Plexa Administrator July 30 2013 11:10. Gift TL+ PM Profile Blog Quote # OP had potential, but then went all religion vs atheism.
On this note, improving on OP. No religion thread please.
In the history of humanity, there are quite a few "paradigm shifts" that totally changed the course of history, a proverbial point of no return where what once was will never be again. In most cases, there was no record of such events, and the general psychological and mental state of people who experienced such shifts in history is forever lost to us.
First, let us start with the agricultural revolution. From hunter gatherers, we are told that we learned or discovered agriculture, thereby changing our behaviour, our physique, our diet, our social dynamics, almost everything. It is easy to think of agriculture as merely a change in the way we get food, but in fact it changed everything. Unfortunately, since this happened so long ago, in a time when homo sapiens was not even into writing, there are no records how the people think about this change.
Second, the industrial revolution. Fortunately this one, humanity was already fully literate and eloquent as there are a lot of records already about humanity's experience of this event. From the literature of the Victorian writers like Dickens we learn of the plight of London under the industrial revolution. From the Romanticist like Blake we learn than it was not all that glorious as many might think. From accounts of industrialists, engineers, pioneers, technocrats, historians we know the detail of how we humans experienced it.
Today, there is a great feeling, a looming specter, that we are again about to undergo a paradigm shift unlike any before. With the internet where information is accessible to all, culture and technologies are shared instantaneously, it is easy to compare cultures and share knowledge.
What do you think will be the next big paradigm shift? Some say it is in energy. Others in nanotechnology. Some in neurobiology. Some in the complete eradication of racial prejudices. And still others in culture. What is your opinion on this TL?
Colonization of Space. As we will have more than one world to care for but also ones that we have to build from the ground up and it will be recorded in real time. After a while there could prejudices from people who were born and grew up on Mars, others who think higher of themselves for being on the "home" planet. Then we could very well see past incidents happen all over again, revolutions, nationalism just involving more than one planet than say continents.
On July 30 2013 12:03 dAPhREAk wrote: human vs synthetic.
it has been building up for years with the industrial revolution, but i feel its getting to be more and more a reality.
I have to agree with this. I see "modified" humans along the lines of Deus Ex being a reality in the near future, bringing the what is "human" question to bear. Will be interesting to see all the effects of this across competitions, and workplaces.
Wearable technology will change how we live more than smartphones do. Improved voice control software will integrate us completely with technology and the internet, and we will rely on technology far more than even now.
there will be nothing you can hide from the rich and powerful in the future. Once google glass goes up, that's it. All the information in the world is recorded through the eyes of people, and anyone that shows any semblance of critique, independent thought will be filtered out of society at a very early age.
I expect philosophy and science and art to be heavily pressured if people allow corporations to be run the same way they are run now, as totalitarian structures.
global warming will turn half the planet into a desert. People will be able to communicate through thoughts, lots of cool new technology will be available. propaganda will become more effective as the human population is atomized through distractions like internet, augmented reality and social bonds grow weaker.
There will be weapons that will threaten to destroy the world even more so than nukes.
people will be able to augment themselves like off deus ex
and strange sex lives will become normal.
the human brain will be psychologically affected by new technologies and a much more image based world, and become used to instant gratification. they will all be addicts.
I think the growth of the internet in the last decade will be seen as a paradigm shift, not only for the spread of information but mostly for the boundaries of who you can exchange information with is kind of torn down. The start of a more homogeneous culture all around the world.
On July 30 2013 12:14 Evacipate wrote: The shift from United States to China for the throne of world hegemony.
Not a chance imo. This is so frequently posited, but I just don't see it happening. It has a massive impact in terms of commerce and economic clout, but it's cultural influence is thus negligible when you compare it to the States in the 20th century.
Hm, I see the increasing success of technology and products like social networking integration continuing as they are. I'm not overly happy about it, so much inane shit, pooling into everything.
A Butlerian jihad at some point against certain kinds of technological progress. Well not a war but eventually things will change too fast and lots of people will get riled up pretty good about it.
I don't think it would be a paradigm shift though now that I took a minute to think about it. Half the posts in this thread are not about things that would be paradigm shifts
The extension of human life by decades is more likely than not less than a hundred years away and will have a huge impact on society and human existence in general. And it's more likely to happen than anything that's been mentioned so far.
The technical capability, in the West, to switch to a hydrogen economy is probably not more than a hundred years off either, probably a lot sooner than that. That has the potential to be a very big thing.
On July 30 2013 13:29 DeepElemBlues wrote: A Butlerian jihad at some point against certain kinds of technological progress. Well not a war but eventually things will change too fast and lots of people will get riled up pretty good about it.
I don't think it would be a paradigm shift though now that I took a minute to think about it. Half the posts in this thread are not about things that would be paradigm shifts
The extension of human life by decades is more likely than not less than a hundred years away and will have a huge impact on society and human existence in general. And it's more likely to happen than anything that's been mentioned so far.
The technical capability, in the West, to switch to a hydrogen economy is probably not more than a hundred years off either, probably a lot sooner than that. That has the potential to be a very big thing.
I can see what you mean with the point one. With all this encroachment of social networking, targetting advertisements and the augmented reality glasses, I for one shall not be part of it much longer. I shall retreat to the Alaskan wilderness, form a society called 'The Pure' who eschew such things and live a peaceful life, away from Farmville.
I'm not so sure actually about the extension of human life being close. Indeed, the 80+ tend to be infirm and squishy as it is, I don't see how you can push further along that path really. The next step will probably be some kind of way to not necessarily extend our lifespan, but increase the quality of what we already have through vat-grown organs and that kind of thing.
I DO see a bombshell hitting when the effects of the older, economically unproductive segment of society being an increasingly large proportion of the population actually start to hit.
This will only come with global economic equalisation of some kind, but it'll happen eventual. At present, migrant workers can take up the slack in the developing world, but if their native countries give them sufficient economic opportunity that is a crutch that will be taken away.
Most likely severe global warming taking place in the next century or so. If that doesn't happen, though, it's probably going to be something caused by advances in internet and communications technology. PRISM was only the beginning of something much bigger, methinks.
I think a "humanitarian" movement will finally gain enough popularity and organization to topple the pyramid power structure that currently governs the world, putting 1% in charge of everything to reap all the wealth and prosperity from the global economy while the rest of the world is barely above poverty. I think the world is moving more towards everyone being middle class, because that in itself could spur a lot of growth and development in our societies. In short i'm talking about the cultural singularity. I think it's a very real thing and the bottom line is people who cant tell the difference between right and wrong is dumb. when it comes to a worldwide economic and political system there are certain things that make too much sense to be ignored, no matter how much our leaders try to hide. These things are basically what a lot of northern European countries have with extended social securities and welfare and while i'm not sure if a policy that extreme will be put into place world wide, i do think that there will be a "bottom line" standard of living that we will try to hold all people to. That is what i think the most pressing social paradigm shift is in the world today.
lots of good ideas in this thread, i definitely think advances in energy and technology will help spur this kind of paradigm shift. AND of course one of the first things that will have to be addressed once we have a sort of global system that is actually capable of representing the people (aka the internet) will be global warming, and the drastic changes that have been happening in our environment recently. This is the most pressing political topic that needs to be discussed but isn't due to the agendas of the politicians which are heavily influenced by the corporate agenda.
On July 30 2013 13:29 DeepElemBlues wrote: A Butlerian jihad at some point against certain kinds of technological progress. Well not a war but eventually things will change too fast and lots of people will get riled up pretty good about it.
I don't think it would be a paradigm shift though now that I took a minute to think about it. Half the posts in this thread are not about things that would be paradigm shifts
The extension of human life by decades is more likely than not less than a hundred years away and will have a huge impact on society and human existence in general. And it's more likely to happen than anything that's been mentioned so far.
The technical capability, in the West, to switch to a hydrogen economy is probably not more than a hundred years off either, probably a lot sooner than that. That has the potential to be a very big thing.
I can see what you mean with the point one. With all this encroachment of social networking, targetting advertisements and the augmented reality glasses, I for one shall not be part of it much longer. I shall retreat to the Alaskan wilderness, form a society called 'The Pure' who eschew such things and live a peaceful life, away from Farmville.
I'm not so sure actually about the extension of human life being close. Indeed, the 80+ tend to be infirm and squishy as it is, I don't see how you can push further along that path really. The next step will probably be some kind of way to not necessarily extend our lifespan, but increase the quality of what we already have through vat-grown organs and that kind of thing.
I DO see a bombshell hitting when the effects of the older, economically unproductive segment of society being an increasingly large proportion of the population actually start to hit.
This will only come with global economic equalisation of some kind, but it'll happen eventual. At present, migrant workers can take up the slack in the developing world, but if their native countries give them sufficient economic opportunity that is a crutch that will be taken away.
I think that age bomb could be avoided by a shift to more and more technology allowing robots to do the work people once did.
If a robot for example could do repair work on cars the production at a auto body shop would at least triple. We could even get to a point where we are living in a utopia where no one works except for our robot slaves and man simply enjoys what he pleases.
On July 30 2013 13:29 DeepElemBlues wrote: A Butlerian jihad at some point against certain kinds of technological progress. Well not a war but eventually things will change too fast and lots of people will get riled up pretty good about it.
I don't think it would be a paradigm shift though now that I took a minute to think about it. Half the posts in this thread are not about things that would be paradigm shifts
The extension of human life by decades is more likely than not less than a hundred years away and will have a huge impact on society and human existence in general. And it's more likely to happen than anything that's been mentioned so far.
The technical capability, in the West, to switch to a hydrogen economy is probably not more than a hundred years off either, probably a lot sooner than that. That has the potential to be a very big thing.
I can see what you mean with the point one. With all this encroachment of social networking, targetting advertisements and the augmented reality glasses, I for one shall not be part of it much longer. I shall retreat to the Alaskan wilderness, form a society called 'The Pure' who eschew such things and live a peaceful life, away from Farmville.
I'm not so sure actually about the extension of human life being close. Indeed, the 80+ tend to be infirm and squishy as it is, I don't see how you can push further along that path really. The next step will probably be some kind of way to not necessarily extend our lifespan, but increase the quality of what we already have through vat-grown organs and that kind of thing.
I DO see a bombshell hitting when the effects of the older, economically unproductive segment of society being an increasingly large proportion of the population actually start to hit.
This will only come with global economic equalisation of some kind, but it'll happen eventual. At present, migrant workers can take up the slack in the developing world, but if their native countries give them sufficient economic opportunity that is a crutch that will be taken away.
I think that age bomb could be avoided by a shift to more and more technology allowing robots to do the work people once did.
If a robot for example could do repair work on cars the production at a auto body shop would at least triple. We could even get to a point where we are living in a utopia where no one works except for our robot slaves and man simply enjoys what he pleases.
-Classifying people's capabilities based on genetic coding seems inevitable. I'm not sure we'll be able to modify dna for a while, but 'selective breeding' has already begun and I feel will intensify and change human relations forever. You'll just be able to read someone's genetic profile and see already get a good idea of how they are, if you want to hire them, if you want to have a relationship with them, ect. It'll essentially dictate when you can and cannot do...kind of like in Gattaca.
-Discovering FTL travel. Mentioned already but not discussed. Space colonization could happen within our solar system but otherwise I don't see us going to any extrasolar earth-like planets unless we don't have a choice. Terraforming is way more feasible. If we discover FTL though...the possibilities would be endless and human civilization would finally begin to conquer the final frontier!! But for now everybody is really iffy about space because developing the technology would cost a lot and the rewards are limited.
Resource scarcity. Pollution contributing to this. Massive temperature shifts and storms. A move toward a synthetic food, chemically produced, that provides all necessary nutrients in proper amounts, but also causes much more widespread disease.
Otherwise, the shift will come in consciousness. People will learn to stop listening to their mind and begin working together, without judgement, to make something better. Unlikely.
On July 30 2013 13:29 DeepElemBlues wrote: A Butlerian jihad at some point against certain kinds of technological progress. Well not a war but eventually things will change too fast and lots of people will get riled up pretty good about it.
I don't think it would be a paradigm shift though now that I took a minute to think about it. Half the posts in this thread are not about things that would be paradigm shifts
The extension of human life by decades is more likely than not less than a hundred years away and will have a huge impact on society and human existence in general. And it's more likely to happen than anything that's been mentioned so far.
The technical capability, in the West, to switch to a hydrogen economy is probably not more than a hundred years off either, probably a lot sooner than that. That has the potential to be a very big thing.
I can see what you mean with the point one. With all this encroachment of social networking, targetting advertisements and the augmented reality glasses, I for one shall not be part of it much longer. I shall retreat to the Alaskan wilderness, form a society called 'The Pure' who eschew such things and live a peaceful life, away from Farmville.
I'm not so sure actually about the extension of human life being close. Indeed, the 80+ tend to be infirm and squishy as it is, I don't see how you can push further along that path really. The next step will probably be some kind of way to not necessarily extend our lifespan, but increase the quality of what we already have through vat-grown organs and that kind of thing.
I DO see a bombshell hitting when the effects of the older, economically unproductive segment of society being an increasingly large proportion of the population actually start to hit.
This will only come with global economic equalisation of some kind, but it'll happen eventual. At present, migrant workers can take up the slack in the developing world, but if their native countries give them sufficient economic opportunity that is a crutch that will be taken away.
I think that age bomb could be avoided by a shift to more and more technology allowing robots to do the work people once did.
If a robot for example could do repair work on cars the production at a auto body shop would at least triple. We could even get to a point where we are living in a utopia where no one works except for our robot slaves and man simply enjoys what he pleases.
How will anyone make any money?
People wouldn't need to make money to survive - the robot labor would provide for their basic needs. Sure people could still choose to have jobs, and there would be some positions (researchers, artists, etc.) which couldn't possibly be filled by robots, but any money they made would basically just be for luxury commodities.
I've always been taught that we are already in the information revolution, since most of the wealth nowadays is generated by the flow of information, whether financial, entertainment or something else. Like the ones before it, this revolution is already reshaping the texture of human society from the lowest level up. This manifests from little things like how people spend their spare time on the internet, to the huge instantaneous public reaction to world events, all made possible by the fast, essentially unrestricted flow of information. It's brought people together, and it's driven people apart. The world has certainly changed, and IMO for the better.
Whereto from here? I've got the feeling that the information revolution is shifting human focus and wealth too much on the superficial like entertainment, consumerism and political discussions. Perhaps to the expense of more long-term priorities like mentioned many times in this thread: energy, materials, food, water, transportation (up to space travel), environment etc. Sometimes I find it ridiculous that we have all of these iGadgets touted as the next crown of human achievement, while it still takes half a day to fly from Europe from East Asia, worse than what the Concorde did half a century ago. (Yes I am a grumpy traveller, it's easy to be grumpy when travelling eats up 10% of my annual vacation).
"Today, there is a great feeling, a looming specter, that we are again about to undergo a paradigm shift unlike any before."
I couldn't agree more. Yet when talking about where we are heading I think it is best to review how we got here. I think one book that does that best is, "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power" by Daniel Yergin. Nothing has changed our way of life more than cheap energy. When comparing the profitability of energy historically it helps to know the difference of cost of the input vs. the output or revenue. So a farmers energy calculation long ago would estimate this cost when considering to feed an animal to plow his fields. So If he can gain more calories by feeding an ox calories to plow his field it makes sense to do so. To put our energy consumption into historical perspective it helps to try and convert our cheap energy back to calories. A typical person can keep a 100 watt light bulb lit so taking the average energy consumption for an American and you get around 99 thousand kWh. Divide this by the number of hours in a year that an American consumes energy at an ave. rate of 10kW so the ave. U.S. resident enjoys a lifestyle that would require the equivalent of 100 energy servants. No nation in history has it ever been possible for a nation to be so wealthy for everyone to be able to have 100 servants. Yet the oil fields worldwide are aging and the barrels of oil cost vs. what is gained is no longer that attractive as it used to be. If that wasn't true we'd never look at shale or deep ocean drilling due to the cost. I'm not arguing that this is end of the age of oil but that we are in the end of the age of cheap oil and this will change everyone's life on this planet even if they never got to benefit from it.
Improvements in and widespread usage of 3D Printing can turn the information age into a true information revolution. The ability to print off anything that you have the blueprints for means that you no longer need manufacturers for almost anything.
The worldwide destruction of manufacturing would kill the job market. The entertainment and service sector would be the primary job provider in any modernized country and simply could not provide enough jobs for everyone. So, unemployment would skyrocket. The methods of wealth distribution would have to change to something more socialistic or else we'd have an old fashioned revolution (except with people who can print off their own weapons).
A combination of Globalization/Planetary Government with Space Exploration/Colonization seems like the best contender if you're looking at agricultural/industrial revolution levels of shifts in human history.
It's hard to say whether it will be a Planetary government or Corporate interests that propel us into Space though.
Nothing else really seems on the level of agricultural/industrial revolution.
In any case, I'm guessing we won't experience it in our lifetimes though, it still seems like it's pretty far off in the horizon.
The increase in adoption of automation to replace menial, and increasingly, skilled labour. This isn't really a new paradigm shift, it's just the industrial revolution having not really played itself out fully yet. It's just that we have reached a stage where the primary obstacles to this are no longer technical shortcomings, but the political, social and economic ones. Primarily, our current economic system, where income is so heavily dependant on one's ability to sell one's labour/skills, is simply not able to accommodate the level of automation that is now technically both possible AND efficient without causing major social upheaval.
The other big one would be an energy revolution, away from traditional fossil fuels into probably nuclear, unless we can find something better before this change absolutely needs to occur.
Kinda hard to say which will come first, the former is getting kinda ridiculous where increasingly people have jobs that simply don't need to exist anymore because machines could do it quicker, better, cheaper and more energy efficiently, but for the fact that it would lead to massive unemployment rates. On the other hand fossil fuels have a pretty imminent crunch time with increasing awareness of climate change as well as scarcity issues that will soon become relevant.
On July 30 2013 16:36 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote: The increase in adoption of automation to replace menial, and increasingly, skilled labour. This isn't really a new paradigm shift, it's just the industrial revolution having not really played itself out fully yet. It's just that we have reached a stage where the primary obstacles to this are no longer technical shortcomings, but the political, social and economic ones. Primarily, our current economic system, where income is so heavily dependant on one's ability to sell one's labour/skills, is simply not able to accommodate the level of automation that is now technically both possible AND efficient without causing major social upheaval.
This plus diminishing scientific returns and global warming leading to a Malthusian catastrophe of sorts.
I think there will probably be a good century or so of serious social and political unrest and we really can't predict the outcome, a shift will be required to get out of it but exactly what that shift will be isn't easy to call.
If the rather large effects of the global financial crisis haven't precipitated a paradigm shift, I'm a bit skeptical of Marx returning to vogue anytime soon
First of all, I'm glad OP rewrote his previous post into something that actually encourages sensible discussion.
On July 30 2013 16:36 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote: The increase in adoption of automation to replace menial, and increasingly, skilled labour. This isn't really a new paradigm shift, it's just the industrial revolution having not really played itself out fully yet. It's just that we have reached a stage where the primary obstacles to this are no longer technical shortcomings, but the political, social and economic ones. Primarily, our current economic system, where income is so heavily dependant on one's ability to sell one's labour/skills, is simply not able to accommodate the level of automation that is now technically both possible AND efficient without causing major social upheaval.
The other big one would be an energy revolution, away from traditional fossil fuels into probably nuclear, unless we can find something better before this change absolutely needs to occur.
Kinda hard to say which will come first, the former is getting kinda ridiculous where increasingly people have jobs that simply don't need to exist anymore because machines could do it quicker, better, cheaper and more energy efficiently, but for the fact that it would lead to massive unemployment rates. On the other hand fossil fuels have a pretty imminent crunch time with increasing awareness of climate change as well as scarcity issues that will soon become relevant.
Great post, though I feel that energy revolution will come faster considering how quickly global demand is increasing. Also, due to synergy effects, I expect the tempo of changes to accelerate so that people will really struggle to adapt and the 'mentality gaps' between generations may increase. But on the other hand, if this happens, it will be way harder to actually develop any paradigm in the first place.
Other than that, let's not forget that the tempo of every next paradigm shift will be completely different depending on wealth and technological prowess of given country or region. For example, today we have regions fully adjusted to post-industrialism (USA, Western Europe), regions with industrial and post-industiral paradigms coexisting (China, India, South America) and where no real shifts happened except for external investments into higher-tier paradigm resources, the less-developed cannot explore due to their shortcomings (most of African countries). So I expect the future progess to be probably even more relative and selective than it is now.
When people stopped cramming their heads with information, and they trained themselves to stop storing information, except for things that were really important (e.g., tacit knowledge for their job), because most of it was readily available and more accurate through information infrastructure. It doesn't make one stupid, or lazy, just more efficient.
On July 30 2013 19:17 peacenl wrote: When people stopped cramming their heads with information, and they trained themselves to stop storing information, except for things that were really important (e.g., tacit knowledge for their job), because most of it was readily available and more accurate through information infrastructure. It doesn't make one stupid, or lazy, just more efficient.
I would argue that the current information era is not (yet) comparable to industrial revolution. Internet and the overwhelming amount of information that is available haven't really caused big changes in the western (North america + Europe) societies. The societal changes are nowhere near those caused by the industrial revolution for example. Majority of western adults (especially people over 40+ years) still live the same lives they lived 5 or 10 or even 20 years ago.
Just like the OP hinted, the information era is still just coming into full effect and there are a lot of factors slowing its progress. I would say that the paradigm shift caused by the information era was/will be greater in non-western societies. From personal experience I know there are still people in less developed countries (even in India) who are illiterate (even in their native tongue), but use touchscreen based industrial equipment in their daily work tasks. It is kinda baffling how the different the level of societies can still be in a lot countries, thus making the internet and free information even greater revolution.
The Internet is the big shift going on right now. People underestimate things going on around them - soon most of the world's population will have basically free communication to each other, creating for the first time in the history a truly global community.
Tehcnology convergence; we're already halfway there with things like the ubuntu edge and google wallet, your phone is almost everything and lets you know everything. IIRC there is a neuroscience theory being tossed around where quick access internet is becoming an extension of the brain. How is the stock market trending? Thousands of statistics for assorted stocks in seconds. New movie has been released in theater? Oh here it is I'll watch it now while it's downloading. I forgot how to calculate the loads in this building, oh here's a guide. Human stored memory is inefficent and liable to interpretation.
nother thing likely to come around at this point is human augmentation. When parts of the brains can be replaced and improved with computers. Even now they have bionic eyes, 3-D printed prosthetcis, prosthetics that can feel, in thirty years it is likely they will be better than human flesh. They're close to injecting memories directly into mice brains. Eugenics is also some technology that has some serious ethical consideration in a few decades time, we're at the point where we can ensure your IVF child won't have certain genetic disorders, how long until you make your child that blonde haired girl you wanted to have?
The full switch over will probably come in thirty or forty years from now when these techonologies are acceessible to about 1% of the world population. It will coencide with the end of almost all primary (resource collecting), secondary (resource processing), and most tertiary (service) industries. Leaving only the information, design, and maintence industries intact.
I think the most important thing for global politics is where asia will go (most importantly china) in this century because that's the biggest part of this planet's population. If we're talking continents I'd also prognose that Africa will sadly probably continue to be fucked.
I think technology is advanced enough, what we really need is a human revolution in terms of ethics. We really need to help our friends come out of the proverbial stone ages in the middle east and Africa, among other poor countries, and integrate them into the world economy, extending rights and freedoms to them as a cost of doing business.
And as stated above, the end of crony capitalism and the beginning of well-regulated, fair and reasonable capitalism.
But besides that, I think the continuing advancements in computer processing speeds and ongoing studies in evolution (and artificial evolution performed in simulations) can lead to great advancements in artificial intelligence. But really there are probably going to be so many shifts in the near future...access to information is universal and ideas are spreading faster and faster. The role of the internet can never be under appreciated in this regard.
On July 30 2013 19:52 Meself wrote: The Internet is the big shift going on right now. People underestimate things going on around them - soon most of the world's population will have basically free communication to each other, creating for the first time in the history a truly global community.
Have to agree with this, though internet didnt change our lifes as much as agricultural and the industrial revolution it still is a big change and paves the path for a global community. Agriculture and the industrial revolution both greatly increased the productivity and with that the wealth of an average human. The only thing i can imagine wich can greatly increase productivity again is virtually unlimited energy and engines and technologys to make meaningfull use of such huge amounts of energy, but this could take 100 years or more for us to to achieve.
On July 30 2013 11:59 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: Colonization of Space. As we will have more than one world to care for but also ones that we have to build from the ground up and it will be recorded in real time. After a while there could prejudices from people who were born and grew up on Mars, others who think higher of themselves for being on the "home" planet. Then we could very well see past incidents happen all over again, revolutions, nationalism just involving more than one planet than say continents.
There are so many reasons why colonization of space is important, and one of them is actually that it could prevent humanity from wiping itself out through war. Unless we develop some sort of faster than light travel interstellar warfare would be almost impossible, since any army that launches will be massively disadvantaged by the years it takes them to get to their enemies. Even if the army was robots or something like that, there would be a technological disadvantage. Space col is cool.
i believe the biggest paradigm shift that was intentionally thwarted was the discoveries of Nickola Tesla. imagine a hundred years ago discovering the tap to limitless wireless power.
until those keeping us in this petroleum economy relinquish their control of these known technologies i dont think any paradigm shifting of any kind will happen. which feeds the idea of the rich and powerful ruling over the rest of us with impunity.
would love for the paradigm shift to go the other way, and the world realizes that the global banking system is a complete fraud and those rich and powerful are suppressing technologies that remove our dependance on them.
It will be the end of the world as we know it. The only thing that has mankind propelled into these speres of technology and lifestyle was the invention of the car/plane and therefor the use of oil.
On July 31 2013 01:09 Dryzt wrote: i believe the biggest paradigm shift that was intentionally thwarted was the discoveries of Nickola Tesla. imagine a hundred years ago discovering the tap to limitless wireless power.
until those keeping us in this petroleum economy relinquish their control of these known technologies i dont think any paradigm shifting of any kind will happen. which feeds the idea of the rich and powerful ruling over the rest of us with impunity.
would love for the paradigm shift to go the other way, and the world realizes that the global banking system is a complete fraud and those rich and powerful are suppressing technologies that remove our dependance on them.
I swear I hear so many claims about Tesla. He was shafted somewhat, but were some of the things he had devised actually viable to implement at the time nation-wide?
On July 31 2013 01:17 plgElwood wrote: Next Shift:
END OF OIL.
It will be the end of the world as we know it. The only thing that has mankind propelled into these speres of technology and lifestyle was the invention of the car/plane and therefor the use of oil.
Is there a reliable source for this? Other than urban myths and conspiracy theories. Last I heard we have enough oil to keep us going for at least 50 years.
On July 31 2013 01:17 plgElwood wrote: Next Shift:
END OF OIL.
It will be the end of the world as we know it. The only thing that has mankind propelled into these speres of technology and lifestyle was the invention of the car/plane and therefor the use of oil.
Is there a reliable source for this? Other than urban myths and conspiracy theories. Last I heard we have enough oil to keep us going for at least 50 years.
And by the time we run out we'll have developed fully functioning electric vehicles. We already have them for the most part, its just a question of making it economically feasible. Don't drink the kool aid.
On July 31 2013 01:17 plgElwood wrote: Next Shift:
END OF OIL.
It will be the end of the world as we know it. The only thing that has mankind propelled into these speres of technology and lifestyle was the invention of the car/plane and therefor the use of oil.
Is there a reliable source for this? Other than urban myths and conspiracy theories. Last I heard we have enough oil to keep us going for at least 50 years.
And by the time we run out we'll have developed fully functioning electric vehicles. We already have them for the most part, its just a question of making it economically feasible. Don't drink the kool aid.
The wikipedia page on the subject is very interesting and extensive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil . The problem is not the depletion of the oil reserves, but rather the decline of the extraction rate due to diminishing easy-to-access reserves. Not only planes and cars run on oil, but more importantly everything on your supermarket is also carried around the world by oil, meaning that the prices of basically everything you can buy will grow as the rate of oil supply declines. That alone is enough to challenge the society quite a bit.
In a more positive light (but also more improbable to happen), it would be really cool to have an energetic breakthrough. Imagine what would happen if we had access to the equivalent of a nuclear power plant worth of energy output but at the cost of oil. Things like private space stations and 2-hour world roundabout vehicles would not be out of the question anymore. Fancy a dinner in Thailand tonight? And then back home for bedtime. On the other hand it would also be much easier for the bad guys/crazy people to produce nuclear explosions, so that should also be factored into the equation. But then the police/military would also hold the most extreme versions of these powers, so it might balance out. I think the potential benefits would be greater the hazards of such a technology.
On July 31 2013 01:09 Dryzt wrote: i believe the biggest paradigm shift that was intentionally thwarted was the discoveries of Nickola Tesla. imagine a hundred years ago discovering the tap to limitless wireless power.
until those keeping us in this petroleum economy relinquish their control of these known technologies i dont think any paradigm shifting of any kind will happen. which feeds the idea of the rich and powerful ruling over the rest of us with impunity.
would love for the paradigm shift to go the other way, and the world realizes that the global banking system is a complete fraud and those rich and powerful are suppressing technologies that remove our dependance on them.
I swear I hear so many claims about Tesla. He was shafted somewhat, but were some of the things he had devised actually viable to implement at the time nation-wide?
according to Tesla, he could achieve this, but the oil bankers wanted nothing of it once they caught wind of the full scope and it was fully suppressed, we may never know as those in power now are the same families from then still living off the profits of oil and banking. free energy removes the need for both.
On July 31 2013 01:17 plgElwood wrote: Next Shift:
END OF OIL.
It will be the end of the world as we know it. The only thing that has mankind propelled into these speres of technology and lifestyle was the invention of the car/plane and therefor the use of oil.
Is there a reliable source for this? Other than urban myths and conspiracy theories. Last I heard we have enough oil to keep us going for at least 50 years.
50 years is not a long period, not by any stretch of the imagination. Most, if not all on this message board will live to see 2063. Sure, there is enough oil to keep us going, but because it is getting increasingly difficult to actually extract it, prices will increase, and with it the prices of everything else, most importantly food.
The growth of China can also be a rather substantial paradigm shift. Perhaps not on a cultural level, but on an economic and military level, China's potential is enormous.
On July 31 2013 01:17 plgElwood wrote: Next Shift:
END OF OIL.
It will be the end of the world as we know it. The only thing that has mankind propelled into these speres of technology and lifestyle was the invention of the car/plane and therefor the use of oil.
Is there a reliable source for this? Other than urban myths and conspiracy theories. Last I heard we have enough oil to keep us going for at least 50 years.
50 years is not a long period, not by any stretch of the imagination. Most, if not all on this message board will live to see 2063. Sure, there is enough oil to keep us going, but because it is getting increasingly difficult to actually extract it, prices will increase, and with it the prices of everything else, most importantly food.
The growth of China can also be a rather substantial paradigm shift. Perhaps not on a cultural level, but on an economic and military level, China's potential is enormous.
This is why the "club of rome" was wrong: Yes the oil is harder to extract and prices will go up. But: Technological advancement is incredible fast. We are now able to access oil reserves that were unknown 50 years ago. We simply cannot know how long the oil reserves will sustain because we don't know what technology we will have in 50 years. Plus: There are already experiments with bacteria to produce oil. So even if the natural oil runs out we might be able to still produce oil.
Imagine the modern world without oil. Just strike out everything you have because of it. Everything thats made with oil. (grease, plastic, medicine, H², foil, ....) Everything powered by oil. (cars, trucks, trains, planes , tractors, CargoSHIPS...) Everything (or parts of it) transported by anything that has ever used oil. .....
To the electric-vehicles. Just LoL. Okay there are some cars operating on battery. They exist since 1880 and at first they were liked even more than internal-combustion-engines, because they were silent, and did not stink or catch fire, all of what scared the shit out of the people 130 years AGO. Back in 1892 Loner-Porsche did 50km/h for 50km and was a fire-engine. These specs are equal to today´s cars, if the producer would not be cheating on the spec cheat. And even if in the future there will be sligtly better ones, imagine an economy, that has to pay 10-times the amount of money to produce this car without oil. You can not even run electric cars without the oil in the grease and electric-components, you could not make plastic to isolate the wires without oil...
and now you packrat386
END OF OIL
means it will be so rare, that is too damn expensive to use
What reaaaaally fascinates me is 3D printing being able to make edible food, such as pizza and dessert and whatnot. It can also be used to make moderately sized objects, such as plates, staplers, and pistols.
Once they become affordable to the extent that every family has their own small 3D printer, this would definitely cause a paradigm shift.
When 3D printing gets advanced to the extent where sofas or washing machines are churned out regularly... prices would plummet as hard as my League ELO in the past week.
there will be other big changes but next big paradigm shift will definitely be total elimination of labor. automation will take over VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING and the transition will hurt ALOT of jobs. Even some creative and thinking jobs will eventually be taken over by machines as they get more complex and breakdown the process into algorithms. It wouldve been unthinkable for machine to take over driving work over humans, and some might not even trust it to do the job to this day. Yet google is within legal hurdle away from making this thing a reality. And in truth machines actually are way better at driving than humans are today.
maybe way later in the future these machines will get so complex, they will have the same ethical considerations as humans. In that case, if they're emancipated, labor problem will surface again! lol.
On July 30 2013 11:59 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: Colonization of Space. As we will have more than one world to care for but also ones that we have to build from the ground up and it will be recorded in real time. After a while there could prejudices from people who were born and grew up on Mars, others who think higher of themselves for being on the "home" planet. Then we could very well see past incidents happen all over again, revolutions, nationalism just involving more than one planet than say continents.
There are so many reasons why colonization of space is important, and one of them is actually that it could prevent humanity from wiping itself out through war. Unless we develop some sort of faster than light travel interstellar warfare would be almost impossible, since any army that launches will be massively disadvantaged by the years it takes them to get to their enemies. Even if the army was robots or something like that, there would be a technological disadvantage. Space col is cool.
Meant solar system wise but even so such efforts would surely deliver dividends not only economically but in leaps and bounds in computer, engineering, software and even the material sciences. As for war seems a bit of a stretch as when governments, or even a world government, claims something they make sure they receive incentives and will easily place muscle to make sure it is delivered just look at colonization and conquest throughout history.
On July 31 2013 19:55 Basic Basic wrote: It's impossible to predict the next paradigm shift, due to the fact that if we knew what it was, we'd have achieved it.
I wouldn't necessarily say that, some things we can see coming, it's just there are certain obstacles preventing them from being done that can't be solved by simply seeing that the obstacle is there.
An example would be energy, we know that we will need to get mostly (or maybe completely) off fossil fuels at some stage, we just don't know exactly how we are going to do it. We have some idea of the possible solutions, eg by utilising the thorium fuel cycle, and some immature and developing technologies that are promising(eg travelling wave and molten salt reactors). We have enough problems with fossil fuels and enough of an idea about possible solutions that we know it is coming, we're just not exactly sure how it will come (or that it will definitely be those specific technologies).
Another example I hold close to heart is automation, as I said in an earlier post, technically, we have already reached a stage where many existing jobs are simply better done by machines than people could hope to do them. But we have major economic obstacles stopping all out replacement of human labour in these fields with automation due to the social/political/economic upheaval that would be caused by the resulting unemployment.
I mean replacing those workers with machines results in the same amount (or more) of work being done cheaper, faster, better, safer and more energy efficiently. It is patently ridiculous that our current economic system is such that increased automation could be a bad thing, but it is, so clearly there is a disconnect between our economic model and how things really work. We know this is a problem, it's clear to see that this paradigm shift needs to occur at some stage (indeed it is overdue from a technical standpoint) but we just don't know exactly how we can make it happen yet.
Peak oil won't be a paradigm shift. There's already electric cars that are just as good as petroleum-powered alternative. Virtually all our energy comes from the Sun and it's a pretty natural course of events that we'll have to start using it.
Global warming may well result in a major paradigm shift, as we might have to adjust the way we live our lives, and whole parts of the world might become unliveable.
As for historical paradigm shifts...has anyone nominated the scientific revolution? This pre-dates the industrial revolution, and in fact it was arguably the main cause of the industrial revolution. There's some arguments for and against this, but I find it hard to believe that the great advances made by scientists wouldn't have trickled down and created a sense of confidence in man's mastery over the world. Pre-scientific revolution, Chinese engineering achievements were just as great as the European ones. Then you get Western dominance. Now that China has embraced modern science, it has the world's best engineers.
On July 31 2013 03:33 FeUerFlieGe wrote: The printing press was a huge paradigm shift.
It's interesting that this was invented first in China, centuries before Johannes Gutenberg. Although Gutenberg's one was better and started the movable type revolution.
Edit: Of course, the sheer quantity of Chinese characters would undoubtedly have been an obstacle to Chinese inventors.
Surprised OP didn't mention access to the Internet, or simply just development of personal computers in general. Massive paradigm shift in how life works, information is transferred, etc.
Near future the replacement of the Middle East with North and South America for oil/energy resource kings. Assuming that the major players in the region continue what they are doing now.
Farther out it'll be cyborging people out and the end of standing armies as we know it replacing them with use of remote craft and small elite groups of augmented fighters for precision strikes. You're already seeing that now in many aspects..
On July 31 2013 23:27 GreenGringo wrote: Peak oil won't be a paradigm shift. There's already electric cars that are just as good as petroleum-powered alternative. Virtually all our energy comes from the Sun and it's a pretty natural course of events that we'll have to start using it.
Global warming may well result in a major paradigm shift, as we might have to adjust the way we live our lives, and whole parts of the world might become unliveable.
Peak oil / Global warming are two elements of the same event: humain society resource needs outgrow what our home planet currently offers. We have the same problems regarding water, rare earth, farmable land, ... the limiting factor in our development is no longer the technology to achieve a goal, but the material impossibility to do everything our technology could offer.
At this point, we wouldn't be able to provide current western living standards to 7 billion people.
From that point on, there are numerous possibilities, all of which probably qualify as paradigm shifts for the discussion. Aiming our technological development at ressource optimization ; active research of additional ressources (ocean floor, asteroids, deep earth drills, ...) ; active research of alternative ressources (energy of course, but also recycling, replacement of oil-based plastics, ...). We are already working on all of those, what we do not see yet is mid/long-term impacts.
A lot of scenarii have been proposed, no idea which one will come to pass in the next 200 years. Opposition between rich and poor countries (a fact, but would it lead to conflicts ?) ; new wars for ressources other than oil/land (water conflicts between india/pakistan, gold/diamond conflicts in africa, ...) ; forced cooperation between countries to enforce resource repartition (nah, but maybe some inforced ressource management IMF-like) ? a ressource disappearing faster than expected triggering a huge crisis ? a technological breakthrough that takes us to another planet or frees us from some resource needs (nanotech ?) ?
Of course, the next alien invasion/apocalypse will free us from such questions.
since this is the information age due to this wonderful thing called "internet" mainly that caused a lot of people to become lifeless .. enough of that i really believe that the centralization of information may slowly bring centralization of every country or to simple say "multiculture" countries will rise and the concept of nationalities might slowly fade overtime yet that is just my opinion
You guys are really pessimistic about this, it's funny how movies give the strangest ideas to people, and even make a wrong conception about effort and time, Movies= Terrible things always happen in the future, and little effort=great rewards.
It's all wrong, I don't think we will have a nuclear war, powerful countries know this is stupidity, what's the point in a nuke war?, after you get nuked you won't be a "strong" country for years. To me a nuke war is just self destruct for the world, so it's highly unlikely anyone will allow this.
What's the point of finding a new "world"? We can't even take care of ours as it is we would just destroy another planet...Honestly, isn't it better to find new/creative solutions for the place we already live in?
I'm not saying it's all bad, of course we want scientific breakthroughs and all that cool stuff, but really, why not focus on our current status and home. I don't think we will have some sort of "oblivion(movie)" world or some post-apocalyptic setting. I think humanity will have some hard years until we start to really focus on the problems at hand
On August 01 2013 00:22 Oshuy wrote: Peak oil / Global warming are two elements of the same event: humain society resource needs outgrow what our home planet currently offers. We have the same problems regarding water, rare earth, farmable land, ... the limiting factor in our development is no longer the technology to achieve a goal, but the material impossibility to do everything our technology could offer.
Well, peak oil will force our hand and we'll have no choice but to go green. That's inevitable. But by then, the damage might already have been done. The ice caps, for example, might have melted sufficiently to flood much of northern Europe. Agriculture might be destroyed in a lot of countries.
The posts about space exploration are funny, because we're not even close to being able to put a self-sustaining colony on the Arctic -- let alone Mars.
You do get spin-off benefits, but the same is true of almost anything. You don't play the violin because it's good exercise for your right arm.
On July 31 2013 01:09 Dryzt wrote: i believe the biggest paradigm shift that was intentionally thwarted was the discoveries of Nickola Tesla. imagine a hundred years ago discovering the tap to limitless wireless power.
until those keeping us in this petroleum economy relinquish their control of these known technologies i dont think any paradigm shifting of any kind will happen. which feeds the idea of the rich and powerful ruling over the rest of us with impunity.
would love for the paradigm shift to go the other way, and the world realizes that the global banking system is a complete fraud and those rich and powerful are suppressing technologies that remove our dependance on them.
I swear I hear so many claims about Tesla. He was shafted somewhat, but were some of the things he had devised actually viable to implement at the time nation-wide?
according to Tesla, he could achieve this, but the oil bankers wanted nothing of it once they caught wind of the full scope and it was fully suppressed, we may never know as those in power now are the same families from then still living off the profits of oil and banking. free energy removes the need for both.
This claim has never really made much sense to me. If he actually had a machine that could make a near endless supply of energy for very little he could just patent the thing and make zillions. Oil and banking have nothing to do with it, his machine probably didn't work. Also please explain why free energy removes the need for banking? People are going to want to store their money somewhere besides under their matress -> banking.
On July 30 2013 11:59 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: Colonization of Space. As we will have more than one world to care for but also ones that we have to build from the ground up and it will be recorded in real time. After a while there could prejudices from people who were born and grew up on Mars, others who think higher of themselves for being on the "home" planet. Then we could very well see past incidents happen all over again, revolutions, nationalism just involving more than one planet than say continents.
There are so many reasons why colonization of space is important, and one of them is actually that it could prevent humanity from wiping itself out through war. Unless we develop some sort of faster than light travel interstellar warfare would be almost impossible, since any army that launches will be massively disadvantaged by the years it takes them to get to their enemies. Even if the army was robots or something like that, there would be a technological disadvantage. Space col is cool.
Meant solar system wise but even so such efforts would surely deliver dividends not only economically but in leaps and bounds in computer, engineering, software and even the material sciences. As for war seems a bit of a stretch as when governments, or even a world government, claims something they make sure they receive incentives and will easily place muscle to make sure it is delivered just look at colonization and conquest throughout history.
I don't think its as much of a pipe dream as you think. If we were only able to get below light speed travel, then to for any army to travel to even the nearest star would take 2 years, and it would take the same amount of time to send any messages. Anything other than command on sight would be impossible, and the people you were planning on attacking will have had 2 years more to develop new technologies and build more defenses. It simply takes too long to do, and thus pockets of the human race would get isolated and prevent total extinction by war.
As for whether you're going to see the harms of modern colonialization, we have little reason to believe that anything lives on most of the planets that we're looking at. Alien life, though it may exist, appears to be exceedingly rare and its unlikely that we would want to destroy intelligent life that we find.
I should note that its definitely possible for there to still be wars between colonial factions in the same solar system, it just seems unlikely to be able to have interstellar warfare work out without faster than light travel.
On August 01 2013 00:22 Oshuy wrote: Peak oil / Global warming are two elements of the same event: humain society resource needs outgrow what our home planet currently offers. We have the same problems regarding water, rare earth, farmable land, ... the limiting factor in our development is no longer the technology to achieve a goal, but the material impossibility to do everything our technology could offer.
Well, peak oil will force our hand and we'll have no choice but to go green. That's inevitable. But by then, the damage might already have been done. The ice caps, for example, might have melted sufficiently to flood much of northern Europe. Agriculture might be destroyed in a lot of countries.
you do know that human progress was able because we went away from "green"? The car is a great improvement to the horse. The plane would be unable without mining. The tamed river is better for living than the mosquito-plagued swamps most "natural" riverdeltas were. Now going green would reintroduce our dependency on nature instead of making us more independent and free. We can't control the weather thus requiring more energy. (you lose energy due to the process of storing it. 2nd law of thermodynamics). When was it ever a good idea to improve our dependence on "mother nature" instead of replacing it with technology? Mostly because we already have ideas how to do so.
On August 01 2013 00:22 Oshuy wrote: Peak oil / Global warming are two elements of the same event: humain society resource needs outgrow what our home planet currently offers. We have the same problems regarding water, rare earth, farmable land, ... the limiting factor in our development is no longer the technology to achieve a goal, but the material impossibility to do everything our technology could offer.
Well, peak oil will force our hand and we'll have no choice but to go green. That's inevitable. But by then, the damage might already have been done. The ice caps, for example, might have melted sufficiently to flood much of northern Europe. Agriculture might be destroyed in a lot of countries.
We have lots of choices, not too sure what "green" means to you in the context. Don't understand "damage might have been done" either. Destruction of a few countries and a few hundred million casualties wouldn't be a paradigm shift. The reaction to such an impact might.
On August 01 2013 00:58 never_Nal wrote: You guys are really pessimistic about this, it's funny how movies give the strangest ideas to people, and even make a wrong conception about effort and time, Movies= Terrible things always happen in the future, and little effort=great rewards.
It's all wrong, I don't think we will have a nuclear war, powerful countries know this is stupidity, what's the point in a nuke war?, after you get nuked you won't be a "strong" country for years. To me a nuke war is just self destruct for the world, so it's highly unlikely anyone will allow this.
What's the point of finding a new "world"? We can't even take care of ours as it is we would just destroy another planet...Honestly, isn't it better to find new/creative solutions for the place we already live in?
I'm not saying it's all bad, of course we want scientific breakthroughs and all that cool stuff, but really, why not focus on our current status and home. I don't think we will have some sort of "oblivion(movie)" world or some post-apocalyptic setting. I think humanity will have some hard years until we start to really focus on the problems at hand
That has nothing to do with movies, never in the human history there was a period of absolute peace, the last ''terrible'' thing wasn't WW2, we had vietnan, korea, iraq (1 & 2), we have the pakistani-india border, palestine-Israel, i could go on and on.
''War'' is in the nature of man, and any of the conflits that we currently have today can escalate out of control in an instant. Most the shifts people said in this thread are several decades away, it's just logical to assume that before that we will have another armed conflict.
To be honest, i dont even consider space exploration a thing because that's such a massive enterprise it would require the entire world's mutual cooperation and that's never going to happen (if anything, history again teaches us that people only truly unite in the face of extinction, so an event of that sort would have to happen before, and that would be de paradigm shift)
On August 01 2013 00:58 never_Nal wrote: You guys are really pessimistic about this, it's funny how movies give the strangest ideas to people, and even make a wrong conception about effort and time, Movies= Terrible things always happen in the future, and little effort=great rewards.
It's all wrong, I don't think we will have a nuclear war, powerful countries know this is stupidity, what's the point in a nuke war?, after you get nuked you won't be a "strong" country for years. To me a nuke war is just self destruct for the world, so it's highly unlikely anyone will allow this.
What's the point of finding a new "world"? We can't even take care of ours as it is we would just destroy another planet...Honestly, isn't it better to find new/creative solutions for the place we already live in?
I'm not saying it's all bad, of course we want scientific breakthroughs and all that cool stuff, but really, why not focus on our current status and home. I don't think we will have some sort of "oblivion(movie)" world or some post-apocalyptic setting. I think humanity will have some hard years until we start to really focus on the problems at hand
That has nothing to do with movies, never in the human history there was a period of absolute peace, the last ''terrible'' thing wasn't WW2, we had vietnan, korea, iraq (1 & 2), we have the pakistani-india border, and i'm not even going to mention palestine-Israel.
''War'' is in the nature of man, and any of the conflits that we currently have today can escalate out of control in an instant. Most the shifts people said in this thread are several decades away, it's just logical to assume that before that we will have another armed conflict.
To be honest, i dont even consider space exploration a thing because that would require the entire world's mutual cooperation and that's never going to happen (if anything, history again teaches us that people only trully unite in the face of extinction, so an event of that sorts would have to happen before)
Space exploration and colonization doesn't require the cooperation of everyone. For example, if the US were to say that they would recognize any land claims made on the moon based on use and occupation (you have to be there using it to get the land) then there would be a large incentive for private companies to go up there and begin minign, colonizing, etc. Yes if your idea of space exploration involves the peoples of the world holding hands on the ISS then its going to take a while, but all it takes to get people into space is to declare it open for business.
On August 01 2013 00:58 never_Nal wrote: You guys are really pessimistic about this, it's funny how movies give the strangest ideas to people, and even make a wrong conception about effort and time, Movies= Terrible things always happen in the future, and little effort=great rewards.
It's all wrong, I don't think we will have a nuclear war, powerful countries know this is stupidity, what's the point in a nuke war?, after you get nuked you won't be a "strong" country for years. To me a nuke war is just self destruct for the world, so it's highly unlikely anyone will allow this.
What's the point of finding a new "world"? We can't even take care of ours as it is we would just destroy another planet...Honestly, isn't it better to find new/creative solutions for the place we already live in?
I'm not saying it's all bad, of course we want scientific breakthroughs and all that cool stuff, but really, why not focus on our current status and home. I don't think we will have some sort of "oblivion(movie)" world or some post-apocalyptic setting. I think humanity will have some hard years until we start to really focus on the problems at hand
That has nothing to do with movies, never in the human history there was a period of absolute peace, the last ''terrible'' thing wasn't WW2, we had vietnan, korea, iraq (1 & 2), we have the pakistani-india border, and i'm not even going to mention palestine-Israel.
''War'' is in the nature of man, and any of the conflits that we currently have today can escalate out of control in an instant. Most the shifts people said in this thread are several decades away, it's just logical to assume that before that we will have another armed conflict.
To be honest, i dont even consider space exploration a thing because that would require the entire world's mutual cooperation and that's never going to happen (if anything, history again teaches us that people only trully unite in the face of extinction, so an event of that sorts would have to happen before)
Space exploration and colonization doesn't require the cooperation of everyone. For example, if the US were to say that they would recognize any land claims made on the moon based on use and occupation (you have to be there using it to get the land) then there would be a large incentive for private companies to go up there and begin minign, colonizing, etc. Yes if your idea of space exploration involves the peoples of the world holding hands on the ISS then its going to take a while, but all it takes to get people into space is to declare it open for business.
Then China would do the same, then Russia, India and every other Nation, it would basically be the new Age of Discovery, a race, and that leads to what? War, that's why the world cooperation is needed.
In any case, even with private funding that's several decades away, and moon exploration is not even scratching the surface.
On August 01 2013 00:58 never_Nal wrote: You guys are really pessimistic about this, it's funny how movies give the strangest ideas to people, and even make a wrong conception about effort and time, Movies= Terrible things always happen in the future, and little effort=great rewards.
It's all wrong, I don't think we will have a nuclear war, powerful countries know this is stupidity, what's the point in a nuke war?, after you get nuked you won't be a "strong" country for years. To me a nuke war is just self destruct for the world, so it's highly unlikely anyone will allow this.
What's the point of finding a new "world"? We can't even take care of ours as it is we would just destroy another planet...Honestly, isn't it better to find new/creative solutions for the place we already live in?
I'm not saying it's all bad, of course we want scientific breakthroughs and all that cool stuff, but really, why not focus on our current status and home. I don't think we will have some sort of "oblivion(movie)" world or some post-apocalyptic setting. I think humanity will have some hard years until we start to really focus on the problems at hand
That has nothing to do with movies, never in the human history there was a period of absolute peace, the last ''terrible'' thing wasn't WW2, we had vietnan, korea, iraq (1 & 2), we have the pakistani-india border, and i'm not even going to mention palestine-Israel.
''War'' is in the nature of man, and any of the conflits that we currently have today can escalate out of control in an instant. Most the shifts people said in this thread are several decades away, it's just logical to assume that before that we will have another armed conflict.
To be honest, i dont even consider space exploration a thing because that would require the entire world's mutual cooperation and that's never going to happen (if anything, history again teaches us that people only trully unite in the face of extinction, so an event of that sorts would have to happen before)
Space exploration and colonization doesn't require the cooperation of everyone. For example, if the US were to say that they would recognize any land claims made on the moon based on use and occupation (you have to be there using it to get the land) then there would be a large incentive for private companies to go up there and begin minign, colonizing, etc. Yes if your idea of space exploration involves the peoples of the world holding hands on the ISS then its going to take a while, but all it takes to get people into space is to declare it open for business.
Then China would do the same, then Russia, India and every other Nation, it would basically be the new Age of Discovery, a race, and that leads to what? War, that's why the world cooperation is needed.
In any case, even with private funding that's several decades away, and moon exploration is not even scratching the surface.
Private funding isn't the issue, the problem is that the Outer Space Treaty is usually interpreted to make the holding of any property on celestial bodies to be illegal. Also there is no need for it to lead to war as long as countries recognize other companies claims to land. You should note, the proposal is not for the US to claim land on the moon, but to say that it will recognize the claims of private entities that do, regardless of where they are from. There are several authors that support this idea, and if you want I can PM you some of their works.
I think the next big paradigm shift will be in regards to the general level of education and knowledge possessed by the masses.
Regardless of which direction society chooses to go militarily, socially, or economically, i think the next real change is going to take place in the minds of the youth, due to the fact they are going to have access to more information from a younger age than anyone throughout history. Information will become the new power, and as they say, eventually the truth will out.
Private funding isn't the issue, the problem is that the Outer Space Treaty is usually interpreted to make the holding of any property on celestial bodies to be illegal. Also there is no need for it to lead to war as long as countries recognize other companies claims to land. You should note, the proposal is not for the US to claim land on the moon, but to say that it will recognize the claims of private entities that do, regardless of where they are from. There are several authors that support this idea, and if you want I can PM you some of their works.
I thought the "space treaty" referred an agreement to keep weapons out of space. If i had to speculate I would guess that the notion of holding properties in space is not one that has been thoroughly fleshed out in international politics. The first entity to actually gain access to something valuable in space would be the ones with the agenda to push for "space ownership rights". The fact that right now there is nothing anyone has access to in space that is of some practical value which can be "owned" is what leads me to guess that it is not yet an issue among space faring entities.
On August 01 2013 00:58 never_Nal wrote: You guys are really pessimistic about this, it's funny how movies give the strangest ideas to people, and even make a wrong conception about effort and time, Movies= Terrible things always happen in the future, and little effort=great rewards.
It's all wrong, I don't think we will have a nuclear war, powerful countries know this is stupidity, what's the point in a nuke war?, after you get nuked you won't be a "strong" country for years. To me a nuke war is just self destruct for the world, so it's highly unlikely anyone will allow this.
What's the point of finding a new "world"? We can't even take care of ours as it is we would just destroy another planet...Honestly, isn't it better to find new/creative solutions for the place we already live in?
I'm not saying it's all bad, of course we want scientific breakthroughs and all that cool stuff, but really, why not focus on our current status and home. I don't think we will have some sort of "oblivion(movie)" world or some post-apocalyptic setting. I think humanity will have some hard years until we start to really focus on the problems at hand
That has nothing to do with movies, never in the human history there was a period of absolute peace, the last ''terrible'' thing wasn't WW2, we had vietnan, korea, iraq (1 & 2), we have the pakistani-india border, and i'm not even going to mention palestine-Israel.
''War'' is in the nature of man, and any of the conflits that we currently have today can escalate out of control in an instant. Most the shifts people said in this thread are several decades away, it's just logical to assume that before that we will have another armed conflict.
To be honest, i dont even consider space exploration a thing because that would require the entire world's mutual cooperation and that's never going to happen (if anything, history again teaches us that people only trully unite in the face of extinction, so an event of that sorts would have to happen before)
Space exploration and colonization doesn't require the cooperation of everyone. For example, if the US were to say that they would recognize any land claims made on the moon based on use and occupation (you have to be there using it to get the land) then there would be a large incentive for private companies to go up there and begin minign, colonizing, etc. Yes if your idea of space exploration involves the peoples of the world holding hands on the ISS then its going to take a while, but all it takes to get people into space is to declare it open for business.
Then China would do the same, then Russia, India and every other Nation, it would basically be the new Age of Discovery, a race, and that leads to what? War, that's why the world cooperation is needed.
In any case, even with private funding that's several decades away, and moon exploration is not even scratching the surface.
Private funding isn't the issue, the problem is that the Outer Space Treaty is usually interpreted to make the holding of any property on celestial bodies to be illegal. Also there is no need for it to lead to war as long as countries recognize other companies claims to land. You should note, the proposal is not for the US to claim land on the moon, but to say that it will recognize the claims of private entities that do, regardless of where they are from. There are several authors that support this idea, and if you want I can PM you some of their works.
Yes, i know it's not the US or X country taking the claim, it's the private entitie, but it's unrealistic to think that any company in the world would attempt this without a Nation backing them up, especialy the US, since they already have the tech to go there.
In theory, it should work out as long as countries do recognize the claims, but in the long long run, i don't think that would happen.
On August 01 2013 03:40 packrat386 wrote: Private funding isn't the issue, the problem is that the Outer Space Treaty is usually interpreted to make the holding of any property on celestial bodies to be illegal. Also there is no need for it to lead to war as long as countries recognize other companies claims to land. You should note, the proposal is not for the US to claim land on the moon, but to say that it will recognize the claims of private entities that do, regardless of where they are from. There are several authors that support this idea, and if you want I can PM you some of their works.
I thought the "space treaty" referred an agreement to keep weapons out of space. If i had to speculate I would guess that the notion of holding properties in space is not one that has been thoroughly fleshed out in international politics. The first entity to actually gain access to something valuable in space would be the ones with the agenda to push for "space ownership rights". The fact that right now there is nothing anyone has access to in space that is of some practical value which can be "owned" is what leads me to guess that it is not yet an issue among space faring entities.
I would refer you to Alan Wasser. He's a pretty prolific writer so googling him will probably turn up more articles. He explains here whats going on and why it would be hard for a moon settlement to claim the land it needs.
As for their not being anything anyone has their hands on, my friends in the Aerospace department of Michigan are working on things like Asteroid Mining, Helium 3 recovery, Space Solar Power, etc. All of thses things require land ownership, and if wasser is to be believed, the necessary funding is never going to come to make them possible because the current OST makes it illegal. He describes the effect of lifting the ban as a "Second Industrial Revolution".
On August 01 2013 01:08 GreenGringo wrote: The posts about space exploration are funny, because we're not even close to being able to put a self-sustaining colony on the Arctic -- let alone Mars.
You do get spin-off benefits, but the same is true of almost anything. You don't play the violin because it's good exercise for your right arm.
Actually we are. The US could start putting habitats on Mars in less than a decade if it really had the drive to and financial backing. Quite easily in fact with our advancement in computer, flight hardware, and robotics.
On August 01 2013 04:00 packrat386 wrote: Asteroid Mining, Helium 3 recovery, Space Solar Power, ...
describes the effect of lifting the ban as a "Second Industrial Revolution"...
Do you think that the corporate or state structures can take advantage of asteroid mining as it is? I mean maybe 1000 years from now our descendants will be watching a reality show called "Space Gold", but at this stage in the global economy is mining for ANY mineral economically viable in space? Is H3 that useful?
Solar power I don't really know much about, so I'm not sure if we have a viable way to transport energy harvested in space back to earth, but i have not yet heard of any proposals beyond a farcical sounding lazer on the moon, transmitting power by firing at receptors on the earth. I can certainly see that one day space will be the next frontier for us, but until we have a cheap method of getting into space, can there really be an industrial revolution?
On August 01 2013 00:22 Oshuy wrote: Peak oil / Global warming are two elements of the same event: humain society resource needs outgrow what our home planet currently offers. We have the same problems regarding water, rare earth, farmable land, ... the limiting factor in our development is no longer the technology to achieve a goal, but the material impossibility to do everything our technology could offer.
Well, peak oil will force our hand and we'll have no choice but to go green. That's inevitable. But by then, the damage might already have been done. The ice caps, for example, might have melted sufficiently to flood much of northern Europe. Agriculture might be destroyed in a lot of countries.
We have lots of choices, not too sure what "green" means to you in the context. Don't understand "damage might have been done" either. Destruction of a few countries and a few hundred million casualties wouldn't be a paradigm shift. The reaction to such an impact might.
"Green" is pretty self-evident; it refers to renewables.
There's some climate scientists who say global warming has the potential to make the planet like Venus. It definitely has the potential to cause a "paradigm shift".
On August 01 2013 01:08 GreenGringo wrote: The posts about space exploration are funny, because we're not even close to being able to put a self-sustaining colony on the Arctic -- let alone Mars.
You do get spin-off benefits, but the same is true of almost anything. You don't play the violin because it's good exercise for your right arm.
Actually we are. The US could start putting habitats on Mars in less than a decade if it really had the drive to and financial backing. Quite easily in fact with our advancement in computer, flight hardware, and robotics.
You don't understand what's meant by "self-sustaining". The colony would have to grow its own food and much else. To say that this is "easy" is simply ridiculous. Even George W. Bush's intended Moon-Mars mission was estimated to cost over a trillion dollars, and a colony rather than a manned flight would cost much more.
No gains have been suggested except a few small spin-off benefits. That can hardly justify trillions of dollars in expenses, regardless of how much mystique there is attached with space "exploration".
On August 01 2013 03:10 Oshuy wrote: We have lots of choices, not too sure what "green" means to you in the context. Don't understand "damage might have been done" either. Destruction of a few countries and a few hundred million casualties wouldn't be a paradigm shift. The reaction to such an impact might.
"Green" is pretty self-evident; it refers to renewables.
There's some climate scientists who say global warming has the potential to make the planet like Venus. It definitely has the potential to cause a "paradigm shift".
There is no such thing as renewable energy as far as we know ; in a way, oil is "renewable". We just use it a lot faster than it is renewed. We're better of with direct nuclear energy (sun or local fusion) or indirect (wind/core heat). Anyway, I don't think Oil issues are linked to its use as an energy source at this stage.
Agreed, the venus scenario for earth warming would be a fun one.
On August 01 2013 03:10 Oshuy wrote: We have lots of choices, not too sure what "green" means to you in the context. Don't understand "damage might have been done" either. Destruction of a few countries and a few hundred million casualties wouldn't be a paradigm shift. The reaction to such an impact might.
"Green" is pretty self-evident; it refers to renewables.
There's some climate scientists who say global warming has the potential to make the planet like Venus. It definitely has the potential to cause a "paradigm shift".
There is no such thing as renewable energy as far as we know ; in a way, oil is "renewable". We just use it a lot faster than it is renewed. We're better of with direct nuclear energy (sun or local fusion) or indirect (wind/core heat). Anyway, I don't think Oil issues are linked to its use as an energy source at this stage.
Agreed, the venus scenario for earth warming would be a fun one.
Sun, local fusion and wind/core heat are exactly the kinds of energy that "renewable" refers to. Of course they're not strictly renewable, but the semantics of the term just aren't that interesting.
The shift is already there. We're missing it because it's the very air we breathe.
There isn't much time for growth, too. Following Kondratiev's pattern, new technologies will push the economy for a dozen more years until the market is overwhelmed and slowly deflates like a giant hot air balloon.
However, give it fourty more years and progress in genetics will open up the field of bioengineering... heh !
I'm pretty sure in a few hundred years, raising and killing animals for food will be viewed as primitive and barbaric. Most of the first world will either eat a meat-substitute or meat grown independent of an actual conscious animal, like this.
On August 01 2013 01:08 GreenGringo wrote: The posts about space exploration are funny, because we're not even close to being able to put a self-sustaining colony on the Arctic -- let alone Mars.
You do get spin-off benefits, but the same is true of almost anything. You don't play the violin because it's good exercise for your right arm.
Actually we are. The US could start putting habitats on Mars in less than a decade if it really had the drive to and financial backing. Quite easily in fact with our advancement in computer, flight hardware, and robotics.
You don't understand what's meant by "self-sustaining". The colony would have to grow its own food and much else. To say that this is "easy" is simply ridiculous. Even George W. Bush's intended Moon-Mars mission was estimated to cost over a trillion dollars, and a colony rather than a manned flight would cost much more.
No gains have been suggested except a few small spin-off benefits. That can hardly justify trillions of dollars in expenses, regardless of how much mystique there is attached with space "exploration".
Of course nobody expects a colony to be self sufficient right off the bat. Space Colonies could take decades for such a sustainability to take effect. Which is why a colony wouldn't just sit there it would establish routines whether it's scientific or even industrial such as mining metals or even methane. Thus strategically located colonies while working to establish sustainability.
I so want to post the YouTube video "The Case for Mars" by Robert Zubrin yet I have posted it so many times on this site that it is either ignored or everyone is familiar with it.
On August 01 2013 07:12 Kukaracha wrote: The shift is already there. We're missing it because it's the very air we breathe.
There isn't much time for growth, too. Following Kondratiev's pattern, new technologies will push the economy for a dozen more years until the market is overwhelmed and slowly deflates like a giant hot air balloon.
However, give it fourty more years and progress in genetics will open up the field of bioengineering... heh !
for somebody defending relativism not too long ago it is quite bold to proclaim patterns in history stretching over 50 years.
On August 01 2013 01:08 GreenGringo wrote: The posts about space exploration are funny, because we're not even close to being able to put a self-sustaining colony on the Arctic -- let alone Mars.
You do get spin-off benefits, but the same is true of almost anything. You don't play the violin because it's good exercise for your right arm.
Actually we are. The US could start putting habitats on Mars in less than a decade if it really had the drive to and financial backing. Quite easily in fact with our advancement in computer, flight hardware, and robotics.
You don't understand what's meant by "self-sustaining". The colony would have to grow its own food and much else. To say that this is "easy" is simply ridiculous. Even George W. Bush's intended Moon-Mars mission was estimated to cost over a trillion dollars, and a colony rather than a manned flight would cost much more.
No gains have been suggested except a few small spin-off benefits. That can hardly justify trillions of dollars in expenses, regardless of how much mystique there is attached with space "exploration".
Of course nobody expects a colony to be self sufficient right off the bat. Space Colonies could take decades for such a sustainability to take effect. Which is why a colony wouldn't just sit there it would establish routines whether it's scientific or even industrial such as mining metals or even methane. Thus strategically located colonies while working to establish sustainability.
I so want to post the YouTube video "The Case for Mars" by Robert Zubrin yet I have posted it so many times on this site that it is either ignored or everyone is familiar with it.
The scientific gains simply aren't worth it. Unmanned space flight is almost just as good for scientific purposes as manned spaceflight. This is the consensus of astrophysicists. They can see the same things, extract the same materials, perform the same tests, with probes and rovers, for much cheaper. Scientifically, they could do all kinds of far more important things with the trillion dollars it takes to put a man into space (and presumably trillions of dollars more to put a colony on Mars and keep it there).
As for resources...how do you plan to transport them? The cost will outweigh the gain. Until there's a huge demand for the type of stuff they happen to have on Mars, colonizing such a planet simply isn't worth it.
The next shift will be the downfall of humanity. With our planet exploited and poisoned, free thinking, freedom of speech suppressed, knowledge being kept away by laws and patents, religious idiocy governing the minds of people in the west and the east. A world economy crashing because the crash is programmed in the nature of the system itself. People will rebel because they are willing to work but got no money and no job. Old people will rebel because they wont see a penny and will live on the streets without a care of what so ever. Young people will riot because they have no future.
In the next few years we will see more tension, more war, more natural disaster until it all collapses.
On August 01 2013 19:23 Holy_AT wrote: The next shift will be the downfall of humanity. With our planet exploited and poisoned, free thinking, freedom of speech suppressed, knowledge being kept away by laws and patents, religious idiocy governing the minds of people in the west and the east. A world economy crashing because the crash is programmed in the nature of the system itself. People will rebel because they are willing to work but got no money and no job. Old people will rebel because they wont see a penny and will live on the streets without a care of what so ever. Young people will riot because they have no future.
In the next few years we will see more tension, more war, more natural disaster until it all collapses.
With you all the way, apart from that part about "knowledge being kept away by laws and patents".
Patents have existed for hundreds of years, even before the industrial revolution. They protect inventors and reward innovation. Without patents, creative people are prevented from getting the recognition they deserve and have absolutely no incentive to push themselves to the limits. Stealing the ideas of inventors is like copyright infringement, only an order of magnitude worse because at least when you download an MP3 you know who the artist is and whose work you're benefiting from.
The introduction of patent laws might itself have been a paradigm shift.
The 'information age' isn't anywhere close to having run its course, and that's the paradigm shift that's most significant to any of our lives. As for the next, I would have to put my money on genetic modification. Moral concerns are the only currently existing check on human genetic experimentation, and as real wealth continues to collect into the hands of fewer and fewer individuals the potential rewards of developing 'super-elites' will likewise continue to increase. Automation/robotics is another contender, but less likely to occur imo because of the cost of cheap labor is still so low.
i dont think we will be able to live on another planet until we learn how DNA exactly works. I say this because radiation will kill us all within a couple years . Cancer for everybody!
We going to have to mutate our genes to be more like cockroaches to stand a better chance. I dunno. I think we going to have to change ourselves Or, learn how to use massive magnets to solve this radiation problem
On August 01 2013 01:08 GreenGringo wrote: The posts about space exploration are funny, because we're not even close to being able to put a self-sustaining colony on the Arctic -- let alone Mars.
You do get spin-off benefits, but the same is true of almost anything. You don't play the violin because it's good exercise for your right arm.
Actually we are. The US could start putting habitats on Mars in less than a decade if it really had the drive to and financial backing. Quite easily in fact with our advancement in computer, flight hardware, and robotics.
You don't understand what's meant by "self-sustaining". The colony would have to grow its own food and much else. To say that this is "easy" is simply ridiculous. Even George W. Bush's intended Moon-Mars mission was estimated to cost over a trillion dollars, and a colony rather than a manned flight would cost much more.
No gains have been suggested except a few small spin-off benefits. That can hardly justify trillions of dollars in expenses, regardless of how much mystique there is attached with space "exploration".
Of course nobody expects a colony to be self sufficient right off the bat. Space Colonies could take decades for such a sustainability to take effect. Which is why a colony wouldn't just sit there it would establish routines whether it's scientific or even industrial such as mining metals or even methane. Thus strategically located colonies while working to establish sustainability.
I so want to post the YouTube video "The Case for Mars" by Robert Zubrin yet I have posted it so many times on this site that it is either ignored or everyone is familiar with it.
The scientific gains simply aren't worth it. Unmanned space flight is almost just as good for scientific purposes as manned spaceflight. This is the consensus of astrophysicists. They can see the same things, extract the same materials, perform the same tests, with probes and rovers, for much cheaper. Scientifically, they could do all kinds of far more important things with the trillion dollars it takes to put a man into space (and presumably trillions of dollars more to put a colony on Mars and keep it there).
As for resources...how do you plan to transport them? The cost will outweigh the gain. Until there's a huge demand for the type of stuff they happen to have on Mars, colonizing such a planet simply isn't worth it.
Precious metal's, helium 3, space solar power. All of these things require a large presence in space and far outweigh the costs of the commercial ventures to retrieve them. The biggest remaining barriers are legal, not technological. As for why colonization is beneficial, as I'm sure other people have pointed out, the planet seems smaller and smaller every day. There is a limited amount of space for agriculture and people to live in, so if we want humanity to grow, the only way is up.
On August 01 2013 07:12 Kukaracha wrote: The shift is already there. We're missing it because it's the very air we breathe.
There isn't much time for growth, too. Following Kondratiev's pattern, new technologies will push the economy for a dozen more years until the market is overwhelmed and slowly deflates like a giant hot air balloon.
However, give it fourty more years and progress in genetics will open up the field of bioengineering... heh !
for somebody defending relativism not too long ago it is quite bold to proclaim patterns in history stretching over 50 years.
Hi ! Not really sure what you mean there ? Besides, Kondratiev and Juglar's cycles have been observed for more than two centuries. It simply feels safer to bet that the world will keep on running its course than predicting a sudden revolution.
On August 01 2013 07:12 Kukaracha wrote: The shift is already there. We're missing it because it's the very air we breathe.
There isn't much time for growth, too. Following Kondratiev's pattern, new technologies will push the economy for a dozen more years until the market is overwhelmed and slowly deflates like a giant hot air balloon.
However, give it fourty more years and progress in genetics will open up the field of bioengineering... heh !
for somebody defending relativism not too long ago it is quite bold to proclaim patterns in history stretching over 50 years.
Hi ! Not really sure what you mean there ? Besides, Kondratiev and Juglar's cycles have been observed for more than two centuries. It simply feels safer to bet that the world will keep on running its course than predicting a sudden revolution.
Well I am no expert on the subject, just skimmed across the wiki article but the first thing that crossed my mind was that the world's population and thus the number of scientists increased throughout history. Generally speaking an increased number of scientists should gather more knowledge. This is countered by the fact that complexitiy of research increases (aka: you discover easy things first.) So it may be (if population goes up + Show Spoiler +
I know this is a problem since there is a trend that birthrates decrease, except for "black africa" and Afghanistan.
or more people have access to university level of education) that "the wavlength" may decrease. Or increase since problems will become so complex that you need intelectual outliers to solve them. Or both effects occur at the same time since people could work on two paradigm shifts at once but on a larger timescale. It may also be that the "far left" are right and there is a fundamental flaw in capitalism which causes periodical large scale crisis. these periods may cause increase in unemployment thus decrease number of researchers and thus cause K-waves.
Edit: I just saw the latest picture of A JW Goldschmidt, who seem to acknowledge some of my issued because the waves differ in length. So it seems they are no "wave" rolling through history but rather a description of the cycle of new technology.
Another thing that bothers me is that these "large scale" theories remind me of Marx theory of history and that didn't work out that well. Furthermore it is quite bold to start to see patterns in modern human history from just about ~300 years of the industrial revolution. There could be a lot of noise in it. Last point is a technical thing: there is no "y-axis". And this is a real problem since you can't just calculate "inflation" like that. How much would my computer cost 10 years ago? prob. a lot more, since it was usable and better by this times standards. 50 years ago? questionable. People could reverse engineer a lot but it wouldn't have direct effects on costumers. 300 years ago? worthless piece of junk where nobody would understand what it could do. (assuming you don't explain them what it does)
On August 02 2013 03:06 packrat386 wrote: Precious metal's, helium 3, space solar power. All of these things require a large presence in space and far outweigh the costs of the commercial ventures to retrieve them.
I was going to ask you for numbers to support this astonishing claim, but since you lump in "solar power" it's pretty clear that you're bullshitting.
The idea of sending rockets into space to farm solar power and then take it back is crazy. It's only something that someone who hasn't studied high school physics could possibly entertain.
As for precious minerals and helium 3..."precious minerals" encompasses a variety of things, but helium 3 costs $100 per litre. The cost of sending a manned rocket to Mars is over a trillion dollars. Go figure.
On August 01 2013 01:08 GreenGringo wrote: The posts about space exploration are funny, because we're not even close to being able to put a self-sustaining colony on the Arctic -- let alone Mars.
You do get spin-off benefits, but the same is true of almost anything. You don't play the violin because it's good exercise for your right arm.
Actually we are. The US could start putting habitats on Mars in less than a decade if it really had the drive to and financial backing. Quite easily in fact with our advancement in computer, flight hardware, and robotics.
You don't understand what's meant by "self-sustaining". The colony would have to grow its own food and much else. To say that this is "easy" is simply ridiculous. Even George W. Bush's intended Moon-Mars mission was estimated to cost over a trillion dollars, and a colony rather than a manned flight would cost much more.
No gains have been suggested except a few small spin-off benefits. That can hardly justify trillions of dollars in expenses, regardless of how much mystique there is attached with space "exploration".
Of course nobody expects a colony to be self sufficient right off the bat. Space Colonies could take decades for such a sustainability to take effect. Which is why a colony wouldn't just sit there it would establish routines whether it's scientific or even industrial such as mining metals or even methane. Thus strategically located colonies while working to establish sustainability.
I so want to post the YouTube video "The Case for Mars" by Robert Zubrin yet I have posted it so many times on this site that it is either ignored or everyone is familiar with it.
The scientific gains simply aren't worth it. Unmanned space flight is almost just as good for scientific purposes as manned spaceflight. This is the consensus of astrophysicists. They can see the same things, extract the same materials, perform the same tests, with probes and rovers, for much cheaper. Scientifically, they could do all kinds of far more important things with the trillion dollars it takes to put a man into space (and presumably trillions of dollars more to put a colony on Mars and keep it there).
As for resources...how do you plan to transport them? The cost will outweigh the gain. Until there's a huge demand for the type of stuff they happen to have on Mars, colonizing such a planet simply isn't worth it.
Of course why do you think the ultimate goal for the Mars rovers are along with learning the history of mars. is? Or the recent moon mapping for water etc are for?
Fuck it:
Notice his plan for the first missions. Keep in mind this was in 1997! Cell phones are more powerful than the computers were at that time now if it was possible then... There is also discussing of transport etc. Now there is the private industries which are now in direction competition for NASA ISS contracts,. Times that to delivering to outposts on the Moon and Mars. Also note private companies aren't just in the logistics business some are actually working towards mobile fuel depots in Space. Some even want to manufacture in Space.
As for cost versus gain. Imagine the country or even a company that successfully manages to extract methane on the moon, or resources from an asteroid and not only did it successfully but they also plan to do it agauin several times over. They will have cornered the market and not a damn thing could be done to stop it or even prevent them from selling it except for other nations and companies to do the same. They will make the Oil companies look like lemonade stands.
On August 02 2013 03:06 packrat386 wrote: Precious metal's, helium 3, space solar power. All of these things require a large presence in space and far outweigh the costs of the commercial ventures to retrieve them.
I was going to ask you for numbers to support this astonishing claim, but since you lump in "solar power" it's pretty clear that you're bullshitting.
The idea of sending rockets into space to farm solar power and then take it back is crazy. It's only something that someone who hasn't studied high school physics could possibly entertain.
As for precious minerals and helium 3..."precious minerals" encompasses a variety of things, but helium 3 costs $100 per litre. The cost of sending a manned rocket to Mars is over a trillion dollars. Go figure.
You should try reading some of the articles that I linked to. A lot of lanthanide and actinide metals are found in incredibly small quantities on earth (we call these rare earth metals) but you can come across asteroids that are made up entirely of these metals. A lot of them are critical for new technology and industry so having a larger supply would be great.
As for space solar power, the idea is not to "mine" solar power in batteries and bring it back, but to put solar panels on the moon and in orbit and then send the energy back using microwave energy transfer. A lot of people believe in the technology, so here are 2 sources just off the top of my head that thing you're wrong
Both of them are infinitely more qualified than some random guy on the internet. Next time try reading before asserting that I can't possibly be right.
On August 01 2013 07:12 Kukaracha wrote: The shift is already there. We're missing it because it's the very air we breathe.
There isn't much time for growth, too. Following Kondratiev's pattern, new technologies will push the economy for a dozen more years until the market is overwhelmed and slowly deflates like a giant hot air balloon.
However, give it fourty more years and progress in genetics will open up the field of bioengineering... heh !
for somebody defending relativism not too long ago it is quite bold to proclaim patterns in history stretching over 50 years.
Hi ! Not really sure what you mean there ? Besides, Kondratiev and Juglar's cycles have been observed for more than two centuries. It simply feels safer to bet that the world will keep on running its course than predicting a sudden revolution.
Well I am no expert on the subject, just skimmed across the wiki article but the first thing that crossed my mind was that the world's population and thus the number of scientists increased throughout history. Generally speaking an increased number of scientists should gather more knowledge. This is countered by the fact that complexitiy of research increases (aka: you discover easy things first.) So it may be (if population goes up + Show Spoiler +
I know this is a problem since there is a trend that birthrates decrease, except for "black africa" and Afghanistan.
or more people have access to university level of education) that "the wavlength" may decrease. Or increase since problems will become so complex that you need intelectual outliers to solve them. Or both effects occur at the same time since people could work on two paradigm shifts at once but on a larger timescale. It may also be that the "far left" are right and there is a fundamental flaw in capitalism which causes periodical large scale crisis. these periods may cause increase in unemployment thus decrease number of researchers and thus cause K-waves.
Edit: I just saw the latest picture of A JW Goldschmidt, who seem to acknowledge some of my issued because the waves differ in length. So it seems they are no "wave" rolling through history but rather a description of the cycle of new technology.
Another thing that bothers me is that these "large scale" theories remind me of Marx theory of history and that didn't work out that well. Furthermore it is quite bold to start to see patterns in modern human history from just about ~300 years of the industrial revolution. There could be a lot of noise in it. Last point is a technical thing: there is no "y-axis". And this is a real problem since you can't just calculate "inflation" like that. How much would my computer cost 10 years ago? prob. a lot more, since it was usable and better by this times standards. 50 years ago? questionable. People could reverse engineer a lot but it wouldn't have direct effects on costumers. 300 years ago? worthless piece of junk where nobody would understand what it could do. (assuming you don't explain them what it does)
In the technologist interpretation of kondratiev's cycle, there is an important distinction that is made between "incremental" innovations and "radical" innovations. The increase in scientist doesn't mean that the wavelength of the cycle may decrease because there are economical mecanism that play in the cycle that goes beyond the population : it's not only a question of "research" but how and where you are researching. For exemple, Schumpeter consider that at the end of a crisis, there is a mecanism of "creative destruction" that occur, where the ressources (money and men mostly) that were used in a specific industry that is destroyed by the crisis is reinvested in other type of industries where there are possibilities for radical innovations. It's that process that permit research in fields where there are radical innovations and not the number of scientist nor our knowledge.
From an economic perspective, Schumpeter's interpretation of the Kondratiev's cycle is really interesting but people should not misunderstand why the interpretation was needed : Kondratiev's cycle came with deflation periods, and deflation was described as a central mecanism of the cycle. In today's world, deflation is not really a common occurence, and the trend is completly different from how it was at Kondratiev's time (it was flat, not it's going up). It's attracting to think that there are some kind of grand economic and historic scheme that repeat itself and that could define for us how and when revolutions are going to occur, but in my opinion that's kinda wrong.
On August 01 2013 07:12 Kukaracha wrote: The shift is already there. We're missing it because it's the very air we breathe.
There isn't much time for growth, too. Following Kondratiev's pattern, new technologies will push the economy for a dozen more years until the market is overwhelmed and slowly deflates like a giant hot air balloon.
However, give it fourty more years and progress in genetics will open up the field of bioengineering... heh !
for somebody defending relativism not too long ago it is quite bold to proclaim patterns in history stretching over 50 years.
Hi ! Not really sure what you mean there ? Besides, Kondratiev and Juglar's cycles have been observed for more than two centuries. It simply feels safer to bet that the world will keep on running its course than predicting a sudden revolution.
Well I am no expert on the subject, just skimmed across the wiki article but the first thing that crossed my mind was that the world's population and thus the number of scientists increased throughout history. Generally speaking an increased number of scientists should gather more knowledge. This is countered by the fact that complexitiy of research increases (aka: you discover easy things first.) So it may be (if population goes up + Show Spoiler +
I know this is a problem since there is a trend that birthrates decrease, except for "black africa" and Afghanistan.
or more people have access to university level of education) that "the wavlength" may decrease. Or increase since problems will become so complex that you need intelectual outliers to solve them. Or both effects occur at the same time since people could work on two paradigm shifts at once but on a larger timescale. It may also be that the "far left" are right and there is a fundamental flaw in capitalism which causes periodical large scale crisis. these periods may cause increase in unemployment thus decrease number of researchers and thus cause K-waves.
Edit: I just saw the latest picture of A JW Goldschmidt, who seem to acknowledge some of my issued because the waves differ in length. So it seems they are no "wave" rolling through history but rather a description of the cycle of new technology.
Another thing that bothers me is that these "large scale" theories remind me of Marx theory of history and that didn't work out that well. Furthermore it is quite bold to start to see patterns in modern human history from just about ~300 years of the industrial revolution. There could be a lot of noise in it. Last point is a technical thing: there is no "y-axis". And this is a real problem since you can't just calculate "inflation" like that. How much would my computer cost 10 years ago? prob. a lot more, since it was usable and better by this times standards. 50 years ago? questionable. People could reverse engineer a lot but it wouldn't have direct effects on costumers. 300 years ago? worthless piece of junk where nobody would understand what it could do. (assuming you don't explain them what it does)
In the technologist interpretation of kondratiev's cycle, there is an important distinction that is made between "incremental" innovations and "radical" innovations. The increase in scientist doesn't mean that the wavelength of the cycle may decrease because there are economical mechanism that play in the cycle that goes beyond the population : it's not only a question of "research" but how and where you are researching. For exemple, Schumpeter consider that at the end of a crisis, there is a mecanism of "creative destruction" that occur, where the ressources (money and men mostly) that were used in a specific industry that is destroyed by the crisis is reinvested in other type of industries where there are possibilities for radical innovations. It's that process that permit research in fields where there are radical innovations and not the number of scientist nor our knowledge.
From an economic perspective, Schumpeter's interpretation of the Kondratiev's cycle is really interesting but people should not misunderstand why the interpretation was needed : Kondratiev's cycle came with deflation periods, and deflation was described as a central mecanism of the cycle. In today's world, deflation is not really a common occurence, and the trend is completly different from how it was at Kondratiev's time (it was flat, not it's going up). It's attracting to think that there are some kind of grand economic and historic scheme that repeat itself and that could define for us how and when revolutions are going to occur, but in my opinion that's kinda wrong.
well, thank you for that. it still doesn't convince me.
Just to add for the first paragraph: Due to the increase of scientists there open up more fields which we can research at the same time. For example: A lot of people are researchers in the field of communication systems and computers, but there are also vast improvements made in genetic engineering. So it isn't like Civ 5 where we are researching "optics" and nothing but optics. So it's quite arbitrary to sum them both together because they happen "in between two crysis".(even that being questionable since you said that there are no more deflations).
On August 01 2013 07:12 Kukaracha wrote: The shift is already there. We're missing it because it's the very air we breathe.
There isn't much time for growth, too. Following Kondratiev's pattern, new technologies will push the economy for a dozen more years until the market is overwhelmed and slowly deflates like a giant hot air balloon.
However, give it fourty more years and progress in genetics will open up the field of bioengineering... heh !
for somebody defending relativism not too long ago it is quite bold to proclaim patterns in history stretching over 50 years.
Hi ! Not really sure what you mean there ? Besides, Kondratiev and Juglar's cycles have been observed for more than two centuries. It simply feels safer to bet that the world will keep on running its course than predicting a sudden revolution.
Well I am no expert on the subject, just skimmed across the wiki article but the first thing that crossed my mind was that the world's population and thus the number of scientists increased throughout history. Generally speaking an increased number of scientists should gather more knowledge. This is countered by the fact that complexitiy of research increases (aka: you discover easy things first.) So it may be (if population goes up + Show Spoiler +
I know this is a problem since there is a trend that birthrates decrease, except for "black africa" and Afghanistan.
or more people have access to university level of education) that "the wavlength" may decrease. Or increase since problems will become so complex that you need intelectual outliers to solve them. Or both effects occur at the same time since people could work on two paradigm shifts at once but on a larger timescale. It may also be that the "far left" are right and there is a fundamental flaw in capitalism which causes periodical large scale crisis. these periods may cause increase in unemployment thus decrease number of researchers and thus cause K-waves.
Edit: I just saw the latest picture of A JW Goldschmidt, who seem to acknowledge some of my issued because the waves differ in length. So it seems they are no "wave" rolling through history but rather a description of the cycle of new technology.
Another thing that bothers me is that these "large scale" theories remind me of Marx theory of history and that didn't work out that well. Furthermore it is quite bold to start to see patterns in modern human history from just about ~300 years of the industrial revolution. There could be a lot of noise in it. Last point is a technical thing: there is no "y-axis". And this is a real problem since you can't just calculate "inflation" like that. How much would my computer cost 10 years ago? prob. a lot more, since it was usable and better by this times standards. 50 years ago? questionable. People could reverse engineer a lot but it wouldn't have direct effects on costumers. 300 years ago? worthless piece of junk where nobody would understand what it could do. (assuming you don't explain them what it does)
In the technologist interpretation of kondratiev's cycle, there is an important distinction that is made between "incremental" innovations and "radical" innovations. The increase in scientist doesn't mean that the wavelength of the cycle may decrease because there are economical mechanism that play in the cycle that goes beyond the population : it's not only a question of "research" but how and where you are researching. For exemple, Schumpeter consider that at the end of a crisis, there is a mecanism of "creative destruction" that occur, where the ressources (money and men mostly) that were used in a specific industry that is destroyed by the crisis is reinvested in other type of industries where there are possibilities for radical innovations. It's that process that permit research in fields where there are radical innovations and not the number of scientist nor our knowledge.
From an economic perspective, Schumpeter's interpretation of the Kondratiev's cycle is really interesting but people should not misunderstand why the interpretation was needed : Kondratiev's cycle came with deflation periods, and deflation was described as a central mecanism of the cycle. In today's world, deflation is not really a common occurence, and the trend is completly different from how it was at Kondratiev's time (it was flat, not it's going up). It's attracting to think that there are some kind of grand economic and historic scheme that repeat itself and that could define for us how and when revolutions are going to occur, but in my opinion that's kinda wrong.
well, thank you for that. it still doesn't convince me.
Just to add for the first paragraph: Due to the increase of scientists there open up more fields which we can research at the same time. For example: A lot of people are researchers in the field of communication systems and computers, but there are also vast improvements made in genetic engineering. So it isn't like Civ 5 where we are researching "optics" and nothing but optics. So it's quite arbitrary to sum them both together because they happen "in between two crysis".(even that being questionable since you said that there are no more deflations).
I'm not saying that we are only researching in one area. The idea of neo technologists economist like Freeman is that there is more to innovations than just long term productivity gains, but that some innovations (radical innovations) are like at the center of an economic model (what they call a technologic system) : the usage of the petrol for the industrial era for exemple. Most of the innovations that comes afterwards are only innovations that take the radical innovation and apply it to another field or make it more efficient, but the society as a whole is based around this radical innovation. According to them, there are conditions that are needed for our society to really invest and use economically a new technology that could completly change our view on things, our economy but also our society as a whole. One of that condition is that our old innovations are unable to progress anymore to a point where it push us to a crisis, and a lot of ressources are unused and thus can be reinvested in other fields - but it's not the only "condition", and we could easily extrapolate to say that there are social conditions.
You must also take into consideration that the world "innovation" doesn't refer to a new technology, but to the usage of that technology and especially the economic and social valorisation of that technology. Maybe we already researched something that could completly change our world, but we are not using it broadly for various reasons.
But yeah in modern economy there is some kind of attractiveness to the idea that the more scientist, the more long term growth. The european 2020 is based around an economy of "knowledge"... it didn't really helped our growth to be fair, and I don't really see europe as the region that will really change the world and give birth to that new "paradigm".
Why does everyone assume the coming paradigm shift will be something positive? It seems apparent to me that the global human population is unsustainable at present western standards of living. The coming shift in my mind will be a drastic reduction in the standard of living. The causes will be numerous, but will primarily include steadily rising energy costs, ballooning government debts, and clean water shortages.
On August 01 2013 07:12 Kukaracha wrote: The shift is already there. We're missing it because it's the very air we breathe.
There isn't much time for growth, too. Following Kondratiev's pattern, new technologies will push the economy for a dozen more years until the market is overwhelmed and slowly deflates like a giant hot air balloon.
However, give it fourty more years and progress in genetics will open up the field of bioengineering... heh !
for somebody defending relativism not too long ago it is quite bold to proclaim patterns in history stretching over 50 years.
Hi ! Not really sure what you mean there ? Besides, Kondratiev and Juglar's cycles have been observed for more than two centuries. It simply feels safer to bet that the world will keep on running its course than predicting a sudden revolution.
Well I am no expert on the subject, just skimmed across the wiki article but the first thing that crossed my mind was that the world's population and thus the number of scientists increased throughout history. Generally speaking an increased number of scientists should gather more knowledge. This is countered by the fact that complexitiy of research increases (aka: you discover easy things first.) So it may be (if population goes up + Show Spoiler +
I know this is a problem since there is a trend that birthrates decrease, except for "black africa" and Afghanistan.
or more people have access to university level of education) that "the wavlength" may decrease. Or increase since problems will become so complex that you need intelectual outliers to solve them. Or both effects occur at the same time since people could work on two paradigm shifts at once but on a larger timescale. It may also be that the "far left" are right and there is a fundamental flaw in capitalism which causes periodical large scale crisis. these periods may cause increase in unemployment thus decrease number of researchers and thus cause K-waves.
Edit: I just saw the latest picture of A JW Goldschmidt, who seem to acknowledge some of my issued because the waves differ in length. So it seems they are no "wave" rolling through history but rather a description of the cycle of new technology.
Another thing that bothers me is that these "large scale" theories remind me of Marx theory of history and that didn't work out that well. Furthermore it is quite bold to start to see patterns in modern human history from just about ~300 years of the industrial revolution. There could be a lot of noise in it. Last point is a technical thing: there is no "y-axis". And this is a real problem since you can't just calculate "inflation" like that. How much would my computer cost 10 years ago? prob. a lot more, since it was usable and better by this times standards. 50 years ago? questionable. People could reverse engineer a lot but it wouldn't have direct effects on costumers. 300 years ago? worthless piece of junk where nobody would understand what it could do. (assuming you don't explain them what it does)
In the technologist interpretation of kondratiev's cycle, there is an important distinction that is made between "incremental" innovations and "radical" innovations. The increase in scientist doesn't mean that the wavelength of the cycle may decrease because there are economical mechanism that play in the cycle that goes beyond the population : it's not only a question of "research" but how and where you are researching. For exemple, Schumpeter consider that at the end of a crisis, there is a mecanism of "creative destruction" that occur, where the ressources (money and men mostly) that were used in a specific industry that is destroyed by the crisis is reinvested in other type of industries where there are possibilities for radical innovations. It's that process that permit research in fields where there are radical innovations and not the number of scientist nor our knowledge.
From an economic perspective, Schumpeter's interpretation of the Kondratiev's cycle is really interesting but people should not misunderstand why the interpretation was needed : Kondratiev's cycle came with deflation periods, and deflation was described as a central mecanism of the cycle. In today's world, deflation is not really a common occurence, and the trend is completly different from how it was at Kondratiev's time (it was flat, not it's going up). It's attracting to think that there are some kind of grand economic and historic scheme that repeat itself and that could define for us how and when revolutions are going to occur, but in my opinion that's kinda wrong.
well, thank you for that. it still doesn't convince me.
Just to add for the first paragraph: Due to the increase of scientists there open up more fields which we can research at the same time. For example: A lot of people are researchers in the field of communication systems and computers, but there are also vast improvements made in genetic engineering. So it isn't like Civ 5 where we are researching "optics" and nothing but optics. So it's quite arbitrary to sum them both together because they happen "in between two crysis".(even that being questionable since you said that there are no more deflations).
I'm not saying that we are only researching in one area. The idea of neo technologists economist like Freeman is that there is more to innovations than just long term productivity gains, but that some innovations (radical innovations) are like at the center of an economic model (what they call a technologic system) : the usage of the petrol for the industrial era for exemple. Most of the innovations that comes afterwards are only innovations that take the radical innovation and apply it to another field or make it more efficient, but the society as a whole is based around this radical innovation. According to them, there are conditions that are needed for our society to really invest and use economically a new technology that could completly change our view on things, our economy but also our society as a whole. One of that condition is that our old innovations are unable to progress anymore to a point where it push us to a crisis, and a lot of ressources are unused and thus can be reinvested in other fields - but it's not the only "condition", and we could easily extrapolate to say that there are social conditions.
fair enough.
You must also take into consideration that the world "innovation" doesn't refer to a new technology, but to the usage of that technology and especially the economic and social valorisation of that technology. Maybe we already researched something that could completly change our world, but we are not using it broadly for various reasons.
well the most obvious reason would be that it doesn't compete well with technology we have at hand.
But yeah in modern economy there is some kind of attractiveness to the idea that the more scientist, the more long term growth. The european 2020 is based around an economy of "knowledge"... it didn't really helped our growth to be fair, and I don't really see europe as the region that will really change the world and give birth to that new "paradigm".
While I also do think that more science = better, I also don't see Europe doing quite well. Germany is at the height of its power. But its society is overly aging and not trying hard enough to get more children. They also dump a lot of money into solar power and windcraft without proper storing technology. I don't know much about France but I heard the quota of gvmt is quite high and thus the industry is quite unflexible. Let alone UK who basically deindustrialized a lot.
@Artax: Because we believe in the good of mankind and the power of innovation. We never believed that we could feed 7b people but as it seems we will be able to sustain more than 10b. Never in the history of humanity so much people had this much wealth. Also it seems that your examples are rather poorly chosen: Money in itself has no value. But behind this stands the power of the country it issues. As long as "the west" stays powerful we will not suffer reduction in life quality. (also: lol at the water thing. what is this? 1980?)
On August 02 2013 03:06 packrat386 wrote: Precious metal's, helium 3, space solar power. All of these things require a large presence in space and far outweigh the costs of the commercial ventures to retrieve them.
I was going to ask you for numbers to support this astonishing claim, but since you lump in "solar power" it's pretty clear that you're bullshitting.
The idea of sending rockets into space to farm solar power and then take it back is crazy. It's only something that someone who hasn't studied high school physics could possibly entertain.
As for precious minerals and helium 3..."precious minerals" encompasses a variety of things, but helium 3 costs $100 per litre. The cost of sending a manned rocket to Mars is over a trillion dollars. Go figure.
You should try reading some of the articles that I linked to. A lot of lanthanide and actinide metals are found in incredibly small quantities on earth (we call these rare earth metals) but you can come across asteroids that are made up entirely of these metals. A lot of them are critical for new technology and industry so having a larger supply would be great.
As for space solar power, the idea is not to "mine" solar power in batteries and bring it back, but to put solar panels on the moon and in orbit and then send the energy back using microwave energy transfer. A lot of people believe in the technology, so here are 2 sources just off the top of my head that thing you're wrong
Both of them are infinitely more qualified than some random guy on the internet. Next time try reading before asserting that I can't possibly be right.
I haven't been able to respond for the last two weeks, but this is just infuriating.
You clearly haven't read the papers you refer to, because they have NOTHING to do with your original claim that it's a good idea to colonize Mars for the purpose of solar energy and helium-3.
Neither of the papers mention helium-3 (whose cost of $100 per litre would be dwarfed by the cost of transportation back from Mars). Both papers are about harnessing energy from the Sun by means of satellites in geosynchronous orbits. As goes without saying, that is a different proposition from putting solar panels on Mars. The optimal position for any solar panel array certainly wouldn't be on Mars. The papers you refer to take this for this granted.
On August 02 2013 03:06 packrat386 wrote: Precious metal's, helium 3, space solar power. All of these things require a large presence in space and far outweigh the costs of the commercial ventures to retrieve them.
I was going to ask you for numbers to support this astonishing claim, but since you lump in "solar power" it's pretty clear that you're bullshitting.
The idea of sending rockets into space to farm solar power and then take it back is crazy. It's only something that someone who hasn't studied high school physics could possibly entertain.
As for precious minerals and helium 3..."precious minerals" encompasses a variety of things, but helium 3 costs $100 per litre. The cost of sending a manned rocket to Mars is over a trillion dollars. Go figure.
You should try reading some of the articles that I linked to. A lot of lanthanide and actinide metals are found in incredibly small quantities on earth (we call these rare earth metals) but you can come across asteroids that are made up entirely of these metals. A lot of them are critical for new technology and industry so having a larger supply would be great.
As for space solar power, the idea is not to "mine" solar power in batteries and bring it back, but to put solar panels on the moon and in orbit and then send the energy back using microwave energy transfer. A lot of people believe in the technology, so here are 2 sources just off the top of my head that thing you're wrong
Both of them are infinitely more qualified than some random guy on the internet. Next time try reading before asserting that I can't possibly be right.
I haven't been able to respond for the last two weeks, but this is just infuriating.
You clearly haven't read the papers you refer to, because they have NOTHING to do with your original claim that it's a good idea to colonize Mars for the purpose of solar energy and helium-3.
Neither of the papers mention helium-3 (whose cost of $100 per litre would be dwarfed by the cost of transportation back from Mars). Both papers are about harnessing energy from the Sun by means of satellites in geosynchronous orbits. As goes without saying, that is a different proposition from putting solar panels on Mars. The optimal position for any solar panel array certainly wouldn't be on Mars. The papers you refer to take this for this granted.
Helium 3 is a reason to visit the moon and asteroids, I never said we should go to mars for that. The reason you would go to mars is because of the 2 articles that I linked indicating that we need to get off the rock in the long run.
If a firm is eventually able to bring ore down to Earth, the total wealth available to humanity will be increased. The estimated Helium-3 reserves on our moon would create, in a controlled fusion reaction, 10 times as much energy as is contained in Earth's recoverable coal, oil, and gas combined.2° What is stopping these companies now, perhaps more than the money or technology, is the uncertainty of the legal regime. If exploitation of outer space's bounty is our goal, we must establish a space property legal system that creates both incentives and predictability.
All of the authors that I linked to indicated that there is an abundance of natural resources in space that cannot be retrieved because of uncertain legal doctrines. All of them indicate that if these legal doctrines were clarified it would be a relatively simple process to make billions in space. You have absolutely no qualified evidence indicting any of these claims.
Since you will probably assert without any evidence that there are no valuable resources in space, here is another quote from the same article.
Perhaps the most lucrative area of development is the mining of celestial bodies. On the moon, an assay of only 30 km2 of the lunar surface during Apollo-17 turned up deposits of Helium-3, a radiation-free fusion reactor fuel, practically nonexistent on Earth, that is more efficient than any radioactive fuel currently available.6 So-called near-Earth asteroids ("NEAs"), six are closer to Earth than our moon and more than 50 closer than Mars,7 might also be optimal targets for early development. The smaller of these asteroids have negligible gravitational fields, which would reduce fuel costs far below what is necessary for a lunar mission. Many of these NEAs seem to be rich in raw materials that are either rare and valuable on Earth, or common on Earth, needed in space, but expensive to launch.8 For instance, there is accumulating evidence that some NEAs contain gold, rhenium, germanium, and platinum-group metals -- platinum, palladium, iridium, osmium, rhodium, and ruthenium -- at concentrations of up to 100 times those that are mined on Earth.9 Glenn Reynolds0 has observed, "The smallest known near-Earth metal asteroid contains more metal than has been mined by humanity since the beginning of time."'" It has been estimated that 2,000 NEAs larger than 1 km in diameter exist.
On August 17 2013 00:52 packrat386 wrote: Helium 3 is a reason to visit the moon and asteroids, I never said we should go to mars for that. The reason you would go to mars is because of the 2 articles that I linked indicating that we need to get off the rock in the long run.
Two points here:
(1) The author is speculating about the possibility that fusion engines will be invented one day. Cold fusion hasn't been discovered yet and that's the only controlled-fusion reaction that is economically viable. The value of helium-3 at this date, as I mentioned, is about $300 a litre. Your point about helium-3 can be dismissed even though you've conveniently changed the subject to colonizing the Moon when the post I critiqued was about putting a colony on MARS.
(2) I see you've backed off your claims about colonizing Mars for space solar energy. That is because you can't defend that and you know that NOBODY would colonize Mars just to place solar panels.
Western strategists need to look at all potential background shifts and the latest identifies a lot of what's been mentioned here already. But my #1 prospect for earth shattering paradigm shift is the collapse of Western populations, and a concurrent acceleration of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and North African and Arabic populations.
The aging of G8 (now the G7 + Russia) population is clearly underway, and as Baby Boomers and their parents debilitate and pass on, Western-oriented populations will shrink and transition, and the wealth and influence of Europe and Japan and their sphere of allies will diminish. By 2024, half of France's kindergarten cohort will be of North African descent. Similar transitions will occur across all of Western Europe between 2030 and 2060: most quickly in urban centers but continuing to rur arwas as well. And by the end of the 21st C. Western Europe as we knew it a generation ago will be gone.
Depending on how that Western "population bust" demographic transition unfolds, all paradigms we have grown accustomed to will be subject to radical change.
Corrections to the above include: the latest (strategic assumptions on major trends) includes what's already been mentioned. Also, from 2030-2060, Europe's demographic transition will start in urban centers but migrate to RURAL AREAS AS WELL. (Putting the blame for that typo on the stupid "smart phone")
EPT
