Monsters from the Id
Posted on 05/05/2013 7:59:36 PM PDT by presidio9
The crazy man walking down the city street holding a sign that reads “The end is near” might just have a point.
A team of mathematicians, philosophers and scientists at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute say there is ever-increasing evidence that the human race’s reliance on technology could, in fact, lead to its demise.
The group has a forthcoming paper entitled “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority,” arguing that we face a real risk to our own existence. And not a slow demise in some distant, theoretical future. The end could come as soon as the next century.
"There is a great race on between humanity’s technological powers and our wisdom to use those powers well," institute director Nick Bostrom told MSN. "I’m worried that the former will pull too far ahead."
There’s something about the end of the world that we just can’t shake. Even with the paranoia of 2012 Mayan prophecies behind us, people still remain fascinated by the potential for an extinction-level event. And popular culture is happy to indulge in our anxiety. This year alone, two major comedy films are set to debut (“The World’s End” and “This is the End”), which take a humorous look at the end-of-the-world scenarios.
For its part, NASA released a series of answers in 2012 to frequently asked questions about the end of the world.
Interestingly, Bostrom writes that well-known threats, such as asteroids, supervolanic eruptions and earthquakes are not likely to threaten humanity in the near future. Even a nuclear explosion isn’t likely to wipe out the entire population; enough people could survive to rebuild society.
“Empirical impact distributions and scientific models suggest that the likelihood of extinction because of these kinds of risk is extremely small on a time scale of a century or so,”
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I’ve never seen this. Are there articles on these Hedgehog brothers?
Predictions in the ‘70’s said we all should have starved to death by now.
Nah,only the prog/libs would give up; the rest of us would either interbreed with them or kill them
Yea, low-techs!
What a worthless sentence! If it is to be believed, then the human race’s reliance on technology could, in fact, lead to its deliverance.
They have not, yet.
Man will find a way until some BFR ends it all.
Monsters from the Id
72 virgin males, or females, or a mix of both? :-P
Well, it happened to the krell on Forbidden Planet, right?
Most evolutionary branches end in extinction. What makes us think we are “the ones”? Like neanderthal, maybe we’re just another failed branch of our species. Because we make airplanes and computers, we’re exempt? Really?
John B. Calhoun had a series of experiments with rats which gave a lot of insight into species extinction. He set a population of rats up with all the food, water, and security they ever wanted, but only a limited amount of space. Once they filled the space, their behavior changed and became very anti-social, in ways that are like humans today. The end result of every colony was collapse and extinction, even though they never ran out of food.
We are performing this experiment on ourselves on a massive scale. Countries all over the world, such as China, are building mega cities that cram millions of people together in tight living spaces. Yet the cities are designed just like Calhoun's experiments. Already human behavior is beginning to replicate the rats, and our birth rate is collapsing around the world. Japan is leading this demographic, they will become extinct in 900 years at present rates of childbirth.
Um, your model suggests that the population will decrease to some supportable magnitude and then stabilize, not that they will become extinct.
For its part, NASA released a series of answers in 2012 to frequently asked questions about the end of the world.
What is it with Yahoo! News and their obsession with 1-sentence paragraphs anyway?
That is a reasonable, natural belief, but Calhoun's experiments all ended in extinction despite the fact that they had food and water. Even given Calhoun's experiments, it is hard to predict actual extinction, because that is just extrapolating that the present trends will continue forever, and they almost never do.
It’s nuts like these that are ensuring the demise of Great Britain.
I had visions of a beautiful young raquel welch x 72, please. Thank you. I’ll wait right here.
Humans aren’t rats. If you read the crime reports, you’ll see humans are roaches. Roaches will survive a nuclear winter.
Re-title:
“Group Without Faith Believes God Not In Control”
or maybe
“Group Playing At God Loses Faith In Mankind”
or maybe
“Two Half-Wits Make A Quarter Wit - And A Group of Them Concludes Yet Another New Study”
(That there is funny, I don’t care who you are!)
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