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Asked on Yahoo! Answers

Stephen Hawking wrote:How can the human race survive the next hundred years?

In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?

My (meager) answer:

Grendel wrote:It's a resource problem with the root cause of permanent population growth. For the human race to survive any significant length of time the population density needs to be reduced. Possible ways are massive expansion into space (unlikely), strict birth control (eg. allow every adult person two children. Almost impossible to enforce and the implications are fearsome (power abuse)), war (likely) or a pandemic.

So, in short -- it's unlikely the human race will improve conditions on this planet in the foreseeable future since humans don't have the capacity to think beyond their lifetime or on a global scale, sorry.

There's always the "Matrix" solution though..

This is all my own opinion of course. Feel free to have yours

P.S. Remember, there are no morals. Only consequences.

Yeah, this was on slashdot earlier. Lots of interesting answers there.

Bah - the only thing which can wipe out humanity is an asteroid in the \"Planet Killer\" class. Even then, some would survive somewhere I'm sure - but the real problem then would be that all the easily extractable raw materials have gone, so you'd be stuck trying to resurrect civilisation by recycling - which would NOT be easy.

This whole \"OMG THE SKY IS FALLING\" stuff is complete and utter bull★■◆●! Population simply is NOT an issue on planet Earth. The growth curve is so far from the predictions of 30 years ago it makes those doom sayers look like ★■◆●ing idiots. Oh - and the nuclear winter assholes too. Oh, and those pollution-will-wipe-out-mankind fuckwits too!

Please note that ALL ditre predictions made in the past have NEVER come to pass. Not one. Not even slightly. Hell, in the 60's people were predicting that 50 million people would starve to death in the USA in the 80's. LMFAO.

Hawking may be a bright cookie - but he is only a mathematician (albeit a good one) and in terms of understanding that predicting the future is impossible, he is as looney toons as the rest of 'em.

Simply stated, you can NOT predict the future. It is IMPOSSIBLE.

I'll quote Michael Crichton here: If you asked someone in 1900 what the major concern in 2000AD would be, they would probably answer that finding enough horses would be tricky, and how to deal with x billion tons of horse crap a year would be the really big issue. (This because in 1900, the horse crap problem was very serious indeed.)

We'd laugh at those people pretty loudly. Just as the residents of earth in 2100AD (And I plan on being one of them) would laugh at us today for worrying about oil, CO2, population, pollution and asteroid strikes.

By 2100 there will be millions of items, concepts, and principles which are common knowledge then, but which are completely unknown today.

Here's a TINY list of things that a person in 1900 would just have not a single clue about: Jet engines, rockets, cell phones, computers, heart transplants, elevators, particle accelarators, Nuclear energy, atom bombs, bunker busters, GPS, satelites, TV, Gortex, nylon, teflon, Helium, Gene therapy, stem cells, genetically modified organisms, robots, Captcha, traffic lights, automobiles, 1080, Phalanx guns, autopilot, weather stations, Wifi, Radio Telescopes, Hubble, Cosmic Background Radiation, semi-permeable membranes, self healing machines, fault detection, skydiving, wind surfing, MRI, Positron Emmisions, X-Rays, Sub-atomic particles, atoms, Lasers, Radar, Seismography, CAT scans, digital cameras, memory sticks, DVDs, Transistors, CPUs, silicon doping....

The list goes on and on and on. For anyone today to make ANY kind of prediction for 100 years from now is just plain stupid. No two ways about it.

Mobius wrote:Bah - the only thing which can wipe out humanity is an asteroid in the "Planet Killer" class. Even then, some would survive somewhere I'm sure - but the real problem then would be that all the easily extractable raw materials have gone, so you'd be stuck trying to resurrect civilisation by recycling - which would NOT be easy.

This whole "OMG THE SKY IS FALLING" stuff is complete and utter *****! Population simply is NOT an issue on planet Earth. The growth curve is so far from the predictions of 30 years ago it makes those doom sayers look like **** idiots. Oh - and the nuclear winter ***** too. Oh, and those pollution-will-wipe-out-mankind **** too!

Please note that ALL ditre predictions made in the past have NEVER come to pass. Not one. Not even slightly. Hell, in the 60's people were predicting that 50 million people would starve to death in the USA in the 80's. LMFAO.

Hawking may be a bright cookie - but he is only a mathematician (albeit a good one) and in terms of understanding that predicting the future is impossible, he is as looney toons as the rest of 'em.

Simply stated, you can NOT predict the future. It is IMPOSSIBLE.

I'll quote Michael Crichton here: If you asked someone in 1900 what the major concern in 2000AD would be, they would probably answer that finding enough horses would be tricky, and how to deal with x billion tons of horse crap a year would be the really big issue. (This because in 1900, the horse crap problem was very serious indeed.)

We'd laugh at those people pretty loudly. Just as the residents of earth in 2100AD (And I plan on being one of them) would laugh at us today for worrying about oil, CO2, population, pollution and asteroid strikes.

By 2100 there will be millions of items, concepts, and principles which are common knowledge then, but which are completely unknown today.

Here's a TINY list of things that a person in 1900 would just have not a single clue about: Jet engines, rockets, cell phones, computers, heart transplants, elevators, particle accelarators, Nuclear energy, atom bombs, bunker busters, GPS, satelites, TV, Gortex, nylon, teflon, Helium, Gene therapy, stem cells, genetically modified organisms, robots, Captcha, traffic lights, automobiles, 1080, Phalanx guns, autopilot, weather stations, Wifi, Radio Telescopes, Hubble, Cosmic Background Radiation, semi-permeable membranes, self healing machines, fault detection, skydiving, wind surfing, MRI, Positron Emmisions, X-Rays, Sub-atomic particles, atoms, Lasers, Radar, Seismography, CAT scans, digital cameras, memory sticks, DVDs, Transistors, CPUs, silicon doping....

The list goes on and on and on. For anyone today to make ANY kind of prediction for 100 years from now is just plain stupid. No two ways about it.

I like that list you made. Kool...

But I think Stephen Hawking is worried about religion and how it breeds extremism. If anything can wipe us out in the next 100 years that would be what I would worry about.

Bettina

Grendel wrote:It's a resource problem with the root cause of permanent population growth.

It's a good thing population growth isn't permanent, then. Humanity will reach a max of 10-12 billion by 2050 and then level out. Population will probably drop after that as people around the world continue to become more affluent.

I never understood that. Why is there an inverse correlation between wealth and childbirth? Is it self-selective? And does that imply that the wealthiest nations will eventually die out?

Here's all the stuff I've got rattling around in my head:

1. Wealth brings sexual education and contraceptive use
2. People don't see the need for having many children, especially males which in patriarchal societies, such as the vast majority of dirt-poor societies, are the only way to ensure economic stability for the family
3. Wealthy people may be wealthy because they don't have to provide for children, thus affecting the results
4. When you're unemployed, sex is a great way to pass the time (:P)

Does #3 imply that a nation with lower economic discrepancy and a higher concentration of wealth is less-suited for survival than a nation of diverse wealth?

affluence brings reduction in the need for human-based labour in primary industries thru growth of industries that create artificial labour.

or to put in another way - the jobs of the parents of large families had no longer exist for their grand children once a economy gets industrialized.

Mobius wrote:Hawking may be a bright cookie - but he is only a mathematician (albeit a good one) and in terms of understanding that predicting the future is impossible, he is as looney toons as the rest of 'em.

A "bright cookie" "mathematician" .. True signs of a well done background check. You did notice that he simply asked a question, right ?

What I read from your post is: I don't care, you are all dumb (incl. Hawking who doesn't know what he talks about), there will be a technical miracle to save us all.

Very, uhm, interesting approach.

Lothar wrote:It's a good thing population growth isn't permanent, then. Humanity will reach a max of 10-12 billion by 2050 and then level out. Population will probably drop after that as people around the world continue to become more affluent.

So, there will there be enough resources to sustain 10-12 billion people in 2050 then ? What do you think the quality of live will look like ?

Mobius didn't say there'd be a technical miracle to save us all - just that from precedent he expects that technological changes will make current issues irrelevant.

Grendel wrote:

Lothar wrote:It's a good thing population growth isn't permanent, then. Humanity will reach a max of 10-12 billion by 2050 and then level out. Population will probably drop after that as people around the world continue to become more affluent.

So, there will there be enough resources to sustain 10-12 billion people in 2050 then ? What do you think the quality of live will look like ?

There already are enough resources to sustain 10-12 billion people, otherwise, population wouldn't be growing at the speed it is. (Population growth doesn't happen without resource overflow!)

If technology completely stagnated, quality of life would remain pretty much the same as it is now, overall. Some areas will experience greater overcrowding, though, and dealing with those areas is going to become pretty important in the next 20 years or so.

The expectation is that technology won't stagnate, and quality of life will continue to improve as it always has. The poorest people on earth right now are in better shape than the poorest people on earth 100 years ago, even though there are billions more of us.

I hear Britney is pregnant again.



Think I'll up the contributions to my 401k.

Wow, I agree with Mobius %100. I cant believe that what he just posted made perfect sense.

DCrazy wrote:Why is there an inverse correlation between wealth and childbirth?

PART (but by no means all) of it is that in an agricultural society, more children means more workers means more wealth.

But once a society becomes more industrialized, more children means more expenses means less wealth.

I think it is because wealthy people on average are a lot smarter, and they don't fill up their trailers like a sardine can. Unlike the poor...born to rut, and half of'em don't even understand how they got pregnant.

I don't think that population growth will play a role over our survival through the next hundred years. I think that it will mainly be a matter of armament and supremacy in terms of military. In that sense, I see the United States seeing itself through the next hundred years, and not \"ticking anybody off\" enough for them to launch a nuclear strike against us. I think the reason for this is because, quite simply, nations looking at us subjectively need us just as we need them in terms of their own economic markets. If anyone was to launch a counteroffensive against the U.S., they would certainly suffer tremendously economically.

I think it'll all be all right.. we just need to not be the ones to make the stupid move and throw the majority of the UN or NATO against us.

XThermonucleusX wrote:I think it'll all be all right.. we just need to not be the ones to make the stupid move and throw the majority of the UN against us.

Unless there's a sudden change in the US, that mistake is curently in progress!

Have a nice doomsday.

Haha.. yeah.. Bush didn't do so good with that G8 summit remark to Blair... *COUGH*

Aside from that (and other things that the U.S. has done to annoy other peoples..) well look.. if worst does come to worst and someone nukes an area where I live it'll be so quick that I won't even feel it, and if there's fallout, as soon as I hear about an attack on the news I'd either flee or kill myself if I notice I've got some radiation poisoning.. heh.

In terms of the U.S. annoying foreign countries though, I'd have to say that our foreign policy is pretty good really. We dole out aid to countries in need of it, and the only reason that many countries in the world today aren't experiencing independent economic stability (like many African states for example) is because of a lack of solid leadership. The local governments of foreign third world countries is not really solid.

Thread resurrection !

Lothar wrote:There already are enough resources to sustain 10-12 billion people, otherwise, population wouldn't be growing at the speed it is. (Population growth doesn't happen without resource overflow!)

According to the WWF Living Planet Report 2006 we're using more resources than can be renewed since about 1986..

If we continue on our current trajectory, even optimistic United Nations projections with moderate increases in population, food and fibre consumption, and CO2 emissions suggest that by 2050 humanity will demand resources at double the rate at which the Earth can generate them.

The report is a good read.

Edit: BTW, Hawking choose this as the best answer:

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

Political and social chaos has been with us for a very long time. Given the revolutions of the past and present, class warfare, and scheming of those seeking power, the human race has shown a remarkable resilience and managed to survive thus far.

The new factors in the equation of the balance of mankind and the rest of nature are the technological advances that have changed how political and social chaos can develop, and the advances in industry that have the potential to inflict serious environmental alterations. Threats of nuclear war, biological catastrophe, and climate change now bring into question as to how humanity can continue to survive.

Personally, I think that with the growth of true threats to survival, there has been growth of human ingenuity as well. We have yet to release a Frankenstein's monster of technology upon the world. Despite the stockpiles of nuclear weapons, there has been no global warfare. Medical research is in a renaissance of advance. Climate change remains a concern, but I believe that we are an adaptable species, as we have adapted before and will again.

The larger question is how will humanity survive, which is what is asked. It's very likely that the resources of today may no longer be available in a century. But consider the resources available today that were not available a century before. As stated before, we are an adaptable species, and when one window of resources closes, it's likely that other windows will be openable.

Of course, the speed that everything progresses at has increased. Will we be able to adapt in time? Perhaps not for a lot of us, but consider that in the 14th century, the Black Death wiped out over a third of Europe's population. Yet Europe survived and prospered. We may again have a catastophe that has similarly devestating effects, but I feel confident that after the catastrophe, humankind will prosper.

Why do I place this faith in humanity? Because I must. Without the belief that we will continue to grow and overcome the pains of social chaos as we mature as a species, we might as well not have any faith at all. I'm not talking religion (although that may or may not be a part in its current forms), but simply the same belief that we will survive just as much as the sun will rise the next day.

Source(s):
Just what I believe.

Not a bad answer.

Your report link only gives me a server-side java error. Sounds like it could be a good read, though.