Are you afraid of the future?

[StarlanderGoods]

Just stop destroying the world and putting kids in cages, nitpick statistics later.

[Maryanne Solo]

12 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

How many refugees does your country take in?

Far too many.
Endless new, tree-less suburbs of tiny little pre-fab houses with no yards or lawns.
These people are being HAD by those who are selling a traditional dream newcomers will never experience,
at a cost to themselves and society that truly belies belief.
 

[Silent Mistwalker]

28 minutes ago, Maryanne Solo said:

Far too many.
Endless new, tree-less suburbs of tiny little pre-fab houses with no yards or lawns.
These people are being HAD by those who are selling a traditional dream newcomers will never experience,
at a cost to themselves and society that truly belies belief.
 

I didn't think you lived in the US.

[Ceka Cianci]

5 hours ago, Tama Suki said:

Sorry but do you realize how illogical this reasoning is?
Ok let's forget the whole history of human evolution and let's talk about the last 50 years.
Can you think about what the world was like 50 years ago and what it is like today?
Do you think the world 50 ago was better than today?

I'm sure my response sounds illogical to many people..

I wasn't even looking at the whole human evolution.. I was looking at from when we hit the gas and got into the fast lane.

There is going to come a point, if we haven't reached it already, that we'll have become too big for our britches.

I do feel the world was a much better place 50 years ago, because there wasn't 8 billion humans eating away at it 50 years ago.

If you watch the growth of cities and the destruction of natural growth on a google time lapse,we look like a disease eating away at the world, not something that is improving it.

 

 

[Lindal Kidd]

Some things have gotten better, but I agree with Ceka.

Plus, I'm afraid of what the face-off over Ukraine might lead to.

[Kalegthepsionicist]

On 1/16/2022 at 3:54 AM, Sam1 Bellisserian said:

We will all be dead anyway. The end.

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by Kalegthepsionicist

[Arielle Popstar]

21 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Fair enough: that certainly is the dominant narrative in the US since the mid-19th century. In practice, the vast majority of immigrants to the US since then are far more likely to those escaping poverty, or just seeking economic opportunity, than fleeing from political oppression. And I'm sure that's true of Canada as well.

Tragically, neither country did a very good job of assisting pre-war Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/voyage-of-the-st-louis

I would venture to say that political oppression is likely to equal poverty among other characteristics. We could for example look at the current vaccine mandates and lockdown as a political oppression that has put quite a signicant minority of people out of work with the resulting poverty that is starting to be experienced by those so affected. 

Just as we judge our great grand parents for the choices they made during their lifetimes, so will we be judged by our children and children's children in the future. Something to think about. Do you think we will be judged any better than we judge those who proceeded us?

[Arielle Popstar]

21 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

The economics of planetary exploration and conquest are very much different than those of the "wretched refuse". We might imagine a far off future in which such travel is available to the masses, but they will migrate long after the powerful have established profitable passage and infrastructure at the destinations (and all the rules attendant to that profitability). Earth's "New World" was every bit as habitable as the old one. That won't be true of interplanetary new worlds.

I am of the opinion that it is all relative. So just as the cost of migrating to the Americas became affordable to the masses of yesteryear, so the cost of migrating to new worlds will someday be accessible and available to the masses of the future. How far in the distant future that is we really don't know at this point. The cost of making the Americas habitable to our current lifestyles is also  going to be a factor in making a new world habitable. Time and effort for either. We don't know at this point how much that would be but I'm sure the cost of converting the pre-existent rocks, trees and water, has been a costly endeavor to convert to farmland, office towers, factories, apartments and suburbia. Question is, does history show that new lands were initially built up by the rich and powerful, or did they come in after the masses had already migrated and established a base?

[Rowan Amore]

9 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Question is, does history show that new lands were initially built up by the rich and powerful, or did they come in after the masses had already migrated and established a base?

The difference now is that only the rich and powerful will be building the means to get to outer space.  We've already seen this.

The pilgrims that settled in America after leaving Europe, were financed by a stock company.  Many of them already well off financially.  Columbus was financed by Spain.  Marco Polo by his family.  The ' huddled masses' arriving after the initial financed explorations.

[Arielle Popstar]

2 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

The difference now is that only the rich and powerful will be building the means to get to outer space.  We've already seen this.

The pilgrims that settled in America after leaving Europe, were financed by a stock company.  Many of them already well off financially.  Columbus was financed by Spain.  Marco Polo by his family.  The ' huddled masses' arriving after the initial financed explorations.

Sure, the rich and powerful financed the design and building of the ocean going ships to travel to the new world like the rich and powerful are also now doing the same for eventual interplanatary travel but what I was contesting/questioning was:

Quote

but they will migrate long after the powerful have established profitable passage and infrastructure at the destinations

 

[Rowan Amore]

24 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Sure, the rich and powerful financed the design and building of the ocean going ships to travel to the new world like the rich and powerful are also now doing the same for eventual interplanatary travel but what I was contesting/questioning was:

 

The major difference now being your average disadvantaged person can't hop on a rocket to get to an outer space destination.  Before, if you had a horse, a wagon or just your feet, you could follow.  People can't even afford airplane travel.  Rocket travel will be out of reach to all but the very wealthy.  Those wealthy people making even more money selling passage on their rockets.  There really is no other option to get to outer space.

[Ceka Cianci]

57 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

The major difference now being your average disadvantaged person can't hop on a rocket to get to an outer space destination.  Before, if you had a horse, a wagon or just your feet, you could follow.  People can't even afford airplane travel.  Rocket travel will be out of reach to all but the very wealthy.  Those wealthy people making even more money selling passage on their rockets.  There really is no other option to get to outer space.

It would probably be something like in the movie ,Passenger.. Where they finance the rides for people that have certain skills and can do all the different things they will need done where they are going..

Something to make it worth their wild to send them there..

Although they would still need to be able to have some sort of invention that stops the aging process..

Because if they rely on so many generations going by before they get there, They probably would be so messed up by the time they got there..

Just imagining the myths about the old world and the history all muddled up and everything else that gets faded away over generations..

Let alone just finally getting there and the huge amount of fear that's going to put on them after knowing nothing but a ship their whole lives.. hehehehe

That's a big ole rabbit hole of stuff..

I say,let the rich go for it first, then tell us how it was going ..

It might be like the end of Don't look up.. the little clip that came after the credits..

[Scylla Rhiadra]

23 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

I say,let the rich go for it first, then tell us how it was going ..

It might be like the end of Don't look up.. the little clip that came after the credits..

Brilliant idea. Can we bundle them all into a rocket now? I'll happily pack them box lunches and enthusiastically wave goodbye!

[Silent Mistwalker]

36 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

Just imagining the myths about the old world and the history all muddled up and everything else that gets faded away over generations..

What good is Earth history going to do them on an alien world? None. They are creating their own history that only has its origins on Earth and will never involve Earth. They will be completely on their own, no support or rescue from Earth because it won't exist (yet). It can't because humans wouldn't have made it that far. We won't have outposts established until we build them.

Edited January 17, 2022 by Silent Mistwalker

[LittleMe Jewell]

43 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

What good is Earth history going to do them on an alien world? None. They are creating their own history that only has its origins on Earth and will never involve Earth.

One would hope though, that if they have a solid understanding of Earth's history and the mistakes that we have made, that they might avoid repeating those mistakes.

 

[Sprout Evergarden]

2 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

The major difference now being your average disadvantaged person can't hop on a rocket to get to an outer space destination.  Before, if you had a horse, a wagon or just your feet, you could follow.  People can't even afford airplane travel.  Rocket travel will be out of reach to all but the very wealthy.  Those wealthy people making even more money selling passage on their rockets.  There really is no other option to get to outer space.

the scary thing was if it is like the way early people got to the "new world" back than many were contracted to a compony others were in Indentured Servitude to a person who was here and could afford yo pay for someone else to travel.

these days indentured servitude may not be in labor but agreeing to have no rights of privacy at all for "Research purposes"  Like what we live with now but much much worse.

[Silent Mistwalker]

20 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

One would hope though, that if they have a solid understanding of Earth's history and the mistakes that we have made, that they might avoid repeating those mistakes.

 

We haven't learned that lesson in the past 50,000 years or so. I doubt we will learn it by then, if ever.

[Qie Niangao]

19 hours ago, Tama Suki said:

Do you think the world 50 ago was better than today?

13 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

I do feel the world was a much better place 50 years ago, because there wasn't 8 billion humans eating away at it 50 years ago.

If you watch the growth of cities and the destruction of natural growth on a google time lapse,we look like a disease eating away at the world, not something that is improving it.

Yes. It's not that the world was "better" 50 years ago, but rather that it had much better prospects. It's difficult now to imagine the optimism of a postwar world where humans first walked on the moon, where "better living through chemistry" was a slogan not a punchline, where Atoms For Peace was a hope, where vaccines would cure all ills, and where the long arc of history seemed destined to bend toward justice.

Now we have snazzy smartphones, a telescope that can probe near first starlight, and yet we've never been so unlikely to achieve even a Kardashev Level 1 civilization. Humanity has depleted the Earth with global famine and eventual extinction more likely than the species-wide cooperation needed to geoengineer our way out of climate calamity.

[Rolig Loon]

2 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

The major difference now being your average disadvantaged person can't hop on a rocket to get to an outer space destination.  Before, if you had a horse, a wagon or just your feet, you could follow.  People can't even afford airplane travel.  Rocket travel will be out of reach to all but the very wealthy.  Those wealthy people making even more money selling passage on their rockets.

Yes, Earth's historic and archeological record is full of accounts of people who traveled long distances in low-tech, low-cost ways. Pacific islanders and the native people of the Americas traveled by boat or on foot without wealthy sponsors. As you point out, there's no low-tech, low-cost route to space. I wonder, though, about your final point. I can understand wealthy people investing in expansion across the Solar System, but where's their incentive to bankroll an interstellar mission?

Selling tickets is a nice idea, but investors would get income from a pretty small number of people on a one-way trip. Even if the people who travelled were millionaires paying millions of dollars for a ticket, I can't see ticket sales being a profit-making business. To get any return for their investment, the sponsors would have to believe that their heirs might some day greet return visitors who had somehow found or created something worth more than the original mission cost. That seems very unlikely.

Therefore, I see only two possible incentives: altruism and desperation.  Investors or governments would either need to make the unprecedented decision to expend huge resources to satisfy their scientific curiosity or wanderlust, or Earth would have to be dying and prepared to toss a lifeboat into space. Science fiction is full of lovely plots that play on one or the other of those themes. They make great reading. No matter which one you think is most likely, though, interstellar exploration would be an immensely expensive and high-risk venture. I don't see it happening any time in the foreseeable future. (Unless someone invents a warp drive, of course.  Then all bets are off.)

[Sprout Evergarden]

Going to be strait this climate thing will not be solved period. an No it wont be "Big Oil" or the "right wing" or any other excuse BS that's going to stop the fix its all the Bull Crap twinkle fairy Sunshine and rainbows technologies that might be practical some day  technology basket that all the Climate alarmed want to toss all the eggs in. Not to mention all the hypocrite crap like screaming at people enjoying a Hamburger while they pull out there new phone they replace every year to shame said burger eater on Twitter. 

Issue one Solar and and are great when the wind is blowing and the sun is out but  its still not 100% practical and it is also environmentally harmful to manufacture Rare earth metals are poisonous to mine we need something that works now and at the moment that is Nuclear and before you ask about waste did you know the French found ways to recycle spent fuel and still get more energy in the process https://www.anl.gov/article/nuclear-fuel-recycling-could-offer-plentiful-energy however people freak the heck out every time this solution is mentioned. 

issue 2 Bull s*it solutions for a real problem Lets start with the Biggest Placebo Band-Aid of them all Ev's To start with we have all the issues of Rare earth metals I mentioned earlier we can go do you know what kind of power station is supplying your area if it's coal or Natural gas or any other old Dinosaur bits your fancy EV is doing jack squat for your carbon footprint except for perhaps giving you a reason to feel better than the people around you who could not afford to drop $40,000 on green tech scam. the other issue is the EV detracts from the real fix make cities walkable or even better make it bicycle friendly the Bicycle is the single most efficient means to transport humans there is you can travel hundreds of miles on a burrito. Electric cars just make cities keep the horrible car-centric design they are using now. 

Issue the Stop the bleeding Hypocrisy i already mentioned the whole Hamburger thing but lets talk about air travel and i wont talk about the celebrities going to climate change conferences in private jets but private people screaming bloody murder about air travel while ate the same time ordering crap online next day delivery (how do you think that is getting to you across country over night? in a UPS or Fed-Ex Jet of course) 

 

we need real solutions now and not authoritarian chuckle F*cks trying to change peoples diet (that will just turn people off)

TLDR the whole way climate change is being handled is a joke dependent on dirty technologies that might work "someday" and were all doomed because of it 

remember this rubbish form 5 years ago ?

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by Vanessa Amethyst

[Drake1 Nightfire]

37 minutes ago, Vanessa Amethyst said:

Going to be strait this climate thing will not be solved period. an No it wont be "Big Oil" or the "right wing" or any other excuse BS that's going to stop the fix its all the Bull Crap twinkle fairy Sunshine and rainbows technologies that might be practical some day  technology basket that all the Climate alarmed want to toss all the eggs in. Not to mention all the hypocrite crap like screaming at people enjoying a Hamburger while they pull out there new phone they replace every year to shame said burger eater on Twitter. 

Issue one Solar and and are great when the wind is blowing and the sun is out but  its still not 100% practical and it is also environmentally harmful to manufacture Rare earth metals are poisonous to mine we need something that works now and at the moment that is Nuclear and before you ask about waste did you know the French found ways to recycle spent fuel and still get more energy in the process https://www.anl.gov/article/nuclear-fuel-recycling-could-offer-plentiful-energy however people freak the heck out every time this solution is mentioned. 

issue 2 Bull s*it solutions for a real problem Lets start with the Biggest Placebo Band-Aid of them all Ev's To start with we have all the issues of Rare earth metals I mentioned earlier we can go do you know what kind of power station is supplying your area if it's coal or Natural gas or any other old Dinosaur bits your fancy EV is doing jack squat for your carbon footprint except for perhaps giving you a reason to feel better than the people around you who could not afford to drop $40,000 on green tech scam. the other issue is the EV detracts from the real fix make cities walkable or even better make it bicycle friendly the Bicycle is the single most efficient means to transport humans there is you can travel hundreds of miles on a burrito. Electric cars just make cities keep the horrible car-centric design they are using now. 

Issue the Stop the bleeding Hypocrisy i already mentioned the whole Hamburger thing but lets talk about air travel and i wont talk about the celebrities going to climate change conferences in private jets but private people screaming bloody murder about air travel while ate the same time ordering crap online next day delivery (how do you think that is getting to you across country over night? in a UPS or Fed-Ex Jet of course) 

 

we need real solutions now and not authoritarian chuckle F*cks trying to change peoples diet (that will just turn people off)

TLDR the whole way climate change is being handled is a joke dependent on dirty technologies that might work "someday" and were all doomed because of it 

remember this rubbish form 5 years ago ?

 

You realise we are overdue for an ice age, right? Like 1,000 years overdue. We can not stop what is coming. It will happen. Put all the solar panels and wind farms up you want, better work on making underground cities as well, though. 

[Tama Suki]

4 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Yes. It's not that the world was "better" 50 years ago, but rather that it had much better prospects. It's difficult now to imagine the optimism of a postwar world where humans first walked on the moon, where "better living through chemistry" was a slogan not a punchline, where Atoms For Peace was a hope, where vaccines would cure all ills, and where the long arc of history seemed destined to bend toward justice.

Now we have snazzy smartphones, a telescope that can probe near first starlight, and yet we've never been so unlikely to achieve even a Kardashev Level 1 civilization. Humanity has depleted the Earth with global famine and eventual extinction more likely than the species-wide cooperation needed to geoengineer our way out of climate calamity.

I really don't understand the reason for your pessimism folks.
We have been through many ups and downs, we have had economic booms and very heavy economic crises but we have always come out better. We are moving more and more towards a global peace, if you think about it, it hasn't even been so long since in Europe we were able to kill each other as if nothing had happened, today such a thing is unthinkable.
I don't think there is a global famine and I don't think the Covid problem proves that humans are incapable, on the contrary, I think we are demonstrating the exact opposite.
We have managed to create vaccines in impressive times, we have managed to contain the disease and we are defeating it.
@Innula Zenovka I was wrong to refer to apartheid talking about 50 years in the past, maybe it was 80 or 100 or 200, the sense of what I meant changes little.
Today such a situation would be unthinkable.
We learn from our mistakes, society evolves for the well-being of all. We have many problems but with time and experience we solve them, others will arise and we will solve those too.
We have to free ourselves from illusions and look at our reality with frankness, I think perhaps the greatest evil is the illusion and unfortunately many politicians use that weakness to beg for approval.
I don't understand why someone came up with the immigration issue. I think equating the exploration of the cosmos and the probable colonization of other planets has absolutely nothing to do with immigration and oppression of peoples.
Can you imagine that the future of the colonization of other planets is a kind of Total Recall? LOL! It will be a very slow and very stable process.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

1 hour ago, Tama Suki said:

I don't think there is a global famine and I don't think the Covid problem proves that humans are incapable, on the contrary, I think we are demonstrating the exact opposite.
We have managed to create vaccines in impressive times, we have managed to contain the disease and we are defeating it.

With the rise in cases across the world, you really think we have Covid under control? 

[Tama Suki]

1 hour ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

With the rise in cases across the world, you really think we have Covid under control? 

Certainly. because those who get vaccinated are much less likely to end up in intensive care or die. They may always be affected by the disease but they will pass it like a simple cold. Most of those dying now are naive who didn't want to get vaccinated.

Edited January 18, 2022 by Tama Suki

[Tama Suki]

On 1/17/2022 at 1:17 AM, Silent Mistwalker said:

I didn't think you lived in the US.

Are there Aborugines in the US too?

 

Ah no sorry, in the United States of America there are Native Americans. Now I understand what you meant.

Edited January 18, 2022 by Tama Suki