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The World in 2076

newscientist.com

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Re: The World in 2076

#41

Post by bbctol »

mobiuscog wrote: post #10
guard-of-terra wrote: post #8

Right now I'm more concerned about society changes than technology changes. Will we make democracy work for the average citizen? Will they have control of their data? Do we get to preserve our culture and the rights deriving from it given the continuing mass migration? Will we figure out basic income? If not, what's the job all those people are going to hold? Will we stop concentrating people in a few attractive mega…

You'll have to decide what an 'average' citizen is, first.

Or if that's even the right question. Do we have an obligation to raise the minimum standard in our society, so that no decent citizen is starving or in pain, even if that doesn't optimize the average? How much should we count future generations? There's tons of philosophy that must be included in any practical discussion.

Re: The World in 2076

#42

Post by mason240 »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #38
goalieca wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countries that turn their back on science will fall behind.

Will there still be competition for progress?

It depends if we remain individual nations that chart different courses, or if we are conglomeratized into trans-nation states like the EU.

Re: The World in 2076

#45

Post by simonh »

amelius wrote: post #3

No singularity?

We don't even have a vague outline of a guiding principle of a theory for what general purpose 'strong' intelligence actually is, let alone a road map to achieving anything like it. So no, probably not.

I have a theory that on a long-term universal scale of general intelligence, humans are unbelievably stupid. What is the absolute minimum, basement level of general intelligence necessary to develop a material technology? That's what we have, because we've only just managed it. Seems obvious, doesn't it? Yet why doesn't everybody intuitively realize this? Why did it take me 50 years to work it out? ...Exactly.

Re: The World in 2076

#46

Post by kkotak »

Every decade brings a technology movement that steers the path of humanity in a certain direction. Nobody would've predicted the rise of social media (yes, including Snapchat, Instagram, Pokemon Go)and how much of the humanity gets consumed by it, thereby derailing us from the track we were on the decade prior to it.

Re: The World in 2076

#47

Post by lordnacho »

Some of these are science predictions, and some are economics predictions.

Here's my take:

- Replicator is unlikely. The machine that makes everything is like the drug that cures everything and the man who knows everything. We already have specialist replicators, specialist drugs, and specialist professors. For the same reason, we won't get a generalist AI, just a bunch of very good specialists.

- James Webb will tell us within a few years whether there's lots of life or none. Some realisation about just how likely life is will happen as we use the JWT to scan various planets.

- Similarly with superconductivity, we'll either find a way to do it, or a reason why it can't be done.

- Economics: the revolution here is how society changes when there's a bunch of old people around, mostly healthy and mostly skilled. I suspect people will want to be able to retrain, and so the old model where there was only time (opportunity cost) to go to school when you were young will change. It probably already has for some people.

- Tech/Econ: society will have thought hard about giving everyone a decent living while the tech people build just about everything.

Re: The World in 2076

#48

Post by sapphireblue »

drinchev wrote: post #32

As older as I get ( 30 now ) I feel more and more the world is going to dystopia, rather than utopia. Instead of having a world-wide federation, we will most probably have a period of dissonance around the nations where people will close more and more inside their borders, until they feel they have the power of their lives in their hands again. I know you won't like it, but I will blame unregulated capitalism for thi…

The unpleasant truth is that this dystopia isn't coming out of nowhere, it is being built with our own hands. Our everyday desires, decisions, actions and inaction decide what will be built (more apps) and what won't (nextgen cures).

Re: The World in 2076

#49

Post by jly »

bwindels wrote: post #29

I feel it's unfortunate articles like these don't put more emphasis on climate change, and instead still keep up the narrative that we will innovate ourselves out of the problem. There is not reason to believe we will, and I expect society as a whole to already be heavily impacted by climate change by 2076. The more people are talking about the fact that human civilization won't survive 4 degrees of warming in a 100…

My first thought before reading the link was that the world of 2076 would be one in which we have utterly devastated the Earth's biosphere, and we are using all of our technological resources to sustain a human-survivable planet while simultaneously looking for other homes.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that and we figure this out sooner rather than later.

Re: The World in 2076

#50

Post by knz »

drinchev wrote: post #32

As older as I get ( 30 now ) I feel more and more the world is going to dystopia, rather than utopia. Instead of having a world-wide federation, we will most probably have a period of dissonance around the nations where people will close more and more inside their borders, until they feel they have the power of their lives in their hands again. I know you won't like it, but I will blame unregulated capitalism for thi…

I'm not sure capitalism deserves the entire blame - some of it is just human nature (it's harder to care about something that happens in a distant location or time).

The question is what can we do about it? How do we rebuild public trust in the institutions (science and education) that should guide the country in the right path even if the people are asleep at the wheel? Trust in experts is at an all time low. Fact checking appears to have failed = "The fact checkers are biased!". And people are retreating into their media bubbles.

I often see the "Pass it on" billboards (http://www.values.com/inspirational-sayings-billboards) - perhaps we need something for science and education? ("Clean air regulations save x lives a year in your community", "Every $1 spent on education saves $x on welfare down the road". I hate billboards but at least they would break through the media bubble many of us live in.

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