Fascinating talk. Made me think about the current 2nd order agricultural revolution: farming of electrical energy through wind and solar (mainly), that can be stored in batteries and more long term storage (in analogy to granaries), and that can be translated into work (physics) or chemicals (chemistry) and derivative technologies.
I would argue that we have reached the billion person empire age, not via nations, but rather corporations with billions of users under their direct influence. It lines up with the people/dates trends too, but is harder to see as it is outside of the physical area ruling we have been accustomed too.
Evolution or extinction? Are we able to learn to live in harmony with each other, nature and technology including AI? Sustainability not profitability. Mindfulness and self love, respect not exploitation. Our species faces a major die off, the population is passing the peak, passing a tipping point where our population goes from exponential growth to a transition to a new sustainable relationship with the ecosystem that has sustained us up until now. That downward curve can be as steep as a cliff which falls to zero, extinction, or it can begin steeply and recover as it returns to historic levels of sustainability, pre-technology levels such as pre-Columbian America. This could lead to a selection pressure that would produce a new species of hominid, speciation. The curve could be more gentle and could include technological solutions that would level off at a population that could both live more harmoniously with nature and each other and incorporate technology that would represent an evolution into a new species of technologically enhanced humanity, cyborgs. Taking life to other planets, terraforming and evolving new species of humans who could survive other planetary ecologies is another path that will require technologies including genetic engineering to reach for the stars. Managing these changes in a moral and humane way brings hope to a future that appears very scary from our selfish and ethnocentric perspectives. Keep up the good work or as John Perkins says "Dream True" instead of living like the hero of his book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman." Be blessed, you are a blessing. Aboriginal cultures have much to teach us.
@@robertspies4695 Most folks even those with a green perspective refuse to look far enough down the road to see the extinction perspective. We're all looking for an acute case intervention to fix a chronic problem. We have eaten ourselves out of house and home and now we think we need a tent.
@@georgepotter1820 It's going to a rough ride down to 1-2 billion people How likely is it will stop there?. But I see it as human hubris to think we can tinker masterfully with genetics, find our way to a habitable planet B or compute our way to a less dominating species. The fossil record says otherwise. But maybe we can buck the system and survive.
@@robertspies4695 I can't make any predictions as to how long it will take or how far we will fall but it feels like the rollercoaster has just crested the peak and the reason we feel like we are floating is that we are falling weightlessly into the hell of our own creation. It's not the fall that gets you but the sudden stop when we reach the bottom. Or not. Now is the time to decide how we will soar outward into a sustainable future by whatever means. Some say the meek will inherit the earth. Is that because the bold will reach for the stars? We shall see...
The size of the planet hasn’t changed. Increasing density pressures the growth of complexity. Hello my internet neighbours!
Fascinating talk.
Made me think about the current 2nd order agricultural revolution: farming of electrical energy through wind and solar (mainly), that can be stored in batteries and more long term storage (in analogy to granaries), and that can be translated into work (physics) or chemicals (chemistry) and derivative technologies.
I would argue that we have reached the billion person empire age, not via nations, but rather corporations with billions of users under their direct influence. It lines up with the people/dates trends too, but is harder to see as it is outside of the physical area ruling we have been accustomed too.
China and India are your real examples. I can just stop using facebook or windows they have littile power over me
Evolution or extinction? Are we able to learn to live in harmony with each other, nature and technology including AI? Sustainability not profitability. Mindfulness and self love, respect not exploitation. Our species faces a major die off, the population is passing the peak, passing a tipping point where our population goes from exponential growth to a transition to a new sustainable relationship with the ecosystem that has sustained us up until now. That downward curve can be as steep as a cliff which falls to zero, extinction, or it can begin steeply and recover as it returns to historic levels of sustainability, pre-technology levels such as pre-Columbian America. This could lead to a selection pressure that would produce a new species of hominid, speciation. The curve could be more gentle and could include technological solutions that would level off at a population that could both live more harmoniously with nature and each other and incorporate technology that would represent an evolution into a new species of technologically enhanced humanity, cyborgs. Taking life to other planets, terraforming and evolving new species of humans who could survive other planetary ecologies is another path that will require technologies including genetic engineering to reach for the stars. Managing these changes in a moral and humane way brings hope to a future that appears very scary from our selfish and ethnocentric perspectives. Keep up the good work or as John Perkins says "Dream True" instead of living like the hero of his book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman." Be blessed, you are a blessing. Aboriginal cultures have much to teach us.
I asked a trilobite how we can do that and did not get a clear answer.
@@robertspies4695 Most folks even those with a green perspective refuse to look far enough down the road to see the extinction perspective. We're all looking for an acute case intervention to fix a chronic problem. We have eaten ourselves out of house and home and now we think we need a tent.
@@georgepotter1820 It's going to a rough ride down to 1-2 billion people How likely is it will stop there?. But I see it as human hubris to think we can tinker masterfully with genetics, find our way to a habitable planet B or compute our way to a less dominating species. The fossil record says otherwise. But maybe we can buck the system and survive.
@@robertspies4695 I can't make any predictions as to how long it will take or how far we will fall but it feels like the rollercoaster has just crested the peak and the reason we feel like we are floating is that we are falling weightlessly into the hell of our own creation. It's not the fall that gets you but the sudden stop when we reach the bottom. Or not. Now is the time to decide how we will soar outward into a sustainable future by whatever means. Some say the meek will inherit the earth. Is that because the bold will reach for the stars? We shall see...
Trying to reduce human behavior to math notation is totally superfluous. Social science has no correspondence except game theory and statistics
Thing is, before Nash you wouldn't have mentioned game theory.
Try reading the science fiction classic FOUNDATION, by Isaac Asimov.