The Human Sterilization Project

[ElectricFetus]

I know you don't want me to list all the early predictions, which are far more numerous and well known.

What like flying cars, atomic vacuum cleaners, a lunar tourisium?

Scientific Speculation (SciSpec, unlike SciFi) has been very accurate in general: Powered flight, mechanical vehicles, medical advancements, ect. Price, Safety, functionality, politics and funding have to be taken well into account though. Flying cars have not happened because they would take up to much fuel, would be horrible unsafe (think of druke drive, except in the air!) and loud as hell (if based of helicopters or VSTOL aircraft) Atomic vacuum cleaners would be to expensive to make and fuel (safe though). The Space race ended do to politics as Russia gave up and America quite as the winner, if it had continued we would have moon bases and been to Mars by now.

As for why I don't think cyborgs, biorobots and AI are in the near future... religious ethics and lack of technology. First, religious freak fight even the research of this type of stuff.

Religion and ethics has done little to nothing to the cybernetic community. nanotech are loved, Biorobotics is nanotech. Biotech research still goes on unharmed, although some of its products do come under political and ethical attack I don’t see much outcry in the future for organ farms and biotech synthesized drugs (as many of today drugs are biotech synthesized) Curing disease and aging have come under little attack as there goals are very universal in acceptance.

Second, none of those three have anything NEAR what would be required for your vision of the near future.

What do you mean? Again consider that technology develops exponentially. We have monkies control robots with implants, we have rats with artificial hippocampus, it not unrealistic to think we will have basic brain prosthetics and augmentation implant within 20year.

AI has been developing at a exceptional rate since the late 1980's with the re-introduction of neural networks and field programmable gate arrays. By 2020’s we will have computer capable of more processing power then the conservative estimates of the human brain's thinking power. We have planes that can takeoff, fly and land them selves, we have cars that can drive them selves, and all this developing at a exponential rate.

If you have some knowledge of a breakthrough, great... but saying that 'growth is exponential' is silly because we don't know what level of technology is actually needed for this stuff to happen.

how is it silly it pure mathematics! lets say you have a error of 10X were you could be off on how difficult something is by +or- 10times your estimate. because your on a exponential curve your off by a decade or two, not centuries.

 

[Avatar]

something really must be done, or at least planned!

POPULATION GROWTH SCENARIOS - 300 YEARS
Low - 2.3 billion
Medium - 9 billion
High - 36.4 billion
At current fertility levels - 134 trillion
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3302497.stm

 

[hypewaders]

And the sooner, the better: No time for concensus or even consent now. We've got to impartially reverse the birth rate before we and our spawn trash this place.

 

[spidergoat]

We could just find another planet...

...or let nature do the job. Human population is self-limiting.

 

[hypewaders]

"...find another planet..."
Out of reach in the foreseeable future (to say the least).

"Human population is self-limiting."
Of course it is, and we can choose how much ecological destruction, violence, and agony must be involved in limiting our numbers.

Proactively limiting human fertility is preferable in every way to the apathetic alternative. Just as is the case with any other destructive behavior, none of us should be guaranteed the "right" to overburden the planet with our progeny.

 

[Persol]

To play devil's advocate:
We are proactive in the cases of domestic animals 'to help them', why does the human race deserve less?

 

[hypewaders]

Exactly. Our overpopulation and resultant destruction of environment will bring us immense and unnecessary suffering and grief.

 

[BigBlueHead]

Hype: Then let the hammer of suffering forge us on the anvil of pain! Since I'm not sure I like your idea of population control by lottery. What if, by some fluke, only the morons survive? I mean, the Earth is about 95% morons, so the chances of that are actually pretty good...

 

[dagr8n8]

134 trillion if fertility levels continue at the same pace. so what i think is that every one should just be limited to one child then the poplation would eventaly decrese.

 

[valich]

I am ethically unassailable on this topic, and all who oppose me are evil and must not be allowed to reproduce.

If you believe that all that oppose you are "evil" then you have a psychological problem with society and should see a psyche to deal with it. We are not being evil: only trying to have a productive forum.

Actually, I haven't made myself clear. Human population growth is not going to naturally peak by any reasonable estimate in the next century. Even with a slight natural decline in average world fertility, there will still be critical growth of population.

In natural terms, human population has already peaked. This is why we are now scientifically searching for newer and better technological means to sustain our overpopulation: biogenetic engineering of crops, remanipulating social infra-structures (high-rise apartments, etc.), incarcerating more-and-more social misfits, encouraging cremation over burial, look to expand our life onto other planets (NASA's Mars project).

I'm not going to go into the problems of overpopulation, hopefully we can agree that extreme human population pressure causes great social and environmental devastation. Hopefully we can all agree that merely the financial wealth of the planet distributed however unfairly among a smaller population would be interesting: Imagine the implications of inheritors of all wealth being half the number of their forebears.

I think we would all agree on that.

I am proposing a genetically engineered, highly infectious virus that would be as indiscriminate as AIDS, would be more highly contagious, and like AIDS would not cause any symptoms in some individuals. I am not proposing doing violence on anyone- some responses in this thread compare this concept with weaponry.

Now you are contradictoring yourself! Yes it IS "weaponry." You are proposing to use a "weapon of mass destruction" and this is evil and wrong! It is evil and wrong in ANY religion, in any moral construct, and in any ethical debate.

You first state "and all who oppose me are evil," as if you are God in your commandments! And you are not? Your suggestion is, without any reservations, totally evil!

 

[Fafnir665]

Did this thread really have to be resurrected after almost 2 years of inactivity?