^^^ That's where GoldenViper and his transhumanism come in. I put some faith in it.

6/3/2008 4:31:51 PM

6/3/2008 4:32:03 PM

Quote :

"so what about corporal evolution. do you guys think we've hit the ceiling of our evolution from monkeys to man? "

dude, within a ridiculously short time period we're going to be able to make our babies (and maybe even ourselves) be whatever the fuck we want

this is the age of biology

6/3/2008 4:32:12 PM

Quote :

"if getting to other star systems and doing good stuff is deemed nearly impossible (it might be... god I hope not)"

I don't see why traveling to other solar systems would be impossible. Hard for squishy fleshbags, maybe, but we'll at least be able to send probes there. Theoretical antimatter designs can manage up to 40% of c. With that kind of speed, you could travel to nearby systems and back repeatedly.

6/3/2008 4:39:07 PM

yeah, i guess

it shouldn't be that big of a deal

6/3/2008 4:40:14 PM

GoldenViper I had thought there were legit safety issues with MPT, but a quick wikipedia search proved that was not in fact the case.

It still seems like an array that was anywhere near the scale that we're discussing would involve mining more material than would be readily mined within the solar system... a partial ring, or large satellite net makes sense.

I still highly doubt that Earth will ever cease to be home base. Global Warming scaremongering aside, the planet has been here a while, I don't think we'll be leaving it... at least the lion's share of man's population won't.

We're still talking thousands of years in the future, and assuming that either Global Thermonuclear War never happens, or we rebuild as one happy-go-lucky One Earth government after said war... I suppose it's possible, but still seems optimistic given mankind's blood lust.

[Edited on June 3, 2008 at 4:43 PM. Reason : double negatives]

6/3/2008 4:42:23 PM

i think global climate change is the scariest thing out there

way scarier than a nuclear war, but I think that no matter what, we can survive that

but we may just push the climate right over the edge... no one really knows

6/3/2008 4:44:46 PM

I can easily imagine the posthumans leaving Earth, but the idea of consuming our planet for resources makes me want to cry. I'd settle for less energy and an intact Earth. Leave a little window in the sphere for our homeworld, okay?

6/3/2008 4:46:16 PM

Quote :

"homeworld"

lol, that reminds me,

6/3/2008 4:49:51 PM

Quote :

"i think global climate change is the scariest thing out there way scarier than a nuclear war, but I think that no matter what, we can survive that but we may just push the climate right over the edge... no one really knows"

Are you insane!?!? Not even Al Gore would be silly enough to compare climate change to a friggin' nuclear war!

Look, climate change is real, it could be a major inconvenience, but it's not like you won't see it coming; just move out of the way.

6/3/2008 11:34:27 PM

Well, runaway climate change could conceivably turn this planet into a second Venus. We'd have to utter idiots to let it progress that far, though.

6/4/2008 10:04:05 AM

Quote :

"Are you insane!?!? Not even Al Gore would be silly enough to compare climate change to a friggin' nuclear war! Look, climate change is real, it could be a major inconvenience, but it's not like you won't see it coming; just move out of the way. "

i will refer you to

Quote :

"Well, runaway climate change could conceivably turn this planet into a second Venus. We'd have to utter idiots to let it progress that far, though."

again, we don't know what may happen...

i like to think of the climate like a giant slumbering bear

you go ahead and poke it...

it may not notice...

it may just swipe at you...

then again, it might bite your freaking head off

the answer, certainly, is not to continue poking it... or god forbid, poke it even harder

[Edited on June 4, 2008 at 9:31 PM. Reason : .]

6/4/2008 9:31:08 PM

That's probably the best analogy for climate change I've ever heard.

6/4/2008 9:37:10 PM

Surviving a Venus-like Earth would be challenging. Animal and planet life would be gone, period. A few humans and their creations might persist, but AI couldn't be that good if it the transformation happen in the first place.

6/4/2008 9:44:43 PM

uhh...

you know that the surface of venus is hot enough to melt lead right?

...

but... on the other hand, venus is a possible place for colonization through the means of maintaining floating cities above the clouds

it would be cool to master such a fucked up planet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus

6/4/2008 10:37:15 PM

it must have sucked for the dinosaurs living on a Venus-like planet.

6/4/2008 10:41:42 PM

^^ Cloud City FTW

6/4/2008 10:43:01 PM

^^^ Why do you think I gave such a grim forecast?

And yes, colonization of the clouds of Venus would be majestic.

Quote :

"it must have sucked for the dinosaurs living on a Venus-like planet."

Wait, what? I'm pretty sure those big lizards didn't survive in lead-melting temperatures.

[Edited on June 4, 2008 at 10:46 PM. Reason : dinos?]

6/4/2008 10:43:28 PM

Venus...

it's got that gravity. I think we could all agree, it would be about the most pimp planet to colonize within at least a few light years.

6/4/2008 10:45:18 PM

I would seriously change my name to Lando and open my own casino there.

I mean that. My entire life would come to a screeching halt and I would pack my bags for Venus.

6/4/2008 10:48:02 PM

Quote :

"it must have sucked for the dinosaurs living on a Venus-like planet"

wrong...

aside from a few massive point disasters (of which, only one has been retardly disasterous) all life have existed in a natural balance with with the climate with relativly SLOW change

it hard to say what will happen because what we are doing is so UNNATURAL

we're taking hydrocarbons that should be locked away FOREVER, burning them, and throwing their byproducts up into the sky

were doing this, honestly, just because

this is completly unprecedented

[Edited on June 4, 2008 at 10:49 PM. Reason : .]

6/4/2008 10:48:19 PM

Early earth was most like Saturn's moon Titan, although it was much more hospitable by the time the dinosaurs landed.

6/4/2008 10:52:09 PM

you mean super duper early earth

6/4/2008 10:54:00 PM

Thats the one.

It's actually pretty amazing that they simulated Titan's atmosphere in the lab and organic compounds suddenly appeared when they introduced lightning. There's also enough liquid methane there to end all of energy problems, the only catch is that it's next to Saturn.

6/4/2008 10:56:47 PM

Wow. A cloud city on Venus sounds almost perfect. Observe:

Quote :

"This is because at an altitude of approximately 50 kilometers (in Venus's upper atmosphere), the pressure and temperature are Earth-like (1 bar and 0-50 degrees Celsius). In addition, in this region, solar energy is abundant. The solar constant at the top of Venus's atmosphere is 2,610 watts per square meter, 1.9 times that of Earth, and the clouds are reflective enough that solar panels pointing downward towards them would be nearly as effective as those pointing upwards towards the sun."

Maybe we should forget about Mars.

6/4/2008 10:57:59 PM

I skipped page 2 so this should have already been said,

1) humanity is wiped out, either by its own actions or something natural/stellar
2) earth keeps spinning
3) creatures keep evolving
4) time moves on

I would love to see a manned mars mission before I die, maybe prevent my future from happening.

6/4/2008 10:58:06 PM

^^ As I understand it you'll be knee-deep in pussy on Venus, while Mars is a total sausage fest.

6/4/2008 11:02:51 PM

^lol

I read something about solar sails being a ridiculously fast and efficient way of travel (they cited some theoretician who claimed it could hit some significant fraction of c, like 10%, I think), but I am neither a physicist nor an engineer. Does anyone know more about that?

6/4/2008 11:19:54 PM

^ I've read the same thing. Various sources give an even higher maximum speed, but it depends on the exact design and so on. Note we still have a few technical challenges to overcome before deploying spacecraft with solar sails. Sadly, they provide miserably low thrust.

6/4/2008 11:34:42 PM

Isn't the same true of ion engines?

6/4/2008 11:35:28 PM

Most engine designs other than chemical rockets, really. I'm not sure, but I think solar sails are even lower thrust than average. This makes them less useful for travel to Mars or Venus. Getting both high thrust and high efficiency ain't easy. An Orion-style craft powered by fusion or antimatter explosives might manage it. Perhaps a handful of fusion designs.

6/4/2008 11:40:53 PM

I don't see how unprecedented what we are doing really is. Before, CO2 was a trace gas; afterwards it will still be a trace gas, not even at record levels in a geologic sense. It is rediculous to suggest Venus as a possible outcome.

6/5/2008 12:27:29 AM

It'd take a lot work, yes. But scientists suspect the atmosphere of Venus was somewhat like Earth's billions of years ago. Runaway greenhouse effect made it what it is today. Remember, water's a greenhouse gas too. Heat turns liquid to steam, and the process feeds on itself.

6/5/2008 12:35:56 AM

ok look earth's atmosphere is not going to become like venus anytime soon. (venus has WAY more atmospheric gasses in the first place.)

lets not do the climate debate in here. there are better places for that.

6/5/2008 8:07:30 AM

yeh turning our atmosphere into a venitian like one, would take literally 100's of nuclear holocausts.

even a massive comet crashing into us wouldn't do it b/c the ice the comet would carry with it would cool things down a bit before it got so hot

talking about earths atmophere like that is a waste of time.


edit: in fact one of the ways i hear of terraforming venus would be bringing some of the ice comets in from the outer edge of the freezing ass kepler belt and crashing them into venus with a shit ton of ice that it would carry. cool huh? hehe

[Edited on June 5, 2008 at 9:35 AM. Reason : .]

6/5/2008 9:34:11 AM

we should terraform Venus and colonize it with genetically engineered humans that give birth to two times as many women as men.

6/5/2008 10:11:15 AM

^

6/5/2008 10:11:36 AM

Quote :

"genetically engineered humans that give birth to two times as many women as men"

That's a nice thought, but it's simply not sustainable. If there were twice as many women as men then, on average, males would have twice as many offspring as females. For every male child you have, you'd get twice as many grandkids as you'd get for each of your female children. Individuals who have predominantly male children will be reproductively much more successful than individuals who have predominantly female children. This will produce a strong selective pressure that drives the gender ratio back to approximately 50/50 within only a few generations.

[Edited on June 5, 2008 at 10:53 AM. Reason : ']

6/5/2008 10:53:08 AM

I've not spent a whole lot of time reading soap box in the past, but I'm curious to hear more about this transhumanism of GV's you guys keep referring to, and I'm wondering if he's read much from Ray Kurzweil about this?
Here's the link that prompted the question, by the way. I'm totally just fishing for information.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/science/03tier.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

6/5/2008 4:24:37 PM

^^ or we could just go 100% homosexual as a society and humans will go extinct in about 100 years

6/5/2008 5:15:54 PM

god, wouldn't that be great

sweaty man on man loving and hot chick on chick action for everyone

perverse and decadent as we spiral into extiction

6/5/2008 5:29:13 PM

^^^^ Very true, but society still moves faster on its feet than natural selection.

In fact, to fully state the rule, it would be this:
It is optimal for parents to spend effort on each sex proportional to how much of the genome of the next generation it contributes.

So, for humans, each sex contributes almost the same amount of the genome to the next generation, and each sex takes almost equal effort to raise, so women give birth to almost equal amounts of both. Interestingly, women contribute slightly more genetic code due to that X-chromosome, and counter intuitively, the 'sex ratio' in societies that don't practice infanticide is about 103 boys to 100 girls.

This means that up until now (mostly the hunter-gather environment), it cost slightly more resources to raise a girl than to raise a boy. Possibly because boys play a role that is more likely to get them killed by a wild bore, thereby costing fewer resources on average (you don't spend any more time raising a dead kid).

So, to make this completely sustainable, we could make having boys take more resources. Or, introduce an artificial factor such as population controls that either reward having girls - freeing up more time for the women to have more children, or restrict future children of women who had boys. Simple as that. I'll leave social commentary to other users here

[Edited on June 5, 2008 at 5:42 PM. Reason : ]

6/5/2008 5:36:40 PM

Mankind's future needs more things like MOTHER FUCKING SKYLAB
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19770020211_1977020211.pdf

6/26/2008 9:03:40 PM

6/27/2008 11:59:47 AM

skylab was CAVERNOUS

6/27/2008 12:04:21 PM

it's alright, the new space hotels will be pretty spacious.

6/27/2008 12:18:09 PM

Mankind can has future?

6/27/2008 2:42:53 PM

I made you a fossil fuel...

But I eated it

6/27/2008 4:36:52 PM

Space elevator? More like http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/153671/

6/28/2008 10:18:03 PM

bttt

8/14/2008 2:08:40 PM