PeoplesChamp wrote:CJackson wrote:spaceballer wrote:A lot of press lately on the EM Drive passing peer review. But they do note that there's a chance it's due to artifacts that can't be tested while on Earth, such as the role the Earth's magnetic field may play in creating spurious results with unaccounted for interactions, or other sources of error. Still, getting a peer reviewed paper passed is a big step forward.
Even if it doesn't pan out in space, anything close to a perpetual motion machine could literally save the planet from environmental devastation. That would be its greatest value unless the narrative is the only way the human race survives is to leave.
That's actually what Stephen Hawking believes. He says the way we're going, mankind has between 1K - 10K years left unless we leave the planet.
He's as concerned about AI as the environment, right?
The thing about guys like him or Musk worried about AI eating us for lunch is you need AI to seed the stars so it seems like a Catch-22 proposition.
and 1-10,000 years is a drop in the bucket of time overall, but several thousand years so far is the sum of recorded human history and if we have even 1,000 years left that is enough time to go elsewhere if that is the case
myself, I don't have a clear vision of whether humans survive or not. The odds are against them both in terms of self-destruction and cosmic probabilities like meteor strikes.
I think the real question is whether or not humans can collectively evolve their levels of mutual tolerance, because the emergence of human-machine hybrids is forthcoming alongside intelligent lab-created bio-organisms. Since humans can barely tolerate the personal freedoms of others, I don't see why they should expect other organisms and hybrids to exhibit a greater level of compassion than we do.
So I'd say the odds are the human race may destroy itself with its own inventions that develop their own agendas and that Musk and Hawkings are probably right. We lack collective wisdom as a species and I think the wave of political populism that denies facts in favor of bonehead fantasies about issues like actual economic realities and global warming shows the masses are still unevolved.
The power elite is not enlightened either so the only hope is spiritual awakening as a species and I would not bet on that happening to the degree necessary for survival.
Our evolutionary trend is to escalate, not harmonize and pandora's box is opening right now with biotech soon doing things we can't control and most organisms are not wired for compassion towards other species or even their own.