Sounds like a version of public transportation. I assume there will be appropriate tolls to defray the cost, right.
Pass DIY Addict
Joined 2000
Paid Member
Just to poke, because it's fun: Upon what is such confidence founded? I hear people say this ALL of the time: "That can't happen!" So, I simply ask why not? Humanity tends to be pretty arrogant in our statements like this. Do people think that because it's never happened before that it simply can't happen in the future? This is like investing in the stock market, everyone knows that "Past performance does not guarantee future returns." When I challenge this sentiment, people often respond: "Well, we won't LET it happen." To this, I say "Really?!?!" I would like to believe this, but I don't. So, in order to increase my confidence that humanity will rise up and with a single voice, declare: "No, we will not allow AI to become sentient!", please show me an example of when humanity has done this in the past in another domain. What single event has galvanized society to rise up and declare: "NO!" in the past? Having an example that we've been able to do this in the past will increase my confidence that we'll be able to do it again in the future. Having never done this before, I lack the confidence that we'll be able to do it for the first time, when it really matters.
Everything we do is a march to more and more automation for the sake of better, cheaper, faster. All of this eventually leads to technology becoming more efficient, less expensive, and performing better than when we don't use technology. In the short term, it all makes prefect business sense (better, cheaper, faster). In the long game (several decades to a century), it will create significant challenge. Apple has everyone trained to camp out on sidewalks for the "next" iPhone. The lemmings love it. Will did this for the iPhone 5, the 6, the 7, the 8. Will we do it for the iPhone 47, 48, 49? The 156, the 157? I think so. Will YOU not purchase the next iPhone? Will YOU not use Amazon? Will YOU not use Google? Will YOU not buy an autonomous vehicle? Where will YOU draw the line?
If YOU don't draw that line, YOU will most certainly cross it!
Last edited:
True I did'nt read all the posts but of those I read I did'nt see a single one that said - human population out of control.
Africa - most populations have gone up x 10 times in less than a century. Massive destruction of once fertile lands. Would the Arab Spring have happened without vast numbers of young people who have zero chance of any kind of employment - no.
The whole tragic Syria thing and never a word about population explosion or a 10 year drought. You see TV of the totally detroyed cities but not a comment that before the destruction these big cities are in desert/ non producing locations. Bangladesh once a small population now 200 million with virtually all the land just above sea level. It's not in dispute that sea levels are rising and totally irrelevant to argue why, they are, so where do 200 million people go.
Northern Europe/Scandinavia - you can forget about any kind of future for the Netherlands/Denmark, the whole of northern Germany, most of Sweden and Finland/Baltic States and huge swathes of Russia - now throw in robotisation and the nightmare is clear. Yes I know there are lots of Macawbers around, their theorising will soon enough turn into a living nightmare.
And the tragedy is that with sensible population control from the 1930s onward, we could have been looking forward to robotisation and it's many benefits to a small well informed human population.
This forum quite rightly has a no religion or politics rule, what a shame that the whole world does'nt.
Africa - most populations have gone up x 10 times in less than a century. Massive destruction of once fertile lands. Would the Arab Spring have happened without vast numbers of young people who have zero chance of any kind of employment - no.
The whole tragic Syria thing and never a word about population explosion or a 10 year drought. You see TV of the totally detroyed cities but not a comment that before the destruction these big cities are in desert/ non producing locations. Bangladesh once a small population now 200 million with virtually all the land just above sea level. It's not in dispute that sea levels are rising and totally irrelevant to argue why, they are, so where do 200 million people go.
Northern Europe/Scandinavia - you can forget about any kind of future for the Netherlands/Denmark, the whole of northern Germany, most of Sweden and Finland/Baltic States and huge swathes of Russia - now throw in robotisation and the nightmare is clear. Yes I know there are lots of Macawbers around, their theorising will soon enough turn into a living nightmare.
And the tragedy is that with sensible population control from the 1930s onward, we could have been looking forward to robotisation and it's many benefits to a small well informed human population.
This forum quite rightly has a no religion or politics rule, what a shame that the whole world does'nt.
You have my sympathy for your concerns over the compliant sheeples who are roaming around on our streets in zombie mode with their faces pointing down towards a dumbing down device in their hands, and it gets much worse with younger generation, many of them are complete virtual life drug junkies.
But don't forget to look into the latter 2/3 part you quoted, search and you will understand.
The exploding population is a concern, especially when everyone wants to live the western life style, it's going to require a LOT of energy.
Then there are those who use to quote the statement which says we can fit the whole earth population in Texas...
The odd thing about our planet and its population is that if we were on Mars we would be making calculated and informed scientific decisions with a fully trained astronaut team who has gone through the entire procedure right down to the last minute in painful detail of what they are going to do next and why they are doing it.
Just look at the Apollo missions to see that this is true.
My point is, to get your brain engaged into that form of thinking. Okay, have you got it yet? You realize that on the moon and in frequent space missions there is a massive checklist for everything, even for the time that you sleep and for the time that you eat and exercise.
Okay. now imagine you're on earth again, and completely tear up and throw away that rulebook. This is what EVERYONE is doing right now.
If you haven't realized it by now you should be feeling a sense of complete and utter chaos when you reflect upon those procedural tasks and what we are doing on earth right now. Maddening isn't it.
We built our cities next to shorelines and continue to ignore the problem to the point that we are sticking dollar bills in our ears, donning a pink tu-tu and pretending that money can fix the problem by running around the room chanting fancy engineering words! Yes! We are crazy! Just like Jim Carrey!
YouTube
^ Proof of this.
Earth Under Water Worldwide Flooding Sea Level Rise (SLR) - YouTube
There is SEA WATER in the streets of Miami and people are still buying into that market because of dynamo-driven (Prefer the unstoppable derailing train analogy?) market economics!
If that doesn't put fear into you about the next 10-20-50 years I don't know what will.
You CANT continue to live in Miami! Full stop! You have to get out! Not buy a multi-million dollar house there!
I cannot possibly fathom thinking in such a small timescale as 10-20 years. 10 years goes by VERY quickly... if you ask me
Okay. lets change gears a bit here and now realize that the reality is unless you are preparing for a future whereby millions of people are/will be banging on your door to get your food. Where an economy has completely collapsed. Where heatwaves and freezing winters are killing your crops. You'll be either very disadvantaged or very dead.
And keep calm, and realize yet again, that all you need to do is to grab a shelf and put food onto it, start bottling in Ball mason jars and find a new place to live.
And heres hoping that we will do the right thing and use AI and robots and computers to fix the problem of climate change, to de-pollute the earth and feed and heal and treat the poor, and reduce our footprint worldwide.
I've already done my part. I've put solar on the roof. I'm growing and bottling my own rudimentary foods. And maybe someday I'll even own an electric scooter/car.
The future doesn't need to be grim, but we do need to get our ***** into gear and make the changes happen.
Use an electric powered scooter instead of a car for small trips around town (if possible, traffic is really heavy here for me).
Put solar on your roof, grid-tie or off-grid, doesn't matter.
Start stockpiling food so you don't make so many trips to the stores, which lowers your footprint.
Start growing some foods instead of buying them, to stop the long trips from farm to table.
Lower your power consumption at home.
Many other options.
And I hate to admit it but drone deliveries do indeed reduce our carbon footprints.
And so do ATMs and automated cashiers.
But that is also reducing the carbon footprint by putting somebody out of a job.
Last edited:
Excellent post!
I have been aware for at least the last fifteen years that ultimately, all our current environmental problems are population problems.
Researching when our population problems started is fascinating. Can we identify a point where we clearly had too many people for our planet to handle?
It turns out, we can. The story is a fascinating mix of science, politics, and hubris.
Plants need nitrogen to grow, and most plants cannot absorb nitrogen directly from the air; so they depend on lightning in the earth's atmosphere to convert inert atmospheric nitrogen into water-soluble nitrogen compounds, which rain brings down into the soil, feeding the plants.
So the amount of lightning that occurs in the earth's atmosphere is one of the natural limits to human population growth.
The evidence is that, around 250 years ago, in the second half of the 1700s, we hit that limit - we could not grow enough crops to feed everyone, there simply wasn't enough nitrogen in the soil. Put another way, there simply wasn't enough lightning occurring on Earth to support the human population!
Adding manure to the soil (animal excrement contains nitrogen compounds) was already routine, but farmers were running out of enough manure, and people were still going hungry due to lack of enough crops.
For the next century or so, there were "guano wars". Rich deposits of guano (bird poop!) were found in Bolivia along the coast, and the countries of the world were desperate for it, to use as fertilizer to feed their starving populations.
So much wealth was involved that war began, involving Bolivia, Peru, and Chile, and the dozens of other nations that were the customers for guano. It ended with Chile annexing much of the guano-rich coastal lands that used to belong to Bolivia.
Eventually the guano began to run out, much as petroleum is running out today. The spectre of mas global starvation loomed, until a German scientist (Haber) discovered a way to manufacture synthetic ammonia, essentially doing in a factory what lightning does in the air - synthetic "nitrogen fixing".
So technology saved us. Synthetic ammonia became the basis for artificial fertilizers, and suddenly the world could grow more crops. Just pile on the fertilizer.
The interesting part of the story is that we (humans) actually exceeded the carrying capacity of our planet around 250 years ago, when the human population was maybe 700 million. Since then, we've repeatedly found ways to stave off disaster, and we've multiplied our numbers more than tenfold, now exceeding 7000 million.
In other words, we've been incredibly clever and resourceful, and have built a mile-high house of cards, on top of which we're all perched precariously now.
The thing about a really tall house of cards is, that it is inherently really unstable, and eventually, it simply has to collapse.
Will the collapse happen in ten years? Fifty? A hundred? Two hundred? I have absolutely no idea, though I very much doubt we have another two centuries left before we're in serious trouble. There is a good case for saying we're already in serious trouble, and it's worsening by the decade.
-Gnobuddy
The only problem with that idea is that petroleum products will never go away. Even if it takes an army of 3rd world citizens we will still have oil refineries to use for farming and the transport of food into cities will take highest priority. The consumption of oil will however reduce significantly. Which is a good thing, it preserves a very precious commodity which is irreplaceable. This will also coincidentally solve global warming.
So even if a collapse does occur there will still be people working and living, there may not be as many people on the earth but there will still be a significant amount. We may only have a die off of only 30%, or none at all. Its not however as dramatic as some people believe.
DON'T PANIC! - Dad's Army: YouTube
And electric cars are a great success so people will still have personal transportation to and from work (and public transportation could play a much larger role.) Even charging the car at work is a reality.
So it is not all doom and gloom, not all of us will go away. But times will change eventually for the better because our society will be a far more robust one. A far more efficient one.
Last edited:
Pass DIY Addict
Joined 2000
Paid Member
When exploring topics like automation, robots, and AI, there is a fundamental question that seems not to have come up: Which is the more appropriate metaphor to describe our society in the context of technology- an on-ramp or a pendulum?
If the best metaphor is that we are currently on a technological "on ramp" (for example, no going back) I think we can expect to see technological use (and abuse) continue to grow and cause problems for us as more time continues to go by. Sure, technology will bring improvements as well, but it is currently far from clear which outcome (benefits or drawbacks) is more likely.
If, however, the above metaphor is inaccurate, perhaps a better metaphor is to view society's use of technology as a "clock pendulum" that swings back and forth over time, then a new question arises: Since society has no "gravity" in and of itself, what is the mechanism that will begin to slow the pendulum and eventually push it back the other way? Stated another way, which technology will our smartphone addicted society specifically choose NOT to adopt because it creates more problems than it solves???
If the best metaphor is that we are currently on a technological "on ramp" (for example, no going back) I think we can expect to see technological use (and abuse) continue to grow and cause problems for us as more time continues to go by. Sure, technology will bring improvements as well, but it is currently far from clear which outcome (benefits or drawbacks) is more likely.
If, however, the above metaphor is inaccurate, perhaps a better metaphor is to view society's use of technology as a "clock pendulum" that swings back and forth over time, then a new question arises: Since society has no "gravity" in and of itself, what is the mechanism that will begin to slow the pendulum and eventually push it back the other way? Stated another way, which technology will our smartphone addicted society specifically choose NOT to adopt because it creates more problems than it solves???
Have a nice day
The smartphone does a lot of positive things as well. Like keeping people accountable to their actions, such as recording crime as evidence for later convictions, police brutality, etc.
The iPhone however is pure evil and so is the company that makes it. I doubt that apple will be around for much longer as a company however so that will fix itself and we will be left with just Android.
The problem exists elsewhere, a smart phone is just a tool. The problem is systemic from the very existence of consumerism centered in western society.
I can prove this because I can relate a smart phone with just about any other appliance or device such as a car.
But the 2 latter videos (first one is ok) center themselves around the notion that the smart phone is the cause of all of modern society's problems. Not true, in the 30s-80s we were all distracted by the newspaper.
If you want to fight a battle properly make sure you are hitting the right enemy.
This documentary hits the right target: YouTube - The Century Of The Self
Last edited:
I wasn't referring to petroleum alone - we have a number of impending catastrophes building up steam. Among them, climate change rendering croplands unusable and equatorial countries unlivable, the already serious collapse of marine life, and the fact that we're starting to run out of many necessary resources, including drinkable fresh water.
Unfortunately, probably not. For example, it is estimated that the excess CO2 already absorbed by the ocean, may take over a thousand years to diffuse back out into the atmosphere, even if we humans magically stopped all our CO2 emissions now.
There is also the increasing possibility that we may have already gone past the point of no return - the ocean floor has warmed up enough for methane to start bubbling out from frozen clathyrate deposits, the arctic tundra has warmed up enough for methane to be gushing out from thawing grass that was buried under what used to be permafrost, and it has just been discovered that CO2 emissions from forests are starting to rise as the land warms up and CO2-producing bacteria start to increase.
All these are positive-feedback systems: there is more and more emission of methane and carbon dioxide as warming continues, and the increased amounts of methane and carbon dioxide cause still more warming, so you have a vicious circle that can quickly spiral completely out of our (human) control. Once greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost and ocean floors exceed human CO2 emissions, the story is all over; nature will take its course, and the human race will just be bystanders.
I have the same guess, we are a versatile and adaptable species, and it is hard to completely wipe out 7.5 billion individuals.
Only? That would be 2.25 billion people dead. The most horrific tragedy in human history, by far. WWII death toll estimates top out at 80 million, already horrific. 2.25 billion would be nearly thirty times as many people.
Where are the electric jumbo-jets? The electric big-rigs (trucks)? The electric container ships that bring millions of tons of products from China to countries all over the world?
All of these pollute far more than cars do, in some cases, tens or hundreds or thousands of times more (think about the horsepower needed to move a ship, or get a big passenger jet off the ground and up to mach 0.7).
And we don't have the slightest clue how to replace these much bigger polluters with electric equivalents.
We are dealing with much bigger problems than transportation here.
-Gnobuddy
They are on the build phase right now actually. Especially the trucks.
YouTube
It may be too little too late though. I'll give you that.
Last edited:
People have been saying that for at least 20 years, yet today it is the higest valued corporation in the world. I have an iPhone but only use it as a phone, it is a nice bit of kit. And i really love my Macs (more than one), as they let me do more with less effort than the alternatives.
dave
Early prototype stage, and only with the trucks.
I Googled, and the only electric big rigs I can find are prototypes, with unusably small ranges. How practical is a big-rig that needs to stop and recharge for a couple of hours every hundred miles? (Cummins unveils an electric big rig weeks before Tesla)
A big-rig engine might have 500 horsepower ( The Extraordinary Engine Configurations of 18-Wheelers ). A Boeing 777 has two 110,000 horsepower engines, for a total of 220,000 horsepower (Some Unbelievable Statistics About The GE Engine On The Boeing 777 - Business Insider).
So the Boeing 777 has four hundred and forty times as much horsepower as the big-rig. For both truck and airplane, the horsepower comes from burning fuel, so more horsepower always means more carbon emissions.
And the jet engine has no pollution controls whatsoever, so it probably emits much more than four hundred and forty times as much pollution as the big-rig - one thousand times as much is probably closer to the mark.
So: one airplane equals roughly 1000 big-rigs worth of pollution, to an order of magnitude estimate. One big-rig equals roughly ten to forty cars worth of pollution (you typically use only 15 hp to cruise around in your car, with bigger peaks during acceleration.)
So our order of magnitude estimate is that one jetplane pollutes as much as 10,000 to 40,000 cars. Why are we putting the pollution controls on the cars, which are tiny fleas compared to the elephantine pollution from the jet planes?
This is also why we won't see electric equivalents to passenger jetliners any time soon. You can't just make motors and batteries 1000 times bigger; we don't know how. And the energy density of our best production batteries is still basically two orders of magnitude worse than jet fuel - so the battery will weigh fifty to a hundred times more than the fuel it's replacing, or the range will be fifty to a hundred times less. Neither scenario is practical.
Electric motors are more efficient than jets and piston engines, so the actual numbers will work out a bit better than fifty or a hundred times. If we're very lucky, the batteries needed for equivalent range might only weigh fifteen times as much as the jet fuel they replace.
(The plane couldn't get off the ground, and in fact, would collapse from its own weight.)Truthfully, this is one case where I would be very happy - overjoyed - to find out that I have been utterly wrong, a total idiot who made a staggeringly huge miscalculation.
Because, if I'm right, it means suffering and devastation on a scale humanity has never seen before.
-Gnobuddy
1) "Has the smartphone destroyed a generation?": Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? - The Atlantic
2) "No, smarthpones are not destroying a generation": No, Smartphones are Not Destroying a Generation | Psychology Today
I don't know about "destroying", but what I do see is a powerful addiction - many, probably the majority, of smartphone owners feel painful withdrawal symptoms if deprived of their fondle-slabs, in some cases, within as little as five to ten minutes.
Reported symptoms typically include anxiety, a growing sense of isolation and loss, fear of disconnection from everyone, et cetera.
It sounds a lot like what a toddler experiences when he/she loses sight of Mommy in a supermarket. Except it's happening to people whose bodies are adult.
-Gnobuddy
2) "No, smarthpones are not destroying a generation": No, Smartphones are Not Destroying a Generation | Psychology Today
I don't know about "destroying", but what I do see is a powerful addiction - many, probably the majority, of smartphone owners feel painful withdrawal symptoms if deprived of their fondle-slabs, in some cases, within as little as five to ten minutes.
Reported symptoms typically include anxiety, a growing sense of isolation and loss, fear of disconnection from everyone, et cetera.
It sounds a lot like what a toddler experiences when he/she loses sight of Mommy in a supermarket. Except it's happening to people whose bodies are adult.
-Gnobuddy
I think Moss said it best:
"There's an iPhone Jen! An actual iPhone!"
"I may be able to get an iPhone without giving any money to Apple!"
"I'll be living the dream."
Attachments
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.