Established Member
http://www.msnbc.com/news/983899.asp?0bl=-0
Interesting way of looking at it.
Personally, I'm beginning to wonder. We've become a risk-averse species. We're afraid to take chances. Nobody seems willing to take the long view, hence no long-term projects are cropping up. Everything seems to be about today, with no thought of the future.
Established Member
I think it'll take a Deep Impact style event to get us moving again... I agree with you, currently, we're just not willing to think in the long term, but sooner or later something big will smack us in the side (literally or metaphorically) and we'll just have to get up & get going again!
2 ways to look at it- if we have peaked, then it'll all be over soon.Who ever heard of a species that didn't try to expand and multiply and beat it's competitors etc? If we've lost the drive to survive, then either we'll destroy ourselves, or be killed by some supervirus or... I dunno [insert disaster here]
The other way is that, if we peak for a little while, but get going again, we'll keep going for a long long time to come. If we can get out of one rut, then in the future people will look back and say "The early 21st century... That was pretty bad, but they kept at it & eventually got to where we are now. Hmm.. We seem to be at the same situation now- but they got out of theirs before so we can too!"
I'm feeling optimistic even though things aren't great right now anyway...!
Honored Member
Varf. Humanity has been going downhill for millenia. :-? "When our houses were made of straw our men were made of iron..." and such dreck. Our men also spent a lot of time chasing elk just to survive and died at 40 because their teeth wore out or something. As well as most of the children.
We're probably in anesthetic overload from everything. Music and pictures plucked from the air. Quantum computers. Computers! "Run down to the convenience store for a jug of milk..." Two miles. Back in five min.
So we lost the SST. Too bad, it's so pretty and fast. Maybe we didn't lose it so much as it came 'too soon'. Who here is waiting for the data from Cassini? 'Video from Titan!" Jeez!
As a certified grouch who gets depressed easily I say: lighten up! Compare the best of the 20th century with the best of the 19th. Take comfort in the perspective of time!
Grow old along with me
The best is yet to be...
Established Member
Maybe that's because could all be vaporized tomorrow in a radioactive plume of fire and dust.Originally Posted by SirThoreth
Established Member
Speaking as an idealistic teenager I beg to differ. I also think the article overlooks some important points.
Firstly, there is no way you can look back at the last century without noticing all the medical technology that has increased with leaps and bounds. How many countless lives have been saved through medical technology around the world? Can anyone say the fact that those people have a chance at life is a bad thing? Maybe if you're talking about the gene pool, but other then that...
Also, one random line struck me as weird in the article was when the author started lamenting about how the three latest Nobel prize winners for physics won for their "contributions" to their field instead of "discoveries" in a field. The three guys practically wrote the textbook on superconductors and superfluids. They had numerous "discoveries," they didn't just contribute a footnote or two. If the author still has his doubts about just how much those people did he can earn his own Nobel for Physics...
One more general nitpicky detail: there is no way humans could have peaked as a species seeing as we are evolving right now. Not in the sense that we are growing a third eye, of course, but on the molecular level we have been constantly evolving to counter things such as diseases. Ever wonder why people in Asia tend to have type B blood and Europeans usually have type A? If I remember correctly, the A makes you more immune to smallpox and B makes you more immune to typhoid. Something like that...
Order of Kilopi
What a ridiculous article. Who the heck is Mike Moran? Somebody who forgot to take his Wellbutrin? Obviously he knows nothing about chaos theory or the laws of complexity, which in large part delineate the progress of technology (as well as biological evolution). Take the lowly bicycle as an example, as Stephen Jay Gould did in considerable detail. The bicycle is a piece of technology. When the idea of the bicycle first broke into the human psyche, there were all kinds of very weird models - one had a great big wheel in front, another had a great big wheel in back; I mean, you had to have a ladder to get on the thing! There were all sorts of designs. (Gould compared it to the biological evolutionary Cambrian Explosion.) Before long, the designs sort of converged to the most reasonable style, more or less, and from there, smaller improvements continued to be made, and smaller improvements continue today. But then you have a Harley Davidson, which is rather a quantum leap in the "bicycle" genre. Anyway, that's just how technology goes forward. It's not linear.
Ha! Now, that's sayin' something!
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Established Member
Of course this poll assumes there will be a peak...
Order of Kilopi
Eh, it's just the age of telecommunications beginning to make rapid tranatlantic flight irrelevant and simply a leisure pursuit;
I am convinced that we will see the change in society accelerate in this current new century; evolution is not finished with humanity yet;
once the expression of the genome has been tamed there will be a burst of designer evolution which puts the Cambrian to shame.
Order of Kilopi
He missed the mark by a bit. He's mistaking the retirement of one technology for humanity having given up its future goals. Hardly. The concorde was an incredible feat, but in the end it lacked practicality. As someone mentioned earlier here, with advances in telecommunications and computer networking, rapid transatlantic flight is just not an absolute necessity. Its not as if all progress has stopped. Computer technology is still exploding after 50 years and doesn't look like its going to hit a wall anytime soon. Materials sciences are still going strong, with the development of construction materials that are going to blow the top off of the current limits of design and development. Another material are these new myo bundles that are acting as replacements for human muscles in artifical limbs. And lets not even get into medical science. Aside from the custom designed body shaping, the practical elements that are now coming into play are more incredible. Certain people with deafness are now gaining the option of regaining or obtaining hearing for the first time in their lives. The first operation replacement eye has just come out in prototype form, along with new biological developments like a basic synthetic blood (not perfect, but it does exist), artificial organs and non-invasive sugical techniques that are making having surgery less dangerous than before. Heck, the medical science in a freakin' tube of neosporin is something someone one hundred years ago couldn't have dreamed of.
This guy is taking the rollback of a luxery vehicle as the death knell of the human race, he needs to step back and see the whole forest, not just the one pruned tree.
Banned
The human species is not yet an intelligent one. So I hope we have not yet reached the highest point.
Established Member
This argument has been soundly defeated elsewhere. Repeatedly.
Really William, what is your point here?
Honored Member
Channeling jkmccrann this afternoon?
Nevertheless, speak for yourself. Personally I'm very happy not to be caught in a feedback loop (AKA "a rut").
It's ironic that someone who claims that, due to time constraints, they can't provide meaningful, detailed responses to other poster's quite legitimate questions, would have time to waste resurrecting old threads.
[edit/add word]
Last edited by Maksutov; 2006-Jan-21 at 11:35 PM.
Established Member
In a rut? I can't tell if I'm coming, or going?
Let's do the time warp...again!
Honored Member
Man, time to get out the tux, the dark sunglasses, and the noisemakers.
A toast!
Senior Member
Not just this afternoon...
Over the last week or so he has bumped numerous threads.
Established Member
Sorry to bump this back up, but TheBlackCat, who seems to have been MIA from BAUT has been posting some eloquent stuff over at the BA's blog. This quote caught my eye and I immediately thought of this thread.
And Stephen Hawking:
“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”
Order of Kilopi
Maybe he was exxagerating to make a point, but that is like calling our global telephony infrastructure an advanced model of 2 cups and a piece of string.
Order of Kilopi
Er, is there any reason that you decided to drag such an old topic out for discussion?
Edit: And what about the other old topics you dredged up? Why?
Established Member
meh... I don't know about you surface dwellers, but this is the golden age of cave exploration. Just take a look at the long / deep cave lists of the world, keeping in mind that, as recently as 1972, the longest cave in the world was roughly 45 miles. (all units in miles)
1 Mammoth Cave System --- U.S.A. --- Kentucky --- 367.000
2 Jewel Cave --- U.S.A. --- South Dakota --- 133.910
3 Optimisticeskaja --- Ukraine --- 132.973
4 Hoelloch --- Switzerland --- 119.247
5 Wind Cave --- U.S.A. --- South Dakota --- 117.440
6 Lechuguilla Cave --- U.S.A. --- New Mexico --- 114.170
7 Fisher Ridge Cave System --- U.S.A. --- Kentucky --- 109.300
8 Siebenhengste-hohgant Hoehlensystem --- Switzerland --- 92.584
9 Sistema Ox Bel Ha --- Mexico --- 88.765
10 Gua Air Jernih Malaysia --- Sarawak --- 80.450
11 Ozernaja --- Ukraine --- 75.800
12 Systeme de Ojo Guarena --- Spain --- 68.351
13 Reseau Felix Trombe / Henne-Morte --- France --- 65.721
14 Bullita Cave System --- Australia --- 65.244
15 Toca da Boa Vista --- Brazil --- 63.380
16 Sistema Purificacion --- Mexico --- 58.257
17 HirlatzHoehle --- Austria --- 58.036
18 Zolushka --- Moldova/Ukraine --- 56.048
19 Shuanghedongqun --- China --- 52.997
20 RaucherkarHoehle --- Austria --- 51.379
21 Sistema Sac Actun --- Mexico --- 48.477
22 Friars Hole Cave System --- U.S.A. --- West Virginia --- 45.539
23 Easegill System --- United Kingdom --- 43.807
24 Reseau de l'Alpe --- France --- 41.801
25 Ogof Draenen --- United Kingdom --- 41.085
26 Kazumura Cave --- U.S.A. --- Hawaii --- 40.700
27 Sistema Nohoch Nah Chich --- Mexico --- 40.438
28 Organ Cave System --- U.S.A. --- West Virginia --- 39.500
29 Barenschacht --- Switzerland --- 38.339
30 Botovskaya --- Russia --- 37.790
(oh, and one quarter of the long caves are in the good ole USA. we haven't been dragging our feet!)
Furthermore, we've got caves with a biological genesis, caves created out of sulfur, a whole slew of new deep caves (the deepest being over 7000'!), Salt Caves, Lava Tubes (Kazamura on the above list is both the longest lave tube in the world as well as the deepest cave in the US), caves affecting regional politics (see the transpark controversy outside mammoth cave) and a whole slew of newcave creatures (that made headlines on CNN.com recently). And 90% of all the work done to achieve this is by weekend ameatuers. (using the word "ameateur" in the same context as ameateur astronomer).
So, yeah, maybe your top-earthers are winding down, but we right-thinking mole-men are just getting warmed up!!! lol
We do have one request, though, wear slippers. You people make too much noise walking around upstairs!! LOL
John
Order of Kilopi
These are the good old days that someone in the future is longing to get back to;
. . . or . . .
The past was harsher and less forgiving in almost every way imagineable. Rinsing it off and parading it around as how things ought to be is a fools game.
I do see that not knowing certain fundamentals puts us at serious risk should there be a worldwide cataclysm. How many people know how to build a sturdy structure, or make clothing, or gather food (not from the grocers), or butcher meat without poisoning their family, or read the sky to see a storm is coming, and so on and so forth.
Not that everybody need to know everything; but I wonder if enough people know enough things to guarantee a significant portion of the population survives. My guess is that if our technical and industrial infrastructure were to be wiped out, most of the population would die.
Order of Kilopi
Egads, this is an old one...I almost didn't recognize myself having posted here.
Established Member
Interesting to note where this thread came from, it seems I've been usurped, but that's ok, i've since evolved.
Glad to see that we're generally a community of optimists here though, I can't really understand or take seriously any other viewpoint.
I mean, really, over the last 10-15 years the technological advancements enjoyed by societies the world over have been phenomenal. Of course we in the West have the best of it, but almost every country on the face of the planet has progressed greatly since the end of the Cold War - with perhaps the odds exceptions like North Korea, Turkmenistan et al. Its really mystifying to even consider the fact that we've peaked as a species.
Were they asking the same questions in the Middle Ages when they looked back at the grand opulence of Classical Times? Centuries of history has proved anyone asserting the contention at that time dead wrong, and I have no doubt that those around in millennia to come will be able to reach the same conclusion about anyone saying as such now.
Having read the article, I'm left wondering about what it is exactly that the author of the article regards as progress, harking back to things like this...
If the contention is that that era represented the peak of our species, I'd love to know what Mr. Moran thinks about gender equality..... :?
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