What life could be like for civilizations 1 trillion years from now • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by spiritcat » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #74

I started reading this and then thought "what a waste of time". This pertains in no way to my life or the life of anyone for the foreseeable future. I read it just after the one about taking pictures preventing people from experiencing things and remembering them. Putting these together reminded me that reading some of these things on HN is preventing me from living. And with that, I'm gonna close this laptop and go…

I mean, it's at least plausible that the first immortal has already been born. Whether that immortality is physical or digital, I'll leave up to the Westworld writers.

Alternate Westworld themed hypothesis: It's already a trillion years in the future, we're all living in the valley beyond and don't realize it.

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

#102

Post by mrep » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #98

mrep wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2 biggest health problems that I am aware of with spaceflight are due to weightlessness and radiation. However, both can be probably be solved with enough money (make the spaceship a rotating one with artificial gravity and add more shielding). There might be others but I am pretty confident you could engineer your way past each and every one given a large enough budget.

You're sort of missing the biggest health problem of all: how do you make a self-sustaining closed ecosystem?

True, I was thinking more in the context of the mars trip you mentioned where you can generally take the resources you need for the trip. For intersteller travel, you would need to make it self sustaining since the travel times are so long and that would be extremely expensive.

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

#103

Post by 21 » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

oldcynic wrote: post #22

a3n wrote: post #2

I think tools 1 trillion years from now that stumble across that headline will wonder what humanity was.

They'll probably wonder why all the fragments they find seem to indicate we preferred damaging technologies over benign. Then like archaeologists everywhere will conclude it was of religious significance.

Are you saying that we shouldn't have had the industrial revolution, because burning coal and oil was very polluting?

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

#104

Post by Ensorceled » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

sctb wrote: post #99

Ensorceled wrote: post #83

There is a lot of weird downvoting in these threads, can anybody explain what is going on?

I'm not sure what you're referring to, but could you please email hn@ycombinator.com with details so we can take a look instead of posting a meta comment?

It was curiosity. Essentially what looks to be reasonable comments are being downvoted, not sure if there is anything nefarious.

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

#105

Post by InitialLastName » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

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?

When the brightest minds of our generation have dedicated themselves to optimizing advertising networks, you can be sure we aren't emphasizing these things.

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

#106

Post by dmh2000 » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

this assumes that civilizations will be able to use energy from sources other then their own star (or galaxy) or that it will be possible to get a significant number of their individuals to other stars. unlikely. just hang on until your own star dies then its over.

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

#107

Post by bdcravens » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:40 PM UTC

d0mine wrote: post #100

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, ...

It is not how science works. You can't predict what might be useful. 1940 Hardy labels number theory (his own area of mathematics) as useless 1977 RSA You can't imagine the modern internet without cryptography.

You can have imagination without implementation.

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

#108

Post by whatshisface » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:44 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #89

no1youknowz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>We're not exactly short on metals (even precious metals).

Last I checked, the price of most metals was greater than zero. They're commodity markets, so that means they're scarce. If you mean "available at any price," then we were not short on iron during the Bronze age or short on Aluminum during the early 1800s.

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

#109

Post by ryandrake » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #91

a3n wrote: post #2

I think tools 1 trillion years from now that stumble across that headline will wonder what humanity was.

I think that, a trillion years from now, any trace of humanity's existence will have long since vanished from the universe, and nothing that comes after us will know that we were ever here, there or anywhere.

Chances are we'll have self-annihilated or been beaten by disease within 10K years. After that, it will only take millions of years for all traces of humanity's existence to vanish. Cement structures, plastics, garbage, etc. will mostly be gone in tens of thousands of years.

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

#110

Post by visarga » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:58 PM UTC

Here's my take on the future: We'll upload ourselves and use much less energy. As uploaded agents we'll have all the advantages of software - forking multiple instances of ourselves, backup for assured immortality, plugins and upgrades, changing our appearance at will, slowing down or speeding up, becoming part of a collective - everything. It will be Life 2.0, very different from our life.

We've already "uploaded" parts of the brain - visual processing, voice, simple communication and some interaction skills like playing game, moving about and handling objects.

Our age is the first where massive storage, worldwide communication and cheap cameras exist. So we will be an interesting case for the future uploaded agents - we'll be revived based on our digital traces in order to study the origins of Life 2.0 - digital archeology.