So - how is the world going to end?

[jpiniero]

It makes sense, doesn't it? One party has been adamant about the facts of those things that we are facing for decades now, and that they should be addressed. The other party has been, and remains, in eternal denial mode about those facts, engaging lies, slander, and corporate dollars to maintain the lie against the health, safety, and economic stability of the people of the planet. These are the facts.

So, it's inevitable that we "fight about political parties," when you consider that one of these is unambiguously and specifically engaged in the greed-driven extermination of humanity.

The only thing stopping increasing temperatures in general is a worldwide population drop. Anything the Democrats have proposed isn't going to do much other than PR.

I'd vote for war actually.

 

[Ajay]

Nah, we'll be fine. Well, some percentage of 'we' in any of the given scenarios. Some people will just be genetically predisposed to surviving, even if only a tiny fraction of the human race.

 

[Artorias]

 

[DigDog]

my projection is as follows (in plainspeak)

private interest will become more influential than governments, leading to a sectioning of humanity (the somebodies and the nobodies)
cyber technolgy advancements will be at the root of a civil war
global warming will be an additional factor but not relevant
social divide between organic and arificial humans
organic humanity will slowly fade away due to the hostile social/biological environment

i predict that our intelligence will continue existing forever, albeit in a very different form.



on the plus side robots DGAF about climate change

 

[zinfamous]

my projection is as follows (in plainspeak)

private interest will become more influential than governments, leading to a sectioning of humanity (the somebodies and the nobodies)
cyber technolgy advancements will be at the root of a civil war
global warming will be an additional factor but not relevant
social divide between organic and arificial humans
organic humanity will slowly fade away due to the hostile social/biological environment

i predict that our intelligence will continue existing forever, albeit in a very different form.



on the plus side robots DGAF about climate change

lol, so you think robots can mine and refine the very materials that make them, assemble them into parts manually, from protocols and plans made in great detail, digitally, with scripts to run automated machines that run these protocols, powered by an AI that determines itself relevant, somehow able to live off of storage devices with set data-lifespans, but easily transferable and swappable onto new media at routine intervals, made of the very same materials that hold its very existence, mined by the very machines that it is, itself, able to recreate, in perpetuity?

huh? huh? lol, like yeah, sure man...like that could never happen!


..
..




.

oh.

 

[DigDog]

actually no, although, i mean, if we really wanted to, a self-replicating machine could be created. at least in theory. (i hear that's not a good idea though)

but i am rather talking about the soon-to-exist brain-computer interface. i do think that the netx step in ... i should probably first say that i think we're a species not because we got arms and legs but because we have intelligence. And at some point we will want to export that intelligence in a format which doesnt decay within 100 years, so, cybernetics.

I believe that the next step will be not artificial intelligence, but human intelligence fully contained within a machine. And yes, it will still be able to say cogito ergo sum so yes i think it's life.
No i dont think a tape recorder with the words cogito ergo sum on it constitutes life.

I do predict a snowball effect once this happens. At that point i dont think artificial humans will care much for biological humans, or at least for the biological side, so, the body. The "alive" bit.

Also i predict that machine-mind interface will dramatically improve our intelligence and completely change our social structure, in a way unrecognizable to a modern man. Think Sovereign from ME1.

Will such a machine-man be able to mine materials to self-replicate? uh... yes.

 

[randay]

I mean, the sun will take out Earth before the universe's heat death.

Not if we take out the sun first! FIRE THE NUKES!

 

[DigDog]

i go to school, and i read books, and a guy writes stuff on the board and talks to me. I absorb this information (with some processing) and store it in my brain.
We know for a fact this is physical storage. You even get weird unrelated memories surfacing if you get bonked on the head too hard. Our brain is just a big ol HDD.

We are now studying how this information is stored. It's not going to be too long before we can look at a photo of a brain and say "that section is your knowledge of how to drive a car".
Then we expand into case studies of how different brains store this. Then why it gets processed differently.
At some point it is inevitable that we will be able to store memories - functional memories - outside the brain.

This last statement is debatable, yes, and everything in my previous posts depends on it, but i think it's not unreasonable, also because this is something we really really want. We want The Matrix-style "i know kung-fu".

And your personality (which .. probably will not be considered something you'd WANT, in a brain) is just the same as any other experience. Sure, you still poop and breathe and do a whole lot of instinctive things through your being a biological entity, and one could poetically argue that this makes you human, but i promise you that NOT having these will be seen as a positive, not a negative.

As a tradeoff you will be able to access knowledge instantly in the same manner as if you had earned it through experience. To become an engineer, you will simply need to download patch engineer.104, and you will be able to not just be an engineer, but to have immediate, useable knowledge of EVERYTHING we know.
Engineer biologist chemist pilot geologist historian coder statistician is not a bad resume.
You won't die. You won't grow old. You will be able to re-build yourself, and be in multiple places at the same time.
The only thing that will drive us will be the want to MORE knowledge.

Or rather, you WILL die, but to anyone talking to both your biological body and your artificial body, they will think they are talking to the same person (just, one is far more stupid than the other).

Remove the unnecessary biological traits (i.e. personality) and you'll see that having mutiple instances of the same intelligence is not really relevant; so, you won't miss giving birth to new humans, either.

Biological life LOL.

 

[eelw]

Asteroid or volcano will cleanse the earth of the blight called humanity

 

[mikeymikec]

OP's question has already been answered:

 

[nakedfrog]

i go to school, and i read books, and a guy writes stuff on the board and talks to me. I absorb this information (with some processing) and store it in my brain.
We know for a fact this is physical storage. You even get weird unrelated memories surfacing if you get bonked on the head too hard. Our brain is just a big ol HDD.

We are now studying how this information is stored. It's not going to be too long before we can look at a photo of a brain and say "that section is your knowledge of how to drive a car".
Then we expand into case studies of how different brains store this. Then why it gets processed differently.
At some point it is inevitable that we will be able to store memories - functional memories - outside the brain.

This last statement is debatable, yes, and everything in my previous posts depends on it, but i think it's not unreasonable, also because this is something we really really want. We want The Matrix-style "i know kung-fu".

And your personality (which .. probably will not be considered something you'd WANT, in a brain) is just the same as any other experience. Sure, you still poop and breathe and do a whole lot of instinctive things through your being a biological entity, and one could poetically argue that this makes you human, but i promise you that NOT having these will be seen as a positive, not a negative.

As a tradeoff you will be able to access knowledge instantly in the same manner as if you had earned it through experience. To become an engineer, you will simply need to download patch engineer.104, and you will be able to not just be an engineer, but to have immediate, useable knowledge of EVERYTHING we know.
Engineer biologist chemist pilot geologist historian coder statistician is not a bad resume.
You won't die. You won't grow old. You will be able to re-build yourself, and be in multiple places at the same time.
The only thing that will drive us will be the want to MORE knowledge.

Or rather, you WILL die, but to anyone talking to both your biological body and your artificial body, they will think they are talking to the same person (just, one is far more stupid than the other).

Remove the unnecessary biological traits (i.e. personality) and you'll see that having mutiple instances of the same intelligence is not really relevant; so, you won't miss giving birth to new humans, either.

Biological life LOL.

Is this a Kurzweil singularity sort of thing?

 

[DigDog]

Is this a Kurzweil singularity sort of thing?

i prefer the term The DigDog Singularity
but yeah

 

[nakedfrog]

i prefer the term The DigDog Singularity
but yeah

That doesn't sound quite as sciencey

 

[Fritzo]

It will all start when my wife discovers the new guitar I bought...

 

[Exterous]

It will all start when my wife discovers the new guitar I bought...

Did it arrive from Wuhan China?

 

[sdifox]

It will all start when my wife discovers the new guitar I bought...

Lol no that is just the end of you.

 

[whm1974]

It will all start when my wife discovers the new guitar I bought...

The sake of us all, I am going to steal your new guitar that end the World if your wife discovers it. This rather reckless of you to buy this dangerous object. Just why in Hell did you have to this in the first place?

 

[WelshBloke]

Global warming makes the global society more fragile. Fungi evolve to better suit a warmer environment. Fungi suited to a warm moist environment end up being ideally suited to using human bodies. Humans now at risk of a myriad of hideous fungal diseases that previously didnt concern them.

 

[pmv]

The Sun will of course become a Red Giant and engulf the Earth in a few Billion years or so. Earth of course will long outlast Humanity.

This is why I would refuse the offer of immortalitly. Imagine how boring and downright unpleasant life would be if you were still alive after that event.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

Illudium Q37 Explosive Space Modulator.

 

[sportage]

Well.... my Trumpie fanatical religious family members are relying solely on THE RAPTURE.
You know... Donald Trump as the savior anointed from heaven then sent to earth to fulfill gods will.
OK... Whatever....

Applying religion to the answer(sorry), I believe the end will come when god is no longer needed.
Like 1000 years from now when all of our needs and desires are fulfilled by technology.
Well, maybe not 1000 years, maybe more like 3000 years.
Where technology feeds, houses, and clothes all of humanity regardless of race, creed, or continent of inhabitance.
Where technology cures all illness that would plague or threaten mankind.
Where technology fulfills our every desire and enables unlimited imagination.
Technology, as with the iPhone 100,000 plus. The human transport model.
Buy the iPhone, visit the universe. Physically.

The world will end during a time when technology becomes the answer to all want and need of humanity. When a god and the concept of a god is no longer needed. When believing in any god is no longer necessary.
Hell... who will need a god when technology replaces god? And becomes god?
So.... in that time thousands of years away, it will be god that will end the world.
Ended by that god rejected.
As scripture says, god is a jealous god. Kinda like Donald Trump.
God will have the last laugh on humanity.

So, I kinda think this is how the world will end.
In a time so very long away.
Sorry family members, but I know how you rely on THE RAPTURE. And I say, what if that rapture never happens? Instead, what if ignorant people keep electing ignorant people, and things keep getting worse and worse because you keep electing ignorant people like the Donald Trump's?
Then what?

 

[Fritzo]

The sake of us all, I am going to steal your new guitar that end the World if your wife discovers it. This rather reckless of you to buy this dangerous object. Just why in Hell did you have to this in the first place?

I have saw mankind for what it is, and deemed it unworthy to continue...

 

[Red Squirrel]

I'm torn between society destroying economic depression and global warming. I voted global warming as that is happening at a rapid pace and the powers that be don't seem to care to make changes fast enough, but I could easily see a huge economic collapse that completely brings everything to ruins happen at some point too. Perhaps both sorta at the same time and they'll sorta be related to each other in a sense. Global warming will do a big number on the economy, and the economy crapping out will prevent any action to reverse global warming and things will just snowball from there.

I also imagine a scenario where there's only one or few corporations that own and control everything, so there are hardly no jobs, everyone is poor and eventually even that corporation collapses as nobody is buying their products and services because they're all poor. Government keeps trying to bail it out, so government goes bankrupt too. Nobody is paying taxes either because they're too poor, jails too full as well as they end up just not being able to keep up with everyone that's too poor to pay their taxes, bills etc and it just snowballs from there to the point that even the government completely collapses. Lot of riots and anarchy etc too. It could get ugly.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Cue "End of the World as We Know It... and I Feel Fine." by R.E.M.

 

[whm1974]

The world will end during a time when technology becomes the answer to all want and need of humanity. When a god and the concept of a god is no longer needed. When believing in any god is no longer necessary.
Hell... who will need a god when technology replaces god? And becomes god?
So.... in that time thousands of years away, it will be god that will end the world.
Ended by that god rejected.
As scripture says, god is a jealous god. Kinda like Donald Trump.
God will have the last laugh on humanity.

No one needs the biblical god in the first place because it has never been shown to actually exist. The so called word of god known as the bible has debunked so many times that anyone who still believes the set of books doesn't do so for any good reason at all.