Before you die, what do you want to see become a reality

[Ryan_m_b]

Sensible answer

A workable theory of economic democracy that is both green and steady state along with a corresponding improvement in political democracy. Bonus points for both being able to institute a leisure economy through increased automation/mechanisation and reform of welfare to include a guarenteed minimum income system.

Oh and this applies globally.

Luxury answer

- A cheap, global system of personalised rapid transport (I'd prefer teleporters but they're not possible)
- Five star fully automated house ("Kitchen make me dinner and bring me wine whilst the bathroom preps the hot tub!")
- Life extension (bonus points for healthy life extension. Being 150 and feeling 90 doesn't seem much of an improvement)

 

[Ryan_m_b]

What Jean Luc Pickard said to the 20th century stock broker that found himself in the 24th century.

That's pretty much what I was going for with my sensible answer above after some searching I found the clips:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzqW0YaN2ho&t=0m56s

 

[MathJakob]

I'd prefer teleporters but they're not possible

Not possible as in it would violate the laws of physics, or that we just don't have the energy or technology to do it?

 

[nitsuj]

Not possible as in it would violate the laws of physics, or that we just don't have the energy or technology to do it?

Gotta define what is meant by "teleport". I can email a design at near the speed of light.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Not possible as in it would violate the laws of physics, or that we just don't have the energy or technology to do it?

Impossible in the sense that there isn't a conceivable way to move an object from A to B without being in any intervening space.

Gotta define what is meant by "teleport". I can email a design at near the speed of light.

When I say teleport I mean the science fiction idea of objects disappearing from one location in space and reappearing at another (with differences in momentum compensated for).

 

[skyshrimp]

I hope everything goes smoothly in 2018 with the JWST launch. It's going to be 1 million miles from Earth, unlike Hubble which is only 370 miles away and can be physically repaired and upgraded.

 

[Kinase]

I'm young so, I'd like to not have to worry about dying. that'd be nice. Or at least cybernetic people or something.

 

[NATURE.M]

- Experimental evidence to support the multiverse theory. If not a testable scientific explanation on what came before the big bang.
- The discovery of extraterrestrial life forms.
- A society driven more towards secularism, rather than religious dogmatism.
-A more scientifically literate society.
- Great technological innovation and vast improvements medicine.
-Unraveling the mystery of 'consciousness'.

 

[haael]

Unicorns.

 

[jim hardy]

I always liked the Twilight Zone story of the benevolent aliens coming to Earth promising so much and presenting the President (I think) with a book entitled: To Serve Mankind written in alien language

Everyone wanted to visit their planet and as people were boarding the ship, a philologist studying the alien language realizes the true meaning of the book...

Ahhh yes, "Serving Man" was the title of that episode I think.

My particular favorite is "Next stop Willoughby" : a hard driven ad-man escapes to a place where there isn't any '.. haste to succeed in such desperate enterprises...'

I'd like to see society come to value that kind of life.

http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi836544281/?ref_=tt_ov_vi

 

[bp_psy]

The technological singularity. Human consciousness will be transferred to machines, so technically you will be able to live forever :)

This is pretty much it. I do not believe it's going to happen though.

I do not care at all about the technological, political and economical situation of humanity after I am dead. I just hope that I do not see WW3 in my lifetime.

 

[McCartney]

That's pretty much what I was going for with my sensible answer above after some searching I found the clips:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzqW0YaN2ho&t=0m56s

The Star Trek shows that advanced civilizations move beyond the silly greediness of current culture. Jean Luc scolds the man form the 20th century for wanting material things. He goes on to tell the primitive man for the 20th century that theye solved poverty and "want" (the accumulation of material things).

I another episode in Voyager Lt Paris talks about how Earth currency had been abolished in the 22th century. I tried to explore this topic in the General Forum.

 

[blokpoi]

Singularity and warp drive. :)

 

[Enigman]

Singularity and warp drive. :)

Singularity huh? I guess a super-intelligent entity would be kinda cool; that is until it goes all Terminator on us...

 

[blokpoi]

Singularity huh? I guess a super-intelligent entity would be kinda cool; that is until it goes all Terminator on us...

It would be cool, but it would also be nice to live forever. Which is one of the reasons besides being a super intelligent robot I picked singularity.

 

[Enigman]

Why would you want to live forever though? It can get pretty borrrrriiiinggg...You wouldn't have any friends, if you did have them, being a singularity you would already know anything they are about to say or do. You may not even have a body, as ultimately the organs will die after a 1000 years or so and you would have to regrow them if you really want a physical manifestation...(Hmmm...ears falling off-to do tomorrow grow new ears.)

 

[Enigman]

As far as I am concerned: free books period.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

As far as I am concerned: free books period.

Not sure I understand this one. Do you mean open access textbooks or that all books should be free? The former seems noble and potentially possible (so long as all majors textbook produces switch to public financed, social enterprise or charity models) but the later would seriously harm the fiction publishing industry.

 

[Enigman]

Oh, textbooks only.
As for fiction is concerned well, the more the difficulty in getting hold of a novel the more you tend to cherish it. I guess the same could be argued for textbooks but often once you have got one book on the it almost seems livable without other better alternatives or additions.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I see what you mean and kind of agree. Ideally I'd like to see something along the lines of an open access encyclopaedia that has educational functions as well as reference and can produce tailored answers/summaries/recommendations on the basis of the question asked. Like if Wikipedia and khan academy had a baby raised by wolfram alpha.

 

[bp_psy]

Why would you want to live forever though? It can get pretty borrrrriiiinggg...

How do you know that? Have you lived forever? I think I could find fun stuff to keep me busy for a couple of hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of years. The fact that we die pretty fast and we can lose much of our physical and intellectual faculties even earlier is the worst thing about life. All of the sentimental arguments against living a long time are not very convincing.
The singularity stuff, yes it is pretty much nonsense.

 

[Enigman]

...Like if Wikipedia and khan academy had a baby raised by wolfram alpha.

Now that would be heaven...

As for living forever well, I am pretty much bored in the 'short' life I have...
No sentimental arguments; but growing new organs also without singularity living forever wouldn't be much fun 'cause either you would spend all your memory and forget recent things or you would have to create 'virtual brain drives' to store your memory- if so you won't even be able to use all your memories without integrating yourself to the drives and you become something akin to singularity..

 

[edpell]

See anomalous heat from nickel and hydrogen proved and deployed. AI I can have a conversation with. 100,000 people settled on Mars. Saudi Arabia out of oil and bankrupt.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

RE: boredom and long life. If you had a comfortable amount of money then I see no reason one would ever be bored (besides laziness and lack of imagination). Consider how long it would take to visit every interesting place, to do every leisure activity from a spa day to BASE jumping and now consider how many new things to do, experience and talk about are being created all the time. I'd love a longer healthy life, there's just too much to see and do to ever be bored.

 

[jim hardy]

RE: boredom and long life. If you had a comfortable amount of money then I see no reason one would ever be bored (besides laziness and lack of imagination). Consider how long it would take to visit every interesting place, to do every leisure activity from a spa day to BASE jumping and now consider how many new things to do, experience and talk about are being created all the time. I'd love a longer healthy life, there's just too much to see and do to ever be bored.

agreed.

Life is a smorgasboard .

My interests tend toward tinkering in the workshop
and traveling by automobile on the backroads
and classical music concerts
and meeting people

I could entertain myself for a thousand years.
(It'll take me at least that long to figure out the symbolism in"Moby Dick")

There has never been a time like the one we're living. I sure hope it lasts .

old jim

 

[mfb]

Boredom and long life usually don't refer to 1000 years - it is no problem to find something new for 1000 years. It's probably possible for a million, or even a billion years. But if you consider "true" immortality (you cannot die, even if you want to), eventually you are running out of new things you can discover, or you have to forget at the same rate you see things, and get stuck in some sort of endless loop.

 

[dlgoff]

Boredom and long life usually don't refer to 1000 years - it is no problem to find something new for 1000 years. It's probably possible for a million, or even a billion years. But if you consider "true" immortality (you cannot die, even if you want to), eventually you are running out of new things you can discover, or you have to forget at the same rate you see things, and get stuck in some sort of endless loop.

my bold

Truth? That happens way sooner than 1000 years. Or even 100 years.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I don't want to wander off into sci-fi territory here but I'd add memory enhancement to the longevity wish list. At least that's been one of the things I've had in mind when I said healthy life extension.

 

[mfb]

my bold

Truth? That happens way sooner than 1000 years. Or even 100 years.

Certainly with everyday experiences (there is no point in detailed memory for every time you tied your shoes anyway) , but not with exceptional things.

 

[dlgoff]

Certainly with everyday experiences (there is no point in detailed memory for every time you tied your shoes anyway) , but not with exceptional things.

Yea. You're right. I remember the how cool it was that Peter Higgs was at the CERN announcement of the finding of the Higgs Boson but I have to look down to see if I've put my shoes on.

 

[Akaisora]

Nothing beats living in a futuristic utopia.

 

[lisab]

Nothing beats living in a futuristic utopia.

Ask the folks living 1000 years ago -- we're there, buddy, beyond their wildest dreams .

 

[cdux]

Nothing. Human progress will never end so if you have the illusion that you will be happy if you see some innovations you are wrong. If you see alien life you will then wonder if you will meet intelligent life, and if you see a CPU doing 100x the work of those now you will then wonder if one does 1000x the work. You will never be happy following that path. Innovation will not end and it will always be approaching infinity.

Well, that's practically wrong since the Universe has a finite life cycle, at least in this iteration, but in this iteration, it's still a baby.

Besides, you can already imagine some of those things being actually real. e.g. who seriously believes alien life doesn't exist? It's so likely that even intelligent life is extremely likely to the point of being certain.

I think a better path to happiness is knowledge. Deep knowledge. Knowing that what is going on is part of reality in such a fundamental level of understanding that you are no longer a slave of it or one that has the illusion of a God that controls it, but that you are a camera looking at it clearly and saying "yeah, that's what's going on".

After all, do you really need power? All you need is inclusion.

 

[mfb]

Nothing. Human progress will never end so if you have the illusion that you will be happy if you see some innovations you are wrong.

I see innovations on a daily basis, and I think this is really awesome. Bigger innovations are more awesome, and some of them happened within my lifetime. It is not an illusion, it is a fact.
Example

If you see alien life you will then wonder if you will meet intelligent life, and if you see a CPU doing 100x the work of those now you will then wonder if one does 1000x the work. You will never be happy following that path. Innovation will not end and it will always be approaching infinity.

That just means there are more awesome things to discover.

Besides, you can already imagine some of those things being actually real. e.g. who seriously believes alien life doesn't exist? It's so likely that even intelligent life is extremely likely to the point of being certain.

There is a huge difference between the hypothesis of life elsewhere and an actual discovery - or even communication with them.

I think a better path to happiness is knowledge. Deep knowledge. Knowing that what is going on is part of reality in such a fundamental level of understanding that you are no longer a slave of it or one that has the illusion of a God that controls it, but that you are a camera looking at it clearly and saying "yeah, that's what's going on".

That is connected to innovations.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

who seriously believes alien life doesn't exist? It's so likely that even intelligent life is extremely likely to the point of being certain.

Life or intelligent life? Either way we have only one example of a planet housing both and we don't have sufficient understanding of abiogenesis and evolution to place a probability that an identical primordial Earth would give rise to either (the Fl and Fi in the Drake equation). It could be that those two values are so high that it is statistically unlikely that there is life anywhere else in the universe, or it might not be. There isn't enough data to suggest it is likely one way or the other.