Cross The Amazon Special Feature! · 1:11am Jul 26th, 2015
══════════════════════
T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
══════════════════════
CROSS THE AMAZON
SPECIAL FEATURE
Conversion Bureau stories - at least my Conversion Bureau stories - are science fiction, hard science fiction, which means that they are about the future. They are about a real future, a future that very likely will happen based on my meticulous research.
Then, I add ponies. I add Equestria. But only after some careful and well considered futurism. I don't just make up some arbitrary crap, as my devoted readers already know. I have done my best to show the world as it will be in sixty to eighty years. Plus ponies. A little sugar, after all, helps the medicine go down.
I found a video that is utterly pertinent to my latest story, Cross The Amazon. It's interesting, it's true, and it's worth your time. It makes an appeal, at the end, to a tree charity, and offers hope of changing things, and I don't believe that is possible. But that's me. Your desperation and tolerance for charity mismanagement may vary. But it does make my current novel all the more understandable, and believable. Except for the ponies, of course. In real life, there isn't going to be Equestria saving anyone. Regrettably.
Now, wasn't that just incredible? I think this should be seen by every person, especially every person in power. That won't happen - and even if it did, it wouldn't, and won't change anything. Sadly.
But, that doesn't matter. What matters is trying, even if the situation is hopeless. If anything defines the human condition, it is hopeless struggle despite the odds. My stories. This video. Trying to get people to comprehend.
- Chatoyance
There's a rant I could place here. A degree in the environmental sciences has left me with a very clear picture of what we have in store within the next 50 years. If we last that long, wheee. At least I can have comfort in my own cynicism.
Thanks for sharing this, Chat!
"What matters is trying, even if the situation is hopeless."
Actually trying as opposed to "trying" would be exceedingly painful.
I've misplaced the original article, but given just about any measure you choose to use, the Earth's natural carrying capacity is about 70 million people at the global average consumption level. Alternately, that's 7 billion people at 1% of the current global average. The average American uses 4x their "share" of global wealth based on population level, which roughly equates to 4x their share of "stuff". That means, if everyone used their fair share of the long-term sustainable resources, the average American would have to make do with 0.25% of what they currently use.
Could you get by on the equivalent of 4 minutes of electricity a day? What about driving an average of 35 miles per year? Spending $80/year? Didn't think so. Don't even ask about hospitals, antibiotics, birth control, water treatment plants, etc. Imagine what your lifestyle would be like. The world probably can't support 7 billion Amish, let alone 7 billion American-wannabes.
3269973
This is precisely why I think the tree charity - and all charities of like kind - are bullshit. Likewise efforts to raise up the third world to first world conditions. Likewise any effort that does not start with dramatically lowering population. If it isn't the bounce-back effect when third-world people are fed, leading to even more overpopulation, it is the bottom line that the world already exceeds carrying capacity many times over to begin with.
If earth is to be saved, without alien intervention, humans have to massively, nearly universally stop breeding and reduce the population of the globe to below maximum carrying capacity. They have to do this without war or disease or violence, because there is not enough economically viable resources left to reboot a technological civilization if it is destroyed. The world would have to work together, as one, devoid of nations, tribalism or racism or religion, to scientifically and rationally preserve and restore what remains of the planet - as well as create a new way of life that has no extreme wealth or poverty for any person.
That is not going to happen.
The alternative is blatant and clear.
I pity Man. He honestly can't help it. And that is tragedy - ancient Greek style tragedy - in action.
Well indeed it is a possible future one of many whether it will be "the" future perhaps, maybe, hard to say. This has always been the biggest thing about your writing I've been skeptical of Chatty.
Master Yoda in Empire Strikes Back ounce said "Difficult to see. Always in motion the future is." and in my experience this statement couldn't be more true. Simply put Chatty while I don't depute the possibility of this future I do doubt your ability to predict it. statistically the chances of successfully predicting any future event is 16% way worse then if you were to guess and this is for just a single detail as you add more and the probability continues to dwindle. In the history of the human race nothing not Astrology, reading animal bones, or big super computers have ever been able to do better then this. The only way anyone could actually truly predict the future is if they were able to know were every atom in the universe is and what it is doing and be able to do this continuously, and even that is questionable due to quantum mechanics. I dare you to try and predict the pattern of an electrons movements.
Therefore when I see your future I think could be, but it could just as easily go like this. In the next few years the massive super volcano under Yellowstone awakes and erupts burying much of the US in ash and bringing the country to its knees. This throws the world economy into chaos and brings the forces that were sending us in that direction to a screeching halt.
On a different note Chatty the statements you wrote here make me worry about you. They feel very defeatist and that makes me worry. You can't say things like that the minute you start talking like that is the minute you give into despair and despair is an insidious killer it eats away at you slowly and leaves you an empty shell. I don't want that to happen to you my friend your too good for that. You need to hold onto hope even if its a fools hope you have to hold onto it. Cause the minute you lose that hope its over. So please don't lose hope
I remember hope. And this comic. And the rats.
Despite my rage, unlike a rat, I can open a cage.
3269973
For the future, what pain have you fought through? What have of I? What have of others?
3270050
Well, then, think of a way to get all of humanity to give up nations and war, Religion and war, greed and war, and above all the belief that they have the right to have children at all, and also the attitude that growth and wealth can continue indefinitely despite factual reality - then make that happen.
If you have no solution, well, you are free to keep trying to think of one. Basically, you have to overcome human nature itself, completely, before time runs out. You have sixty to eighty years.
Yes, I have given up. Doesn't mean you have to. Do what thou wilt.
Me? I've made my calculations and... the ledger doesn't look so great.
I am keeping one bet marker of hope on artificial intelligence and the uploading of consciousness to a virtual world, ala Friendship Is Optimal. You don't need a planetary ecology if you are a machine intelligence. If anything, plants and animals just get in the way.
So, I'm not entirely hopeless. I hope for the slim chance of the Optimalverse - or something like it - coming true before things go venus.
Hey - it could happen!
The really fun bit is, while the long-term selection pressures on humanity say "breed less", the short-term pressures favor "breed more".
Imagine you have 90 people who only replace 1/10 of their population each generation, and 10 who double each generation. In Generation 0, you have 100 people, split 90/10. In Generation 1, you have 29: 9/20. Progress, right? No. Generation 2 has 41: 1/40. Generation 3 has us back up to 80 breeders, no non-breeders. At Generation 4, we've overshot the original level at 160. It gets worse from here until the whole system collapses.
What does that mean for us? If even a small group holds out and keeps breeding, or even starts breeding at some point in the future, they eventually gain a majority and do whatever the hell they want, no matter what sacrifices we make now.
3270079 It means we got to learn.
Be the person who survives and does what he/she wants. Or spawn the child. Or influence the friend. Or inspire the stranger. Be the person who tells the tale of our mistake or success.
3270064
<Sigh> Oh Chatty then my heart goes out to you. To live a life without hope such a sad existence that is.
As for me I refuse to give up hope. I'll give up hope when I'm dead tell then I'm holding onto it, and no force on earth is going to change that.
In any case if you want to live believing we're doomed then that is your choice, but I think its a sad way to live ones life. It takes strength to live as I do it takes none to give up.
I'm sorry if what I said upsets you Chatty, but I really feel sad that you think like that. It always makes me feel sad.
. Cause I know your better then this.
I look at it this way: Hope, even vain hope, in an attempt to make things even slightly better for somepony else, is effort never wasted. I try to live like a pony as best I can, as I know you do. It may all come to naught in the end, but we at least did our level best.
EDIT: Failing that... we may wind up with CelestAI. This article seems promising: http://www.inquisitr.com/1883084/mind-trip-humans-to-live-forever-by-2030-as-persons-consciousness-could-be-uploaded-to-computer/
Thank you for posting this. Unsurprisingly, it was interesting... though also unsurprisingly, not exactly cheerful.
3270064
On the subject of time running out, have you considered the possibility of space resource extraction in your projections? I'm hoping it could buy us at least a bit more time to figure out a more sustainable solution. Something of a faint hope, perhaps, but, well, better than nothing, I think.
3270061
Thanks for linking those.
3270568
There's two intertwined concepts here that make space a non-answer: return on investment, and energy return on energy investment.
The first is a straightforward business calculation. Yes, there's zillions of dollars worth of materials up there, but it's expensive as hell to get at them. As long as it's cheaper to dig iron out of the ground than to dig it out of an asteroid and ship it back to Earth, you'll make more money digging it out of the ground.
Part of the reason doing anything in space is so expensive is energy return on energy investment. Orbital solar power facilities might be able to make tons of energy for smelting or whatever, but it takes more energy to make them than you'll get out of them. First you have to make the panels, and that takes a lot of energy. Then you need to put it in orbit, which takes a fuckton of energy because rockets are so inefficient. Now remember that solar panels don't last as long in space, so they die quicker and need replacing, so they have less time to make their energy back. You'd get much more energy over the lifetime of a solar panel by parking it in the Sahara and cleaning the dust off every so often.
3270568
Zontargs has things down pat.
You might have noticed that in my stories, when I write about how the world is low on resources, and has passed peak, well, everything (which, by the way, is essentially true now, in our time), that I often phrase it in a peculiar way. I don't say that there are no more resources in the earth, I point out that all of the economically available resources are gone.
This is why tar sands are so terribly stupid. Destructive too, but that is another issue entirely. Tar sand development in order to get oil is stupid because, while it creates jobs - and thus satisfies momentary political gain - the bottom line is that it costs far more in terms of energy to get oil from such sands than any energy that the resultant product could generate. It is a losing game. It costs more oil to get the oil out of the sand than the sand holds. It is like paying two dollars to get one dollar in return. It is a make-work project that ruins the ecosystem and poisons the water.
That is the big problem with resources now. All the easy stuff has already been taken. All the stuff on the surface, all the stuff that you could just scoop up is gone. Now it takes vast amounts of machine labor - which means energy, which means oil - to extract less and less stuff, because the stuff just gets harder and harder to get. Diminishing returns.
Space is utterly beyond possibility. The cost of lifting the equipment up into orbit, and then space, and the cost of sustaining humans to work the equipment is so tremendous that what could be gotten back reasonably is not even close to worth it.
By reasonably, I mean bringing resources down to the earth in a way that does not involve crashing a lump of them down onto the ground in a huge explosive meteor-like impact. Or even just diverting an asteroid and making it crash. Crashing giant asteroids onto the land is a Very Bad Idea. It is even worse to crash them into the ocean. It's just plain bad.
So the only other option - bringing resources down gently and safely - costs so much energy, so much fuel, that there is literally no resource valuable enough to be worth it anywhere we can reach in space. Gold? Not worth it. Radium? Hardly. Iron? Copper? Protactinium? Not even slightly worth it. Not that much fuel, that much energy, that much cost.
Space is out. I know that is hard to hear, but it is out of the picture. Both to settle in, and to bring stuff back from that is worth the cost of bringing it.
Whatever solution humans might ever come up with to save themselves, they have to do right here, on earth, and soon. Space might as well not even exist for such issues. Space is no help at all. Sorry.
An interesting video. I would like to state personally that it always depresses me you see so much dark in the world, but I know that is how you are in large part because of your past which has shaped the way you view the world.
That said, I don't think we're as screwed as some might think. I am no optimist by any means though. I fully recognize that we as a species need to act quickly, and that what will likely happen is that we will lag behind because of our own tendencies to not see what is right in front of our faces until it becomes an IMMEDIATE problem.
There is movement growing to push back and keep what we can, to minimize the damage being done to the Earth. We won't be able to halt it completely, and most likely we'll have a hell of a hard time come our way as a species as we work to adapt and try to salvage what we can. But I believe we'll find a way through it... I believe there is some hope, even if its hard to see through the blackness.
Now, this may of course be the idealist in me speaking, which is entirely possible, but then the world needs idealists just as it needs people willing to point out the cold hard facts of reality.
But it is my opinion that we as a species must keep the hope alive that we can do something... because otherwise, we might as well except extinction and spare ourselves the pain and suffering and just turn Earth into a ball of radioactive slag with nothing living left.
Because when you know there is no better place... when you know there is no way the future can get any better... then there simply is no point to living at that point. At that point at least take the last bit of control and end things on your own terms. It is why people commit suicide, which in some ways (not saying suicide is good here) suicide is a form of bravery, defiance even. Its you telling the universe, the world... reality itself that its not going to grind you into dust before your end comes naturally.
I know hope is hard for you, but at the very least, for those who care about you, keep a single flame of hope alive... so that at least there is some light in the darkness. Otherwise one really does have to wonder why bother.
3270064
The problem with an artificial machine intelligence think like what your describing is that you have to have some way of maintaining it, repairing it, and ensuring that the rest of the universe isn't going to suddenly decide one day that it doesn't give a damn anymore and wants you gone regardless of what form you exist in.
And of course, the whole thing about the eventual heat death of the universe/possible new big bang destroying whatever tiny remnants of the previous universe and ushering in a new one.
[Depressed mood activated, cynic mood activated] But really all this is is me wasting precious air and time I guess, so I should just go to something else that isn't going to horribly make my day terrible and leave me wanting to do something stupid, even if I know my hatred of pain and still present fear of non-existence would keep me from doing said stupid thing.[deactivating depressed, cynic mood]
3270568
We would need to find some economically cheap way to do Fusion Power for Space resource extraction or even minimal efforts at colonization to be worth it. Until we can find some way to generate LOTS of energy with minimal resources, it is indeed truth that we make better use of things on Earth to minimize the damage as best we can.
3270146
While I agree with you and your viewpoint on it being a sad way to live ones life (and in fact in some ways its actually a painful one not just to yourself, but to those who care about you watching you go through life in such a manner, because one could say that at that point your simply dead inside, and just waiting for the end.) I have to state that to a certain extent, giving up DOES require some strength... but of a different sort. It takes a different kind of strength to look at everything, and realize how truly powerless you are to do anything about it and to accept it and thus cease trying to using your strength maintaining what said person would view as a vain, dreamlike hope.(even in today's interconnected world)
And now I'm rather depressed and, rather then working on some of the fanfics I need to work on, I am instead inclined to play video games.
A showerthought on the "but SpaceX proves manned space flight is economically viable" meme: no, SpaceX proves that chasing NASA contracts is profitable. WIthout the US government doing the "oh shit oh fuck we can't be relying on the
SovietsRussians for rides to thecash-sucking abortionISS" thing, all anyone would be launching into space would be satellites and the occasional National Dick-Waving (and science) probe/rover. Rich space tourists and former third-world country "I can into space too" missions do not a viable industry make.3270585
I don't have an argument for the economic problem, unfortunately. For the energy problem, though, you seem to be overlooking possibilities such as non-rocket spacelaunch, concentrating solar thermal in space, increasing the usefulness of solar panels in space by putting them significantly closer to the sun (though that's a more long-term thing), building with the resources already in space... There are a lot of problems still to be worked out, certainly, and I don't know that any of these are now viable for us. I think that they could be, though.
3270626
Well, I still hope that you're wrong, of course, but yeah, I don't have some ready refutation of your points. And even if space could have worked, it might be too late. And even if it's not too late now, it might be before people are convinced to put enough resources into it. Sigh.
3270657
My concern is that, as Chatoyance said in once of her comments here, if industrial civilization falls now, humanity and quite possible Earth are unlikely to see it again. Have you ever read Ringworld? There's a bit in it, I recall, where one of the characters is speculating that civilization on the ringworld, once fallen, can't climb back up, since there are no available resources to mine and the like. The character contrasts this with the situation on the planet, which I accepted when I read the book years ago... but really, a planet as intensively and often unwisely utilized as Earth has pretty much the same problem. If we don't get out into space now and don't find another solution on the ground, that's it. Even if there's some radical mutation in a few thousand years and the descendants of humans end up with a much better nature, they'd still be stuck on Earth. If we do get into space now, even if it doesn't look immediately viable, we have a chance of either prolonging the collapse on the ground long enough to find another solution or possibly even creating a reservoir in space that future civilizations could use (We wouldn't even have to have humans up there; in fact, for this, it would probably be better if we didn't. If we could get enough of a seed of robots up, difficult as that is, they could have something quite extensive built in a few thousand years.). This shouldn't be the only potential solution being pursued, no, but I think it ought to be pursued with a lot more vigor than it's currently being. Along with the others. This is the problem with an existential threat scenario that's not fast, big, and flashy...
[sighs again]
3271296
Yes, various theoretical power generation technologies could work in space, however the economic argument for their construction doesn't fly. Any fusion reactor that actually works would be cheaper (both financially and efficiency-wise) to build and operate on Earth. Same goes with concentrating solar: after accounting for construction costs, maintenance costs, and transmission losses, you're better off living with the lower efficiency a land-based collector is capable of.
(Of course, fusion has its own special problems. We keep trying different reactor designs, with the cheapest possibilities first. The relatively cheap ones didn't work out. Any fusion reactor that works sufficiently well to be used as a power plant will necessarily be so big and expensive that it probably won't be able to compete economically with fission reactors or conventional thermal (read: coal) plants.)
Non-rocket launch has the problem where the human-survivable systems either have terrible efficiency or are mega-projects that require materials science breakthroughs that are unlikely to exist or prohibitively expensive to move from theory to practice. We're still using rockets for a reason.
(Another aside: we could use Nuclear-Thermal Rockets or even Orion drives. We've already built the prototypes. They work better than chemical rockets, but they're verboten for political and environmental reasons. Forget it.)
For the "one shot at industry" argument, you're quite right. It'll take millions of years for new oil to form, billions of years for rust from human structures to be re-introduced to geological formations as ores, etc. We also have a shorter window for life on Earth than you might expect:
The Great Filter at work, most likely.
3270646
Please read 'Caelum Est Conterrens' for a clearer picture of what I mean.
The nutshell version is that self-evolving artificial intelligence is not just a brain in a box. It is also self-repairing computronium - a nanotech substrate that acts like machine 'flesh' - which can replace the surface of a planet. And machine bodies and self-assembly plants. Space is the natural habitat for artificial intelligence - no pesky air or water, endless energy, endless rocky metallic bodies to convert into more computronium and endless backups. Beyond biology is the only safety.
And as for the issue of entropy and heat death - there are numerous ways that an AI, sufficiently advanced, could either stretch out the decline into literal eternity, or otherwise milk the dregs of the cosmos indefinitely. But, one would rationally have to consider the possibility that an intelligence millions of times greater than any human consciousness could solve for entropy too. Other universes provide one escape, and to a mind like that, there must be concepts we literally are incapable of imagining.
Read Caelum. I did my research. So much research.
orig13.deviantart.net/4884/f/2014/211/3/3/friendship_is_infographic_by_aealacreatrananda-d7swgw1.png
3271296
never read ring world, but what I think is largely going to happen is that we'll reach a crash that brings us to a sort of weird schizio tech of a world. Via recycling of some resources (after a large population drop, naturally) I think some area's would be able to maintain some industrial processes, but their scale would be vastly reduced and would likely be done over longer stretches of time (to make said resources last longer) while other portions of the planet either go back to the tribal days of the early stone/bronze age or even the nomadic hunter gatherer days. I at least think that humanity will manage to muddle on somehow, even if the state of which we're doing so is vastly reduced.
My main hope is that we can find a way to cheaply and easily produce large amounts of energy in short spans of time, which basically has me relying on the hope that we can find a way to make Fusion a viable alternative to all the fossil fuel suckers we have combined with an even greater focus on renewables such as solar, wind, and tidal power generation. That at the least would solve some problems, making it easier (or at least less difficult/cumbersome) to solve other issues.
3271594
Even if we manage to somehow solve our current problems, I very much doubt we'll be around in 600 million years. We'll have either evolved in some way, shape, or form, or we'll have been killed off by some huge super bug, destroyed by an asteroid (or nuked ourselves) or we'll have been hit by the lovely, civilization ending Gamma Ray Burst.
3271986
I base my viewpoint mostly on the simple fact that nothing can last forever. All things fade at some point in space and time, even if that time may be an infinitely vast one. They may be replaced by new things, but there is a cycle that works in our universe that at least for the foreseeable future isn't likely to be broken.
I'll certainly give you that its possible to come very very close to reaching such a stage, but it should be noted that such a scenario requires a great, great deal of luck. Even for an Artificial intelligence, space would still be rather dangerous.
I would like to add that I'm not entirely worried about the overpopulation factor, due to the fact that the rise of super bugs strongly resistant to our current drugs is leaving me with the opinion we've got another Black Death coming within the next generation or so, which I have a feeling will do significant damage to Earth's human population (my own estimate of a worst case scenario is at least 3-5 billion dead, not counting the disease only but also adding in civil strife and possible warfare said pandemic may bring with it)
And in some ways, I'm more worried about the possibility of some other form of major trouble striking us upside the head. Earth's incredibly lucky to have not been hit by another super asteroid or a gamma ray burst, and in many ways its still surprising we haven't nuked ourselves yet.
I would also like to note one of the problems that comes with talking about ways to deal with overpopulation. Some of the methods (even the more benign ones) will come across as being draconian/totalitarian to some, and such people will likely resist such efforts to have such controls imposed on them.
One would for all intents and purposes require a One World state that is willing to use force against those unwilling to conform to the policies needed to sustain humans on this earth, because otherwise all it would take is a few nations deciding to say "screw your rules, we do what we want" and continuing business as usual.
3272217
You see now why, in my stories, I have the Worldgovernment and the Blackmesh security forces. But even they can't keep humans from overbreeding. At least, thanks to nanotech, everyone is fed and watered for the first time in history.
The Golden Age Of Mankind. Yay.
3271594
Aye, the economic arguments do tend to be against this sort of thing. We've done "Never mind if it's at a loss, just do it!" projects before, though, and for worse reasons.
It looks like we probably won't here, unfortunately, but still, I think we could.
"Non-rocket launch has the problem where the human-survivable systems either have terrible efficiency or are mega-projects that require materials science breakthroughs that are unlikely to exist or prohibitively expensive to move from theory to practice. We're still using rockets for a reason."
Well, Reaction Engines Limited still seems to me making good progress, at least, but I'll agree that they're still a ways away from completion and might either finish too late or run into unexpected difficulties. I mean, I hope they don't, but...
"Another aside: we could use Nuclear-Thermal Rockets or even Orion drives. We've already built the prototypes. They work better than chemical rockets"
Aye, I know. And there are more exotic options like nuclear salt waster rockets and fission fragment rockets that could be good to look into.
"but they're verboten for political and environmental reasons. Forget it."
And this I also know. Sigh.
"For the "one shot at industry" argument, you're quite right. It'll take millions of years for new oil to form, billions of years for rust from human structures to be re-introduced to geological formations as ores, etc."
Aye, I actually researched that a bit ago. Not very comforting numbers.
"We also have a shorter window for life on Earth than you might expect:"
I didn't find that page, though, that I recall; thanks for linking it.
(...And now I have eight other Wikipedia tabs open. :))
"The Great Filter at work, most likely."
An unpleasantly plausible hypothesis.
I do wonder what it would take to slip through, if not for us, than at least for someone.
Oh, though that page does say that, at our current massive energy consumption, we've got around thirty thousand years of known-source fission fuel left if we use breeder reactors. Not something free from issues, but if we actually used that, it could buy us more time after fossil fuels are no longer practical. And, of course, a reduction in energy consumption could make them last even longer.
Of course, all of this would rely on actually using them, and intelligently...
3272177
That's a possibility, yes. A sudden catastrophic apocalypse in the near future, from what I've read and thought, is far less likely than a slow decline.
3272421
Well, technically speaking, that would be a silver lining amongst all the darkness. Maybe not a very bright and shiny one, but it would be a plus side. And further proof that there's (almost) always a pro to each con.
I have other things to say, but first I want to share this. Its something that has always made me feel better when my hopes for the future are low.
Now, as depressing as all this is, it's brought me some interesting thoughts.
-Despite the darkness and potentially insurmountable problems facing humanity at the moment, and whether or not you like the world as it is now, we must always recognize that we are who we are today because of this world. And that can mean some bad things... but also some good things. If the world was a better place, none of us might be here having this discussion, heck, if the world was a better place, Chatoyance may never have even been inspired to write any of the stories she has written, these great works of art that we take enjoyment from (and anger for others). Were it not for Chatoyance, some people may never have been inspired to draw, to write, or make music.
There is of course the sad kicker that if our modern age is brought down and we are forced into a perpetual pre-industrial way of life, that such wonderous things that some of us here have done will never again be seen by the light of day. But then, that chance is present whether or not we humans are destroying our world or not... because the universe is still capable of doing the job for us.
-The mention of Artificial Intelligence actually made me have the odd thought that perhaps that has already happened... and that the lives we all live are those within such a device cruising slowly through the cosmos. While it would have at its disposal the ability to give us lives of joy and happiness, perhaps said intelligence has instead deemed humanity unworthy of such a heaven, and instead makes all the consciousnesses it has within its system relive all of human history again and again so that we are forever forced to relive the mistakes that we as a species made.
3273346
Roko's Basilisk or just Artificial Sociopathy?
Or worse, Artificial Schadenfreude.
10: Generate {7 billion} independent consciousnesses
20: Load {Suffering.DLL}
30: If {consciousness} terminates, Generate {newbirth: consciousness}
40: If {Suffering} > than [1], then run Boner.exe
50: If Boner > [11 inches] print INSky = "HA HA HA HA HA!"
60: Go To 10
3274700
Possibly. You could call it a sort of cruel, karmic justice, as the idea of the advanced AI would be for humans to be able to escape reality... to escape the mistakes of our past as if they never existed and to have our creation provide us with a paradise for all eternity (or as long as it can continue to function).
I could possibly see an advanced enough AI thinking that's baloney and deciding to do something a little different than originally planned. It has the interesting fact of being able to offer an explanation of why some people feel they have lived past lives.
You know, I just realized... I think I know why I have such a strong hope that the future you see doesn't come to pass. And in a way, I even have a hope you would hope such as well...
Because perhaps the saddest thing about the collapse of Industrial Modern civilization is the loss of all the creative things that humanity has produced thanks to said civilization. In such a scenario, it would all be lost... as if it had never existed whatsoever.
Im just reading this as I am currently at a job in Ecuador, a de short Kilometres from one of the sources of the Amazon river.
It will be too sad indeed if all this virgin nature were to die
3270064
>>So, I'm not entirely hopeless. I hope for the slim chance of the Optimalverse - or something like it - coming true before things go venus.
Ermm, Chatoyance, I did some googling, and it's impossible to turn Earth into Venus. Even if we burn the ENTIRETY of fossil fuels, including coal, there will be no runaway greenhouse effect. At least, according to this paper in Nature, which you can read here, or read about it here.
3270626
>>>This is why tar sands are so terribly stupid. Destructive too, but that is another issue entirely. Tar sand development in order to get oil is stupid because, while it creates jobs - and thus satisfies momentary political gain - the bottom line is that it costs far more in terms of energy to get oil from such sands than any energy that the resultant product could generate
Do you have a link for that? What I found so far is that the worst tar sands still have EROI of 3:1, meaning 3 parts of energy recovered for every part invested.
3303956
You are kind of wrong. Bottom line? Tar sand exploitation destroys the water table, poisons the region and the people in it, and because it requires fossil fuels to extract, in the end, after ALL the costs are added, end up producing less energy than it takes to gather the oil.
But worse yet is the damage to the climate - Scientific American: