[Sys1]

I'm here for a moment now. Almost 5 years reading and posting on this site and life after the oil crash one. Peak oil changed my world conception. Finally, my main learning is that we didn't hit a point where history ceased to exist as teachers told me at school. There's nothing as false as everlasting. Even the most glorious creations of nature and mankind will eventually disappear, sometime in an instant.

Beside doom and gloom, I noticed on this site that people tend to speak about ''sustainable'' as a purpose. We should live in harmony with nature in order to last as long as possible. Sure it would be great for us, but no matter how respectuous to nature we can be, we as a whole are going to die. Later is better, this is the argument for sustainbility.

By inventing fire, crops, village, mankind started to manipulate nature to preserve itself. Neolithic was the first step on a path leadind to Appolo project.
By giving us free time instead of perpetual gathering and hunting, neolithic put us on the technological way, since we are too intelligent to contemplate nature without playing with it. Some could call that Pandora's box or promethean dream, but it's our destiny.

And now? We have passed peak oil, economy is collapsing because of it, the average guy knows something is wrong and his conditions will first get worse before eventually getting better in the long term located at best beyond skyline.

The future will be far different from the past, I don't think people will argue much about it. It is impossible to vizualize Hummers and business as usual in 2030. It will be different.
I've heard many times about Fermi paradox on the forums. If it were possible to create space travel and infinite energy, some aliens should have already met us or at least left some signs of themselves among the universe. Is it us who are too primitive to see their presence, did they just depleted their planet our simply are we so rare?

Fermi used some virtual statistic to opt for the auto destruction. This is where I disagree. He basically said that intelligence is a curse since it dooms us to die quickly.
Now my word : Is it better to go back to some neolithic that could last for milleniums or better to bet on technology even if the price to pay is the end of our race this century?

May the future be Mad Max or Starwars. There's no reason for this universe to exist since it expands and getting cold under the weight of entropy. If science reach a point where we totally understand this world, we will be able to do things unbelievable. Perhabs the first race in inifinity who will understand the universe will be able to recreate it instead of letting it expand to a wide vacuum. Perhabs it is just a desperate dream I have and we as a whole will evaporate thanks to thermonuclear technology.

Que sera, sera, Whatever will be, will be...

[Bas]

Interesting contemplations, Sys1, and I must say that I share most if not all of your views and questions, hopes and fears. There has to be some philosophical answer as to why this universe or we ourselves exist, and I suspect that these two, intelligent life and the universe itself exist for eachother; there cannot be intelligent life without a universe and vice versa. That said, maybe the universe has had enough intelligent life for it to exist and then again maybe not. Maybe there are many planets with intelligent life that experience a sort of peak-resources after which they decline, without one of them ever reaching beyond the stars, or maybe still we or others will reach for the stars someday. One can still wonder about and/or hope for a startrek kind of future, no matter how deeply one is invested in our current problems of climate change and resource depletion and how these seem to make these science fiction wet dreams impossible.

In my four years on this forum I've seen doomerish predictions come and go, and four years ago most if not all posters believed we would be in far worse shape than we are now, that is if you think our current crisis is mostly due to financial mismanagement and not oil so much, which we can argue about. Either way the next couple of years should tell us how important a factor oil has been in bringing about our current economic woes. And I still believe we might have some time left before we hit the ultimate peak in oil as the current plateau we're on shows no sign of dropping off. Time will tell as you say, but you can't say it's over before it's over, eventhough most people here are eager to anounce the end when the jury is still out and evidence inconclusive.

[Tyler_JC]

This is the kind of discussion we should be having more often in this forum. Great job Sys1!

I agree with your general sentiment but I disagree with the idea that mankind must go to the stars.

Just you look at the energy requirement to move an object the size of the Moon Lander to the nearest star...it would exceed the entire global energy consumption of decades.

This isn't about spending a few hundred billion dollars to get a man to the moon. We'd be looking at spending a few hundred trillion.

The moon landing was the equivalent of walking across the street. Visiting a nearby star is like Magellan's circumnavigation of the world. The problem is the scale.

I just don't believe humanity could ever muster up the resources to do it. Even if we had a singular global focus on it and poured everything into it. I just don't see it as a possibility or even a positive course of action. We should strive to preserve life on Earth, not export it to the universe.

I'm with Eugene Cernan. "We went to explore the Moon, and in fact discovered the Earth."

If we can't make it work here, what makes us think we could make it work out there?

[Plantagenet]

No need to go to the stars just yet. We've got a perfectly good spare planet just a short distance away.

[Ludi]

I don't promote "going back" to anything. Not only is it impossible (conditions are vastly different), it's not necessary, nor desirable, in my opinion.

Those who want to go to the stars are welcome to, if they would please not reduce survival chances for those who will be left behind. Some folks going into space doesn't solve the problems the majority will continue to face here on Earth.

So far, humans living in space seems far-fetched. We've only camped briefly in space, and not very far out in space at that.*

I think there's a large range of opportunities between "going back to the caves" and "escaping to the stars." Some of those might even be possible.


* http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/ ... eltroubles

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sys1', '
')By giving us free time instead of perpetual gathering and hunting.

[Narz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '[')img]http://nai.arc.nasa.gov/seminars/34_Heldmann/mars.jpg[/img]

[Narz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'T')here's actually more free time with hunting and gathering than with crop agriculture. Average workday of hunter-gatherer, 4 hours. How many hours a day do you have to work for your living?

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Narz', '
')Well I'm a certified fuck-up, too deranged for work (so I've been labeled) so zero technically (though I feel like crap if I don't work at all).

[kpeavey]

Some scientists have argued that for the human race to survive the death of the sun we will need to move out into the heavens. Others have debated that the genes will last and that we will eventually evolve into a different form. Maybe an ET look alike or Vonegut's seals. Humans or seals, its our collective descendants we are talking about. Can we get off the planet before we consume and disperse the metals, minerals, and resources required for space travel? Say we do get off the planet, head for Alpha Centauri, Wolf 359, Barnard's Star or wherever we find suitable class M planets. The nature of humans, in our present form, is to convert an environment into more humans. I'm sure we can screw up another planet just as much as this one. Finding a planet which offers the resources to mass produce colonizing ships spells trouble for the galaxy. For the greater good of the galaxy, we might want to limit ourselves to just one planet. Get back to the caves.

[mos6507]

If we actually do gain warp drive, fusion, etc... then I think we're really going to have to ask ourselves some hard questions. In technological progress the weakest link is human biology. The temptation towards eugenics (or digital upload singularity) will be all but irresistable. I mean, why limit ourselves if we can truly play God and engineer our successors? What is so special about our current selves that we should remain frozen in evolutionary stasis? Imagine engineering Tragedy of the Commons and other obsolete and counter-productive traits OUT of the human genome. I just don't see the point of using Star Trek technology to allow us to extend an agenda that is no more enlightening than yeast into the cosmos.

[Narz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')
Hey, sounds like me, but I'm able work at home, usually 4 hrs a day or less. But I'm guessing that's not typical for modern people.

http://www.bls.gov/tus/charts/

[Rod_Cloutier]

I hate to harp on an idea. However, space contains virtually unlimted natural resources. We can strip mine planets such as Mars with no cosern for the enviroment whatsoever- their is no enviroment to protect or damage. Titan contains rivers of hydrocarbons. Huge concentrations of Helium-3 exist on the moon that could be mined to power the 1st generation of Helium-3 fusion reactors. Utilizing space resources, no matter how much these ideas have been panned and joked about on this board, remain real an valid possiblities for the future.

http://peakoil.com/open/the-titan-threa ... t2649.html

Interstellar travel within our own solar system is an estiblished fact. We have the techologies, we just need to take them seriously. The religious fanatics, UFO nuts, and sceptics just have to be ignored and put aside for our progress into space.

[Nefarious]

Our species lacks wisdom to go with our intellect. We doom ourselves, but I'm sure there are other species out there in the great expanse that are not weighted down by our flaws and have probably expanded their cultures far out from their own worlds.

[mos6507]

Repent, the fact that you would cite that other thread in which you were thoroughly rebutted shows that you don't know what you're talking about.

[Hermes]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sys1', 'S')ure it would be great for us, but no matter how respectuous to nature we can be, we as a whole are going to die. Later is better, this is the argument for sustainbility.

[Narz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'R')epent, the fact that you would cite that other thread in which you were thoroughly rebutted shows that you don't know what you're talking about.

[Narz]

I see the post above my last one is a neo-luddite.

You you ever tried living with a village or crops, chap?

If you truly believe that more scientific understanding we gain, the worse off we are why don't you go burn down some schools.

Perhaps teaching them Creationism & burning science books might be a good first step if that kind of destruction is too extreme.

Seems to me like the most violent & backwards cultures & subcultures of those that fear science & instead worship superstition.

Just because we're babies @ handling the vast power imbued to us by... us, doesn't mean we should just throw it away & go back to living off of wild yams & termites.

Besides, there was only room for a few dozen million hunter-gatherers in pre-industrial society with flowing streams yada yada yada, probably only about 10 million or less could live that way now. Who decides who's in the 1.3% that gets to keep living & what if people don't want to burn their villages & torch there crops and go back to yams & termites?

Trust me, I honor & respect native peoples & yes, we have fucked things up, I've been called a luddite myself before & a noble savage type for suggesting we could learn from past sustainable efforts but to suggest going backwards is silliness. Now to mention impossible.

And casting logic & science as the bad guys & if only we could forget all we know we'd be fine... we wouldn't be fine, our ancestors would be wiped out yet again but those who used their minds to think of the technology to run us out. It's the way the world works.

We've got to utlilitize the best of both worlds. Neither one as is stands can possibly cut it ATM.

[Narz]

Also, this thread should be moved as it isn't related to hydrocarbon energy.

[Caffeine]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sys1', 'N')ow my word : Is it better to go back to some neolithic that could last for milleniums or better to bet on technology even if the price to pay is the end of our race this century?