Singularity or Decline?

Is a new, more prosperous age beyond a technological Singularity on the horizon? Or does human civilization now face an inevitable decline? This video by futurist Christopher Barnatt discusses the great debate at the heart of future studies.

[ExplainingTheFuture]

Fascinating comment. I guess I would argue that both sides can involve optimism. Decline is a natural process that perhaps we ought not to fear . . .

[rbairos]

@ExplainingTheFuture Just throwing it out there.Overall great production work and engaging content!

[SommBuddy]

I"m so thrilled I found your video series. I have come to many of the same conclusions independently.

[MrUniversality]

@Drew, one of the main factors in the singularity IS AI. It will do the very thing you brought up at the end of your comment. Now the Brain push has begun just like the Gene mapping did. Interfacing and augmentation already takes another huge leap with Gglasses. The military is actively building emotionless robots; the very thing we fear. At same time AI with the ability to understand humans are finally popping up. As Ray also says, our only chance at preventing it is building a smarter one.

[ExplainingTheFuture]

You are right -- no mainstream political parties are into this stuff. Which is a great pity, and quite alarming. As you say, we could sorts things out if we all got on with it together . . .

[MrUniversality]

3d printing is another perfect example on the good side. 100% waste reduction; the ability to not deplete our resources through not only the latter but 100% recycling...
The ability to self replicate..cheap materials not expensive materials. The recycle factor alone can add to this. When people are done creating everything they ever wanted then what? The desire to posses, or take would die...As would the concept of greed and possibly our flawed virtual money system? Sry for spam...

[TheJamesrocket]

invariably lost as useless heat. I think it accounts for something in the multi-gigawatt range, at least. It plays a fairly important role in the GW equation, I'm surprised you haven't heard about it.
But I'm grateful that we're able to have such a civil and informative discussion. Other people are MUCH more closed minded when representing their ideologys.

[stardude]

I was born in 1988 and the pirate party as you describe them describes a lot of the things I and my generation believe in. I think if everyone had access to all of what we have achieved to this point we would be in a much better world.

[Kynareth]

It's the fourth year I'm checking exponential progress in solar energy acquisition and suprisingly it's still true. It's at least 60% more watts from global acquisition per year. That means more than twice after 2 years. It's all wonderfull but it can't be guaranteed, progress won't dramaticly slow down(for example because of rising costs of bigger and bigger power plants).

[ajarnfrankie]

- Nice job Christopher! I have always been a believer of Technology for useful purposes. The main we need to focus on for now is getting rid of the people who hold us back from progress. The Banks, Politicians and greedy(money before earth/people) business types. Then we must convert to a resource based economy. Finite resources today are wasted like no tomorrow and this is not good.

[ExplainingTheFuture]

Indeed, the Singularity could involve many negatives as well as positives.

[ExplainingTheFuture]

Yes, lots of capital. But there are still lots of companies, governments -- and even some wealthy individuals -- with capital that could be invested in projects to help the survival of humanity (rather than, say, in making war) . . .

[IngeniousEpithet]

From everything I've read... there is ZERO debate amongst the respected scientific (and especially climatology) community over whether AGW is real (or poses dangers to humanity and ecosystems)... however, the debate amongst climatologists is over whether the consequences of AGW are going to be BAD or TERRIBLE.

[Haarkbot]

Are there any major political movements dedicated to bringing about this post-singularity extropian society? I can't seem to find any. Why is there no 'Extropist Party' or 'Singularitarian Party'? The problems of unsustainable resource consumption wouldn't be problems for much longer if the world's countries collaborated together to solve them.

[IngeniousEpithet]

Upon searching for heat pollution (also thermal pollution) it appears I was mistaken... I HAVE heard of it and certainly it is a factor in global warming... I don't know how considerable a factor it is, however. From what I know, greenhouse gases (and the resultant positive feedback effects) contribute to the majority of AGW.

[ExplainingTheFuture]

@rbairos1 That was/is not my intent! :-) But your observation is a very interesting one on which I will ponder.

[TheJamesrocket]

runs on a roughly 1000 year circuit, and has a mean global temperature difference of only several degrees. The longer cycles have much larger ups and downs (hence the ice ages, where ice has at times been 2 or 3 kilometers thick in north america).
With that said, the earth may be experiencing a significantly larger dip than would be expected. Whether its enough to cause mass extinctions and the like is anyones guess. I hope this clears some things up for you.

[ExplainingTheFuture]

@IQ20000Berta Me too . . . There is something changing around the globe now . . .

[Newbie]

i think a decline due to fossile ressource shortage is quite unlikely, there are many nations that put great effort into expanding and researching alternative energies, some nations would likely suffer a economic crash but in the end all that would just force modernisation and technology would progress even faster. nations can recover quite fast from complete economic crashes as we saw for example in germany after the hyperinflation and after ww2 ( ok they had help).

[ExplainingTheFuture]

@Dalsir1 This is indeed sadly true . . .