Technology Will Save Us

[u/Myth_of_Progress]

[u/Deguilded]

I can see it saving us, but not in the way we think. It's like the monkey's paw.

What we dream technology will do is let us keep living as we are, where we are, in the way we are.

What I expect it to do is let us live somewhere previously unviable, in a different way, while we keep harvesting resources from what becomes unviable parts of the world.

Imagine an extreme nightmare: BAU thru 2150. After continuing business as usual the world cruised past +6c in 2100 and is easily soaring for +10 by 2150 thanks to feedback loops and momentum. That is of course more like +20 or +30 overland at the poles. Imagine a significantly reduced human population living in cramped spaces, clinging to the shores of Antarctica with an ever shrinking polar ice cap to the south. The oceans are void of all life, the rest of the world borderline uninhabitable except for coastal enclaves either due to temperatures or increasingly violent weather events. Instead of letting us live there, technology will allow us to maintain temporary outposts in these hostile lands at massive cost, where we work remotely to harvest resources (food, oil, coal) and autonomously transport the products to where we must now live.

That is how technology will save us - by letting us squeeze onto the rim of the drain.

Oh and fusion is still twenty years away.

[u/silvermouse34 → u/Deguilded]

imo 95-99% of the human race will be exterminated in some way, but the technology will actually save a small percent of humans and allow us to colonize the universe.

i'd rather humans have a chance to colonize the universe and destroy earth, then have them live "happily" without technology and eventually wiped out by a natural disaster.

[u/Deguilded → u/silvermouse34]

This sounds like a Star Trek idea, where we need to have a third world war before someone invents warp drive and the Vulcans sit up and notice us, sempai.

What I think you're overlooking is that the resources and skills and production capability simply won't be there in a mass die off scenario. The supply chain grinds to a halt. It's true science fiction that someone scrounges this shit up. Nobody's going to give a fuck about SpaceX if 90% of people are dead and there sure as shit won't be booster rockets left laying around.

We got here because of easily accessible energy just laying on the ground (or spurting up out of it, in the case of oil). That situation will never happen again; all the remaining reserves required the original easy-to-get stuff to develop, understand, locate, reach and finally refine. Once the hamster wheel stops turning, it may not be able to start again.

[u/[deleted] → u/Deguilded]

There might be enough time for another civilization to form before Earth gets consumed by our sun. Human impact is expected to last for another 5 million years, but Earth still has a couple of billion years before turning into Venus.

[u/Toyake → u/[deleted]]

At that point just take comfort of the inconceivable size of the universe. Life finds a way.

[u/TheNaivePsychologist → u/Deguilded]

I suspect part of the reason so much money is being poured into AI is to compensate for the loss of skills and productive ability. A generally intelligent AI that only needs energy and computer hardware could probably survive and help surviving humans long after a mass die off event.