All prediction of the future is futile and premature. It doesnt matter if it is positive, negative or otherwise.
All current extrapolation of what the future will be, are based on present science and technology....and that is naive... why?...because there is a real possibility of a singularity, a technological/scientific black swan that makes all future prognostication silly and stupid. Human genetic engineering is such a singularity.
Why do i say this?
Let me start this way:
I used to read sci fi. i especially like sci fi from decades ago. It is funny how their projection of the future(our present age) is completely different from what eventually materializes today. I enjoy reading and seeing what they get wrong and right... what their thought process were like.... From h.g. wells to arthur c clarke to a.e. van vogt. or isaac asimov, etc...
Not just the sci fi writers... i like reading journals and excerpts from scientists from ages past to see how they imagined their future(our present) to be... how right and wrong they are...and what is their thought process in reaching whatever conclusions they had...
My conclusion: It has always been, it will always be -- the future will be different from whatever we imagine it to be.(which is part of the reason i have zero patience for the doom/gloom whining about feminism, race, and other political nonsense.)
Until blackbody radiation breakthrough happen with Planck's equation... Newton/Liebnitz calculus... Einstein's space/time... advent of molecular biology by watson/crick and jacob/monod ... I remember reading how people used to see the world(scientists included) ....
In fact, there was a time that the US patent office was recommended to be shutdown because there is not a new invention that could be invented. How wrong they were!
that was how limited their views were. How limited is our present views today?
Technological breakthroughs has a way of making total fools of social science predictors.
The problems with historians is that most are not technologists...so they focus on world actors e.g, napoleon; and not on the technology that allows napoleon to do what napoleon did.
Which leads me to effects of genetic engineering of humans... a field that the chinese are tampering with...
Most of the technological extrapolations of the future that i have seen are based on what current humans are doing... not on what super-humans will do. That is a major distinction. What will a superbrain human do? Trying to imagine what a superbrain human will do, is like a monkey trying to imagine what a human will do. There is no way we can imagine what a superbrain is capable of inventing, scientifically or politically or socially. And I am convinced that one way or the other, either through genetic manipulation or freak evolutionary accident, a superbrain human is coming. On that day, we as a species are obsolete.
the Chinese tampering with human genetics could cause two things: inadvertently unleash a devastating genetic plague on humanity or (b)inadvertently results in a genetic superbrain human. It only take one such superhuman intelligence to render all our current science and technology literally obsolete overnight. The seismic shift will be insane.
The day we cooked up a superman... is the day we become monkeys again...
It goes without saying that there is no way we can control such a superbeing. it will be like a bunch of monkeys thinking they are capable of raising and controlling a being that is total combination of leonardo da vinci + julius ceasar + Mozart + plato + Isaac Newton + nathan rothschild + William James Sidis. Not a snowball's chance in hell.
I am not sure the future is all roses and rainbow and beautiful humming birds...neither is it going to be some hyper-liberal paradise of lindy west's imaginings...it is going to the shite we havent seen before.
Regards,
Nemencine
All current extrapolation of what the future will be, are based on present science and technology....and that is naive... why?...because there is a real possibility of a singularity, a technological/scientific black swan that makes all future prognostication silly and stupid. Human genetic engineering is such a singularity.
Why do i say this?
Let me start this way:
I used to read sci fi. i especially like sci fi from decades ago. It is funny how their projection of the future(our present age) is completely different from what eventually materializes today. I enjoy reading and seeing what they get wrong and right... what their thought process were like.... From h.g. wells to arthur c clarke to a.e. van vogt. or isaac asimov, etc...
Not just the sci fi writers... i like reading journals and excerpts from scientists from ages past to see how they imagined their future(our present) to be... how right and wrong they are...and what is their thought process in reaching whatever conclusions they had...
My conclusion: It has always been, it will always be -- the future will be different from whatever we imagine it to be.(which is part of the reason i have zero patience for the doom/gloom whining about feminism, race, and other political nonsense.)
Until blackbody radiation breakthrough happen with Planck's equation... Newton/Liebnitz calculus... Einstein's space/time... advent of molecular biology by watson/crick and jacob/monod ... I remember reading how people used to see the world(scientists included) ....
In fact, there was a time that the US patent office was recommended to be shutdown because there is not a new invention that could be invented. How wrong they were!
that was how limited their views were. How limited is our present views today?
Technological breakthroughs has a way of making total fools of social science predictors.
The problems with historians is that most are not technologists...so they focus on world actors e.g, napoleon; and not on the technology that allows napoleon to do what napoleon did.
Which leads me to effects of genetic engineering of humans... a field that the chinese are tampering with...
Most of the technological extrapolations of the future that i have seen are based on what current humans are doing... not on what super-humans will do. That is a major distinction. What will a superbrain human do? Trying to imagine what a superbrain human will do, is like a monkey trying to imagine what a human will do. There is no way we can imagine what a superbrain is capable of inventing, scientifically or politically or socially. And I am convinced that one way or the other, either through genetic manipulation or freak evolutionary accident, a superbrain human is coming. On that day, we as a species are obsolete.
the Chinese tampering with human genetics could cause two things: inadvertently unleash a devastating genetic plague on humanity or (b)inadvertently results in a genetic superbrain human. It only take one such superhuman intelligence to render all our current science and technology literally obsolete overnight. The seismic shift will be insane.
The day we cooked up a superman... is the day we become monkeys again...
It goes without saying that there is no way we can control such a superbeing. it will be like a bunch of monkeys thinking they are capable of raising and controlling a being that is total combination of leonardo da vinci + julius ceasar + Mozart + plato + Isaac Newton + nathan rothschild + William James Sidis. Not a snowball's chance in hell.
I am not sure the future is all roses and rainbow and beautiful humming birds...neither is it going to be some hyper-liberal paradise of lindy west's imaginings...it is going to the shite we havent seen before.
Regards,
Nemencine
.
A year from now you will wish you had started today.....May fortune favours the bold.