shut down and hence death by starvation.
And then of course there's the ''need for water'' factor for continous life .
Oh I agree. I was just speculating the consequences of a "magic-like" immortality. If you can never die, then you couldn't starve, or die of thirst, or be crushed to death, etc. Granted, I think the idea of that is preposterous, but it's fun to imagine such a scenario. Since I made that post I've been thinking about other reasons being immortal would suck, even if you didn't physically age at all. If you were immortal and indestructible, then in theory you would survive anything, including the end of our planet. Then you'd just be drifting aimlessly in space for eternity, which I think would be horrible! Although I also wonder how much your perception of time would change. Would the years seem to go by faster the way they do with us regular mortals as we age? That could be interesting.
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