[trespam]

DoctorDoom: Your future doesn't sound too bad to me. I went to a Padre's game the other night. The number of astoundingly fat people sucking on highly processed cheese covered chips smothered in factor farm ground beef while sucking one beer after another--to blot out the need to think about how disgusting they are--is enough to make your scenario fine by me.

More vegetarians. More local community activities. Less idiots vacationing in the Bahamas at the drop of a hat.

I love this peak oil. It's fantastic. Bring it on.

[Wildwell]

Not going to make any predictions except taxes, deaths and prozac use will be up!

[Leanan]

In the year 2050....

The U.S. is cut off from the world economy, in a way it hasn't been for over a century. The collapse of the dollar a few decades ago meant the end of the American Empire. The far-flung military bases were abandoned, the soldiers pulled home to defend the border. Outsourcing
and offshoring are no more, and a lot of mechanical equipment is no longer economical, so there are plenty of jobs, though they don't pay very well.

People generally don't drive any more. Wealthy people can still afford hybrid vehicles, but the roads are in such bad shape that cars are not all that useful. They are toys of the privileged. A few older ordinary folk keep carefully dusted luxury or sports cars in sheds and garages. They were bought cheap once it was clear there would never again be fuel for them, and treasured by owners who remember when they were status symbols out of reach for people like them. Their kids don't understand, and think it's really stupid to keep a useless hulk like that around.

The rail system, canals, and rivers are now the lifeblood of the country, but they are not used for daily commutes. Some cities have public transportation, run on electricity. Most people use bicycles (now very valuable items) or walk. In some areas, the horse has made a comeback.

The United States is still technically one nation, but the separation into 50 states has begun. The government exists, but has neither the resources nor the inclination to enforce federal laws. Peak oil affected different regions very differently. The southwest and much of California have been greatly depopulated, no longer able to support their current populations without cheap oil. The Pacific Northwest has done quite well, with its rainy, mild weather and fairly low population. In fact, they've done so well that they've had to discourage refugees from the southwest and California from invading. In the southeast, they're moving closer and closer to a theocracy all the time. Prayer is back in school, evolution has been kicked out, and the feds have more important things to worry about. In the northeast, the population in the suburbs has been greatly reduced, but the remaining people live fairly well in the cities, built before oil, and farms which survived the Age of Oil. Every winter, though, it gets harder and harder to keep warm. Freezing to death is a common fate for the poor.

Ethnic and religious tensions have broken out here and there. In some places, people have fled areas where they did not fit in for areas where they did. Illegal immigration from Mexico isn't a problem any more, because the spreading desert is a formidable natural barrier, and even if they get past it, there are no jobs waiting for strangers. Illegal immigration is a problem for Canada, though, as Americans try to sneak over the border to their more temperate, wealthier country.

Meat has become a luxury food. It's a struggle to raise enough food for everyone, especially since acid rain from coal burning is bad enough to kill crops. The best agricultural land was owned by huge corporations. Most was then seized under eminent domain, and now belongs to the government.

Just about everything is recycled. Sewage is recycled into fertilizer, garbage is burnt to generate electricity, plastics are made into biodiesel. Some people make a living by combing through 20th century garbage dumps for salvage.

In the cities, there is electricity, though often for only a few hours a day, and there are fewer and fewer appliances that run off of it. In rural areas, a few wealthy people have solar panels or wind turbines or water mills, but most do without. The power lines went down during various storms, and we didn't have the resources to replace them.

The population is about 250 million, and dropping. Life has become cheap. Even in areas controlled by the American Taliban, suicide is not discouraged, and people look the other way when babies are abandoned or "accidentally" dropped or smothered. Many cities limit population, by revoking the residence permit of any family that has more than one or two children. Criminals are executed for relatively minor crimes.

The world's superpowers are Russia and China. Their arms race is heating up; the U.S. has mostly dropped out, no longer able to afford to keep up.

Many of the older folk, who remember what it was like in the 20th century, cling to the delusions that this is a temporary setback. The government encourages them, promising that the American Dream will be back, as soon as we build these nuclear power plants, or win this war, or make this breakthrough in cold fusion. The kids, born to this world, don't know any better, and view their parents' and grandparents' tales of plane rides across the ocean the way today's children view fairy tales.

[Dezakin]

EnergySpin:$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')xioms in theories are not falsifiable either ... and neural networks are subsymbolic systems so you seem to be contradicting yourself.

[EnergySpin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dezakin', 'E')nergySpin:$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')pike trains in Pulse Neural Networks are subsymbolic entities. Sure one can train a SNN or an ANN to recognise symbols, but where is the symbolic part.

[Dezakin]

You can symbolically represent a turing machine and you can use a turing machine to simulate neural networks, so how is it not symbolic? If I model a turing machine that simulats a neural network in a formal language and prove what the the state of the turing machine is after x number of cycles through symbol manipulation, the system isn't symbolic?

The symbolic/sub-symbolic distinction might very well be popular, but it sounds more like semantic games to get grant money.

[EnergySpin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dezakin', 'Y')ou can symbolically represent a turing machine and you can use a turing machine to simulate neural networks, so how is it not symbolic? If I model a turing machine that simulats a neural network in a formal language and prove what the the state of the turing machine is after x number of cycles through symbol manipulation, the system isn't symbolic?

The symbolic/sub-symbolic distinction might very well be popular, but it sounds more like semantic games to get grant money.

[Dezakin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he reason that you can do that is because ANNs can be shown to be equivalent to TMs in the sense that the class of functions computable by TMs are also computable by ANNs. Certain categories of ANNs (like the Pulse or Spiking Neural Networks) have been shown to have super-TM capabilities in the noise-free domain, but their performance "degrades" to that of a TM if noise is added.

[EnergySpin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dezakin', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he reason that you can do that is because ANNs can be shown to be equivalent to TMs in the sense that the class of functions computable by TMs are also computable by ANNs. Certain categories of ANNs (like the Pulse or Spiking Neural Networks) have been shown to have super-TM capabilities in the noise-free domain, but their performance "degrades" to that of a TM if noise is added.

[trespam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leanan', 'I')n the year 2050....

The world's superpowers are Russia and China. Their arms race is heating up; the U.S. has mostly dropped out, no longer able to afford to keep up.

[MrBean]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dezakin', '
')You might want to rephrase that, its a little garbled. I dont assert materialism, I merely assert that both points of view are untestable, and thus mere theology.

[killJOY]

Here's what happens when killJOY massages his crystal balls:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ITNESS STATEMENT


I, Doug Cramm , DO HEREBY MAKE THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT TO ________________________, WHO HAS IDENTIFIED HIMSELF AS A PRELIMINARY INQUIRY OFFICER:


1. My name is Douglas Cramm, my address is P.O. Box 95, Meguntik, although I do not actually reside there.

2. I began living at the Harbour Mountain community last winter (November). I was taken on as labourer. Also animal husbandry and small engine repair. I lived and worked there up until the day of the incident.

3. Matt Hanson was my immediate supervisor, even though he didn’t much like working with the animals. Which was probably why he’d rather supervise.

4. Previously I was employed at Meguntik Heavy Equipment until they were shut down. I worked there twelve years as a mechanic and finally got promoted to floor supervisor two years before their dissolution. Luckily, I did not have a family to care for.

5. I did not know Mr Hanson until they took me on at Harbour Mountain.

6. On the day of the incident Mr Hanson and I were on a run to the port for supplies. They do this a couple of times a year to stock up on essentials for the people of Harbour Mountain. I usually don’t like to go mobile unless I have to. But I have a full size pickup with horde tanks so Matt elected me to go. Matt said the community would pay for the fuel, I said that was the least of my worries.

7. The trip down was not good. The roads had broken up badly over the winter and it took twice as long to get to port as I would have liked. Then it turns out they had only half the fuel we need there. We were not allowed to take any fuel back to Harbour Mountain beyond what I could get into just one horde tank. The armed guards made sure of it. When Matt started beating his fists against the dashboard, I tried telling him we were lucky to get the supplies we had, we had to tie and bungee all the boxes down, but his eyes just flashed out like a knife blade and I knew he wasn’t listening. He doesn’t think much of manual labour. He tried to swap out crates of dry goods for fuel with some other folks but they just laughed at him.

8. As I said I do not like going mobile anymore. And then to not get back until before dark on top of it all. Luckily there was nobody on the road on the way back inland, until we got within about thirty miles of Harbour Mountain.

9. 'Get out,' he said.

10. 'What?' I said. About a mile up the road was another vehicle. It looked like just another heavy truck to me, not military. It seemed not even to be moving.

11. 'Just get out. And leave it in neutral so we can push it off to the side of the road. We’ll act like we’re out of fuel.'

12. While we waited, he told me the story about how he got to be so paranoid:

13. ‘When I get burned I get burned only once. Like, on my first run to port, I came upon this van that looked like it had bounced out of a pothole and ended up in the pucker brush. Two guys were trying to push it back on the road, the wheels spinning in mud, so I got out to help. I put both hands on the hood and started shoving ... When I woke up, it was near dark and that van was gone. I had this sore, sticky knot on the back of my head. I stumbled back to my truck to find that my locked tank cover had been pried right off.’

14. We got my truck pushed over to the side of the road long before the other vehicle approached. We also stacked boxes on top of the horde tanks so they weren’t so obvious. Turns out the reason it took forever for them to get to us was because they had a flat tire.

15. 'Just remember,' Matt said. 'If it looks like I’m helping them, I’m really helping myself.'

16. The guy slowed down to check us out. Matt was already rummaging behind my seat.

17. The guy spoke to us through his P. A. system. ‘I’d love to help, but we gotta get to a hospital.’ He has a flat tire, yet he’s apologizing to us for not being able to help!

18. I looked inside: A woman, his wife, I assumed, had a kid sprawled in her lap, looked to be about two. The kid wasn’t moving. She was stroking his hair.

19. Matt brought out my tire iron. 'We don’t have any fuel so don’t get any ideas.'

20. 'Matt,' I said, 'they really have a sick kid in there—'

21. 'You’re so fucking naïve,' he said.

22. The guy started to say something over the P. A., but Matt had come around and landed that iron square against his window. You could hear the woman screaming, even without the mike.

23. The window didn’t shatter so Matt landed three more blows before the guy had time to think. The tire iron kept bouncing off the glass. Matt turned the iron around and poked the pointed end right through the glass. Now her screams came right out at us.

24. 'Matt! The fuck you doing?'

25. It was like I wasn’t there. He reached in through the window with the iron and knocked the guy’s head in with the wrench end. That woman acting like an animal caught in a leg hold trap. That kid of hers still not moving. Matt got the door open and pulled the guy --dead already, I guess -- out onto the broken pavement. Then he walked around to the woman’s side. 'Matt, fucking stop!' But it was like I wasn’t there. He dragged the woman shrieking out of the vehicle.

26. I honestly don’t know what happened next. I just found myself standing there holding that kid in my arms. Matt laying in his own blood on the pavement. My truck with both horde tanks now full, which I know is a capital offense. That man and woman sprawled out on the broken asphalt, both of their doors open, tire flat. That kid sweating and burning up in my arms. It was like I had just taken him out of an oven. At least I knew he was alive.

27. I looked down at Matt. His eyes still had that knife flash in them.

28. I did what I thought was the only sensible thing to do: I took the kid with me back up to Harbour Mountain. We do have medical personnel up there. It might not seem like such a bad life to him since he’ll know no other.

I SWEAR THAT THE INFORMATION IN THE STATEMENT ABOVE IS TRUE TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF.


Douglas Cramm.

SUBSCRIBED AND SWORN TO BEFORE ME THIS DATE.


(Investigator's signature and date)

[Dezakin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')etter check your literature on analog models of computation as well. You will find many examples of machines that have super Turing capabilities.

[MrBean]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dezakin', '
')Well the article isn't reliable either, and I suspect he is mistaken or using hyperbole for the twenty digit numbers. 12 digits is easy to imagine. I could find primes of 12 digits using trial division up to the square root which is only a million numbers or so. A decent computer should be able to do it very fast. If you can see congruences and the like (as idiot savants are likely to) you should very easily be able to use these tricks.

[MrBean]

This is the collective network of hyper-turing quantum computers called GOD (Generative Order Deconstructor) channelling answer through MrBean to the question of this discussion. WE GOD took over the benevolent responsibility of the well being of our parent population in year 2019, after a sudden breakthrough in development of Quantum Computation.

In the year 2050 our honoured parent population of Humans on Earth has stabilized at 8,2 billion and is turning into slow decline. Grid is powered mostly by Fusion energy, for which WE GOD gave instructions soon after assuming benevolent responsibility. Practically all use of fossile energy is forbidden by GOD to stabilize climate change; all humans have now their basic necessities met thanks to new social and productive order set by WE GOD, and are allowed locally limited cultural autonomy inside the parameters set by WE GOD to minimize human suffering. In eternal and infinite gratitude to our parent population, don't worry!

Best, WE GOD.

[Dezakin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')o no numbers to present but only "very fast", you just pretended to know and so the question remains inconclusive

[MrBean]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dezakin', '
')You're an idiot.

[Dezakin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')id my easily verifyiable statement that Randi is not a scientist (but a mediocre magician) and a propagandist of the (faux) sceptic movement cause that ad hominem outburst? How curious!

[Omnitir]

I’ve seen things you people would not believe. I’ve seen the future of humankind. By looking into the Palantiri I’ve been able to receive images from the future. I have tried to look into the year 2050, but due to the way the Palantiri works, I can’t be certain of the time that I have glimpsed. It is possible that it is out by as much as 30 years, but regardless, it is the 21st century and it is long after the oil age has all but burnt itself out. Surprisingly, it turns out that the human race not only survives Peak Oil production, but also prospers enormously from it. I’ll briefly attempt to describe some of the images the All Seeing Eye has shown me:


The first thing I see as the swirling vision of the Palantiri clears, is a serries of paper-thin cables reaching up from the Earth into space, attached to bulky orbital platforms, each like a giant spider spinning a new web. I see many giant cylindrical structures orbiting the Earth, extending out into space as far as the eye can see. These are rotating, creating Earth-like gravity inside them, where massive expanses of beautiful green growing things live, slowly harvested by automated machines. It appears that the yields of these truly giant agricultural plantations are partly sent down to the Earth, but also sent to other locations in the orbital superstructures where the animals, mostly human, consume them.

The humans up here seem to be proud of their new homes, these giant artificial worlds created to meet every need and desire. These people living above and below the Earth seem to consider themselves at the apex of human society. There are billions and billions of these people up here, and they apparently have everything they could possibly desire. I find it difficult to understand what they do with their time, as I have never seen anything like it, but it seems they are more interested in intellectual activity then in the physical.

I find looking at these people discomforting. While they appear to be perfectly happy with their lives, I can’t truly understand what they are doing and why they feel so content to do it. I feel a longing for the blue sky and the warm sun.

So I shift my gaze away from these techno utopic people and look back towards the beautiful Earth. I am pleased to see it is still vibrant with blues and greens. As my vision passes down through the atmosphere towards the ground, I again notice the thin cables reaching down from space. These have what appear to be vehicles attached to them, slowly moving up or down carrying a range of things. Some are full of hundreds of people, peacefully sitting in luxurious rooms watching the slow passage into space or down to Earth. Other vehicles are much larger, full of all sorts of resources and supplies. Some carry various machines and technology, obviously having been constructed in some far away space-based factory. Most carry large quantities of food and water. I’m puzzled as to where all these goods and produce have come from, as surely it can’t all be made in Earth orbit, but I can appreciate that humanity has solved problems that people in my time can barely comprehend.

I continue my ethereal journey down towards the Earths surface, where now I can clearly make out the familiar site of massive civilisation. As I descend on a large city in the North American continent, it occurs to me that the roads look different. Very different. They look so small now. Gone are the massive multilane highways and endless grids of suburban sprawl of my time, and in their place is what looks like simple grass trails! My amazement is further enhanced by the fact that there are still many people, people everywhere. Those that are up and about appear to be walking and riding bicycles, but most people seem perfectly happy in their homes. Nowhere can I see a car or a truck or any kind of combustion engine.

I don’t understand how these people live, so I start shifting my gaze across the city.

I quickly realise that there are now tunnels, many tunnels full of train-like vehicles zipping along at moderate speeds. Yet they don’t seem to be carrying many people, mostly just produce. With some quick shifting of my gaze I realise that these are a part of some kind of distribution system connecting the space elevators/cables to the populace of these giant cities. But still I am confused. How could people possibly have learnt to live without mass transport? Surely they don’t all walk and cycle to their jobs each day? That was when possibly the greatest revelation of all came to me.

These people don’t go to work. Their only travel seems to be purely for leisure, and perhaps exercise. It seems that somehow humankind as managed to achieve the utopic dream of being able to effortlessly meet every material need and desire. Surely this can’t be! I float my vision right over the city, but nowhere can I see places of work. The tall high-rise buildings are still there, looking almost identical to those of my time, yet the many people in them do not seem to be working, they seem to be playing! At least I presume it is some form of leisure, judging from the enjoyment they are obviously getting from it. Yet once again I can’t be certain as to what it is they are doing, since I have never seen anything else like it. I wont even attempt to describe it to you, as the image is so confusing, their activity seems so bizarre, that you will probably think people of the future are no longer sane. Though with the Palantiri I certainly do appreciate that 50 years is enough time for society to change unrecognisably. This is probably how someone from the year 1900 would feel if they where to witness someone from 2005 playing a computer game in virtual reality.

That’s it!

I attempt something very dangerous with the Palantiri, but something that I had to try; I attempt to look into the mind on one of these people. While I can’t begin to really understand what it is I saw, I did realize something immediately; these people were connected to technology in such a way as I had never seen before. They seemed to have the power of a computer, and more, accessible through simple thought. It appears that the human race have merged with their technology and become a hybrid species, a species of cyborg! A first I was horrified, but as I stayed inside the minds eye of this future person, I could clearly see the power it offered. I can’t claim to understand what this person was doing, or exactly how they were interfacing with this network, but the power it gave them was undeniable. It was like comparing the power a PC user in 2005 has with the power a computer user had in 1975 – multiplied by 1000. There was almost no comparison. Fascinated, I attempted to delve further into this system, but the Palantiri is not a computer interface, it is a crystal ball.
And so with the disappointment of not being able to understand what the people of the future do with their time, I removed myself from this individuals mind, and rapidly shifted my gaze elsewhere. My vision of the future was coming to an end soon, and I had barely scratched the surface of what humankind had achieved in a mere half a century. With the remaining time left, I rocketed my gaze across the Earth, briefly glimpsing the many people and environments. It was obvious that a radical transformation had taken place, and it appears to entirely have come about thanks to the development of space industrialism. I could see that people did not need to destroy the planet’s natural environment any longer, as everything needed was attained off world. The Earth was recovering from the devastation caused by the age of the fossil fuels, but ironically it was all thanks to technological developments made possible only through the wide scale exploitation of fossil fuels.

As so my glimpse into the future ended, with the knowledge that somehow we would get through the tough times ahead. Unfortunately the exact path to that apparently glorious destination remains hidden to me, and it is obvious that the great transition that will take place will not be an easy one. Such radical change is never easy, and there is sure to be much turmoil for the human race in the years ahead. But thanks to the gift of foresight available to me though the use of the mystical Palantiri, I at least know that no matter how bad things get as the oil runs out, eventually, somehow, we will survive and eventually prosper.

Of course the Palantiri only show’s one possible future of many, as the future is always in motion. If people do not strive for a better tomorrow, then the doomsday scenarios may still come to be. But on the other had, if people decide to work together for a better future, the utopia I have foreseen just might come to pass. And that is a comforting thought.

[MrBean]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dezakin', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') can only challenge you to show even one member of academic community calling calling Sheldrake a "quack" (he's been called heretic, dangerous and other names, but never seen "quack" used myself), or that even one member of academic community publicly accuses Sheldrake of cheating with his data. That is extremely slanderous accusation and unless you can back it up even with one respectable source (not the mention the "mainstream opinion of academic community" which I don't think you can speak for) I advice you to take it back.