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What life could be like for civilizations 1 trillion years from now

phys.org

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Re: What life could be like for civilizations 1 trillion years from now

#81

Post by paulryanrogers »

mrep wrote: post #35
oooooof wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that humanity will ever travel even to the nearest star is pure fiction. Anyone who thinks otherwise just fails to grasp the distances involved. They are so large as to be beyond understanding.

The idea that humanity won't ever travel even to the nearest star is pure fiction. Anyone who thinks otherwise just fails to grasp exponential growth. They are so large as to be beyond understanding.

"...won't ever... is pure fiction"

Do you mean to say humanity certainly could travel to the nearest star?

I'm skeptical that anything resembling humanity could because everlasting exponential growth requires infinite resources. And humanity evolved on an abundant--but far from infinite--gravity well.

Re: What life could be like for civilizations 1 trillion years from now

#82

Post by misnome »

melling wrote: post #79
newsbinator wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just gave this a go. It's amazing, thank you for putting it on my radar. At first his speech impediment makes it harder to follow, but 5 minutes in you're used to it and you're just riveted by the content and the clear communication style. This is quality stuff.

I guess it’s more fun to dream about the world millions of years in the future, but wouldn’t we gain so much more if we spent all of our energy trying to optimize acquiring knowing more rapidly in the next few decades? For example, supply 9 billion humans with clean, renewable energy by 2050. Accelerate cures for cancers, heart disease, malaria, etc. Large colony on Mars within 20 years, ...

And you think this is possible without art and creativity to inspire?

Re: What life could be like for civilizations 1 trillion years from now

#84

Post by dwaltrip »

melling wrote: post #79
newsbinator wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just gave this a go. It's amazing, thank you for putting it on my radar. At first his speech impediment makes it harder to follow, but 5 minutes in you're used to it and you're just riveted by the content and the clear communication style. This is quality stuff.

I guess it’s more fun to dream about the world millions of years in the future, but wouldn’t we gain so much more if we spent all of our energy trying to optimize acquiring knowing more rapidly in the next few decades? For example, supply 9 billion humans with clean, renewable energy by 2050. Accelerate cures for cancers, heart disease, malaria, etc. Large colony on Mars within 20 years, ...

Are these endeavors so separate? The curiosity, thirst for understanding, and drive for mastery and improvement that brings advances in engineering, medicine, and science seems to also cause people to gaze longingly at the cosmos.

Not to say we shouldn't be pushing to make even more progress on those difficult, pressing issues.

Re: What life could be like for civilizations 1 trillion years from now

#85

Post by mrep »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #81
mrep wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that humanity won't ever travel even to the nearest star is pure fiction. Anyone who thinks otherwise just fails to grasp exponential growth. They are so large as to be beyond understanding.

"...won't ever... is pure fiction" Do you mean to say humanity certainly could travel to the nearest star? I'm skeptical that anything resembling humanity could because everlasting exponential growth requires infinite resources. And humanity evolved on an abundant--but far from infinite--gravity well.

I was mostly making a point that grandiose statements can be rebutted by similar (in this case, changing 3 words) grandiose statements.

To answer your question though, the main problem with space travel isn't physics (assuming you are ok with long travel times), it's economics. We have sent astronauts to the moon and probes all across the solar system. The main reason we don't do more though is because of how expensive it is. However, a thousand years of 2% growth (not a given but again, grandiose) means we would have 400 million times more money to possibly spend on space travel. A NASA budget 400 million times larger could certainly build and send a spaceship 4 light years to alpha centauri.

Now how long will we sustain exponential growth? Well that's anyones guess but I don't see us becoming resource constrained for a long long time. The sun produces 10^13 more energy than the world used in 2013 according to [0] and we have plenty of resources in the solar system to build with (and we can recycle more).

[0]: https://www.quora.com/How-much-energy-does-the-sun-produce-p...

Re: What life could be like for civilizations 1 trillion years from now

#86

Post by joejerryronnie »

phkahler wrote: post #73
OscarCunningham wrote: post #20

This goes together nicely with the Aestivation Hypothesis ( https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.03394 ). If a civilisation puts itself on hold for a trillion years, just waiting around doing nothing, then when it wakes up the universe is much colder and it can do computations 10^30 times more efficiently. If the civilization consists of minds running on computers then they've increased their own lifespans by the same factor.

You might enjoy "The Last Question" by Issac Asimov: http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

One of my favorite quick reads! I probably re-read about once a year when some random train of thought leads me to it.

Re: What life could be like for civilizations 1 trillion years from now

#87

Post by [deleted] »

Findeton wrote: post #64
chii wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still can't intuitively understand this. If two objects ar stationary relative to each other, the expansion implies that at some point, the distance between those two objects will increase (without either of those objects having moved). So space is being somehow created?! What if i have a large object, will the length of that object increase? Or will it break up?

I think you are using a concept of space-time that is quite limited. You are at most using concepts from Einstein's Special Relativity. Everything changed with General Relativity. Space is not "created", space-time is warped. Gravity is the deformation of space-time by mass/energy. The distance from point A to point B is measured by the time it takes for a light ray to get from A to B using the shortest path. But if…

[deleted]

Re: What life could be like for civilizations 1 trillion years from now

#88

Post by coldtea »

charlchi wrote: post #80
melling wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it’s more fun to dream about the world millions of years in the future, but wouldn’t we gain so much more if we spent all of our energy trying to optimize acquiring knowing more rapidly in the next few decades? For example, supply 9 billion humans with clean, renewable energy by 2050. Accelerate cures for cancers, heart disease, malaria, etc. Large colony on Mars within 20 years, ...

You are under the assumption that we aren't already trying to doing all these things?

Well, I am under the certainty that we aren't already trying _enough_ to doing all these things...

Re: What life could be like for civilizations 1 trillion years from now

#89

Post by jcranmer »

no1youknowz wrote: post #51
oooooof wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that humanity will ever travel even to the nearest star is pure fiction. Anyone who thinks otherwise just fails to grasp the distances involved. They are so large as to be beyond understanding.

Let's be a bit more positive on Humanity's progress eh? Humanity is on the cusp of three major technological breakthroughs that will quite literally change everything. 1) AI. Even if we don't reach ASI in the near term, we'll have ANI to help us research new technologies in months/years rather than decades. 2) Asteroid Mining. Whether it's Musk/Bezos/A. N. Other, the very first time someone brings down an asteroid. I…

> 2) Asteroid Mining. Whether it's Musk/Bezos/A. N. Other, the very first time someone brings down an asteroid. It will herald the dawn of abundance for precious metals. What will happen to prices is another topic. But this will allow researchers to develop even more exotic materials.

Say what? The idea that asteroid mining will enable material science revolutions is fanciful. We're not exactly short on metals (even precious metals). And interplanetary space is less extreme than environments we can create in terrestrial situations, so we're not going to find weird new stuff by poking around asteroids.

Re: What life could be like for civilizations 1 trillion years from now

#90

Post by jcranmer »

mrep wrote: post #85
paulryanrogers wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...won't ever... is pure fiction" Do you mean to say humanity certainly could travel to the nearest star? I'm skeptical that anything resembling humanity could because everlasting exponential growth requires infinite resources. And humanity evolved on an abundant--but far from infinite--gravity well.

I was mostly making a point that grandiose statements can be rebutted by similar (in this case, changing 3 words) grandiose statements. To answer your question though, the main problem with space travel isn't physics (assuming you are ok with long travel times), it's economics. We have sent astronauts to the moon and probes all across the solar system. The main reason we don't do more though is because of how expensi…

> To answer your question though, the main problem with space travel isn't physics (assuming you are ok with long travel times), it's economics.

I'd argue it's biology, not physics. Sending a rock to another star is easy. Sending a rock that can send back data is probably possible with our technology, but it's unlikely it would retain data transmission capabilities long enough to actually report back from another star. Sending a bunch of humans and keeping them alive the entire journey? It's not clear we can do that for a round trip to Mars, let alone an interstellar journey.

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