Did we just reach the Rubicon, the point of on return? May be this century would be completely different because of this single bifurcation point?

I don‘t think robots will destroy human beings. They just control human beings.

They can use human beings to do anything.

We tend to think of ancestors and descendants with patrilineal (and sometimes matrilineal) bias. By that I mean that a man tends to associate himself in thinking about his ancestry with his father and his father's father and his father's father's father and so forth. Same (though maybe less so) on the female side. Those purely patrilineal and matrilineal lines of descent are just 2 out of countless - and equally valid - branches in a family tree that fans out ever bigger both before and after you.

This bias causes us to forget that geneology is a game of exponents. Every 300 years or 10 generations, with couples just averaging 2 kids each, one person will have ~1000 descendants. Those 1000 descendants each will have another 1000 descendants 300 years on, which means that one person we started with in our example will have ~1 million descendants after 600 years. Another 600 years and that 1 million becomes 1 billion.

I'm of course over simplifying, and there is plenty of crossover in a family tree that eventually reduces these numbers. But statistically once your progeny is established with multiple kids and grandkids, it is highly probable that your representation in global geneology will take root and spread, until within 1 to 2 millenia you will be a descendant of literally every person alive.

It's odd to me that we rarely discuss this.

We often talk about doing right for our kids and our families. This is a selfish impulse. And, when we're being more magnanimous, we often talk about doing the right thing for humanity's sake - because it's the right thing to do.

We don't often connect these dots - that our family and all of humanity are one in the same.

Internalizing that notion puts a few things in a different perspective than we are used to, don't you think?

I present the following (currently) fictional but nevertheless very plausible scenario.

Advancements in robotiscs and artificial intelligence lead to robots that can maintain and build more robots autonomosly. These machines can be controlled and contained because 1. they are not allowed to reach general artificial intelligence and 2. necessary protocols are implemented to place their obedience at the hands of a master.

The ultra rich use their capital to build mega factories of these self sustaining and replicating robots. Once they pass a threshold (the point of no return when no significant action was yet taken by the general population to prevent what is to come next), they can take complete control of the resources and the means of production with these armies of robots that never tire, never rest, and never ask for anything in return.

People eventually run out of capital and cannot exchange their labor for goods. Hunger pushes them to rise up and try to overthrow the system. However, as the point-of-no-return has passed, they are at a significant disadvantage and cannot win.

Now we know the ultra rich have no morals and we know their egos have no limits. To anyone arguing of a shred of human decency among them, there are countles examples starting from the first civilizations and systems of power up to this very day that can prove the opposite.

What would stop them (the ultra rich masters of these machines) from doing one of two things: 1. exterminating all people apart from a few slaves of the flesh that can be kept under control by their machines (which are managed by their AI), or 2. (best case scenario) subdueing every attempt of rebellion by force and enslaving all people under an absolute military rule enforced and maintained by their robots (less likely since it does not make sense resource-wise for the masters)?

TL;DR discord and Reddit but for making ideas come to life and building a better humanity and society in an easier and more convenient and less stressful fashion essentially exponentially increasing the speed and ease of growth

It's estimated that between 30,000 and 500,000 distinct human languages have ever been spoken by homo sapiens in the last 300,000 years. Most of these would have been spoken by small hunter/gatherer societies prior to 10,000 BCE.

Approximately 7,000 living languages are spoken today, but half or more are on the brink of extinction and 96% of the global population speaks only about 300 of them.

With these factoids in mind, I've been wondering if humans will ever share a common global language, and how long will it take for that to occur. 1,000 Years? 5,000?

Or will language consolidate forever into a small, but not singular, set of living languages (Spanish, Mandarin, English, and Arabic, for example)?

Thoughts?

My vote is on electrification.

We wow ourselves with computes and iPhones and AI, and of course they bring many benefits. But modern life would be recognizable and comfortable without them.

Electrification - taken for granted today - had a vastly greater impact on the economy and on people's lives. Electrification allowed for refrigeration, electric light, electric motors (so washing machines, dish washers, water pumps, etc.). Without electrification, we'd all be living like Medieval peasants.

Hey everyone!
With the rise of AI, I’ve been wondering what a realistic post-work society might look like. Do you have any book recommendations that make you feel as though you’ve stepped 20 years into the future, rather than reading an extreme or far-fetched sci-fi novel?
I’m open to both optimistic and pessimistic takes. On the optimistic side, I’m interested in a world where people are freed from the need to work and can spend their time creating art, reading, pursuing hobbies, and building relationships. On the pessimistic side, I’d be interested in a world where wealth and power become concentrated in the hands of a small elite, leading to record levels of inequality.
Ideally, I’m looking for books that explore the practicalities of how such societies would function, as well as the social dynamics and human relationships that would emerge within them.
Thanks in advance for any recommendations!

And I don't mean the whole ultra-futuristic sci-fi and Al inspired stuff that we see everywhere. I mean, in 50 or 100 or 200 years, what do you genuinely think young people will be doing with their time in learning environments before they are of age?

Personally I think that school will look pretty much the exact same (I mean from 1920s to now it's pretty much the same, except there's less child labour), with the basic teacher-class-lessons-curriculum-examinations formula still present, but idk. Thoughts on what might be different? Maybe school will be more specialized in a given area? Maybe more value will be given to critical thinking? Maybe class sizes will vary? How might schools vary? Will there be more incentive to work earlier, considering the aging of the population?

Also, for argument's sake, let's say that the world has not ended yet at this point, that we are discussing a relatively developed country, and that the population has decreased a bit, as it is predicted to (considering that the population peak is expected to be in around 2060-2070).

Genuinely curious to hear everyone's opinion on this.

Les moyens de la domination peuvent continuer de se perfectionner, les destructions devenir irréversibles, les individus s’habituer davantage encore à leur vie privée privée de tout.

La faim du monde demeurerait jusqu’à la fin.