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2512

Usually when I speculate about the future, I stick to two areas; either the really near future (within the next couple of decades), or the really far future (so far out that signs of continental drift should be glaringly obvious). But what about the medium term?

Parameters: I'm going to assume no alien invasions or total collapses of technological civilization or significant asteroid impacts, because all three of these are rare in the historical record.

I'm also going to ignore space colonization, because I want to focus on this planet.

I'm going to assume that we are sufficiently short-sighted and stupid that we keep burning fossil fuels. We're going to add at least 1000 GT of fossil carbon to the atmosphere, and while I don't expect us to binge all the way through the remaining 4000 GT of accessible reserves, we may get through another 1000 GT. So the climate is going to be rather ... different.

Sea levels will have risen by at least one, and possibly more than ten metres worldwide. Large chunks of sub-Saharan Africa, China, India, Brazil, and the US midwest and south are going to be uninhabitably hot — that is, too hot for non-GM plants and organisms to survive in during heat spikes, and with heat spikes over 44 celsius at night lasting at least two weeks every year (sufficient to kill off anyone without air conditioning). As 80% of today's human population live within 200Km of a coast, there will have been mass migrations and resettlements: many of today's great cities will be lost. London, New York, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Mumbai — they're all going to be submerged, or protected by heroic water defenses and at comparable risk to today's Venice and New Orleans (both of which will be long-since lost).

Energy and technology: I think there's a high probability (approaching certainty) that we'll be running on a de-carbonized energy cycle by then. Fusion: will be in widespread use, or proven to be economically non-viable. Fission: will be in widespread safe use or completely taboo. Solar, wind, tidal, OTEC: mature technologies, durable and optimally deployed for hundreds of years. The more variable environmental power sources will be used to generate hydrogen, and from there via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis to produce storable hydrocarbons from water and air: or they'll be used to compress air into exhausted underground gas deposits, to be released slowly for energy balancing. More likely, we'll have either "wet" nanotechnology — advanced biotech, in effect — giving us highly efficient algae-analogs that can continue to photosynthesize in the high temperature zones and produce useful energy-storing materials. Or we'll have full-on Drexlerian diamond/vacuum phase nanotechnology and paving the Sahara in self-organizing and self-wiring solar cell factories will be a high school project.

Political/demographic change ...

Five hundred years is a nearly unimaginable gulf from today's perspective. Five centuries ago, the Portuguese conquistadores were beginning their rampage through South America; Martin Luther was finishing his doctorate in theology and thinking about sin: the huge sequence of civil wars that racked Japan for over a century were raging: the Great Powers were still the Chinese empire and the Caliphate (although the latter was undergoing a shift in center of gravity towards Istanbul and the Ottoman empire). The great powers in Europe were Spain and Venice; the English speaking world was a few million barbarians occupying a handful of damp islands on the outer fringes of Europe. It's more than twice the historical existence of the USA to this date. Of our social institutions, very few survive from that long ago: the Catholic Church (and various orders and sub-groups within it), the Japanese Monarchy, and so on. A handful of universities, banks, and other institutions. The half-life of a public corporation today is about 30 years: ten half-lives out — 300 years hence — we may expect only one in a million to survive.

Looking forward 500 years requires us to make some assumptions. In the absence of breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, mind uploading, or longevity research (which it would be foolhardy to dismiss on this kind of timescale) none of us are going to be around in any form to observe it. We appear to be living close to the peak of a demographic bubble that will see our population max out or be in decline by 2100. Longevity breakthroughs (as in: a cure for the aging process, and all diseases that currently prevent us from reaching our maximum age) might smear out the descent, but unless old people suddenly start to have more children, it's not going to change it. Longevity breakthroughs would slow down the rate of change of demographic groups, but only in the medium term. 500 years is close to the human mean life expectancy if all medical causes of death are abolished: eventually an accident or violence will get you. So, demographically, the world of 2512 isn't going to resemble our world very closely at all, although it's anyone's guess at this stage as to who will prosper.

(It's fairly obvious at this point that some idiot is going to start shrieking about the teeming, breeding hordes of [people not like them]. It's also likely that we'll find a bigot or two in the comments, nattering about "Eurabia" or sha'ria law. I'd just like to point out that 500 years ago our ancestors mostly believed in the geocentric model of the universe, and witchcraft, and torturing heretics. We're descended from people who were arguably rather less enlightened than the Taliban in Afghanistan. 500 years is a long time, and today's ignorant fanatics are tomorrow's effete decadent intellectuals. And vice versa.)

One key issue is that during the age of cheap oil (i.e. right now) a whole lot of cultural mixing is going on, on an unprecedented, planetary scale. We have become an urban species, and I see no high probability of that state changing and the bulk of humanity reverting to a low-density agricultural (much less hunter-gatherer) lifestyle. Over the next century we're going to be doing a lot more cultural remixing; many niche languages are becoming endangered while 3-5 major languages are becoming global lingua francas — English, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic (although Arabic is balkanized), Spanish, Portuguese. Whatever culture looks like in 2512, it's unlikely to be broken up and diversified geographically (except in practical terms — igloos don't belong in central Africa, and so on), although there may be many subcultures distributed in balkanized linguistic and informational bubbles.

The age of the Westphalian nation state is ... well, it's less than 500 years old. And that model comes with huge contradictions and paradoxes if you consider the extent of travel and communication today. A model that evolved to handle territorial boundaries in an age when it took two days to cover 100Km is bizarrely inappropriate in an age when it takes two days to span the antipodes (which at that time were about 2-3 years apart — if you survived the adventure).

I'd like to believe in Steven Pinker's pacification hypothesis — that the history of humanity shows a continual progression towards peaceful means of social mediation, and a decline in violence, because we are developing better tools for dispute resolution and selecting at an individual and cultural level for less-violent people and belief systems. But even if he's right in the long term, there are regressions along the way. The 20th century was the most peaceful century in human history, in terms of probability of an individual dying violently (either in war or through murder): but it still sucked mightily if you were a conscript during the Battle of the Somme, or a Jew in a ghetto the SS had just cordoned off.

I suspect the hypothetical no-collapse-of-civilization world of 2512 will harbor a myriad of conflicts, but they'll be played out in ways incomprehensible or invisible to us. We're already living into an age when developed nations prefer to send drones instead of human soldiers where possible: and where information war is an actual thing, not just a bullshit marketing proposition. Go forward 500 years and extrapolate from today's Predator drone, analogizing it to a 1500s arquebus ... it's not pretty.

Speaking of regressions: racism and race politics as they exist today are largely a side-effect of the perceived need to find a moral basis from which to defend the African slave trade, followed by rationalisms based on a half-assed reading of evolution. Older strains of racism and intolerance hinge on religious absolutism. Sexism emerges from the defense of patriarchal status. I see none of these constructs as inevitable, and the status of women in particular is drastically affected by the demographic transition phenomenon, which seems in turn to be a side-effect of improved maternal childbirth survival rates and improved neonatal survival. Which is to say that, short of a complete collapse of civilization and the loss of key knowledge about hygiene, feminism (in the sense of, at a minimum, the end of patriarchy and the systematic subjugation of women as a class by men as a class) may be as much of a one-way shift as the transition from hunter-gatherer to settled agricultural lifestyles at the beginning of the neolithic.

The biosphere on 2512 Earth isn't going to look much like ours. That we're living through a great extinction event is obvious, and the level of climate change we can expect in five centuries means this will have run mostly to completion. On the other hand, it's almost a certainty that if we're still around in five centuries, we'll have extensive experience in synthetic biology, and not just at the single-celled level. Tools we're going to need include a better photosynthesis pathway (one that operates efficiently above 40 celsius, rather than shutting down), a more efficient mitochondrion, modified ribosomes that can assemble polypeptides using non-standard aminoacids (presumably coded for using four-base codons), lots of new and improved heat shock proteins, and some metaprogramming systems for handling epigenetic modification and cellular differentiation.

I'd expect to see lots of — to our eyes — odd vegetation. Freeman Dyson's suggestion of GM mangroves that can grow in salinated intertidal zones and synthesize gasoline, shipping it out via their root networks, is one option. Variant food crops that can grow in 50 celsius climates and still make stuff we can eat would be a bonus. Modified animal or bird pest species, re-purposed as agricultural stoop labour? It might be easier to work with the intelligences that nature's dropped all around us rather than trying to design artificial ones from scratch. (Think racoons. Think racoons programmed to come out at night to harvest and wash fruit because we've invented racoon Heroin™ and trained them to take their fix in payment for crop-picking. Or something like that.)

I'm unsure whether the non-urban environment is going to be curated, re-wilded wilderness. Or whether it's going to resemble a vast, robotized, semi-sentient farm, with every individual plant tagged with an RFID chip to monitor its growth and coordinate its nurture. But either way, it's going to look rather alien to our eyes.

Other neck-sticking-out projections?

I doubt the United States of America will exist in 2512. I doubt the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will exist in 2512. I doubt that the Peoples Republic of China will exist in 2512. (The Japanese monarchy ... maybe, if they haven't been inundated.) Our existing geopolitical boundaries are going to take a shoeing from rising sea levels and changing demographics. And our existing political arbitration mechanisms are already taking a shoeing from communication and data mining technologies. The legal, economic, and cultural frameworks of 2512 are going to be rather different, as are the dominant sociopolitical groups. Possibly South Africa (or some political grouping in that part of the continent) will be the dominant superpower. Or maybe it'll be Poland.

I don't expect off-planet trade to amount to much. There may be useful accessible sources of rare earth elements. And there may be bulk platinum or iron deposits on small asteroids that we can dump in the ocean without causing too much harm. But there's a hard floor under the energy cost of getting a canned ape into orbit — namely the mass constraint imposed by canned ape plus life support, and the reaction mass and energy needed to shove it up to around 7.5km/s — and we really don't want to be using excessively high energy power sources in a biosphere we have to live in. Even if we iron out the bugs in our space elevator designs, and work around the obstacles, a ticket into orbit isn't going to be significantly cheaper than a first-class subsonic airliner ticket to the opposite side of the planet, today. Which is cheap enough for emigration, but not necessarily for bulk trade: we might be exporting brains and importing insanely high-grade permanent magnets, but we won't be exporting water and importing corn.

Anyway, that's my blogging keystroke quota exceeded (I have a novel to write). Over to you ...

824 Comments

1:

I expect to still be here.

2:

What, commenting on this blog? That's a horrible thought! For both of us.

3:

Two predictions that seem totally obvious:

The vast majority of energy will be expended on computation, and most "stuff" will be happening in VR

Human genetic engineering will have triggered a multiple speciation, so there may well be far more racism than exists today.

4:

I suppose there'd have to be some boundaries as to what's possible. For instance :-

Today's laws or physics are right. No zipping about the universe at anywhere near the speed of light, let alone faster than it.

Advancement/increase (of pretty much anything you choose to measure) is on a sigmoidal, not exponential curve. I.E. no singularity.

Allowing for that sigmodal curve, our knowledge map would be getting pretty complete. I'd expect us to come up against the limits of the unknown. As in, our understanding of the universe would be such that we'd be in the 'known unknowns' stage. Sure, there'd be a lot of stuff we'd know we couldn't know; say for instance we've proved the Riemann hypothesis is unprovable.

Knowing that we may be approaching the end-point of our capabilities might have interesting social consequences... Apathy would be the final barrier to the long term continuance of the race!

5:

Your first point is, I think, unlikely -- improvements in energy efficiency (via Koomey's Law) will make in-roads into the computational energy budget.

The second point: if we've got sufficient GM chops to control human tissue differentiation, then by definition it's not a speciation event because different human sub-strains will be mutually fertile (with a bit of medical assistance). But I suspect ethics considerations will put a stop to most obvious germ-line modifications beyond the elimination of "undesirable" traits.

Of course, the definition of "undesirable" is a movable feast. Nobody would argue in favour of retaining the recessive trait for Tay-Sachs disease. But how about fixing the broken human metabolic pathway for synthesizing Vitamin D? Then we could also fix the melanin-deficiency trait in folks descended from northern Europeans which makes them so vulnerable to sunburn!

6:

Ten half-lives is a factor of a thousand, not a million.

7:

Knowing that we may be approaching the end-point of our capabilities might have interesting social consequences... Apathy would be the final barrier to the long term continuance of the race!

Disagree.

Rather, what we could expect would be a convergence of science with established knowledge -- you wouldn't go to a researcher for information, you'd go to an archivist -- and a reversion to the pre-rennaisance world view in which human knowledge of the physical world is viewed as essentially static received wisdom.

There'd still be stuff to argue over or research, but it wouldn't be in the fields of physics or astrophysics: the social sciences might still be in ferment, as well as biology (and some of the more arcane sections of chemistry).

But our origin story for the universe would be as frozen as Genesis (only based on reproducible, empirical research rather than divine revelation).

8:

Well, I'm going to disagree with you on the computation issue. I think ultimately the amount of computing power will be energy limited no matter how efficiently we eventually make the computers. It seems to be an infinitely desirable resource.

9:

Ten half-lives is a factor of a thousand, not a million.

  • Rolls eyes *

I blame early morning caffeine deficiency!

10:

Farming could well disappear, all food could be cultured. There might be some farming specialised to providing rare product to the elite but in general it could by then be all grown in cultures and artificially flavoured. I expect nanotech to be of the wet variety. I doubt if there will be nay super power, it is also possible that any power or rich organisation will be able to project force over global distance. International affairs will be more constrained by global treaties and the committees that moniter them. This will probalby come into being as a response to the wars that result from the disruption caused by global warming.

11:

I think energy scarcity is likely to be a larger problem than this (thoughtful) suggests. We've backed ourselves into a corner wrt energy supply; we don't have that much carbon left to burn (compared to our appetites), and replacement technologies will take decades to mature sufficiently to be applied at large scale. Given the economic crunch that will occur as carbon fuels dry up (cf various Arab/OPEC oil embargoes and the us economy), we're not going to have a lot of spare change around for the massive engineering needed to deploy civilization-scale energy systems.

12:

Actually, we've got a lot of carbon to burn. The trouble is, it's all the wrong kind -- dirty, filthy coal and oil shale.

13:

In the future your major political affiliation will not be the nation state or even the corporation. It will be your IT infrastructure provider IE Apple, Google, Microsoft or their 2512 counterparts.

14:

As water-level rises and surveillance increases seasteading will start to kick off.

Climate (and water-levels) might get back to todays levels through hydrocarbon synthesis but will not drive people back to living on land.

As life-expectancy increases dramatically our healthcare systems will change dramatically. I suspect we will get a model similar to the one in use in Singapore currently where a certain amount of your taxes go into a specified account that will only be used to pay your medical bills - if the accounts gets to zero you wont get any, unless you pay for it yourself. Very few people will be able to retire completely from work no matter their age.

Birthcontrol will be strictly enforced in most areas and in those lifeexpectancy should be counted in centuries. In others birthcontrol is more relaxed and those areas will either be poor or strictly following their own ideology (probably some low-tech variety like the Amish people). As people get older they will be more and more specialized and the value of an individuals life will increase enourmously. Wars will no longer aim to kill (except for a few targeted individuals) but rather try to make the masses change their viewpoints - which could be done through a combination of wetware and propaganda. Military defense will primarily be concerned with spamfilters and wetware-vaccines.

Eventually most oceans will have a network of seasteadings spread across them and they will work like micronations which will cooperate in fastchanging diplomatic allegiances with continually ongoing memetic wars.

15:

Coal supplies are likely vastly overstated: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5256 And oil shale supplies are very uncertain: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9569 The pessimist in me thinks this is just enough carbon to fully cook us, and not enough to power us into something better.

16:

People like civilisational collapse. This is hard.

17:

Implicit in your suggestions is that idea that work as we know it today even exists.

The structure of work in the developed world today is very unlike work in the pre-industrial revolution world. (Which was mostly agricultural labour, either on your own patch to feed your own family, or as a tax or corvee on behalf of the landowner who owned the plot in question. If you were lucky enough not to be a serf or slave!)

Right now employment (as opposed to unemployment) rates in developed countries are down between 20% and 40% -- yes, even the USA. This is the rate of full-time employment in jobs for which the worker isn't drastically overqualified, from the 15-65 demographic: once you subtract prisoners, the disabled, and students you find that the employment rate is much lower than you'd expect if all you ever look at is the unemployment rate. And the employment rate has been shrinking for the past fifty years.

Ultimately the shrinking employment rate runs into a hard floor imposed by the number of jobs that can't be automated -- currently these are mostly personal services, from cooking and grooming to nursing and dentistry. Because the number of jobs required in the high-tech manufacturing sector is vanishingly small compared to the older smokestack industrial model.

But it looks as if machine vision and robotics are going to begin eating into the service sectors soon, probably starting with self-driving trucks and taxis and buses and cars. And then, who knows?

Update: A key insight I forgot to put in that think-piece is that the 19th-21st century capitalist model will be dead. As dead as the mediaeval guild system, or Leninism, or the divine right of kings. It's inherently unstable and requires unlimited growth and differentials in income and capital distribution. Over time, the scope for growth and the income and capital differentials are going to go away. Which makes life very difficult for a company that tries to follow the industrial age paradigm.

18:

The world population in 500 years is anybodies guess. Average yields in developed countries are roughly twice of the world average, with developing countries getting no more than half the average. Populations on the order of 20billion people seem to be entirely possible with modest improvements of potential agricultural yields, though perhaps not necessarily desirable.

The tropics, however, will remain very habitable no matter what happens - due to the simple fact that the greenhouse effect is dominated by water vapor in those areas and temperatures are lowered substantially by evaporation of rainwater and high albedo of the clouds above. That's why the deserts north and south of the rainforests are so much hotter than the equatorial areas that nominally get more sunshine.

There will be a large rise in the proportional world population on the American continent(s), which is currently very sparsely populated. Eurasia has 4.5x the population density of the Americas, despite the vast stretches of Siberia, the steppes and deserts like the Gobi and so on.

There is no reason, other than its history and recent policies, why the area of the current USA shouldn't have a population comparable to or larger than either China or India. If the US had the average population density of Eurasia, it would have about 900mio inhabitants - but North Americas Siberia is Canada. The US has much more favorable climate and soil than the average of Eurasia.

The use of bulk materials like steel or aluminum will probably reach a steady state, with comparably small additions from raw ores. Having provided this much raw material will likely be seen as a great deed by the ancients and a monumental achievement.

There will also be a steady state in the inventory of nuclear waste - this is already true for fission products, which are produced roughly at the same rate as they decay. Activation products will be taken care of, both to get rid of them and to produce energy. We're pretty stupid not to use the plutonium we have as fuel.

19:

Wot no hover-cars?!

20:

Sorry that was rude- really thought provoking Mr Stross

21:

Most estimates on population have it peaking at around 12 billion in 2050 and thereafter declining. The real problem might be population collapse, which is happening in the developed world and also places like Iran where fertility rate is around 1.3

22:

I wonder if the automation of transportation would change that factor regarding human life and violence/accident.

I wonder if the increase in temperature will lead to more underground housing. You can blame reading Heinlein as a kid, but I kinda love that idea a little. A little underground Maybury might be just right.

Don't know if you noticed a recent report saying avg global temp will be more likely to be up by 8 degrees (f) by 2100 than lower temperatures also predicted: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/11/121108-climate-change-clouds-science-model-relative-humidity/

With the skills to improve mitochondria, would we be able to modify ourselves to require less food? (could that backfire into obesity, or is that just another problem to solve?)

I fall in line with the idea that looking back 500 years for anything but possible magnitude of changes just won't work - the changes we have made in the past 100 years are incomparable to anything we've known before.

23:

Industries like mining will focus to some extent on re-extraction from landfill.

I disagree about interplanetary trade, because extreme automation will mean a mere handful of canned apes will be able to mine millions of tonnes. Sure, we'll minimize climbing out of the gravity well, but I expect human ingenuity to come up with a workaround for chucking stuff in from the top (e.g. Nanomachines diamondize the leading edges of the inbound carbon chunks, and riddle the rest with vacuum filled holes so that once in-atmosphere they drift down feather-like).

I expect to see Greg Egan style self-modding on the personality front, so that to it becomes the norm for kids to decide the personality and drives they'd like to have, then install them.

24:
breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, mind uploading, ... (which it would be foolhardy to dismiss on this kind of timescale)

You don't exactly dismiss these, but your scenario also doesn't seem to reflect such developments. Do you implicitly assume they don't happen, or instead think they won't make much difference?

25:

They make so much difference that it becomes virtually impossible to make any kind of useful predictions in their presence. See also "the singularity".

26:

A million sq km of solar panels working at an overall spacial efficiency of 10% in N Africa with an average insolation of 200W could provide a generating capacity: 10^12 x 200 x 0.1 = 2 x 10^13W which is 10x higher than world electricity generating capacity today. I am assuming that in 500 years the battery problem is solved. Add that to a possible population of under a billion and it's good times for all.

27:

The 20th century was the most peaceful century in human history, in terms of probability of an individual dying violently (either in war or through murder): but it still sucked mightily if you were a conscript during the Battle of the Somme, or a Jew in a ghetto the SS had just cordoned off. Is there a source? Strikes me as odd.

racism and race politics as they exist today are largely a side-effect of the perceived need to find a moral basis from which to defend the African slave trade, followed by rationalisms based on a half-assed reading of evolution. In mainland europe at least, and elsewhere too, racism is part of nationalisms (like the ius sanguinis in german approach to citizienship, Sarkozys plans for genetically testing immigrants wether they are french enough, antisemitism/antiziganism almos all over middle and eastern europe with it's construction of out-groups). As long as there's a state that dispenses rights according to citizenship, people will argue against others gaining said citizenship with whatever arguments they find. I don't see racism end that soon.

A key insight I forgot to put in that think-piece is that the 19th-21st century capitalist model will be dead. As dead as the mediaeval guild system, or Leninism, or the divine right of kings. It's inherently unstable and requires unlimited growth and differentials in income and capital distribution. Over time, the scope for growth and the income and capital differentials are going to go away. There's the argument that crises lead to destruction of capital - war - that create the space for a new cycle of accumulation. Nasty. But I surely hope we come up with something better til 2512!

28:

@dirk.bruere: While the specifics of your post have some problems -- energy transportation is a big deal, 10x current world electricity production is not enough to sustain everybody at first-world levels, etc -- I'll accept the general point that the sun provides plenty of energy. That's not the problem. The problem is that building the systems to harness that is a civilization-scale -- or at least superpower nation scale -- task. Carbon energy is as cheap as it is ever going to be right now. As prices go up and economies start to complain about the cost of energy (and the general state of the economy), how do we get the political and financial resources lined up to build the infrastructure we need to survive?

29:

I have seen estimates that the probability of violent death in most primitive tribal societies, both now and in the past, exceeded 20% if you were male. That's higher than the worst fighting on the Eastern Front in WW2. Even Poland lost "only" 10% of its population. Russia less percentagewise. Germany about 10% as well.

30:

I would not be too optimistic about democracy as a form of government surviving in a scenario like this--or for that matter about Pinker's hypothesis of declining violence. Sometime around the 18th/19th/20th century, depending on where you lived, the expectation of economic growth became the new normal (and thus, the average person could assume that life would be better in 20 years, or better for their kids, than it was today). I don't think it's a coincidence that democracy took off around the same time frame--politics without the assumption of growth is much more zero-sum. And when that growth gets taken away (e.g. 1930s) politics gets a lot uglier and more destructive. If we had to live in a scenario like that permanently, it could change the way we approach interaction pretty significantly.

31:

What puzzles me is how little housing has changed in the past 500 years (or at all). 500 years ago we had houses, some us didn't have glass in the windows, we had worse insulation, some materials improved since then, but basically we still build our houses from bricks, wood, iron (steel) and split them into walled rooms. They might be taller and have more comfort, but are built to last shorter than buildings from 500 years ago. I doubt many of the constructions we built in the past 100 years will be around in 500 years (especially in the US where private houses are made of wood many times), whereas the Notre Dame still might be.

On the other hand, even though human society went throught tremendous changes, the way of living and seeking shelter hasn't much since the stone age. We still seek warm places with a roof on top and some room for privacy. A cozy corner behind a rock inside a cave is not so much different from any apartment room. On one side it is just the necessity to protect our bodies from a hostile environment (weather, aggression) and on the other it's our social interaction and need for privacy with each other.

The latter could change a lot due to the ongoing shift of how we perceive privacy in a world of big data. Midterm this is going to affect how we seek shelter and I think it could lead to less walls between us and more shared space, because today we are learning to share our lifes in VR and it will tip into our RR (real reality, what a nice distinction) in the future. I am curious what architects have in mind for the next 500 years.

32:

I suspect a number of countries will still be around, at least in name. I don't know that we will necessarily recognize them as "countries" or states in the same sense as today. Much of the world 500 years ago was not organized into what we would consider a nation state. There will probably still be a Scotland and and England. "United States" might not be around, but there will certainly be Americans. And there will probably be some weird old fashioned hold outs, who is anyone's guess.

I think there will be a new form of government too. Something evolved from the nascent data mining and consumer prediction algorithms today, along with the stock market algorithms developed by quants, google search results, and other similar things. Basically, it will be possible to predict what people want and why before they can, and even to degrees that they aren't aware of. We will be governed (in an archaic, mechanical sense) by something that at times would appear to those of us in 2012 as complete anarchy or abject tyranny. This thing will give people what they want, while also directing them away from socially irresponsible things and toward socially useful things without their awareness.

33:

You might want to do some research into just how much maintenance goes into one of our "monumental medievil buildings" every year. I suspect that some of them are like grandpappy's axe, which has had 6 new heads and 5 new handles since he bought it.

34:

Dirk:

@21 Most current predictions are on the order of 9-9.5bn people in the year 2050. The prediction used to be 12bn in the 1960-70ies.

@26 Solar farms in Germany using panels with 10% efficiency in an area with about 120W/m^2 average 4 Watts per square meter of real estate over the year. Hint: Solar panels don't cover all of the area.

35:

Using the term work might have been wrong, since I dont think it will take the same shape as it does (mostly) today. Rather, anything others consider interesting would qualify as work - maybe you wont be paid in money, but rather in some equivalent to likes on Facebook, or some other kudos system.

36:

I know, but I am assuming the "ultimate" PV panel will top out at about 60-70% conversion efficiency

37:

I'm confused about something. Your scenario assumes both major global warming and serious genetic engineering. Why wouldn't we make sure Dyson's mangroves then soak up our excess atmospheric carbon? (Refreezing the icecaps, dropping the oceans back to 20th century levels... maybe there's a story there of mangroves run amok, and global cooling.)

I'd posit that violence correlates with life being cheap. So I'd expect that lengthening lifespans is going to automatically bring less violent societies.

38:

I think that if there is serious ecological damage in the 21st and 22nd centuries, that by the 26th we'll be doing some form of geoengineering to correct it.

We could even see pleistocene restoration being put into effect. If the population drops down to a billion or so, and energy and food technology requires much less land, then why not restore things to how they were before the advent of agriculture? Turn the Sahara back into grasslands, bring back mammoths, etc. Restoring forests alone could take a lot of carbon from the air.

39:

Going the full hitech route for food, with aeroponics and hydroponics plus synthetic meat and the amount of farmland could be cut by over 90%

40:

We will very probably see attempts at using biotech for atmospheric carbon remediation. The problem is, it's already gone too far -- whatever we do in the short term, we're going to be stuck with a hotter, wetter, windier world for a while.

41:

Bringing in these "famous" buildings was bit of a misleading example because I was actually aiming at buildings made for living and how little they changed over the course of time.

42:

Human genetic engineering will have triggered a multiple speciation, so there may well be far more racism than exists today.

That would only be true if racism had anything to do with races (as in biological difference). But human "races" are a social construct, and the true cause of racism is the psychological mechanism were on projects one's own shortcomings on someone else (scapegoats).

See the movie "The Wave" based on this experiment where it is shown that you can use about any attribute to create racism.

43:

What, no ideas on what will replace employment?

As a professional software developer, I can't help but feel a little guilty about what I'm doing to employment. I'm sitting here in my office actually replacing my colleague with bits of software; he's actually okay with this and helping out, but I can't help but wonder what that'll mean for the near future (about 25 years out is probably enough to see some large changes here?).

I've talked about this a bit with my friends, but I'm not really sure what will replace employment. I guess a form of socialism is the easiest answer, but I'm not sure if that would actually work this time around.

44:

If we get cheap energy from other sources (fusion for example) synthetic hydrocarbon production could reverse the current climatic effects. Such tech could be available pretty soon:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/company-that-made-petrol-from-air-breakthrough-shudders-at-prospect-of-oil-industry-approaches-8218812.html

45:

Yeah, but by 2512 that hotter wetter world could have come and gone. Since 1512 we've basically seen the deforestation and then reforestation of eastern North America. New England probably has more trees than it did before the Pilgrims arrived...

46:

Well, a quick wander through the Wikipedia articles on Edinburgh and Glasgow (both Scotland, and picked as being the 2 cities I thought I'd easiest spot article hacking on) suggests that, even considering stone-builds only, most domestic property is actually under 250 years old. The position in the UK tends to be obscured by the relative fame of the comparitively few real Tudor buildings, and Provand's Lordship in Glasgow. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provand%27s_Lordship

47:

What about "soft" AI, such as REALLY good automation & planning systems? Stochastic systems that leverage the massive parallelism of very small, very power efficient processors?

It seems like such things could be on the 50-100 year horizon, and their existence could make large scale, long term (greater than human life-span) projects feasible such that by 2512 those systems, and their projects, could be core feature of society.

48:

I sort of picture the future like that in Paolo Bacigalupi's The Wind-up Girl...food production is controlled by conglomerates.

49:

Actually no. The solution is to resequester carbon dioxide in the form of solid carbon and a growing living forest of trees is only in equilibrium with respect to carbon. Sequestration would mean growing the trees (diesel mangroves, hazel bushes, whatever), cutting them down and burying them somewhere to recover the land to grow more trees and repeating this process ad infinitum. It's basically what happened over geological ages as carbon-based plants were buried by alluvial deposits, removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

You could also take the diesel from the genengineered mangroves and pump it directly into depleted oil domes underground -- instead of burying coal precursors you'd simply bury oil directly. It would still take centuries or millenia of doing this to get the CO2 load in the atmosphere down to, say, 350 ppm or about what it was fifty years ago (it's now about 400ppm and rising) and of course you'd be sequestering an important energy resource...

50:

Also, the rise of highly complex and highly non-deterministic systems could/would create a major problem: When things go wrong (or right, for that matter) no one really knows WHY. No one knows how they work.

Heck, we already see this with extremely complex systems today, e.g., the Global Economy. Much of politics in the last 5 years has been arguing over the appropriate opcode necessary to debug the current sluggish performance of the system. (At least, when not arguing over whether or not an integer subject to bit rot has an inherent right to parity checks, both preventative and reactive... but perhaps that's taking the metaphor too far.)

51:

Hmmm. My first reaction is that Freeman Dyson has his head up his ass when it comes to those mangroves, but whichever. That could be because I've actually had classes in plant physiology and anatomy, and what he's describing makes about as much sense as shitting gasoline out your mouth (or eyes) and eating with your anus, both in terms of reversing polarities and the amount of energy he seems to think a plant can shed and still exist. Hint to engineers: go actually take a class or two in how plants work before trying to improve the design. They're miracles of tradeoffs and decentralized design.

My confident prediction is that the glamorous predictions of synthetic biology will join the 1990s nanotech fairy dust on the compost bin of history next to clockwork men and vacuum tube God Computers. What we actually do with synthetic biology will be more practical and less interesting. Cutting edge tech has always been Magic Fairy Land, and the most crucial changes have always been Black Swans, not Fairy Dust. With regards to synthetic biology, the problem as I see it is that genomes and cells are 4.5 billion years of undocumented spaghetti programming that's gone through 4.5 billion years of Darwinian tinkering. While I'm sure some dufus is going to try to create a rational genome, I'm also pretty sure it's going to be big, bulky, clunky, and virus and mutation prone, compared with that annoyingly compact spaghetti programming that actually works.

Unfortunately, according to this Washington Post article, it looks like the higher-end carbon emission predictions are more accurate. Right now, I'm predicting a 3000 GT emission, not 1000 GT. Call this the first intrusion of the Noosphere into the Biosphere, otherwise known as Human Stupidity becoming a significant biogeochemical force.

As for the unsustainability of the tropics, there's this weird ecosystem from the Paleocene that may come back, a super-wet, super-hot, tropical forest (there are lots of weird paleocene biomes, actually). Not something we'd like, but if we do get the conditions of the PETM, it's worth reading up on that. There's something about palms in Alaska and tropical rainforests in Colorado and London that really should get people's attention. While I respect the climate models, I'm not sure where all that atmospheric water is going to go after it's evaporated off the oceans. Heat plus lots of rain could start growing rainforests in all sorts of interesting places.

I'll leave it with that. I'm skeptical about fusion, mostly because it seems to involve precisely the kind of megascale precision engineering that's going to be hard to sustain in a world of rapid changes. Unless it can be scaled down and simplified, I'm not hopeful.

Still, I'll leave on a note of hope. As I've told other conservationists, it's still possible to save most of the species we have. The ecosystems of the future won't look that much like those of the past did, but most people forget that many of the ecosystems we have now are quite different than the ones we had 500 or 1000 years ago (go read 1491 and 1493 for the popular science versions). However, the species that comprised those systems are still mostly around. The point is that extinction is not preordained. It's an outgrowth of ignorance, laziness, and greed, all of which can be beaten with a totally doable effort.

52:

Wrong. Racism is simply the result of a behavioral adapatation which treats bad experiences from people you percieve as 'other' differently. The bad impression lasts longer and is more powerful. Scapegoating..

Not sure how scapegoating explains the very high levels of anti-gypsy hatred in central/eastern Europe.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/d3hax/why_does_europe_hate_the_roma_so_much/

About 2512:

I believe any extrapolation, save maybe about physics constrained stuff like energy generation methods is completely useless.

Same with global warming: catastrophic sea level rise and temperature spikes would no doubt push forward hairy geo-engineering proposals .. which will likely fuck it all up even more.

Dominant powers? Probably the one that'll increase it's human capital the most, by widespread pre-natal genetic modification, behavorial tweaks against cheating that will increase trust in-group.

Trust is the basis of cooperation, so a group that'll have more capable members and will be less hindered by infighting and selfishness..

Add in technological telepathy, and old-style God-fearing societies will be left in the dust.

Or maybe exchange techlepathy for thought-control. There's a fuckton of strength in unity of purpose, and a totalitarian regime that could really mess with it's subjects heads in addition to curbing corruption could be really efficient...

Especially if other societies would be busy wallowing in enviromentalism or hedonism.

53:

While I'll be glad to see the end of "geoponics" (sterilizing soil and then dumping water and synthetic nutrients into it), I'm skeptical about the end of dirt farming. We've been doing that a long time.

500 years is certainly enough time to develop some decent soil out of all that rocky stuff closer to the poles, where we'll be huddling.

We'll have plenty of time to develop crops that can handle the extreme daylight cycle, along with the monsoon cycle that we'll get once we can no longer store irrigation water as mountain snow.

Hm. OTOH:

  • We'll have time to develop a sunshine -> protein* process that's more efficient than Managed Intensive Rotational Grazing. No more livestock.
  • Hydroponics are pretty effective for growing veggies and such. No more truck farms.
  • We'll have figured out that we don't want to live on cereals anymore. No more grain farms.
    • Not everyone thrives on soy protein.
    54:

    So the climate is going to be rather ... different.

    Sea levels will have risen by at least one, and possibly more than ten metres worldwide. Large chunks of sub-Saharan Africa, China, India, Brazil, and the US midwest and south are going to be uninhabitably hot — that is, too hot for non-GM plants and organisms to survive in during heat spikes, and with heat spikes over 44 celsius at night lasting at least two weeks every year (sufficient to kill off anyone without air conditioning). As 80% of today's human population live within 200Km of a coast, there will have been mass migrations and resettlements: many of today's great cities will be lost.

    Do you have references for that >44°C at night scenario?

    I'm not sure if current science can fully forecast the effect of more water in the air. It will definitely rain more, but will more water stay in the air as vapor as well? How much rain will be kept in underground reservoirs rather than flowing back into the oceans? Will we see growth of new vegetation in the Sahara or other now arid areas?

    I don't think we will need GM plants to cope with the weather change, just moving to other areas might be enough to adapt. The worst danger in my view is the acidification of the oceans since that is capable to kill off large parts from the base of the global food chain.

    55:

    More thoughts about wet nanotech, since I built a world (Ghosts of Deep Time) that was built around it: Yes, I used "power vines" (think kudzu), but there's a huge difference between those and gasoline-producing mangroves. The point about using vines is that relatively little of the carbon they produce goes into structural tissue. Instead, most of it goes into the roots. From the roots, you can use a mycorrhizal fungus (thin pipe) or a parasitic plant (slightly bigger pipe) to move carbohydrates.

    That's what I posited: a sugar-based society. The idea was that one could use that sugar to power things like lights and information technology (algae-based semi-quantum computers, for example). The sugar could also be used to grow bacteria to make anything else we need, including metal tools and machine parts. Certainly, some of that sugar could be converted into more energy-dense sources, but most of it was used, unaltered, in a society that had adapted to a much lower level of energy density.

    That's the tradeoff with biotech: complexity vs. time. Right now, we trying to maximize energy density and speed everything up. Contrast that with the idea of ubiquitous biotech: you could grow a supercomputer in your basement, if you have the proper culturing skillset and a year to grow it. This kind of green world is a world that goes much more slowly, that runs on much less energy than we use now. However, it could be equally as complex, both technically and socially.

    56:

    The source for the comment about the 20th Century being (on average) the least violent is cited in the main article - it's Steven Pinker's new book. Which is still on my too-read pile. I've heard him talk about it several times and he makes a decent case that the chances of violent death per century are going down. Even with all the deaths of the two world wars.

    I don't know I agree with Neal Stephenson's suggested outcome, but I think the concept of nationhood will change dramatically, possibly to the point that the concept of being American, British, Welsh, French etc. will be as hard for them to understand as whatever they've got will be for us. In the middlish term, as we virtualise more and more, I imagine defining our identity more by our interest groups (Google Circles maybe) than our geographical location. This might be fun of course, in my house smoking pot is legal. In yours, it's not and shooting law breakers is legal. Can you shoot me, or more precisely what happens when you do? But I'd expect at least one more, possibly two, revolutions of society and culture in that period.

    There's a BBC article on their news pages about the rise of artisan crafters making... well whether you think it's tat or collectibles depends on precisely what they're making. I suspect we'll see that rising as automation takes over. People will come to value hand-crafted items even more as machines make perfect whatever cheaply and efficiently. The other area, probably, if we don't get strong AI, will be research (of all kinds). People will probably drop in and out of research teams more than they do now, but they'll look for new things to do and researching new ideas and applications will be one of them. Researching better AI to do the research might be one of the areas! Things like SETI being distributed, protein folding problems to gamers and the search for exoplanets, are already proving successful, I think that will be expanded and become closer to a "job."

    57:

    "That would only be true if racism had anything to do with races (as in biological difference). But human "races" are a social construct..."

    But what when they are not a social construct but actually separate species that can no longer interbreed? When they have radically different capabilities and looks?

    58:

    Language is an interesting one: English is about to be overtaken by Mandarin in number of web pages, but I suspect Mandarin is a long way down the list in terms of audio and video content (yay Youtube!). Arabic as a spoken language is fractured, but written Arabic is much more of a monoculture.

    It's a bit of personal bias, but my gut feeling is that a Latin-based character set has potential benefits: it's going to be pronounceable (if badly) by cross cultural groups, and it's more straightforward to create or import words.

    But languages are getting relatively static, for all the extinction events. Gutenberg and Webster caused huge normalizations in spelling (hmm, you'd use an "s" in normalization, though -- gotta fix that one). Significant changes in formal grammar get harder and harder to accomplish (I totes think it's not going to happen), but informal word usage changes will continue. What's written conversationally in 500 years will certainly be quite different.

    My other hobby could be summed up as "what's for lunch?" Large mammals as a food source are increasingly under pressure in an economic and ethical stance. But if you take a look at the cuisine of the pre-Columbus old world, try to picture: * Asian cuisines without chiles * Italy without tomatoes and polenta * Ireland, Germany or Belgium without potatoes * A world without chocolate and vanilla

    What crops today will be a major part of our economy and cuisine? Likely bananas (currently the #5 source of calories in the world after the grains and potatoes). Tropical fruits will replace our temperate apples and stone fruits. Perhaps yuca and similar taproots will be the primary starches. But what flavors haven't been explored?

    Let's hope we keep garlic, ginger and chiles, if nothing else.

    59:

    For non-reversible computing the brain comes within a factor of 10,000 of maximal efficiency. Currently computers come within a factor of 10,000 of the brain.

    60:

    I believe the sea would have risen and fallen in that time. If we assume everyone has a 3d nanobio printer then abundance might be an issue. However if all printers were networked and designed to do social printing during downtimes we could:

    a) print enough weather detectors to accurately plot the worlds weather in realtime b) print solutions for global warming e.g. high level 'dust' reflectors that bio degrade when required. Reflective roofing, carbon sink building materials etc etc c) automated robo boats could spray/transport water back into the global ice caps. d) Solar energy systems will be much more efficient in 500 years if fusion hasn't solved that issue.

    The question in my mind is the speed at which we become more socialist as opposed capitalist. If we can't work how could a capitalist society work but when would the changeover happen? Before or after a mass rising of the people versus those few that own the patents and copyrights??

    61:

    Another point about looking back to look forward: it's worth looking at the Bronze Age Collapse, which was arguably more severe than the Dark Ages.

    I don't know what entirely caused the Collapse, but it looks like a confluence of environmental and social issues, which may sound familiar. One thing I'd like to point out is the shift from bronze to iron that happened during the collapse. I'd also like to point to the social consequences.

    The thing about bronze is that it requires long supply lines. To make a bronze sword in Greece, you might need tin from Cornwall and copper from Cyprus. Except for a small area in Asia Minor, tin and copper deposits don't co-occur. The Bronze Age was therefore an time of international trade and travel. Art from the Middle East turned up in Norway and Afghanistan, that sort of thing.

    During the Collapse, the trade routes disappeared, and people apparently turned to iron as a substitute. I say apparently because it's also possible that spreading iron technology contributed to the Collapse. Thing is, iron is much more common that either copper or tin. It requires hotter fires to work, but the spread of ironworking seems to have kept trade networks for reforming for centuries.

    According to some linguistic evidence, our European language patterns date more from the Iron Age than from the Bronze Age, because the early Iron Age was far more isolationist than the international Bronze Age before it. Languages split up into dialects, just as (a 1000 years later) Latin split into the modern Romance languages.

    How does that apply today? We're in the same position as the late Bronze Age: all of our core technologies depend on global trade routes, and many of these can be substituted (at less efficiency to be sure) using local resources. If we get a nanotech revolution of any sort, where people can cobble everything they need within a township, it's going to be much harder to keep global civilization together. Throw in massive environmental pressures, and we could easily see the Oil Age Collapse. During that collapse, we could also see a technological revolution that shifts us away from depending on any international technology.

    62:

    Wrong. Racism is simply the result of a behavioral adaptation which treats bad experiences from people you percieve as 'other' differently. The bad impression lasts longer and is more powerful. Scapegoating..

    Not sure how scapegoating explains the very high levels of anti-gypsy hatred in central/eastern Europe.

    Well, in Germany we have more racism where there are less foreigners, so it doesn't look like it's caused by bad experiences. The mechanism you describe exists, but it can't explain racism on its own.

    About anti-gypsi hatred: a) it's traditional in Europe b) people like to demonize their victims c) there are not enough people speaking up for gypsies, instead politicians use them to distract from the real problems. (and that's not only in central/eastern Europe, Germany and France and Italy are just as bad)

    63:

    But what when they are not a social construct but actually separate species that can no longer interbreed? When they have radically different capabilities and looks?

    I don't see that happening. If there's artificial genetic change it would be to give one's offspring some advantage; and then it's just a question of social status if you get the upgrade or not.

    64:

    My predictions/extrapolations for 2512:

    It won't make a very good subject for fiction written now, simply because their concerns and values are not our concerns and values. It would be like writing fiction set in the sixteenth century's religious wars, except without the crutch of having a protagonist whose values are completely modern, and the audiences' actual RL beliefs are considered hopelessly primitive by the characters.

    Earth continues to be big. There are still nice places and still shitholes. Thanks to the lack of fossil fuels, the nice places aren't quite as nice. The shitholes are almost exactly as bad, because whenever they get worse people die.

    Modern society divides up duties between governments, corporations, churches, and families. These same duties will be redivided several times, resulting in new types of institution (rather like how the corporation is the old medieval guild minus some family-type functions and plus some government-type functions).

    The concept of technological progress is long gone; it's all been done before. The social utility of freethinking is accordingly diminished. Society is more conformist.

    Human genetic engineering has come and gone. Overall human diversity has gone up, but baseline humanity proves to be remarkably good at what it does best, which is survival. Almost everyone has inherited some modified genes, but in general every benefit comes with a trade-off.

    Practical fusion power is thirty years away. Brazil is still the country of the future.

    If Dilbert has been translated to future languages, at least 50% of the strips are still funny to future audiences.

    65:

    Well, one suggestion might be to alter the DNA so that they are no longer subject to mundane ecologically generated diseases. In other words, their DNA is no longer compatible with the biosphere but they are still able to live within it. Another very big change might be an adaptation to ocean living, at least up to the levels seen in whales and dolphins.

    Apart from that, these musings have been triggered by a discussion in ZS on Transhumanism and racism. The outcome is a statement of ZS on the matter: http://transhumanpraxis.wordpress.com/2012/11/09/transhumanism-anti-racism-identity/

    66:

    You can get tin in Cornwall, and copper in Snowdonia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Orme#The_Copper_Mines . Analysis of on site casting waste at the Great Orme has confirmed that bronze artifacts were produced there.

    67:

    You've left out something I came up with (Although certainly didn't invent) when trying to pick out the future a mere 200 years from now.

    Truly intelligent assistant software. Not an 'AI' per se, I have no idea how likely those are, and aren't what I mean, anyway.

    But a computer program that can understand basically what is going on around it. It can decode speech well enough to pipe it into the semantic processors we already have, it knows where someone is and who else is with them (Perhaps assisted by everyone broadcasting their location.)

    And everyone has their own, which pays attention to you and tries to predict your behavior so you don't have to do things. It uses something you wear or carry, like a watch or a headset, but all that does is communicate with a program somewhere else. (Hopefully a server in your own house, although I suspect a lot of people are going to use commercial rentals.)

    In the world I was considering writing, I had that sort of software use the word 'secretary', to the point where it no longer refers to humans, just like the computers took the word 'computer'. Either that or 'assistant'.

    Basically, you get one of these as a kid, and it starts training itself to figure out what you want to do. (With a lot of stuff built in, of course. I'm not talking one of those neural nets that do random things at the start.)

    This would have all sorts of changes. For example, no one would ever pay for things against. You would walk into a store, pick something up, walk out, and your secretary would transfer the money. Granted, some people would reprogram their secretaries to steal...except that, of course the store would have a secretary.

    Likewise, no one ever has to wonder about anything. A person wonders who stars in what movie, and, bam, there's the information. You eat always order a pizza when Frank is over, you start getting a prompt for that, and eventually it just happens without your interaction at all. (And it's possible sometimes the things will reveal unconscious biases you don't even know you have. Aka, 'Why is my secretary lying to my mother?')

    ...and why do you need sensors on electronic doors when they'll just get asked to open?

    Of course, there's a huge privacy issue with this...except there's not really, if law enforcement is actually correctly resized. Why? Because almost all crimes have victims...which means, in a would where everyone, and every location, has their own computer program to watch over that and will report a crime instantly, most crime has vanished. (You can even imagine an 'emergency' broadcast that causes everyone to nearby to become involved in stopping, or at least recording, the crime.)

    So, yes, there's a privacy issue if the recordings of people start getting subpoenaed, but in reality there shouldn't be any reason to do that.

    Oh, and everyone, feel free to steal this idea. I probably didn't think of it anyway. I give it 20 years before we start having such a thing (Note it requires speech and video processing advancements.), and in 50 years everyone will have versions of it, although I don't know when we'll start trusting them enough to actually do things without prompting us first.

    68:

    Thanks Paws. You're right. Still, people came out of the eastern Mediterranean to get Cornish tin.

    The bigger point is that the Bronze Age is a better analog for our age than the Romans are for technology, because of the international trade routes that enabled their technology. Rome is a better analogy for what happens when long-distance trade in food breaks down, come to think of it.

    Anyway, we can learn from the past, and one of the central lessons is that technological innovation can happen despite (or even because of) societal collapse.

    Charlie seems to assume that high tech automatically will keep us integrated into a global culture and thereby prevent a collapse. Based on what has happened in previous collapses, I don't think this will automatically happen. I think it could happen, especially if ham radio operators and such make it a point to keep talking across continents. That doesn't mean it will happen. As with species conservation, it will take dedicated effort by people who care.

    69:

    "eventually an accident or violence will get you."

    Our ever-increasing sensitivity to accidents and mishaps is probably correlated not only to technological improvements that make higher safety standards possible, but I think it is also correlated to increasing life expectancy.

    In the "500 year" life-span predicated upon near elimination of non-medical means of death, we will see a Bubble Wrap culture, as obsessed with environmental risks and product failures as the US/Europe are obsessed with kidnapping/pedophilia now.

    We already nostalgically talk about "Free Range Kids" -- in a future where accidents are a main cause of deaths, they'll become nostalgic for "Free Range People" in general.

    70:

    I would like to - with all politeness - differ on the total collapses of technological civilization. There have been a number of these in the last two thousand years and quite a lot in the last 500 years. Some by military action, mostly by "barbarians" - the Roman empire comes to mind, for example. Some by environmental issues like the Khmer Kingdom, the Maya and the Easter Islands. And some by a combination of these - like the Aztec. And that is leaving out all the African societies and kingdoms we know so little about. And of course the US. Back then these societies for the people living in them encompassed the whole known world - and surly they even shortly before their demise would have never dreamt that their world would come to an end. But then again it was only the end of the world as they knew it, as we know now :-)

    71:

    even considering stone-builds only, most domestic property is actually under 250 years old.

    Yes, there's an attrition rate among the older buildings. But I will cop to living in a 190-year-old apartment, and to having read somewhere that the average age of the UK's housing stock is around 75 years. And that's after rebuilding the stuff that was leveled by the Luftwaffe in 1939-45, and the rookeries that were flattened by town planners in the 1830s-1890s, and the slum clearances of the 1945-75 period.

    In general the good dwellings are repaired and last a long time; the slums are bulldozed and few people shed tears for them.

    72:

    Today: " By 2025, it says the combined GDP of China and India will be bigger than that of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, US and Canada put together. "

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/nov/09/china-overtake-us-four-years-oecd

    73:

    I would like to - with all politeness - differ on the total collapses of technological civilization.

    You fell into the bear pit I dug; there have been no prior total collapses of technological civilization because there have been no prior technological civilizations to collapse.

    Hint: I'm talking about high-energy post-industrial technologies here, not bronze or iron age empires.

    74:

    Lets talk about demographic transition. How do we even know what is going to happen in Stage 5-6-7? What if humanity stays below replacement level fertility?

    75:

    And what if we overcome Nature's genetic programming and come to the rational conclusion that non-existence is the best all round option?

    76:

    "Holy Fire" by Bruce Sterling predicts just such a bubble-wrap society

    77:

    Re "Bubblewrap society" - a finite list of issues form most of the accidental death risk profile, much of which can be reengineered muchly away.

    75% roughly in the US are falls, motor vehicle accidents, or accidental poisoning.

    Falls are a mixture of young / foolish, old / frail, and just bad luck. Old / frail risk goes down if aging becomes less destructive. Building construction, ladder use (airbag blanket under you) can reduce random bad luck. If you live 500+ years young / foolish is a much smaller portion of the lifespan and population.

    Motor vehicles are designed to safety standards subject to long term negotiation and mass production engineering and value / cost of life tradeoffs. Cars ( road cars ) designed to be more highly survivable protect people in 100+ mph accidents. Ferrari cockpits are notoriously tough for example. The cost of that protection falls over time; the value of life rises over time. Active computer emergency management will avoid or lessen the severity if accidents. Timescale is hard to predict but even if car use stays high death rates should plummet.

    Accidental poisoning should fall as less toxic cleaning materials are available, and a little biomedical monitoring and faster ambulance response will go a lobg way.

    Perhaps 10x reductions in all these are hopeful, but 4x is pessimistic, and more than 10x is entirely possible WITHOUT swaddling people in horrible boring lifestyle changes.

    78:

    I agree the world will have higher sea levels, but I don't expect it to be hotter. I would hope that space based sunshades will be the solution to keep the world cool. What may be at issue is how it is constructed, and the compromises made to ensure that most people get the most equatable temperatures.

    I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that most living areas will be tented/enclosed and A/C controlled. This will have the benefit of controlling weather problems so that people are not "fearful of the sky". If CO2 can be directly piped from power stations to tented farms, we may get the benefits of superior plant growth, and the solid concentrations of waste carbon that can be easily sequestered. The oceans will be the problem, huge sources of CO2 and largely dead.

    Yes, biotech will seem almost like magic to us. Maybe we can even make organisms that can fix oceanic carbon to replace the calcareous shelled animals that have disappeared with the high acidity. I also think machines with very sophisticated programming will seem like AI even though they may not pass any sort of Turing test.

    I think the most interesting changes will be the social and institutional ones, not the technology. I have no idea where that goes, although I hope that we see more local democracy in action that people can feel engaged in. My biggest fear is that so much potentially destructive technology can be wielded by anyone, that we may need good systems to control this, and that this control will be very authoritarian.

    79:

    lol oK, point taken. :-)

    80:

    And what if we overcome Nature's genetic programming and come to the rational conclusion that non-existence is the best all round option?

    You are being ironic, but you shouldn't. Evolution is not a perfect mechanism of survival. Need I to remind you that the vast majority of species is already extinct? And human brain is an unprecedented evolutionary move, so there is nothing to compare us to. Humanity could be a dead end.

    81:

    If you were to allow uploading, then zipping around the universe at the speed of light would be reasonable. But you'd need a VERY robust error correction code.

    82:

    But you'd need a VERY robust error correction code.

    First you need to convince people that uploading is not suicide. :-)

    83:

    Well, if it can be done nondestructively it's just weird and disturbing, but if your copy is going to go live in Gliese 51 it's not that strange.

    Huw's parents in Rapture were implied to have been nondestructively uploaded until they decided to make it final eventually. I guess the brain coring scene just made too much dramatic sense.

    Antinatalism is my personal choice but it's a hard sell, not that I'm interested in proselitism. Most meme complexes (religion, political ideologies) help with fecundity rather than hinder it. I don't see humanity as a whole ever falling to non-reproduction.

    84:

    I'll have to take issue with the space mining thing. It might only be used for heavy metals, but it could be the only way to get them and it will definitely be economically feasible.

    First, working wet nano, photosynthesis++, and genetic tweaking for high radiation resistance mean that life support will be a lot easier than it is now. Not only will this reduce the mass of "canned ape plus life support", but it'll make large-population moonbases feasible - large enough for the place to not require manpower from Earth. Even without a mass driver, future us will have space travel a lot easier.

    Second, 500 years may not bring singularity-level AI, but incremental advances (graphene GPUs and existing algorithms) will almost certainly be able to handle autonomous asteroid harvesting and mining. The biggest difficulty with the AI on modern space probes is actually software engineering, and anybody that can safely deploy wet nanotech has obviously solved that problem. They won't be sending any canned apes into deep space, sure, but they also won't need to.

    Third, rare earths really are incredibly rare. Let's use neodymium for an example. World production of neodymium is about 20000 tons per year. Estimated reserves are on the order of 10 million tons. And neodymium is, to quote Wikipedia, actually not rare at all. By 2512 they'll be completely out of rare earths and most other heavy metals. That makes asteroid mining a lot more attractive.

    Finally, remember that in 500 years they'll be willing to play the long game. Asteroid mining wouldn't work very well with current techniques because we want our investment back in two years flat. These people would be more than willing to use solar sails, white paint, and orbital mechanics to make things easier. They'd have latencies on the order of fifty years, but once that's done they'd have perfectly adequate throughput with significantly lower costs.

    85:

    You dug a bear trap for yourself inside, I think.

    As you probably know, "this time is different" has been the clarion call of bubble markets for the last 800 years, according to one widely-read reference. In my opinion, "this time is different" should be a laugh line, not a authoritative rebuttal of arguments using comparisons with the past.

    Basically, the choices are: a) you're right, but what you then say about the future is pointless fantasy, because we're ramming forward into an unknowable future and whatever happens will be a flock of black swans, or

    b) there are similarities between what's happening now and what has happened in other regional collapses going back to the Stone Age, in which case we can look at what's gone before and spot the crises.

    It's pretty clear you're arguing as if a) was true but modeling b), so why complain when we talk about what happens when bad politics, technological limitations, climate changes, and population migrations have collided in the past?

    Obviously, it's not going to be a precise repeat. However, it is entirely possible that we drop from the web to ham radio, from oil to barnyard gas, and from Wall Street to water districts. Each town may have a drone wing to its local militia, and their may be a Nitrogen Master who deals out which part of the local excreta goes to the farms and which part goes to the explosives.

    Despite this, we can still argue that technical advances do not guarantee survival of a global society (it hasn't in the past), that trade networks disappear when things get bad (they have in the past), that people move a lot when things get bad (they have in the past), that people often innovate on the craft level when things get bad (they have in the past), and that peoples rarely disappear entirely during collapses, despite all the shit that happens (they have in the past--they disappear more often through massacres and forced assimilation).

    Admittedly I tend to favor a crash scenario, because we've got crappy politics, technical limitations, societies dependent on international trade, and climate change all sitting here again. Still, a crash isn't guaranteed either. The only future I'm pretty sure won't happen is where we all live in the Sparkly City on the Hill that our God-like Technology has prepared for the True Believers. There's no past precedent for that one, outside of certain minority religious beliefs. Anyway, I'm not a True Believer, so I'll be in the ghetto with the rest of my kind.

    86:

    Regarding languages, we could end up seeing a divergence rather than convergence, as dialects grow more and more apart. Consider the advances being made in automatic translation. By 2512 it is quite likely that any language can be translated into any other in real time, using the person's voice - remodulated to account for different tonal meanings. Even culture specific references and idioms could be reworked for the listener.

    The technology is already being worked on, we'll probably see it widely available by 2050...

    87:

    Why assume that the demographic transition is the last word on population growth? There could easily be a tiny fraction of the population that is "immune" to the demographic transition and continues to reproduce at high fertility rates. Assuming such a group doubles every generation, given 500 years (20ish generations), it would grow by a factor on the order of a million.

    Current population projections are probably good over the next 50 years or so, but I suspect that on the 500 year time frame, anything could happen from extinction to horrific malthusian cycles. Projections of the population stabilizing at a level somewhat similar to the current levels strikes me as wishful thinking rather than a true projection.

    88:

    While I'll accept your definition of a speciation event. (With reservations. Cultural backsliding may cause us to periodically lose GM skills.) I think the "ethical considerations" with respect to genetic modifications is a cultural thing, and is subject to changes over periods of 20 years, much less 500. And won't be the same world-wide even at any one time. (If there are space colonies, this is even more-so.)

    Also, I definitely don't rule out people modified to live in the ocean. Probably under air filled domes (because of electricity, etc.), but modified so that they don't need diving suits to survive trips from dome to dome. Possibly more along the lines of seal oxygenation than gills, but I'm not sure. If gills turn out to be practical, then that will probably be the preferred option.

    And I expect there to be periodic populaiton pressures at least as great as currently. Contol will be possible, but nobody will like it. (Sort of like China today.) As a result I don't expect ANY wild areas to survive. As technology improves the ability of people to live in an area, they will move into it faster than evolution adapts wild species to move into it (bacteria excepted).

    While I accept that you don't want to consider space colonies, they WILL be present. Probably not very significant to dwellers on Earth (barring a Singularity-ish advancement), but a consistent background will require them.

    Also, robots will be widespread. Very widespread. The raccoon scenario that you mention I don't find plausible, mainly because raccoons eat the same foods that people do, and require a livable environment. Robot bodies can just be turned off and stored (with minimal degradation) while not in use...unless bacteria evolve to eat them.

    Many plastics will have become edible by bacteria. (This has already started.) But they won't be able to establish a flourishing colony within most bulk plastics. They'll need to live on them as a film, or dissolve pits of liquid into them. Of course lubricants, being already liquid, will be a favored dietary matter. (Which means we'll need to keep changing which plastics and lubricants we use. ... Unless we choose to consider being biodegradable as a benefit. But see jet fuel and dehydration.)

    As I expect inexpensive computer power to equal the power of a human brain well within this century (actually considerably before 2040, though probably not by 2030) I'm expecting LOTS of robots. Please note, however, that raw computing power doesn't equal intelligence. Software development always lags behind, because it can't be developed until the developers get their hands on the equipment, and even then finding good approaches is a tremendously vast search space. (I tend to see intelligence as a means of doing a heuristic search.) So I run into lots of problems when trying to project beyond 2050.

    OTOH, current governmental policies cause me to expect tremendous pressure for a violent revolution as more and more jobs are automated out of existence. And even many technical people don't realize that we are already very close to the edge of automating most currently existing jobs...with no new jobs replacing them. Few jobs really require much intelligence. What they require is language understanding, a few simple tricks, and a bit of job redesign. (Like supermarkets that have customers checkout their own purchases.) But that's NOT a long term prediction. Just when it will come to a head depends heavily on governmental policies. E.g., if going to school were reclassified as a job, then there would be much less unrest (if there were enough school slots open). Lots of ways details of that could work out, but again, that's short term.

    If, as you suggest, we assume no major technological regression, and continued modest progress (HAH! Modest! The places that go in for heavy progress will export social unrest to the rest of the world, while they become wealthier.) Then there won't be any jobs that a person can do better than a machine can. And the machine won't be uppity. I expect computers to run the world, though quite likely there will be human figure-heads. But if they make a wrong decision (i.e., if they don't do what the machines tell them to), one of their competitors will have unexplained favorable happenstances, and will replace them. Quite likely nobody will be able to prove that humans aren't running things. (N.B.: This doesn't require anything any more advanced than ATHENA. It would, however, require something more advanced to get it into position. I suspect a collaboration between a machine and a human. Or it could just be a more advanced computer program.)

    And I'm still making short term predictions. I just can't manage 500 years.

    89:

    Most technology will be biologically based

    90:

    I'm not sure about self-driving taxis. It's a tempting idea, but how does one deal with the vandalism problem? And inspection after every ride? Internal cameras with passenger recognition?

    I think that's more of an "eventually". (Well within 500 years though.) But short term robot truck drivers are more likely. And chaffeurs. And bus drivers. (You'd still have a human bus steward, but he wouldn't be driving, and wouldn't need a special driving license. So he'd be much cheaper. His public relations job would be to assist the elderly and handicapped, but the real reason would be to prevent vandalism.)

    91:

    that trade networks disappear when things get bad (they have in the past),

    Indeed they have. But in today's world, there are many alternative sources for all but a few commodities and technology has proven fairly adept with substitutes. Having said that, I don't expect total collapse unless something gets really bad, but I do expect disruptions with a power law frequency for their sizes. And look what a mess NY is in after Sandy, and they have the whole country to support them.

    92:

    500 years is tough. It is more likely that you get A)the more or less unimaginable or B) if you can predict things then they are not going very well.

    My cheap guess is that we have two or three space civilizations in that time frame, none of which take on a full time basis. But we might eventually get some probes out to near stars and hear some of the data.

    If climate change gets that extreme, we die out or shrink to a really small, less advanced presence or retreat into a speciation/AI bubble, i.e. one that is too opaque for us to understand from today's perspective. I don't feel comfortable calling that a "singularity," necessarily, but it might be.

    PrivateIron (late of this parish)

    93:

    Sorry, but there have been periods in the Earth's past when the tropics got too hot for tropical vegetation to live there. I think the Triassic was (or contained?) such a period. So we can't depend on anything natural being able to live in tropical regions. Not with the scenario CO2 levels.

    Also, and not mentioned in the scenario, if the oceans warm sufficiently, we can expect the off-shore methal-cathlates to destabilize and release a large but unmeasured quantity of methane into the atmosphere. Over decades this turns into CO2, but methane is even more of a greenhouse gas than CO2 is. These cathlates are already so unstable that nobody has dared to try to tap them for methane, even though they would be a rich source, and as the ocean warms they become less stable. (Well, they're also in fairly deep water, which has so far isolated them from most of the ocean warming. AND made attempts to use them more difficult.)

    So... this is another of those feedback effects. Warming is causing the permafrost to melt, which is causing the arctic bogs to ferment, which is releasing lots of methane, which in increasing the global warming. Which is making the oceans warmer. Etc. When the bogs have fermented to peat, then they'll pretty much stop releasing methand. But then they'll be an easily accessible fuel source for peat. Which will release yet more Carbon as CO2.

    I'm rather certain that we have enough Carbon lying around in various forms to carry us into a Triassic or warmer climate. (The sun's a bit hotter now than it was during the Triassic.)

    But as to how much of this will happen within 500 years? The arctic bogs are already melting. There's no evidence that the methal-cathlates won't go next week, but there's also none that says they won't hold out for a few centuries. It depends partially on just how touchy they really are (people being nervous and extrapolating isn't proof) and partially on how much mixing the ocean does. If the Great Conveyor shuts down, the Atlantic will stop much of it's mixing. (It's also possible that Europe and the Eastern US will have a STRONG cold snap. [Cf. the Older Dryas and the Younger Dryas.] while South of the Equator continues to warm, only faster. It's happened before.) In that case 500 years from now could see Europe and the Eastern US in a mini-ice age, complete with glaciers. This would be caused by a rapid melting of Greenland shutting down the Great conveyor. (Gores' film wasn't TOTALLY fictional, but he got the time scale way off. This would happen over around a century or so. Still lightning fast for the geological record. And I'm fairly sure he exaggerated the extent of the plausible glaciation.)

    Caution: I'm not a climate modeler. If a real one contradicts me, listen to him. I just read popularizations.

    94:

    Charlie: "in general the good dwellings are repaired and last a long time; the slums are bulldozed and few people shed tears for them."

    This was brought home to me when I passed through York and Manchester in 2004, revisiting old haunts.

    I was at school in York, and looking down Bootham (which is the street as well as the name of the school) towards town you see some Georgian domestic buildings that have been there 250 years, with St Mary's Tower (built 1324) on one side, and the vista ends with Bootham Bar (the arch of which is a smidge over 1,000 years old, though most is 14thC) overlooked by York Minster (built 1220-1472). So the view has looked broadly the same for hundreds of years and almost certainly will for another 150 and quite possibly 500 years. (Except that York is already prone to serious flooding, come to think of it).

    I went on to Manchester, where I'd been a student in the late 1970s and lived in a prefab concrete deck access block of council flats built only a few years before. To build them streets of low-rise Victorian terraces had been demolished (leaving only the odd corner pub standing). They were declared unfit for families pretty sharpish, which is why students were moving in, and they were knocked down in their turn sometime in the late 1990s, to be replaced by a massive ASDA and some low rise houses. So within 30 years that whole urban landscape had been transformed twice over.

    95:

    My Manchester location was Moss Side, btw... kind of a byword for drug gang violence, but also only about ten minutes' walk from Manchester University's main buildings.

    96:

    My expectation is that batteries are nearing their limits. Capacitors, however, don't appear to be even close to theirs. This is one area in which I expect "vacuum nanotechnology" to be significant, but it might be doable with other means.

    FWIW, I expect BOTH "wet nanotechnology" and "vacuum technology". Also MEMs. Electronics didn't obsolete the hammer. And I expect that the visionaries underestimate the problems and overestimate the capabilities of both. And that there will be new technologies that are basically different in nature, as genetic modification is different from agriculture. Because the world is complex.

    But with that said, a wet nanotechnology that depends on atoms not used within the human body (or not intentionally, strontium, perhaps) should have capabilities that biotechnology doesn't match. And if it depends on atoms not normally present, it would be easy to limit it's presence. (Caution, though. My first thought for a limiting atom was Cobalt, but that actually IS used in the body. So you need to be careful.)

    Part of the problem is that we think about things the wrong way. Nanotechnology isn't a single thing, the way electronics is. Electronics covers a wide scale of sizes. Nanotech is defined in terms of size. This is convenient now, but I feel it's basically wrong, and causes us to think about it incorrectly. Why should MEMs be separated from nanotechnology? They're a bit larger (micrometer scale), but they have the initial stages of the problems that become dominant in nanotechnology. Friction is extremely important to MEMs, but not as important as it is at nano-scale. In fact there's a continuum of sizes, with friction, e.g., becoming steadily more significant as the size decreases. (I believe that as you contiue shrinking the scale it becomes less important as quantum effects begin to dominate. That's a real, as opposed to a linguistic, boundary. And, if I'm correct, we call our current version of that level of technology electronics. And it, too, comes in wet and "vacuum" varieties.)

    97:

    One thing gets ignored is that much of the landmass of the Northern hemisphere is largely uninhabited because its too cold

    98:

    "My expectation is that batteries are nearing their limits."

    They are about 10x away from limits if considering Li/Air secondaries

    99:

    In this case, I think TP1024 is more right than you are.

    While it is possible that we'll f*ck up the tropics so much that they'll be growing kunai grass and little else, the last time we had it this hot (the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, aka PETM), there are fossils of tropical plants from within 5 degrees of what was the equator at that point, both in India and Colombia (at the Cerrejon site, where they also found Titanoboa). It's useful to search terms like "PETM rain forest" and see what google coughs up.

    Part of the thing here is that angiosperms really do run differently than conifers in terms of water emissions, and we didn't really get a tropical rain forest in the modern sense until angiosperms started getting dominant in the late Cretaceous (where there were tropical palm forests on the equator). This is one of the ways in which the Triassic is a false analogy to the modern system. The other way is that the Triassic was when Pangaea was splitting up, and even Eurasia isn't big enough to give us a good sense of what the interior of a supercontinent looks like (think the Russian steppe on steroids and you start to get an idea). It is possible to put a desert on the equator when you have big enough mountains and huge distances from the sea (as in the Triassic), but that's certainly not the case now, anywhere in our current tropics.

    For those who aren't into climate change, the PETM is the best model we have for what happens next, especially if we go in for the 5000 GT SuperFart of carbon emissions. It's sucktastic if you don't like tropical rain forests, and merely bugalicious if you do. While I do think we'll see expanding deserts in many regions in the short run, the hard part to model seems to be what happens to storms. More heat energy caught in the air means more evaporation off the water, and lots of water and heat in the air usually combine to make big-ass storms. The counter feedback is that hot bare ground (something we enjoy making) makes heat islands that can be difficult to storm on, and we seem to think that scraping the desert to bare hot ground to build shit is a good thing.

    From my limited understanding, that sure looks like a set-up for monsoon-type storms wandering much further into the temperate zone than they used to. As others have noted, superstorms like Sandy are indeed more likely to become the norm, and Midwest farmers may start praying for hurricanes to water the corn and sugar cane. As I said, the future is somewhere between sucktastic and bugalicious.

    100:

    " There's no evidence that the methal-cathlates won't go next week, but there's also none that says they won't hold out for a few centuries."

    Actually, the methane clathrates started going around 2008.

    See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_release

    101:

    You get tin from Dartmoor in Devon right down to the tip of Cornwall and probably beyond. You also get copper in the same region, no need to go to North Wales for it, but it's not quite as easy to get at. Devon Great Consols on the Devon side of the Tamar was the biggest copper mine in Europe at one time, it was also one of the biggest arsenic producers at the same time, and in an example of mining rubbish dumps a lot of tin was extracted from the spoil heaps in the 1970's that hadn't been worth extracting in Victorian times. Where you find one of the metals the others tend not to be far away, though accessibility varies.

    The arsenic was extracted by roasting the ore in a furnace and leading the gases up a very long flue to a chimney at the top of the hill. Once a week the fire was allowed to go out and small boys equipped with dustpan and brush swept up the metallic arsenic that had condensed out. In the right weather conditions aerial photographs still show the fallout pattern to the east of the chimney.

    102:

    I used to be one of those guys working on machine translation. Trust me, it's really hard. It might be one of those technologies that remains "40 years in the future" for an indefinite period of time.

    Anything smart enough to correctly translate (say) English to Mandarin is probably approaching a "magic-wand" level of AI.

    103:

    Hi Charlie! I like the new system.

    In five hundred years, I'd expect the composition of the atmosphere to be closely managed. Most likely the climate will be tweaked to open up more of North American and North Eurasia's marginal landmass, but that will be a political decision. Not to be a pollyanna about industrial growth, but five hundred years is a very long time -- you have to assume a lot of stagnation to conclude otherwise. (Which I see many of your posters have already assumed.)

    Corporation survival rates are very contingent. There used to be many more older companies in the world, until the events of 1949 et seq: they didn't fit under the new Chinese regime. A lot like houses, actually. If you assume a stable environment, you get more survivals, and vice versa.

    But regions, once they develop an identity, last for a very long time. There might not be a United States of America (although I note that the Roman Empire stuck around for a much longer time on a much more hostile continent), but almost certainly there will be a Texas of some sort. How it will define itself in relation to other regions is very contingent, though. (The great bastion of desert communalism! After all, "Texas" means "friends".)

    104:

    Aggression - agree that overall human aggression is on the downswing - better maternal health means better ability to focus on positive/non-stressful pregnancy and parenting which means reduced stress fight/flight hormones (esp. among male progeny).

    Kudzu vine (Heteromeles) - like this idea and have been thinking along similar lines particularly in terms of hybridizing with succulents to grow in deserts, and also about moving food production from energy/resource inefficient fruit trees to vines. Vines are also easier to grow indoors, so could be used at home.

    Desalination - While adding more water vapour into the atmosphere may add to global warming, desalination/hydro dam cogeneration would produce potable water from seawater or brackish groundwater to help provide energy. This would involve use a reverse dam direction to pump from the sea through several filters into fresh-water reservoirs with the now-sweet water used for irrigation.

    Scale -- 500 years hence, our descendents will have had to come to terms with scaling, opting for 'optimal' vs. our on-going fatal fixation with 'bigger/faster/stronger'. An optimal-scale translates into more diversity and complexity (niches). If our descendents are bright and want to stay bright -- and atmospheric oxygen levels keep going down -- this also means physically downsized human beings and/or more efficient means of using oxygen. Smaller humans means a smaller per capita energy requirement - in food, clothing (less yardage), smaller vehicles requiring less fuel, etc. This in turn means that total energy demand will diminish. (Apparently, one of the reasons dinosaurs grew so large was the abundance of oxygen.) One of the barriers to get the species to 2512 will be to inoculate humans against obesity - and this is looking feasible at least at the lab rat level.)

    Work/leisure - there's nothing written into our genome that says that we MUST earn 90% of our living by working for someone else (corporatism). We do/will however need a universal means of exchange though --- whether a currency or some type of electronic voucher system or ... Anyways, increasingly, I think our society is heading toward a 'your work is my leisure/hobby' economy.

    Rats, under-rated co-survivors -- just saw a very warm-and-fuzzy documentary about training/using rats in Africa to smell out land mines. Humans then tag and dig the landmines out and the land is once again (safely) arable. Given that rats have also been shown to feel empathy, maybe we should team up with them for other ventures. [See http://www.apopo.org/home.php]

    105:

    Funny you should mention machine translation. Microsoft yesterday demoed real-time English to Chinese speech:

    http://www.core77.com/blog/technology/must-see_video_real-time_english-to-mandarin_speech_translation_via_microsoft_research_23815.asp

    106:

    While higher ocean levels are a good bet because once the Greenland ice cap starts melting (and it has), it is impossible to reverse short inducing a full scale ice age in the Northern Hemisphere. I don't think there will be the global warming to the degree you suggest though. It is too easy to geo engineer through, for example, reflective particles in the stratosphere, planetary cooling. I think that desperate attempts to stop stop further global warming will eventually segue into global climate control. (Now there's a source of conflict.)

    107:

    Third, rare earths really are incredibly rare. Let's use neodymium for an example. World production of neodymium is about 20000 tons per year. Estimated reserves are on the order of 10 million tons. And neodymium is, to quote Wikipedia, actually not rare at all. By 2512 they'll be completely out of rare earths and most other heavy metals. That makes asteroid mining a lot more attractive.

    Don't confuse limited/expensive production with rarity. Titanium is about 100 times as common as copper, for example, but production of the metal is less than 1% as much and it's significantly more expensive per kilogram. It is in a position roughly analogous to aluminum before the development of electrolysis: expensive due to complicated and energy-intensive production processes rather than rarity.

    Rare earths are relatively common in the Earth's crust, but there are few conditions under which they are usefully concentrated by geochemical processes. Neodymium is more than 10 times as terrestrially abundant as tin, for example, but "neodymium ore" is much rarer than tin ores because neodymium behaves a lot like the other rare earths (and titanium and aluminum compounds) in rocks, so it stays diluted with a lot of lower-value materials. "Estimated reserves" just means something roughly equivalent to "amounts that could be extracted from today's estimated sources at today's prices with today's technology." I would guess that those estimated neodymium reserves will go up sharply in the next 10 years, since there's now much more interest in new sources and extraction processes than there was 10 years ago.

    If you're willing to spend enough effort you can of course concentrate rare earth elements (or any other element) from dilute sources; this is the basis of all classical quantitative analysis in chemistry. But why would you do it in space? Asteroids aren't going to have any higher concentrations of rare earth elements than terrestrial rocks. The asteroids have an advantage over Earth for platinum group metals precisely because geochemical processes don't operate there; on Earth the PGMs have tended to segregate out of the crust into deeps we can't reach. If you have the AI, cheap solar power, etc. to do automated space extraction of rare earth elements you can probably do it even cheaper on Earth's surface.

    And for that matter, the same AI and cheap energy that lets you separate 100 ppm of rare earth elements from bulk rock should also let you recycle at extremely high efficiency. Electronic trash is a richer source for many rare metals than the best ores currently mined today. It's labor intensive to recycle though; replace human labor with AI and the virgin mined material required each year could shrink to a tiny fraction of its present value. The only metals lost in any permanent sense are nuclear fuels and materials that leave Earth orbit.

    108:

    Do the math http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/

    Is asking how likely people think various futurist technologies are going to be, with in a 50/500/5000/eventually/never timescale. The tecnologies are things like self driving cars, flying cars, fusion, off-world colonies, FTL.

    https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2ZC6RD9

    His first write up was from asking physics students vs faculty what was likely to be possible. http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/10/futuristic-physicists/

    Though he's now looking for a larger swath of the population. http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/11/survey-the-people/

    109:

    Very nice, but Microsoft is still claiming a translation error of at least "1 word in 7 or 8".

    The low-hanging fruit of machine translation have been picked, and I'm sure we will continue to see incremental improvements like the one you link to. But I'm skeptical as to whether that is enough to bring us flawless automated translation.

    110:

    Still vastly better than my ability to translate english-chinese and vice versa, which is nil.

    111:

    Google Translate uses some reasonably clever algorithms. Pass one of my sentences to Japanese and back and you get:

    "We are confident that the low hanging fruit harvested machine translation, and we take a look at incremental improvements, such as those linked to you."

    Clearly the state of the art has a long way to go before it can accurately translate idiomatic sentences...

    112:

    I can't speak Chinese either. So what?

    The question is whether machine translation will become so good that it makes linguistic differences irrelevant. From where I'm standing that seems unlikely, unless we develop "magic wand" AI, in which case all bets are off for a whole lot of things.

    113:

    I have a strong suspicion that the statistic on company duration is highly misleading. Some companies are intentionally short term, for example each Glastonbury festival is run as a new limited company which is liquidated afterwards and the proceeds distributed. Giving a specific project legal personality is rather useful from a contractual point of view, it does result in a lot of very short lived companies. Then you get the situation that a very high proportion of new businesses fail within the first year or so, which also reduces the average sharply.

    England and Scotland both emerged as organised states over 1000 years ago and merged over 300 years ago, I wouldn't be at all surprised at it surviving 500 years.

    114:

    As usual, we need to separate "conceptually feasible" from "realistic." Also as usual with geoengineering, the big issues are political in nature: who pays, who monitors, dealing with different demands, and so forth.

    For example, I have no idea how the Greenlanders feel about potentially being able to grow trees and corn within two generations. Sure, it looks like it sucks right now, but compared to how marginal their land is, it could be a godsend. For them.

    That's a point that Charlie's probably sick of me making: the fact that we have the technical means to solve these problems now IN NO WAY means that we actually have the ability to solve any of them. At this time, politics is the major barrier, not technical know how. A lot of good tech innovations die dues to politics, not physical infeasibility. If you want to truly innovate and help the world, go into politics and figure out how to make it work better.

    115:

    The question is whether machine translation will become so good that it makes linguistic differences irrelevant. From where I'm standing that seems unlikely, unless we develop "magic wand" AI, in which case all bets are off for a whole lot of things.

    It seems to me that "irrelevant enough for many purposes" might be achievable without magic AI. Can it become irrelevant enough that non-Chinese speakers can accurately understand Chinese scientific papers or engineering specifications, for example? Or go the other way from English to Chinese?

    I have one of those "Amazing world of COMPUTERS" books from the 1960s where they predicted that machine translation would soon be good enough for many uses -- starting with easy stuff like short stories, of course! Complicated scientific and engineering documents would await further advancement. It's a prediction as badly off as assuming that programming a child's level of language comprehension would be easier than programming a chess champion.

    Google's translation service is good enough for me to understand experimental procedures for chemistry originally written in German, despite my total lack of German comprehension. I don't know how Google fares with similar Chinese documents. It is interesting because there are fewer tricky idioms, slang terms, and metaphors in technical documents and yet the economic payoff from translating technical documents is higher than that from translating fiction. A world where everyone can understand everyone's patents but not everyone's jokes seems possible.

    116:

    I agree that a lot of companies are short-lived by intention (or can barely be said to exist as all, as with shell companies concocted for tax avoidance), but it's pretty unusual for a major corporation to keep going for more than a few decades before it fails or is absorbed into something else. Management needs to be on the ball forever, the forces of entropy only need to get lucky once.

    The Bank of Scotland is a case in point: Founded 1695 and built up over 300 years, then pissed away in about a decade, followed by a merger with the much larger Halifax.

    Wikipedia has a rather interesting article on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

    It claims that 21,000 companies worldwide have existed for more than 100 years, and that most of them are small enterprises with fewer than 200 employees. (Skimming the list of pre-1700 companies, most seem to be food or drink related, for some reason.)

    A lot of the very long-lived companies may be more curiosities than anything else. It's great that Ede and Ravenscroft have been tailors for 323 years, and they might still be around in another 500, but you can't really argue that they have a major influence on wider society.

    117:

    "racism and race politics as they exist today are largely a side-effect of the perceived need to find a moral basis from which to defend the African slave trade, followed by rationalisms based on a half-assed reading of evolution." Perhaps discussions about this in Europe and British-settled world are, but having spent serious time in India and Japan (not to mention the wars in Sri Lanka, the former Yugoslavia, plus what's under the sheets in the Arab Spring) it is clear to me that the discovery and exploitation of differences is quite hard-wired into humans. Not to mention the continued existence of the slave trade in Africa.

    118:

    Oh, and I don't know if you've noticed, but there's a non-trivial chance that the England-Scotland union will dissolve less than 2 years from now: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-20256108

    119:

    I agree. Machine translation might well be good enough for technical documents, but walking up to a native speaker and having a conversation is a totally different order of challenge.

    120:

    Is that a very good definition of “employment” though? After all, it implies that adults should have only one way of making a good living. I suspect it would include you, on the grounds that you are neither a pharmacist nor a software developer.

    121:

    Hey Charlie,

    I tend to agree with Doug Blair above that an energy crunch is likely to define events earlier than the advanced global warming scenario that you describe. Oil is already running out and a vast military expense is required to constrain its price. Although there's much oil left, its future value as a chemical material will at some point jump past its present value as a fuel, and that probably before we get too old.

    A massive global energy crunch isn't going to be pretty, but it'll be ugly in different ways than climate change. Wars of migration and over resources will happen earlier than rising sea levels would otherwise suggest. Wealth will shift radically according to preparedness and adaptability to switch energy patterns. Things like automobiles will move to judicious electric use relatively painlessly, but long-range travel and shipping less so, and with that there will be massive food and supply chain problems. Populations will fell left out and turn to mass exodus or revolt. There will be a perilous and unequal time, in the context of which even unsafe fission power will look like a boon.

    All this in the 21st century. But I think the result will be that we stop a lot shorter of the climate scenario you describe, and that stop will be very messy and violent.

    122:

    Pass one of my sentences to Japanese and back and you get

    People are always using that telephone game to discredit machine translation. Speaking as someone who while not a professional translator is bilingual has done the job for pay in the relevant languages, I don't see how it proves anything.

    A human translator handed out of context sentences would hardly do any better.

    For what it's worth, the last time I did a technical translation I used google translate and corrected it manually. While there was a lot of work involved still, I was impressed with how the system correctly translated technical terms as used by relevant professionals. I found many of it's choices questionable but actually researching them I found that it usually did indeed pick the terms as used by the engineers.

    I figured the system is in fact capable of generalizing the subject of the text from the terms it encounters and applying the relevant slang, so to speak.

    In face to face communication, where body language and nonverbal cues are 80% of the message, a smartphone that can give you the right cue words in real time is pretty much all you need for effective translation

    123:

    Got to pick your language, I think. "The low-hanging fruit of machine translation have been picked, and I'm sure we will continue to see incremental improvements like the one you link to. But I'm skeptical as to whether that is enough to bring us flawless automated translation."

    In Korean back-translated, is: "Receipt machine translation of low-hanging fruit, and we you will see a link, such as incremental improvements is I'm sure. But to us is to avoid a complete automatic translation is skeptical about whether."

    In both simplified and traditional Chinese, back-translated, is: "Low hanging fruit machine translation are picked up, I'm sure we will continue to see incremental improvements, such as you link to a. But I doubt whether this is enough to bring us the perfect automatic translation."

    In Japanese back-translated is: "But I'm sure hanging low, it is fruit picking machine translation, and we take a look at incremental improvements, such as those linked to you, I will bring to us the perfect automatic translation it has been skeptical about whether it is sufficient."

    in back-translated French is: "The ripe fruit of machine translation have been made, and I am sure we will continue to see incremental improvements, such as the link. But I'm skeptical as to whether this is sufficient to bring us perfect machine translation."

    The point here is that it's possible to create a serviceable translation, especially in related languages (like French), but each language is unique, as shown by translation into three fairly closely related languages (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) that are far from English. The words get translated, but some (or much) of the sense gets lost.

    Hopefully parsing sentence structure will be one of the medium-hanging fruit that gets picked next.

    124:
    Hopefully parsing sentence structure will be one of the medium-hanging fruit that gets picked next.

    Hope all you want. I certainly can't rule out some kind of amazing breakthrough in machine translation. My point is that for a machine to handle fuzzy concepts like "context" and "sentence structure" is a lot more difficult than a dictionary lookup algorithm.

    It is plausible that, 500 years from now, we still won't have worked out how to crack this one.

    125:

    Well, the "telephone game" clearly demonstrates that machine translation will not handle idiomatic sentences correctly. I realise it's a hard job for human translators too -- that only reinforces my point that it's unrealistic to expect a perfect Universal Translator in the near future.

    126:

    Going to an archivist... Interesting.

    The scientific knowledge in settled certainty in most engineering problems: but we still have engineers, and engineering is still a challenging discipline. Mostly.

    I can, however, foresee a century where the materials technology and off-the-peg structural analysis is so good, so much of a 'done deal', that you can make almost anything you damn' well please out of carbon, silicon, and common metals. If you have the energy budget.

    Leaning buildings and bridges over the Strait of Gibraltar? Definitely. Mile-high walls of fibresteel holding in the Greenland ice cap? Less likely: too much matter, too much energy.

    I can't quite foresee 'scrith' - an engineering material with a tensile strength of the order of the Strong Nuclear Force - but I can't rule it out entirely. I would point out that nucleii exist in nature, so it's science rather than fantasy, but a full solution to the problems of the Standard Model may well rule out macro-scale nucleonic engineering.

    If I'm wrong, and we advance to an ability to manipulate nuclear forces (rather than the chemical bonds we work with today) in real-world engineering, then fusion is a done deal. As in: there's energy like there's water, everyone knows how to turn the taps on and off and we never think about it.

    You might find that everyday people are baffled by the idea of batteries and plugs and cables - what's energy? Everything's got mitochondria, they're made with a fixed amount of deuterium for the service life, and everything is made of stuff that works.

    "What do you mean, people used to die because their brains starved of oxygen? Injury, circulatory failure, whatever... Is that like, the factory refuses to renew your deuterium?"

    Actually, that level of mastery-of-matter is a kind of 'singularity' on its own: maybe an SF author had better stick to a world that engineers chemical bonds and leaves the Strong Nuclear Force to femtoscale objects that fly apart in a shower of alpha particles when you poke them in the lab.

    Even there, or here in the world of electromagnetic phenomena that you can drop on your foot, I have trouble grasping the extent of the manufacturing revolution over five more centuries. Remember that an Elizabethan craftsman had to make fastenings and staples: the idea of a nut-and-bolt or of woodscrews would've astonished him - they would be comprehensible and usable, but he would be staggered by the days and weeks of exquisitely-precise craftsmanship that went into making them.

    The idea that he could walk into a shop and buy a bag of screws, of whatever size he needed, for the price of his beer, would have been beyond his comprehension and his sanity.

    What of a world in which replacement eyes are beer-money objects off the shelf, or out-of-the-printer on demand? What if the 2512 Screwfix Catalogue includes a miniature chip fab, ICI Runcorn in a matchbox, and thirty man-hour-equivalents of Terence Conran design input? Five hundred years is difficult to imagine!

    Running out of new things to make and do won't be a problem.

    127:

    So what?

    It makes all the difference between communicating, however haltingly, and waving your hands in utter frustration, hoping you can find someone to translate for you. I think even a basic voice translator, however poor, would be a benefit in a lot of situations.

    128:

    500 years isn't what it used to be. It was 20 to 30 generations, depending how you count and where you lived.

    If gains in longevity are retained, 500 years will be 15 generations. (Today at the supermarket I saw a magazine cover featuring a woman who had had a baby at 55, and suggesting that this was going to be normal. Maybe 10 generations.)

    129:

    Everything's got mitochondria, they're made with a fixed amount of deuterium for the service life, and everything is made of stuff that works.

    Wait, what?

    Fusion energy and biology just don't work well together. For starters, nuclear radiation has roughly the same relationship to proteins and nucleic acids that cannonballs have to architecture. Secondly, the energies needed for fusion are not compatible with liquid water. Thirdly, the neutron flux from fusion would turn everything nearby into toxic waste.

    BTW, we've had tabletop fusion reactors for years now. The details have been published in credible, peer-reviewed journals and replicated in other labs. Unfortunately, they're more a source of neutrons than a source of energy.

    see http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v434/n7037/abs/nature03575.html

    130:

    The trend (if it exists) of having children later will put persistent downward pressure on population, by stretching the time between generations.

    This creates a headwind for entrepreneurs: when the population was growing at 2% per year, people could start businesses in an enviroment where the market was going to double in size every 35 years -- even if people weren't getting richer individually. Soon that will be gone: there's an additional 2% risk premium that has to be factored into business plans. This will tend to favour established firms over newcomers.

    Another aspect of this shift: generalising furiously, old people are risk-averse and prone to nimbyism. And richer: wealth tends to concentrate unless deliberately broken up.

    So the incentives for entrepreneurs now are different from those prevailing fifty or a hundred years ago. Then, the big money was in providing mass-market services to an expanding and increasingly wealthy general population. Today, and into the foreseeable future, the opportunities are in selling insurance (and security in general) and elaborate, highly labour-intensive services and products to an elite.

    The thing is ... the thing is that these services don't require much technological innovation.

    So for a time between now and 2512, there will be both greater resistance to technological innovation and smaller incentives pushing it.

    Before we get to the promised land of everything being too cheap to meter, we may stall out, and land back in a static feudalist state.

    For the rest, I think Charlie has summed things up admirably.

    132:

    "...but each language is unique, as shown by translation into three fairly closely related languages (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) that are far from English."

    Japanese is not closely related -- genetically speaking, though there's lots of lexical borrowing -- to Chinese, and its relationship to Korean is unclear (probably not especially closely related to Korean either).

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_Japonic

    133:

    OK, we have at least two different styles of tabletop fusion device to choose from.

    134:

    Then again, I live at 4200 feet, and we rather like the small taste of warming we've had so far. All right, we still get the occasional snowstorm in May, but it melts lots faster than it used to (not joking). I still had to scrape ice off the car in September, but at least it wasn't August, as it has been some years. Some of us are enjoying the ride thus far.

    135:

    If the world warms as Charlie suggests and significant parts of the currently inhabited world are flooded by rising sea levels, and fresh water becomes rarer due to over-extraction of acquifiers and other misuses, would we expect some fairly large-scale violence? Perhaps not another world war but a lot of localised wars?

    These will probably all be resolved by 2512 but what effect will they have on civilisations and psyches? Will they be as forgotten as the Thirty Years War, or still resonate like World War One?

    136:

    Yeah, I used to buy into the "Korean is so unique" thing too, and I'm trying to learn Korean, which is a freaking hard language, incidentally, especially for someone as linguistically handicapped as myself (I'm an American white dude who speaks English).

    I don't any more, and I just deleted a very long and very boring reason why. In general, it boils down to the fact that, different as they sound, Korean and Japanese can be written in Chinese characters, and they can use those characters to communicate successfully, when neither party can understand their spoken language (this was one of the common modes for Chinese-Korean diplomacy and trade, a few centuries ago).

    However, you can't write English with Chinese characters.

    Because of that, I'm willing to say they're fairly closely related to each other, especially relative to English.

    137:

    All of your predictions are basically a straight-line extrapolation from today. Nothing actually new or disruptive. Stated another way, you've fallen into the trap of believing "as things have always been, so will they always be".

    Such may be possible, but it's not the way to bet.

    That said, I did enjoy the read.

    138:

    I also think that just as rabbis are likely evaluating genetically modified food for kosher-ness, that they will have opinions on genetically-modified people (and there are likely to be four opinions for every three rabbis). The Jewish body of opinion has lasted this long--500 years, meh!

    There will also be new religious fanatics, probably a sect that we don't normally hear of in that context (for instance, the Church Militant might be quite a bit more militant--going to the catacombs, so to speak, rather than the mattresses).

    And even if we have longer lifespans, there will still be a small proportion of people who will do Extraordinarily Stupid Things because it sounded like fun at the time--if there is a part of human society where the lifespan fixes don't work, well, the high-risk seeking types will seek immortality by say, climbing Mt. Everest in the nude (some body mods might work on them even if the lifespan one doesn't).

    We might even see the return of BatBoy...

    139:

    The odd thing about computers screwing up syntax is that sea lions, to pick on one animal, can apparently understand some forms of syntax. This seems to indicate that it's not quite as hard a problem as the translation programs currently make it out to be.

    The thing that fascinated me is how variable the sentence structures were in those languages. Is verb placement an issue? English is Subject-Verb-Object, while Korean is Subject-Object-Verb. Let's try some other SOV langauges: German and Latin. Again, the English is: "The low-hanging fruit of machine translation have been picked, and I'm sure we will continue to see incremental improvements like the one you link to. But I'm skeptical as to whether that is enough to bring us flawless automated translation."

    Back-translated from German: "The low hanging fruit has been picked up by the machine translation, and I'm sure we will. Further gradual improvement as you link to see them. But I am skeptical that this is enough to make us perfect automatic translation"

    Back-translated from Latin: "The low-hanging fruit has been gathered, machine translation, and I'm sure we will continue to see incremental improvements like the one you link to. But I'm skeptical as to whether that is enough to bring us flawless automated translation."

    Interesting.

    140:

    Good post, Charlie. Assuming no transhuman weirdness or collapse, I believe that

  • Warfare is going to look surprisingly retro by modern standards. We're testing solid-state laser platforms that can be mounted on vehicles (one on a jeep shot down a drone in a test a couple of years back), as well as microwave weapons - and both could be huge game-changers. As in "combat aircraft are driven from anywhere lower than the stratosphere, missiles are largely gone and artillery much less effective, limited ability to use sophisticated electronics that aren't heavily shielded" game-changing.

  • It's questionable whether or not our descendants (or us in 2512) will want to change the world back to what we would consider the normal. Think about it- they'll have spent centuries living in a "Hothouse Earth" type of climate that Heteromeles mentioned existed in the Paleocene and early Eocene. All the flora and fauna living in that world will have gone through some pretty intense selection pressure for it. I think it's very likely that they'll decide they want to keep the settled areas on the Arctic Basin rim habitable, and so they'll try to maintain temperatures at that level instead.

  • Medical technology is probably going to proceed slower than you think it will. When a machine fails horrendously in testing, you usually just lose money and time. But if a drug tested on people fails, people die. For ethical reasons, it's much harder to test and trial anything medical.

  • I don't think capitalism will die barring some form of 3D printing hyperlocalistic economies or Desire Modification, but you could see an era where profits are almost non-existent for most companies. Massive profits usually only happen when a company has some type of "corner", be it the patent rights to new, valuable technology, regulatory rules protecting them from competition, or some form of information about a market that others don't have. Take those away, and competition tends to drive profits down to the level where they're just enough to keep a certain amount of companies from leaving the business.

  • 141:

    EDIT: Make that "upper" stratosphere.

    142:

    I like the idea of raccoons as agricultural labourers. They're so cute, and their opposable thumbs are so handy! Also, when they become troublesome we can always turn them into hamburger meat and wear their skins:

    http://www.kaufmanfurs.net/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=1999

    143:

    There seems to be an implicit assumption in this post and most of the responses that there will be no major upheavals in physics over the next 500 years.

    That might be the case but it bears keeping in mind that almost all modern physics - nuclear, quantum, and relativity - date from 1905 and later. A span of just over 100 years is not that long. Even Newtonian mechanics fits comfortably within the 500 year window with almost 200 years to spare.

    Physics is still unfinished - we lack a theory that unifies the quantum world with the relativistic one. As long as it remains unfinished, there remains the possibility of yet another upheaval in physics and with it significant significant changes in the technological prospects of the next 500 years.

    144:

    Don't confuse limited/expensive production with rarity.

    Fair enough; I think that I got rare earths and the platinum group consufed during a rewrite of that post and didn't notice. I still stand by my original statement and the rest of my reasoning: getting mass into the asteroid belt and back will be a lot easier than assumed, and may be easy enough for asteroid mining to be viable. Remember, asteroid mining looks like it's worth it using modern technology. The advances that we're assuming here (primarily the moonbase) will only make it better.

    145:

    Saying that it "looks like it's worth it" is stretching what Planetary Resources can realistically do a lot. Right now, virtually all of it except their time-share telescopes is speculative, along with their pathway to actually making a profit off of mining.

    146:

    "Yeah, I used to buy into the "Korean is so unique" thing too, and I'm trying to learn Korean, which is a freaking hard language, incidentally, especially for someone as linguistically handicapped as myself (I'm an American white dude who speaks English)."

    First, I really don't have any unusual ideas about Korean or Japanese linguistic uniqueness.

    Also, I can sympathize -- being a white USer bloke and someone who spent a few years having a go at Nihingo. Best of luck to you.

    "I don't any more, and I just deleted a very long and very boring reason why. In general, it boils down to the fact that, different as they sound, Korean and Japanese can be written in Chinese characters, and they can use those characters to communicate successfully, when neither party can understand their spoken language (this was one of the common modes for Chinese-Korean diplomacy and trade, a few centuries ago)."

    Amounts to an interesting fact about ideographic orthographies -- more so than saying much about language "relatedness." I suppose a well-educated "native" Japanese speaker could follow a Beijing newspaper article a bit (quite difficult), but one of the nice things about Kana is that one can express the morpho-syntactic features of Japanese that are very darn different than Putonghua (and do keep in mind that Kanji is not identical to either of the Chinese character sets); Sino-Tibetan languages are isolating, Japanese, not so much -- considerably inflected. And Hangul was a neat invention, eh?

    "Because of that, I'm willing to say they're fairly closely related to each other, especially relative to English."-

    OK, but, FWIW, keep in mind that anyone with any background in linguistics will make a funny face if they read something about Chinese, Japanese, and Korean being "closely related." If something is said to be "related," we think genetically so. But maybe I'm just making a fuss about jargon.

    For my part, I've a not-entirely-wild-arsed hypothesis that proto-Japonic was an extinct Korean peninsula language lexifier with some sort of just-so-happens-to-be-similar Austronesian grammar...a creolization of an expanded pidgin. Would explain the genuine fact that Japanese is damn difficult to trace.

    147:

    "But languages are getting relatively static, for all the extinction events. Gutenberg and Webster caused huge normalizations in spelling (hmm, you'd use an "s" in normalization, though -- gotta fix that one). Significant changes in formal grammar get harder and harder to accomplish (I totes think it's not going to happen), but informal word usage changes will continue. What's written conversationally in 500 years will certainly be quite different."

    Phonological changes (among others) will continue to bust up grammar. "English" used to have much more explicit case marking (other than pronouns); phonological change roughed that up, and there's no good evidence to suggest that those sorts of processes are coming to a halt -- there just isn't the sort of intra-language homogenisation and stasis you might expect from mass media and what-not.

    148:

    But the folk linguistics here is just adorable. ;-)

    149:

    Regarding "race," I've no doubt that that constructed saliency will be obliterated eventually. The deep monkey ingroup-outgroup stuff that gives rise to it will be more difficult to destroy. Good culture goes a long damn ways...

    150:

    Sorry for being flippant -- I meant that your inability to speak Chinese isn't really relevant to the question of whether a machine translator can do it.

    even a basic voice translator, however poor, would be a benefit in a lot of situations

    If the situation is trying to ask for directions or order in a restaurant, then maybe. For anything more complicated, current automated voice translation is not really fit for purpose.

    IIRC the American army in Iraq experimented with automated "translator boxes", and they were a complete failure. Instead they had to hurriedly recruit whatever Iraqi translators they could find. (Needless to say, the consequences of a misunderstanding were a lot worse than ordering soup instead of salad.)

    151:

    Yeah, a bad translation can get you into a lot of trouble. When the police were called to a domestic dispute here, my Ukranian monoglot flatmate tried using google translate to talk to the police. I'm not sure what he was trying to say, but I'm pretty sure google got it wrong when it claimed he was saying "show me your tits".

    Luckily the (male) police officer wasn't offended and soon he had a translator on the phone.

    On the subject of language, will languages change quite so much in the future, now that there's so much written down and recorded on film, etc? There's bound to be some change - as anyone who watches Ealing comedies will note - but perhaps a speaker in 500 years time will be more comprehensible to a present-day listener than someone from 500 years ago.

    152:

    Only if the people involved are very stupid. Wars are enormously expensive, and while desalination is not cheap, it is a minimum of one order of magnitude cheaper than engaging in warfare. Also, much safer. Time horizon is a tad short, as well.

    153:

    My point in my previous post is that "back translating" doesn't really tell you how accurate the first translation was because the second translation can introduce errors.

    Google translate does have some context awareness capabilities a desktop translation program lacks, if you give it a 20 page document on breweries, it's unlikely it will give you ghosts for spirits.

    With search personalization, location awareness ("User is at an airport, query is not likely to be about mathematical planes"), etc I don't think turing completeness is going to be necessary for useful results.

    154:

    Vandalism is a non-issue. Right now, my local bus company, Lothian and Borders, has about eight cameras inside every bus. Tickets are still sold for cash, but a contactless card system is being rolled out. A shift to a self-driving vehicle implies also a shift towards cashless payment systems -- which could be used to identify riders, subject to legal safeguards. Again, RFID-fingerprinting could be built, relatively cheaply, into each seat. So if someone rips up a bus seat, you run the camera footage, go to the Sheriff's court for a warrant, look up their payment card and use it to pull their credit/bank details, and send the cops round to their house to arrest them.

    Same goes for taxis.

    (It hasn't caught on with the official licensed cabs in Edinburgh yet, but private hire cars frequently have CCTV cameras recording the passengers, on a loop, in case of violence.)

    The takeaway is that such vehicles will be, in effect, "public space", and will provide exactly as much privacy to engage in nefarious activities as any other public space. Which is to say, less and less as time goes by.

    155:

    "back translating" doesn't really tell you how accurate the first translation was because the second translation can introduce errors.

    True as far as it goes. But it's still a useful rough and ready indicator, on the (reasonable) assumption that Japanese-English is not significantly more error-prone than English-Japanese.

    Don't get me wrong -- machine translation is already useful, and it will become more so. It might become reliable for factual instructions like "baggage reclaim is that way" or "put down that chainsaw". But the Star Trek scenario of a device that lets you reliably have an idiomatic conversation, on an arbitrary subject, with a native speaker, is verging on "magic wand" AI.

    BTW "Turing complete" has nothing to do with AI, it refers to the ability to simulate an idealised theoretical computing machine. You might be thinking of "AI complete". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI-complete

    156:

    I've recently read "The Crash Course" by Chris Martenson, "The Singularity is Near" by Kurzweil, and "After America" by Mark Steyn - all with very different takes on the future.

    500 years is a long way out - I might as well suggest flying finned cars that can pack into suitcases + robot butlers!

    I do have one prediction - any out of bounds thought-crime consisting of the conceptual nomenclature "Eurabia" will be immediately detected and redacted !

    157:

    I don't know if printing and widespread literacy slow down or speed up the space of linguistic change. On the one hand, you can have a shared dictionary and standard if you want one; on the other, any change in vocabulary or grammar can spread very quickly.

    You could end up with a situation where the "offical" language drifts away from the language that is actually spoken. This is happening to some extent with French, and more so with Arabic. For an extreme case, look at the divide between Latin and Italian.

    I think the pace of language change is primarily driven by change in the underlying society. In Icelandic, sagas written 1000 years ago are still intelligible to modern speakers... I don't think it's a coincidence that Iceland is an isolated island nation with few drastic social upheavals.

    As Charlie notes, we can expect some pretty radical social and technological changes and population movements in the next 500 years, so language change could be equally extreme. Perhaps it would be exacerbated if human beings are two separate populations in the far north and south, divided by the uninhabitably hot tropics. USA/UK English and South African/Australian English might diverge quite considerably.

    158:

    Birthcontrol will be strictly enforced in most areas [...]

    Seriously, that's not at all necessary. Pregnancy and birth are not exactly fun, and if you add punishing women for having children, by, oh, making sure that they are their families serfs for the rest of their lives because they can't return to the qualified (and satisfying) jobs they had before, and can't comfortably live off the McJobs they can get thereafter, it regulates itself quite handily. So basically all you have to do is make sure that child care is not readily available, and child care duties remain with women. Germany f.e. is doing great at that.

    159:

    Actually, if I were writing a 2512AD novel and wanted to tweak racist noses ...

    One of the quirks that underly much of the ideology of western exceptionalism and white racism is, ahem, white skin/blond hair. It's actually a relatively recent mutation (i.e. it emerged after proto-sapiens made it out of Africa and spread north into Eurasia).

    The current explanation is this: we require Vitamin D, a group of fat-soluble steroids, to regulate calcium and phosphorus metabolism. Now, interestingly, we can photosynthesize Vitamin D from cholesterol. And it doesn't take much sunlight to do it -- the recommendation that stuck in my mind was to spend the equivalent of 15 minutes a day with bare forearms exposed to sunlight.

    However, folks who wrap up against the cold and who live in the far north, where we don't get much sunlight in the winter months, may begin to suffer from Vitamin D deficiency. With symptoms like rickets in children, this is non-optimal. Melanin in the skin absorbs sunlight and reduces the efficiency of Vitamin D photosynthesis: so a mutation that reduces melanism makes it easier for wrapped-up folks in the sub-arctic to make enough of the stuff.

    But white skin comes with a price -- you burn easily if exposed to intense sunlight. Wouldn't it be so much better all round, therefore, if we could tweak the Vitamin D synthesis pathway so that it could be driven directly by ATP reduction, and then fix the broken melanism trait? That way, the future of the habitable regions of the post-warming earth would be full of happy, rickets-free dark-skinned people who could cope if the ozone layer broke again for whatever reason.

    Add this (the abolition of white skin on grounds of its impracticality) on top of those Texan communists and I am certain I could instantly shed a few fans who I didn't really want in the first place ...

    160:

    "Only if the people involved are very stupid."

    Ah, well, then we have nothing to worry about.

    161:

    Spaghetti code -- I've been hammering at this point since the 1970s, and wish you more luck than I've had. Metaphors of genetic "code" and "blueprint" are extraordinarily powerful in encouraging a tinkering/engineering mindset... with about as much success as one would have had c. 1850 in redesigning the body's boiler, or c. 1930 in optimizing its relays and solenoids.

    Back in the day, when I learned how little nitrogenase there actually is out there doing all that nitrogen fixation (ISTR that Vaclav Smil estimates 20-30 kg in the world), I first thought: kewl! We'll just synthesize it, plate it in monolayers, run warm moist air over it, and shut down all that wasteful Haber-Bosch techne. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize how much the enzyme needs the elaborately configured microenvironment in which it's found.

    Then, of course, the NanoMagic gang showed up to tell me that we'll just mass-produce the microenvironments, too. Wake me up when we're as smart as a root nodule.

    163:

    The polling evidence is that the Scots are going to reject independence by a fairly large margin. It is possible that opinion might shift, but it seems unlikely.

    164:

    Wars are enormously expensive

    The Taliban seem to be doing reasonably well on a shoestring.

    while desalination is not cheap, it is a minimum of one order of magnitude cheaper than engaging in warfare

    OGH is talking about large parts of India and China being uninhabitable, leading to mass migrations. Is this really going to happen without conflict? Will these countries have the space for the people, to grow their food, to get or make the water they need, ...? Where there are shortages on this scale, it seems likely to me that there will be conflict.

    165:

    There's an old joke about white folks calling black folks "colored," because our (white) skins change color all the time (blue when cold, red when burned, tan when brown, green when nauseated, etc.). Conversely, they're always "black" (except they aren't--two months ago, my trucker's tan is about as dark as Obama's face is now).

    The real irony is that my Korean friends, whose skin color (away from the sun) is exactly the same as mine, don't tan as much, nor do they burn as much. They envy my deep tans, but laugh at my sunburns.

    It's deeply ironic that "white" people are actually the chameleons of the human world. Too bad we can't call ourselves "colored." Oh well.

    As for the future, there's a place for white folks, in the raw frontier forests up beyond the Arctic and Antarctic circle. More to the point, if we really do get tropical forests up to London, we'll see a total disintermediation between "tropical" and "ethnically brown or black." Tarzan will be far more adaptive in coming millennia than he was a century ago, swinging around the Appalachians on wild grape vines.

    The thing about global warming is that sunlight doesn't change with global warming, but the climatic zones do. Since skin color is an adaptation to ranges of sunlight, not ranges of temperature, the skin color most endangered by climate shifts is that beautiful deep ebony seen in tropical sunlit Africa, southern India, and similar places.

    Anyway, I'm white, they're yellow or black, and the sky's blue. That's culture for you. People see language, not reality.

    166:

    Regarding Korean and Japanese diplomatic communication in the past using Chinese characters: I don't have any specific knowledge of the historical situation, but I find it much more likely that educated people in Japan and Korea had studied reading and writing classical Chinese, and not that they were writing their own languages using Chinese characters (although both did use Chinese characters in their language).

    This is similar to the way Hong Kong people can read and write modern Chinese: even if their native language is Cantonese and they have only poor spoken Mandarin, what they call written Chinese (and were taught in school) is actually written colloquial Mandarin.

    Of course, there is a written colloquial Cantonese, but newspapers don't use its grammar and only use some of its words.

    As for the prospect of fluent machine translation, I believe it is nearly equivalent to general strong AI, which puts us back in singularity territory.

    167:

    My point in my previous post is that "back translating" doesn't really tell you how accurate the first translation was because the second translation can introduce errors.

    Google translate does have some context awareness capabilities a desktop translation program lacks, if you give it a 20 page document on breweries, it's unlikely it will give you ghosts for spirits.

    With search personalization, location awareness ("User is at an airport, query is not likely to be about mathematical planes"), etc I don't think turing completeness is going to be necessary for useful results.

    168:

    doink. Came back, found the post in the comment field, figured I never actually posted and pressed submit. But then I guess I did. Deletions, pleeze?

    (Watts' blog has a nice feature allowing editing and deletion, and since we're all logged in users now... might be nice)

    169:

    @142: We don't have a fully complete answer for how relativity and quantum mechanics interact, but we have a very good practical answer to that question. The practical answer is that they don't interact noticeably at all because the mass, distance, and energy scales are too different. Ignoring some mathematical corrections to energies of heavy atom core electron states, there's very little overlap.

    @151: One prediction that I have utter confidence in: in 2512, humans will still be a pack of assholes, though they may have shinier toys.

    170:

    A couple of points. Racism is about a lot more than skin colour even from a physiology only POV. You think Indians can't recognize Africans if they have the same skin colour?

    Also, the recommended dose of Vit D is around 400 units a day. Which is probably grossly inadequate, except to prevent rickets. I take 5000 units a day and it makes a BIG difference, especially with regard to arthritis.

    171:

    This is not the racism thread. However, before I bring the lid down on it, I suggest you google "kyriarchy".

    172:

    Actually, until the 20th Century, Korean was written in Chinese characters. South Korean papers still use a mix of Chinese characters and hangeul geuljas.

    A bit of history: Hangeul was invented in 1443 to bring literacy to the masses. The Yangban (scholar-noble) class opposed it fiercely, because mass literacy would deprive them of their status as people who had either passed the national examinations, or at least had a grandfather who had passed. As a result, hangeul languished for centuries. Hangeul didn't start to become popular until the 20th Century. It was popularized in opposition to Japanese (especially from 1910-1935 and after 1945) and by Christian missionaries, who espoused the radical idea that all people are equal before God, and thus everyone deserved an education. Hangeul is much easier to master than Chinese characters, and that's what they used.

    The old Korean scholars wrote Chinese, even if they spoke Korean. Even though Korea was a vassal state of China, very few Koreans actually spoke Chinese. Rather more could communicate with their Chinese counterparts in writing, though.

    173:

    Sounds like archetypal Human behaviour of the type we Transhumanists are always accused of wanting to destroy.

    174:

    All people are equal before God in the same way all ants are equal before Humans. However, the ants probably don't see it that way.

    175:

    Trying reading the latest issue of Jupiter - no. 38... there's a climate change story in there and then work out the extrapolations... I'm not going to say the future is rosier than you paint, but you've not taken into account all the factors and the way humans tend to act in their best interests... the crystal ball power with you is not.

    176:

    Of course you're right about back-translation. I was more interested in how Google was handling the frame shift from SOV to SVO and back to SOV.

    On the surface, you'd think that moving the verb around and adding or subtracting the various particles wouldn't be that hard. Thus it was interesting to see how much trouble the machine had correctly attaching the clauses to the structures they modified. I was even more interested to see that the machine lost track of the subject of one verb in the English-Japanese loop.

    Then again, it takes some effort to teach this kind of writing to children, so it's obviously not as easy as I thought it might be.

    177:

    At the risk of stepping on a really big landmine, history and language are both intensely politicized in the area around Japan, Korea, and northern China.

    Given Korea's history over the last 120 years, they're going to stress how unique they are, and it might be harder to see and talk about the commonalities they share with their neighbors than one might expect objectively. Remember that, not very long ago, such commonalities were used by Japan as an excuse to annex them as part of its western-inspired Empire. And then there's the Cold War, which is still very active on the Korean peninsula.

    I agree that Korean, Japanese, and Chinese are superficially very different. The place where we differ is that I strongly suspect that politics have encouraged work that points out how different they are, at least in the last 70 years.

    And I won't even begin the discussion about how "Chinese," with its dialects, is a language like "European," with its dialects of English, German, and French...

    178:

    Isn't "politics" a simpler word for the same thing?

    179:

    I haven't read the 177 comments thoroughly, apologies if this has already come up-

    I think that long before we get to the sort of climate change impacts you describe, we'll attempt massive climate engineering. Maybe a coalition of many nations, maybe one or a few nations working together or independently, maybe rogue non-nation entities.

    Maybe that climate engineering will make things better, maybe worse, maybe just different. But I think it's safe to assume it will happen and it will be a Big Deal in history one way or another.

    180:

    Certainly it's very politicized. And the Japanese probably go even further than the Koreans in thinking themselves a special snowflake, linguistically and otherwise.

    It's been said that languages are dialects with an army.

    Points taken, but they don't change the actual, real fact that Japonic and Sino-Tibetan languages do not have a recent common ancestor.

    181:

    On the surface, you'd think that moving the verb around and adding or subtracting the various particles wouldn't be that hard.

    I though Google had largely abandoned the basic language structure approach and used word phrases based on statistical matching?

    182:

    I don't think you need a magic wand here. There are lots of approaches to nitrogen fixation from purely chemical to purely natural biological. I would be very surprised if we don't get a number of economically viable, low energy approaches to work. Worst case, we fall back on multi-cropping with nitrogen fixing plants as part of the mix.

    Don't forget, we have a lot of fixed nitrogen available, it is just that we keep it very separated from our agriculture.

    183:

    "I though Google had largely abandoned the basic language structure approach and used word phrases based on statistical matching?"

    I believe that's largely correct. It's my understanding that fancier machine translation approaches don't scale so well in terms of speed.

    184:

    So I think everyone is pretty agreed that language translation is HARD, even for humans - why else do we keep seen books published "with a new translation by...". Literature, with its rich vocabulary (and made up terms in SF), plus historical and cultural references (how do they translate OGN's Laundry novels' jokes?) is particularly hard, compared to say, a business letter.

    But suppose we get surprised and we see good literary translations by machines of the 'Watson' approach? Can we accept that achievement as strong AI and allow for the potential for full AGI (probably better than human level I)? I would be surprised if that didn't happen well before 500 years.

    The reason I think this is that we already have ongoing projects to simulate brains. Even 100 years out these approaches will probably show the strengths and weaknesses of brain simulation with the hardware constraints removed. Even specialist, Watson style machines will be ubiquitous, probably with spoken language translation at some level built in.

    I expect our machine intelligences will be as similar to ours, as aircraft are to birds, but so what? They may even have so much processing power that they could simulate humans as an interface to allow us to interact with them.

    185:

    I didn't mean that we can't or won't come up with nifty nitrogen fixation techniques. I was reflecting on my own earlier naivete in thinking that we could just pluck that enzyme out of its evolved settings and use it like a simple industrial reagent... and, by extension, on a lot of the speculation I see about genetic engineering and bio-engineering in general.

    186:

    Sorry guys but some of the comments on this (excepting our gracious host of course) are so... SHORT SIGHTED that even though it's 1:45 AM here in Vietnam, it drove me to register, sign in and comment.

    500 Years is a LONG TIME

    Technology and science are not slowing down they are getting FASTER and are driving history both faster and in totally new directions.

    Look, it would have to take a total world catastrophe to wipe out, for example, the Internet (and it would probably require something of that magnitude to knock out Google and all of its competitors). Unless that happens (and I think we ruled out asteroids and such mega-disasters), we can count on basically ALL OF HUMANITY will have almost the sum total of all human knowledge at its fingertips anywhere at anytime. FROM THIS POINT ON.

    When the average day laborer in Vietnam (where I live) can start to think about getting a cheap android tablet on his salary, you know that day is not centuries, decades but maybe only years away.

    Now maybe that won't TREMENDOUSLY change his life (it'll just make paying his bills, finding a good doctor, getting to work easier, maybe learning a new skill that's all) but for the .1% who are REAL GENIUSES, it WILL. As Bill Gates once said "It used to be better to be a mediocre person in America than a genius in India, then the Internet came along". That is not an exact quote but you can Google it yourself thus proving my point.

    There have been studies showing that when people move to a city, their productivity (and income) goes way up (that's why they move). It's because interacting with other people make people much more efficient/creative/specialized. Now imagine: the Internet is making the WHOLE WORLD a giant city.

    Of course the Internet is just one (important) trend in science and technology. Look at robotics, genetics, large scale computing, carbon nano-tubes, graphene, self-assembling systems, protein modeling, synthetic biology etc. These fields are EXPLODING. (I read a LOT of science articles, you should too: sciencedaily.com).

    Anyway, for an example of how wrong some comments have been, one comment claimed that by 2512 we should have simultaneous translation. Then someone else mentioned MS was already working on it. Then someone else mentioned it already works (between Chinese and English).

    Did you realize that not only is it working but that when it speaks the translated phrase it does so in your voice? Sure, it is only about 80% "correct" but it isn't 2512 now is it? So what if it take s server farm to process; in 20 years you'll probably have that in your hearing aid.

    That prediction is about 500 years off (does anyone really expect it can't be completely solved in a few decades?) By then you'll probably be able to store EVERY ENGLISH SENTENCE EVER SPOKEN WITH ITS TRANSLATION on a sugar cube sized computer and just find the appropriate phrase by brute force search (a la Google).

    The impact of just this one field (computers) extends very very far. Think of warfare. How much better was a navy from, say 1500 than one was from 1400? Slightly bigger ships, better compasses, longer cannons. Now look at various battles between technological combatants in the late 20th century.

    For example the U.S. utterly destroyed a very well equipped (by the soviets) Iraqi air force in the first gulf war. (I believe, at the time that their air force was the 4th largest in the world.) Remember the U.S. was fighting them literally on the other side of the world, whereas they were fighting from dug in defenses FOR THEIR OWN COUNTRY. The main difference? Maybe a decade or two of technology, mainly in the form of (much) better electronics and stealth. The same thing happened when the Syrians fought the Israelis, I think the score was 79 Syrian jets lost to 0 Israelis.

    And I think it's getting worse (that's why the Chinese are so desperate to catch up to the U.S. in the military; being #2 still means you lose).

    What I'm saying is that most of these predictions, even without positing a "Major" technological advance are incredibly short-sighted when projecting 500(!) years. Again, short of an almost extinction level event, humanity is just not going to forget all that has learned; history on a global scale WILL NOT be repeated. For example just take ONE extrapolation of existing technology like quantum encryption to its logical progression (an extrapolation isn't a "breakthrough" like a warp drive or teleporter right?). If/when we get quantum computers working it will change the world, first by giving its creator the ability to crack any non-quantum encrypted code and next by solving many "unsolvable" problems.

    Or, for another example, how about REALLY cheap solar power from spray on solar films (with efficiency in the double digits from nano-dots). Within a generation (within a decade?) you could see almost ALL fossil fuels being abandoned (except from niche or specialized markets) with liquid fuels (hydrogen, LNG, synthetic fuels) made instead from abundant electricity.

    Anyway, you'd be surprised how quickly people will adopt new things if it will save them money or be markedly better; look at the quickening rate of change for technology used for entertainment. (vinyl->cassette->CD->mp3player->cloud).

    If you think that the measure of technological change is in jet packs and space travel then maybe the world doesn't seem to be changing so fast. I, on the other hand, try to see how it affects the world (container ships->trade, washing machines->females in the workforce, green revolution->urbanization, facebook->democracy), and see it accelerating us to an unknown, frightening perhaps but exciting future. Finally, if you thought that was a lot of change, it is because of three basic technologies born in the 20th century (genetics, semiconductors, nano-fabrication) which are not coincidentally grounded in the science of the small (thanks Dr. Feynman!), that we really are headed toward the "unknown country".

    Sorry for the poor writing, it is now 3am. Goodnight!

    187:

    Actually, all approaches to fixing nitrogen are energy intensive, because you have to crack that N-N triple bond, and then bond the N to something else. Absent some amazing chemical breakthrough (aka a magic wand), there's no cheap way to break that bond.

    This is one reason why redwoods don't fix nitrogen (they need the energy for respiration), and why nitrogen-fixing corn's a stupid idea (it would be make fewer corn kernels even as it fertilized itself, and it would still need a dozen-odd elements from the soil).

    Montedavis' point about the special environment is that N-fixation requires the absence of free oxygen, so biological N fixation takes place in cells where the oxygen levels are kept artificially low. Legumes even have hemoglobin in their root nodules to help keep the oxygen out.

    Unfortunately, if we go to multicropping, away from industrial fertilizers, we're back where we were in 1900, when the great powers of the world were worried that the looming nitrogen shortage would trigger mass starvation and mass political upheaval. That's what started the race for artificially fixed nitrogen that pretty much ended with the horror of WWI, when we first realized (as a species) just how much destruction we can cause with huge amounts of cheap nitrogen explosives. Up to that point, warfare had been nitrogen limited. Currently it is not, which is why the AK-47 is such a devastating weapon.

    Now, at least 30% of all human population is supported entirely by artificially fixed nitrogen, and it's pretty clear that, even if we farmed nothing but legumes, we couldn't fix all the nitrogen we'd need to feed the current population. At present, we're stuck with artificial nitrogen fixation, unless we really want to lower human populations the hard way.

    That doesn't mean we can't be a lot more nitrogen efficient. It does mean that when we're designing our HappyFuturePlace, we need to realize that a lot of energy has to go towards nitrogen fixation, regardless of where that energy comes from.

    188:

    Thank you for that excellent presentation of the magic fairy dust approach.

    I think what a lot of us are trying is the so-called "constraints" approach. The previous post, for example, was about the N-N triple bond, which requires a lot of energy to break. It doesn't matter where that energy comes from, nor what does the cracking, it's still energy-intensive. We can deduce, therefore, that we're always going to need to set aside a lot of energy if we want people to get adequate nitrogen in the form of proteins. If we want explosives and machine guns, we're going to need even more fixed nitrogen.

    Similarly, only so much sunlight hits us per square meter, even if we're in space. No technological miracle will increase the amount of solar energy there is to be harvested. Indeed, we do lose a lot of solar energy that could be used to make machines work, but without that energy, our atmosphere would be liquid and we'd be frozen solid. Seems like a dumb tradeoff. Therefore, if we evolve to a society that's powered by the sun, we're going to have to live on a lot less energy than we currently have.

    Less energy also means that, if we depend on solar-powered nitrogen fixation, we're going to have a lot less fixed nitrogen to go around. This in turn means we'll have fewer people, and that means a lot of people will die, and rather fewer will be born. Those people can die of natural senescence and accidents, or starvation, but we're going to have a population of at most a few billion if we go all solar.

    Notice the technology is irrelevant here? We're still stuck with those strong constraints, whatever technology is available. Technology may make us more efficient, but technology may be inefficient (cf the Bugatti Veyron), just as politics and human nature sometimes help us and just as often make us more inefficient too.

    Yes, it's fun to assume that technology will solve all our problems. Unfortunately, that assumption is also naive to the point of uselessness. Reality demonstrates, quite vividly, that we have huge numbers of problems that technology can't solve. Look at Washington DC, for example, and the so-called "Budget Cliff." Worse, technology even enables some problems. For example, look at the last US election, where technology and money enabled candidates to spam us to the point where many of us voluntarily turned off all media, just to get a break from the noise.

    Anyway, if you want to figure out where the technology is going, just look at our strong constraints. If we're lucky, technology will push us up against them, and that's something that's easy to predict.

    189:

    How about a few more predictions:

    • At least three regional nuclear wars will occur over the next 500 years. Almost certainly India v. Pakistan, possibly a nuclear civil war in the US, possibly American Confederacy v. Muslims (and France, for no reason except fuck France), probably at least two between states that do not yet exist.

    • Two or three bioweapons releases that result in Black Plague-level fatalities. Popov viruses, Ebolapox, that sort of thing.

    • The increasing level of destructive power that individuals and small groups can manage leads societies toward two attractors. One is the Orwellian States of Paranoia; the other is the Anarchic States of Mad Max. Anything in between proves to be unstable.

    • Kittens are available in every color of the rainbow.

    190:

    Bad use of words on my part. I was trying to invoke the idea of room temperature nitrogen fixation in a box, compared to the hot, industrial scale Haber process.

    But consider, we are going through all this nitrogen fixing because bacteria are denitrifying fixed nitrogen. Human and animal sewage treatment is one path. At any given moment, the biosphere has all the fixed nitrogen it needs. It is the recycling into the atmosphere that requires us to keep producing more for plant growth.

    Now I am not suggesting we try to totally short circuit the cycle, but we can reuse fixed nitrogen to offset the demand. To do that will require more integrated farming. While at first glance this seems to imply a reverse from industrial scale farming, I don't see that this must necessarily be true.

    191:

    If we cannot engineer plants to fix their own nitrogen in 500 years we might as well give up on science and technology.

    192:

    Err, actually, both the synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

    and the oxidation of ammonia to nitrates

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostwald_process

    are exothermic, though that does not necessarily mean exergonic

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exergonic_reaction

    AFAIR the main problem is, as you mentioned, the high activation of elemental nitrogen, which means you either have to use lots of energy to start the reaction, some catalysator, or both. For the first we have the Birkeland-Eyde process, AKA "electrode welding, the wrong way",

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkeland–Eyde_process

    for the third, there are the already mentioned processes.

    Catalysts are also used in biochemical nitrogen fixation, though that one is quite energy hungry:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_fixation

    Now enzyme catalyst are astonishing, but constrained both by historical constraints, AKA evolutionary history, one of the key structures in nitrogenases is an Fe-S cluster, which might say more about prebiotic chemistry than efficiency

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron-sulfur_protein

    and biology, ever wondered why platinum and palladium are quite hot in synthetic catalysts, but virtually absent in enzymes, and the already mentioned iron and sulfur are quite easy to sideline in vanilaa biochemistry, so engineering better biocatalysts might be a realistic and worthwhile enterprise; though then, some of the latest breakthroughs in the wiki article were molybdenum catalysts, the same element used in some nitrogenase enzymes,

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogenase

    which either mean nature already knows best thanks to trial-and-error, lazy chemists looking for good candidates or maybe both.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organometallic_chemistry#Applications

    Jsut some musings, I'm just a biologist, no chemists...

    193:

    Similarly, only so much sunlight hits us per square meter, even if we're in space. No technological miracle will increase the amount of solar energy there is to be harvested.

    You are conflating energy density with total energy. We could theoretically harvest the total output of the sun, even at the intensity at the earth's surface.

    OK, so we couldn't use it on the planet, but we could easily increase the energy use on earth as long as we removed the GHG component of energy production.

    Having said that, it is clear we cannot go on increasing the per capita use of energy for 500 years, and efficiency has its limits. Still, we could be a lot more energy affluent than we are now and still have a nice planet to live on.

    194:

    I think your military metaphor wrt. the Iraq invasion is a bit faulty; the Iraqi military was actually quite pathetically backward in one vital respect -- tactical and strategic doctrine. They were basically prepared to re-fight the Iran-Iraq war, static trench warfare against an enemy who had deployed human wave suicide tactics. A good chunk of the Iraqi's best equipment was in the hands of the Republican Guard, basically a Ba'athist Waffen-SS equivalent -- except their primary task was to keep the army's guns pointed at the external enemy. The generals were generally terrified -- both of the USA (the 500Kg military gorilla, which currently out-spends every other nation on the planet, combined), and of their own dictator, who had a charming habit in the 1980s of summoning successful generals back to Baghdad, giving them a medal, then shooting them (to prevent them becoming a popular rival). And the troops were conscripts who mostly didn't want to be there in the first place.

    (This is an example of the problem with most facile metaphors: on close examination, the cracks begin to show up. I'm going to leave Heteromeles to finish the demolition on the biological sciences, and just note that progress is a series of overlapping sigmoid curves; I see no sign of a curve going true-exponential in the current signal.)

    195:

    Having said that, it is clear we cannot go on increasing the per capita use of energy for 500 years, and efficiency has its limits. Still, we could be a lot more energy affluent than we are now and still have a nice planet to live on.

    Germany uses about one-third the energy per-capita as the USA. Germany is not notably lacking in manufacturing, so it's not all accounted for by a lack of industry. I've been to Germany and to the USA, and I would say that for the vast majority of people (the 99%, basically) Germany is a much nicer place to live, with a higher standard of living. It's also not as mega-densely populated as the UK -- it has triple the land area and maybe 10% more people -- so the "Germans aren't spread out so they don't need as much energy for transportation" argument doesn't hold much water, either.

    (Actually, drivers in the UK average 12,000 miles a year, to US drivers' 15,000 miles. Living in a smaller, more compact country does not correspond to less commuting.)

    The real issue is efficiency standards. A chunk is down to air conditioning -- Germans don't need it anything like as much -- but they still have harsh winters to deal with. Those American homes I've visited have been ... well, the phrase "badly made from cheap wet cardboard" springs to mind.

    So there's a lot of room for decreasing energy consumption without hitting standard of living, in the USA ... or for increasing standard of living without increasing energy consumption. It's an attitude thing, frankly, and as long as folks like the Koch brothers are lobbying against environmental efficiency standards, you're not going to reap the benefits.

    196:

    Your comparison of annual mileage should be qualified by the number of drivers in each country -- in the UK about 70% of adults have driving licences whereas in the US it's 88% according to some figures.

    197:

    The house I spent much of my childhood in dates back at least to 1859; can't be traced back farther because that's when the courthouse burned and the records were lost.

    But it had been extensively remodeled over the decades. And is probably still undergoing change.

    198:

    I think what a lot of us are trying is the so-called "constraints" approach...[...]..only so much sunlight hits us per square meter, even if we're in space. No technological miracle will increase the amount of solar energy there is to be harvested....[...]...if we evolve to a society that's powered by the sun, we're going to have to live on a lot less energy than we currently have.

    That is taking constraints too far. You are setting very tight constraints based on implicit assumptions.

    Even on planet earth, the oceans have low productivity away from the continental shelves, so you could harvest solar energy across much of the Pacific with little loss to human welfare, or even to oceanic ecosystems.

    Even simple technology could increase surface insolation - space based mirrors. Thin, foil mirrors could add a lot of extra energy to selected areas of the earth's surface - in extremis - creating a solar concentrator with its focus on the ground. Certainly no magical technology. Space based solar PV is more likely, with as much expansion of area as you want.

    Indeed, we do lose a lot of solar energy that could be used to make machines work, but without that energy, our atmosphere would be liquid and we'd be frozen solid.

    Nonsense. All the energy harvested will end up as heat. Solar panels would not magically remove energy from the earth's surface. As for turning the atmosphere to liquid - pure hyperbole. You would need to shade the earth from the sun to do that.

    One can argue where the constraints lay, but assuming tight constraints is just putting everything in a very small box. Breaking assumed constraints is what we should be thinking about.

    199:

    Err, sorry for going for the r words again, but...

    While I guess projecting the old white-vs.-black-vs.-brown-vs.-yellow racism is somewhat futile and lazy, though thinking about the implications of China vs. India in the next century might be interesting. But then, there is the somewhat broader issue of stereotypes associated with certain physical attributes and discrimination of certain physical attributes (see: looks-like-anorectic, obesity, chinless-wonder etc.).

    The interesting things for the future might be:

    • Biomedical research proving some of these ideas correct, e.g. there are some reports red heads react differently to some opioids

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15994880

    no idea if this translates to other behavioural differences, though some melanocortin agonists have interesting side effects:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremelanotide

    Please abstain from horny blonde/sensual brunette jokes.

    • Better ways to manipulate said effects, e.g. some modulators of melanocortin function, and the fun their use entails; compare to racial transformation

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_transformation

    Might generalize to other debatable regional traditions.There are some urban myths Bavarians didn't like iodinized salt because they though goiter was part of theirs.

    Or melanocortin blockers for non-redheads.

    200:

    The real issue is efficiency standards. A chunk is down to air conditioning -- Germans don't need it anything like as much -- but they still have harsh winters to deal with. Those American homes I've visited have been ... well, the phrase "badly made from cheap wet cardboard" springs to mind.

    Wet cardboard does not apply to to stone and brick homes in the older US cities. But while you are so dismissive of stick and gypsum board housing bear in mind that: 1. They use much less energy to manufacture than brick buildings. 2. The energy efficiency can be easily added using insulation. Much more so than much UK housing, especially older Victorians with single skin brick walls. 3. Remodeling and rebuilding is much easier, so the housing stock can be upgraded or replaced at much lower cost than brick construction.

    So there's a lot of room for decreasing energy consumption without hitting standard of living, in the USA ... or for increasing standard of living without increasing energy consumption. It's an attitude thing, frankly, and as long as folks like the Koch brothers are lobbying against environmental efficiency standards, you're not going to reap the benefits.

    Absolutely agree. I'm encouraged that the bigger is better attitude seems to be waning a little. My Prius has a lot of company on the road these days.

    But, even assuming that energy efficiency could result in 1/10th of total energy consumption, if we assume just 1% per annum per capita energy growth, that is 150x the current consumption in 500 years. Starting at 1/10th current consumption, that is 15x. Completely unsustainable on the earth's surface, even with solar shades and factory food. Which implies that the standard of living from an energy perspective is probably going to be much higher in 500 years, but not 150x higher, for residents of earth.

    We can argue about what is an appropriate standard of living, but I would hope that it improves for the bulk of humanity, including those in the most economically prosperous nations.

    201:

    Indeed. When the USA wargamed plans for an invasion of Iraq in 2002, they put retired Marine General Paul Van Riper in charge of the simulated Iraqi forces. The result was a series of horrifying defeats for the simulated USA: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/sep/06/usa.iraq

    If Saddam's commanders had been half as clever and well-motivated as Van Riper, the invasion in 2003 might have gone very differently. (To be clear, I'm not saying this would have been a good thing, it likely would have made the war even more destructive than it already was.)

    202:

    If those cardboard houses (not wet cardboard, dry cardboard - they burn like it, as you could see in NY) would require so much less energy in building them that it could in any way compensate the heating and air-conditioning requirements, the US would consume less energy than it does.

    It's that simple.

    203:

    Residential use is just 20% of US energy usage. Of that, 40% is used for heating and cooling. So just 8% of total US energy usage is for keeping "wet cardboard" homes comfortable.

    So it isn't even close to "simple".

    Conversely, cement manufacture for concrete is one of the largest global energy uses.

    204:

    Technology and science are not slowing down they are getting FASTER and are driving history both faster and in totally new directions.

    If you think technology is accelerating and will continue to accelerate indefinitely, you wind up predicting some kind of singularity. That's a point of view, but it's not one I agree with.

    Another point of view is that engineering itself is subject to the law of diminishing returns. A lot of progress was made in the 19th and 20th centuries, but in a lot of ways it looks like we've picked the low hanging fruit and further inventions are likely to take much more work for less result.

    For example, about 110 years ago the light bulb was invented. It changed the world, but it was inefficient (under 20%). A century later, modern LED lighting is over 90% efficient. A century from now ... there's no way for lights to be more than 100% energy efficient.

    So when we think about what happens in 500 years, we're guessing at how technology levels off. Is fusion a safe, reliable source of power like coal today, or is it like flying cars, a seemingly good idea that just doesn't work out in implementation?

    205:

    If you think technology is accelerating and will continue to accelerate indefinitely, you wind up predicting some kind of singularity. That's a point of view, but it's not one I agree with.

    Another point of view is that engineering itself is subject to the law of diminishing returns. A lot of progress was made in the 19th and 20th centuries, but in a lot of ways it looks like we've picked the low hanging fruit and further inventions are likely to take much more work for less result.

    OTOH, we may still be in accelerating change and haven't reached the inflexion point when it all slows down. Or maybe change is not smoothly continuous.

    Using mature technologies as examples is not an appropriate argument. We need to know where new technologies are going and presumably non-existent ones that will emerge in the future.

    If we take Brian Arthur's view of technology, then it accelerates as the number of technologies increases, simply because there are more possible rearrangements.

    206:

    Biotechnology is in its infancy. It may well be another fifty to one hundred years before it becomes as mature as (say) computer tech.

    207:

    We need to know where new technologies are going and presumably non-existent ones that will emerge in the future.

    Sure, but we've limited ourselves to what we consider (today) basically realistic physics. So quantum computing and genetic engineering are OK to posit, but FTL or Limitless Energy From Nowhere are forbidden.

    208:

    A couple of quick comments on the short/medium term here.

    On Languages, North American English is already diferentiating into (Mutually) unintelligible dialects; ever hear Ebonics? Hollywood does us a real diservice by showing it as more like "Network Standard English" than it be spoke.

    BTW, Canada is included in "North America", with the Maritimes already having a distinctive dialect.

    There was an interesting article in National Geographic about this a few years ago. My netbook won't let me open separate windows...

    We already have a standardized writen form (NATO Standard English?), or written "Mid-Atlantic" version. And American (US) residential geography is increasingly segregated economically. So if current trends continue, the Peasants will probably speak (Multiple) mutually incomprehensible dialects in 500 years. In North America (Including most of Mexico) the Elites will continue to speak a recognizable standard version of Mid-Atlantic English.

    No need to speak to the grocery clerk if you are checking yourself out, or your smart phone bills your as soon as you put merchandize in your cart.

    209:

    Similarly, only so much sunlight hits us per square meter, even if we're in space. No technological miracle will increase the amount of solar energy there is to be harvested. Indeed, we do lose a lot of solar energy that could be used to make machines work, but without that energy, our atmosphere would be liquid and we'd be frozen solid. Seems like a dumb tradeoff. Therefore, if we evolve to a society that's powered by the sun, we're going to have to live on a lot less energy than we currently have.

    Less energy also means that, if we depend on solar-powered nitrogen fixation, we're going to have a lot less fixed nitrogen to go around. This in turn means we'll have fewer people, and that means a lot of people will die, and rather fewer will be born. Those people can die of natural senescence and accidents, or starvation, but we're going to have a population of at most a few billion if we go all solar.

    Let's do the math. It takes about 12 kilowatt hours to make a kilogram of ammonia by electrolyzing water and using the hydrogen in a conventional Haber-Bosch plant. Corn grown in a conventional intensive way takes quite a bit of nitrogen fertilizer -- perhaps 180 kg of ammonia per hectare. Dubuque, Iowa has average daily insolation of 3.77 kilowatt hours per square meter. Current solar modules made without any rare materials (silicon semiconductor, copper conductors) can achieve a bit over 18% efficiency.

    In order to annually supply 180 kg of ammonia, assuming that you locate the solar modules in Iowa, you need:

    (180 * 12) / (0.18 * 3.77 * 365) = 8.72 square meters of solar modules.

    Or to put it another way, you'd need repurpose up to 0.087% of cultivated land to supply its own nitrogen from solar energy, if you can't find any non-crop land nearby. Maybe add another factor of 5 to account for the fact that solar arrays occupy more land than the active surface -- now you're up to almost 0.5% of the land. You'd also consume 286 liters of water via electrolysis to supply the nitrogen for a hectare of corn, compared with the 8-10 million liters of water typically needed by a hectare of corn over its growing season.

    The sun supplies the Earth's surface with roughly 6000 times as much energy as humans now produce/capture artificially. The manufacturing cost of PV modules has come down dramatically in the last couple of decades. Over most of the world's populated surface it is already a cheaper source of energy than burning petroleum products. There are credible improvements in the pipeline to cut costs by at least another factor of 3 (in the USA, you could get a factor of 2 merely by standardizing/streamlining installation like the Germans). Using current 18% efficient modules, you could provide 9 billion people with as much energy as the average Swiss citizen with less than 1% of Earth's land area. The last missing link is seasonal energy storage; there are large fluctuations between summer and winter insolation as you get far from the equator. So either you can suppose that people will develop large scale energy storage in the next 500 years, match their energy-intensive activities to the seasons, use non-solar resources where seasonal differences are large, or migrate to regions where seasonal solar differences are smaller.

    210:

    Interesting that you didn't mention religion. Given the decline of membership in traditional organized religions in the developed world, and the growth of "nones" or "brights" or whatever euphemism you want to use for agnostics and atheists, I'd guess the world of 2512 will be a rather non-religious place, at least as we define traditional religion.

    211:

    In addition, Wikipedia estimates about 2% of global energy use is used for inorganic nitrogen fertilizer production.

    Clearly not a major energy use compared to manufacturing and transport.

    While one doesn't want to coat the planet in solar cells, it is clear that a wholly solar world is possible, especially if space based systems augment ground based ones. The main issue will be storage and transport of energy to areas with low insolation. My guess is that the de novo production of fuels, from water and CO2, for combustion will be the preferred method.

    212:

    Climate, climate, climate. Gosh, people really love their doom wanking!

    Okay, I'll buy climate change problems for a 2062 story; that's 50 years hence and the problems may have gotten ahead of the solutions. I do NOT buy it as a problem in 2512. One way or another, it's going to be a historical footnote. Yes, we may have solved the problem (probably by 2112); or we may have demonstrated that climate control is unfeasible (remember the weather control predictions from the 1950s?), or maybe the Planetary Climate Authority got eaten by feral lawyers. Whatever. The current climate change fuss is going to look like the end of the Medieval Warm Period: the humanoid on the street will give you a blank look if asked about it. There doesn't seem to be a way to stop folks from doom wanking, but let's find another excuse.

    What problems MIGHT we face? There must be some, since humans don't build utopias very well, and it's darned hard to write stories in settings without problems. So let me toss out a few ideas for challenges:

    Energy production should be a set of solved problems; we've got a pretty good idea how to make a lot of technologies work, and while our solution set will evolve it's pretty clear that overall humanity has a whole bunch of options. I'll remind you all that whale depletion did not, in fact, lead to the collapse of civilization when the oil ran out... Waste heat has been offered as a future problem, and it might be - we might, at least, move people and/or industry towards the poles for optimal heat distribution. Darned if I know where there's personal drama in that, as it should be routine long before 2512. Sure, maybe some Old Fart is being kept awake by the space mirrors - but that's an isolated crank, not a problem for humanity. And yes, by 2512 I'm sure we will have hung as many collectors in space as the economy needs, whether that's zero or thousands; we've got the time. However it's produced, humanity has as much energy as it thinks it needs.

    That's energy production, of course; energy storage is a different set of questions. Maybe we'll still have trouble with this, although I suspect we'll have settled on a satisfactory set of answers.

    One under-represented problem is biological anomalies. We've discussed the super-city versus the re-greening, but I don't see it; I think 2512 will see sprawling urbanization and restorative planting and large-scale gardening to turn 'ugly' land into 'beautiful' land and genetically engineered plants in specialized farm (too many of which escape into the wild eventually, and some of which become weeds like kudzu) and entirely new micro-ecosystems not seen before genetic engineering became a low-cost hobby (some of them are intentional, as an art form; others Just Happened; a few were thought up by griefers and are damned nuisances).

    Racism, in the sense of ethnic division, is almost certainly still with us. It may not map onto what we think of as race now, but humans are cranky and stubborn; we'll think of something. (You'll probably be able to change your hair, eye, and skin color with one trip to the corner store, more easily than dying your hair today If you're a red haired Irish man and want to be a dark skinned African woman, that's probably just more expensive. I can't guess how that change might affect your social life in the 26th century.) Maybe Antarcticans don't get along with Atlanteans, the details are unpredictable. How serious this is depends on history and environmental stresses; it could be nothing more serious than rival sports fans today - but that can get pretty serious after an important game.

    Economics...will almost certainly be very different. No, I can't predict how, but it might look reasonably normal at the buying-a-beer level (except that nobody carries cash or visibly pays at all) and yet get seriously weird at the high finance layer. Or not? This is something for a whole new thread; I suspect that by 2512 the idea of wealth measurable by a single scalar number might be long obsolete, the way we're beginning to view intelligence as not very well measured by an IQ number, but I can't even guess how many dimensions 26th century finance would need to use or how they could be assessed. Vector sums? Area? We're not even ready to formulate the questions...

    Since climate change is so loved in this thread, how about geoengineering as a problem? Yes, by 2112 our current questions will be long solved - but what about potential agents in 2512 who want to fiddle with the climate to suit THEIR needs? Presumably they'd not all agree on the same goals; the Wet Australians might ally with the Alaskan Kalifate (they just want it warmer) against the Plains Preservationists (who want grasslands across central North America) and both sides can try to recruit the United Clans of Scotland (actually united only six non-consecutive years of the last 40, thank you, but most of them want the damned glaciers gone). In the meantime some home hobbyist with a space mirror array is getting up to something less well thought out...

    Warfare? I'm going to pass on that question. Yes, we can prognosticate: 3D printing and its descendants will make production easier; robot drones will be within the reach of small nations, individual cities, companies, and home hobbyists; cruise missiles with multi-hundred-kilometer ranges, ditto. Tiny rat-bots already in R&D can be programmed with facial recognition and poison stingers to go after individual targets. That's not 2512, that's 2062; we can't begin to guess what the 500 year fight will be like, except that it'll probably be very deadly and therefore very rare.

    Okay, that's a Packet of Problems for folks to chew over. Things that aren't problems can be in another post.

    213:

    1. They use much less energy to manufacture than brick buildings.

    If they don't last as long, however, that's a major trade-off. If the mean life expectancy of a sheetrock-and-wood building is 30 years and that of a well-made stone building is 150 years, then even if you can build the flimsy sheetrock unit for $30,000 against the $150,000 cost of stone, it's more sensible to build in stone because you waste less time re-building the dwelling in question.

    2. The energy efficiency can be easily added using insulation. Much more so than much UK housing, especially older Victorians with single skin brick walls.

    Yes, but this runs into my earlier "bad old buildings are demolished and replaced; good old buildings are retained" issue. (Plus, modern brick buildings generally have hollow walls suitable for insulation. And by "modern" I mean built in the 20th century.)

    3. Remodeling and rebuilding is much easier, so the housing stock can be upgraded or replaced at much lower cost than brick construction.

    True for some designs, but it's still possible to upgrade/modify brick or stone. This 190-year-old apartment I live in didn't have indoor plumbing or a bathroom when it was built. Nor did it have electricity, natural gas, or central heading, or under-roof insulation. I'm pretty certain that at some point in the not-too-distant future they'll relax the planning regulations enough to permit efficient insulated glazing as well.

    There's a trade-off between designing buildings for durability with upgrade-in-place, and designing them to be knocked down and replaced every few decades. I tend to lean towards the former. (Especially as, after some home shopping that involved touring show homes on new-build estates and rolling on the floor laughing, I concluded that much of the new-build housing in the UK from the 1980s through 2000s is rubbish compared to the surviving 19th century stock.)

    214:

    You're assuming a straight-line extrapolation of a social trend, and furthermore, extrapolating it across cultural boundaries. I'd be very wary of that.

    For example: the upswing in religious fundamentalism in the middle east in the past few decades seems to be connected to the suppression of non-religious opposition to enrentched military-backed dictatorships, which in turn were the emergent power structures (with western backing) in the wreckage of the Ottoman empire. The fundamentalists also benefit from a rejection of western mores which in turn is rooted in resentment about the long-term geopolitical eclipse of the islamic world by the west (who, just four centuries ago, were the uneducated and poor barbarians on the fringe of their sophisticated, rich empire). If/when we see resurgent development and industrialization in the muslim world -- and ironically Iran may be the second-best hope for this right now after Indonesia -- then we can expect a long-term damping-down of the religiosity and increased tolerance.

    For another example: the words "bible belt" spring to mind. There is some danger that, if the USA goes into long-term relative decline, the decline will be followed by an upswing in intolerant religious fundamentalism.

    In the long term I'm hoping for a decline in superstition and an increase in tolerance. But I'm not holding my breath for it in any given country at any given time.

    215:

    My guess is that the de novo production of fuels, from water and CO2, for combustion will be the preferred method.

    Or just use solar power during daylight hours to condense and compress CO2 into tanks, and let it warm up and expand at night to provide working force for turbines. For added lulz improve the efficiency of your cold trap and use LN2 instead -- you can also bottle it and use it to drive cars. It's not extremely efficient but it's easy and flexible and the reduced number of stages in the process may make it overall more efficient than using solar electricity to drive Fischer-Tropsch synthesis.

    216:

    However, folks who wrap up against the cold and who live in the far north, where we don't get much sunlight in the winter months, may begin to suffer from Vitamin D deficiency. With symptoms like rickets in children, this is non-optimal. Melanin in the skin absorbs sunlight and reduces the efficiency of Vitamin D photosynthesis: so a mutation that reduces melanism makes it easier for wrapped-up folks in the sub-arctic to make enough of the stuff.

    I was reading recently that it wasn't just the move north. It was a combination of the move north, and a diet change from Vitamin D rich foods like fish (in mostly hunter/gatherer societies) to relatively Vitamin D poor foods like grains (in mostly agrarian societies). My Google Foo is failing me and I can't find the article right now.

    Even more interesting a 2010 study shows that Vitamin D production is pretty much independent of skin colour http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19812604 - so the lattitude differences in skin colour may be down to things like skin cancer no longer weeding out lighter skins where the sunlight is stronger.

    217:

    If the world does opt for full solar all the problems could be solved with a global grid.

    218:

    By 2512, I predict with 73% certainty that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be solved. :-P

    219:

    ... with a single nuclear weapon, probably.

    220:

    Storing and regenerating electricity costs in terms of energy losses as well as in money to build, maintain and operate the storage systems involved. It's the golden benefit of baseload generation (including hydro along with thermal fossil fuel and nuclear systems) that it converts a fuel source into electricity once, accepting those conversion losses as the only penalty.

    Renewables are not baseload as they depend on intermittent winds, cyclical tides, diurnal-cycle sunlight etc. to provide electricity when it is available and not necessarily when it is needed. At the moment renewables freeride on the baseload generation fleet supplemented by rapid-start thermal stations usually fuelled by gas; if they ever make up a majority share of a grid's generating capacity then they must be supplemented by lossy and expensive storage or rationing and blackouts are inevitable.

    221:

    I'm with the group who here who think that climate change won't be an 'issue' at this point. It will be the way things are - and people will be coping with what has by this point become the norm. Nobody will likely be thinking in terms of 'changing things back'. Although some, at least, will be looking to 'make things better'. No idea what 'better' would be by that point of course.

    Unless we get magic physics we've probably had at least a couple of centuries of Moore's Law no longer applying. We'll have explored the space where we can do useful new stuff with computing pretty thoroughly. The shallow computing-as-engineering metaphor will finally have some relation to reality as we have enough of a box of tools and rules to work with. Computing substrates everywhere doing pretty much the same kind of thing will be generations old.

    At this point anything that can be automated will, potentially, be automatable. Those humans still doing jobs that can be automated will only be there because we build a shitty society that requires it, or because they want to (e.g. I know an old guy - ex-engineer- who became a part time street cleaner after he retired. He says it's great for meeting people, forces him to go outside and exercise, and he likes making things tidy ;-)

    Failing some major unforeseen problems we'd have had quantum computers for a while. So problems in BQP are going to be trivially solvable - and have been for a while. Outside of the issue with large number factorisation and encryption I'm really not sure what impact that'll have on things we can do. Anybody? I've no idea if physics lets QC become ubiquitous - or whether they're going to be the equivalent of the stuff you find in data centres these days.

    Unfortunately I think racism is a bigger problem that skin colour. Witness the local BNP/EDL/UKIP asshats ranting about the Polish and East European workers in the UK. To my, uneducated, eyes it's driven as much by the need to find somebody to blame in times of economic hardship as it is historical issues. Humans are very good at finding an 'other' to blame.

    Unless we change what humans are, or hardship is pretty much an issue for the past, racism will be with us. Of course, by this point, we might be bigoted against those darn racoons.

    If any current countries still exist they'll bear about as much relation to today's political boundaries as the current County of Cornwall does the 8th Century Kingdom of Dumnonia

    Not sure about the space trade thing. Agreed that canned apes seem unlikely/foolish - but automation and Von Neumann style machines may make it very, very, very cheap.

    Given 500 years of computing advancement and biological / cog sci research I think we'll be able to build a human equivalent AI from scratch (at the very least by copying human brain structures). Whether anybody will generally think this is useful or a good idea is another matter. More interestingly this knowledge, in combination with advances in personalised medicine, will allow us to deal with mental illnesses with something a tad more elegant than the current stone axes we have available. That knowledge may have an interesting societal effect too - think how much evolution has affected our view of where humanity fits into the world. I'd be willing to bet quite a lot that the current singularity mob will be viewed in roughly the same way as 'firing cannon to the moon' ideas are now.

    Mass manufacturing is going to be interestingly different. I'm not in the 3d-print-in-every-home crowd - but I think that the ongoing domination of lean manufacturing, further advances in 3D printing, supply chain management, etc. will mean that the last hundred or so years will be that really weird time in history where lots of people had exactly the same stuff. They'll still be factories and production lines - but the things that pop off the end will already have been sold and will have been tweaked and customised for that individual.

    If I was going to guess I'd say that the thing closest to the 'company' space is going to look much more like workers co-operatives. The traditional company structure and mechanisms seem too tied to capitalism to work in a post-capitalist society.

    A mild guess - but I suspect that the world diet is going to have a lot less animal in it. Both because of changing ethical standards, and because a societal shift away from meat protein makes a lot of sense during the hard times during the post-warming population/agriculture shifts.

    222:

    For a while there might be a few versions of English that don't change substantially - air traffic control English, UNIX manpage English, etc. I don't expect UNIX to last 500 years, but I expect it'll have a good enough run to become the Church Latin of coders.

    223:

    I agree that you're right, Nojay, assuming business as usual. Right now, it's looking pretty difficult to engineer the power grid we have to run a baseline generation only with renewables.

    The odd thing is, on the scale of individual homes, people get by pretty well with things like earthships. I'm pretty sure earthships also have local generator backup, but they don't often use it.

    The basic point is that when the grid gets rescaled to the size of a community, power storage becomes less of a problem. It's a huge problem in our current grid system, but it might not be in the future.

    I'm not worried about the so-called smart grid, because we're working towards it in a variety of ways right now. I suspect 500 years will see it solved.

    However (here's the drum-beat again), the problem with smart grids is political, in the broad sense. Power companies currently don't have much of a clue how to "crowd-source" their power through rooftop solar, micro-wind, neighborhood storage, and similar. Where I am, they're not even doing a good job of dealing with ordinary solar. Partly this is a property rights issue (if your solar roof is tied to the town grid, do you own your own roof?), but it's also a liability issue, and there's also the unsolved issues of dealing with slackers and freeloaders (if 75% of the town has to have solar roofs to make it work, what do you do about the other 25%, or about the 10% of dudes who let their solar arrays deteriorate). The power companies know how to import power from big plants, but they aren't community organizers, and it looks like they don't particularly want to be just yet. That will change when some community, somewhere, demonstrates a good working model, but until that happens, I'm guessing will be stuck with power plants and a dumb grid.

    As for earthships, the standing joke in my home is that I get my earthship when I win the lottery, and then it will be our second house (presumably for me to live in). It's not that they're expensive (on a per-square-foot, they cost the same as an ordinary house), but they're weird enough to freak out ordinary people, even those who, like my family, like every single element that goes into earthships (big windows, indoor plants, etc). That's another aspect of politics--community norms. As with the old Eco-City Berkeley idea, it's easy for designers to design an environmentally friendly city, even based on what's there already, and almost impossible to get people to buy into that concept, even in left-leaning places like Berkeley. Most people would rather be normal, thank you very much.

    Ultimately, I think that most of our "sustainable society" toolkit will come from the current third world, and from first world designers who are working for the third-world market. These people will embrace weird sustainable tech because it's decisively better than what they have. They won't be trading down or (worse) getting weird to show off their idealism. They'll be getting a better life, and the tech will diffuse out from them into our culture.

    224:

    About 1 gigatonne should be enough.

    (NB: not every viable solution is also desirable.)

    225:

    I agree, about bigotry and superstition. Given what I saw in grad school, I don't think there's any perfect antidote to either of those issues. It's always, and unfortunately, a dynamic situation.

    As for religion, my personal take is that we've already seen the third great religious wave, counting the Christian/Islamic/Buddhist efflorescence as the second wave, and the great temples as the flowering of the first wave of local polytheism.

    That third wave? Science. It's as great a break from the past as the monotheistic religions were from local polytheism. And just as monotheism didn't really sweep away the local polytheisms (the local deities became saints), science hasn't swept away churches, mosques, or temples. Indeed, science has allowed a resurgence of local polytheisms under the guise of paganism.

    While science has transformed the world as much or more than Christianity and Islam did when they got rolling, it is still struggling with telling us how to live a meaningful life. Indeed, the major criticism of science is that it makes life meaningless. If science ever fills that particular void (and there are ways this can happen), I think it will really become dominant. I'd point to the fight over climate change as (in part) a fight over how people live right through science. This is one reason why (IMHO) there's so much vicious blowback on the issue. Similarly, battles over evolution are in part battles about humanity's place in the world.

    I should note that, assuming science does become dominant, monotheistic religion definitely won't go away, any more than local polytheisms will. The shrines to Charles Darwin in England will assure that, if nothing else. I'm also pretty sure that bigotry and superstition will be as much of a problem in the sciences as they are now.

    Makes me wonder whether there's a fourth wave out there? We should be able to see it now--there were early scientists in Alexandria at the same time as Jesus was doing his thing, after all.

    226:

    re religion: Science is (maybe) one wave, I'd say the whole hoist of esoteric belief systems is another. Since esoterics are more of a individual approach vs the big monotheistic religions (improve yourself via meditation vs. congregattion of the flock) they fit to demands placed on the individauls by the way labor is organzied now. So, what unanswered questions will there be in 500 years, what demands will be placed on each one and what questions will arise from that?

    Re the other irational believ system (bigotry) - people will find rationalisations to defend privileges, wehter those rationalisations are racist, sexist or whatever. Will there be less, or more privileges to defend in a post work society (assuming we manage a social revolution to end the boom-bust cycle of capitalism till then)? One axis along which to organize exclusion and privilege is age, but I'm sure there will be others.

    227:

    You might be right. I keep tripping over the current mess of "hallucinogenics" and neuroscience. While we think we know how the brain works from the outside, it doesn't match well with how we perceive ourselves to work from the inside. I wouldn't be surprised if a "fourth wave" comes out of this ferment.

    That said, new religions are always rising (IMHO). Most of them are confined to one or a few people, and die out when those people pass away. I'm willing to bet this is simply part of being human--there are always a few mystics out who start hacking their own reality to see if there's something better out there. Most of these hacks don't work very well, but some occasionally catch on. I suspect that you could draw a nice power curve for religions, with Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha at the huge end, and a myriad of shamans at the individual end. There are a bunch in the middle too (Judaism, Mormonism, Zoroastrianism, Bahaism Sikhism, etc). You get the picture--it's another J-shaped, long tail curve, from religion to magic.

    To me, the big innovation of the "second wave" wasn't coming up with a single god and joining the individual to that Big Unknown, it was figuring out a good way to proselytize and send out missionaries to spread the good news. They got into marketing, in other words. Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam all did that decisively. This isn't sufficient though: The Isian religion (worship of Isis) sent out missionaries, as did the Nestorians, and they're all gone. Even Buddhism, though it's pretty good at spreading, isn't nearly as good at colonizing governments the way Christianity and Islam do.

    Science is something very different, which is why I'm calling it a different wave, but it deals with the same issues that religion does, in the broad sense.

    So we'll see. All these waves deal with the way humans relate to the world. If you can figure out where we have the most trouble with that, and which ways we haven't really tried, that's where a fourth wave may be lurking. Whatever it is, though, it has to do things that science fails to do, just as science fills gaps left by religion's lapses.

    228:

    Nah, you could resolve the Israel/Palestine conflict with a tiny bomb of only 10 kilotons or so. The trick is to use the nuke on the Kaaba in Mecca; the conflict will be resolved within a week.

    229:

    I don't think there would be a post work society everywhere in 2512. Post-scarcity, yes, but if you choose then to live in a city where new types of social scarcities exist you will still have to work for a living.

    And there's the matter of land. You'll always have people, like me, who want more than one acre.

    230:

    As for religion, my personal take is that we've already seen the third great religious wave, counting the Christian/Islamic/Buddhist efflorescence as the second wave, and the great temples as the flowering of the first wave of local polytheism.

    That third wave? Science. It's as great a break from the past as the monotheistic religions were from local polytheism. And just as monotheism didn't really sweep away the local polytheisms (the local deities became saints), science hasn't swept away churches, mosques, or temples. Indeed, science has allowed a resurgence of local polytheisms under the guise of paganism.

    While science has transformed the world as much or more than Christianity and Islam did when they got rolling, it is still struggling with telling us how to live a meaningful life.

    Argh, Science is NOT a religion. Science is a set of game rules that boils down to "I state something and invite you to prove me wrong." Whoever states the most outlandish things without being proved wrong wins. This is totally different to the game rules of any religion which basically say "Here's the truth, accept it, don't worry, be happy." Usually accompanied with "Don't forget to pay church taxes and follow any rules our priests make up."

    BTW, one of the major "transformations" Christianity forced on the world was destruction of science. People who still marvel at all the cool stuff we came up with since Enlightenment forget that it's extraordinary how LITTLE we came up in the 1000 years before. And half the stuff from the Enlightenment was digging up the science treasures from the Antique.

    Happily, with advances in genetics, religiosity will soon be curable: http://www.scilogs.eu/en/blog/biology-of-religion/2011-03-12/religiosity-genes-again-confirmed-by-another-twin-study

    231:

    There's a trade-off between designing buildings for durability with upgrade-in-place, and designing them to be knocked down and replaced every few decades. I tend to lean towards the former.

    That is a matter of personal taste. I now find that the ranks of cookie cutter English homes that stretch for miles and miles look rather awful to me now, compared to the more custom home approach of California's suburbs. Perceptions change. Remodeling, as in changing room layouts, adding exterior doors and windows, adding extra rooms, etc, are much easier with stick built houses. I recently added 2 french doors to my house. The total cost of labor was $1000 and was done over a weekend. Try doing that with a brick house!

    As for energy costs of manufacture, the lumber just needs cuttings and transport and only represents the frame. The main energy cost is the sheet rock. Compare that to fired brick. Personally I would like more steel and glass buildings for style.

    (Especially as, after some home shopping that involved touring show homes on new-build estates and rolling on the floor laughing, I concluded that much of the new-build housing in the UK from the 1980s through 2000s is rubbish compared to the surviving 19th century stock.)

    Well I had a C19th Victorian in Manchester. A town house in Whalley Range (hi to the commenter upthread who lived up the road in Moss Side). The outer skin was single layer and had persistent damp problems, probably because the mortar needed repointing. I think the only thing keeping that 3 story town house upright was the wallpaper. I was living there when we had the little earthquake out in the Irish Sea. A gentle California quake would have left it as rubble. The retrofits for the bathroom and toilet were tolerable, but hardly modern.

    Overall, I am not impressed by old houses. The few exceptions tend to be very expensive and have had a lot of money sunk into them for modernization. For most people, that represents a costly mortgage burden.

    I think there is a place for old buildings, especially those in places like the center of Paris that have their interiors built as modern shells to preserve the historic nature of the building. And I do understand the feeling of "solidity" that a masonry building offers, but that illusion is fairly easily achieved with the added benefit that the building is contributing as a carbon sink as long as the structure is not burned or decomposed.

    232:

    For added lulz improve the efficiency of your cold trap and use LN2 instead -- you can also bottle it and use it to drive cars. It's not extremely efficient but it's easy and flexible and the reduced number of stages in the process may make it overall more efficient than using solar electricity to drive Fischer-Tropsch synthesis.

    When you can show me that it has a decent range and is easy to replace at a "gas" station, then maybe. How might that work for air transport :)

    I expect to see an electric aircraft before I see a compressed gas one.

    233:

    That's why I think there will be a stable mutual deterrent armistice if Iran or any Arabic nation should develop nuclear weapons. Attacking Israel and risking a backlash that would ensure that no moslem will ever be able to complete the hajj should be a no-no for any muslim leader.

    And nuking Jerusalem would outrage Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, so I don't see that happen. If there is any solution to this conflict, it will be political, not military.

    234:

    I think he was referring more to systems of belief, the voices in your head that tell you what is true -- evolution versus Biblical creationism, the Big Bang versus Genesis, that sort of thing. Of course evolution and the Big Bang are obviously true and those other beliefs are axiomatically false. Or so I believe.

    What the core "voices in our heads" beliefs will be 500 years hence is unknowable -- I would still expect a lot of biblical theism to be running around, accompanied by belief systems like Scientology or Mormonism although I expect them to have changed (or rather evolved) to the point where practitioners today would not easily recognise them.

    It's worth noting that many scientists in the past were churchmen or true believers in their Deity of choice even as they pulled the Universe apart and measured it to their satisfaction. Sometimes they also held to odd belief systems as well, like Newton and his alchemical studies which he kept carefully hidden from his scientific and Church contemporaries.

    235:

    It isn't about science replacing religion. The issue is how people find meaning and purpose in their lives. That is more about the approach to living, which science can offer a solution, albeit a different one from religion.

    What might be a pathological variant is the singularity, an example of "science" offering eternal life to replace the religious variety.

    I personally see science as offering a non-authoritarian view of the world. One that offers a cornucopia of phenomena that can be understood and integrated into one's worldview. And if you are into awe, well the vastness and complexity of the universe far exceeds any religious doctrine I am familiar with.

    236:

    What you're describing sounds more like 18th century Natural Philosophy than 21st century Science.

    Note that I think that both have their qualities.

    237:

    Nah, you could resolve the Israel/Palestine conflict with a tiny bomb of only 10 kilotons or so. The trick is to use the nuke on the Kaaba in Mecca; the conflict will be resolved within a week.

    Erm... what? How is nuking Mecca going to solve any problem?

    238:

    It isn't about science replacing religion. The issue is how people find meaning and purpose in their lives. That is more about the approach to living, which science can offer a solution, albeit a different one from religion.

    Science can not provide answers for the meaning of live. It can offer an occupation that can become the purpose in your live, as can gardening, raising children, sports or crafting. Everyone still has to answer to themselves why they are doing something. Religions offer a shrink-wrapped solution for that, but it's just as possible to come up with individual answers.

    239:

    The precedent set by the destruction of the Second Temple in 70CE suggests otherwise, very strongly indeed. Or don't you think Islam is strong enough to survive the obvious and deliberate destruction of its holiest shrine by an enemy?

    (Don't answer that question: any answer you're likely to give is also likely to annoy me enough to hand you your yellow -- or red -- card.)

    240:

    I think he was referring more to systems of belief, the voices in your head that tell you what is true -- evolution versus Biblical creationism, the Big Bang versus Genesis, that sort of thing. Of course evolution and the Big Bang are obviously true and those other beliefs are axiomatically false. Or so I believe.

    When you decide what to believe you should base that decision on what makes sense. If you subscribe to a believe system, you should make sure the system itself makes sense. If instead you hear voices in your head, you should see a doctor. ;-)

    241:

    No, I think Islam would survive. It's the strategy known as "watching tigers fight from across the river" or more informally "let's you and him fight".

    242:

    The unprovoked destruction of the Kaaba is more likely to start a global religious war, crushing any hope to find reasonable solutions to any other problems mankind currently has. Probably the most direct path to a global collapse of civilization.

    As a MAD threat it could stabilize Israel against aggression of muslim countries. Won't help against Intifadas or anonymous attacks, though.

    243:

    No, I think Islam would survive. It's the strategy known as "watching tigers fight from across the river" or more informally "let's you and him fight".

    Why do you think that conflict would be contained in any way? China and South America might have a chance to stand aside and watch, but even China would be hit by the economic implications of a global war.

    245:

    Look, you can't "just nuke" Mecca. Nukes don't pop out of nowhere, they can be identified. So, who did it? And why?

    246:

    Carbon and climate are likely to be serious problems 50 years out, but not 500. The technologies Charlie describes would be more than sufficient to remove as much carbon as desired from the atmosphere. This leaves the political problems of how to spread the costs of climate engineering worldwide, and how to agree on what kind of climate is desirable.

    Which is still easier than the political problems of trying to get enough countries on board with reducing carbon emissions. Since the costs of reducing emissions are borne locally, while the benefits are felt only globally. If we're serious about dealing with the climate change problem, we need to think about geoengineering.

    @Heteromeles: "Indeed, we do lose a lot of solar energy that could be used to make machines work, but without that energy, our atmosphere would be liquid and we'd be frozen solid." A basic physics error, if I understand you right. Using solar or other energy does not destroy that energy as you seem to think - that would violate conservation of energy. It changes it to a less available form - the least available form is heat. (Thermodynamics)

    Collapse of technological civilization: it is unknown in the record, and not just in the dodgy way Charlie defines it. Looking at the overall tech and economic level of the world - not just local areas - it has had some serious down-drops, including the Bronze Age collapse others have mentioned. None have been to the point of everything being lost. This has enabled the next rise has been higher, and the overall trend continues up....one good book with numbers and graphs on this is "Why the West Rules - For Now". The title's a bit misleading, kind of a marketing gimmick.

    All of Jared Diamond's examples of this were from local Stone Age cultures, plus the Greenland Norse who were almost as technologically primitive. So the record suggests that cultures are more vulnerable to collapse, the poorer and more primitive they are. There is simply no evidence for the argument that more complex and interconnected societies are more vulnerable. Experience so far indicates the opposite.

    I'd suggest this is for the simple reason that they have a smaller margin of production over survival, and smaller reserves. So when they suffer an injury, it is more likely to be fatal. A current illustration is how the poorer, worse-infrastructure regions of the Gulf Coast had more lasting trouble from Katrina than the northeast Atlantic coast is so far having from Sandy. Even though rural southern people may be less interconnected and therefore less vulnerable to collapse according to a widespread theory.

    247:

    Additionally, cooling things off rapidly while the oceans are warm is a recepie for a global ice age. (OTOH, Greenland melting may lead to a mini-ice age around the northern Atlantic.)

    248:

    ...modified ribosomes that can assemble polypeptides using non-standard aminoacids (presumably coded for using four-base codons)...

    Biologist here: But that means re-writing every single protein in the genome, completely re-engineering the ribosome (and associated parts of the translation apparatus), a really difficult engineering problem, and probably also dealing with a host of unexpected and difficult-to-fix genetic-control issues (e.g. of genes that are controlled by pseudogene paralogs).

    It might be easier to start with engineering some currently synonymous nucleotide triplets to be different, so that they code for new amino acids (the genetic code is partly 'degenerate,' so different triplets currently code for the same amino acid -- some of these synonymous triplets are potentially available as distinct ones for new amino acids).

    This still means re-writing much of the current genome (to sort out degeneracy/non-degeneracy issues), though this would be a less radical change than a switch to a quadruplet system.

    Making the triplet genetic code less degenerate may cause its own set of long-term problems. Although the current code does vary slightly across organisms, there's good evidence that its level of degeneracy has evolved as an optimal solution to minimize errors in mistranslation and mutation (at least for the current set of amino acids). This may in turn require careful re-optimization of DNA/RNA replication fidelity. There would be many unintended and hard-to-predict consequences like this.

    A 4-base code would also be more error prone...

    249:

    No. The first rational genomes will be extremely small. In fact, IIRC, it's already being worked on. The entity will be a procaryote, sort of, but it will have a differrent gene coding system. (OTOH, I think it's still basically CHON..but using some different amino acids..

    Now as to whether the current effort will be successful, I have my doubts. And it's utility will be limited to "proof of principle". But it's genome will be as small as any existing protozoa (well, that's the goal).

    If you are predicting what artificial metazoa would look like... I think that's too far away for decent predictions. I expect that it will be designed to require some elements that aren't required by normal life forms, to aid in controling it's spread. (I also expect that this precaution won't be needed...that it will need to be protected from normal life forms rather than vice-versa.)

    P.S.: I'm not counting genetic modification as an artificial life form. Only either "built from scratch" or "built from organisms whose ancestors were built from scratch", but I'll admit I'm allowing scratch to include proteins, nucleic acids, ribosomes, etc. I'm undecided about mitochondira and chloroplasts, but we aren't near that stage yet.

    250:

    Look, you can't "just nuke" Mecca. Nukes don't pop out of nowhere, they can be identified. So, who did it? And why?

    I don't know who would do it. Whoever thought it was in their interests might do it. Possibly China, since the fallout would mostly land on India and the US (metaphorically) (also literally). Maybe somebody new. The Kaaba and the hajj are one of the very few great levers of the world where a small action could have world-historical consequences, and they're by necessity poorly secured. I seriously doubt that nobody over the next 500 years will take a shot at it.

    As for the other part, hijackers can also be identified. The 9/11 team was mostly Saudis; we invaded Iraq. When people are pissed enough, facts don't matter until it's much too late.

    251:

    What makes sense? People are not frictionless spherical beings of unit radius and negligible mass when it comes to making sense of the world or indeed themselves.

    I believe in Science, I do not believe in the God of Abraham or the revelations of the Angel Moroni or the FSM, ramen! but I am very conscious that there are a lot of folks who truly believe, as in they are certain that they walk every day with their God who will listen and respond to their prayers. I do not think their beliefs make sense but I have to accept they believe what they profess to believe.

    Basically we go through life having constructed an internal model of the world and the people around us -- hot things burn, dropped objects fall, some folks are deadly serious when they claim that God talks to them and instructs them how to live their daily lives. Pretending those folks are not serious is a recipe for disaster, up to and including the point where they try to kill you because you insult their beliefs. For example the true believers of the great god Free Speech go around poking various other religionists with a sharp stick and then complain that those religionists don't believe in Free Speech when those religionists go berserk. Free Speechists have voices in their heads that tell them Free Speech is always a good thing and must always be exercised and they can't comprehend that other folks don't hear the same voices in their head telling them the same thing and they may react differently.

    252:

    "500 years is close to the human mean life expectancy if all medical causes of death are abolished: eventually an accident or violence will get you."

    Uh, show your work, Charlie? I think you're blindly passing on someone else's bad numbers. http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_us.html all US deaths by injurty, including accident and violence, are under 59/100,000. The inverse of that is 1695 years. The half-life is 1175 years. And of course this is with modern medicine, and American homicide and traffic death rates, and 'falls' which might be enhanced by fragile old people, I don't know.

    253:

    No mention of world government or the European Union? Charlie says the Westphalian model isn't that old but doesn't say what might replace it.

    Government's core justifications are to keep the peace, including defense, and manage commons. Obvious commons especially in this scenario: the atmosphere and oceans. We already have fragments of global governance regarding the environment, species, copyright, and finance, and a model for nations coming together and giving up sovereignty (one that Africa and South America have embryonic imitations of.) I don't think Earth 2512 being a world state is an unlikely outcome, not through conquest but through voluntary (advantages) and 'voluntary' (economic pressure) mergers.

    Possible downers: the end of the antibiotic age. Vaccines won't stop working, but bacterial illnesses may revive as a deadly threat.

    Genetics: Charlie thinks ethics will prevent much human work. But if you don't have a world state, enforcing those ethics gets harder. And if you get good enough in animal work to show you know what you're doing, you can plausibly argue that the ethical barrier goes away. Even without that, at minimum there's a Gattaca future, where embryos get made shotgun style, then scanned via advanced genomics for selection. To be grown in exowombs, if the women are lucky. Human evolution can accelerate even if we don't stick genes in embryos. I'd predict a smarter and healthier world.

    254:

    Agreed, Nojay. Most people don't think about the definition of the words "God" or "religion," because they were introduced to them when they were young. I'd suggest that it is worth thinking about the phenomena behind those problematic words.

    In one of the few anthropological studies of religious I saw, the researcher struggled with various definitions of "religion" and finally decided that "religion is whatever they do religiously," getting back to the presumed Latin roots of "religio." His problem was dealing with all the belief systems of New Guinea tribes, a few of which contained no recognizable gods at all (their religion was concerned with keeping people healthy through their lives. They did not believe in an afterlife).

    Science is a religion in that it seeks to explain the world, and it is definitely a religion in that scientists practice it religiously. It is certainly not Christianity. This fact doesn't make it not a religion, because, oddly enough, most things we call religions aren't Christianity, and have little in common with Christianity. For that matter, most sects of Christianity are different enough to be considered separate religions (a common usage in the US). Then again, perhaps a religion is a sect with a militia behind it.

    I'm suggesting science is religion 3.0, and it's probably more different from the 2.0 religions than they were from the 1.0 religions before them. I'm also suggesting that, just as 2.0 religions didn't wipe the 1.0 religions from the planet, despite earnest efforts to do so, science won't succeed in getting rid of its predecessors either. We'll all just keep bumbling and bickering along.

    255:

    "I don't think Earth 2512 being a world state is an unlikely outcome, not through conquest but through voluntary (advantages) and 'voluntary' (economic pressure) mergers."

    Multinational governments and organizations tend to come undone by nationalistic forces. German and French nationalism, for example, were obstacles to overcome in building a bailout package for Greece in order to maintain the EU. Likewise there are existing self-determination movements within the EU that may serve, over a long enough timeline, to further fracture the EU even as it works to entrench itself in European politics. It's an open question as to whether nationalistic forces might undo the EU in the next couple of years -- although that's looking less likely right now than it was this time last year -- let alone within the next century or so.

    Rather than a world state, I think it's more likely we'll have a set of global organizations because the more specialized & limited such a construction is the less likely it is to self-destruct to the competing interests of its member states or become a target of popular hatred. There are more issues that could potentially undermine a world state than there are that would undermine something like the WHO.

    256:

    First, the mines will have run out. I grew up in a mining town, and in the 1960's they relabelled the waste dump "stockpiled ore". Yeah, right. Basically, all the cheap extraction will be behind us, except extraction from garbage dumps, scavenging and recycling.

    Expect batteries to be 4 to 15 times better than they are now. A mishandled battery will release a dangerous amount of energy.

    Lasers will be better. CW fiber optic lasers are already the good way to cut steel. I expect that ability will be portable, to the point where bank vaults are carefully made of mixed materials that can't all be cut with a single color. Err, colour.

    The new housing will be dense, so taxis can be pretty much "people movers", ie glorified golf carts. We won't invest as much in highways, since freight carriage will be by rail.

    Conventional nuclear power won't spread, because it depends on cooling towers, and (a) cooling won't work as well in a hot future, and (b) water will have gone through periods of high value. Fusion reactors will face the same problem and will not be used unless a technical solution is found, eg direct magnetic extraction of electricity from charged particles. In which case, expect laser driven fusion powering our space colonies, if we have any.

    The Internet will continue to be a force for communication across political boundaries, so we will continue to see less-widespread languages die out. It will also be force for spreading new slang. (Notice that "ginger" is suddenly in use in the USA.) Global collaboration will be so habitual (and commodification will be so common) that only historians will remember the idea of proprietary software. Phones won't be hand held.

    Energy from solar and wind will reliably have periods when the electric supply exceeds demand. A way to store the surplus as a liquid chemical will exist, because liquid chemicals are energy-dense and portable and geography-agnostic. There will be isolated areas whose economy is founded on exporting said chemical. It will be a chemical that doesn't rot pipelines/tankers, and doesn't absorb water.

    The oceans aren't going to be productive unless you assume that we have successfully scrubbed most of the carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere. The cryosphere won't have had time to re-form, though.

    Due to droughts and storms, the global food supply will have been through at least one persistent bottleneck, reducing the world population below five billion, before the ocean rose.

    257:

    Sure, the eurozone -- not so much the EU proper -- has hit speed bumps. But we're talking on a scale of 500 years. Even if the current EU balks, what will the next generation, grown up in an even more integrated Europe, think?

    Everything I've seen has put the various regional movements as seeing themselves within an EU context. Secession from Spain or Britain, but being part of the EU. Or wanting to be, at least, apart from recent doubts about the euro as it is.

    Thing about specialized organizations that are filled by member government appointees is that they're undemocratic. Representative democracy is one thing, but indirect democracy doesn't seem to work well. For the WHO this doesn't matter, it doesn't make law. The WTO does, the European Commission does, some hypothetical atmosphere regulator would, and there's been concern about the democratic deficit of both. Small rich countries are reluctant to enter "one person one vote" with big poor countries, but if economies converge, and the countries merge first into big units of comparable size, then I think the logic of equality will grind forward.

    Plus we've seen from both the US Articles and from the EU and others that veto-based organization don't work well for long, but if you want majority rules I think it'd best be rooted in a majority of voters, not a majority of governments.

    I wouldn't be surprised if by 2050 the European Parliament was the supreme power in the EU.

    258:

    A full longevity solution probably will require substantial messing around with our own germ lines. Our genomes are terribly messy evolved hacks, with poorly understood 'metaprogramming' as Charlie puts it (the analogy to programming is interesting but imprecise: for a start, genomes can't be divided easily into metalanguage and object language).

    Cancer may become largely avoidable if we can modify our cells to behave somewhat like those of naked mole rats, for example. That'd require some pretty hefty simulation before it moves out of beta into real human beings (experimentation being unethical, and all that), so may or may not be 'easy' to do in the near to long future. But aging (a diffuse genetic break-down?) may be much harder to solve.

    ...Comments from hairyears

    Everything's got mitochondria, they're made with a fixed amount of deuterium for the service life, and everything is made of stuff that works.

    What? Deuterium has nothing to do with mitochondrial function. They're not little fusion reactors, those it's a nice analogy.

    Also, not everything has mitochondria, in fact, most organisms lack them (prokaryotes, archaea, some eukaryotes).

    259:

    Late to the thread as usual - family stuff - but maybe a few points that haven't been covered yet: expect an explosion of granfaloons. And holidays. It'll make the Catholic calendar for saints look like the Pentecostal schedule of annual events. Further, you won't be able to ring through them on an annual cycle. That will be more like twenty or fifty years of officially recognized holidays.

    If people live longer, expect a corresponding increase in the longevity of buildings (no one will live in house that falls apart in sixty years if they live to be two hundred) as well as an overall extension of what's considered long term. In particular, climate considerations will make burial of all supply lines a matter of course instead of the current slow-rolling disaster we have here with Sandy and above-ground power lines. Underground construction and underground tunnel-boring will be a thoroughly mastered high art that has long since become largely automated. And there will be unused tunnels and underground chambers going back for centuries. Tales of high adventure will take place not in space, but in those lost and fabulous underground warrens.

    Space is still not the final frontier (but there will be thousands of people living in NEO and beyond); that's reserved for the newly-opened Antarctica where the disaffected flock to make their fortunes or otherwise Live Free (as they see it of course.)

    260:

    It's not about what will happen, it's about what might happen. The warming response to a given trajectory of GHG emissions depends on a host of factors, resulting in a probability distribution for the likely warming. Now, you can just take an average and plan around that, but the warming that you will get in actuality will have a 50% chance of being higher than average. And then there's the long tail of the probability distribution, the 5% chance of "we're fucked" or the 1% chance of "we're really fucked". What the "we're fucked" and "we're really fucked" scenarios will be varies depending upon which climate researchers you want to talk with, but it's a pretty credible statement to say that the unlikely but high impact possibilities are anything but terrifying.

    And if your description of warming above is the average outcome, then the extreme end of the probability distribution starts to look like a civilisation-ending outcome. If we're assuming that isn't going to happen (on account of being boring), then we'll be looking at a need to go beyond a decarbonised economy and into a negative carbon economy, where we are actively sucking carbon out of the atmosphere. We have the first glimmerings of this right now, with biofuel-fired generating stations combined with carbon capture and storage to give us negative carbon emissions while still generating electricity and money. Whatever technology we use for getting carbon out of the air and back underground, we'll have to have cracked it within one or two hundred years.

    In five hundred years' time, we'll have to be actively controlling the atmosphere, resulting in arguments between various nations over what kind of weather they'd each like to have this season, with the People's Free Republic of Siberia in strong disagreement with the United Amalgamated Corporations of Ghana.

    And then there's what happens when those massive underground stores of highly pressurised carbon dioxide start to leak...

    261:

    A lot about 2512 will depend on how the next 50-75 years play out. Like Cortez & The Aztecs, what happens in the next two generations or so will materially shape the next half millenia.

    World Government? See "The Case for Leviathan", you already have it (Sort of...), as in "Let's talk aboout something else day." Will we abdicate the role to China (Or fight a nasty war or four?), or just revert to a cold war ish stable system.

    With multiple fringe players waving their nuclear arsenals for attention.

    Ocassionaly Right Wing Ideologues get it right, you'll miss us when we're gone.

    Actually, our current industrialized economy and hyper urbanized social patterns are relativly new. The first "Industrial" revolution was based in the UK, about two centuries ago, and only became self-sustaining after 1830/40; Our curent big box hyperabbundance (Complete with surplus T-Shirts traded on to the developing world) a generation and a half or so.

    The Auto Centered American Pattern Suburb only emerges after WW II, enabled by cheap hydrocarbons and the empty space. And GI Bill Home Loans. I think it has passed it's peak, certainly any near term dystopian future swould include a reference to the looting of the Walmarts. American gasoline at $5 a gallon (Locally, $3.32) might push it over the edge.

    262:

    Possibly South Africa (or some political grouping in that part of the continent) will be the dominant superpower.

    As a South African resident of an age too young to have been able to vote in the first democratic election, I find that hilariously funny. But, in 500 years, there might be some differences.

    We might not have the South African equivalent of Mitt Romney (i.e. someone that ran on a platform of corruption with no political convictions other than building his own little kingdom) in the future.

    We might not have the mentality that adding more red tape to processes will prevent corruption in stead of creating opportunities for it. (It's literally easier and more legal to wait until you need a new power station, than to authorize maintenance on an existing one to extend its life at a fraction of the cost.)

    We might have found a better balance between the rights of workers and the needs of businesses without resorting to crippling strikes and mass firings.

    My point is: the South Africa in 500 years will have gone through some very radical changes. If it carries on like it currently does, there's not a whelk's chance in a supernova that it will be any kind of powerhouse. However, the imp of the perverse in me thinks that there might still be some tricks it might pull.

    To be honest, I think the best way to predict future superpowers would be to extrapolate from the climate, and pick geographically idyllic spots. Human politics and social structure rarely last past one or two generations.

    263:

    This might be fun of course, in my house smoking pot is legal. In yours, it's not and shooting law breakers is legal. Can you shoot me, or more precisely what happens when you do?

    Assuming you're in the EU and the other person is somewhere in the US.

    Private citizens shooting law breakers in the US without an expectation of imminent harm will typically land you with a manslaughter charge at a minimum. Stand your ground laws want to make this easier but they are still based on an expectation of harm. (And seem to be stupid to most of us not matter what political stripe as they seem to get used.) About the only way to shoot someone without being charged is if they are in your house uninvited. And that one is still problematic for the shooter in many cases.

    264: 71 - I think we're agreeing here. Ok, I've never lived in anything as old as the "New Town", but my present late 1970s accomodation is the only post-WW2 house I've ever lived in for years rather than months.
    265:

    the slums are bulldozed and few people shed tears for them.

    A counter point to that thought.

    http://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_on_squatter_cities.html

    266: 90 - Ever hear of the "Docklands Light Railway" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway ?

    As noted, it's not totally unmanned, but the trains are driven automatically.

    267:

    I picked on the Great Orme copper mine because I knew it to have been active in the Bronze Age, and to have traded tin with Cornwall, which shows that the trading links need not all have been over thousands of miles. Do you know of any BA copper mining in Devon or Cornwall?

    268:

    Free Speechists have voices in their heads that tell them Free Speech is always a good thing and must always be exercised and they can't comprehend that other folks don't hear the same voices in their head telling them the same thing and they may react differently.

    I'm pretty sure 99% of all people do not hear voices in their heads. If you do, you should see a doctor.

    I meant "making sense" subjectively; if it makes sense for yourself it doesn't need to make sense for someone else. But you shouldn't subscribe to a belief system just because someone tells you to.

    269:

    I'm suggesting science is religion 3.0, and it's probably more different from the 2.0 religions than they were from the 1.0 religions before them.

    If you are doing science like you would do a religion, you are NOT doing science.

    270:

    A secondary note wrt. religion -- which Nojay should get -- is that it is possible to follow more than one religion simultaneously -- especially if you have a Religion 1.0 practice coexisting with Religion 2.0. The obvious example (and I know Nojay's seen it) is the coexistence of Shinto shrines with Buddhist temples in Japan -- in the same premises, with pilgrims/worshipers going to attend both, more or less simultaneously.

    A more obscure example might be Roman Catholicism, with its array of saints who bear a striking resemblance to earlier indigenous deities or spirits, although Catholicism's syncretistic and centralizing tendencies make it a bit harder to identify them as separate religions.

    Science is, if not a meta-religion, then at least open to the possibility of refutation -- it's not an absolutist creed that claims explanatory completeness and final authority has been achieved. But to the extent that we consider it to have explanatory power if practiced in accordance with certain guidelines (themselves subject to refinement over time) then it's rather hard to say that it doesn't fit that broadest definition of religion.

    271:

    Ocassionaly Right Wing Ideologues get it right, you'll miss us when we're gone.

    Actually, you are gone. Unless you're advocating a return to the Monarchical system, the divine right of kings, and what amounts to a hereditary dictatorship a la North Korea, you're not a right wing ideologue in the way the term was applied 200 years ago.

    We're living in the wake of the 18th century Enlightenment. Go back to 1660, and the most radical progressive political platform you could find in the English speaking world has by 2012 become global orthodoxy -- adult males have the vote, even if they're not landowners! We're allowed to publish stuff without prior censorship as long as it doesn't offend against public decency! Nobles aren't allowed to put us on trial and execute us without a jury! Shocking, I know, but even modern conservatives generally agree that the Leveler platform from the 1660s is, shall we say, bedrock-solid. Even though the Levelers were considered to be the swivel-eyed bomb-throwing radical loons of the day.

    272:

    Coming to this debate VERY late (been very busy Thurs/Fri/Sat – catching up @ home Sunday …..) let’s see shall we?

    Kim Stanley Robinson has written a novel entitled 2312 has he not? Not read it yet … any comments relevant therein?

    5 metre sea-level rise? Um 2, maybe 3, though, of course there are still huge numbers who go on about the “GW scam” - & I hate to say it, but they have a point, because although GW is real, the response of guvmints has been to enlarge the profits of the power & utility companies, whilst actually doing nothing at all about GW. [ The real, short-term answer is nuclear power, of course …] Longer term, the next 100 years, will see a reasonable artificial photosynthesis set of processes, which will really change energy & fuel requirements 7 usage.

    One effect that is spoken of, but not mentioned is that a warmer world, means more energy in the system, so more extremes @ both ends, & much more violent weather…. See also @ 99.

    As for Fischer-Tropf & other syntheses of liquid fuels, that is coming between now & 2025 –see www.airfuelsynthesis.com for more information. [ @44 – yes, that’s them …]

    I doubt the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will exist in 2512. but the United Federation of the Isles might well be here ….

    As for orbit, you are not betting on beanstalks? Clarke & the much-lamented Sheffield notwithstanding?

    World population? probably under 5 “billion”, quite possibly under 1 billion, given the demographic transition model. [ So @ 18 isn’t even wrong, I’m afraid, or rather good! ]

    Discussion below on translations, esp “Chinese”. ONE Written language, but 4 (or more) completely mutually-incomprehensible spoken ones. Which is why a lot of them are learning, errr, “English” & the “Roman” script.

    @ 11/12 re carbon & burning it. NOT dirty IF you put your air-fuel plant (see above) inside the coal-burning power station & scrub the stacks thoroughly.

    Charlie @ 17A key insight I forgot to put in that think-piece is that the 19th-21st century capitalist model will be dead. As dead as the mediaeval guild system, or Leninism, or the divine right of kings. It's inherently unstable and requires unlimited growth and differentials in income and capital distribution. Over time, the scope for growth and the income and capital differentials are going to go away. Which makes life very difficult for a company that tries to follow the industrial age paradigm. Very true, but what replacement model? How organised? This might actually be the most important question here, since the rest is “merely” technology & science, whereas this is human organisational systems, which are a lot trickier to manage (pun intended).

    @37 maybe there's a story there of mangroves run amok,…. Oh dear. Already been written. Brian Aldiss … “Hothouse” 1962

    Heteromeles @ 51 and the most crucial changes have always been Black Swans, not Fairy Dust. No I suggest you read some recent history, especially the development of the steam engine(s), both stationary & moving …. Unfortunately, you may be correct about GW – yet there are still many who believe & shout that it is a scam – see my earlier comment.

    @ 52 You touched a very raw nerve there, be careful! At the risk of being thought racist (Charlie knows I am not) the Roma have a problem, because of their own internal culture, I’m afraid. They tend (note “tend”) to regard non-Roma as to be lived off, and things do seem (again note “seem”) to disappear when they are around. Because of the scapegoating effect mentioned above, what then happens is that all Roma get tarred with the same brush, even if their criminal element is only, say, 4% as opposed to our 2.5% [ I just made those numbers up, so please don’t take them as true in any sense, except as a comparator.] A very, very dangerous & sensitive subject indeed. Also Andreas Vox @ 62 - & here, also – people are getting very twitchy about this very tricky subject. Incidentally, fully-assimilated people here, whose ancestors came from what are now India, Pakistan & Kashmir are very, very suspicious of the Roma (whose native language/dialect originated form somewhere near the Rann of Kutch, I believe?) Note to moderators, if really unhappy with this segment, feel free to delete just this section, please?

    @ 59 SO according to your numbers, computing-power crosses brain capacity in 2^11 doublings, with a doubling every 18 months, so we will have at least a weak AI by 2018/2020, which means ALL bets are off, I presume ? Um, I don’t think we are supposed to be discussing “THE” singularity on this thread?

    @ 87 I call strawman on that one, I’m afraid.

    Charles H @ 90 We are already there … see the “train captain/assistant/conductor” on the DLR in London.

    @ 118 Forget it! IF “Devo-Max” had been on the agenda, it would have won an overall majority. As it is, Salmond’s wonderful full member of the EU imitating Iceland model is terminally broken, & people know this. The EU have already said ANY new member must start from scratch, no exceptions …. [ So that the EU bureaucrats can control with no democratic accountability, of course, or am I paranoid? ] Agree with Brett @ 163, for the same reasons.

    hiaryears @ 126 but a full solution to the problems of the Standard Model… Errr … ummm … I thought the “Standard Model still had slight irrecoverable problems, like the renormalisation one & its’ incompatibility with General Relativity. See also @ 143 Yes, Angela, there are still serious scientific problems to solve, as well as engineering ones, such as the utilisation of bi-engineered mitochondria that others have been discussing indirectly. Mind you, elsewhere, someone was enthusing over their newly-fabbed Shawm!

    @ 151 but perhaps a speaker in 500 years time will be more comprehensible to a present-day listener than someone from 500 years ago. Oh, really, don’t believe you, because … err, 400 years ago: Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices That, if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming, The clouds methought would open and show riches Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked, I cried to dream again. Perfectly understandable, is it not?

    Dave Berry @ 164 The Taliban seem to be doing reasonably well on a shoestring. WRONG 1] They are religious fanatics 2] Every attack they make gets some of them killed, at a very disadvantageous rate 3] They have finally managed to annoy everyone, by trying to waste a girl who just wanted an education.

    Heteromeles @ 165 Actually we ARE “coloured” – PINK. Pretty, isn’t it? Especially with freckles…..

    Jay @ 189 NOT some religious nutters trying to waste “the jews” (Israel) ?? Actually ONE regional nuclear war would probably finish it, because everyone will dump on the aggressor. The example, with modern communications would be really effective at stopping that insanity ever again. Unfortunately, I think you are correct, in that some one state will be insane enough to try it. & also Jay @ 219 – yes, I’m afraid some idiot will nuke Tel Aviv, followed by the Israelis going kill-crazy. Not a nice prospect. @ 227 Euwww…… That might be the second bomb, actually? Also Charlie @ 238 … yes, well, but where religious fanaticism is in play, almost anything can happen, unfortunately.

    Charlie @ 195 I didn’t realise that the USSA was in that bad a state, in terms of domestic environments efficiency & even comfort”

    Adrian @ 221 If any current countries still exist they'll bear about as much relation to today's political boundaries as the current County of Cornwall does the 8th Century Kingdom of Dumnonia NO, not even wrong. 500 years ago, at least the following countries existed: England (& Wales) Scotland, Ireland, France, Portugal, Spain, Netherlands (dukedom of Burgandy) Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Poland, Austria, Swiss Federation, Turkey, Persia.

    Andreas Vox @ 229 So very true. Also: Morality is doing what is right, regardless of what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, regardless of whether it is right, or not. Ahem.

    Mindstalk @ 252 The Westphalian model is admittedly not that old (1648 in fact), but recognisable Nation-states existed in 1148, with international relations and ambassadors. So maybe there might NOT be that much change, perhaps?

    Donlindsay333 @ 255 No polywell fusors/fusion, then? I suspect this prediction is off-beam.

    Sasquatch @ 260 Incorrect date. The industrial revolution in the UK was certainly self-sustaining past 1775/84 … the formation of Boulton & Watt as a company & the invention of the Parallel motion. Downhill bicycle race, all the way from there on.

    273:

    Speaking of US housing.

    If the mean life expectancy of a sheetrock-and-wood building is 30 years

    I think you're off here by 30 or more years. Based on my experiences with the housing trades going back to the early 60s. There are multiple categories here. Much of the 45 to 55 1000 sqft stuff built is now gone. Good riddance. It was thrown up to deal with the early days of the housing shortage. Housing built in the late 50s and early 60s in being torn down. But only about 1/2 or less of it. From what I can see much of it due to changing demographics as much as it was no longer viable. But yes there was and is still some junk being built. The rest likely has another 20 to 40 year of life left in it.

    There are vast areas in major cities, (Chicago, LA, Las Vegas come to mind as I have seen it there and in many smaller cities), where 1200 square foot (110 sq meter) housing from the 60s will likely be around for another 50 years. Of course if you visit such area it no longer has the white middle class plumbers and factory workers living there. Now these areas are inhabited by people with on average darker skin maybe speaking a Hispanic or Asian dialect. But they are still mostly what we call blue collar. Plumbers, carpenters, painters, etc...

    274:

    Look, you can't "just nuke" Mecca. Nukes don't pop out of nowhere, they can be identified. So, who did it? And why?

    But why do you think most people would believe the answer?

    This ties back to the recent nonsense about the stupid movie made by a wacko in California that was used as a pretext for various things.

    Much of the world does not understand the US or EU concept of free speech. At all.

    275: 271 ref #118 - Er, if Scotland would need to apply to the EU as a "new accession", surely the same thing would also apply to "EnglandAndWales", since the "United Kingdom" entity that signed the original treeaties no longer exists?
    276:

    http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/11/deuterium-again.php "He found that water enriched with deuterium, which is twice as heavy as normal hydrogen, extends the lifespan of worms by 10 per cent. And fruitflies fed the 'water of life' lived up to 30 per cent longer."

    277:

    There is a lot of smoke and spin going on over the whole independence referendum.

    Me, I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that Scottish independence not only makes good financial sense (for Scotland) but that failure to launch would result in Scotland being dragged willy-nilly down the path of total privatisation that England is embarked on, despite it being wildly unpopular up here. (The formula used to allocate public spending in Scotland takes as its input per-capital public spending in England. Trouble is, as stuff is sold off to the private sector, public sector spending in England falls, thus forcing Scottish authorities to make heavy and unpopular cuts, even if the public sector trough-gobbling contractors are less efficient than the local-authority run services up here. For example, my water bill is rather lower than the equivalent in England, and our infrastructure is better maintained, because the water boards are still under municipal control and are not run on a for-profit basis.)

    278:

    Transhumanism ticks all the boxes for being a scientific religion.

    279:

    What would it take to convince you that 1000 square feet is perfectly acceptable, even average, to accommodate a family of three or four outside of the USA? And I'm not talking about Japan either.

    280:

    Over the next 500 years I wonder if we might see a significant rise in the number and potency of charitable trusts and other non-governmental organisations.

    My logic runs like this.

    People appear to be motivated to give to charities and some of this giving is capital in nature i.e. the donation is expected to be invested in some form in perpetuity and income harvested from this investment. I am unsure whether a growth in income inequality increases the amount of capital charitable donation. I think it might. Even if only 1 in 100 billionaires cash out and leave their fortunes to charitable foundations that is still a fair accumulation of capital in the third sector over the coming few hundred years.

    Charities etc seem to be better at holding on to wealth than the successions of individuals found in families. They have in built bias towards financial (and perhaps operational) conservatism and they are usually required to safeguard capital.

    As a model of this accumulation in action I offer churches, not just the Catholic Church and universities.

    So I wonder then if we end up with much more of the world’s stock of financial capital under the control of charitable and NGO actors. Consequentially, they are a lot more politically important and a lot of important politic discussions happen within them or between them.

    281:

    Do large parts of the world become uninhabitable deserts? Or rather, when they become uninhabitable do they remain so?

    I am wondering at the geo-engineering effect of deliberate attempts to re-green deserts.

    The motivation for the re-greening might be to simply to avoid large deserts. It might be to find new ways to use agriculturally and financially marginal land. It might just be for fun and frolics.

    This might involve some genetically modified plants. If you could “build” a number of plant species that could cope on the edge of deserts with high temperatures, big temperature swings, scarce water and lots of sun do they become invasive of deserts – on their own or with human intervention. And does the introduction of large amounts of plant life have a sufficient impact on the local climate to make other plants able to return.

    282:

    On Charlie’s point about Scottish Independence above my view from Edinburgh is I tend to agree him that Scottish Independence makes financial sense for Scotland and it likely avoids a significant attempt by the UK government to shrink the public sector. YMMV on whether you think this is going to be a good thing or a bad thing. I think it will prove unpopular in Scotland.

    I also think that the Yes campaign will fail to convince people of this and the referendum on Yes / No will be a No vote.

    So I think those of us who live in Scotland who wish to avoid becoming collateral damage in other people’s politics should start preparing for some form of significant additional devolution which would have to include large elements of fiscal autonomy.

    Whether this is at the level of Scotland through Devo Max or through enhanced powers for local authorities or both I’m not sure. (Gut feel says both.)

    For those of you who live in Scotland and can get to Edinburgh for tea time on the 4th December the Electoral Reform Society have been thinking about this issue recently and will be hosting a public talk on what a Good Scottish Democracy looks like as part of their Democracy to the Max workstream. (I’ve been part of some of the working groups.)

    http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/democracy-max

    283:

    Scotland The real problem is that Salmoind is about as trustworthy as Charles I ......

    284:

    I'd add that if Devo Max was on the ballot I'd go for it like a greased whippet. Alas, it isn't. As the UK-wide Labour Party seems to be turning into a mini-me version of the Conservatives at a policy level, the only way they've left open for escape is outright independence.

    285:

    A colleague of mine who is a much more gifted technical analyst of the way voting systems work has suggested to me that the best way to conduct a referendum with three options where one of the options is sort of nested inside one of the others, like the Independence, Status Quo, Devo Max is to have the referendum in two parts. Part one is between the two extreme points. Part two between which ever is the winner and the middle case.

    I’m only part way through reading his paper on it so I’m not sure how he works this out but I’m happy to take his word for it for the time being.

    This looks a bit what I think we’ll end up with in practise with a two option referendum in 2014 with a Devo Max option waiting in the wings if sufficient people care about it to demand that it happens. Which they might if the public sector gets the shoeing it looks like it might from the current government.

    Although whether the Labour Party’s response could be any different I am not so sure.

    Anyway this is beside the point of your thought provoking OP so I shall drop chat on the domestic politics of process unless prompted by you.

    286:

    Permanently subtract all the Scottish Labour MPs from Westminster and things will look interesting in England.

    287:

    I got thinking, and if I were a writer of occult superspy fiction, it would be very tempting to use Mecca as a setting. The enemies could be cultists trying to use the psychic energy of the hajj to unbind some djinn. Having a Black Chamber- controlled Predator drone on standby with orders to launch a Hellfire air-to-surface missile if the job isn't done one minute before moonrise is entirely optional.

    As exotic superspy settings go, it sure beats Colorado.

    288:

    Perhaps naively I hope that Scottish independence will be good for England too. If Scotland can get off the privatised for-profit roadmap that England seems to be following people can look to our neighbour, see how much better it is and demand change. Whilst it's rare for the general public to be aware of how other countries do things better (not their fault most of the time) it will be hard to ignore an adjoining anglophone one that everyone will be watching to see how independence has suited it.

    289:

    I am not sure that I agree with those poster who think that by 2512 we will be post global warming and in a new status quo.

    A recent Canadian study on the persistence of climate change (rather than the persistence of the changed climate) indicated that we might be seeing changes from our current activities still happening in 1000 years.

    I do a bit of summary of it here.

    http://danieldwilliam.livejournal.com/67648.html

    That’s before we see reversals in the levels of greenhouse gasses.

    290:

    Well within that time frame we survived the Medieval warm period, and its demise, not to mention the "Little Ice Age" in Europe.

    291:

    The problem with calling science a religion is that it maps handily with a popular fundie argument. I'll stick to Gervais' "Atheism is a religion like not stamp collecting is a hobby".

    Charlie, if Scotland secedes, are you suddenly a foreigner in your home? Or do they plan to grant citicenship indiscriminately?

    292:

    1439: just outside your 500 year limit, Johannes Gutenberg popularizes the printing press. The First Information Revolution begins.

    1708: Abraham Darby's cheap iron touches off the Industrial Revolution.

    1958: Jack Kilby invents the integrated circuit, boostrapping the Second Information Revolution.

    Few things are invented ab initio. There were movable type, commercial iron, and electronics before then, but those dates are when they took off.

    A hundred, two hundred, three hundred years from now, something else may become a world-changer. Right now, the subsidiary technologies derived from Kilby's integrated circuit is still shaking up the status quo; it's the underlying technology of the internet and most of our communication infrastructure, cheap medical diagnostic equipment, trivially cheap computers, even Charlie's self-driving cars, though I expect the lawyers will turn that into a techological dead end before it gets anywhere.

    What's next? Many people assume it will have something to do with biology, but down at the gene splicing level, that's still Kilby's chips doing all the work.

    293: 290 Para 2 - As a resident born in another Country, Charlie would be automatically offered citizenship. It's his business whether or not he discusses whether he'd accept.
    294:

    back-translation:

    As an aside, I have a languages book written in the 1950s by a professor who spent several hundred tedious pages decisively proving (to himself) that A) modern Romanian is practically indistinguishable from classical Latin, and B) Romanian is the language that most closely resembles English.

    His educational credentials were impressive, but I failed to be persuaded...

    295:

    @195:

    (Actually, drivers in the UK average 12,000 miles a year, to US drivers' 15,000 miles. Living in a smaller, more compact country does not correspond to less commuting.)

    In the USA, much of this is driven by city and county zoning regulations, which tend to insist that people all live in one place, shop in a different place miles away, and work in a third place even further away. The current trend is to "gate" these areas to one or two access points to the main road system, apparently for social status in the case of residences. I can't think of any sane reason for doing it to shopping areas or business parks, but it happens.

    Zoning boards and their decisions are generally absolute and unquestionable, and have the force of law. Changes in zoning classifications are major politics, since large amounts of money are usually involved.

    This sort of thing, played out in 30 to 30 thousand different legal and political jurisdictions, jealously guarded and righteously defended, isn' something easily fixed.

    296:

    AIUI the plan for citizenship in event of an independent Scotland is:

    • Anyone born in Scotland qualifies for Scottish citizenship

    • Anyone resident in Scotland at the time of independence qualifies for Scottish citizenship

    ... There may also be a Scottish-by-descent qualification as with Ireland (if you have one Irish grandparent you can apply for an Irish passport).

    There may also be reciprocal residence rights, as there are between the Republic of Ireland and the UK -- Brits can simply move to Ireland and live there, even voting in elections (although they have to be resident for 3 years before they can get an Irish passport), and vice versa.

    And it's extremely likely that an independent Scotland would ask for EU membership on the grounds that all its citizens were EU citizens previously and it's a spin-off of an EU member state. It's not obvious to see how this could legally be avoided (although the Spanish government is rather upset by the precedent it would set for Catalonia).

    297:

    196:

    in the UK about 70% of adults have driving licences whereas in the US it's 88% according to some figures.

    A lot of Americans have licenses, but do not drive. In the USA, a driver's license is your default document of identification. Anything other than a driver's license is considered to be a special case.

    There's a sign at the local motor vehicle office listing the forms of ID required in order to get a driver's license. Two or three, depending on what they are. I was interested to see that "sex change documents" and "prison records" were acceptable ID. Given the USA's incarceration rate, a good number of that 12% of non-licensed adults are probably doing time.

    There's also an official state ID card you can purchase. It's a driver's license with an overstamp telling you it's not really a driver's license.

    298:

    I grew up in a 1910s house in Chicago. Wooden frame and stucco walls, as far as I know. 1100 square feet of living space by the plans, which surprised me went I learned of it, it felt bigger. 3 bedrooms, large living room, dining room, kitchen, extra room. Plus a couple of semi-enclosed porches and an unfinished basement, probably not counted.

    Don't think we ever needed to replace the roof; good thing, because we couldn't have afforded it. Was leaky, until my father has insulation blown into the attic.

    A new family is living in it now, unless something happened since 2007. Maybe not the world's best building, but trucking along.

    299:

    Absolutely.

    One of the biggest problems with an uncritical definition of the word "religion" is that it tends to be exclusionist. "Thou shalt have no gods before me," is true for Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and therefore people assume it's part of the basic definition of all religions. It's not. To pick one counterexample, it's not true of Buddhism.

    In the little cartoon I constructed here, of Religions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, they interpenetrate. It's entirely possible for a 1.0 religion to exist inside a 2.0 religion, and 2.0 religions seem to spontaneously spawn (or incorporate) 1.0 practices as they spread. People often get steamed about treating Catholicism that way, so I'll point instead to Tibetan Buddhism, which contains a large chunk of the old (and still extant) Bon religion inside it. Or one can point to the voudoun and the other religions of the African Diaspora, which use the language of a 2.0 religion as cover for 1.0 religious practices. Or one can look at various newer sects of Buddhism, which idolize the Buddha and pray to him (or chant some mantra), because his practices are seen as too difficult for mere mortals, and they pray for his compassion instead.

    This is also true for science. I've seen several "Altars to the gel gods" in molecular biology labs. Because getting PCR reactions to work used to be a real pain, grad students created goofy little altars near the machines to encourage them to work properly. While they were meant in fun and to deal with the frustration of repeated failures, they certainly looked like a Religion 1.0 practice arising spontaneously in science.

    Also, being a scientist does not automatically preclude one from practicing an old-line religion. Two of the best scientists I know happen to be elders in their local churches, and one (who teaches evolution at a major institution) is the son of missionary parents.

    Ultimately, realize that this idea of Religion 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 is a cartoon. I'm pitching it because futurists want to know what the Next Big Thing In Religion will be: some form of Mormonism, The Church of Science? I'm making the point that this is Religion 2.0 thinking. Instead, I'm suggesting that the biggest revolution in religious thought (Religion 3.0) was the advent of science as a major social institution that can successfully engage with older belief systems. Just as the 2.0 religions were qualitatively and quantitatively different from their predecessors, science is qualitatively and quantitatively different from the 2.0 religions. All three, 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, coexist and interpenetrate today. While I know that religions die and disappear, I suspect that the underlying memes are much harder to kill. Even if we defund all our universities, there will still be a lot of industrial and citizen science out there.

    The fun question is whether Religion 4.0 is possible. If it exists, it should be out there already in primitive form. Remember, Hero of Alexandria was in his 20s when Jesus was crucified, and he was working with steam, pneumatics, optics, and imaginary numbers. Thing was, he built some of his gadgets for temples, and while they were seen as extraordinary, they weren't seen as revolutionary until much later. For people playing with the future of religions, I'd suggest that finding a good Religion 4.0 candidate is worthy challenge.

    300:

    Americans who don't drive overwhelmingly live in a few cities, mainly in the Northeast, that have decent public transit (NY, Boston, DC, and San Francisco are the only ones that come to mind). In most of the country, driving isn't optional. It's the only way to get to work, go shopping, etc because American zoning laws put residential areas, commercial areas, and industrial areas miles apart.

    Some people use bicycles or motorcycles, but that's seasonal and rather dangerous.

    I vaguely recall a study in which 98% of American drivers whose licenses were suspended continued to drive, despite the risk of prison.

    301:

    Given the incoming Great Climate Kerbloopsie, geoengineering is so close to inevitable that I take them as a gimme. Since I also suspect that international consensus about what needs to done is unlikely, AND that whatever is tried probably won't be very well understood, there is going to be some interesting thrashing going on there.

    In fact, I suspect it will be Very Bad, and possibly worse than the original problem. On the bright side, bad old SF involving mad scientists and weather machines is going to gain a brief surge in popularity...

    302:

    Daniel Suarez already used the Hellfire-attack-in-Mecca idea in "Kill Decision". No djinn / psychic energy / cultists though.

    303:

    Sigh. Science is not a "belief system". The scientific method calls for you to try very hard to disprove what other scientists present as facts. This makes it fundamentally different to religions, where members are supposed accept the beliefs that are handed to them.

    I know that some "scientists" try to preach their theories, but that's not the nature of science.

    "altars to the gel gods": I'd call that a spontaneous 1.0 religion in a setting that's dominated by science. It is not part of science of course.

    Btw, roman and greek heathens really where into science. Science used to be big at that time, but then came the Catholic church with their burning stakes. So if you really want to put in numbers, it would be heathens 1.0, science 2.0, christianity 3.0, enlightenment 4.0 (or 2.1). Without christianity our science would be 500 years or more ahead.

    304:

    Charlie @ 283 YES A devo-max option would be best for everyone, but that is not available, more's the pity. However an "independant" Scotland would be anything but ... If you think the EU is bad, & getting worse, now, wait until then... Also the place will be flat broke.

    Ryan @ 287 Unfortunately that won't work either. One the "privatised-for-profit" supposed drive is NOT as bad as many people are painting it, because a lot of it isn't happening (note) and, Two .. the alternative in Scotland is the SNP becoming a smothering, nannying mock-socilist control-freak statelet, like Blair only worse. Note: IF the p-f-profit drive were as bad as it is painted, I'd be agin it too - there is a lot of scare talk about "cuts" that haven't happened & a lot of rhetoric, on both sides. They are all lying.

    Charlie @ 295 THIS is the problem. I was under the impression that the EU was demanding a completely fresh EU application, under their newer "get down & grovel & give us all your money" rules. Is this the case, or not, or undecided?

    I'm not touching the religion 3.0 idea with someone else's! Remember all religions have certain characteristics, which can be expressed as a set of testable / falsifyable propositions, which, at this time of writing seem to still be standing:

  • No “god” can be detected - OR - "god" is not detectable. ( & therefore irrelevant )
  • All religions are blackmail, and are based on fear and superstition. 2a: Marxism is a religion
  • All religions have been made by men.
  • Prayer has no effect on third parties. 4a: There is no such ting as "psi"
  • All religions kill, or enslave, or torture.
  • 305:

    See also "Quantico" by Greg Bear (first volume in one of his usual double-whammy duologies, the second being "Mariposa" -- this time near-future thrillers rather than far-future hard SF).

    306:

    I was under the impression that the EU was demanding a completely fresh EU application, under their newer "get down & grovel & give us all your money" rules. Is this the case, or not, or undecided?

    It's undecided, but there's an awful lot of spin and FUD going on about how difficult it would be for Scotland to simply be grandfathered into all the treaty obligations of its parent nation (which is what usually happens at the time of independence). It's not just the Tories who don't want Scotland to secede; the Spanish and Belgian governments are terrified of the precedent it would set for their own fractious minorities.

    307:
    Ocassionaly Right Wing Ideologues get it right, you'll miss us when we're gone.

    Actually, given the general chaos you get into when sorting out what right wing politics includes and what not, the first is hardly a surprise.

    Hint: I just listened to my good ol' German Roman Catholic Social Conservative mother waxing about why the USSians don't want compulsive health insurance. Which, in Germany, is one of the hallmarks of Old Style Social Conservatism

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state#Germany

    Where most of those still vote for our Conservative parties, though those are lately more of what you'd call Fiscal Conservatives.

    Which might be interesting for the future, since party politics somewhat depends on obfuscating internal differences; will the old group labels still be with us, though likely to be changed beyond recognition? Or will we go for content over label?

    Personally, being disgusted by the intellectual dishonesty of what most "third-positionism" amounts to

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Position

    I hope for the latter...

    308:

    2512 strikes me as well after the point where we might be obtaining very few resources from mining, instead getting almost all of them from recyling.

    Would the natural world have adapted to climate change, assuming it stopped in 2200 or so? I vaguely recall northwestern fir forest succession taking around 200 years before plateauing.

    309:

    The Levellers were actually the second most radical faction around 1650 the Diggers were the most left wing. The Diggers were agrarian communists and as such significantly to the left of modern politics.

    310:

    You left out Chicago. There's also older small towns that are dense and small enough to walk or bike in, and places within bigger car-centric cities that support such lifestyles, or transit lifestyles, even if the whole city doesn't; several cities have metro lines that don't cover the area, but if you can arrange your life along the lines, you're golden. (Actually, Boston's kind of a glorified version of that; the transit system isn't that good, IMO.) Plus of course poor (sometimes young) people who'd like a car but have to put up with the crappy buses for lack of money.

    311:

    "Science is a religion in that it seeks to explain the world, and it is definitely a religion in that scientists practice it religiously."

    What does "practice it religiously" mean? We've replaced one vague term with another.

    I'd agree that science fills much of the social role of a religion, though not all; to laypeople, scientists kind of are priests who can make sense of the world and describe one's place in it. The fact that they draw on experiment rather than revelation is a minor detail. Whether science as practiced is a religion, mu.

    And even broadly speaking, science lacks moral instruction of what to do, or rituals to mark coming of age or to bind society together. (No, getting your PhD doesn't count, I'm talking coming of age rituals for everyone.)

    312:

    Your mention of Hero of Alexandria gave me an idea, which, for lack of a better word, I'll call "Togapunk". Has anyone written stories set in a fictionalized classical world, where the inventions of people like Hero and Archimedes figure prominently, and the classical philosophies and culture are the backdrop for grand adventures? I think this would be an absolute hoot, and has a lot of potential. What do you think?

    313:

    The Kessler Syndrome (space debris pollution) will already have occurred and the cleanup methods will have already been effective. But during that period, global communication returns to surface methods, and manned spacecraft becomes obsolete.

    314:

    The Kessler Syndrome (space debris pollution) will already have occurred and the cleanup methods will have already been effective. But during that period, global communication returns to surface methods, and manned spacecraft becomes obsolete.

    Perhaps stratospheric airships will have replaced enough satellite based communication (or at least be on hand in event of emergency) to render this problem largely moot with regards to communication.

    315:

    Exactly. And if we are looking out for religion 3.0, capitalism is a much better candidate: it explains the world (everything has a price), gives moral guidance (make profit), arcane rituals and a priesthood (stock exchange). It even has all those irregularities and contradictions and bigotry that normal religions show, too.

    316:

    But during that period, global communication returns to surface methods, and manned spacecraft becomes obsolete.

    I don't think manned spacecraft will become obsolete, unless we are still stuck in LEO space stations. It's not like Kessler Syndorme will cover the Earth with a solid field of debris. Going out to the Moon and beyond will remain safe.

    317:

    I don't think manned spacecraft will become obsolete

    It's possible they already are becoming obsolete at anything other than transporting humans in space. Advances in robotics (specifically robonautics) could result in most-all missions in space being capable of running without humans on site, though perhaps still in a support role from Earth in issuing instructions and troubleshooting.

    318:

    "...even Charlie's self-driving cars, though I expect the lawyers will turn that into a techological dead end before it gets anywhere."

    Yes, I used to think that. Then he discussed (without mentioning cars) the possibility of having small interconnected sensors everywhere, and I mean everywhere, given the gradual drop in the price.

    This means that self-driven cars would have eyes in other cars, in lampposts, in sewer grates, in children's tricycles etc. etc.

    The USA's ambulance-chasing lawyers would not be interested in self-driven cars as a source of revenue in that case. The cars would be incredibly, astronomically more efficient at avoiding injury than any human driver.

    319:

    Yes I think such a religion already exists, and it's called Objectivism.

    320:

    The speed of light lag imposed by distance suggests there'll still be a role for humans in planetary exploration until we get at least mouse-equivalent AI for controlling surface vehicles. And if we send humans in cans to control robots at ground level we can get around the problem of having to land humans on another body alive and bring them back. Pop-sci explanation here.

    321:

    The future will be a voluntary matrix of VR fantasies. Human experience will be limited only by our imaginations.

    322:

    Charlie @ 305 It's not just the Tories who don't want Scotland to secede Indeed, lots of liberals, Liberals & Labour people don't want Scotland to wreck itself by seceding, including me .... In the same way that being anti-EU is no longer (only) a tory right-wing stance, because the EU has changed, and much for the worse, it is emphatically not what we voted for in 1973(?) which is a great pity.

    @ 311 Already been done by Sprague de Camp .... Getting an elephant, from Alexander's conquests to Athens, to show to Aristotle (Alexander's ex-tutor) Called "An elephant for Aristotle" ....

    323:

    Cheers for the cool article. I've read of similar proposals before. I guess it really depends on what comes first: drones intelligent enough to perform complex tasks without moment-by-moment supervision or the social/political/economic will for exploration that will require a human in the loop. Not really sure what to bet on there.

    324:

    Re: "Togapunk" - first thing I thought of was "Lest Darkness Fall" by L. Sprague de Camp (written in 1939, so not such a cutting edge idea!)

    Back to the OP though (slighty late to the conversation, so if I repeat what others have covered in the last 300+ comments please forgive me!).

    I personally quail at the thought of trying to "predict" 500 years hence. What things are commonplace now that could have been speculated about 500 years ago? "Horseless carriages" undoubtedly. Flight, well birds do it. Leonardo da Vinci managed those two. But the internet and the atom bomb? Electricity, radio, lasers, computers? The impact of the contraceptive pill? Those all required step changes and discoveries of fundamental principles that no one could have predicted in 1512. Ask yourself what Leonardo da Vinci DID get right as opposed to things even he hadn't thought about.

    And then there's the change in the rate of change. A time traveller from 1012 to 1512 would have seen relatively few changes. People are using gunpowder, but kings are still in charge and although everything is bigger and there's more of it, people are still using single horsepower transport and there are few things that would be unrecognisable or outright incomprehensible.

    For the time traveller from 1512 to 2012 though......

    We've had an ever increasing number of step changes in technology and understanding accelerating sharply over the last 150 years that have had results that could not possibly have been predicted even by Leonardo. If this acceleration continues then life in 2512 will be so utterly different that there's no way our poor little 21st century minds could conceive of what the world will be like then.

    In a perverse way global catastrophe is in some ways a useful brake on runaway technological change so that we have some sort of fighting chance to make meaningful speculations about the future.

    It may also be that there aren't (m)any fundamental new priciples left to discover and from here on out it's all engineering. I'm personally sceptical of this, there are far too many unexplained holes in our understanding of the universe for surprises not to be just around the corner.

    I do feel though that this last is an unspoken assumption of a great deal of SF, albeit for sensible reasons. It's kind of neat to for readers to be able to undersyand what the bloody hell you are writing about......

    I'd submit though that positing technological contraction or the slowing of growth could be viewed as a form of "cheating" by limiting technological growth to that of 2212 or 2312 rather than unrestrained 2512 weirdness!

    I guess what I'm trying to say is that 500 years is a sod of a long tme and anything could happen. (Which on reflection probably isn't much help - but bugger it, I've written it now!)

    325:

    I do agree that one of the major shortcomings of science is that there are not a good set of general knowledge for how to lead a good life as a good member of a good society. Science has quite a lot to say about how to have a long life, but scientists are not, in general, talking about what defines a good life or a good society.

    That's where the fight over climate change gets so interesting. Because of the blowback from the change deniers, climate scientists are being forced into an advocacy role, just as many ecologists and environmental scientists have been forced to abandon their objective neutrality to work at saving the things they value.

    While I'm not sure whether science will ever grow a moral backbone to match the preachings of the churches and the mosques, I expect that, if one does grow, it will come out of ecology, environmental science, climate science, and similar low-prestige fields. I'd also expect it will come when physics and chemistry finally lose their high status position in the scientific hierarchy. Another pathway is if medicine (also a high-status science) adopts many of the issues ecologists have dealt with, and makes them part of the next wave of public health care. From personal experience, I'd say that medicine (at least in US hospitals) is pretty primitive in its understanding of ecological effects. There's quite a lot of room for growth in that regard.

    As always, we'll see what happens.

    326:

    Andreas, please go back and note that religion does not require belief. For example, Buddha asked his followers to test his teachings in their own lives and prove they were true, rather than taking his teachings on faith. That has not stopped Buddhist sects from making a faith out of his teachings, but that's not what he taught.

    Similarly, there is at least one (probably now extinct) primitive religion where the beliefs were limited to how to be healthy. It did not apparently include a belief in spirits.

    I'll also point out that, as a scientist, I take most of science on faith. I have neither the time, the money, the interest, nor the training to test all the thousands of assertions in the scientific literature before I take them to be true or not. I have to either believe what I read (or not) based on what I think to be true. That is an act of faith, pure and simple. This is true for every scientist and science minded person on the planet. When you go to your local, scientifically trained doctor to be treated for an ailment, you don't ask to see the studies and set up your own double-blind study to see if his treatment is valid, you get your prescription, take your pills, and give thanks when you get better. This despite the fact that many illnesses would resolve themselves with absolutely no medical care.

    Keep trying to understand, please. You're still assuming religion requires belief and science does not. Both of these assumptions are incorrect.

    327:

    I love the concept of Religion 1.0/2.0/3.0! That is such a useful tool.

    One thing I need to point out is that you are making a category error by thinking Religion 1.0/2.0/3.0 and thus 4.0. Think instead of -1/0/+1. It is useful to think 1.0/2.0/3.0 for your cartoon labels, but don't extend it beyond that. 2.0/0 is that baseline that we want to consider "Normal", or "Catholic", i.e. "universal"(HA!), with a fluctuation plus or minus from that norm.

    • The Titanic was a 3.0/+1 design, with the owners not wasting money on frills like lifeboats, since after all, it was "unsinkable". The ship sinking was 1.0/-1 forces reaching out to tear the hull open.

    • 2.0/0 Religions are there to co-opt and contain the 1.0/-1 events. Explaining away 1.0/-1 events as part of the "Mysteries", thus everything is "normal" and under control.

    • When you have a 3.0/+1 lab(construction site, factory) you will always have 1.0/-1 events intruding on the norm, thus your 1.0/-1 altars sitting on the work bench. The 1.0/-1 events increase when you have some bean counter take over control of the lab(construction site, factory) and insisting on reducing costs by eliminating "unnecessary" things like safety procedures, or the "personal" things like the 1.0/-1 altars. I refer you to the Titanic example above.

    Reality(whatever that really means) is only stable in that -1/0/+1 range.

    CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, along with the movie Cabin in the Woods, are perfect examples of what happens when religion 4.0/+2 is attempted. The Giant Evil Gods show up to eat our brains. HA!

    The other example is going to the minus side, -2(Yikes!), is Clive Barker's "Book of the Art" sequence, or almost anything by King.

    Fun stuff!

    328:

    heteromeles @ 325 You're still assuming religion requires belief and science does not Really? IFF someone else has done it, & reported on it & you have to trust that they were telling the truth -if that is "faith/belief" then OK. But religion makes unproveable, untestable declarations about the world(s) & also makes assertions that consistently fail any test (Such as the existence of BigSkyFairy)

    329:

    It may be helpful here to distinguish between scientific methodology (controlled experiment, rigorous empiricism, etc.) and scientific theory (what is taught in physics, chemistry, biology, etc.). The methodology requires little faith in anything, while believing in the theories involves faith in other peoples' ability to do the methodology properly.

    330:

    "I do agree that one of the major shortcomings of science is that there are not a good set of general knowledge for how to lead a good life as a good member of a good society."

    Actually, it does. Evolutionary Psychology + Game Theory

    331:

    Ahem: I'm not sure science requires faith at all, at least not in the religious sense.

    What it does require is trust -- that is, you trust other scientists to understand and confirm the accuracy of yet other scientists' findings. The basis of peer review is a transitive web of trust, so that we can be reasonably certain that someone trustworthy will vouch for the accuracy/meaningfulness of the newly reporting findings. And we use the reviewers as proxies for our own willingness to put in the years of skull-sweat and toil that would be necessary in order to understand what's going on for ourselves.

    At no point does a peer reviewer say, "I know this doesn't make sense, but you gotta have faith". The moment they do that, you've stepped off the deep end into religious belief.

    Rather, what they're saying is, "I have studied field [x] for [y] years, and what Joe reports about [x] appears to be correct. You can take this on trust, or study it for yourself if you've got the time."

    332:

    There are certain articles of faith. In no particular order: Occam's Razor Beauty = Truth The universal applicability of mathematics The unity of Nature

    333:

    What would it take to convince you that 1000 square feet is perfectly acceptable, even average, to accommodate a family of three or four outside of the USA? And I'm not talking about Japan either.

    Why do you ask? I never said it wasn't. I was just posting information about housing stock in the US that contradict Charlie's statements on it. My point was that all those 1200 sf or so houses built in the 50s and 60s (and 20s) are mostly intact and functional.

    I grew up in a 1400 SF house. I currently live in one that has 1850 but I have a home office.

    But housing size is a function of social status and implied wealth with the later taking a real beating over the last 5 years. Could people live in smaller houses. Sure. But you have to convince them it isn't a step down to do so. (As I watch the very large house being build next to mine. Foundation and block in place so far.)

    Now to join in with your comment a friend who's an architect recently interviewed a family that was moving to the area. It was a couple who was expecting a child. To be their only one they stated. Currently they had a 4000 sf house and with the one child they knew they'd be fine building a 6000 sf house. :) BTW the architect lives with one other person in a 900 sf house that he recently remodeled into a single room with his office in it. Not for everyone but it works for some.

    334:

    Well, I dunno about that. We're currently living in 1500+ square feet of housing that was constructed for university faculty some time in the 20's or 30's.

    Needless to say, despite my best (and amateurish) householder skills, my daughter hates me with a burning white-hot passion for forcing her to live in a cruddy two-story house without a built-in dishwasher, wifi, etc.

    Yeah, all other things being equal, I'll grant you that size is important. But all other things not being equal, size is not the most important difference.

    335:

    Why do you ask? I never said it wasn't.

    Let me put it this way. Your way of saying:

    "Much of the 45 to 55 1000 sqft stuff built is now gone. Good riddance. It was thrown up to deal with the early days of the housing shortage. Housing built in the late 50s and early 60s in being torn down. But only about 1/2 or less of it. From what I can see much of it due to changing demographics as much as it was no longer viable. But yes there was and is still some junk being built."

    Certainly doesn't imply that you find such housing to be acceptable accommodation, at all.

    336:

    I mistrust Beauty = Truth.

    It's too damn close to an earlier antecedent, embedded deep in the bronze-age ancestors of Western culture:

    Beauty = Virtue

    This was deduced because it was totally obvious (to bronze-age polytheists) that if you were beautiful, it was because the Gods had blessed you with beauty, which they would obviously only do if you were virtuous (where virtue was defined as "pleasing to the Gods").

    That's no foundation stone to build an empirically sound scientific revolution on top of, is it?

    As for the unity of nature, get back to me when we finally figure out how to hook up relativity with quantum mechanics.

    337:

    That sort of square footage only works if land is cheap and, more importantly, you don't want to be able to walk places but have access to cheap fuel and automobiles (or equivalent).

    Those of us who like cities face a certain trade-off. Which is why a 1000 square foot apartment in the right part of London may easily be worth more than a genuine no-shit castle with a dozen bedrooms and several acres of grounds in the Scottish borders.

    339:

    Andreas, please go back and note that religion does not require belief. For example, Buddha asked his followers to test his teachings in their own lives and prove they were true, rather than taking his teachings on faith. That has not stopped Buddhist sects from making a faith out of his teachings, but that's not what he taught. Ok, didn't know that about Buddha. Still, he didn't set up a system of peer review to allow evolution of Buddhism.

    I think we need to make clear what functions a religion has: a) explain the world b) provide moral guidance c) act as a political tool to control people

    I see b) as central to religions or similar belief systems. AFAIK all religions also (try to) do a) and most do c)

    Science only does a). It does not and can not provide moral guidance; all it can do is provide insight into the consequences of one's actions.

    Btw, science also has a blind spot when doing a): science can only explain events that are repeatable and universal in space and time. So any events that happen spontaneously, only sporadically or only at a certain place or time can not be examined with scientific methods. Thus, should e.g. wonders exist, then science can not verify those by definition.

    340:

    These "articles of faith" may provide guidance when looking for truth, but they do not provide truths themselves. Any scientific theory is still falsifiable.

    And beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, so if beauty = truth, then maybe that's because scientists belief that truth is beautiful? :-)

    341:

    From my book The Praxis: http://www.neopax.com/praxis/index.html

    A religion needs to satisfy as many of these conditions as possible:

    It must provide a doctrine It must have canonical texts that expound upon that doctrine It must offer an ethical framework It must offer an explanation of the world around us and the world within It must offer hope and comfort in adversity It must offer community, fellowship, mutual support and a better way to live It must empower the individual It must offer a mission in life beyond the mundane It must offer a vision of a life beyond this one It must offer transcendence

    342:

    Two ideas got merged.

    There was a lot of crap housing built in the US 1945 to about 1955. Much of it 1000 sf or less. Just a step above WWII army barracks standards. Size wasn't the issue. Just an indicator. And most of that is now gone and good riddance. Looking back it was basically disposable housing b

    Once folks realized they had enough money they wanted better. The next wave was a lot of decently built 1200 to 1400 sf housing built from the mid 50s through the late 60s or a little longer. And much of that still exists. Some of the neighborhoods have gone downhill but much of it has just changed with the demographics. I've even owned one of these as a landlord.

    Size is a different arguement than quality of the stock. A very different argument. Personally I prefer much of the housing built before about 1985 when OSB took off. I, and others, think this is a time bomb waiting to go off as the OSB absorbs moisture over time.

    343:

    There are certain articles of faith. In no particular order:

    Beauty = Truth

    In my experience, beauty is almost always a sign of artifice, and ugliness is far more likely to be honest

    The universal applicability of mathematics

    Math is just a formalism for keeping track of things and comparing things. No matter what the laws of physics happened to be, we'd need such a formalism to make predictions.

    The unity of Nature

    We define "nature" to include everything, so it can't help but be a unity.

    344:

    If maths is just a formalism why isn't pi=3 in flat space?

    345:

    Those of us who like cities face a certain trade-off. Which is why a 1000 square foot apartment in the right part of London may easily be worth more than a genuine no-shit castle with a dozen bedrooms and several acres of grounds in the Scottish borders.

    True, and it leads to another thing about 2512 that hasn't come up. What will humans still have in 2512? London! Not only a city in that place, but probably one that's recognizably London - at least if you squint a bit. Likewise Jerusalem, Paris, and many other places that are worth visiting for cultural reasons even for people who don't care to live there.

    Whatever transportation and industrial options we have in 500 years, and I expect the selection to be much richer than today, some features of cities will still be useful. Maybe you can get an ordinary gardening robot or rejuvenation treatment at the corner shop, but to see Shakespeare performed at the Globe you'll have to go to London.

    I suspect 2512 will see a spread of population densities, for reasons not entirely the same as 2012's reasons. We'll see densities from near zero (in uninviting areas such as underwater and space) up through small towns to great cities. There might be fewer mega-metropoli in 2512, but any population estimates that far out are useless; a decent longevity treatment could come along by 2062. It wouldn't surprise me to see some big arcologies, though.

    346:

    If maths is just a formalism why isn't pi=3 in flat space?

    Don't look at me, man. I didn't do it.

    347:

    David L wrote: Once folks realized they had enough money they wanted better. The next wave was a lot of decently built 1200 to 1400 sf housing built from the mid 50s through the late 60s or a little longer. And much of that still exists. Some of the neighborhoods have gone downhill but much of it has just changed with the demographics. I've even owned one of these as a landlord.

    I live in a San Francisco Bay Area 1350 square foot home dating to 1956; it's entirely serviceable right now, other than needing new electrical wiring finally, and some minor oopsies from the remodel that the old owners did right before they decided to sell it, 8 years ago. It has some interesting character, and needs the poke-holes-in-walls-and-blow-insulation-in done one of these years, but it works, is not significantly degrading as far as I can tell (roof's aging and will need a redo but that's expected every 20 or so years). It could use central air conditioning, and running the natural gas line out to the back yard for gas heat for the now-deactivated hot tub (which costs several hundred $/month to run...).

    Of course, it rarely (once a decade) snows where I am, only freezes intermittently, and 100 degree summer days are not unheard of but rare. Moderate / Mediterranean climates on the west coast give us a lot of slack.

    348:

    Forgive my earlier comment; I was raised to believe that silly questions deserve silly answers.

    I said that math is a formalism for keeping track of things and comparing them to other things. Pi is the name we give to the comparison of a circle's circumference to its diameter, with the terms "circle", "circumference", and "diameter" defined by the formalism. This comparison turns out consistently to be an irrational number just over 3.14, instead of 3 or 47, but that's a property of flat space that was discovered, not defined as part of the formalism.

    349:

    Civilization collapse should not be ignored. You have previously discussed the population required to support our technological culture. If the population were to shrink to "only" three or four billion, do you think that current technology levels could be sustained? A slow subsidence of the technology level, accompanied by a resurgence of religious fanaticism could result in some very interesting societies. You could easily have a culture still more technologically advanced than our own, but where most of the technical knowledge was received wisdom, rather than engineered from first principles as is currently the case. From my experience in the IT field, I'd say that we are not too far from that situation today, sad to say.

    350:

    I notice you don't mention the Catholic Church. What is your opinion of religion, i.e. man's perception of God, sense of his purpose in life, etc? I imagine none of that will change.

    351:

    Civilization collapse should not be ignored.

    Well...yes and no. Yes, I expect that we'll see some nations wane in importance and even disappear; likewise, various other social groups that seem very strong now will certainly go away in the next 500 years. On the other hand, I don't see all of civilization falling apart; read Charlie's comments on this above. It's never happened before and there are many reasons not to expect it in the foreseeable future.

    As for population and technology, I'm pretty sure we can manage with a billion people. We had about that many c.1800, and got to two billion around 1935; we're currently using our abilities much more efficiently than in previous eras and there's plenty of room for improvement. Much less grunt labor has to be done by humans, and we're working on the grunt thinking front today.

    As for folks who don't understand technology, yes; all of us have met those folks. I've complained about them, too. But they have been around as far back as the mechanically inclined have been complaining about them, as have jokes about them. As a percentage of the population they seem to be declining, even as the increased number of gadgets means we get more clueless user jokes. As for received wisdom - really? More than today? Anyone who cares can look up as much information on why something works as they care to, often as easily as pulling up Wikipedia on their smartphone. Mostly we don't bother. The theory is there if we need it, but more often people just need to know what to do, not why. Honestly, how often do you think about chip voltages or asynchronous signal error correction these days? Most of the IT field has moved on.

    Quite a lot of what used to be challenging engineering has moved into the 'solved problem' category. I expect people in 2512 will be working on questions we can't even ask yet.

    352:

    I notice you don't mention the Catholic Church. What is your opinion of religion, i.e. man's perception of God, sense of his purpose in life, etc? I imagine none of that will change.

    That's an excellent example of something we should expect to see in 2512. Catholicism will certainly be obviously changed from 2012, when Vatican II is still within living memory. The smart money is on the church still existing, still based out of Rome (unless something takes out the whole city of Rome), and still led by a Pope. In other words, it will be recognizably Catholicism.

    What changes? Who can tell? Yes, maybe the Pope will be female, or uploaded, or a robot; that kind of thing is cosmetic and not important. Catholicism, and other major religions, will still be giving people a sense of purpose in life and guiding them to be better that they'd otherwise be.

    353:

    As Charlie alluded to, 500 years ago the Protestant Reformation hadn't happend yet. Sikhism had just been created. Mormonism, Ba'hai, and Scientology were all in the future. Conservative and Reform Judaism didn't exist. Bhakti movements were just stating to spread in India, under Mughal rule.

    A lot of religious change isn't unreasonable to predict. Exactly what change... we'd be basically making stuff up.

    "It may also be that there aren't (m)any fundamental new priciples left to discover and from here on out it's all engineering. I'm personally sceptical of this, there are far too many unexplained holes in our understanding of the universe for surprises not to be just around the corner."

    No. There's certainly room for surprises: quantum gravity, dark matter and energy. There's no particular reason to think they'll be just around the corner. There's definitely stuff we don't know... but it's stuff we can barely observe; conversely, stuff that barely affects our life. Meanwhile the immediately observable universe is governed by forces we understand pretty well. I don't think it's unreasonable to imagine that fundamental physics is basically done for the next few thousand years, until 'we' can get out and do astrophysical-level experiments like observing black holes up close.

    And relatedly, we've picked most if not all of the low-hanging fruit from mastering electromagnetism and thermodynamics and the periodic table. Relatedly, we can state the limits of on lots of things, and we're close to many of them. Communication is probably as fast as it'll ever be. Heat engines are within a factor of 2 of their theoretical efficiency for the temperatures they run at, or a factor of 3 if you could dump to deep space. Artifical light via LED is about 20-25% efficient, having improved by orders of magnitude over campfires and candles. Gasoline may not be the best energy carrier ever, but it's definitely near the top of the list in density and convenience. If we ever get fusion, it'll only be a few times better than fission -- irrelevant for anything but very high speed space travel. Fuel's more abundant but Earth probably has fissionables millions if not billions of years.

    As mentioned, computational energy efficiency is nowhere near limits, and there's plenty of room for computatoinal and biological complexity, specialization, automation, and maybe robustness. But that way lies various forms of Singularity.

    354:

    Dirk @ 331 Beauty = Truth. REALLY? Got ANY evidence of that? Remember, beauty can change with time & mores. & 340 Yup, communism's a religion, then!

    Charlie @ 335 Yup Beauty != Truth ... As for Gen Relty /= QM ... Apparently a variation on the "standard" model,supersymmetry has recieved serious, possibly fatal damage Warning, account seems a little garbled.

    Andreas Vox @ 338 But, science/scientists is/are trying to get a handle on "short-lived phenomena" - there was a Smithsonian (?) institute doing just this. Prime candidate: "ball lightning", and similar odd-balls.

    Jay @ 347 Pi is much deeper than that. It appears to be built into the actual structure of our universe, as well as being the ratio of circular dimanesions. "e" is the other one, of course.

    Justin @ 349 Obsolete & defunct, I hope, but I'm not holding my breath. & s-s @ 351 "Pope uploaded"? Well, that opens the can of worms we are not discussing.

    I note that Kurzweil is saying that we will have human-brain-capacity computing by 2020 & reverse-engineering of the functions by 2030, which means a real AI take-off, hard or soft by that date. All bets off, or not if true? How realistic IS Kurzweil? Or is this millenarianism again?

    Housing - just calculated mine ... TOTAL (including store-roomlets & bog & kitchen ... 1152 (sq ft) Badly utilsed @ present, as we need money for expensive underpinning ... But, even so (Charlie @ 336) it is worth more than double a similar house, 2 or 3 miles away, bacause of our location.

    355:

    Andreas Vox @ 338 But, science/scientists is/are trying to get a handle on "short-lived phenomena" - there was a Smithsonian (?) institute doing just this. Prime candidate: "ball lightning", and similar odd-balls.

    Did they so? I bet they first try to make it somewhat repeatable, preferably in a controlled environment. If it's really spontaneous, i.e. having no detectable cause, all science can do is throw statistics at it. If it's also very rare, statistics will "prove" it never happens.

    356:

    I note that Kurzweil is saying that we will have human-brain-capacity computing by 2020 & reverse-engineering of the functions by 2030, which means a real AI take-off, hard or soft by that date. All bets off, or not if true? How realistic IS Kurzweil? Or is this millenarianism again?

    Kurzweil is a crank. Anyone who thinks it's reasonable to plot entirely arbitrary historical events (e.g. the evolution of language, adoption of writing and invention of the microprocessor) on a graph to make a hockey stick and then extrapolate AI from it is a loon. His estimations on reverse-engineering the brain are often based on assumptions on how to measure the brain in terms of a computer plotted against Moore's law (tap dancing past whether or not the assumptions hold true and the fact that suitable hardware does not equal the ability to code the software) and a severe lack of understanding on exactly how biology works.

    I could go on but PZ Myers has addressed it better in the past

    http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/17/ray-kurzweil-does-not-understa/

    (Searching "pharyngula kurzweil" will bring up other articles of a similar nature)

    357: 321 "lots of people don't want Scotland to wreck itself by seceding, including me ..."

    Why is there this presumption that an independant Scotland would be doomed to failure? Please don't say "banking collapse" because that presumes that we would have made the same mistakes as Alan Greenspan, Billy Bob Clinton, Greedy Gordon Brown, Tony B Liar and the English treasury civil servants who advised the second pair. Given that at least one Republican senator (who voted against the repeal) correctly predicted the US collapse almost to the day on the repeal of Glass-Steagal, the collapse was entirely forseeable to the competent.

    358:

    Given that at least one Republican senator (who voted against the repeal) correctly predicted the US collapse almost to the day on the repeal of Glass-Steagal, the collapse was entirely forseeable to the competent.

    Just playing devils advocate here but in matters like this it's important to remember a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters could write anything and everything. In other words there are so many commentators on economic and political issues that some of them are bound to be spot on even by accident.

    359:

    Even some of us who live in places where a car is a near essential would chearfully swap ownership for a city place and the right to hire something for the odd long trips like Eastercon and a couple of model shows per year.

    360:

    If you know the Church from the inside out you would know that the chances of a female or automated pope range from zip to zero.

    Sure, individual opinions may be in favour (of the female option), but the Church's doctrinal structure - the Magisterium - transcends individual opinions in a way you don't find elsewhere. It's a central belief in Catholicism that doctrine can develop in a linear fashion, but it can't be changed, and the nearer you get to the mechanisms that govern the Magisterium, the stronger that belief becomes.

    I tend to think on the lines of A Canticle for Liebowitz, in which the Church keeps its identity intact but finds itself out of sync in differing ways and degrees with the world around it. Being out of sync, paradoxically, suits the Church to the ground.

    If I can crack the problem of altering the gene that handles cell reproduction in my body and discover immortality, I'll wager 12 months salary (not much) that in 500 years I'll be seeing a male priesthood supplying male bishops who will elect a male pope.

    The rest of the world by then may have asked itself why it is technologically chasing its tail...

    361:

    I see what you're saying; my points are:- 1) The political affiliation of the senator in question. He's scarely the sort of person you would expect to favour "more government regulation". 2) If he missed the actual date in question, he was off by at most 2 days, in 10 years. I'm not inclined to dismiss that sort of accuracy as "infinite number of monkeys".

    362:

    Justin: What is your opinion of religion, i.e. man's perception of God, sense of his purpose in life, etc?

    My opinion of religion is rather low: I'm an atheist, for Richard Dawkins values of atheist. But I try to be more polite about my neighbours, and so I didn't see any need in this particular essay to whack that particular hornets' nest with a stick in passing.

    363:

    Jeff, I believe current tech levels can be sustained on a fraction of the world's population. Peasant farmers in rural India and China aren't contributing to the technosphere (except indirectly, insofar as they produce food for the rest of us -- and they're pretty bad at that). In fact, the proportion of us who are at the coal face at any time is pretty small. We need the bulk activities of education and academia to keep supplying new brains for the intelligence-driven technology mines, but I'm taking that as a given: and in any case, much of our current higher education output goes on stupid things -- notably folks who want to get a university degree that will help them get a high-paid job in marketing or management or something else that pays off their student loans faster, rather than folks who want to get the research and cognitive skills that constitute an education.

    But the real problem I see is that shrinking populations are inherently deflationary, in economic terms. Less consumers buying stuff, less producers making stuff. We can see this in Japan right now; their economic stagnation is largely a side-effect of population shrinkage -- per an Economist study, if they were maintaining a total fertility rate of 2.1 instead of 1.3, they'd have also been maintaining 3-4% economic growth throughout the 1990s and 2010s.

    Flip side: there is sucking demand for human labour in the care and geriatric medical fields as an aging population require nurses are carers. (Japan, for cultural reasons, doesn't address this need by permitting mass immigration. Hence their low unemployment rate in the middle of what ought to be a deflationary depression.)

    It was Bruce Sterling who described the second half of the 2000s as "a world full of old people who are afraid of the sky". To which I should add, "and complaining about the economy. And how expensive it is to hire a home help." Even though the home helps won't be laughing all the way to the bank.

    364:

    If I can crack the problem of altering the gene that handles cell reproduction in my body and discover immortality, I'll wager 12 months salary (not much) that in 500 years I'll be seeing a male priesthood supplying male bishops who will elect a male pope.

    The rest of the world by then may have asked itself why it is technologically chasing its tail...

    I agree. With the caveat that if the Catholic Church is that inflexible, it's likely to have a much smaller congregation by then. Religions wax and wane over time; you can still find Zoroastrians, Stoics, or followers of the Norse gods, but they're relatively rare.

    365:

    Warning: almost-OT, connecting only to @271 "beanstalk" and OGH's passing reference to space elevators.

    In 2001, Brad Edwards' "The Space Elevator" (http://www.amazon.com/Space-Elevator-Earth-Space-Transportation/dp/0974651710) renewed interest in an old idea -- in my case, so much that for a while I forgot/ignored what I know about physical chemistry and process engineering.

    Look: carbon nanotubes are really really strong because they are closer than anything else we know to "perfect": one sp2 carbon bond after another, in principle to macroscopic lengths, without the flaws and dislocations that make all bulk materials much weaker than their atomic/molecular bonds. Edwards was confident that "in principle" could be brought into practice, and updated Artsutanov's 1960 classic (http://www.spaceelevator.com/docs/Artsutanov_Pravda_SE.pdf) -- which had inspired Clarke, Robinson et al -- with an ingenious "bootstrap" deployment that would require just a few heavy launches rather than pushing carbonaceous asteroids around. Much geek excitement ensued: conferences, LiftPort etc.

    Keep in mind: a ground-to-geosync SE demands just about all the theoretical strength of nanotubes -- not just (bignumbillions) of bonds for a mm or two, but (bigbignumtrillions) for thousands of km. You can't finesse that with shorter nanotubes in composites: any matrix material is inevitably much weaker, and the nanotubes themselves are inherently very slippery, so fiber-to-matrix binding would be... problematic.

    The salient fact of the ensuing decade is that there has been very little progress in growing longer zero-defect (or tolerably smallnum-defect) nanotubes. There are multiple unanswered basic-science obstacles w/r/t how nanotubes self-assemble from hot carbon atoms, and w/r/t the catalysts that foster that. Those may not be insoluble, but are certainly far from solution. Beyond those, there are obstacles no one has begun to tackle in nanotube ginning-and-spinning: getting from a tangle of angstroms-wide fibers to something you could fabricate as a ribbon or cable. I base this on long conversation with the late Rick Smalley, and on continuing exchanges with academic and industrial researchers.

    Bottom line: carbon nanotubes plus Edwards' deployment ideas made an earth-to-orbit SE much more plausible than it had been between 1960 and 2001... but not quite enough more plausible, not without invoking NanoMagic-level QC and process scaling.

    NB: the above has almost nothing to do with applications of the kewl quantum, microelectronic, photovoltaic, and thermal properties of nanotubes, graphene, or buckyballs. In this case it's all about tensile strength -- there are other open questions, but without enough GPa in bulk they don't matter.

    Nor does it rule out lunar or Mars SEs or various orbital tethers, many of which look do-able with existing high-strength fibers or less-than-perfect nanotube composites. But AFAIC the Big Casino, the earth-to-orbit SE, still requires breakthroughs at least as daunting (and expensive and not-yet-schedulable) as those required for nuclear rockets, laser launch, and other alternatives. I wish that were not so, but I'm pretty sure it is.

    366:

    I'm inclined to take a positive view of orbital tethers, pinwheels, and lunar and martian SEs.

    A terrestrial one is really pushing hard against physical limits, yes. But it has one thing going for it:

    There are no "application deserts" on the way to a perfect nanotube cable capable of supporting a terrestrial space elevator.

    That is: if you can make a better carbon nanotube than is currently available, then you can sell it and make money. And this is a recursive function, all the way out to "flawless nanotube cables 36,000Km long". There's no such thing as a higher-tensile-strength rope or cable with no applications (as long as you bear in mind that its cost, in bulk, will limit the applications -- for example, we have incredibly strong spider silk right now, but due to the cost of milking it from Black Widow spiders it's mostly confined to weird niche apps like marking sighting graticules on sniper scopes).

    367:

    "Beauty = Truth. REALLY? Got ANY evidence of that?"

    See the link to the Murray Gell-Mann talk. It's a very common belief in fundamental physics.

    368:

    Carrying on along these lines of reasoning. Several of the currently popular (military for the most part) series that feature some sort of mature beanstalk technology also use something called spidersilk for making ballistic garments. Accordingly, applications for these "novel materials" clearly exist, and the main problems we have to solve are production engineering.

    369:

    Civil engineers would love flawless cables 36 km long - you could build a Channel Bridge with those (even a classic suspension would need but a single join, which you'd put at the centre where the catenary had dipped to the road deck level).

    So yes, useful at lots of different scales.

    370:

    My last harmless comment got held for moderation for some reason. Anyway, on the topic of machine translation some things can never be translated, only explained

    371:

    "...but to see Shakespeare performed at the Globe you'll have to go to London."

    How good does telepresence and/or immersive virtual reality need to be before that argument falls over?

    372:

    How good does a copy of the Mona Lisa have to be before people no longer travel to see the original?

    373:

    More awkwardly, how about Dali's "Christ of St John of the Cross"? I picked this piece because it's about 8 feet by 4 feet!

    374:

    One of my worries about the Scottish independence debate is down to the lack of realistic policy coming out of the "yes" campaign. Every time the SNP have been called on (say) legal advice on the EU, foreign policy, defence policy, fiscal policy, things have gone pear-shaped. In each case, it has become obvious that these problems are messy and complicated, and a response of "oh, that won't be a problem, we haven't thought about it properly yet, but we'll solve it when we come to it" attitude is positively scary.

    It rather smacks of an emotional desire for independence and an associated search for justification, than of a reasoned decision from a basis of "this is genuinely best for everyone, following on from the following economic and political analysis".

    This applies particularly to the politicians involved. I really worry about politicians who seek power on a nationalist agenda - because they are deliberately appealing to the "us" versus "them" argument - "we're different, we're better". That's the argument that Milosevic and Karadic used; and there are plenty of morons who are willing to use the "us and them" argument as justification for uncivilised behaviour. Just look at the treatment of BBC Scotland journalists who dare to offer any comment on Rangers Football Club; it doesn't take much to twist that level of ignorance, stupidity, and hatred to other purposes. Every time I hear Salmond use words like "Toffs" and "Lord Snooty", I know that he's playing the man not the ball.

    There also appears to be a level of "I can't hear you, lalalalala" within the SNP when it comes to debate over the economic numbers, roughly summarized as either "we'll be OK, we've got fish and oil" or "we would have been as rich as Norway if the English hadn't stolen all of our oil and given away our fish". Neither of these arguments fares well after the suggestion that if independence is good enough for the Faroe Islands, it's good enough for the Shetland Islands (watch the SNP argue that the Shetlands are an indisputable part of Scotland if you want to see dissociation in action)...

    375:

    OTOH we have the parting of the Czechs and Slovaks in the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. All very civilized.

    376:

    Charlie @365: Carbon nanotubes are not robust to certain types of radiation, especially ion bombardment or alphas, so their use in a space elevator could be limited.

    Justin @359: I'm sure the cardinals will come around when they see all the features in Microsoft Theocrat.

    377:

    "How good does a copy of the Mona Lisa have to be before people no longer travel to see the original?"

    That's an interesting question and an interesting example...

    Given the conditions which La Gioconda is neccesarily displayed under these days (in a climate controlled environment behind bullet proof glass with impatient crowds shuffling past behind a barrier well out of touching range) I'd have to say that the level of contemplation and interaction allowed is such that a bit of quality time up close and personal with a really good reproduction (or a virtual encounter of the quality which a few hundred years of technological progress would lead me to expect) is probably a rather more meaningful and satisfying experience.

    I've seen the original and found the experience utterly lacking, if I'd been allowed to get as close and linger for as long as I managed and enjoyed with "lesser" Leonardo's at the National Gallery last year (and that was a somewhat frustrating, sub-optimal experience...) it might (in fact I sincerely believe it would!) have been very different, but as it was, beyond being able to metaphorically tick the "seen the Mona Lisa" box it didn't really do much for me. We might be able to do better in 500 years but while there's only one precious, delicate original and millions of people who'd like to experience it there's always going to be a problem and if the technology (replicator, VR, or telepresence) is good enough then an expensive, time consuming trip to Paris might not have anything like the appeal it does now...

    378:

    OTOH, every time the "no" lobby are called on what they believe Scotland would need, they roll out the Rolls-Royce options of a credible blue water navy, an army and airforce capable of deploying about 25% of their strength to, say "AHardPlace" for years at a stretch, your own embassies or consulates in every foreign capital and other major cities in places like, say, the USA... without having more justification than "the UK had them".

    379:

    I'm not so sure PZM is as correct as he thinks. Basically he is arguing that you cannot create an artificial bird, so artificial means of flying won't come for a long time. He is correct if Kurzweil is really saying we will be able to completely reverse engineer a human brain in order to understand it. But is Kurzweil really saying that?

    Similarly for his dismissal of the genome as being the design. Yes he is correct, it is not the design. But equally obviously, if we can simulate development, a human like brain could be generated from relatively little data.

    One problem we have is that we really don't know whether the brain's computational capabilities requires the complexity of the biology we see. It could go either way. Kurzweil is betting on the answer being no, that simulations require much less underlying complexity than is evident at the neural level. But the biologists arguing from the opposite POV don't know that either, they just see the complexity.

    What Kurzweil has going for his position is that we can model neural systems with sufficient fidelity [Blue Brain Project], and there any number of engineering approaches to mimicking particular pieces of human cognition, from simple code to artificial neural networks.

    380:

    "Science only does a). It does not and can not provide moral guidance; all it can do is provide insight into the consequences of one's actions."

    Absolutely science provides moral guidance. Take the efforts to have homosexuality described as a disorder by the psychiatric community (rather than as a crime) and, eventually, as something normal and natural. This happened not because uninvolved scientists came to appropriate conclusions, but because a collection of scientists took a moral stance and reinforced that stance with research and advocacy. Science is not detached and sober where its scientists are public advocates for causes they want the public to take notice of.

    381:

    Yes, this.

    Before you can come up with a Scottish military, you need to know what you're going to use them for. Obvious roles are:

    • Support of foreign policy goals

    • Defense against invasion (by whom? Note: SNP have dropped their opposition to NATO memership)

    • Support for civil authorities in event of disaster or civil disorder

    • Coast guard, fisheries patrol, oil/gas asset security, offshore wind farm security

    • Nuclear deterrence (precisely who is threatening to nuke Edinburgh and can be deterred by a one-tenth share of a fractional reserve Trident submarine?)

    • Anti-terrorism

    ... We don't know what SCO's foreign policy goals will be, but my guess is they'll have about as big an element of overseas adventurism to them as the Republic of Ireland.

    The SNP have a long-standing anti-nuclear-weapons policy; a SCO that isn't interested in or aspiring to be a front-rank player has no need for such expensive and arguably useless and dangerous toys.

    Terrorism is (a) best handled by intelligence-led policing, and (b) more of a problem for aspiring front-rank players. Arguably the UK and US are targets precisely because they dick around in other peoples' back yards.

    So what I see SCO as needing is:

    • Roughly the same size and mix of army as the Republic of Ireland, with a mix of domestic support and overseas UN-led peacekeeping duties,

    • A significantly bigger navy than the RofI, because of a bigger coastline, more off-shore assets to protect ... but nothing huge. Maybe 2-3 frigates, 2-3 destroyers, some minesweepers, and 1-2 diesel-electric subs.

    • Air force: logistics, transport, maritime surveillance, enough fighters/AWACS to protect the maritime surveillance/transport roles and intercept hijacked airliners. A single squadron of [decomissioned, alas] F.4 Tornados would do a gold-plated job of it, never mind shiny new Typhoon IIs, plus a squadron of Hawks for training/airfield defense.

    TL:DR; unless an independent SCO wanted to pursue the sort of global foreign-policy initiatives of the UK, it could make do with a military that's significantly less than 10% of the current UK force.

    382:

    Or they outlast any other human institution. Islam goes back to 600AD, Catholicism +/-4BC and Hinduism somewhere around 500BC, and none show any signs of exiting the stage just yet.

    Myself, I avoid religious arguments like the plague. Just on the subject of God/no God, my theology (if you can call it that) is that the evidence for God's existence is conclusive, but not compelling. One is always free to disregard him, which is the way he wants things. One can visit a place like the motherhouse of the Sisters of Charity at Nevers and still ignore what one sees.

    But back on the subject, I think technology has lost the sense of purpose it once gave. Dan Dare optimism is long gone. Something has to fill the void, and that can only be some form of religion.

    383:

    Yes, "a collection of scientists took a moral stance."

    That does not mean that science provided guidance which moral stance to take. When science finds the cause of homosexuality, a scientist can choose to A) accept homosexuality as normal B) put in efforts to "cure" homosexuality or even propose to euthanize the subjects C) don't care.

    384:

    Or they outlast any other human institution. Islam goes back to 600AD, Catholicism +/-4BC and Hinduism somewhere around 500BC, and none show any signs of exiting the stage just yet.

    Make that 325 CE for Catholicism (Council of Nicaea, that's the one that settled the iota), 1000 BCE for Hinduism and 500 BCE for Buddhism.

    385:

    Seconded:- I think we might need a similar number of fast jets to Austria, and possibly more SAR birds than we presently have (although I note that HMS Gannet's responsibilities for Cumbria and Morecombe Bay would no longer exist unless actively contracted out to Prestwick by a London Government).

    Similarly, unless you actively plan overseas deployments or anticipate an invasion by EnglandAndWales, just why do you need tanks for defence?

    Navywise, I think modern diesel-electric subs and fisheries protection type vessels are adequate for a navy that doesn't plan force projection.

    As for consulates, many nations accept representation by someone else in some jurisdictions and/or (hopefully with better selection procedures) contractor consuls similarly to the role Anwar takes on in Rule 34.

    386:

    On the subject of Scotland's independence, I think it's worth re-iterating that it's stupid and/or malicious when unionists claim SNP can't provide detailed answers on this issue or that. It's not a referendum on perpetual SNP rule.

    Should the independece side win, it will be up to the Scottish political parties - old and new (and new ones will rise up) - to shape the future of Scotland. SNP is one of those parties, but there'll be others, and SNP may well lose enough seats that they'll find themselves outside government.

    387:

    Almost certainly the brains complexity is beyond what is needed for computation since most of the cellular machinery is there to keep it alive and metabolising. Anyway, we should know within a decade since Human scale whole brain emulations will be possible based on the simpler models.

    388:

    I think you're being disingenuous with a distinction. What is science except the collective work of scientists? When scientists focus their research and experimentation on a moral issue then science takes a turn towards moral guidance.

    For the record, though, your interpretation of how a scientist can respond to science regarding homosexuality is shockingly misanthropic: (b) a scientist can propose to cure homosexuality or murder/sterilize homosexual people? I literally don't understand how this is even reasoning. A scientist can study insects, but that doesn't leave them with the option of (a) accepting insects; (b) eliminating insects; or, (c) not caring about insects. I mean, am I missing something obvious here?

    389:

    The Catalan government already has unofficial embassies throughout the world*, probably one of the reasons they're in economic trouble despite being technically the rich part of the country.

    *34 in toto with plans to open more, but the Spanish government and EU are asking them to close them as condition to receiving bailout money

    390:

    Make that 325 CE for Catholicism (Council of Nicaea, that's the one that settled the iota),

    Not really. Homoiousion fine-tuned a dogma, it didn't start a religion.

    1000 BCE for Hinduism and 500 BCE for Buddhism.

    So it is. Got them mixed up.

    391:

    Regarding 2512, I'd expect to see a significantly smaller human population, with all-cultivated food (e.g. lab-grown meat, synthesised dairy etc).

    Hunting/fishing wild animals will be a niche hobby, and actually killing for real, and eating the meat, will be seen as rather disturbing (like drinking mare's blood is among modern westerners).

    Seeing how wooden building techniques have improved in the last 30 years (well, in Scandinavia at least...), I would expect the notion of building dwellings out of bricks and cement will be considered outlandish. (As for the longevity of wooden houses, well, I grew up in a wooden house built in 1882. While we were renovating that to modern standards, we lived for half a year in another wooden house, built 1681.)

    392:

    Well, at least arguably, the SNP will have fulfilled its function and should quietly disband on the passage of the "Repeal of the 'Act of Union With England (1707)' Act".

    393:

    'Homoiousia' for those who noticed the error. ;-)

    394:

    I'm with you that normal people would choose a). Unfortunately I live in a country where 70 years ago many scientists opted for c). My argument is that science itself does not tell you how to choose, you need proper morals for that. And you can't construct morals by scientific method, either.

    395:

    Charlie (and @366, @367): I couldn't agree more on the continuum of applications for progressively stronger/longer CNT materials -- and should they come along in bulk at reasonable cost, they'd enable a revolution in terrestrial engineering that would dwarf the impact of SE space access for quite a while. (Think not just cables, but fiber-reinforced materials with really stiff fibers...)

    But a depressingly large fraction of SE enthusiasts that I encountered in 2004-2007 (and still see in cyberSPAAAACE) accepted too readily Brad Edwards' assurance that 100-Gpa-or-better materials were coming RSN. Edwards is a fine physicist and space mission scientist, but he's not a materials scientist or process engineer -- and it showed.

    As a corollary, the true believers also tended to see the SE tail wagging the CNT dog. They thought that the demand for cheap access to space would naturally be the driver of progress -- rather than IBM research's interest in CNTs for microelectronics, or DuPont's and Mitsubishi's interest in stronger fibers for everything, or Siemens' interest in both, or everybody and his brother looking into graphene sheets and CNT connectors for solar panels, superdupercapacitors...

    @374: Radiation resistance is a genuine issue that needs work. So is the management of oscillations in a taut, low-mass, hardly-damped 100,000-km "string. Steve Patamia has looked into it, and the dynamics are amazingly hairy to model, let alone control.

    396:

    Andreas V @ 354 They actiually got a start on Ball-lightning, especially when one managed in the middle of a fen thunderstorm, to appear INSIDE the Cavendish!

    paws4thot @ 376 BRITAIN doesn't have a credible blue-ater navy right now! & your supposed point was? Apart from the crash effect on employment in Alba, as soon as the (English) defence plug is pulled - & it will be. & Charlie @ 379 Actually, Alba needs a navy fractionally smaller than the whole present UK one, but much differently constructed. Fast frigates / minesweepers/ destroyers with heli & drone capability. Perhaps a small air-carrier (are they becoming obsolete?) Maybe 2-5 non-strateg subs??? Remember, anyone want in to attack England, will immediately go for Scotland (weaker) first - been done MANY times before.....

    Justin @ 380 "No god is detectable" & therefore all gods are irrelevant. To prove me wrong, and make it worthwhile taking any god seriously, all you have to do is detect him/her/it/them SIMPLES!

    ss@ 384 BUT It ISN'T ABOUT independance for Scotland, actually. It's about more power for lying slime-bag Salmond! A man who makes Anthony Blair look straight & honest!

    397:

    Justin @ 380 "No god is detectable" & therefore all gods are irrelevant. To prove me wrong, and make it worthwhile taking any god seriously, all you have to do is detect him/her/it/them SIMPLES!

    Detectable, yes. In a way that hits you in the face, forcing assent and submission, no.

    Proofs: among others, my previous post; the Shroud (try refuting it); biological micro-engineering (try making random chance stick); the origin of the universe in time, and more. These are examples that a lot of ink has been spilt over but that have not gone away, like the flat earth and the gods on Olympus have gone away.

    398:

    No termites in your location then!

    We do have a number of wood buildings from the mid 1800's in California, although they are not common and I am not clear how well constructed they are, what modifications were made and what maintenance is required.

    To some extent, much of the wood in a stick built California style ranch house could be replaced by steel, although at a cost of making the structure more difficult to remodel. That's probably why steel has been mostly restricted to commercial buildings.

    Apart from cost, I'm surprised that we still use simple lumber for framing, rather than engineered box sections [of plywood?] that could be very strong and lightweight. I do see prefabricated wood roof trusses for some projects, so there is some attempt to use newer approaches to materials and structures.

    399:

    biological micro-engineering (try making random chance stick)

    This sounds like Behe's "irreducible complexity" argument. It's been shown to be incorrect. Or perhaps you are referring to the "wind blowing through a scrapyard cannot male a Boeing 747" argument? Again, wrong because evolution does solve the problem. But perhaps you have something else in mind?

    400:

    You're a young-earth creationist trolling this forum. Admit it.

    401: 394 - Cite to 376 and 379 - Cites needed please. In particular, I'd like to see cites to the claim that "England has been invaded via Scotland many times before".

    Cite to 384 - Are you trolling, unaware of the history of the SNP, or just libelling a man you don't like? The SNP is decades older than Wee Eck.

    402:

    From his other comments today, I'd guess that Silly Swordsman is from Scotland too.

    403:

    Usually I find proofs for the non-existence of god more convincing than the other kind. Maybe you want to elaborate on how the Shroud is a proof so I can pick it apart?

    404:

    justin @ 395 Oh dear: "Detectable" by ANY scientific means. We can go from massless particles up through neutrinoes atoms molecules, life, planets all the way to super-galaxy clusters in deep space & time ... no BigSkyFaiy anywhere. Show please? Not "in a way that hits you in the face" at all, just ... detectable. PLEASE DON'T try to put words into my mouth, you really won't like my response if you try that trick again.

    paws4thot 1745? 1715? For starters ....

    405:

    Sorry about being a little late to the party.

    Just some initial comments....

    "Large chunks of sub-Saharan Africa, China, India, Brazil, and the US midwest and south are going to be uninhabitably hot"

    The opposite could also occur with global warming preceding another ice age (see "The Great Climate Flip Flop", Atlantic Monthly, http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/98jan/climate.htm ) and large areas of Eurasia being rendered unihabitable by ice sheets.

    Or ... we geohack the planet to prevent global warming and find out that global warming was keeping another ice age at bay since the start of the industrial age (IIRC we are about 1,000 years overdue for an ice age).

    I'm not a AGW denier, I firmly believe that human activity is causing the Earth to warm up. However, I also believe that our understanding of Earth's climate is still in its infancy, which greatly increases the odds of screwing things up. No matter what our level of knowledge, and no matter how sophisticated our computer models, it will always be extremely difficult to achieve that perfect climate balance.

    For a good description of how easy it is to throw the Earth's climate out of whack, even without industry burning massive amounts of fossil fuels, see "1493" by Charles Mann, describing how discovery of the New World altered the climate and environment of the world as a whole.

    For example, there is Richard Nevle's theory that prior to being nearly wiped out by diseases brought by the European colonists, Native Americans extensively used slash and burn agriculture across North America. This greatly added to the atmosphere's carbon load while reducing the vegetation that could have reabsorbed the carbon. Early settler described forests sparse enough to drive carraiges through. Eliminate the Native Americans with disease and eliminate their slash and burn agriculture, then you reduce the Earth's CO2 levels to the point where the Little Ice Age really starts.

    My guess is that over the next 500 years, we will screw with the climate and then screw it up even further trying to fix the environment until some sort of new equilibirum is established - a new state that could be either hotter or colder, wetter or dryer than it is now.

    [[ Mod: fixed link. Be careful about trailing brackets ]]

    406:

    "I think there's a high probability (approaching certainty) that we'll be running on a de-carbonized energy cycle by then"

    Nothing beats hydrocarbons in terms of energy density, ease of storage and simplicity of use. Not hydrogen, not even the best lithium batteries, nothing can match good old fashioned diesel and gasoline. Which is why you don't see electric cars and never will. Its not a conspiracy of the oil companies, its a conspiracy of physics.

    But the fossil fuels won't come from fossils. They'll come from genetically modified algea, bacteria and plants that convert sewage and sunshine into fuel.

    407:

    So attempts by the House of Stewart to overthrow the (to them anyway) usurping House of Hanover are invasions then? A fast skim of Wikipedia suggests that the French and Spanish committed something like 6_000 soldiers and sailors between the 15, the 19 and the 45. If the clans had chosen to do so, they could have put your "invasion force" back into the sea using farmers and militia alone.

    408:

    I think there's a high probability (approaching certainty) that we'll be running on a de-carbonized energy cycle by then

    Bad phrasing on my part. Not de-carbonized, but de-fossil-carbonized. (Renewable carbon combustibles that don't inject additional CO2 into the biosphere aren't really a problem.)

    409:

    Never see electric cars? Luckily thats So Not True.

    Because the hybrids in my neighbourhood are so silent when running on electric, if they were also invisible I'd never know what had hit me! ;-)

    410:

    All it needs for electric cars to take over is a range of 300 miles and a charge time of less than 1 hour. We are almost there now.

    411:

    You're a young-earth creationist trolling this forum. Admit it.

    I admit I'm a bit naive, internet-wise. I had to go to Wiki to get a definition of trolling:

    In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory,[3] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as a forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[4] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.i

    Hoo boy!

    I'm not a young-earthie. Creationism - it's the last 15 minutes of 12 Angry Men and the majority like the design arguments. But really, I'm here because I liked your assessment of the impracticalities of space colonisation, having reached the same conclusion myself. Your mention of the Catholic Church sparked an interesting side issue that was a bit off-topic, I admit.

    No agenda, but I do have an RC point of view. However sci-fi's the reason I came to this blog in the first place.

    412:

    By the shroud you mean the shroud of Turin? I thought that was carbon dated to the 15th century or thereabouts.

    I saw a documentary that described a dark room photo imprinting process that could explain the shroud's markings, they suggested Leonardo as the probable culprit (Then again he's sort of an attractor for that kind of thing, given he's the biggest name in that era for anything science related).

    Regarding science and rare events, that's pretty much what astrophysics are all about, a supernova is something that happens once in a billion years. Fortunately we have billions of stars to look at, so we can expect to see them happen regularly. Ditto with atomic level stuff.

    Desiging experiments to capture similarly rare phenomena in human scale environments does sound like a challenge but there's those precedents to work from. Perhaps high quality simulations will allow us to make educated guesses.

    413:

    I think it could lead to less walls between us and more shared space, because today we are learning to share our lifes in VR and it will tip into our RR (real reality, what a nice distinction) in the future.

    As far as I know, the most commonly accepted term for "opposite of VR" is RL -- "Real Life".

    414:

    By the shroud you mean the shroud of Turin? I thought that was carbon dated to the 15th century or thereabouts.

    Yes, that's the one. The 1988 C14 test is under the spotlight. See this BBC documentary.

    I saw a documentary that described a dark room photo imprinting process that could explain the shroud's markings, they suggested Leonardo as the probable culprit (Then again he's sort of an attractor for that kind of thing, given he's the biggest name in that era for anything science related).

    The bottom line is that there's no natural explanation for the shroud markings that explains every aspect of them. No trace of chemicals, discolourations too superficial to have been caused by any kind of heated statue technique, and so on. A slew of scientific detail that I can't begin to summarise here (wrong place anyhow).

    415:

    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguisable from magic (and hence from supersticion and religion)>

    416:

    Why assume that the demographic transition is the last word on population growth? There could easily be a tiny fraction of the population that is "immune" to the demographic transition and continues to reproduce at high fertility rates. Assuming such a group doubles every generation, given 500 years (20ish generations), it would grow by a factor on the order of a million.

    Immune how? There are very good economic reasons for demographic transition, which is why it occurs everywhere in the world, pretty much regardless of religion or culture. To put it simply -- in modern technological society, to have many children is to condemn them to poverty. (Unless you are already very rich, and even then it means diluting the wealth.) Any group which does that -- their children look around, see how much better they could have been if their parents were not stupidly prolific, and DO NOT have as many children themselves. This is already true worldwide -- look up how many Amish drop out of being Amish. The only high-reproduction group which so far has largely escaped this "bleed" are Orthodox Jews in Israel -- and only because Israeli government subsidizes them. That won't last forever.

    417:

    We don't even need that: we just need convient hire options for a diesel generator pack in a trailer, and a standard for in-drive charging.

    (In other words: it's a pure electric car about town or for short road trips. Want to ferry it a long way, rent a trailer that turns it into a hybrid.)

    418:

    Just a heads-up: Byron Dorgan, one of the few Senators who voted against the repeal of Glass-Steagall, is actually a liberal Democrat rather than a Republican, who voted en bloc for repeal.

    As for blaming Clinton, there was no way he could veto the thing since the Senate had way more than the necessary supermajority needed for a veto override.

    419:

    If you know the Church from the inside out you would know that the chances of a female or automated pope range from zip to zero.

    Today, yes. Back when Vatican II was going on, that wasn't so clear - ordination of women was a hot topic for a few years. As it turned out, the church didn't go that way. There are good reasons why priests are men, and the current thinking seems to be that maintaining that tradition is best. This could change again in a few generations; maybe female ordination will be a popular cause again in 2062.

    For those who find this unlikely, I'll remind them that priestly celibacy is relatively recent, in the form it's usually thought of. (Not entirely: a prohibition on priests castrating themselves goes back to the Council of Nicea.) Even today one can be a legitimately married and sexually active Catholic priest via a few routes. Since we're looking at a 500 year period I'll note that we're almost 500 years away from Martin Luthor getting married (to Katharina von Bora in 1525) and Edward VI changing the rules for Anglican priests in 1547, after which they could marry.

    Of course, the question of female ordination becomes less meaningful once medicine advances enough that sex changes are safe, effective, and routine. Maybe it's just the custom that you have to wear a penis for church services.

    The religious reaction to uploaded personalities is trickier, but Norman Spinrad already wrote Deus X.

    Genetically changed humans and uploaded animals will probably require only small and brief transitions in thinking; once something can speak and demonstrate reason, it's human enough to understand moral lessons.

    I tend to think on the lines of A Canticle for Liebowitz, in which the Church keeps its identity intact but finds itself out of sync in differing ways and degrees with the world around it. Being out of sync, paradoxically, suits the Church to the ground.

    In five hundred years I'd expect this cycle to go around several times. It will presumably drift out of relevancy, wake up to smell the coffee, have a big exciting round of reform and modernization, and after a while relax and become complacent. Repeatedly.

    I mentioned the Catholic Church more or less at random, as a good example of a long lived institution, but it seems plenty of folks have something to say about it. Great.

    420:

    All I'll say is that the person who fed me the quote was a Republican, and seemed a bit surprised by the quote's existance.

    421:

    "Nothing beats hydrocarbons in terms of energy density, ease of storage and simplicity of use."

    But there's also "cost". Fossil hydrocarbons have been nice and cheap. Ones we have to synthesize from the atmosphere might not be cheap enough for mass private automobiles like today. You need a lot of energy to make them from scratch, and then you remember that you're wasting 75% of that energy since mobile IC engines aren't that efficient. If you need 1 Joule to move a car, you need 4 Joules in the tank, and may need 8 or more Joules of solar input to fill that tank. Electric cars don't look so bad then. Deciding that you don't need a car at all, and going with public transit / bicycles / electric bicycles can look even better.

    422:

    GM will sell you a very nice car featuring something very much like that, except the engine isn't on a trailer. It's called a Volt stateside, Ampera on your side of the pond.

    As to Daniel.duffy20's notion that electric cars don't exist, these can run for 35 miles before switching to charge sustaining mode. Something like 75% of daily driving is less than that range, so the car can be called mostly electric.

    Besides, Tesla seems to be doing fairly well selling non-existent electric automobiles. A few of the mythical beasts even passed me on the highway.

    423:

    Catholicism does not go back to 4 BC. The alleged birth of Jesus does. The roots of Christianity start around 30 AD and developed over the next couple of centuries. The documents go back early -- just as the Vedas and the Torah do -- but the religions and institutions (if any) surrounding those documents have changed a lot. There's stuff we call Hinduism or Judaism or Christianity now and 2000 years ago, but if you look under the names they're not exactly the same things.

    424:

    As a historical artifact, the shroud is interesting, but as proof of divinity it's rather... embarrasing.

    The entity that allegedly began time, spun up the pulsars, seeded the myriad stars in the sky, from the small dwarf stars to the behemoth giants that dwarf our whole solar system... this being, powerful beyond imagination, left us a rag with a face on it as proof of its existence?

    Seriously?

    425:

    Is the Volt/Milliampera really anything more than an LA/London Con Tax friendly though? 35 miles might manage my commute, as long as it was dry and daylight (which it hasn't been at least one of more or less the last 3 weeks) except that the last mile is up a 1:12 hill and there's an unpredictable but almost certainly non-zero number of dead stops en route.

    So where does the electricity come from to refill the battery pack? If it's the onboard gennie set, then I've got a compromised petrol car. If it's the grid, we've got to get around the transmission losses that give a "pure electric" car effective CO2 of about 160g/km.

    426:

    Further, even assuming (despite evidence) that it is proof of something supernatural, there is absolutely no reason to conclude it's proof of the Christian deity, or of the Nazarene.

    I'm refraining from my honest opinion, because it's unnecessarily rude.

    427:

    Transmission losses will happen either from an internal combustion engine or a power plant, but the power plant is much more efficient, with some well over 50% [1] as compared with 25% for an automobile engine -- and accumulated losses from plant alternator to battery out are nowhere near 50%. The grid doesn't solely rely on fossil fuels, either, with nuclear / hydro / wind / solar thrown into the mix, so the carbon load is reduced to the extent those contribute power.

    [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil-fuel_power_station#Gas_turbine_plants

    Electric cars also use regenerative braking and shut down the motor when stopped, further conserving energy.

    As for the Volt being a "compromised" electric car, I prefer to think of it as a more versatile automobile which runs on electricity for my local runabouts and kicks in an auxiliary generator on the few occasions when I drive beyond the battery's range.

    428:

    "Immune how?"

    Religion. Those having large families are doing so indefiance of econom,ic logic because their faith promotes large families.

    http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/faith-equals-fertility

    Nobody knows exactly why religion and fertility tend to go together. Conventional wisdom says that female education, urbanisation, falling infant mortality, and the switch from agriculture to industry and services all tend to cause declines in both religiosity and birth rates. In other words, secularisation and smaller families are caused by the same things. Also, many religions enjoin believers to marry early, abjure abortion and sometimes even contraception, all of which leads to larger families. But there may be a quite different factor at work as well. Having a large family might itself sometimes make people more religious, or make them less likely to lose their religion. Perhaps religion and fertility are linked in several ways at the same time.

    The future belongs to religious conservatives.

    429:

    "As to Daniel.duffy20's notion that electric cars don't exist"

    I should have said, don't exist inlarge numbers. And this is a good thing.

    All batteries wear out. A warn out battery is a small clump of toxic waste. A warn out electical car battery array is a large pile of toxic waste. Millions of worn out electic car battery arrays are a massive toxic waste disposal problem.

    In terms of efficiency and cosgt per energy no electic battery can ever hope to compete with a gallon of gas.

    430:

    30 years? My erstwhile neighbourhood was built fifty years ago and everything still stands quite nicely thank you very much, even despite Canadian winters, and the older (yes, I know, bloody UKers) parts of town are doing well after eighty years. As another datum, The Boyfriend's place has over 100 years of surviving the usual California earthquakes. This brings us to another point -- stick construction is less likely than stone walls to leave a divot in your head when Gaia throws a bender.

    I won't speak to newer stuff, which looks like it's slapped together from piss & plaster, but lumber construction was well done within living memory.

    431:

    "All it needs for electric cars to take over is a range of 300 miles and a charge time of less than 1 hour."

    It also needs operational and capital costs lower than that of a fossil fuel powered internal combustion engine in order to compete in the market place.

    That will never happen unless you change the laws of physics OR peak oil becomes a reality and gas prices rise to the point that electric cars become cost competitive.

    With America becoming the new Saudi Arabia by 2020, peak oil is not going to happen in the forseeable future:

    http://www.businessinsider.com/iea-the-us-to-become-the-worlds-top-oil-producer-before-the-year-2020-2012-11

    432:

    paws4thot @ 405 Oh "the house of Stuart" - backed by LOTS of French money, if not lots of men .... Nice wind-up try, though!

    justin @ 409 " but I do have an RC point of view." CORRECTION You have an RC brainwashing. Please delete it NOW

    @ 426 I hope & expect not Scary

    433:

    2512?

    You couldn't wait 13 more years and have all your questions answered by Zager and Evans?

    434:

    "Go forward 500 years and extrapolate from today's Predator drone, analogizing it to a 1500s arquebus ... it's not pretty."

    To quote Dr. Evil: "Frickin' laser beams!"

    The laser and other directed energy weapons will change warfare as much as gunpowder did.

    Truely effective and powerful "see the target and kill the target" lasers make satellites, spacecraft, aircraft, missiles, helicopters, and even artillery and mortar shells obsolete. They will do to any orbitting, airborne or unarmored object what machine guns did to infantry in the Great War.

    Armor evolves to becomes heat resitant ceramics insted of impact resistant plating. AFVs beimg armed with powerful lasers, individual soldiers will still use assault guns shooting bullets (still the most energy efficient form of individual firepower). The power plant for an effective laser would be too heavy for a soldier to carry himself even if he wears an exoskeleton. Robots and drones outnumber humans on the battle field by 10 or 100 to 1. Each soldier being effectively an NCO commanding dozens of robot grunts.

    Unable to deliver nukes by aircraft and missile, strategic weapons will be nanotech, cyber and bio weapons delivered by stealth.

    With aircraft obsolete, aircraft carriers will be too. The dominant naval vessel will be the submarine which can hide and use the water's depths to deflect a laser's energy and fight back with pop up lasers of their own. They will resemble sharks - sharks with frickin' laser beams!!!

    435:

    Actually, I'd say that science does all three:

    a) explain the world b) provide moral guidance c) act as a political tool to control people

    That is science as a monolithic institution, which, of course, it isn't, but we'll pretend for the sake of rhetoric.

    Moral guidance certainly shows up in the environmental sciences, ecology, conservation biology, and similar. It also shows up in fields such as public health and medicine ("first, do no harm," is part of the Hippocratic oath). Climate science started off apolitical, but it is rapidly becoming politicized, and all the sustainability talk is certainly moral. Looking back a few decades, eugenics and population control are also explicitly moral, although we disagree with their morality today.

    As for a political tool to control people...do you really believe that academia isn't politicized, and doesn't affect state and federal politics? To pick one of many examples, the Cold War was a tech race. One could say that it was science and technology subjugating itself to political goals, but one could equally say that science and technology encouraged the various arms races as a way to grow. It was truly a symbiosis.

    436:

    [A battery electric vehicle] needs operational and capital costs lower than that of a fossil fuel powered internal combustion engine in order to compete in the market place.

    That will never happen unless you change the laws of physics OR peak oil becomes a reality and gas prices rise to the point that electric cars become cost competitive.

    Electric vehicles already have much lower operational expenses than ICE vehicles. In Toronto, for example, a Nissan Leaf is about 7 times cheaper per kilometer to operate from residential electricity than a Nissan Sentra is to operate from petrol at the pump. But you might not even break even on lifetime costs due to higher capital costs for the Leaf, largely from batteries.

    What laws of physics would need to be broken to lower lithium ion battery costs to, say, $250 per kilowatt hour of capacity from $700? The most expensive/rarest material in Li-ion batteries is cobalt, and at most a battery needs 2.4 kg of Co per kilowatt hour of capacity. At current prices that comes to $55 of cobalt plus maybe $15 in other raw materials. $60 of raw materials is currently turning into nearly $700 for 1 kilowatt hour of finished battery. Is that an immutable ratio?

    Here's a provocative analogy: today, the best silicon-based PV manufacturers have about $0.60 per watt in manufacturing costs on top of $0.20 per watt for silicon. In 2004, silicon cost about $0.32 per watt but manufacturing costs added about $2.60 per watt. In 8 years the ratio of costs between bulk materials and finished devices fell from about 9:1 to 4:1. If battery manufacturers can achieve something comparable over the next 8 years, lifetime costs of EVs will be lower than those of ICEs for most of the world's car drivers, even without any greater divergence of costs between electricity and liquid fuels.

    437:

    You'd guess wrong then. He lives about a mile from here, in Royston to the south of Cambridge, and has done for the last decade or so. Before that (when we first knew him) he still resided in Sweden.

    So he comes from a country with a long tradition of well-built wooden housing, and not a lot of termites.

    438:

    There are very good economic reasons for demographic transition

    Those reasons may not be applicable in the near future, let alone 500 years from now. Increasing automation, let alone AI, may make the economic value of education negligible; most skills may be better implemented in software than in brains. The end of the Pax Americana may make having only one or two children seem unreasonably risky. Also, the last time we had a world with negligible economic growth (antiquity to 1600 AD, roughly), constant warfare made it necessary to generate a bigger cohort of military-aged males than competing nations/tribes could field.

    439:

    Greg@353: It's not entirely clear to me to what extent pi is fundamental, and to what extent it shows up as an artifact of our bias toward right triangles.

    440:

    The laser and other directed energy weapons will change warfare as much as gunpowder did.

    Truely effective and powerful "see the target and kill the target" lasers make satellites, spacecraft, aircraft, missiles, helicopters, and even artillery and mortar shells obsolete. They will do to any orbitting, airborne or unarmored object what machine guns did to infantry in the Great War.

    Alternatively, time of military action will be tied much more closely to atmospheric conditions. Fog, rain, snow, low clouds, and combustion haze will provide the atmospheric "terrain" that defends machines and soldiers from lasers. Artificial smoke screens become more about neutralizing laser weapons than about hiding movements.

    There's a sword of Damocles hanging above the battlefield even with current COTS lasers: blinding laser weapons. Current diode lasers costing less than $20 can easily and rapidly cause permanent eye damage while running off of small batteries. Many pocket digital cameras can pick out human faces, and even the locations of eyes on the faces, from scenes in real time. There are no technology controls on ordinary diode lasers like those found in DVD recorders. A single shipping container of laser modules could supply a mid-size nation's military for years.

    It seems to me that we're only a hop, skip, and a jump away from turning cheap, unregulated electronics into monstrous machines that blind people with tremendous speed and accuracy. These weapons would be silent, speed-of-light, low cost, easy to automate with or without humans in the loop, and extremely effective at rendering fighters helpless but leaving them alive and needing resources. They're unlikely to be developed by major military powers, because they would only undermine those powers' relative battlefield advantages (and would violate treaties, but that's incidental). They're also unlikely to be developed by dirt poor non-state actors, since they require some modest R&D effort. But I could certainly see them popping up in a future war between smaller nation states, and once developed non-state actors might borrow or imitate the technology.

    441:

    The first part of your post contradicts the second. If human skills are worthless, soldiering isn't likely to be a viable career anyway.

    Zorro's post is a good example why warm bodies don't mean much on the modern battlefield. I imagine mass blinding weaponry would at least spur r&d into cyberoptics pretty rapidly. Soldiers would come with artificial eyes by default.

    Although there's a precedent with chemical warfare, chlorine gas blinds people and the treaties barring it's use were respected in WWII. Laser blinders might be harder to control if the electronics+know how become ubiquitous enough

    442:

    Although there's a precedent with chemical warfare, chlorine gas blinds people and the treaties barring it's use were respected in WWII. Laser blinders might be harder to control if the electronics+know how become ubiquitous enough

    Yes, it's possible that people will pre-emptively appreciate the dire consequences of blinding devices and elect not to use them. There is partial precedent with chemical weapons and better precedent with biological and thermonuclear weapons.

    I think that even if blinding lasers specifically don't get mated to autonomous vehicles with machine vision, we will see autonomous vehicles with machine vision and more conventional weapons, like small caliber guns. The machine that creeps around and shoots people based on certain visual characteristics isn't much less horrifying than the machine that blinds them. It's deadlier, less clearly illegal, but noisier and more dependent on external resupply.

    Most of us have probably seen video games where autonomous gun turrets try to shoot the player. They are usually just annoyances in games. When implemented in real life they'll be far more deadly, since they will be able to move, and nobody will be decreasing their firepower, accuracy, or reaction times for purposes of "game balance."

    443:

    If human skills are worthless, soldiering isn't likely to be a viable career anyway.

    It depends on what skill level you require of soldiers, and what other career options are available. The soldiers I'm thinking of look more like Lord's Resistance Army than Navy SEALs. Low cost teenage trigger-pullers with $2 AKs are likely to remain more adaptable than machines for some time when trained by the University of Life, the School of Hard Knocks, and the Kindergarten of Watching Your Best Friend Get Shot.

    444:

    You're confusing Science with Technology, a common error. Science is about thinking, not doing. Technology is about doing, not thinking.

    445:

    "...North American English is already diferentiating into (Mutually) unintelligible dialects; ever hear Ebonics?"

    Actually, African American English is the result of movement in the other direction. The pidgens spoken by first-generation slaves developed into creoles such as Gullah -- which are fading away.

    446:

    I get along without a car reasonably well in the Twin Cities; and it's getting easier.

    Living in Los Angeles without a car was...interesting, but I managed it for about ten years.

    447:

    "Religions wax and wane over time; you can still find Zoroastrians, Stoics, or followers of the Norse gods, but they're relatively rare."

    More precisely, there are AGAIN followers of the Norse gods.

    448:

    500 years is far to long to predict anything really.

    I suspect it won't be very pleasant and they won't remember anything about us postdating printed books One solid EMP event which has a non trivial chance of happening in that time could destroy a lot of informatiom assuming format loss doesn't get it forst/

    If I had to guess I'd suggest the future will vaguely resemble the early 19th century with somewhat better tech in places.

    I suspect cheap energy and cheap food will have long been a thing of the past and warfare though not nation state war at first will be common as groups fight over spoils.

    The population will have self reduced and died-back to a sustainable number,maybe I don't know 1 or 2 billion tops, maybe much less.

    It will also be a lot more conservative (in the political sense) and probably highly religious as well. Athiesm and Agnocisticsm are reproduction failure prone memes whereas religion is not. We may not recognize any of the faiths though.

    . This might not effect Europe unless a new meme comes up though there is an outside chance given birth rates Europe might also be a Caliphate too which will have interesting consequences depending on what flaor of Islam wins.

    Eventually the loss/inability to maintain certain technologies might actually increase nation state warfare. Nukes are a great peace keeper and if few people or none have them or any of the precision guided techonlogies, war becomes a viable option .This does not require much in the way of non renwable either resoutces (wood and mental and saltpeter are fine)

    Those states will be smaller though and far more homogenuius based around shared identities, not exactly race but something akin to it, tribe, clan something.

    As for the race issue, well, humans are evolved from tribal banding primates and as such they will always have ingroups and outgroups,

    those groups are going to change but they will be there . We may not recognize races the same way but there will be something akin to them as well as tribes.

    449:

    My question is, what would/will human civilization be like in the absence of a true frontier? If all territory is claimed, under surveillance and developed, wouldn't this create a rather dystopian "prison planet" where there is no place to try really new ideas? Wouldn't a frontierless society with little progress tend toward some kind of dismal monarchy/theocracy/totalitarian state, where few people dare to hope for a better future?

    This is why I hope space colonization is in the cards, because otherwise I fear that 2512 won't be a place where our current notions of freedom, progress and opportunity will exist.

    450:

    "Detectable" by ANY scientific means. We can go from massless particles up through neutrinoes atoms molecules, life, planets all the way to super-galaxy clusters in deep space & time ... no BigSkyFaiy anywhere. Show please?

    Oh, you're looking for a God who can be measured by scientific instruments. I was thinking of one whose existence can be deduced without him being directly observable.

    The problem is that I can't show you a God in the way you ask. A big blob in the sky would by definition not be God.

    I think you're working on the premise that if something doesn't have physical attributes then it can't exist. I was going on the assumption that there can be entities who do not have volume, mass, atomic (or at least sub-atomic) structure, etc.

    451:

    I think you're working on the premise that if something doesn't have physical attributes then it can't exist. I was going on the assumption that there can be entities who do not have volume, mass, atomic (or at least sub-atomic) structure, etc.

    If an entity exist, it must be detectable either directly or via its effects. And by detectable, that must mean it disturbs the universe in some way we can perceive.

    If it cannot, how could you JUST KNOW it exists? If you are going to suggest that he reveals himself in some mysterious, non-material way, how can you be sure that: 1. that you aren't fooling yourself. 2. the entity is the one you think it is, and not another?

    You have already suggested that the complexity of life is one proof, and that the Turin Shroud is another. Both are explicable without resorting to supernatural forces. So how can you be sure that point 1 above doesn't apply?

    452:
    among others, my previous post; the Shroud (try refuting it)

    Well, since I agree with Feyerabend that reason is the slave of the passions, we can try, but are unlikely to succeed. There are easier targets, but since this fracas has been going on for some time (scrutinizing relics is basically older than modernity), those tend to have been weeded out. BTW, agnostic RC here. ;)

    Since I know discussions like that from the inside, just ask a female friend of mine trying to be the voice of reason(1), I somewhat doubt this is likely to change.

    (1) Which is slave to her passions; you see, she and the girl we talk about are totally different, they just listen to the same music, share some exes, quite a few behaviours...

    453:

    I think we have different concepts of science. You take it as the group of all people who are working in science and I take it as concept, a set of rules that is designed to promote knowledge.

    Any group of people working together will need some moral guidance, but for scientists that is independent of science as a concept. Since science has objectivity as a goal, and there are contradicting moral systems around, science can not tell which is "true" or "false"; all it can do is highlight inconsistencies within a moral systems or predict consequences of applying that system.

    And while science can provide tools for controlling people, it is not used itself as a political tool to control people. Given that skepticism is an integral part of science, I doubt that could work anyway.

    454:

    Religion. Those having large families are doing so indefiance of econom,ic logic because their faith promotes large families.

    Explain Iran, then. (UN report, PDF.)

    (TFR of 7.7 in 1960 dropped to 2.17 in 2000 (per UN study); dropped to 1.67 in 2010 per World Bank figures.

    Has religiosity in Iran dropped by nearly a factor of five in the past fifty years?

    455:

    I'm just waiting for some bright spark to come up with an anti-(anti-missile laser)-missile that uses the anti-missile laser's beam energy to heat its reaction mass and provide a handy targeting signal.

    Sort of like the way anti-radiation missiles use an enemy radar transmitter's own emissions as a target to home in on, only even more extreme.

    Less facetiously: I'm not convinced by laser weapons. Lasers are only about 20% energy efficient, at best; so for every kilowatt you hit the target with, you need a heat sink capable of absorbing five kilowatts at the transmitter end. This is probably okay for warships (they sit in a heat sink called "the ocean") but not so good for ground vehicles or aircraft. Much less satellites (weight-constrained and sitting in a very good insulator, i.e. hard vacuum).

    Then you need to consider transmission loss. Weapon lasers need to be tuned to wavelengths that pass through air with relatively little absorption. Fog, mist, or clouds mess with them by inducing refraction. High energies may be unsustainable because if they are absorbed, you end up with ionization and a plasma forming along the beam path -- which is opaque to light. (The one way out of that is a hybrid laser/electric weapon -- use laser to create plasma, then zap a high current down it, i.e. artificial directed lightning).

    Finally you've got the problem of building and maintaining (in battlefield conditions) the high quality optics needed to optically target the enemy at long range and survive being blasted (at very short range!) by a weapons-grade laser without warping and melting.

    TL:DR; there's a reason the Pentagon retired the Airborn Laser 747s a couple of months ago. I can believe it as a shipboard point-defense weapon -- replacing Phalanx and Goalkeeper -- and possibly for close-range defense of ground installations against mortar and artillery fire (the Israeli gadget that comes in about four shipping containers and can shoot down $50 mortar rounds at a kilometer's range in an arid, near-desert climate). But they ain't magic.

    456:
    If I can crack the problem of altering the gene that handles cell reproduction in my body and discover immortality, I'll wager 12 months salary (not much) that in 500 years I'll be seeing a male priesthood supplying male bishops who will elect a male pope.

    Quite likely. But maybe also quite likely irrelevant.

    Personally, I agree female Roman Catholic priests are about as likely as me living to the year 2512, but then, I'm still hoping for the latter. As for female priests, err, the examples I know (n=1) are not what I'm looking for in a priest, for similar reasons I always thought the education of social pedagogy should include being dumped in some downtrodden park near a railway station in a bigger city with nothing but a nearly empty telephone card(thanks to Heinlein's SST for the inspiration)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_pedagogy

    To explain my sarcasm, we are basically talking about a bunch of welloff, neurotic, paternalistic youngsters solving every problem except their own. Err. Ok, not that most male priests are that much better. And maybe it's time for us men to be told what to do with our body. though only maybe. But let's return to the problem at hand...

    If nothing else, brand loyalty for Catholicism focuses on "eternal, immutable", where changing too much would be akin to Apple firing their service department. Of course, there is always Vaticanum II, which illustrates both why this is unlikely for brand image reasons and that nevertheless it might happen. Just ask any sedevacantist.

    One of the major problems of the contemporary RC church in Germany is a lack of priests, importing them from abroad is a debatable, though IMHO suboptimal option, though that's somewhat interesting with migrant (e.g. in this case mainly Polish) communities. As already mentioned, I don't think female ordination to happen, especially since the main impetus of contemporary church policy seems to be to, err, soften/go back on some of the reforms of Vatican II to mollify the Traditionalist Catholic flock. What IMHO is more likely to happen is that we see some softening with the ordination of new priests, e.g. ordinating older deacons, where quite a few of those are married. Also note that celibacy is not implemented in quite a few of the Eastern Catholic Churches, where those overlap with some of the fastest growing sectors of the RC church.

    Nevertheless, I guess we're likely to see more laity in the church, "priesthood of all believers" is highly unlikely, especially given brand identity issues with Protestant churches, but quite a big chunk of what priests do today, not just in pastoral care, but also in liturgy, is going to be done by laity. Eucharist is likely to remain the domain of ordained priest, but then, frequent communion is something of a late (12th century, IIRC, linked somewhat to the evolution of celibacy, no sex before Eucharist for the priest, you see) innovation.

    Of course, this "laity" is going to be highly organized, so think more along the lines of a "clergy with benefits".

    But with more work for laity, laity is likely to ask for more influence. Even today we see this happen, and of all places, with the guys who want to go back on Vatican II. Because with the already mentioned Traditionalist Catholics, I have a hard time explaining to those(1) why "more popish than the pope" means not exactly "loyal follower of the pope", except in the sense that the Satsuma Rebellion of "The Last Samurai" fame was loyal to the Japanese emperor. How this relates to female laity remains to be seen, but anecdotal evidence(2) points to a dispropionate share of women in communal life, so when 90% of the "clergy with benefits" is going to be female, keeping them out of higher orders is going to be fun.

    I guess "regular" priest are likely to stay with us, most likely the screening is going to be tougher to weed out the "nuts"(3), but in the long run, one possible outcome is that we're going to see a somewhat more symbolic function, somewhat AKIN to the evolution of the role of the Kohen in Conservative Judaism

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohen#Modern_application

    As for the pope, his continued presence is the thing I'd most certain about, though I'd still qualify it with "quite likely", still, even papal infallibility(4) could just mean something like the Monarchy in the UK(5)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_the_United_Kingdom

    or even less, e.g., he signs the bills and could refuse to, though maybe that'd mean there were quite some questions about him being fit for the position.

    Which, BTW, is one of the interesting points that's going to work out in the next decades, popes are not getting younger, if anything, I have a feeling of them getting older. Till now, we have been spared the worst, watching the last years of John Paul II with Parkinson's were somewhat of a sign of contradiction, but he remained more or less sound(6). But what to do if a pope develops Alzheimers, gets comateous(7) or, to go for something like the worst case scenario, is diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia(8) is not in the manual. Which might be deliberate - anybody familiar with Mr. Irons as Rodrigo Borgia knows it's a bad idea to leave certain loopholes, and expect the usual liberal vs. conservative vs. Traditionalist battle to become a lot hotter when you could dispose a pope you don't like - but is still suboptimal.

    To go for the other usual suspects:

    • Abortion is likely to remain "forbidden", though in medical emergencies, with rape, incest etc. this might just mean some workaround like "excommunicating the persons involved till they repent". As for PID, well, the RC church already opposes IVF, so this could either mean strengthened opposition or "don't ask, don't tell", e.g. "You already sinned because of IVF, repent, and we won't ask any further. Thanks for the new soul in our congregation, BTW." For the actual ethical arithmetic, there is always casuistry:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casuistry#History

    • "No sex before marriage. Seriously, we mean it!!111!eleven." Incidentally, no wonder Catholicism is such a fast-growing religion, our pregnancies (e.g. the interval between marriage and birth) take only three month.

    • I think the stance on contraception might soften somewhat, of course only for married couples, see above. AFAIK part of the reasoning against contraception is teleological, e.g. the target outcome of sex is procreation, so preventing that is WRONG. Don't blame the Catholics, that's Aristotle, AFAIR. Leaving aside couples where a least one person is sterile, and leaving aside that one of the few things that divide us from most animals is the somewhat disconnect between sex and procreation we have, as the Bible say "just look for the birds in the sky", and prohibiting this seems debatable, neurology indicates sex seems to strenghten pair bonding, see oxytocin, so a scientifically informed church, I look your way, Jesuits, might go less literal there. As for homosexual sex, when we include inclusive fitness, that might work too, and see next paragraph. In short, maybe it's time for a marriage of modern evolutionary biology, e.g. inclusive fitness et al. and Rc theology.

    • Homosexual couples. Well, it seems like even some bishops finally agree that stable homosexual relationships are more akin to RC morality than promiscuity, so we might see something of a blessing for the "sinners". For the stance on homosexual sex, see above. As for actual gay marriage, there is the Eucharist of Marriage between man and woman, for the relation to procreation see above, and the blessing by Paul of Tarsus reads somewhat like

    "But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband." 1 Corinthians 7

    or, to interpret somewhat, "If you have to fuck, keep it in the family. No, not this way, you incesteous pervert". And given that precedent, maybe we'll see an extension of the franchise.

    As for the implementation of current homophobic policies, e.g. the place of gay couples in present church life, did I tell you about the two men next to me in the Tridentine mass I visited some time ago...

    Some of the things here might not be in the manual, e.g. the current Magisterium, but then, first of, I don't know which, which might strenghten the point, e.g. indicate Magisterium is somewhat fuzzy on some issues, or weaken my position, e.g. I'm not that knowledgeable about church teachings. But then, this is what canon lawyers are for, and am I the only one who thought Roman Catholic church law is what happens when Judaic law is taken over by Boston Legal's Crance, Poole & Schmidt?

    (1) The fun of Genetics, I don't want to elaborate further.

    (2) Me observing mass, and some statistics.

    (3) Both to the Left and to the Right. If you listen to some of your musical inclined friends talking about their experiences with choral work, you know what I'm talking about.

    (4) Which, for the Non-Catholics here, is quite circumscribed and rarely invoked, the actual cases are up to debate, see

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility#Instances_of_infallible_declarations

    (5) Who, incidentally, still carries the title of "defensor fidei" bestowed by Pope Leo X. on one King Henry VIII. of England. Err.

    (6) I still think abolishing the 'advocatus diaboli' was a bad idea, and a pious Catholics I know agrees, so it's not just my usual heretical stance.

    (7) Warhammer 40K's God-Emperor of Mankind, anyone?

    (8) See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontotemporal_dementia

    Now, we can talk about self-selection in the clergy. And quote Oliver Sacks to show personality modifies manifestations of pathology. Still, a syndrome a) known for severe changes of personality b) possibly leading to sexual disinhibition is likely to interfere with papal duties quite severely.

    457:

    Err, I forgot to include a book about some of those topics, not read it, but it seems interesting:

    http://www.futurechurch.org/newsletter/winter10/thefuturechurchbookreview.htm

    458:
    And while science can provide tools for controlling people, it is not used itself as a political tool to control people. Given that skepticism is an integral part of science, I doubt that could work anyway.

    May I introduce you to "Feyerabend, Paul"?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method

    Though I guess it hardly works as a manual, I agree with Ernst Mayr that it's quite realistic as a description of real life science.

    459:

    Nexialist: My question is, what would/will human civilization be like in the absence of a true frontier? If all territory is claimed, under surveillance and developed, wouldn't this create a rather dystopian "prison planet" where there is no place to try really new ideas?

    You're American, aren't you? :-/

    That falls into the category of "this is a really silly question that only an American would ask". The answer is obvious: see Europe, China, India, Africa. All settled and without a "true frontier" for millennia now.

    The American frontier was an illusion created by the epidemics that swept the continent in the 1490s, killing 90-95% of the inhabitants and leaving a post-holocaust wasteland in front of the uncomprehending colonists.

    460:

    Personally, I agree female Roman Catholic priests are about as likely as me living to the year 2512, but then, I'm still hoping for the latter.

    The RC Church still has a long-term goal of re-absorbing many or all of the Protestant churches.

    One of the most likely to be re-absorbable would appear to be the Church of England -- indeed, some of their priests flounced across to the RCs a few years ago over precisely the matter of the ordination of women.

    Leaving aside the thorny issue of gay rights (which is a ticking bomb between the African/evangelical wing of the C of E and the much more liberal UK/US wing), the C of E is currently debating female bishops. I see this as a ratchet effect on a slope they've already taken the first step down, and would expect the C of E to have its first female archbishop well within the next century. (The head of the C of E is already female -- Elizabeth Windsor, in her role as Queen of England/Wales and Scotland and Defender of the Faith -- so this doesn't seem to represent a huge step.)

    So the RC Church will either have to abandon completely or scale back the long-term goal of re-absorbing the protestant churches, or figure out how to deal with female archbishops. Including married female archbishops. They've already bent the rules sufficiently to allow married C of E priests to function as RC priests -- divorce is a bigger no-no than the non-celibacy thing, it seems -- so it's only a matter of time before they have to address the key dilemma of any religion: "which is more important -- expansion or doctrinal orthodoxy?"

    461:
    If it cannot, how could you JUST KNOW it exists?

    To come somewhat to Justin's rescue, no idea if he wants it...

    While I don't see the biochemical setup of cells requiring supernatural explanation, biologist here, we know the cracks in the design, and I agree with the RC officials who called the Shroud "an icon", I agree that the existence of the universe, space, time and spacetime, is a miracle that demands an explanation. Though if you use god as an explanation, then god's existence is a miracle that demands an explanation - as is the case with any other explanation, e.g. going beyond the Singularity (which is no singularity then).

    Way out of the Demiurg dilemma: a) Gnostic hierarchies of demiurgs. b) Goto loop (in science, one variant is known as Steady State)

    As for miracles and proofs of God's existence in general, I find the idea of a God that leaves inexplainable artifacts but refuses to reveal himself more clearly is something of a paradox, and not every ilogicity is a sublime truth of faith.

    So either the odds are exactly 50-50, and you just choose one side, or are compelled by some part of your neurology to so so. The latter is not necessarily an argument against God, just ask me when I'm in one of my "smiling like some jerkass on MDMA(1) for 2 weeks" binges again, but not for one, either.

    (1) Anecdotal evidence if being in love is as neurotoxic being on some serotonine-catecholamine releasers?

    462:

    We have had some multi century old institutions collapse recently, so I wouldn't really bet the catholic church is immune. If you go to Ireland right now for example, it does not look too healthy at all, almost zero replacement for priests, scandals, cultural dissafection. It will almost certainly be even less of a state actor than it is nowadays.

    Regarding population, 500 years really gives time for diebacks and population booms, you could have a 1 billion population at the end of the 21st century and easily climb back to double or quadruple our current levels if technical civilization gets it's act together again.

    Me, I favour a gentle demographic slide down to sustainable levels - a happy medium between "No one is having babies" and "Only the mad fundies are having litters so they take over by default". I'd point out that even the latter produce apostates (See Fred Phelp's atheist son)

    463:

    You have already suggested that the complexity of life is one proof, and that the Turin Shroud is another. Both are explicable without resorting to supernatural forces. So how can you be sure that point 1 above doesn't apply?

    These are just affirmations, like my own affirmations that the Turin Shroud cannot be explained by natural causes and that biological organisation cannot be reduced to random causational factors. Affirmations by themselves are worth diddly squat. They have to be backed by 500-page studies quoting the factual input (not opinions) of experts, and examining and effectively refuting all the objections. No way one can do that in a thread unless one gives links, and who's got time to follow up on them all?

    Personally, I'd rather discuss something specific that has a chance of reaching a conclusion, like is it technologically possible to create carbon nanotubes long enough for SEs. At least one can get somewhere. I know, I started the religion ball rolling (well, saw it and gave it a nudge). Probably a mistake.

    464:
    The RC Church still has a long-term goal of re-absorbing many or all of the Protestant churches.

    Yes, but this could work both ways. After all, at least in Germany, Reformation got started by a guy who inter alia thought some of RC morals too lax(1).

    So ordination of women might help with e.g. some Anglicans, but then, it would be a major problem with the Orthodox(2), where we have seen quite some action lately.

    As for the other heret'w, err, Protestants, there are quiete soem differences

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordination_of_women_in_Protestant_churches

    In general, having your head up your ass is not a RC prerogative.

    As for married priests, I'm not that up to date with the proceedings on the CoE, but I guess there'd be no problem with instituting an "English rite" akin the Eastern Catholic Churches

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Catholic_Churches#Clerical_celibacy

    where married priests are the norm, though some posts have to be unmarried.

    BTW, I see my "clergy with benefits" even has a precedent with the difference between monastic and non-monastic clergy in EC.

    As for ordination of women along similar lines, e.g. in some Rites, there is no precedent, the ideological sources of Christianity, Hellenistic philosophy, Roman customs and Second Temple Judaism are not that much known for gender equality, nevermind in comparison to some other cultures, they are.

    In general, the RC has said "no" on the question of ordination of women so often a change might lead to better acceptance in the long term, but in the short term it might be the final blow that makes the Catholic Right, and not just the Traditionalist loonies but also your plain Vanilla Conservative Catholic secede. Similar changes have happened (Vatican II and Freedom of Religion come to mind), but though they were quite a change in theory, IMHO they didn't change practice that much; I somewhat doubt no Catholic read Kant prior to the the abolition of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum

    (1) Funny that our current chancellor, Angela Merkel, recently mentioned Luther as one of the heralds of modern self-determined man. Err, how exactly by denying free will?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Bondage_of_the_Will

    (2) Where, IMHO, some Greek and Russian Orthodox, even compared to the most hardcore RCs I know, seem to have their head up their ass so much it comes out again...

    465:

    "With America becoming the new Saudi Arabia by 2020, peak oil is not going to happen in the forseeable future:"

    Possibly true, but what will happen is US oil prices following those of the rest of the world. Because, if it can be sold expensive abroad why sell it cheap at home? You some kinda commie trying to rob the honest oil business of its profits?

    466:

    Two points. Defences against laser blinders exist both in the form of filters and rapid response goggles (transparent to opaque in under 50nS). Second, lasers have a hard time against certain coatings eg carbon and their power has to be increased enormously to compensate.

    467:

    Oh, BTW, there seems to be a precedent for a female priest:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludmila_Javorová

    While the circumstance might not be reproducable in Europe today, given the fracas in China, there is still a possibility o similar to happen

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Patriotic_Catholic_Association

    To compare the option of declaring such ordinations invalid, or results, Baptisms would likely remain valid, though marriages usually require a minister.

    468:

    I checked last night, in lighter traffic than usual, and reckon on that basis that it's pretty marginal whether or not the the Volt could actually manage my 25 mile round trip commute without resorting to a cold start on the gennie for the last mile or 2. (based on what consumption I usually get commuting and how much better it was last night).

    As for your other claims, I note that your wording is all selected to paint the greenwash of electric cars as green as possible. For instance, not all electric cars use regenerative braking, and some petrol and diesel ones do use it.

    469: 432 wrt #405 - Still effectively a "civil war" (albeit with at least one side having foreign backing) rather than an invasion as you claimed.
    470:

    And in what way is an artifact that can't be explained scientifically (yet) a proof that God exists? Now, if you'd crucify another son of God together with 100 random bloggers and wrapped them in identical shrouds of linen from a common source, stored them in a controlled environment and in the end only the shroud of the 2nd son of god showed an image, then I might accept the theory that images in linen shrouds indicate the presence of a god; but I'd still be looking for alternative explanations. As it is, how do we know the image in the shroud is Jesus and not Barnabas or Josef? What if someone clever comes with a way to exactly reproduce the shroud next year, would you stop believing in God?

    471:

    Telling us what? True science is anarchic? Scientists are politically controlled? I don't see anything that contradicts my statement.

    Regarding Feyerabend: not knowing his book, I doubt that traditional science includes "the forbidding of ad hoc hypotheses", or else I don't understand what he means with that premise.

    472:

    Has religiosity in Iran dropped by nearly a factor of five in the past fifty years?

    Hm, more than 30 years of the Mullah regime might do the trick.

    My personal theory for reduced fertility in Iran is despair: people don't believe in the future of their nation. I've heard from friends that some families rather let their children be smuggled to Europe than raise them at home.

    473:

    @318:

    (without mentioning cars) the possibility of having small interconnected sensors everywhere, and I mean everywhere, given the gradual drop in the price.

    I've written about that myself, as an example of why it makes more sense to put vehicle guidance under central control than to depend on each separate vehicle to find its own independent way.

    I think people seriously underestimate the complexity of a system that's able to handle real-world driving, but assuming that is solved satisfactory, the problem is still secondary to legal issues.

    You're dealing with the laws of multiple countries and local jurisdictions within them. In the USA, the Federal government, the 50 state governments, and some of the posessions and territories are free to make their own laws, including vehicle regulation and product and personal liability.

    Also, the cost of developing a vehicle control system has to be paid for, either by a government via taxes, or the manufacturer via sales.

    Not all jurisdictions are going to allow the use of automated vehicles on their roads, so the cost of the system is going to have to be borne across the ones that do.

    474:

    Well, there is this fundamental equation:

    e ^ (pi*i) = -1

    C.f. http://xkcd.com/179/

    475:

    @331:

    What it does require is trust -- that is, you trust other scientists to understand and confirm the accuracy of yet other scientists' findings.

    The keystone of science is repeatability. An experiment should turn out the same no matter who performs it or what their expectations are. If you question someone's results, you can check for yourself.

    Repeatability was what exposed a lot of "scientists" as plain old grant whores during the big cold fusion flap a couple of decades ago.

    476:

    @342:

    There was a lot of crap housing built in the US 1945 to about 1955. Much of it 1000 sf or less. Just a step above WWII army barracks standards. Size wasn't the issue. Just an indicator. And most of that is now gone and good ... Once folks realized they had enough money they wanted better

    Before WWII the USA was primarily a rural country. During the war a lot of people moved to the cities to fill the labor shortage. After the war, many stayed, and when the soldiers were demobilized, they often stayed in the last sizeable town on their route home, rather than going back to plowing dirt in Hooterville. There was a major housing shortage after WWII, and you can read many articles about it in the magazines of the day.

    Something similar happened in Britain; Churchill's memoirs said new housing for returning soldiers was a major issue in Parliament for a while.

    477:

    This entire "the shroud shows there is a God" debate boils down to what many call a God of the Gaps. Which many Christians think is a bunch of hooey. Especially those not speaking from provided sound bites.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps

    In keeping with the point of this post (what will things look like 500 years from now) it's easy to see how most of the "this science can't explain it" for the last 500 years has has fallen. And more will fall over the next 500 years.

    478:

    Religion. Those having large families are doing so indefiance of econom,ic logic because their faith promotes large families.

    You are making a very common assumption that children of prolific religious conservatives are themsleves prolific religious conservatives. Which is simply not true. As I already said, look up how many Amish drop out. And Charlie already mentioned Iran.

    Come to think of it, ever since contraceptives were invented religious fundamentalists ALWAYS had more children than religious moderates and atheists. By your logic moderates and atheists should not even exist today! Instead, it is fundamentalists who are shrinking, worldwide. Reason? Children, especially female children, see on which side their bread buttered.

    479:

    Low cost teenage trigger-pullers with $2 AKs are likely to remain more adaptable than machines for some time when trained by the University of Life, the School of Hard Knocks, and the Kindergarten of Watching Your Best Friend Get Shot.

    Explain how any of the above can exists in a world so full of automation and robots that "human skills are worthless". And what exactly are REASONS for warfare in such world?

    480:

    @350:

    Catholic Church

    I expect it'll still be around. It is working with the Anglicans and the rapidly-expanding Greek Orthodox Church to hammer out some of their differences. While the Catholics and derivatives have been losing ground in the English-speaking world, they're still strong in many places.

    Probably, all of the existing established religions will be around in some form. Religions seldom die out on their own; they're usually quashed by invasion and suppression.

    Of the newer ones:

    The Scientologists... I think their survival depends entirely on what Miscavige's successor does. Their rigid doctrine hasn't dealt well with modern information technology and media. Their organization is strictly top-down and seems rather fragile.

    The Moonies just might make it. They're probably not as wealthy overall as the Scientologists, but instead of depending on tithes and donations from their membership for their primary funding, the Moonies are part of a small international corporate conglomerate, with ownership or control of organizations running from football teams to universities to gun manufacturers. Plus they're aggressively expansionist outside the West.

    I also think we might see the rise of a successful neopagan/Gaian religion in the not-too-distant future. Wicca already has legal status as a religion in the USA, though regrettably the courts still haven't ruled on the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

    The Church of Elvis, alas, may not survive over the long term. Future network administrators may wonder why every nontrivial network has a node called elvis...

    ping elvis elvis is alive

    481:

    Yes, just after posting I remembered that in the US the adoption of elected senators, as opposed to appointed ones, was something very gradual, with one state (Oregon, 1908) leading the way and the others falling in, until the 17th amendment made it a national obligation. So the adoption of robot cars might happen in the same way in the US.

    But it might instead be a non-issue, with the interconnection of those tiny sensors, and their reuse, falling under some obscure regulation controlled by the FCC or FAA (the myriads of tiny sensors would also track weather data, making airplane flying safer) and be fully enabled by special anti-terrorist or anti-otherenemy legislation.

    482:

    The Scientologists.

    I keep wondering. Are they are religion or a new/media firm?

    483:

    I just did; high 80s% of Amish teenagers actively choose to be baptised and join the faith. They'd need to have more children than the average to have an expanding church without conversion of non-Amish, but not that many more. If they averaged 3 children per family surviving to adulthood, that would do it.

    484:

    Paws4thot @ 392 YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS! SNP disband? The Wee eck relinquish his greasy little fat paws on being a big fish in a little pool? Really? & 407 “The Clans” … assuming those to be a united force, all pointing in one direction? Like Campbell & Gregor, I presume? Or Maxwell & Johnston??? & 469 NO In 1745 “Bonnie” prince Charlie could not take Edinburgh castle, & the population of Edinburgh really did NOT want the barbarian country cousins in town The ’45 was a very shrewd investment by France to distract “England” in the middle of a war – worked too. Support for the Stuarts in Scotland was less than 20% of the population…

    Charlie @ 417 You’ve just re-invented the “Producer-Gas module” as used in WWII !!! Errr ….

    Jay @ 439 If you’d ever done a graduate or post graduate Physics or Engineering course of any sort, you would know that Pi is inescapable – if only because of determining actions concerning spheres (like stars & planets) and their Strong / weak / electromaganetic / gravitational interactions. There is LOTS more, believe me!

    @ 441 RE: “Blinding” lasers: &/or laser-sensitive goggles that go black – which already exist for laboratory use …. See also dirk @ 466

    Simon @ 448 Atheism and Agonisticism are reproduction failure prone memes whereas religion is not. REALLY? Got any proof for that allegation at all? Especially given that religion is fading fast, at present, as education improves – what a surprise!

    Justin @ 450 Did I say “directly” observable? I didn’t. I said “detectable” – includes holes where the rules don’t apply so need invesigating. Or second-order effects that can only be explained by BSF – except we are not seeing any of those either. Nice try, no banana, and stop weaselling! IF BSF exists (as believers calim) AND BSF has effects on us humans – as all believers ALSO claim … then why cannot we detect BSF – or “Messages” from BSF? And we can’t.

    Or to quote [ long ]

    Not detectable directly or indirectly. No events or causations exist that are not explicable in the normal course of natural causes and random occurrences. This includes, most importantly, the information-flow that must pass to and from any "god", so that he, she, it, or they can themselves observe, or intervene in "their" universe. If there is any god around, then that information-flow will also be detectable. Where is it? Please note, even if only for the point of argument : - NOT "God does not exist". That is the viewpoint of the committed atheist, who believes an unprovable(?) negative, with as much evidence, or lack of it, as any deist believes in any sort of god. This applies equally to any god at all: Marxist, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, etc…. Religions fulfil certain criteria. One of the most obvious is that of unalterable belief in the holy words of the prophet(s), whose word may not be questioned, and whose sayings must be learnt. People who do question these teachings will be persecuted, and possibly killed. This leads towards points 2 and 5. Monotheistic religions, in particular, are mutually exclusive. A maximum of one of them can be "true". Their central beliefs and tenets make this so, and this also leads to points 2 and 5. The attempt by ecumenicals to blend or blur the distinctions between major faiths and sects, or to say, as they do: "We worship the same god under different aspects", will not wash. This is because the central core beliefs of each religion in the divinity or the divine revelation of their own leader(s), and the secondary nature of "other" prophets make them incompatible. For example: "There is no changing the Quran. The Quran is a perfect guide for humanity. Human law nor science is above Allah". What the relatively enlightened, but deluded people of “faith” are looking at are the common ethical rules that should govern any civilised society. It is not a good idea to kill, lie, steal, or otherwise make one's self obnoxious. But, one does not need any god, or religion, to have these rules.

    Believers appear to derive comfort from the statement that science cannot prove the nonexistence of god. They describe any attempt at such proof as an arrogant mistake. We are supposed to infer that an equal weight is assigned to the alternatives of existence and nonexistence, and that a believer is no less reasonable than a non-believer. It is amusing to extend this line of argument as follows by examples. Can a scientist, in his laboratory, perform an experiment demonstrating that there is no such creature as the mystical invisible pink unicorn? No. Can he deduce that conclusion from quantum mechanics, relativity, or the theory of evolution? No. Thus, is a belief in the mystical invisible pink unicorn intellectually respectable? No. Advocates of the science-cannot-disprove gambit are opening the door to an unnumbered host of unwelcome guests. The mystical invisible pink unicorn is only one example; don't forget the tooth fairy, or the Ming-period vase orbiting the Sun in an oppositional orbit, or …

    485:

    My (not-very-neck-out) projection: The Beatles will regarded as "the Mozarts of the 20th century" on the mass communications media of the future. Music earworms are immortal.

    486:

    "This includes, most importantly, the information-flow that must pass to and from any "god", so that he, she, it, or they can themselves observe, or intervene in "their" universe. If there is any god around, then that information-flow will also be detectable. Where is it?"

    It may surprise you but such questions were addressed millennia ago. To pose a counter question, how do characters in your dreams explain the supposed lack of information flow to a higher being aka "the dreamer"?

    487:

    Did you read "Ringworld" by any chance? :)

    488:

    Ref #392 - The SNP website is vague on the subject of the party constitution, but as an ex-member I know that the clause existed.

    Ref #407 - Obviously, the supporters chose a landing site in Jacobite Clan territory. Since the troops they supplied represented about 1/10 of the total Jacobite force in Scotland on each occasion, you're not exactly attacking my point by bandying semantics.

    Ref #469 - All true, but this same army that could not take Edinburgh Castle defeated a Hanoverian army just down the road at Prestonpans, and made it down to Derby before turning back. In any event, that's completely irrelevant to the fact that you've produced no further evidence to support your claim that the 45 was a foreign invasion rather than a domestic insurrection or a small civil war.

    489:

    If all territory is claimed, under surveillance and developed, wouldn't this create a rather dystopian "prison planet" where there is no place to try really new ideas?

    You're American, aren't you? :-/

    Clarke (a Brit) opined that same frontier thought for his views on opening up space, and he got it from Toynbee (a Brit) who invokes it as an environmental stimulus for civilization.

    Let me also remind you that many non-Americans (by birth), e.g. Von Braun, Ley wrote books on space variously entitled "_ frontier".

    Frontiers do not have to be virgin, unoccupied territory at the edge of civilization, just new territory. So call the American frontier an illusion of freedom if you like, but it was a frontier, nevertheless, and more importantly, it shaped the people living there.

    While Europe, China and Africa may have been fully colonized for 100's of years, that isn't the point. The point is that disaffected individuals and groups could leave and go elsewhere, preferably to a place with fewer societal rules.

    490:

    Justin,

    You are foolish to drag the Shroud of Turin into the discussion. Manufacturing relics was a growth industry in the middle-ages.

    About 25 years ago Biblical Archaeology Review published an extensive discussion of the evidence for and against the shroud. In the next issue they published a letter for someone with a PhD in the history of textiles. This expert witness pointed out that the fabric of the shroud could only have been woven on a type of loom that wasn't invented until after 1000 CE. Carbon 14 analysis also indicates a date around 1200-1300 CE.

    491:
    Telling us what? True science is anarchic?

    For a metric of "anarchic" that includes "authoritarian if need be", yes. According to Feyerabend, there is no single set of scientific rules that could be used universally, e.g. Falsifiability, thus the "anarchism".

    "Against Method" is something of an elaboration on Lakatos,

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Lakatos

    who tried to formulate a somewhat a more realistic and somewhat sophisticated version of Popper's Falsificationism, since any new hypothesis is likely to contain some fine errors and thus would be easily falsified, so Lakatos went for 'research projects' instead of single hypotheses, where it's the 'projects' that are falsified and not single hypotheses.

    Thing is, according to Feyerabend, when you thus tweak Popper, you end up with no methodology at all. Thus "Anything goes".

    Scientists are politically controlled?

    Not necessarily, but science is politics. Though insisting it isn't is a nice political move.

    I don't see anything that contradicts my statement.

    Err, what about

    "I think we have different concepts of science. You take it as the group of all people who are working in science and I take it as concept, a set of rules that is designed to promote knowledge."

    According to Feyerabend, there is no such set of rules, because scientists violate some of these rules all the time. And when you look at the history of science, thank, err, god, because otherwise we'd still be with the geocentric model.

    While I agree with you that the "Science is Religion 3.0" hypothesis is wrong, I think arguing science is not of this world, in contrast to political religion, is somewhat mistaken.

    But then "Science is Religion 3.0" might be an interesting 'research project'.

    As for my opinion, I guess religion, science, art etc. are somewhat orthogonal enterprises, though they sometimes overlap. But the games religious, scientific and artistic schools play are not that different.

    492:

    Yes, I think The Beatles will be remembered for a very long time. They were the first band (in which I include George Martin) to be given complete artistic freedom in a new media (music made in a recording studio) and that - coupled with their obvious talents - and the first to do something well in a new field gets to set the ground rules.

    It's hard to think of any other single band's reputation that will have that kind of longevity, although there might be a few others. Though I hope not, guitars, bass and vocals might be a very brief fad - "guitar groups are on the way out", and in any case outside of Western Europe and the United States most pop musicians are completely unknown, and are likely to remain so. My Ukranian flatmate hadn't heard of any of the bands from my entire cd collection.

    However I can confidently state Sean Ryder's going to be recognised as the greatest poet since Yeats. And people will still be listening to The Durutti Column.

    493:

    The keystone of science is repeatability. An experiment should turn out the same no matter who performs it or what their expectations are. If you question someone's results, you can check for yourself.

    Err, I don't think so. For someone who works a lot in the astronomy and climate fields, the physics we do is just as valid as the stuff I did back in the laser lab, but I don't get to do repeatable experiments ...

    Instead, Falsifiability is key. Can your theories be tested? I may not get to do many experiments to test my weather models, but I do get to test their predictions against tomorrows weather.

    494:

    Ummm yeah. I so see the disaffected idiots that were the first colonists of the Americas surviving in space. Come on, most of them couldn't even survive in the Americas without massive help from the Indians they proceeded to kill. Space is much less forgiving.

    I do agree, though, that civilization* will end with the end of any significant frontiers. European countries are not a good counter-example, because until after WWII, many of them were supported by overseas territories that they've only lost in the last 50 years.

    *Civilization: the definition of that word is the sticking point. If, by civilizaiton, you mean a metropole of well-off people supported by exploiting the poorly regulated resources of people who are your financial and technological inferiors, then you're right. Eventually (within at most a few centuries) that's going to end. While some people will still reap riches from exploiting others, I don't think we can keep doing that on a country-level basis forever. So yes, you do have something to be very deeply afraid of, if that's the kind of system you support.

    If not, then I think civilization, in the broader sense will continue on into the indefinite future.

    The good thing, for those who worry about a prison planet, is that we're currently setting ourselves up for a nice millennium of continual change highlighted big-ass storms and droughts, otherwise known as climate change. This will have a massively democratizing effect, because there will be few resources so dependable that our overlords can monopolize them indefinitely, and it will be hard for them to push their tyrannical rule for more than a generation or two. Of course, this will be the democracy of nomads leading their goat herds to the next green pasture, but hey, it will feel like a frontier, won't it?

    Am I being sarcastic? Perhaps. As the US republicans have lamented, the next few hundred years belongs to brown people who want stuff, more than to white people who have stuff. Weirdly, I think our descendents will be able to deal with it.

    495:

    A point on this though, While I agree the Shroud of Turin is almost certainly a manufactured relic, thats actually not relevent. Its sacred because people regard it was scared. It has I dunno, numina for lack of a better word. This is somewhat related to fame but it goes deeper.

    Its the same reason that while you can pretty easily and cheaply get copies of say a Rembrant ($35 US at art.com) people still want to see the original. It has intaginable meaning and those meanings are part of the human experience

    Philosophies that don't take those deeper instincual needs into account won't last and its why I think todays materialist society is not long for the world. Something will replace it or if the technology allows we might narcotize our sorrowas away with computers and forget to reproduce enough or fail on some other point.

    496:

    OK, then let’s go further back to the first Americans who came across the land bridge and found an empty continent. Yes, most of the world has been settled for a long time, but not with the technology we have today which allows for mass indoctrination and control. I’m talking about a world where there is nowhere to hide from the drones and satellites of the Global Empire, no place to unplug from the Matrix and carve a new society out of the wilderness, and no way to build a new nation except by war. Such a world would be something new in human experience, and sounds very bleak to me.

    497:

    Blinding laser weapons have countermeasures that are cheap by the standards of a modern, well-equipped military force. For that matter, so does mustard gas. That's why I predict that if blinding laser weapons are developed they will will be developed in the context of a fight between two less well equipped nations. Just like mustard gas caused significant casualties during the Iran-Iraq war whereas it would have just been a nuisance in a fight between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

    As for higher power lasers, DARPA's SHEDS program was chasing 80% electrical-to-optical efficiency from diode lasers at room temperature. In practice the best results ever revealed were 76% at room temperature, 85% at -50 C. For high power output and high beam quality you need to combine the work of many lasers, either by pumping a disc or fiber laser or with wavelength beam combining like Teradiode does.

    In a 100 kilowatt or 1 megawatt laser it's still going to be an impressive feat getting rid of the 36% to 25% of the electrical energy that's wasted as heat inside your device, but not so grim as if you were you wasting 80% of the energy there. That's why I think there may be a substantial role for high power lasers on future battlefields, though there are enough permanent limitations (like atmospheric conditions) that I doubt they'll replace all other weapons.

    498:

    Blinding lasers and similar eg isotropic radiators, have little military use but would make excellent terrorist weapons. That's the major reason they will not be deployed (and I exclude "dazzlers" from this category).

    499:

    I understand the conventional arguments for the demographic transition. These arguments are largely economic and assume rational humans. Humans are manifestly not purely rational. On aggregate, humanity often appears to behave rationally, but making this assumption the basis for a prediction can lead to folly. My point was that over a time span of 500 years a very small group can completely dominate the population through exponential growth. Such a small group might not currently be apparent in the aggregate behavior of humanity. This small group could differ from the norm genetically or memetically or both. There are plenty of examples of not completely rational behavior that are partially genetic in nature - e.g. OCD is thought to have a genetic component. A hypothetical genetic compulsion to have numerous children combined with a religious or pseudo-religious belief that this is the right thing to do could easily result in a group that produces large numbers of offspring that share those traits. Add 500 years and you have an overpopulation problem.

    500:

    I’m talking about a world where there is nowhere to hide from the drones and satellites of the Global Empire, no place to unplug from the Matrix and carve a new society out of the wilderness, and no way to build a new nation except by war. Such a world would be something new in human experience, and sounds very bleak to me.

    Study the history of China; you'll find that humans managed to live like that quite well most of the time.

    It occurs to me now that most of the 'we need a frontier' faction may be looking the wrong way. What if it's easy to plug into the Matrix? There may be few practical limits to the size and population of VR realms; any group that wants to try out its own social theories could buy a simulated Earth and have a go at it. The successful ones could expand into new Earths and out into the physical world.

    501:

    Simon,

    What Justin is appealing to is not just the numinous. I'm sure an Orthodox believer can experience the numinous with the aid of an icon that makes no claim to being a holy relic. Justin's claim is akin to that of a Fundamentalist whose belief in God is reinforced because he believes every word of the bible is literally true.

    People like that have a brittle faith that tends to crumble if you make them sit down and study the bible. They find the many internal contradictions, mistaken prophecies, and anachronisms destructive to their faith. Their other possible reaction is to double down and become even more rigid in their dogma.

    I grew up in a town that is considered the buckle of the bible belt. To preserve my sanity I always considered myself an anthropologist living in the midst of a tribe displaced in time.

    502:
    Instead, Falsifiability is key. Can your theories be tested? I may not get to do many experiments to test my weather models, but I do get to test their predictions against tomorrows weather.

    That might work for meteorology, but there are quite big chunks of physics that are open neither to repeatabilty nor easily falsifiable. Inflaton, M-theory, anyone?

    In paleontology, if there were early eutherian mammals in Australia

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tingamarra

    and we try to work out why they went extint and marsupials ruled, we can neither repeat the event (where, BTW, it's quite often the marsupials going extinct), nor is it likely there is an easy way to falsify that one.

    "Logical consistency in itself and with the facts" might be a way out, but then, how to distinguish from philosophy etc. ?

    503:

    See also archaeology. However rigorously you practice it, it almost invariably destroys what it observes (the one exception I'm aware of is the use of ground-penetrating radar without subsequent excavation).

    This doesn't mean it's not conducted on a scientific basis; merely that it's non-repeatable on a per-site basis.

    504:

    You are postulating a genetic trait which a) has never been observed, b) is compelling enough to resist economic pressures which so far had overcome pretty much every religious childbearing compulsion, and c) is a dominant allele (has to, to last for centuries without diluting). In effect, you are arguing that human species will be supplanted by some hypothetical Homo natalis. Sorry, but I am not buying it. You could just as easily claim that ant-like Communism of Plato's "Republic" may prevail some time in next 500 years because of "hypothetical genetic compulsion to enjoy one's inborn station combined with a religious or pseudo-religious belief that this is the right thing to do".

    505:

    Study the history of China; you'll find that humans managed to live like that quite well most of the time.

    I'm no expert but it seems to me that for much of China's last 2000 years the majority of the people lived in a wonderland similar to peasants in Europe around 1000AD.

    506:

    Here's a second non-destructive exception in the field of archeology:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_archaeology

    No excavation needed.

    507:
    This expert witness pointed out that the fabric of the shroud could only have been woven on a type of loom that wasn't invented until after 1000 CE.

    Can't you see this is proof Jesus was something special? The technology used in his shroud wasn't even invented then.

    Actually, I was going to add that this was somewhat farcical, but then I remembered a program on Public broadcasting when the first C14 tests came out that went something like "yeah, but maybe resurrection changed the physical properties", which implicates

    a) resurrection says we can't trust the tests b) the test results say resurrection was real

    Guess when listening to this variety of believers most Christians I know feel like I do when listening to some of our "there is no god and I'm his prophet" atheists. Or worse.

    508:

    Err, there was an attemt of a tongue-in-cheek tag with the

    Can't you see this is proof Jesus was something special? The technology used in his shroud wasn't even invented then.
    509:

    Personally, I always wanted to try this one:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_survey_(archaeology)

    Any idea if the magnetometers in some mobile telephones are sufficient, and if there is an app?

    510:
    These are just affirmations, like my own affirmations that the Turin Shroud cannot be explained by natural causes and that biological organisation cannot be reduced to random causational factors. Affirmations by themselves are worth diddly squat.

    It looks as if you don't have any idea of either how science works or what an excluded middle is.

    To the first point, you've got to have some sort of definition of this god-thing you speak of, and furthermore one that is amenable to some sort of replicable observation. I don't know about you, but for me, a being who could do the ftl thing or flip gravity on and off with a snap of their fingers would definitely not have demonstrated that they were any sort of "gods". Your mileage may differ, obviously, but the point is that until you take that step you aren't doing anything that could remotely be classed as proof.

    The second bit is simply this: If I can show that a number is not even, then it pretty much has to be odd. But if I show that a number isn't divisible by, say, four, I can't immediately jump to the conclusion that it is divisible by five or six, or that it is prime.

    Iow, saying that current scientific theory can't explain some phenomenon doesn't lead immediately to "therefore goddidit". That's simply not the only possible alternative explanation.

    511:

    All I mean is that a civilization without a frontier will be different from one with a one. Frontiers offer opportunities.

    As a biologist, you can appreciate the evolutionary impact of species colonizing new territory, compared to the relative stasis of the slow grind of natural selection on large established populations. Why think that culture is that different and, more importantly, not desirable?

    The Americas (really the North) model obviously isn't the one that the space colonists will face. It is much more like the Polynesians colonizing uninhabited Pacific islands. Trade will be required for most things, and there is the obvious problem of having to build the local life support. But living in underground cities on the moon or Mars, perhaps with large "open spaces" doesn't seem so awful to me. I have no idea what the culture might be like - e.g. Heinlein vs Varley, but it will become different from earth as long as it remains a separate entity that can evolve.

    512:

    While evolution has been observed happening in a wide variety of contexts, most of what evolutionists study is historical and not subject to repetition. Nonetheless, it is entirely possible to create a hypothesis-driven science that works with these historical data.

    The same is true, incidentally, for astronomy.

    As noted above, falsifiability is a more universal test than repeatability. If there are competing hypotheses that can be tested against a set of historical data, the best hypothesis can be judged.

    The problem for the non-scientific proletariat with this idea is that it replaces the idea of history as a certainty back by one's faith in the reputation of the historian with a data-driven hypothesis that is the best explanation we can come up with at this time. That loss of certainty seems hard for many people to comprehend (cf: Fox News coverage of the 2012 elections, and the aftermath thereof).

    513:

    It occurs to me now that most of the 'we need a frontier' faction may be looking the wrong way. What if it's easy to plug into the Matrix? There may be few practical limits to the size and population of VR realms; any group that wants to try out its own social theories could buy a simulated Earth and have a go at it. The successful ones could expand into new Earths and out into the physical world.

    So you can ensure that these new earths are somehow unreachable from the existing ones? Seems to me, they can be potentially expunged with the flick of a [software] switch.

    Of course, if the universe we inhabit is the matrix...

    514:
    Explain how any of the above can exists in a world so full of automation and robots that "human skills are worthless". And what exactly are REASONS for warfare in such world?

    That's easy: machines that produce stuff of any kind are very expensive in this future world. But their output is so tremendously more than a human's that they're "worth it". But on the battlefield? In an environment that's as deliberately hostile as it can be? It could turn out that even with a kill ratio of a hundred to one or five hundred to one against those teenage trigger-pullers, the side running the machines are experiencing horrific and unsustainable losses.

    515:
    I also think we might see the rise of a successful neopagan/Gaian religion in the not-too-distant future. Wicca already has legal status as a religion in the USA, though regrettably the courts still haven't ruled on the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

    Why restrict this to just religion? In the more stable world of 2512, expect to see the rise of the granfalloons. For example, maybe a venerable 500-year-old gaming association still playing World of Warcraft, only by now they've accreted all sorts of secret signals and mystic hand signs whose meaning is known only to a select few. WoWser pass amongst us, but only they know who is and who isn't, if you get my drift :-)

    516:

    That might work for meteorology, but there are quite big chunks of physics that are open neither to repeatabilty nor easily falsifiable. Inflaton, M-theory, anyone?

    Indeed. This is why so many physicists are getting quite impatient with string theorists. If they don't start coming up with testable predictions soon ...

    517:

    So you posit manufacturies which are very expensive themselves, but produce everything today's world produces at a fraction of cost.

    Such manufacturies should be able to make robotic tanks barely above modern level -- and completely invulnerable to kids with AK-47's, -- without breaking up a sweat.

    518:

    Study the history of China; you'll find that humans managed to live like that quite well most of the time.

    I for one don't find imperial China a particularly attractive model for human civilization going forward...

    519:

    I should clarify several of my major assumptions:

    • A world where automation makes human labor largely unnecessary is a world where the powerful have little reason to tolerate the powerless.

    • Weapons are getting cheaper, more powerful, and easier to use.

    -Fourteen year old boys will still be the same as they were when Vegetius said they make the best soldiers.

    • That adds up, as I've said earlier, to a world where some areas may be paranoid police states, and other areas may be Somalia-style tribal anarchies, but anything else is unstable.
    520:

    Why would paranoid police states ("the powerful") tolerate the existence of Somalia-style tribal anarchies? And by the way, Vegetius was wrong then, and is still wrong now. Fourteen year old boys make "best soldiers" only against unarmed civilians.

    Your scenarios are still full of contradictions.

    521:
    That might work for meteorology, but there are quite big chunks of physics that are open neither to repeatabilty nor easily falsifiable. Inflaton, M-theory, anyone?

    There are huge chunks of the scientific community (almost certainly a comfortable majority) who think that string theory isn't science for just that reason. Check out Peter Woit's blog Not Even Wrong if you're interested in that sort of thing.

    522:

    Don't get hung up on the AK-47 bit. RPG-7s are a serious threat to a tank, and future weapons development is likely to see offense continue to outrun defense. Does it matter whether they're using cheap assault rifles, cheap railguns, or cheap unidentified future weapons?

    523:

    I'd just like to draw some attention to the fascinating and topical work of Paul Stamets, here is a link to his Ted talk on "Six ways mushrooms can save the world". Mycorestoration of the planet is groundbreaking, relatively low tech and just about ready to go as a means of addressing some of the most intractable environmental difficulties we face, heavy metal and petroleum pollution,infertile soils...

    Highly recommended to all concerned, and if by some remote chance Charlie,its new to you then I will have done something wonderful. Please take a look folks, refreshing to see this kind of thinking occurring.

    524:

    It's entirely possible that the world will go to one extreme or the other, and it's entirely possible that it will tend to oscillate between the two over time as governments get built up, ossify, and crumble. Think 80s USSR, 90s Russia (the gangster's paradise), then Putin's Russia (rebuilding the security state).

    525:

    Don't get hung up on the AK-47 bit. RPG-7s are a serious threat to a tank, and future weapons development is likely to see offense continue to outrun defense. Does it matter whether they're using cheap assault rifles, cheap railguns, or cheap unidentified future weapons?

    If offensive capabilities and manufacturing just keep getting better and cheaper I don't see any triumph of teenage militias with portable weapons. If tanks are obsolete because defense is so much harder than offense, anyone who wants to intervene in Chaosistan will just send thousands of small drones instead of human soldiers and armored vehicles. Something like a quadrotor drone could rest most of the time, recharging from solar energy each day, forming part of a large sensors-and-communication network, only expending a lot of energy to fly (and possibly engage a target by either designating it for larger weapons platforms or just exploding like a tiny cruise missile) when there are specific events to respond to, like explosions, gun fire, or screams.

    526:
    So you posit manufacturies which are very expensive themselves, but produce everything today's world produces at a fraction of cost. Such manufacturies should be able to make robotic tanks barely above modern level -- and completely invulnerable to kids with AK-47's, -- without breaking up a sweat.

    I'm not positing anything; I'm merely pointing out that "comparative advantage" is more than just a right-wing talking point (which is right and proper, since comparative advantage is just a statement about linear programming). After that it's all down to numbers; one set says "don't use the kids", another says "use the kids". Whether they're using AK-47's or something more advanced (and therefore, more potent) is up to the gamer to decide.

    527:

    "Don't get hung up on the AK-47 bit. RPG-7s are a serious threat to a tank, and future weapons development is likely to see offense continue to outrun defense. "

    You mean defence is outrunning offence. Tanks are not defensive machines. RPGs are defensive weapons.

    528:

    The offence versus defence race is really determined by energy -- how much energy can a weapon put on a target versus how much of that energy can be bled off, deflected, absorbed or dissipated. At this point in time one-man-portable weapons like the RPG-7 are pretty much useless against first-world main battle tank armour suites and marginal against armoured-personnel carriers with similar layered-armour systems deriving from the Chobham concept. There's only so much "energy" a single person can lug around; some two-man portable launchers carry enough energy to do some damage if they get very lucky but it's a percentage shot, not a sure kill. At the moment and in the forseeable future armour has the advantage. Barring a major technical breakthrough that produces something like containable antimatter I expect that chemical rockets, propellants and explosives will be the best the grunt-on-the-ground can deliver for some time to come.

    529:

    Dirk, I didn't say that. You're quoting someone else in a reply to me.

    530:

    "At this point in time one-man-portable weapons like the RPG-7 are pretty much useless against first-world main battle tank armour suites and marginal against armoured-personnel carriers with similar layered-armour systems deriving from the Chobham concept."

    Not true if you look at multistage RPG warheads and weapons like Javelin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv7sBh5aMv0

    531:

    I love the idea of our future depending on mushrooms. "Des champignons", in French.

    To me there,s something of a mad science side to this. I mean this in a positive way.

    You see I was raised on good doses of the adventures of "Spirou et Fantasio". Many of these adventures were science fictional, and at the core of them was their friendship with a well-meaning mad scientist the Count of Champignac (champignon, Champignac):

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_in_Spirou_et_Fantasio#The_Count_of_Champignac

    The count made all kinds of serums and chemical substances based on mushroom extracts, as his name would let you guess. There was a serum that let humans withstand the greatest colds while still in shirtsleeves. There was an extract (metomol)that made any metal (statues, rifles, tanks...) as limp as thin rubber, there was a serum that made it impossible to get the bends while diving underwater etc. etc.

    532:

    "Parameters: I'm going to assume no alien invasions or total collapses of technological civilization or significant asteroid impacts, because all three of these are rare in the historical record."

    HA!

    If you are really going to look at the next 500 years, then you have to honestly look at the past thousand. You are basing what you are saying on consensus history which is made up of deliberate forgeries and distortions from events that happened a thousand years ago. We literally do not know what happened before 1000 AD.

    One hundred years ago world population was below two billion. One hundred years from now world population will once again be below two billion. They will have no resources to save the worlds libraries. If you get the chance, walk into a university library, go into the stacks, touch and smell the books. That smell is the rot turning them to mush. They will not survive another hundred years much less 500. That means there will be a "Forgetting", and we will be myth and legend, if we are remembered at all.

    There is precedent for this, since all of recorded history only covers the past thousand years. A thousand years of forgeries and deliberate alterations. When people babble about BC this, or AD that, they do not know what they are talking about. 500 years from now, people will be learning similar false Histories of their "Antiquity". This will happen because over the past thousand years there has been wave after wave of false histories created. That process is ongoing, and that process will not stop.

    Let's look at some of the obvious examples.

    In response to the Protestant Reformation, Pope Gregory ordered a new calendar to be made, and had the Church generate forgeries to move the origin of the Church back thousands of years. The current Holy Land(tm) was created as a religious theme park for pilgrims to travel to, spend money in, and reaffirm a history that never existed. The nonsense of the "Stations of the Cross" and the various holy sites are no different than theme parks like Disney Land.

    The history of Ancient Egypt is not thousands of years old, but hundreds. Ancient Greece, not thousands, but hundreds. Ancient Rome the same. Modern Rome in Italy is only hundreds of years old, and was created to be the seat of the Catholic Church in opposition to the true Church in Constantinople. The original Rome is Constantinople. Constantinople was also Troy, and the original Jerusalem. The names and events were duplicated, moved back in time, which is why there are so many complete echoes of events and Kings in the forged consensus timeline that we learn today.

    • Troy was not defeated by the Greeks using a wooden horse, they came in through the aqueducts. The Greek word for aqueduct translates as wooden horse.

    • The Temple of Sophia is King Solomon's Temple.

    • The Old Testament was written after the New to fill in back history, to justify the legitimacy of events.

    • Jesus was born 1152 AD and died 1185 AD.

    All of the current world religions were different parts of the same world religion, which is why in old churches you find all the various holy symbols in the same church.

    • Catholicism split off from Christianity, which became Eastern Orthodox Christian. The word "Catholic" means "Universal". So they were the Universal Church of Rome. They were the State religion, not Christian. The only true Christian Church is the Eastern Orthodox Church. Any other group that claims to be Christian is lying. HA!

    • Islam was the military arm of the Church. Islam means "submission". In the US, the military swears an oath to the Constitution and submission to Civil Authority. Muslims swore that oath to God.

    • Judaism is the fundamentalist branch that said, yes, they believe in the Messiah, but he has not yet come. That is because Jesus died and the Kingdom of Heaven was not here on Earth, thus they wrote the Old Testament and waited.

    • Protestants are Catholic Lite. They threw out the fun stuff, the Mysteries and the liturgies, becoming self righteous and deadly boring.

    The same need to forge histories, to validate a religion, has occurred many time in the past few hundred years as well.

    All the modern science fiction religions were invented in America: Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientologists, etc... There was this fun clause which created "Religious Liberty", that allowed everybody to create their own religion; and they did. All these modern SciFi religions deal with aliens and world destruction. Some wear the facade of Christianity, but are not. All of them created vast back stories claiming that their religion goes back thousands, even millions of years. They even have wonderful books that they copied from ancient texts to prove it. HA!

    Then you have the various Amerikkkan Fundamentalist religions that are barely a hundred years old. They have taken the King James Bible and wrapped a "study guide" around it, creating "Study Bibles". The "study" part has nothing to do with the actual King James Bible and can be filled with some of the strangest stuff that you will ever read. These are not Christians, they are KKKhristians. These groups number in the thousands, each with their own narrative, each based around a charismatic leader that has occasionally taken their members into death; Jonestown, David Koresh, etc...; and some are still trying to redeem the world by destroying it.

    If anyone has read this far without hitting TL;DR, go to Google Books, and search for "Anatoly Fomenko". They have the first two books in his History: Fiction or Science? series. Read the first two books, and you will see that he has made his point. If you have any argument with what's in the books, argue with Fomenko, not me. HA!

    For American history, read anything by Howard Zinn. I was born in 1956, and I have personally watched American history mutate and change in bizarre ways ever since I started school. Each year we would get new history books, and the story each time was different from the year before. Even as a little kid that seemed excessive to me. HA!

    533:

    Sure, you can send thousands of drones from Orwellburg to Chaostan, and the locals respond by various means, which may include mapping the drone network, triggering so many false alarms that the signal gets lost in the noise, setting traps for the drones, shooting the damn things, digging underground tunnels...

    We've been doing this sort of thing in Afghanistan and, until recently, Iraq. Unless Orwellburg is pissed enough to just depopulate Chaostan (which may have political repercussions inside Orwellburg), it seems to reach sort of a stalemate.

    534:

    Note that Javelin is a 2-man-team weapon, not single-man portable like the venerable RPG-7. It's also not guaranteed to be effective even in top-attack on modern first-world layered armours since its warhead is too small. It takes something like a 300kg Maverick with a 50kg shaped-charge warhead to get through this kind of armour guaranteed. The Javelin will do a number on monkey-model export tanks with rolled or reactive armour suites and it might succeed in knocking out APCs but MBTs, forget it.

    535:

    Btw - you can take it as a given that I find Combat! In the 26 Century! a terminally and abysmally boring topic. To be interesting, you need numbers. Something that I hope we'll all agree is lacking when constructing scenarios for 2512. Note that Charlie has been rather careful not to give any hard numbers for his scenario.

    536:

    We're projecting 500 years into the future here. The guerrilla's weapon of choice could be nearly anything, as long as it's cheap to mass produce. Railguns, lasers, cheap model-airplane-plus-a-grenade drones, explosively formed penetrator rounds, biologicals, microwave weapons, wifi broadcasts of computer viruses, electrolasers, and IEDs are only some of the options.

    One of the reasons I expect offense to continue to outrun defense is that the attacker has an ever-increasing variety of options.

    537:

    You could be right, but I don't think Iraq and Afghanistan have many lessons to offer here. Today's drones are expensive and rare. I think it will be very different if they are cheap and ubiquitous. A large drone deployment would behave like an on-demand panopticon system plus (potentially) lethal measures against belligerents and/or their weapons systems.

    And speaking of panopticons, I'm surprised I'm the first to use that word in this thread. I can easily see future cities, or even all but the most sparsely populated and remote areas, constantly under seamless overlapping surveillance systems. In the case of democratic nations with legal protections for human rights I even find that comforting rather than creepy. "Secure Beneath the Watchful Eyes" can conjure up 1984, but for me it also brings to mind the Culture, where getting away with crimes of violence is nigh-impossible and nobody's afraid that they will be victimized due to being alone, young, weak, old, or a visible minority.

    538:

    That takes the biscuit for the nuttiest comment (rant?) all day.

    Jesus born in 1152AD, after the Christians were on the crusades? English history is so well documented that the timelines cannot be altered as Fomenko wants. Then there are so many independent, but interlocking dating methods that cannot be unraveled as you think.

    The Wikiepedia entry on him is too gentle, IMO. He is clearly a crank.

    539:

    RPG-29 "In August 2006, an RPG-29 round, which uses a tandem-charge warhead to penetrate explosive reactive armor (ERA) as well as composite armor behind it, was reported to have penetrated the frontal ERA of a Challenger 2 tank during an engagement in al-Amarah, Iraq, wounding several crew members."

    540:

    A large drone deployment (a panopticon in your terms) might be part of the taming process by which a section of Chaostan is Orwellified. It might even work so well that everything gets Orwellified and Chaostan goes the way of the dodo. I wouldn't bet on it. I think cultural differences are inevitable between Chaostans and Orwellburgs, and I think it will continue to be extremely difficult to neutralize one enemy guerrilla without inspiring five more. Who knows?

    541:

    Nojay: Note that Javelin is a 2-man-team weapon, not single-man portable like the venerable RPG-7. It's also not guaranteed to be effective even in top-attack on modern first-world layered armours since its warhead is too small. It takes something like a 300kg Maverick with a 50kg shaped-charge warhead to get through this kind of armour guaranteed. The Javelin will do a number on monkey-model export tanks with rolled or reactive armour suites and it might succeed in knocking out APCs but MBTs, forget it.

    You're believing the armor / defense hype. There's an M-1Abrams whose crew were all wounded in the Iraq invasion by a hull-penetrating side shot through the skirt armor, side armor, and turret basket just (JUST) ahead of the hull ammo compartment. By a dirt standard RPG-7 as best can be told from the fin impact pattern on the skirt armor.

    Most such shots will bounce, but that's not invulnerability.

    I can punch through MBT side or top armor at will with well aimed 3 cm diameter modern multistage shaped charges, much less 8.5 cm RPG-7 sized modern warhead. The key is aimpoint. That was a statistics game (1% vulnerable area, etc.) until very modern guidance kit, now may be evolving to commonplace over 25 years.

    542:

    That takes the biscuit for the nuttiest comment (rant?) all day.

    Thank you, I had fun posting that, but it doesn't change the facts of the matter. HA!

    I know that it sounds like a strange concept, but you might try and actually read the first book at least, and then make up your mind before dismissing the idea out of hand.

    I do find it fascinating that people won't even bother to read the first book before they decide. That they trust the consensus opinion on Wiki, which of course will only echo the propaganda of consensus history. That is bizarre, and always astonishes me. HA!

    The reality is, the past ain't what it used to be.

    543:

    The panopticon is the system of inescapable surveillance. A drone swarm might be a way to quickly install a panopticon where existing infrastructure doesn't provide it. And I think that a disarmament-oriented panopticon might well be able to frustrate armed struggle without inspiring more warriors than are neutralized. You're more likely to take up arms yourself if someone you value is killed or wounded in an attack aimed at Local Resistance Commander X. If bystanders are unharmed, and for that matter LRCX himself is unharmed but his armaments are destroyed, I don't think it will inspire more people to violence in a prolonged spiral.

    In case of gun violence in a newly drone-watched region, picture the drone network tracing all persons and weapons away from a shooting. If guns are left behind and show recent use, they're destroyed. Everyone fleeing is remembered for follow-up questioning once they can be safely approached. Or in case of something like a car bombing, where it's an instantaneous event, the surveillance is traced backwards from the time and place of the bombing to find the perpetrators and their previous locations (in case the attackers came from camps or workshops still holding weapons or warriors), then also run forward to locate them again for disarmament and monitoring until humans can approach them without risk for arrest. There's no need to escalate a conflict by assassinating a suspect with a missile, risking the destruction of nearby people or property and thereby priming additional people for violence. This doesn't need to be an AI complete system; humans can still make the tough calls like whether to keep monitoring someone who appears to be wearing a suicide vest or force a confrontation.

    These scenarios suppose that automation and AI continue to improve but never reach the point of genius-in-a-box AI or growing guns from cyber-seeds, rocks, and sunlight. They also suppose (perhaps more fantastically) that in the future there are organizations similar to military or police but that are not self-indulgent in "teaching lessons" to defeated enemies or apprehended criminals.

    544:

    Consider. The dates of the English monarchy are perfectly traced from before the Norman conquests. So even with this documented historical data, we know that this historical revisionism is crap. That is before we apply physical dating systems to known events.

    There is no requirement to read a book that must so obviously be incorrect.

    That you would take this stuff seriously is more a reflection on your lack of critical thinking. Next you will be telling us that the world really did start 6000 years ago.

    545:

    I get the panopticon, but I see two failure modes for it.

    The low signal failure mode is when the system and its operators don't understand what they're seeing with at least about 99.99% confidence: false positives and confusing data waste almost all of their time. Smart adversaries will exploit this, having associates stage harmless false alarms (ostensibly by accident) for you while they make their real preparations.

    The second failure mode occurs when the occupation is highly unpopular, which they tend to be. At this point, the panopticon constantly sees people misbehaving, but imprisoning everybody is not practical and killing them all only makes more enemies.

    Remember that the defender has to be able to deal with any form of attack. If guns are too trackable, the guerrillas switch to something else. Whatever energy store replaces gasoline in the future is likely to be just as weaponizable.

    Any security system faces a tradeoff. Openness permits attack, closure isolates the system's masters from facts on the ground. I expect that even 500 years from now this tradeoff will still exist.

    546:

    There is no requirement to read a book that must so obviously be incorrect.

    HA!

    Go to Google Books, enter "Anatoly Fomenko"

    Click on the first book, and in the search field of the book, enter "william".

    You will see Fig. 6.43 in chapter 6, page 299 with the side-by-side comparison of the "English Kings and the Byzantine emperors".

    Read that chapter, and get back with me. HA!

    547:

    Let's all just avoid feeding the troll.

    548:

    Let's all just avoid feeding the troll.

    HA!

    The point is, consensus history has been butchered, intentionally and unintentionally, such that we do not know what actually happened before 1000 AD. It will take major effort by Universities doing original research, possibly for the rest of this century, to untangle the mess created by people trying to win their side of the argument over the past thousand years.

    But first, they have to acknowledge the problem and begin the research.

    And since that process of hijacking history has been ongoing for the past thousand years, it is obvious that 500 years from now consensus history will be even more fabricated. HA!

    As a writer, I find that rich and juicy to bite into and play with. That gives me free reign to go forward and back through time and play. Look at the classic story where the characters use a time machine to go back in time to some historic event. What happens when they arrive to find the actual events vastly different from consensus reality.

    • What happens when a time traveller goes back to so called "Ancient Greece", 447 BC, to watch them build the Parthenon, and there is only a sleepy village, not a great city that consensus history would call "Athens".

    • The same with the classic story of trying to go back and watch the Crucifixion, only to find no Romans in control of Judea, and no Romans anywhere in the world; plus no Judea. HA!

    549:

    I'm projecting that sensors, communications, and AI will become good enough to eliminate most false positives.

    As for the second part, I'm guessing that warlike violence can be deterred by rapid and consistent intervention, just as with less extreme behaviors. People are deterred by probable minor penalties more than by improbable extreme penalties. More people will risk a rare chance of life-ruining financial penalties for copyright violations than will park a car in a location where it's likely to be towed. If a territory has a million young men with AK-47s when the drone swarm moves in, I'm guessing that occupiers don't need to reserve prison space for 500000 or even 50000 of them as long as the response to violence is consistent and rapid.

    I wrote the above thinking of the current difficulty deploying armed forces for genuine humanitarian good, even in the rare-ish case where that motivation is present. But as I review it, it occurs to me that such technology could make "soft" wars of conquest viable, at least if the opposition has nothing more than angry young men with small arms and improvised weapons. I don't know why anyone would launch wars of conquest, in a world where everything is made by machine and exceptional mineral resources were exhausted long ago, but most wars probably don't start from sound and sober calculation.

    550:

    Concetrating on conventional weapons seems to miss the point in my opinion. Certainly guerillas will be well guerillas and use technology in novel and hard to predict ways.

    Its the uncoventional stuff that counts even for nations or whatever replaces them. I think wars half a millenium from now will be fought with something akin to an AK-47 with trains, horses and a few technicals , I might be wrong.

    Scenarios like The Hunger Games aren't especially far fetched either if any of the myriad of psycopaths out there can gain a technological edge or political power , they'll certainly use it.

    Heck we live in a society with a level of pervasive surviellance than would have provoked a violence when I was young.

    The entire idea that the State can and should have cameras in public was anathema well into the 90's, the hallmark of a tyranny in fact. Now its commonplace. I dount it would be that difficult to convince future folk that a "safety implant" was the best way to keep society state, Start with I dunno sex offenders and work outwards. When you reach critical mass, everyone is a slave or killed.

    And yes such technology is possible, several natural parasites can do crude versions. A smarter BAN (Body Area Network) say a carbon nano computer with good brain science could well do it as well. And if someone can do it, they will do it.

    Another odder scenario is a "die down" Really good VR and robotics might simply replace interest in meat space and while people will have families, they'll be data not flesh. Think Tamogotchi writ large if you remember those.

    This is a rather gloomy if interesting scenario, well maintained empty cities (busy little robots) with pods of people whose lives while richer and fuller in ways aren't really human. Gradually people only exist as data and live a kind of limitless existence as nature reclaims the unused bits.

    Scenrtios that have us exploring space in numbers though? No. Its not a technological issue, the tech can be done.

    Its one of politics and interest. Basically if your society has the social and phsyical resources to do well at this, they don't need it or want it. If they need it, they can't do it.

    There might be some manned exploration but I suspect it will amount to a whole lotta nothing and in time, it will pretty much cease,

    551:

    By Cthulhu, when you think this thread can't get any worse, I does, again and again.

    I'll go calm myself by reading youtube comments.

    552:

    ...HA!...

    Does anyone seriously believe that history suddenly has a cutoff point around 1000AD? That over a short time someone re-wrote everything without trace? And that nobody would find contradictory evidence for a thousand years?

    There's plenty that never got recorded in the first place. And there are real historical mysteries. But denying the existence of Rome is just silly.

    553:

    Mushrooms? Piers Anthony: Ox / Orn / Omnivore

    Allybh @ 532 We literally do not know what happened before 1000 AD. Oh, really? Care to justify that statement? We have plenty of physical evidence of constructions that have lasted that long & contemporary written records. “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle” is a good starting place. That smell is the rot turning them to mush NO – only if they get DAMP – if they are kept dark & dry they will just sit there. since all of recorded history only covers the past thousand years. Oh, really? So the works of Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, Suetonius, Tacitus etc [Ad nauseam] are all modern fiction are they? I call TROLL! How do you get around PHYSICAL EVIDENCE, securely dated by various historical/archeological/physics techniques – such as dating mortar in buildings? You don’t. I realise you are having great wind-up fun, but please desist, since we can all see the gaping holes in your fun “argument”

    Jay @ 536 “Offense to outrun Defence”? Like in WWI you mean? Or mediaeval warfare, where castles COULD be taken, but it took months …..

    Weaponry, generally. Sorry folks, but are we not circling around one of the “forbidden attractors”, as listed by OGH here? Can we get back to civil society? Remember – Geordie Stephenson changed the world a lot more than the murdering tyrant, Buonaparte!

    554:

    You appear to have intermittent malfunctions of your 'H', 'A' and '!' keys. Please try to find another keyboard.

    555:

    Everybody knows we're all actually living in Judea around the birth of Christ. We've all read Phillip K Dick around here, we know what's what.

    HAH! :P

    Regarding future warfare, as in OGH's Glasshouse, it's likely there will be technology allowing civillians to be weaponized. It's the most likely scenario for a mob of lightly armed humans vs. high tech army showdown I can think of.

    The webcomic schlock mercenary has a similar storyline going at the moment. The mercs are hired as security and find their civillian employers are compromised and being nanotechnologically transformed into weaponized supersoldiers (All clones of one operative, I believe).

    I know we're being conservative with technomagic but I expect 500 years time will give at least one consistent method of effective mind control.

    Another reason to be antinatalist, as technology progresses the scope of horrible shit that can happen to your descendants widens.

    (And I consider myself a technological optimist)

    556:

    Nexialist: I for one don't find imperial China a particularly attractive model for human civilization going forward...

    Ah, but compared to the alternatives on offer at the time, imperial China was pretty utopian! At least if you're comparing it to, say, the Maya (shafted by agriculture-induced climate change, always teetering on the edge of famine), the Aztecs (made Hitler's Nazis look like a bastion of sanity and enlightenment), the Dark Ages in Europe (squatting in the wreckage of the roman empire and not quite punched all the way back to the neolithic). The Caliphate, at its height, was probably competitive, as were some of the Indian empires, but they tended to have more invasions and wars of conquest, if anything.

    The Chinese empire, in contrast, was run by a literate, educated bureaucracy with a merit-based system for promotion and a down-escalator to clear the upper ranks of under-performing hangers-on (if the children of the high-ups couldn't be arsed swotting to pass the civil service exams). Yes, it gave an unfair advantage to the already-wealthy, who could provide schooling and tuition for their kids: but compared to the social mobility in, say, England (born a peasant, live a peasant, die a peasant, and your childrens' children too) it was a radical ferment of social mobility.

    557: 492 - That may be a comment on your flatmate. I don't know any Ukranians that well, but I do know Chinese (mainland, not "just" Hong Kong or Taiwan) and Russian people who know a selection of "Western" bands. Ok, the Chinese girl was totally blown away when she heard a capella music, but apparently the Chinese really don't have anything even vaguely like it.
    558:

    Indeed so.

    And history isn't even a single strand. It's a weave of thousands of threads, hemmed down the edges with archaeology. When someone writes off the whole of archaeology, with its multiple dating methods based on basic physics and chemistry, they're so obviously barking that there is no need to examine their 'evidence'.

    When I was a lad, there was a guy named Velikovsky who purported that Venus was a comet wandering round the solar system and having close encounters with Earth, thus explaining the events in the Bible. This is pretty much the same level of fruitloopery, several mega-muesli.

    Nope, I see no reason to encourage such nutcases by giving them money. Not do I see any reason to spend my time on it either. There's a limited amount of time in my life, and I'm not going to waste it on cranks with such ignorance.

    559:

    The rewriters of history usually have an agenda of some kind, political, cultural or psychotic. There was, for example, a British movement in the 19th century who believed that all of the events in the Gospels of the New Testament had actually taken place in south-west England and Jesus was, in fact, an Englishman. They had maps and all. Brings a new meaning to the song "Jerusalem" don't it?

    560:

    Heck we live in a society with a level of pervasive surviellance than would have provoked a violence when I was young.

    The entire idea that the State can and should have cameras in public was anathema well into the 90's, the hallmark of a tyranny in fact. Now its commonplace. I dount it would be that difficult to convince future folk that a "safety implant" was the best way to keep society state, Start with I dunno sex offenders and work outwards. When you reach critical mass, everyone is a slave or killed.

    Maybe the pervasive presence of public recording devices will render us all slaves or prepare us for the death camps. It seems probable to me that in a century, much less five, public surveillance will be seen as an important component of civilization and no more tyrannical than displacing thief-takers with public police forces or identifying motor vehicles with license plates. By way of historical analogy, I recall people proclaiming that product bar codes and RFID tags were (somehow) going to usher in a tyrannical system of control marking the Biblical end of days. You can probably still find some people peddling that theory, but the promised tyranny has been slow to appear.

    I can't find a coherent position in "we need Leviathan, but should prefer it weak and incompetent." It's like believing that victimization by criminals means freedom, because any law enforcement capable of catching muggers might also catch and punish people for arbitrary and unjust reasons. It's best that police are unable to find pamphleteers and arsonists alike (??? !!!)

    561:

    And of course all the European nations, including those that have hated each other for ages, have periodically all got together to coordinate the fraudulent dating. No doubt as soon as the last eye witness to the Jewish Holocaust dies we will have all the deniers crawling out of the woodwork making exactly the same claims. I mean , nobody actually saw anything - its all easily falsified records etc.

    562:

    as soon as the last eye witness [...] dies

    Oh you naive foolish boy! The deniers already make those claims. After all, those 'eye witnesses' can be dismissed, they don't matter, they are deluded or part of the conspiracy, yes?

    (Not to mention those nations who while having understandable gripes against the state of Israel have bought wholesale into denialism.)

    563:

    Sort of like those who call the police about the neighbors dog barking after dark. A legitimate complaint. Then when the police get there they proceed to tell the police that the root cause is their neighbor beaming ultra sonic waves to the alien overlords every night at 10 PM which causes the dogs to bark. And that's what the police must stop.

    564:

    I knew I'd read something along the same lines (History is not what we think) recently. Here it is, a post by one of the main lesswrong contributors http://squid314.livejournal.com/340809.html

    Guaranteed free of any trailing HA!s although I can't guarantee the comments section from here on... these things have a way of spreading :)

    565:

    Yep. I've been an amateur history reader for decades. The fall of Rome made more sense when I learned, (in very broad terms), that the Mongols drove the Germans through France and into Spain where they then took over N. Africa then moved on Rome. Sort of. Kind of. With a lot of early Christian issues mixing into the fighting. Apparently the concept of Trinity was a big sticking point between the left over Romans and the "invaders". Not to get into that entire thing with Constantinople.

    And there isn't a really settled overall history of how N and S America was settled.

    566:

    Regarding the statements about string theory in 516 and 521: Massively misinformed. Think about it for a moment, who do you think is a better source for your opinions about physics - Woit, who runs a tabloid physics-blog rather than do research, or Witten, one of the smartest, most admired, and most prolific physicists of all time? String theory is a complex subject - as is particle physics in general - and it is easy to be confused about it. But allow me to assure you, string theory, right or wrong, is science, it has extremely deep ties to the rest of physics, and even if data from the LHC causes a lot of paradigm churn, it is very very likely that some form of string theory will remain relevant. It might even be "string theory without strings" - like I said, it's a complex subject, with subtleties that it's easy to be confused about. But the newly fashionable trash-talking of string theory is just ignorance at work.

    567:

    That blog entry sounds quite sane, though. It just states that history as taught at school is incomplete, not completely forged. I think history at school has more to do with genealogy (where do we come from? how is our government justified?) than any historical science.

    Here in Germany I heard a review about a critical school book named "Nobody laughed at Columbus" which lists a lot of popular historical errors that are still taught at school. The title is about the fact that at Columbus' time it was widely accepted that earth is a globe. He still had problems with getting funding for his expedition because there were two theories concerning the circumference of the world which differed by a factor of 6. Columbus believed in the less accepted shorter circumference, and potential funders pointed out that if the longer circumference is true, he'd die of starvation before reaching India (unless he found new land in between, ha ha ha). So guess which circumference theory was correct?

    568:

    Yeah Scott is sane, I wasn't trying to upstage the crazy, rather redirect the discussion so more productive routes.

    So, assuming no great loss of data one thing I find will be different from now on is the sheer granularity of the historical record. Increasingly from the 20s on we're getting a more and more comprehensive and filled out vision of the past, even with the spotty technology of the time we stumble on video of Anne Frank, full copies of Metropolis, etc... given the current ease with which backups are made and the increasing forensic technology, I can imagine people in the future will have a crystal clear image of the past.

    This is the opposite of the old saw about digital evanescence, I'm willing to bet a 23rd century archeologist will be able to extract a lot of meaningful information from a late 2oth century CD found in a landfill. And that's aside from all the stuff he'll have at the tip of his finger with a quick search engine query.

    Even without life extension, which would add living memory to the mix, I think this is going to lead to a substantially different society in the long run.

    Perhaps slower to change but more consistent through time, I'm thinking in terms of a shortened or nonexistent generation gap between adults for example...

    569:

    Well, yes: history is over-simplified for public (and juvenile) consumption. It's also whitewashed by the victors.

    But there's also a point at which the narrative of history runs up again (a) everybody with an axe to grind being dead, and primary sources being accessible to relatively-impartial researchers (e.g. government archives), and (b) the archaeological record, which is often ambiguous and fragmentary but provides firm confirmation -- you might not believe a battle took place in 1540, but if someone can point to a battlefield with mass graves full of men with bits missing, and lots of lost arrowheads and broken swords, then something violent clearly happened there.

    570:

    That blog entry sounds quite sane, though. It just states that history as taught at school is incomplete, not completely forged. I think history at school has more to do with genealogy (where do we come from? how is our government justified?) than any historical science. On that level it's hard to argue with the statement. The issue arises when you have to start asking questions like "what has been left out?" "what has been re-written?" (eg Richard III of England) "who did the editting and with what motives?"

    571:

    Be careful with "the victors write the history books." Just as often, its the defeated musing obsessively about what went wrong who impose their views, while the victors move on to other things. Consider how much impact the losing sides in the '45, the Slave-Holders' Treasonous Revolt, or the Second World War had on popular views amongst the winning side. Or whose view of the Peloponnesian War we have, for that matter.

    572:

    If a dispassionate presentation of facts is what you call greenwash, then I plead guilty, sirrah.

    573:

    Easy: anything that doesn't justify the current government is rewritten and everything that shows other persons than our ancestors being great is left out. ;-)

    Ok, I know, in that generality this statement is wrong, but I think the tendency is right.

    I hated history at school. Once I got interested in politics I got also interested in finding out how politics worked in the past. Without that history was just a sequence of random events and numbers to me.

    574:

    The word "sirrah" probably doesn't mean what you think it does. Please find a [good] dictionary ...

    575:

    But there's also a point at which the narrative of history runs up again (a) everybody with an axe to grind being dead, and primary sources being accessible to relatively-impartial researchers (e.g. government archives),

    Yes, that's why the catholic church was careful to get rid of a lot of primary sources.

    And school books tend to run behind current historical insight by a number of decades.

    576:

    It's not the "current government" but the current governing system that received mainstream history tends to exhibit a bias towards. We live in self-identified democracies that do a lot of mutual back-slapping over their excellent human rights record, and the presentation of history to the public (and especially to kids enrolled in publicly funded education) tends to be spun to reinforce the idea that these systems are the best, final, ultimate emergent form of ideal governance. Even though this whiggish viewpoint is explicitly rejected by actual practicing historians, it's implicit in the over-simplified versions taught in schools -- which are also tasked with inculcating patriotism or a sense of national pride in their charges.

    This isn't necessarily spun as pure propaganda, but in general positives are highlighted and negatives are avoided or go untaught. In the UK, the British Empire is generally presented in a neutral or positive light, while rebellions against it, or freedom movements, are ignored or swept under the rug. Japan: we know all about their regretful tendency not to talk about the Rape of Nanjiang in class. The USA: do they really teach kids about the invasion and near-genocide in the Philippines? Or the systematic extermination of the First Nations? (Slavery and the Civil War is almost impossible to avoid, but even there, it's possible to spin it.)

    577:

    Or consult the forums of a good dictionary:

    "Sirrah" is insulting when used between people of the same rank. There are countless examples in Shakespeare. Here's one, from "The Taming of the Shrew," III i. I've eliminated a lot of the text except to show that they are both gentlemen and that they are insulting each other.

    [Lucentio and Hortensio, both gentlemen, are arguing.]

    Fiddler, forbear; you grow too forward, sir: ... ?

    HORTENSIO: But, wrangling pedant, ... .

    LUCENTIO: Preposterous ass, ... .

    HORTENSIO: Sirrah, I will not bear these braves of thine.

    BIANCA: Why, gentlemen, ...

    AFAIK it also used in mock piratee talk by Americans (generally appending "-ah" to words). I'm not sure if many people use Sirrah as a synonym for Alpheratz, though...

    578:

    It's not the "current government" but the current governing system that received mainstream history tends to exhibit a bias towards. We live in self-identified democracies that do a lot of mutual back-slapping over their excellent human rights record, and the presentation of history to the public (and especially to kids enrolled in publicly funded education) tends to be spun to reinforce the idea that these systems are the best, final, ultimate emergent form of ideal governance.

    That's exactly what I meant; I wish I had your way with words! :-)

    I compared history at schools to genealogy because in monarchies it was used in the same way to justify the rule: "We are king because my father was king, and my grandfather was king before then, and his father was king, too, ..... and my great-great-great-great-...-grandfather was God!" (or appointed by god)

    579:

    These are some thoughts about this post and “context is everything” . On the latter – I am serious heartened that so many people agree with you. I have long thought the environmental movement has done a serious cause nothing but harm by its quasi mystical guff about “saving the planet” . It is about safeguarding our niche in it – it may be unfortunate but people will only get it, if they can see that their own selfish interest (or at least that of their children, nation, species) is at stake.

    While facts are important, that is why we shouldn’t disappear up our own fundament a debating whether global warming is man made. It is happening, and we have to work out how to respond. Paradoxically it is good news if we can affect the weather – we just need to learn how to do it deliberately in the direction we want it to go. Not so easy I know. Equally while burning carbon fuels maybe bad it is also not a long term solution – we urgently need to find serious alternatives. Here we come up against a political problem. While most of us may find it difficult to think beyond, say, our children’s life time, politicians find it difficult to think beyond the electoral cycle. In the USA that is two years. Both the US and EU are designed, yes, deliberately designed, to move at a snail’s pace, so that something can only happen with very broad agreement. That has democratic virtue but makes sweeping imaginative decisions almost impossible. (And ,no, the Chinese authoritarian model is not an answer, although it does make planning easier ). Both the Pentagon and the European Council warn of the political instability that will follow on the heels of climate change. Both the EU and the Obama administration talk about importance of “green jobs” – but they mean more windmills and better light bulbs. Where is the investment in exploring serious solar power, or fission ? But there is another problem here. Obama has made it clear in the last 24 hours that the “environment” does not come before “jobs.” Covering New Mexico in photovalvic devices and supplying cheap energy would be a lovely lucrative contract for some one, but it (probably) wouldn’t mean jobs or profit on the level of the extractive industries. You might well be right that the US and UK won’t be around in 500 years time – but what is the appropriate unit ? – world government would be even more sclerotic and Strathclyde regional council cant cut the mustard. The recent ravages of Storm Sandy show how ill prepared the richest country in the world is for rises in sea levels. Floating cities anyone ? It would seem to me a serious, far sighted proposal worthy of huge investment – but any politician who proposed it would be laughed out of court as a fantasist. Too “sci fi”. Will corporations do the work ? – may be, but the investment capital needed is huge – and would they turn their precious products over to the homeless Bangladeshi’s who’d been the one’s in need ? Unfortunately I don’t have any solutions, beyond urging that we try to get people thinking beyond left right paradigms.

    580:

    I read your relevant post as:- 1) Claiming that all electric and hybrid vehicles use regenerative braking. This is not the case. 2) Claiming that no HC powered car uses regenerativ braking. This is not the case either.

    Where are these "dispassionate facts" then?

    On the subject of "sirrah", I took the word as being gentle mocking rather than actively insulting.

    581:

    Nestor @ 555 “mind control” … Well first steps are tentatively already here, in medical applications re. people in PVS. Scanners are being used to note their mental states, compared to normal people, & slow “conversations” are being performed, using thoughts, alone.

    Bellinghman @ 562 Please don’t! I have worked with people who had neat numbers tattooed on the insides of their wrists. Including one, who having survived Czechoslovakia 1938-45, was put into the Gulag in 1948-9 [ Escaped with wife & daughter by literally jumping ship into a Danish harbour, in February …… ]

    One man’s meat @ 579 Yes this is the REAL “global warming scam” which so confuses the right-wing & libertarians (I’ve been arguing with them for months on this one) That GW is real, but that guvmints are, effectively, doing nothing AT ALL to mollify, turn aside, or alter that real GW. Instead, they & their power/energy-corporation buddies are ripping us off. Or something along those lines. I mean, lots of nuclear power, whilst Japan & Germany are CLOSING theirs down & our programme looks to be late, expensive & foreign owned-&-built. Um.

    582:

    Yes, but. This assumes that humans are the failure point. That won'ty necessarily be the case.

    A pervasive surviellance system could easily consist of simple, efficient weighing algorythms linked to interactive databases. We could program a crude version in LISP now

    Think of it as something akin to the "Machine" from TVs Person of Interest only hundreds of times smarter and without a "Finch" to guide it.

    The systems thinks you did X act and the entire system, everywhere is after you.

    Something like the movie "Minority Report" only with more pervasive, more multi-level sensors, not just retinas but DNA from sweat, voice print, gate analysis and all that, combined.

    The technologies by themselves are no big deal, the risk is in convergence.

    Now certainly there will be some resistance but its staggeringly easy to kill or control mass numbers if a societies wishes. We did it with 30's tech and applied modern tech would make it much easier. Heck a simple start would be to prohibit and discourage general purpose computing and a free Internet under the rhuburic of "Piracy and Child Porn"

    I can almost 100% guarantee that some state somewhere will try this simply because rotten sociopaths love power and the modern state, save maybe social democracies tends to give it to thse people.

    583:

    I seem to remember reading a novel which made much mileage out of this idea. Called something like "Rule 34", can't remember who the author was ...

    584:

    Of course a while after posting that I realized the technology to weaponize civilians already exists, it's called radio, as demonstrated by the Rwanda experience...

    OT Tech note: movable type asks if I want to be remembered but I find I have to log in every time I return regardless. Cookies might be set to evaporate a little too easily?

    585:

    The USA: do they really teach kids about the invasion and near-genocide in the Philippines? Or the systematic extermination of the First Nations? (Slavery and the Civil War is almost impossible to avoid, but even there, it's possible to spin it.)

    When I took high school and college history (late '80s/early'90s) slavery and the Indian genocide were fairly extensively covered, and not particularly sugarcoated. The Philippines conquest was much less covered, but mentioned.

    I suspect that much of the animus motivating the current Republican party has its roots in those classes. It seems to give a lot of white Americans, particularly Southerners, a persecution complex.

    586:

    RFID tags are in their infancy. The jury is still out on that one.

    And exactly that fear of street crime is what will bring about a tyranny. Why not have state watch your house to keep you safe. I mean you have nothing to hide right? Until some private party of the state lets your boss know about you bad think or wrong opinion. Something doesn'thave to be illegal and neither fines nor legal action are reqwuired to ruin a life. The baseline freedom to be a jerk with bad opinions is essential to a healthy society.

    This is opinion here but street crimes and riots and such are actually beneficial in small to moderate amounts. It means people are trying and striving and vital. A super efficient police state could almost certainly stop much of these activities but if it leads to passivity you have a problem

    In fact what should scare people is passivity. When a population stops reproducing for too long , bothering to strive when gains can be had or as seems to be common in Japan having sex at all, c.f grass eaters thatsnot good.

    This as in any population of animal is a dire sign since in time it will lead to cultural or even species extinction.

    And note too, save for highly dysfunctional or highly religious areas this seesm to be global. So if our tech ends up being a dead end for aur biological needs, thats a challenge we are not equipped to deal with.

    However its impossible to say if such trends will continue. So who knows?

    587:

    String theory is the edge of science. You're doing science when your theories are falsifiable. The work in string theory is very beautiful, and has deep roots (maybe) in physics, which is why people have been lenient with it to date, but its been several decades and not a useful prediction in sight ...

    I'm not being dismissive of string theory, but its too easy to stray into irrelevance if your theories are untestable. Hence the impatience...

    588:

    "I seem to remember reading a novel which made much mileage out of this idea. Called something like "Rule 34", can't remember who the author was ..."

    I think that it was Charlene Stress. She also wrote something titled "Clockwork Robber Barons vs the Zeppelin Zombies of Mars".

    True Steampunk!

    But the problem I have with steampunk is that you can't stretch it in the future. In a sense it doesn't have a future.

    I mean, what comes next in 20 or a 100 years? You go on to dieselpunk? And what do you step up to after that? How do you get it as far as 2512?

    589:

    "In fact what should scare people is passivity. When a population stops reproducing for too long , bothering to strive when gains can be had or as seems to be common in Japan having sex at all, c.f grass eaters thatsnot good. This as in any population of animal is a dire sign since in time it will lead to cultural or even species extinction."

    It will lead to the extinction of the 95+% of the population who will be dead weight chronic unemployed in a fully automated future.

    590:

    "It will lead to the extinction of the 95+% of the population who will be dead weight chronic unemployed in a fully automated future."

    Every so often your mask slips and reveals your actual beliefs. Perhaps you should think about getting other spokesbeings for your political movement, because you're making it sound like you don't want any people in it.

    591:

    I'm just stating what will happen if things don't change. Zero State is about making sure that future does not happen. It means closing the gap between the "one percent" and the rest ie wealth re-distribution. Whining libertarians can take it elsewhere.

    592:

    And an addendum - Marx was right, but 200 years too early.

    593:

    I agree. I strongly recommend Paul Stamets' Mycelium Running.for a better look at a bunch of things people could theoretically do with fungi. If you google "mycoremediation," you will find even more potential and real-world applications.

    It's also worth reading Mycelium Running because he is quite explicit about the legal challenges for this industry. The biggest problem as I recall is that some big companies patented many of the processes back in the 1970s. These were patents for the equivalent of "using fungi to break down toxic wastes." These overly broad, poorly defined patents have caused no end of trouble, because you either have to get a license to commercialize your innovation (the patent holders aren't really in any myco-related business, AFAIK) and/or you have to fight them in court.

    This, incidentally, is a hint to anyone outside the US who wants to do some really innovative technology for things like, oh, hazardous waste remediation, forest restoration, water treatment, and so forth. Note that getting rich by doing any of this in the US market will be difficult, but eventually those patents will fall.

    I'd also add that I've used Mycelium Running to provide background for a couple of SF novels, and I'll use it again. It's a rich trove of future setting material, right up there with Debt, the First 5000 Years and Bill Mollison's Permaculture.

    594:

    Have you read David Brin's The Transparent Society or any of the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks? My views on privacy were greatly shaped by the former and the latter offer a pretty good aspirational program for secular paradise, albeit one that needs substantial modification in light of real-world physics and AI research. And a substantial component of that paradise is that it has very few explicit laws and high toleration for deviance, precisely because AI and ubiquitous observation can stop harm just-in-time rather than crafting statutes for all situations.

    I think that the ideal society allows everyone to live the idly rich, carefree life of a Bertie Wooster, insofar as that is possible without destroying the biosphere or depending on any other person to play cook, maid, or Jeeves. If anyone chooses a more challenging life it should be out of eagerness rather than the coercion of masters or circumstances.

    There are some crimes that I would prefer to see left unsolved because I don't think they should be crimes in the first place, but in a democratic society I believe those laws can be changed, and in fact will be easier to change if serious crimes are greatly diminished. I'm not very keen on the idea that riots or unsolved crimes of violence are a sign of societal health. It reminds me of the insane idea that maintaining some poverty is important to motivate hard work. Or of the equally insane idea that hard work is intrinsically valuable. And I hear loud warning bells when someone raises concern about insufficient human reproduction and "cultural extinction." The whole planet could reproduce at Japan's low rate for a century and humanity wouldn't be anywhere near extinction. There would even still be millions of Japanese people.

    In 2002 Charlie wrote an essay titled The Panopticon Singularity which I think outlines all the monitoring technologies I've been speculating about, albeit with far more pessimism about how they'll be used. In 2007 he wrote Shaping the Future, an even bolder extrapolation about information technology, but devoted only a couple of paragraphs to surveillance cameras and possible associated risks. In this present essay the word surveillance doesn't appear at all and I was the first to use the word panopticon, 537 comments into the discussion. Is that because we expect panopticons everywhere so soon that they're settled, ancient, unquestioned facts by 2512?

    595:

    dirk @ 592 Marx was right, but 200 years too early. NOT EVEN WRONG If you believe this, then your political movement is doomed. Marx was a very astute observer of the scene - he then said i"if this goes on, unaltered, as it is now, then the following will happen..." But, it did NOT go on as it was then. Employment improved, employers' slowly improved terms & conditions, & the "working" classes became middle. All predictions based on a snapshot of society taken in 1848 were wrong, because of subsequent changes. Marxism is a RELIGION - & as wrong & murderous as all th others.

    Panopticons: It is not the existence of a panopticon that is the problem... It is what you DO with it. I think Cory Doctorow has had words on this subject?

    596:

    So what is to stop the ownership of everything gradually moving to the "one percent" as automation replaces even middle class jobs and most of the population is unemployed (apart from security jobs)?

    597:

    If machines do all work and manufacture everything, including copies of themselves, it only takes a small number of altruists or pirates to neutralize the capital-owners' initial advantage.

    598:

    Try "neutralizing" anything on £70 a week job seekers allowance or £6 an hour minimum wage in a part time job.

    599:

    The USA: do they really teach kids about the invasion and near-genocide in the Philippines? Or the systematic extermination of the First Nations? (Slavery and the Civil War is almost impossible to avoid, but even there, it's possible to spin it.)

    Yes, not, sort of.

    Pre teens get a sanitized version of most history.

    High school (15-18 year olds) gets a more raw version. Somewhat depends on the class. Are you taking basics to get out, college prep, or advanced college placement. The more rigorous the class the deeper you go.

    Plus understand the for public schools curriculum is set by the states. So the civil war gets a somewhat different treatment in Chicago than Dallas. And the Oregon trail studies are different in New Hampshire than Colorado.

    And I'm sure that the battle of Agincourt has a different treatment in the UK vs. France. At least in terms of why it occurred.

    600:

    That's where I disagree. While I happen to love the oceanic cultures, and I agree that it's really fun to study how they lived on the islands (just as it is fun to study the Arctic cultures), the truth is that most historical cultures haven't lived in that condition for anything up to 40,000 years. Or more. They've had neighbors on all sides, and their great adventure in life has been learning to live within whatever the confines of their life is. This status quo has, of course, been broken by generations of migrations, but in almost all cases, their migrations have been to another place where people already live, not to a land that people had never before visited.

    Where I think it's worth mocking Charlie is in the assumption that our civilization ("our" referring specifically to the US and UK, less to a place like, oh, Andorra, that never had overseas colonies) can survive without a bunch of colonies to extract resources from our cheap labor to make our junk and favorite addictive substances (sugar, alcohol, caffeine, etc). That's the subtext of the ideal of the frontier in the US, and that's what we really have to watch out for. The frontier is where we make our lives better, not just a hellhole where we get away from the city. Right?

    Wealth creation is also a subtext for space colonization. After all, the real reason to go into space is to get rich, not just to get away from people. After all, if some dude is going to drop a cool billion on sending a group of people to the asteroids, it's not because he's a philanthropist trying to get a small crew of malcontents away from Earth. He's really trying to corner the platinum (or iridium) market for the next few generations. If the only suckers he can find for the voyage are a bunch of malcontents, that's just life.

    601:

    Circling back to the Future of Religion

    A great deal of "Bad Data" here; I expect there will be a Pope in Rome in 2512; How important will he be? Who Knows? Much will depend on the next 50-75 years, and if we sustain this economy of metastic growth.

    BUT, many of the baseline assumptions I have seen here are wrong. Background, I am a US "Episcopalian"; (Affiliated with the CoE); One of my the more interesting experiences of my Youth was having the Vestry explain to the Half UK/Half American Military congegation how different the US and UK churches were (In Frankfurt a. M.); Yes, the US Church "Looks" like a quasi-Catholic body (Bishops, Cathedrals, etc), (Complete with a US Bishop in Paris!) but is really another (US) Anarchistic Protestant Denomination. Actually, the Southern Baptists (Attended with my Grandmama for a while) are better at enforcing doctrinal and organizational conformity.

    ("Catholicism Without the Guilt" is one of the standing jokes)

    The Episcopalians had a Gay Bishop (with partner) in New Hampshire; Women Clergy (and Bishops) are old news... I thought about it a bit, but if the Diocesese in New Hamshire wanted to call (elect) that guy to be their Bishop, who am I to question gods work?

    As for the Catholics, in the US it is pretty much DADT on Birth Control, etc; You don't see many of those Catholic families with eight or ten children that were common in the 1960s. The people have voted with their actions, and the parish clergy just keep their heads down. Or are busy trying to learn Spanish.

    Latin American Catholics are losing ground to the (US Derived) "Prosperity Gospel" Protestants. How large an active population the Catholics still have is an open question. It's the default setting there, everyone who doesn't say otherwise is a Catholic.

    IIRC, many of those "Eastern" Catholic denominations are more likely to be in intercommunion with the Anglican Community than the Pope/Bishop of Rome.

    602:

    Q: In a world where machines perform all useful economic activity, how do you tell the capitalists from anyone else?

    A: Everyone's an idler, but the capitalists are the ones that look unhappy.

    603:

    Why should idler's be "paid" more than subsistence? If 80% of the population is unemployed, 10% are minimum wage rentacops and the rest are (in the words of the Daily Mail) "hard working families" why should the latter have to subsidize the former, and most especially the children of the former. How about incentives not to breed eg withdrawal of child support etc? The old Marxist analysis broke down because the Capitalists actually needed the labour of the workers who could organize. But when that is no longer true?

    604:

    When machines do all the useful work, ordinary people don't need wages any more than capitalists need workers. If the only thing preventing 80% of the population from switching to prosperity from poverty is a few antediluvian rentiers, elections will quickly fix that state of affairs.

    605:

    There's a traditional type of place for a new frontier in this new world - Antarctica. Also - we're going to have 500 more years worth of ruins to live in. Some of them wiil probably quite comfortable - think of Gibson's Bridge trilogy: Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties.

    This might not be a new frontier, technically speaking. But it has the feel of some old interplanetary/interstellar sf. At least, to me it does.

    606:
    without a bunch of colonies to extract resources from our cheap labor to make our junk and favorite addictive substances (sugar, alcohol, caffeine, etc).

    Oh, and for the record - you can have my sugar, caffeine and alcohol when you pry them out of my cold dead hands :-)

    607:

    So what is to stop the ownership of everything gradually moving to the "one percent"

    Historically, there have usually been several dynamics at once:

    • The 1% tend to have large families and the men tend to have bastards, so there is a constant flow of second and third sons into areas previously reserved for the upper decile. The upper decile's sons spill downward, until you get to the bottom of the social pyramid where excess population just dies.

    • The 1%, realizing that to spread their wealth is to diminish it, enact laws to minimize upward mobility.

    • Some of the 1% meet their end at the hands of other 1%ers.

    • Every so often, some group in the top decile manages to convince the 99% that they are for greater equality. The top 1-5% meet the guillotine (or local equivalent) and a new 1% is formed. The rest of the social pyramid gets reshuffled a bit. Restrictions on upward mobility may be relaxed for a generation or two.

    608:

    "elections will quickly fix that state of affairs."

    LOL! You mean you can vote for whoever is backed by the 1% because anyone else cannot generate enough campaign money to even appear in one TV ad. And strangely, neither candidate is actually going to change the basic wealth distribution of the nation.

    609:

    The difference between then and now is that the 1% in the past actually needed workers. Also bear in mind that this is not a problem for 2512 but something that is going to run to completion within the lifetime of many alive now, and maybe even within the next 30 years. Youth unemployment in Spain is 50%, with overall 25%. That may well be the template for the whole Western world within a decade, or two at the outside. "Too big to fail" has captured the Western world and every crisis will further enrich the top 1%.

    610:

    Off topic: I just glanced through those old novels wondering why they were still in the bookshelves when the "Sprawl" stuff wasn't. And the answer is that Gibson matured incredibly after those journeyman works. I highly recommend rereading them. At least, going by my cursory paragraph-level scan.

    611:

    The Anglosphere is not the whole world. The last 10 years have seen socialists take electoral victories in regions with unemployment and poverty rates much lower than 80%. At 80% the big question would be where they wouldn't make big gains. I think you're making the same mistake as the billionaires themselves, believing that elections are deterministic outcomes of advertising budgets and that voters will reliably cut their own throats if asked enough.

    612:

    I agree. Also, with climate shifts, there's going to be novel ecosystems forming around us. Actually, that's happening already.

    I'm having fun thinking about different ways to fit tropes of SF into Earth's future. One can easily substitute islands for asteroids, for example. It's possible that the great Institutes of Brin's Uplift Universe may have some vague echo on a future Earth, as outgrowths of today's NGOs. We could have futuristic windjammers instead of solar sails. Stuff like that.

    Yes, such stories have certainly been done, but I don't think the 1970s are all that similar to the 2010s, do you? To pick one major example, what happens if the web never entirely dies, but keeps evolving with whatever resources are available? If we imagine a future where different parts of the Earth are getting weirder at different rates, that forms as good a backdrop as a suite of generic alien planets.

    613:

    Wealth creation is also a subtext for space colonization. After all, the real reason to go into space is to get rich, not just to get away from people.

    I think there will be a lot of motives. Getting rich is just one. Getting away from people/rules you don't like is also a legitimate motive. Avoiding persecution - real or perceived. Simple wanderlust.

    Obviously while space access is expensive, ROI is going to be an important filter. If costs decline or you can "indenture" yourself, then other motives will drive exploration and colonization.

    However I also think that it may not be humans that come to dominate space colonization, but rather our machine descendents. Unlike Charlie, I do think thinking machines (however primitive) will be created, and that they will be the de facto "colonizers" as they will be adapted for space and thus able to exploit resources more effectively, for us at first, and later for themselves.

    614:

    We've already had space colonized by simple thinking machines. They're called satellites.

    615:

    Also, with climate shifts, there's going to be novel ecosystems forming around us. Actually, that's happening already.

    There's a good point. Some of the novel ecosystems will be natural, others engineered, and in the near future we'll have enough genetically tweaked organisms to construct really novel environments.

    To pick one major example, what happens if the web never entirely dies, but keeps evolving with whatever resources are available?

    I'm sure some global computer network will be around - at least one, but call it one because there will almost certainly be gateways between networks. That's not to say there's reason to think it will be recognizably related to what we have now!

    This is tricky, to say the least. We don't know where Moore's Law will top out, so we don't have any way to guess how much power the future net will have. All of the even moderately practical extrapolations are things we could have in the next few decades; our models become useless long before 2112.

    For amusement, here's one that could be commonplace by 2212. Since VR and AR should be ubiquitous (by 2112) and uploads might turn out to be practical, how about a ghost layer on the physical world? Anyone who cares to come out and interact with the really living can do so, as easily as picking up the phone today. Expect that only some locales will support two-way tactile interaction. Some incarnate people will probably spurn the digital ghosts, for various reasons. Comments?

    616:

    dirk @ 598 True, but it only takes on rich altruist or a group woking together, and that "total control" model slips - it has a single-point-of-failure mode, which means it WILL fail.

    @ 599 The froggies NEVER mention Agincourt - they stress Patay. And, interestingly enough "les rois maudits"

    zorro @ 602 It's called "The Culture", right? Maybe?

    dirk @ 603 AND the "owners" needed SKILLS & EDUCATION in their workforce, which meant you HAD to give them better conditions, or it failed, this created a feedback loop that completely shafted the communist-religions' analysis of how it worked. And still does, and will do - even the 0.1% [ Let's be ralistic here, it isn't the 10% or even the 1%] will NEED support & help, if only to maintain their "machinery". Sooner or later, the overweening differential breaks down. The trick is to get it to break down as it did in Britain 1872 - 1970, or the US 1901 - 2001, & NOT as in Germany 1871 - 1933, or Russia 1905 - 1990.

    jay @ 607 Not necessarily true. One of the remarkable things about English/Scottish, possibly Welsh society, certainly since about 1520, is the remarkable amount of social mobility. The APPEARANCE of a rigid heirarchy is very strong, but when you look at the actual numbers, it ain't so. I can't speak for other societies, of course.

    dirk @ 608 How, then do you explain that, sometimes, true independants & mavericks DO get elected ... look at the constituency of Wyre Forest for a recent example. Also, in the UK, the mega-spending that happens in US elections is verboten.

    zorro @ 611 and that voters will reliably cut their own throats if asked enough. Well, almost worked for the US Rethuglicans, didn't it - did in one respect - they still hold a majority in the "house", I understand?

    617:

    Plus understand the for public schools curriculum is set by the states. So the civil war gets a somewhat different treatment in Chicago than Dallas. And the Oregon trail studies are different in New Hampshire than Colorado.

    State level? My understanding is that counties and even local school boards can change the curriculum. That might depend on the state, though.

    618:

    @479:

    Explain how any of the above can exists in a world so full of automation and robots that "human skills are worthless". And what exactly are REASONS for warfare in such world?

    Eh? Universal prosperity isn't going to solve that kind of problem. People in general have no problem killing each other due to race, religion, language, national boundaries, political affiliation... humans seem to like finding differences so they can create groups of "us" vs. "them." Nations break up over differences imperceptible to outsiders; city-dwellers go cross-eyed with outrage against suburbanites, all people supporting that other party obviously have brain damage and should be reprogrammed.

    619:

    It might be worth waiting to colonize Antarctica until its plate has moved nearer to the equator again, though.

    If you really want a local frontier, try living in or on the oceans. We won't see much of that in the next 50 years but it might be common in 500 years.

    It's really funny that people think we are ready for space colonization when we don't even have self-sufficient artificial islands on earth.

    620:

    Paras 1 & 2 - I thought it was "Char < T Ross"? ;-)

    Paras 3 & 4 - After DieselPunk, NuclearPunk and then ColdFusionPunk maybe?

    621:

    dirk @ 592 Marx was right, but 200 years too early. NOT EVEN WRONG If you believe this, then your political movement is doomed. Marx was a very astute observer of the scene - he then said i"if this goes on, unaltered, as it is now, then the following will happen..." But, it did NOT go on as it was then.

    That's why I like to differentiate between Marxian epistemology, his analysis of capitalism and the communist program. I think the first one is rock solid. The second is more correct than most modern economic theories but got its prediction wrong for the reasons you stated. And the program failed because it wouldn't adapt and was instead turned into a religion and a tool for political power play.

    Or, to quote someone who grew up in socialist Germany: "After the reunion we found out that everything the party said about communism was lies, and everything it said about capitalism was true. :-("

    622:

    Dirk, a better future would be one where we recalibrate our definition of human worth so that it doesn't centre on "work" to such a pathological extent that not being able to get a paying job is seen as equivalent to "worthless".

    Here's a hint: actual employment levels in the developed world have been dropping for decades now. If you take the definition of full employment to be: aged 16-65 and working full time in a paid job for which one is not over-qualified, then the percentage of us who are fully employed varies between around 30% and 40% of the population -- the rest are children, in higher education, retired, in prison, working part-time, under-employed, raising kids, or, finally, unemployed. The unemployment figures only reflect that fraction of the non-working work force who can jump through the flaming hoops necessary to convince the government to count them -- for example, people who've been sacked for cause in the UK generally don't get to claim unemployment benefit therefore don't add to the figures.

    But the fact is, we're already in the situation you describe. And you're probably going to circulate through the 90-95% "unemployable" sooner or later, even if only because you're old and unattractive and [ageist] employers don't want to take you on as an industrial serf.

    623:

    late to the party if looking forward 500 years, then maybe it's worth looking back 500 years and seeing what was the same in 1512 as it is now ... on a banal level you have people living in houses in various states of domesticity (singles, elderly, families, groups, servants or not, assistance or not), you have alcohol (beer, wine, spirits), you have agriculture of some sort, you have rule of law in some format, you have some system for bringing fuel to the home for cooking/heating, water supply, a need for a means of exchange (unless we're reverted to crofting/barter or accelerated towards cornucopian 3D printers)... at some level, all the needs will be the same, but mediated differently - i imagine you can also posit a standard distribution curve of 'engagement with knowledge' among the general population - back then, now, in 500 years' time - with geeks at the right hand end but most folk in the bulky middle

    i was in the scottish national portrait gallery in edinburgh yesterday which has a section devoted to the cityscape prints of one John Slezer - edinburgh's old town in the late 17th C (300+ yrs ago) looked very much as it does today ... you might guess that the general layout of the old town will look fairly similar in the mid 24th C (individual buildings notwithstanding, castle and palaces excepted)

    624:

    For amusement, here's one that could be commonplace by 2212. Since VR and AR should be ubiquitous (by 2112) and uploads might turn out to be practical, how about a ghost layer on the physical world? Anyone who cares to come out and interact with the really living can do so, as easily as picking up the phone today. Expect that only some locales will support two-way tactile interaction. Some incarnate people will probably spurn the digital ghosts, for various reasons. Comments?

    It's going to happen a lot sooner than that.

    People are dying. And already, close to 50% of the world population have internet access. And already, close to 50% of those have some sort of social media presence.

    By some estimates, by 2050, Facebook (or its successors) will reach the tipping point whereby 50% of the accounts will belong to dead people.

    Add lifelogging, which (again) I think is feasible now, albeit on a bleeding-edge scale (sort of like personal computing in the late 1970s), and which I expect to become ubiquitous in the developed world by 2050, if only to address the cognitive deficits of an aging and increasingly demented population.

    Chances of lifelogs not being stored "in the cloud" and linked to social media? About zip, I'd say, if present trends in privacy continue.

    So, chances of the internet being dominated by the lifelogs of dead people by 2050? Very high indeed. And bolting a simple conversational interface on top of someone's lifelog -- think Siri, using the lifelogger's own voice and speech cadences -- is a whole lot easier than mind uploading, so it's probably going to happen.

    Finally, add geotracking (an intrinsic part of lifelogging if you're doing it right) and we can map these uneasy ghosts onto real world locations.

    625:

    It's really funny that people think we are ready for space colonization when we don't even have self-sufficient artificial islands on earth.

    As Bruce Sterling pointed out: if you spend a thousand years and several thousand trillion dollars terraforming Mars, you'd end up with a hunk of real estate that resembles the Gobi Desert.

    In fact, the Gobi Desert is more desirable real estate -- if your colony expedition there fucks up you can walk home from the Gobi Desert, after all.

    So why aren't we colonizing the Gobi Desert?

    626:

    Chances of lifelogs not being stored "in the cloud" and linked to social media? About zip, I'd say, if present trends in privacy continue.

    With storage becoming ever cheaper, do we really have to store stuff in the cloud?

    627:

    Paras 1 & 2 - I thought it was "Char &LT T Ross"

    628:

    With storage becoming ever cheaper, do we really have to store stuff in the cloud?

    Short answer: yes.

    Long answer: most regular people don't understand the care and feeding of home storage area networks, with or without SSDs, much less how to couple them up to the internet so they're accessible outside the home. Think of the Cloud as "some company somewhere sets up and runs the SAN for you and makes it available wherever you are in return for you paying rent" -- which includes the sanity-sapping issues of keeping it all running. I reckon most regular people will go for that in preference to the DIY approach.

    629:

    "The Anglosphere is not the whole world."

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/13/robots_china_market_foxconn/

    "China is poised to take over from arch rival Japan as the biggest robotics market in the world in the next few years, as manufacturers struggle with rising labour costs and demand greater efficiencies."

    630:

    So why aren't we colonizing the Gobi Desert?

    No water. Let's face it, humans are parasites to living biosystems. That's why we thrive if we have access to forests and meadows and have a hard time in deserts or anywhere with sparse life.

    631:

    The Cloud is likely to devolve into Ms Fnd n Lbry -- http://xkcd.com/908/

    632:

    "The rise of the praetorian class" is a must read. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article32663.html

    Now add it the elimination of most of the economic class.

    633:

    Let's face it, humans are parasites to living biosystems

    By this definition, every heterotroph is a parasite.

    634:

    Charlie,

    So why aren't we colonizing the Gobi Desert?

    Lack of Chinese citizenship.

    In fact, several thousand people do live in the Gobi Desert and find the place desirable enough to live in, as to call it their home. The same goes for every desert on earth. Antarctica had be declared off-limits and untouchable (in terms of its biosphere and geosphere) in order to keep the population as small as it is.

    Even a population density of 0.0001 inhabitant per square kilometer (as in Antarctica) would make Mars home to 15,000 people.

    635:

    I think you're overestimating the average user's storage requirements. A hard drive with a flash drive backup is adequate for me, and probably for most people.

    There's a place for the cloud. Gmail works. But the current business focus on the cloud strikes me as another version of software-as-service; an attempt to keep us paying rent for what we already own.

    636:

    Ghostbusters!

    637:

    This is related to Google's Chrome OS. They are selling Chrome laptops for £200. One huge reason for getting one is if you do any major financial stuff online. I would not trust my PC to do online banking.

    638:

    Really? When you pay to keep your files in "the cloud", what you're actually paying for is hire of the disc space you're using and the professional services of a proper backup strategy (multiple sets, off-site copies, disaster recovery strategy...)

    639:

    I've been hearing this since the early 80s. Just with different nouns.

    300k floppies 1.4 meg floppies 10mb XT disk drive Zip drives

    And so on.

    Charlie is talking about the future. You talking about the present getting stuck.

    640:

    I use the 2G I get with dropbox free. There's not much I have that needs offline, away-from-house storage.

    641:

    That's not a definition, but a statement expressing that in my view mankind profits much more from its ecosystem than vice versa.

    OTOH most parasites are more clever than to kill their hosts...

    642:

    So why aren't we colonizing the Gobi Desert?

    Or the Sahara, or....

    As others have pointed out, people do live in deserts, sparsely. Arguably a large population already lives in the desert (or at least a place with little water) - Los Angeles.

    Unlike the Gobi, Mars does appear to have water, lots of it. Which means that an essential ingredient for life is present. Even a relatively small amount of water at the lunar poles makes a lot of difference.

    So what about the other direction - seasteading? Well there are ideas about this, although most were about wealthy people living on tax haven ships. Artificial, floating islands are certainly possible, but if sited out of national jurisdictions, may need to be defended from pirates already roaming the oceans. But let's not forget that salt water is very corrosive.

    So a colony on Mars, probably living below the surface, would have abundant water (which means air too), no threat from pirates, pretty much guaranteed freedom from existing government interference, and a lot of space to expand into without killing or displacing indigenous peoples.

    643:

    "The opposite could also occur with global warming preceding another ice age (see "The Great Climate Flip Flop", Atlantic Monthly, http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/98jan/climate.htm ) and large areas of Eurasia being rendered unihabitable by ice sheets."

    If there's such a mechanism, I'd like to hear about it (that page is 404, and dude, it's the Atlantic; not exactly reliable on matters of fact and science).

    "Or ... we geohack the planet to prevent global warming and find out that global warming was keeping another ice age at bay since the start of the industrial age (IIRC we are about 1,000 years overdue for an ice age)."

    No, except in the sense (IIRC) that we are on the 'downward' part of the Milankovitch cycle, and so are heading that way - in ten thousand years.

    [[ Mod: I've fixed the link you quoted. Be careful about trailing brackets ]]

    644:

    I fixed the link, and saw what he's talking about (although it was funny to see a neurobiologist talking about climatology).

    645:

    The "climate flip-flop theory" is older than the present AGW dogma.*

    *If you doubt my choice of words, try attacking AGW and see what happens,

    646:

    Even if there is water on Mars, you don't have a living ecosystem that can fix things for you. When oxygen levels where dropping in Biosphere 2, the management could simply pump in oxygen from the outside. If the same happens on Mars, you are just fucked.

    If mankind had the knowledge to engineer closed ecosystems in space, then it could also fix Earth's problems and wouldn't need to go to space. Just re-engineer all cities and farms as closed ecosystems.

    647:

    ...or Siberia. Average population about 3 people per sq km, with 70% living in a few cities. In the 80s ago I flew over Siberia - for some 1500 miles there was absolutely no trace of Human habitation. No houses, no towns, no cities, no roads - just tundra.

    648:

    When oxygen levels where dropping in Biosphere 2, the management could simply pump in oxygen from the outside. If the same happens on Mars, you are just fucked.

    How so? You have power, so just electrolyze the water for the O2. CO2 getting too high? Use lime scrubbers made from the carbonate rocks, or reform it to methane and water with the Sabatier reaction.

    This whole "closed ecosystem" thing is getting to be a fetish. We do not need totally closed ecosystems. What we do want is to close the loop where it makes economic and biological sense. A Mars colony is not an energy limited star ship. There is abundant energy available to power the life support systems. The Mars colony will probably have far more problems with getting hi-tech spare parts and manufacturing equipment, even with 3D printers.

    649:

    How so? You have power, so just electrolyze the water for the O2. CO2 getting too high? Use lime scrubbers made from the carbonate rocks, or reform it to methane and water with the Sabatier reaction.

    Biosphere2 didn't last long enough (in mission day terms) to get its inhabitants to Mars, if it had been the colony ship. Remember we need to cut down resource use enough to get the colonists to Mars in the first place.

    Bluntly, there are too many things that can go wrong. Until we can build enough robustness to keep the people alive for 2-3 years, they won't live long enough to fix the colony / get supplies from Earth.

    650:

    Charlie: Long answer: most regular people don't understand the care and feeding of home storage area networks, with or without SSDs, much less how to couple them up to the internet so they're accessible outside the home. Think of the Cloud as "some company somewhere sets up and runs the SAN for you and makes it available wherever you are in return for you paying rent" -- which includes the sanity-sapping issues of keeping it all running. I reckon most regular people will go for that in preference to the DIY approach.

    It is Not Proven that large clouds are ultimately more reliable or suffer fewer data loss events.

    There are terrifying interdependency problems with clouds and SAAS and so forth. The days leading up to Sandy's landfall were ... Precious, for many Cloud IT folk.

    One of these years I will be able to publish the billion-dollrar cloud failure case study, once I am sure the lawsuits are over.

    Cloud backing up your local devices, redundantly, is what I'd do now...

    651:

    It's going to happen a lot sooner than that.

    I think so, too. With the caveat that calling up someone else's life experiences (possibly because Facebook has screwed over their privacy again) will be the easy part; an actual uploaded consciousness seeking you out by its own choice will doubtless come later.

    Now I'm wondering how someone can make a buck off of this. (On the theory that we'd better think about it now so CMOT Dibbler isn't first in the field.) Maybe you could set this up for your friends and family? Kind of morbid, I'd think, but not that far from the prerecorded clips already in some tombstones. Elderly docents could try to leave expert systems modeled on themselves for future visitors. Disneyland already has robotic US presidents; any famous figure would be fair game for an imitative chatbot.

    Although...it might not be lifelogs so much as expert systems with edited memories; a human setting up a digital personality echo for a specific purpose doesn't want it to be a perfect copy. So if I'm making a chatbot to keep up with my social circle on Second Life while I'm asleep, it only needs to know things relevant to that. It remains ignorant of my finances, my kindergarten memories, and the clutter in my basement.

    (We've visited the cloud-vs-local storage question before; that cycle has gone around often enough already that it's silly to ask which will be more popular in the far future, save that both options will exist. They have different advantages and different failure modes.)

    652:

    If I were trying to colonize the Gobi desert, I'd probably be thinking: "I'm cut off from civilization, there's nothing here, life is too difficult, this sucks, I'm moving back home".

    However, if I were a Mars colonist, in addition to all those thoughts, I like to think I'd be thinking: "I'm one of the first humans to live on another planet, I am the vanguard of humanity's cosmic future, my home world is just a pale blue dot in the sky, I am a master of the universe!"

    So I don't think comparing Mars to an Earth desert is fair; there's a psychological/spiritual effect you need to factor in that could make all the difference (google "Overview Effect").

    653:

    It's really funny that people think we are ready for space colonization when we don't even have self-sufficient artificial islands on earth.

    Interesting that you should mention that; I saw just yesterday that Neft Dashlari is getting decrepit for lack of maintenance. But it still carries a few thousand people, out in the Caspian Sea. It's quite something to look at, too, as you can see in the pictures. It was never meant to be self-sufficient, of course.

    We rarely see the old & failing O'Neill colonies in SF, half abandoned when the economy moves on...

    654:

    Just making the silicone seal for spacesuit requires an industrial infrastructure of tens or hundreds of thousands of people. And that's a WW2 spacesuit :-)

    655:

    I'm just saying that I have a 250 GB hard drive, and I'm using it to store about 17 GB of data (accumulated over about 15 years), most of which I don't really need. I also have an operating system (Ubuntu 10.4, about 8 gigs but easily replaced), a crappy operating system (Vista, not used but given a 100 GB partition just in case I ever want to boot it up), and a flash backup. My backups are not professional quality or terribly frequent, but my data isn't terribly important either. I don't have any real need for cloud storage, and I think that's true for many users.

    If I was a software professional or had a lot of valuable data, my needs would be different. OTOH, one of those needs would be control over my data; I've heard horror stories of data centers in India extorting people by threatening to delete or publish their data.

    656:

    I've been using gmail as an archive for years. Anything important I mail it to myself and then archive it.

    657:

    If I was a software professional or had a lot of valuable data, my needs would be different. OTOH, one of those needs would be control over my data; I've heard horror stories of data centers in India extorting people by threatening to delete or publish their data.

    This is one of the points rarely brought up by the "everything will be in the cloud" proponents. Some data is worth protecting with more security than, for example, my email or Facebook posts. As has been observed, it may take only one high-profile scandal for the trend to reverse again.

    Personally I expect it will be more common to see data losses from business failures quite disconnected from any technical problem; when the corporation runs out of money, they shut down the expensive computers and turn everything over to lawyers. (The servers might or might not wind up in the hands of someone who cared to save the data, or had any interest in the original owners...) We've already seen that. And as soon as predatory asset looters figure out that there's something worthwhile in the cloud's servers, we're right back to the scenario you first mentioned, holding data hostage as long as someone's checkbook holds out.

    658:

    Biosphere2 didn't last long enough (in mission day terms) to get its inhabitants to Mars, if it had been the colony ship. Remember we need to cut down resource use enough to get the colonists to Mars in the first place.

    Biosphere 2 is irrelevant. We do not need to cut down resources. It is an economic issue - propellant vs reuse trade off. Water is one of the largest consumables - both for drinking and for hydrating food. It is also the easiest to recycle, and it doesn't need some full closed loop system to do so, as the ISS has proven with urine recycling.

    Bluntly, there are too many things that can go wrong. Until we can build enough robustness to keep the people alive for 2-3 years, they won't live long enough to fix the colony / get supplies from Earth.

    Supplies can be placed on Mars before the colonists arrive and continuously while they are there. That is just cost. There is absolutely no requirement that colonists be self sufficient immediately, nor that they have perfectly robust systems. That is an artificial barrier that you are raising.

    Obviously the lower the cost the better. But as we already know, the actual propellant cost of a spacecraft is low. The cost of orbital propellant has to bear the full cost of launch, so it isn't cheap. However I fully expect ISRU from NEAs to reduce the cost of water to much lower levels, which in turn means that the mass of water and propellant decreases accordingly.

    We could try to run some "Mars colony" simulations today to determine what the real problems of the colony might be. Do they need lots of brute force approaches to ensure batch food production can be done without the biology tripping you up, or will more elegant approaches be sufficient. Or a combination. What does the supply buffer need to look like? What can be created locally, vs. imported? One thing I don't expect to be a problem is simple H2O electrolysis to supply O2 to the colony. That technology is mature.

    659:

    We could try to run some "Mars colony" simulations today to determine what the real problems of the colony might be.

    It could be a Mars Research Station, even. Maybe in some conveniently unused piece of desert somewhere, such as Utah.

    (This one came to mind because I know a fellow who crewed there; I'm aware there are others.)

    660:

    "China is poised to take over from arch rival Japan as the biggest robotics market in the world in the next few years, as manufacturers struggle with rising labour costs and demand greater efficiencies."

    I don't see how that indicates one political outcome for automation over another. Chinese leadership has already guided the world's largest, fastest reduction in poverty in the world's history. They're not democratic but they do care about keeping ordinary people content. If it comes down to a choice between stability and contentment for a billion people and hyper-wealth for a thousand people, I think they'll favor the billion.

    Even better: do you think that people in Guatemala, Egypt, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Botswana... are going to vote in favor of respecting foreign interests' exclusive control over the machines that could make them much more prosperous? In many nations there's unlikely to be any indigenous stakeholders with an interest in preserving IP rights for automated machinery. Consider the parallel with pharmaceutical royalties and IP rights in lower-income nations.

    661:

    China tends to periodically fission into smaller states and re-fuse; it's hard to say which state it will be in in 500 years. Either way, Russia is likely to be majority-Han by then unless something unexpected happens.

    662:

    I partially agree, but the problem with Biosphere 2 was its size. Small biospheres run into huge stock/flow problems. Without going into the headbanging stoichiometry part of this, basically, you've got to keep all the elements in the biosphere in useful quantities at all times, or the people die. There has to be enough oxygen in the atmosphere, enough (but not too much) CO2 in the atmosphere, but the nitrogen cannot get tied up as N2 in the atmosphere--or released as ammonia. And so on. Our planet has enormous pools of these elements, so local hiccups don't cause global catastrophes. Just local ones, like fish kills.

    In a small spaceship, you're limited in how fast you can cycle an element from one pool (say something useless, like sewage) to another (something useful, like food). Worse, you're limited in how much of each element you can carry with you. As a result, you've got to be Very, Very, Very good at keeping everything moving right, so that you have air to breathe and food to eat.

    In Biosphere 2, they came pretty close to getting it wrong and only managed to survive with outside help. On a small spaceship, it would be even harder.

    I agree that carrying consumables is one way to get around this problem, because it increases the nutrient pool size without requiring recycling. Still, it's a short-term solution, because you either have to get rid of your trash or start recycling it into your biosphere, and both of these can be bad. Once it's eliminated, you can't use it again, and once it's part of the recycling, you can get into the small biosphere problem of not having it in a form where you can use it, when you need it.

    In a class I used to TA, we had students build tiny closed ecosystems using water, nutrients, algae, aquarium microorganisms, and snails. These were assembled in jars. While 1 or 2 systems per class (out of perhaps 100) lasted long enough for the snails to reproduce, in a vast majority of cases, the snails died within a week (due to low oxygen), and a fair number died during assembly. It's a sobering little lesson, especially given how tough aquarium snails are compared to humans.

    663:

    The Mars Research Station has different goals. I'm thinking something more like a combo of submarine in concept, and an underground marijuana operation. Partially closed system only.

    664:

    Both Biosphere 2 and your class ecosystems had one thing in common - they were designed to be fully closed. In both cases, some of the problems could be rectified by physical or chemical means. For example, the O2 level could be boosted by electrolysis, and the the CO2 reduced by scrubbing. Other problems are not so easy to be sure, but my original complaint stands - we don't need to be purists, but should employ a mix of systems and live with losses.

    665:

    I agree that we need a mixed approach.

    The problems come from the lack of things like autochefs, which quickly turn stuff into food, and magic recyclers that quickly turn junk into stuff. Right now, we've got a mix of complex, low energy, low speed, high efficiency biological systems, and simple, high energy, high speed, low efficiency mechanical systems. We don't have a lot in the middle.

    Marijuana's not a particularly good model, because it does quite well with massive energy and chemical inputs. Yes, we could (and probably should) use hemp as part of a small biosphere, but marijuana-style grows require huge inputs of energy and mineral nutrients. This is great if energy isn't limiting, and if we've got a way of breaking trash down to mineral nutrients quickly (which also involves lots of energy). If energy is limited, this won't work so well. There's also the little problem of adapting other plants to a marijuana grow-style regimen.

    666:

    Good old wagon train to Mars. Not going to happen, not going to be remotely like that.

    First set up a complete bioindustrial complex. Then send people. The people just need to pack enough sandwiches to get to Mars, then they're fine.

    Setting up a complete bioindustrial complex: We have the start of it. Unlike the moon, I wouldn't be surprised if we have an active technological presence on Mars from here on in. It'll be managed from Earth. Lag time is annoying, but our robotics is getting better really quickly. Self driving cars on Earth translate into more autonomous robots on Mars, and so on. 3D LIDAR scanning makes things a whole lot easier. Software is getting better. 3D printing replaces a lot of the machine-shop. Etc. A whole lot of things are making this look easier right now.

    In terms of running a complete biological system: Yes, it's a big problem. It's going to take a lot of big-data science. We're going to have to substitute brute force computation and huge combinatoric experiments for complete traditional human understanding. That's fine, we can do that.

    We can definitely do this in under a few hundred years.

    Upshot for Earth: at least a second planet worth of cultural production. The cultural impact will be at least of the scale of the invasion of the Americas, but otherwise completely different. I have no idea what that will be like.

    667:

    "The "climate flip-flop theory" is older than the present AGW dogma.*

    *If you doubt my choice of words, try attacking AGW and see what happens,"

    I've got to apologize to Duffy; I was just mucking around on Wikipedia, and found articles referencing repeated short-term oscillations, and linking it to a possible cause for the extinction of the Neanderthals.

    As for global warming dogma, you don't know what you're talking about. One side has facts and evidence (more every day, the way things are going); the other has Koch Bros. money.

    668:

    "So a colony on Mars, probably living below the surface, would have abundant water (which means air too), no threat from pirates, pretty much guaranteed freedom from existing government interference, and a lot of space to expand into without killing or displacing indigenous peoples."

    Since there are people, there is some sort of existing government or government-like things(s)[1], which means that you don't have any guaranteed freedom from existing government interference.

    As for lots of space, you have lots of space, no air, miniscule water. You're confusing 'space' with 'limiting factor'.

    [1] Meaning 'whenever people tell other people, including themselves, what to do'.

    669:

    I've got to apologize; I've been mucking around on Wikipedia, and found support for much of what you say. The only flaws in your argument is that the 'next ice age' is still on the scale of 10K years or far more (by astronomical cycles), and the amount/rate of CO2 we're putting into the atmosphere is radically more than anything in the geological record. Unless something very odd pops up, the CO2 wins.

    670:

    "We rarely see the old & failing O'Neill colonies in SF, half abandoned when the economy moves on..."

    It's like a ship - there's not a large margin between 'floating' and 'sinking'.

    671:

    "So why aren't we colonizing the Gobi Desert?"

    For the same two reasons we're not colonizing Northern Canada(which has way more space available than the Gobi desert, by the way).

    A- The weather is terrible

    B- The natives are not a "laissez-faire" bunch

    672:

    <1>As for lots of space, you have lots of space, no air, miniscule water. You're confusing 'space' with 'limiting factor'.

    Pay attention.

    Water is abundant: Water on Mars

    Therefore air is abundant as it can be manufactured by electrolysis.

    As for space - you have the surface of the planet which is about the area of Africa. I just expect that the colonizers will build below the surface to create airtight, radiation safe living areas.

    673:

    I know precisely what the word means, and used it with malice aforethought as a retort to the imputation of intellectual dishonesty. Greenwashing indeed. Pfaugh.

    674:

    decido@668: Mars is a particularly bad place to try to build a libertarian paradise. Where one screwup (like a major fire) can choke everyone to death for miles, regulations will necessarily abound.

    alexander@672: By "abundant" you seem to mean "at least seven orders of magnitude less abundant that on Earth (where the stuff is miles deep over most of the planet), and probably quite a bit less abundant than in the middle of the Sahara, all told". What water there is seems to mainly be located at the poles, which is really inconvenient if you need solar power to hydrolyze it so you can breathe.

    675:

    There is 1,386,000,000 km3 of water on earth, or about 1/4 km3 per person. Do you really need all that?

    US per capita water consumption is 2000 m3/y.

    Taking your 7 orders of magnitude less water on Mars at face value, that means this can support:

    140x10^9/2000 = 70m people.

    Even assuming only fractional extraction and a large buffer per person, Mars can support a lot of people.

    When the Martians need more water, they will dismantle a dead comet.

    Note that the BIS has already done a study for a Mars base near the pole = project Boreal.

    You assume that solar must be on the ground. Why? I envisage orbiting collectors beaming energy to the ground. This technology, with associated space based geoengineering technology, will be widely available by 2512.

    I really don't see our colonists like Heinleinian farmers arriving with a tractor and seeds, but rather people with a lot of very advanced support technology available.

    676:

    deccico barry @ 667 As for global warming dogma, you don't know what you're talking about. One side has facts and evidence (more every day, the way things are going); the other has Koch Bros. money. Not quite. There are a LOT of people out there who just don't want to believe that AGW is true. And who are convinced that it ISN'T true, because of guvmint's spposed "green / low-carbon" initiatives cost shedloads, for no real green return & line the pockets of the power companies. The worst of all possible worlds, in fact.

    alexander tolley @ 672 I just expect that the colonizers will build below the surface to create airtight, radiation safe living areas. What, not "roof over" Valles Marineris?

    677:

    Greg,

    when you're reduced to arguing about peoples motives, instead of their arguments, you're on the quickest path to getting your arse kicked by reality.

    Been there, done that. (Hint: I used to do the same wrt nuclear power.)

    678:

    There is 1,386,000,000 km3 of water on earth, or about 1/4 km3 per person. Do you really need all that?

    Yes, as a buffer for the stock/flow problems heteromeles explained. Personally I fell much safer knowing that a small lake of water is reserved for me on this planet.

    US per capita water consumption is 2000 m3/y.

    There is also 23.000 m3/y per capita precipitation in the US. Consumption of clean water is only a small percentage of the overall water cycle needed for a biosphere.

    679:

    Politics are about competing visions of the future. I think conservatives imagine a new feudalism and they survive by sucking up to the 0.001%.

    680:

    Charlie@576, Jay@585, David@599: My high school and college were late 60s, but I've continued to read a lot of history all along, surely with some 60s-contrarian edge. So I know the ugly stuff, and (judging by my sons' curricula in the 2000s) the ugly stuff is certainly taught more today than it was. But in the centuries-long perspective of this thread, two big ugly implications have yet to sink in to NAmerican curricula:

    One is currently pop-surfacing in Mann's '1491' and '1493': that epidemic Eurasian diseases, running from years to generations ahead of settlement, much more than decimated indigenous populations and cultures. That's coming into the textbooks as a fact -- but the underlying narrative is still "Europeans found wilderness, or sparse hunter-gatherers, or settled cultures that fell right over at Tenochtitlan and Cuzco." Sooner or later it will become "Europeans, preceded by their microbiome, found tattered and shattered remnants." (Analogy: consider the very slow USAn progress from "after D-Day the Greatest Generation smashed the Nazi war machine" to a more accurate "after D-Day they cleaned up the small fraction of German power not dead or dying on the Eastern Front.")

    The second is the sheer scale of slavery. From first contact to 1800 or so, two-thirds of all those who crossed the Atlantic westward were unwilling Africans. Today, the prevailing narrative is still "Bold self-reliant Europeans transform the New World," with a shamefaced appendix -- or chapter at best -- about slavery. Giving the historical numbers due weight, it really ought to be "Bold Europeans advanced using twice their number in Stalinesque 'punishment battalions' of Africans. That's how they made a go of Caribbean sugar islands, Southern US tobacco and cotton, and Brazilian everything -- where they weren't enslaving indigenes to keep the gold and silver coming."

    681:

    My take is that the optimal solution for initial exploration of Mars, or long duration Lunar exploration (e.g. the Block 2 missions proposed for the now-cancelled 2000's era Ares program, which proposed to put four astronauts on the lunar surface for six months at a time) is that you plan on recycling all the food/air/water your astronauts consume, but you plant a long-term storable depot of supplies first that is sufficient to run the entire mission without recycling.

    Yes, it's expensive. But if you don't hit on the depot because your recycling works, you've got it as insurance for future missions. And if your recycling suffers a set-back, you've got live astronauts who can tell you what went wrong so you can fix it on the next run.

    682:

    Our chance of accurately predicting what 2512 will look like are about the same as a modestly educated denizen of 1512 had of predicting what 2012 would look like.

    683:

    US per capita water consumption is 2000 m3/y.

    Sure, but in any sustainable ecosystem, human life is a small fraction of total biomass.

    If the average person metabolizes 2000 kCal per day, you need at minimum 2000 kCal of photosynthesis going on to make that work (actually much more since inefficiencies abound). Since plants are much more sedate than animals, that's a lot of biomass (several acres of plants per person assuming roughly Kansas-equivalent soil and Earth-equivalent illumination). Even assuming cacti are a major staple, agriculture is going to be a major drain on available water supplies. Whatever detritovores are used will also require water, as will manufacturing.

    684:

    @ Andreas, Jay

    So you both want a lot more water before you will accept a Martian colony?

    OK. Ceres has a postulated water ice mantle that contains 200,000,000 km3 of water, or over 1,000,000x as much water as Mars. [Surface g = 0.5km/s, so very gentle requirements to push ice into orbit/escape velocity]. If you want 10x annual consumption, that supports 2E8 x 1E9/2E4 = 1E13 people. Too many for Mars.

    The delta v from Ceres to Mars is about 6km/s. Doable with chemical rockets (using electrolyzed Ceres water), but I think this is a case for using solar sails. Automated ice miners send large chunks of ice on an inward spiral to Mars using solar sails to apply the necessary delta v. Manufacture of the sails could be at Earth or Mars. If Planetary Resources Inc actually does some asteroid mining, I would expect the technology for water/ice mining to be fairly mature within 50 years.

    Asimov had his Martian ice miners end up getting ice all the way from Saturn's rings (The Martian Way - 1952). Ceres is practically on their doorstep, and robots may obviate most of the human presence.

    685:

    What, not "roof over" Valles Marineris?

    'Tenting' is KSM's solution in his stories. But consider that VM makes the Grand Canyon look small. The roof will need to be think enough to keep out the radiation and be very large if you don't want walls as well. So starting a city doesn't need that scale. I would go for a lava tube/cave first, where the excavation has been mostly done for you. Once the population is large and the industrial infrastructure is in place, then maybe roofing VM might make sense.

    686:

    Actually, when I think about it, nitrogen is likely to be a limiting factor on Mars. Earth's atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, but Mars's much thinner atmosphere is less than 2% N2 (and another 2% argon, which can substitute for some purposes).

    Plants need nitrogen, but the main need is to maintain atmospheric pressure in a human-compatible range without breathing pure oxygen. Breathing pure oxygen has serious long-term health effects, and elevates fire risks enormously. Carbon dioxide is available on Mars, but breathing too much CO2 is also toxic.

    687:

    Charlie, assuming your parameters (the current main trends continue without big game changers) the only world that I can imagine in 2512 is such a nightmare that I prefer not to think of it.

    There is just one relatively "good" 2512 scenario that I can imagine under this assumption: a major catastrophe or war has wiped out 90% of humankind two or three hundred years before, and the survivors have rebooted civilization. Of course this scenario may be good for people in 2512, but very bad for those who live through the catastrophe (not to mention the 90% who die).

    But now I see that this also violates the parameters (no total collapses of technological civilization). OK then the world in 2512 is a nightmare. We need big game changers.

    688:

    I think you're being too pessimistic about Vales Marineris. Yes, it's huge -- land area comparable to Germany! It's also multiple kilometers deep. The roof doesn't need to be thick enough to keep out radiation, it just needs to be thick enough to retain atmosphere at a low multiple of Martian surface pressure. (Air is a pretty good radiation shield, if you've got enough of it, as witness our relative safety from solar flares and cosmic rays.) And you don't roof the whole thing; you start with the deepest section you can reasonably bridge, and put air dams at each end (presumably made of mylar or something similar). You then pressurize to 10x Martian surface pressure with regular Martian atmosphere. That's pretty much oxygen free and at somewhat lower pressure than the peak of Everest, but it should be okay for humans to walk around in with oxygen tanks. More to the point, there's enough CO2 for terrestrial plants to photosynthesize and grow, if you can add water. Human dwellings would presumably be tunnels drilled horizontally into the base of the cliffs to either side.

    Purpose of this project:

    • Provide a source of breathable oxygen and edible food

    • Retain enough pressure for humans to move around with oxygen tanks rather than full pressure suits

    • It's a short-term achievable terraforming goal (meaning: years or decades rather than centuries or millennia)

    You can "build out" by expanding the tented area and moving the air dams. You can reinforce the dams and tent as you increase the atmospheric pressure and move it to a more terrestrial mix, eventually making it breathable. VM, if populated to the density of the UK on Earth, could accommodate 150-200 million people. Assuming we scale down in line with the decreased insolation (and decreased potential for crops), it's still good to hold and feed 50-75 million people. That is the sort of presence I think you'd need in order to achieve industrial self-sufficiency and commence serious planetary-scale terraforming operations: it's not a toe-hold, it's a real colony.

    Nitrogen is indeed going to be an issue. But here's a question: can we substitute other gases? I note that Earth's atmosphere contains nearly 1% Argon -- which is non-toxic and biologically inactive. The Martian atmosphere is apparently 1.6% Argon; and it should be fairly easy to isolate Ar and N2 from the Martian atmosphere using a cold trap (CO2 freezes out almost 100 degrees Kelvin above those two gases).

    689:

    2512

    Climate Change

    Some people who have commented already (I've read the comments up to 500-ish) have suggested that climate change will essentially be over by 2512. I think this is wishful thinking. Barring a truly heroic geo-engineering effort in the middle of this century, climate change will be ongoing.

    The problem is that climate change carries with it a 30-40 year time lag between CO2 being emitted and it's full effects being felt. The 0.7 degree C rise which we're now feeling the effects of is from carbon emitted up to the mid 1980's. Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, the temperature would continue to rise into the 2040's. Given our lack of serious effort to change this so far, I think it will take another 30-40 years to de-carbonise our economy. This means another 70-80 years and 4-5 degrees of warming and that puts us into very dangerous territory indeed.

    The problem is long term natural feedbacks.

    These include the burning of the rainforests, the melting of the tundra, de-stabilisation of the Arctic methane clathrates and the warming of the oceans.

    Shifting climate zones will lead to multi-years drought in the rainforests. The trees will die and then they will burn. The rainforests contain 10 times as much carbon as humans have emitted so far.

    The carbon pulse from the rainforests will accelerate the melting of the permafrost, releasing more carbon, initially as methane (12 times as effective a greenhouse gas as CO2). There is 10 times as much carbon in the permafrost as there is in the rainforests, and it is already melting.

    The Arctic methane clathrates are temperature dependent, not pressure dependent. This means any warming of the Arctic which reaches deep enough into the Arctic ocean (around 100 metres for the Siberian Shelf) will begin the de-stabilisation process. There is possibly 10 times as much carbon in the clathrates than there is in the permafrost. Recent research has already found methane out-gassing from the sea-floor on the Siberian Shelf and around Spitzbergen. This may be new, in which case we're in big trouble already, or it may be an ongoing effect of the end of the last ice age. Either way, it will increase as the world warms.

    And, finally, there is the warming of the oceans. The oceans currently absorb around 40% of our CO2 emissions but the capacity of the ocean to absorb CO2 is dependent on temperature. Once the surface ocean warms past a certain point it switches from a carbon sink to a carbon source. Dog knows how much carbon could be released by this.

    (Some caveats now. While the rainforests won't survive this century, I don't expect the permafrost to completely melt in less than multiple thousands of years. In some areas it reaches down to a depth of a hundred or more metres. Likewise, the Arctic methane clathrates won't have released all their carbon by 2512, but these releases will be ongoing and so will climate change)

    So what will this carbon catastrophe mean for the descendants of Buck Rogers and Wilma Deering?

    Sea level

    I read a paper a couple of years ago which attempted to put some numbers on the rate at which the Greenland ice sheet could melt. The melting in the 90's was double that in the 80's and it doubled again in the 00's. If that exponential rate was maintained then it would all be gone in around 350 years. Alternatively, if the rate of the 00's was simply maintained, then it would take 2-3000 years. The actual rate will be in the middle.

    So, by 2512, I think we could see around 5m of sea level rise from Greenland. The East Antarctic ice sheet is similarly vulnerable and contains a similar amount of water to Greenland, so that's another 5m. All the other non-antarctic ice is another 1m, and the West Antarctic sheet will be melting too, so lets say another 5m from that. Also the permafrost is about 40% ice but I've never seen an estimate of the total amount of water contained in it, so let's guess another 2m. That's 18m total and the rise will be ongoing.

    Other environmental effects

    Ocean acidification and the die-off of the phytoplankton (40% since 1950) will have largely sterilised the oceans from the surface down to the continental shelves, the deep may still be relatively healthy but I doubt it will be a useful food source.

    As Charlie said in the OP, large parts of the world around the equator will be uninhabitable simply due to the high temperatures. Another band either side of the death zone will be uninhabitable desert. This zone will extend to maybe as far as 55 degrees north and south of the equator. Northern Canada, Siberia and Scandinavia will have a Mediterranean climate and human civilisation will be confined to a narrow band around the Arctic Ocean. There may also be a pocket of settlement at the extreme end of South America.

    Nothing physical from our current civilisation will survive.

    The coastal cities will be drowned and the inland ones will be dusty desert ruins. I can imagine a few groups of nocturnal monks living in bunkers next to the few remaining holy sites that haven't been drowned, but other than that...

    As for religion in general, apart from the aforementioned monks, I think the current religions will be pretty much extinct. I could see them being replaced by a cult of scientific environmentalism where a virtuous life would be one where you put more carbon back into the ground than you used over your lifetime and the cathedrals would be Eden Project style enclaves preserving transplanted fragments of otherwise extinct biomes. The high priests - the biologists and environmental scientists who maintain them.

    Politics and economy? Who knows, but our present arrangements will not survive. The population will be small, maybe a few hundred million at most, long lived and homogeneous. Racism and sexism will seem as quaint and barbaric as slavery does to us. I doubt whether extreme differences of wealth or power will exist, the corporation will have been replaced by the co-operative. Ayn Rand and the American dream will be forgotten.

    Mental health will be as important as physical health and society will have enacted measures to detect and treat extreme personality types such as psychopathy, for it's own safety.

    Surveillance will be ubiquitous, full spectrum and real-time from satellites and drones. Civilisation will be too fragile to permit anything less. Any possible threat to food production, energy supplies or environmental maintenance will be clamped down on, hard.

    Society will be largely virtual apart from those tasked with maintenance and food production, or rather overseeing the machines which carry out these tasks.

    It will be a very different world.

    690:

    nitrogen is likely to be a limiting factor on Mars.

    Yes it is. KSR's 2312 has the Martians mine Titan's atmosphere for the gas. This is certainly a fallback option. More likely, there are nitrates on Mars, produced by hydrologic processes or by early impactors. Another possibility is ammonia in the subsurface ice.

    I don't see any showstoppers so far.

    691:

    For basic pressure, Argon would be fine. Everyone would sound a bit basso profundo, but that's not a big deal. Condensing it out of the Martian atmosphere wouldn't be too difficult. It's just another necessary drain on limited energy supplies and another damn thing that can go wrong.

    692:

    If GW is going to be that drastic, then the pressure to "do something" is going to be intense. Geo-engineering nicely falls into the hands of the large corporations, at least in the US, probably paid by teh public public purse.

    I'v ealready read about ideas of covering the Greenland ice sheets in reflective Mylar (Christo was a piker by comparison). Orbital sunshades can be used to reduce insolation, and targeted at the vulnerable poles and permafrost.

    Ocean acidification is much more of a problem. However, if rainforest is designated as a CO2 sink, and has high economic value for this, I could see vast bamboo plantations to fix CO2 which is then cut down and sequestered.

    When the consequences are the destruction of the global economy, heroic actions to save it will be put in place. The poor scenario is a gradual retreat with population and economic decline with a business as usual mentality until it is too late, and we end up with your scenario.

    693:

    If GW is going to be that drastic, then the pressure to "do something" is going to be intense.

    A very techno-optimist attitude that I can't help feel relies on the absolute assumption that the date in which the pressure to do something will be before it's too late to do anything. Or alternatively that by this time we won't have passed certain milestones that mean the task will be far more complicated and painful.

    ArabiaTerra raises good points about the feedback cycles we see in biospheres that you haven't really addressed beyond "when the time comes we'll do it". It's worrying how pervasive this ideology is.

    694:

    Your scenario is dramatic, but somehow I find it more plausible than Charlie's. Any scenario that doesn't factor in radical game-changers like AI/robotics, catastrophic environmental changes, die-offs, collapses, radical biotechnology and space colonization is perhaps trying a bit too hard to imagine a linear, mundane future.

    695:

    Oh man. Roofing the Vallis Marineris?

    Please check out this little article on katabatic winds. I suspect that the Vallis Marineris has some of the strongest katabatic winds in the solar system. They'll only get worse if we terraform Mars to any degree.

    The other thing is that the Vallis Marineris isn't a valley precisely, it's a dead rift zone. On Earth, there would be ocean there, and on Mars, the VM connects up with the northern depression. That's a large, as I recall, topographically messy area, where the rift runs into the northern "sea." Is there ice under the bottom of the VM, and will it flood if heated and pressurized? That's another one of those really good question.

    So what does this mean for construction? One is that you've got to build a tent in some fairly strong (read hurricane speed) daily winds. The width of this thin, flexible structure is going to be enormous, just to bridge the Vallis. The top edges are highly erosive (that's what the edge of a canyon is), meaning you've got to reinforce the entire edge of the top (check out all those Grand Canyon-scale side canyons, too. It's a fractal problem!). You need a to make a good seal around the entire edge up there, and somehow keep it sealed. Sealing the bottom edge is just as ugly.

    Structurally, the analogous problem is going out in a nice sleet storm with some bubble gum, blowing a bubble the size of your face, and keeping it from deflating all over your face.

    Note that making a smaller domed city in the bottom of the canyon isn't a bad idea. Tenting the entire VM is one of those really difficult engineering problems, IMHO. I'd hire Larry Niven to do the initial design work.

    696:

    "Pay attention.

    Water is abundant:"

    Bullsh*t. For example, right now, I can walk a kilometer, and find a river. Where can you dip your bucket on Mars?

    "Therefore air is abundant as it can be manufactured by electrolysis."

    No, it means that it's possible to manufacture air, given lots of energy, equipment, an airtight living space, and lots more energy and equipment to maintain a largely close-cycle life support system.

    That's not what I call 'abundant'.

    BTW - where's this nitrogen coming from?

    "As for space - you have the surface of the planet which is about the area of Africa. I just expect that the colonizers will build below the surface to create airtight, radiation safe living areas."

    I don't know what the this spacelibertarian fascination with raw 'space' is. Right now on Earth, it's a rare place where space is the limiting factor. And in your martian scenario, livable space is something which has to be excavated, air-proofed, filled with manufactured air, and maintained. Actually, in that scenario, space is in quite short supply - livable space that is.

    Please use a definition of 'abundant' which fits in with Earth experience, and not with SF Belters.

    697:

    The only thing I'd add is that you've got to disentangle tropical forests from rain forests. There are a lot of temperate rainforests (Pacific Northwest, Chile, New Zealand, Tasmania, Japan, Kamchatka).

    Depending on how highly carbonated our future is (and I agree, climate change won't be over by 2512), we could see subtropical forests in southern Greenland and palms in Wyoming in 500-1000 years.

    All that atmospheric water has to go somewhere. It won't just rain out over the ocean and leave the continents as barren deserts. What will apparently happen is that the Earth will warm up, the poles much more than the equator, and the pole-equator temperature gradient will become much lower. In temperature terms, more places will become "tropical."

    In other words, there will be rainforests everywhere that there's lot of rain. There will be subtropical or paratropical forests in rather more areas, and dry tropical forests in still more places (in the lee of mountain ranges and such).

    I'm not sure what will happen in the current tropical rain forest zones, because there were forests in the tropics during the PETM. I hope this means that forecasts of the death of all tropical rain forests are premature, but that's not what the climate modelers are saying so far. On the good side, our models of vegetation in the climates are pretty damn crude, so I think there's something to hope for.

    698:

    I'm not sure why everyone is talking about electrolysing Mars' rather rare water to obtain oxygen. You can get oxygen from a much commoner source. Mars is red due to Iron Oxide, rust which contains rather a lot of Oxygen which can be extracted fairly easily.

    699:

    If GW is going to be that drastic, then the pressure to "do something" is going to be intense.

    But this is my point. The pressure isn't intense. The drought predictions for the 2060's are terrifying. If they come true then the rainforest is toast, globally. The breadbaskets of the US, Russia, China, Europe and Australia are dustbowls. Given the 30-40 year lag in climate impacts we have to be putting measures in place to deal with these predictions within the next 10-15 years. This just isn't happening. It isn't even being seriously talked about.

    At the link below is the relevant chart:

    http://www2.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/news/2010/2060-2069wOceanLabels.jpg

    (BTW, I believe the 1930's US dustbowl rated a 4 or 5 on this index)

    Ocean acidification is much more of a problem. However, if rainforest is designated as a CO2 sink, and has high economic value for this, I could see vast bamboo plantations to fix CO2 which is then cut down and sequestered.

    There won't be any rainforest, there won't be any land for the bamboo. In 50 years time we'll be clearing the Northern temperate forests just to get enough land to grow our food.

    The OP specified that civilisation would survive. I based my previous post on that assumption, but I'm not optimistic about it.

    Anyway, I'm off to the pub. I'll come back to this tomorrow. :-)

    700:
    I'm not sure why everyone is talking about electrolysing Mars' rather rare water to obtain oxygen.

    I'm not sure why anyone is talking about Mars, period, given Charlie's general parameters. If it's terraforming you want though . . . I suspect basic physics will be pretty much a known field, i.e., a dead end. You see this what seems to be almost monthly announcements about how no, the LHC has put yet more and tighter bounds on just how much we can depart from the standard model (and the answer seems to be: very little.) In other words, we've got a pretty good notion of the rules of the game.

    But it's one thing to know how the pieces move in chess; and quite another - and much, much harder - thing to play a good game. From simple combinatorics if nothing else. I suspect that stuff like truly closed miniature ecosystems will need the big data approach for any real progress to be made, and even then, it will be inching, incremental progress made over centuries. But it may be just the thing to deal with keeping large numbers of people alive as the climate thrashing intensifies.[1] Once you've got that worked out - and notice that there's no application desert here - then you can talk about colonies on Mars or orbital habitats or what have you.

    [1]Barne's Kaleidoscope Century might be informative to those who haven't read it yet. But be forwarned - it's character is a fairly stomach-churning sort and the book is a long chronicle of not-nice people doing not-nice things to each other and to innocent bystanders.

    701:

    You then pressurize to 10x Martian surface pressure with regular Martian atmosphere

    If the local Martian air pressure is about 1.2% Earth in the valley, then you are talking about 12% partial pressure. So breathing pure O2, without a pressure suit, means an equivalent of breathing at the top of Everest. Just doable, if you are in good health.

    I tend to agree with heteromeles about the issue of tenting, and I worry about scale. The reason you want that approach is to provide enough air depth to act as a decent radiation shield.

    If that approach works, then I would build vertical tubes, perhaps 1/2 km in diameter and 10 km high to hold the gas, so that the ground would be covered in a adjacent hexagons. This would allow build out in stages and remove single point of failures. However, they would need to be guy wired for stability.

    Wikipedia has N2 at 2.7% of the atmosphere, Argon at 1.6%. But the melting points are not so different to favor Argon, so why not use N2 as well, which you need anyway?

    If the Martians do need to be good at making solar sails for water transport from Ceres, then it makes sense that they would be good as making membrane tents.

    Where we agree is that Mars would need a large population to support an industrial scale civilization. My sense is that the resources to support such a population are available, both locally and elsewhere. But without some sort of radiation shield, my preference is for the population to migrate underground. Maybe crops that are radiation resistant can be grown above ground. I am not betting on either of those 2 speculations.

    702:

    That still sounds a lot more habitable than Mars. :)

    I don't think the climate will be that grim, though. Nature will have time to adapt, conquering places which are mow barren due to lack of water. Vegatation also has the side effect of producing cool microclimates.

    Maintaining a human population of 6 billion or more during these climate changes will be a challenge, though.

    703:

    You can get oxygen from a much commoner source. Mars is red due to Iron Oxide, rust which contains rather a lot of Oxygen which can be extracted fairly easily.

    To reduce the iron and liberate the O2 you need either H2 (electrolyzed from water) or CO, which we would need to reduce from the CO2 atmosphere.

    You might as well say that we have lots of O2 in the CO2, so let's reduce that (with photosynthesis).

    704:

    Nature will have time to adapt, conquering places which are mow barren due to lack of water.

    I don't know how long the Mojave has been dry, but it has been long enough for cacti to evolve, and that couldn't have been quick. The Mojave desert is still, except for irrigated patches, pretty desolate. There's only so much a biosphere based on water can do to adapt to dry conditions.

    As far as climate goes, the Arctic has been outgassing increasing amounts of methane clathrates since about 2008. Nobody really knows how much is down there or what the depth profile is, but there's a good chance that global warming is now a chain reaction that will proceed no matter what we do. On a scale where 1 is no big deal and 10 is so long and thanks for all the fish, it could be anywhere in the range of 6 +/- 4.

    705:

    For example, right now, I can walk a kilometer, and find a river. Where can you dip your bucket on Mars?

    Well I can plonk you in the Antarctic and by your definition, there is no water there either. All that white stuff, and not a drop to drink. And if I leave you stranded on the ocean, you will die of thirst too.

    But in both cases, even simple technology will transform the situation.

    As for all that space available on Earth. Try plonking yourself down at random and see how long you have before you are moved along because you don't own the right to stay there.

    706:

    The Mojave desert appeared after the last ice age. Initially wet with lake water, it dried out.

    The cacti did not evolve from scratch locally, but from extant forms from elsewhere. Cacti have been around for some 50m years.

    Thus we can expect life to migrate to follow the climatic changes as best it can in the short time frame. Humans can help that process along.

    707:

    "For basic pressure, Argon would be fine. Everyone would sound a bit basso profundo, but that's not a big deal. Condensing it out of the Martian atmosphere wouldn't be too difficult. It's just another necessary drain on limited energy supplies and another damn thing that can go wrong."

    That's a heckova substitution in the atmosphere; for a start any nitrogen-fixing plants would need to be grown in a special atmosphere, inside your special atmosphere.

    708:

    ...Barring a truly heroic geo-engineering effort in the middle of this century, climate change will be ongoing. The problem is that climate change carries with it a 30-40 year time lag between CO2 being emitted and it's full effects being felt...

    Now this fallacy is one I hope we see the end of quickly. Climatology is as complex as any other science; it is not a sound bite of atmospheric CO2 levels. (Incidentally, this is why I dislike fiddling with CO2 as the only discussed form of climate control; it takes a very long time to find out if it's doing anything, and more decades to change if you discover you've done the wrong thing.) On the other hand, climate change will be with us in the future, just as it has been in the past. It's not currently popular to point out that climates have been changing for as long as we can get data, not only throughout human history but for millions of years before humans were here. There's good evidence that what's happening right this moment is faster than normal change, although there were times when climates shifted more quickly than this.

    I expect that climates will continue to change; long before 2512 we'll have tried various things to make local and global climates more to our liking. (A good way to keep lawyers from predating on groups trying to fix things would be appreciated.) This will probably work to at least some extent, but it may be that the chaotic system is not as easily manipulated as would be convenient for us. Many readers are old enough to remember science fiction in which weather control was common, and that turned out to be rather optimistic.

    709:

    you don't have any predictions for perl6 being done by XMAS 2512 ?

    710:

    "Well I can plonk you in the Antarctic and by your definition, there is no water there either. All that white stuff, and not a drop to drink. And if I leave you stranded on the ocean, you will die of thirst too."

    The technology needed to survive in the Antarctic or on the ocean is trivial, compared to what is needed to survive on Mars. And things like a pressure leak don't kill within seconds in the Antarctic.

    "As for all that space available on Earth. Try plonking yourself down at random and see how long you have before you are moved along because you don't own the right to stay there. "

    I'm not talking about 'plonking down at random', I'm talking about space, and you can find vast quantities of seriously open space on Earth. It's usually in a place hard to get to, but a million times easier than Mars; the weather usually stinks, but is a million times better than Mars; the natural resources are thin, but again they'll be a million times richer than on Mars.

    As has been pointed out, a space colony will be poor in space, and the local government will be rather strict on regulating behavior, because it's so easy for individual behavior to kill everybody else.

    711:

    The product from freezing the Martian atmosphere (after first crashing out CO2) would be about 50% argon, 45% nitrogen, and a little oxygen (which would presumably be supplemented from other sources). Nitrogen fixing bacteria should be able to work with that, with perhaps a little performance enhancing genemod.

    I still think this looks like far too much effort and risk for far too little profit, but if we assume that energy is available for the liquefaction that part should work.

    712:
    So, chances of the internet being dominated by the lifelogs of dead people by 2050? Very high indeed. And bolting a simple conversational interface on top of someone's lifelog -- think Siri, using the lifelogger's own voice and speech cadences -- is a whole lot easier than mind uploading, so it's probably going to happen.

    I tweeted this in jest in 2008:

    "Need to tweet more to provide enough data for post-singularity intelligences to reverse engineer my consciousness. Or maybe just to annoy :)"

    Now it appears to be slightly less funny. Slightly more disconcertingly odd.

    All I have of my grandparents is some memories, some nick nacks, and some bits of furniture. Ditto for my dad - with the addition of a large stack of photos the vast majority of which I have no idea as to the people or the context.

    With some people who have died in the last few years who've either been far too young, or of the geek persuasion, it's like they're still around. They pop up when I'm searching my mail. A google around a topic they were interested in ends up at some tweets where I was having a conversation with them. A picture of one of their kids pops up with their name as a guess when the face recognition kicks in. And so on.

    I'd imagined Rucker's lifebox potentially existing - but it being something deliberate. I choose to poke at the deceased in the same way I choose to reminisce over some old photos or letters.

    This almost imposition of the dead feels odd to me - which is probably an artefact of my age. I'm usually good wrapping my head around new technology and technological cultures but this particular aspect - the artefacts of the dead popping up into my daily life - disconcerts me quite a bit.

    For anybody born in the last twenty odd years in the developed world it's going to be normal.

    The dead are never going to go away.

    (And a rich source for barking mad new religions / practices I'm sure it will be. Data mining the lifelogs of your potential partner's parents is going to become the modern blood-type dating.)

    713:

    That's the 2010 forecast for fifty years from now. I would be nice to have something for 500 years from now.

    This is a common problem, incidentally. It's not just multiple models, it's that we're not trying to correlate time frames. Things don't freeze in 2069 and stay that way for the next 450 years, unfortunately.

    Whether the temperature projections mean that all rain forest is toast is basically, pardon me, BS at this point. It's projecting a water-stress model in polygons, averaged over a decade, on a polygon of rain forest (on a fairly coarse scale).

    I had a lot of fun beating this type of modeling to death in another bit of writing, so here's the tl;dr: version:

    --Vegetation polygons are questionable averages. I did my entire PhD in a highly diverse plant community type that was totally unmappable without massively simplifying assumptions that made the boundaries a joke.

    --weather projections are things like 30-year averaged temperatures, 30-year averaged annual precipitations, and so forth. Droughts aren't about averages, precisely, they're a combination of how little water falls and how long the hot periods are. They're the results of extreme events piling on, and these disappear in the averages. The averages tell you when extreme events are more probable, not that they're happening.

    --Vegetation isn't a museum diorama, to be damaged by change. It's constantly changing. Simplistic conservation is done on the diorama model, and so the prospects are bleak, because dioramas get old and break. Plant communities change constantly. They have to, by their very nature. Thing is, we know the Amazon (and probably the Congo) were radically different 500 or 1000 years ago (mostly because they were much more populated, and the same is true for most plant communities. The only reason we think things are static is because we take snapshots, call them reality, assume they're normal, and assume that they've always been that way and should always stay the same.

    Conservation is about preserving future possibilities. You preserve one species, and that narrows your future possibilities considerably. You preserve 100 species, and there are quite a few more. I favor preserving as many possibilities as possible, because I don't know which ones will be important in the future.

    So no, I'm not going to say the rainforests are toast. Understand this very, very, carefully, because simplistic reading of a model such as the one you presented will lead you very, very wrong.

    This is important: I've seen a number of college-age environmental science and conservation majors start smoking and drinking heavily when they learn just enough to become convinced that the future's apocalyptic and they can't save it all by themselves, which means it can't be saved. Fortunately, most of them grow out of it. A few commit suicide, which shows how bad logic can kill.

    We CAN make a difference, but none of us can save the world alone. Making a difference is about understanding reality as best we can, figuring out what we can do, and doing it.

    714:
    --Vegetation polygons are questionable averages. I did my entire PhD in a highly diverse plant community type that was totally unmappable without massively simplifying assumptions that made the boundaries a joke.

    What was the problem, more specificially? It sounds like polygons were too large because of constraints on computing power/observed data points and they were then manipulated by some sort of finite difference type of numerical method.

    Or maybe It's just that the problems you described could be solved by using (much) smaller polygons ;-) You might want to check out John Baez's site "Azimuth" sometime if you're not already familiar with it.

    715:

    I worked on savannas, which are a mix of trees and grasslands, but which have unique properties.

    The best way to explain the mapping problem is with something most of us are familiar with: beer. Assume we have a mapping problem, where the beer is the trees of the forest, and the air in the room around us is the grass in the grassland.

    Savanna is the foam head on the beer. It is composed of nothing but beer and air, but it has properties that neither beer nor air have. Furthermore, mapping the boundaries of that foam is difficult to impossible, because of time constraints (it changes rapidly) and definitional issues. How big does a bubble have to be before it counts as air? How small do the bubbles have to be before their surrounding matrix counts as liquid?

    In a savanna, the grass-filled gaps between the trees come at all scales, so you have to make an arbitrary definition of how close the trees are to count as forest, and far apart they are to count as grassland. Or you can make a similar rule about the amount of grass in a given area. The two definitions will almost certainly conflict, and neither lets you accurately map the savanna.

    This is a common problem in vegetation mapping. Any times trees invade a herb- or shrub-dominated habitat, or shrubs invade a grassland, or grasses invade a shrubland, you get this kind of "foam."

    I got interested in savannas because they were the most species-rich plant communities where I was living at the time. Foam can have some really interesting properties.

    One of the big problems with ecology is that people believe map polygons to be reality. They aren't. If you're lucky, the lines are driven by consistent rules and the surveyors bothered to write down the rules they used to draw the lines. In most cases, you don't even get that much.

    716:

    The only reason we think things are static is because we take snapshots, call them reality, assume they're normal, and assume that they've always been that way and should always stay the same.

    As an example - which I'm sure you're aware of but may come as news to folks outside the US - there's the question of water allocation downstream of the Hoover Dam. Water is important in the American southwest, so before concrete pouring even started an agreement was (eventually) worked out allocating the available water with only moderate unfairness, in theory. In practice, the water supply numbers were based on less than 20 years of rainfall records, literacy being fairly new to the region at the time. It turned out that the only period measured was abnormally wet, more so than any time since, and the dam has never had enough water to supply everyone with what they were supposed to get, much less what they wanted after a few decades of civil and agricultural development.

    This wasn't human error. There were enough of those along the way, but the information they had to work with was insufficient; the planners had no chance of getting it right when the dam was being built.

    We're probably making analogous mistakes today. If we knew what they were we'd be halfway to fixing them. As it is, we'll find out later on when something goes pear-shaped; if we're lucky we'll at least figure out the right problem in time to address it.

    717:

    Incidentally, is it me or is popular culture rather missing eco collapse stories lately? Back when I was a kid you couldn't open a comic book without "pollution will destroy the world" type messages (I first encountered the concept of Ozone depletion in a marvel comic, years before it became a mainstream concept).

    You still get post-apoc stuff but it tends to be aliens, or zombies or what have you.

    Maybe it was a cold war zeitgeist thing.

    718:

    (Assuming technic Civilization Still Exists)

    Small bands of wonky intellectualls will spend time debating how meat space colonization of Mars might be possible.

    Of the two actual Manned Mars Missions, the first to actually land sped past the first dispatched, so the first departures landed second, and were so depressed by their second place finish, they screwd up their life support on the way home, providing endless literary fodder for drama in various media.

    (They Died, as in "I am just going outside for a bit")

    My best bet (Mid term, 25-75 years), the Chinese dispatch a modest maanned mission (Hard to hide), and the US, tired of hearing about the greatness of the middle kindom, launched second using a novel propulsion technology developed in a "Black" program.

    But it could go the other way.

    719:

    From start to finish, this was a thoroughly enjoyable article. I wish had half your eloquence and intelligence. Brava!

    720:

    Some of us are trying to change this.

    (Advertisment warning. I'm not trying to derail this thread). In the contrarian spirit of razzing the onrushing Mayan Apocalypse, I'm hoping to crowd source not one but 34 civilization-ending apocalypses, and to string them out over the next 525,000 years of future human history.

    It's on my blog, at http://heteromeles.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/apocalyptic-fun/

    The basic point is to get people thinking about the deep future, and to think about the possibility of humans living on Earth for a very long time (hundreds of thousands to millions of years), without regarding such a tenure as some sort of pathetic failure to either reach heaven (or the singularity) or hell (zombies, vampires, sky net, ad nauseum). This idea of life as a game where we ultimately face the Big Bad and either win or lose is so juvenile, really. There's an indefinite number of sequels.

    If we're around for millions of years, humans will experience some truly bad things, like asteroid impacts, ice ages, climate change, Carrington events, pandemics, and other, weirder dooms.

    So, to promote a future history, I'm trying to put together a list of 34 future apocalypses, 34 being a number I pulled out of the air. I'm hoping to draw in some creative people to help me populate this list.

    The first and last apocalypses are already in place. The first apocalypse is what's happening now: climate change, and the first apocalypse is a 5000 gigatonne megafart of carbon into the atmosphere, where we burn off almost all our fossil fuels in a century long orgy of gluttony, and pay the price for the next 1000 years. The last apocalypse on the list is the next ice age, about 525,000 years from now. At that point, the 5000 GT of carbon will be sequestered back in the ground (though not as fossil fuels) and the ice will start to advance. The glittering polar civilizations will be ground to nothingness by the advancing ice, sea levels will fall 100 meters below where they are now, and people will flee for the cooling tropics.

    If you're interested in visiting a special doom on humanity, head on over to my blog and pitch one. I'm hoping someone will have some data on the probabilities of asteroid impacts or Carrington events.

    If I can get 34 apocalypses, I'll write them up and send them out to everyone who contributed. This is open source futurism. If it inspires some stories or conversation, so much the better.

    So if you're interested, head over, and join in the conversation. http://heteromeles.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/apocalyptic-fun/

    Back to 500 years!

    721:
    Yes, the US Church "Looks" like a quasi-Catholic body (Bishops, Cathedrals, etc), (Complete with a US Bishop in Paris!) but is really another (US) Anarchistic Protestant Denomination.

    Well, my personal impression was something along the lines that the Anglican Communion in general is quite diverse in its outlook, from High Church Anglo-Catholics

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Catholicism

    who have had a tendency towards staying close to Roman Catholicism or even convert, err, return to it since at least the 19th century, vide John Henry Newman

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Newman

    where they tend to be with the more modern Roman Catholics, to Low Church Protestantism

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_church

    Theoretically, Anglo-Catholics converting to Roman Catholicism and Low Church Anglicans splitting of to form Methodism

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodism

    and other movenments outside of the main CoE

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Church_of_England

    should strengthen the other groups in the CoE and thus make the CoE more "Protestant" or "Catholic", though I guess it's more complicated, e.g. with the CoE stressing its Catholic strains to keep Anglo-Catholics from converting etc. (I shun the conservative/liberal or left/right moniker, since e.g. there are quite some Protestants more to the right than Catholics.).

    If the different movements dominate in different geographic entities, I wouldn't be that surprised.

    BTW, the situation for RC is somewhat similar, though

    a) the RC "liberals" have been quite marginalized

    b) there have been much publicized efforts to mollify the not-quite-as-lunatic fringe of the Traditionalist Catholics, which is quite a PR disaster, vide the Wiliamson affair

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Williamson_(bishop)

    c) the current Pope is known to be a conservative, though that means quite to the left of some self-styled public RC conservatives, mater si, magistra non, anyone?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mater_si,_magistra_no

    Though the Ratz hasn't done me the favour of excommunicating the bunch:

    http://grist.org/election-2012/does-santorum-think-the-pope-is-a-radical-environmentalist/

    Actually, the Southern Baptists (Attended with my Grandmama for a while) are better at enforcing doctrinal and organizational conformity.

    Err, since we're talking about Southern "True Love Waits" Baptism, that might not say that much. ;)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Love_Waits

    As for the Catholics, in the US it is pretty much DADT on Birth Control, etc;

    Well, I thought my joke about RC pregnancies was quite clear on what I thought about RC rulings and actual believers' practice. But then, of course there is always penance for using contaceptives:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrament_of_Penance_(Catholic_Church)

    Personall, while I don't see any ethical reasons against using contraceptive measures that prevent fertilisation (one could argue about the ones that prevent implantation, but let's not go there) and quite some heavy reasons against not using them in certain circumstances, the RC church opposition to all forms of contraception is not all negative when you look at opposition to forced sterilizations for eugenic or social reasons, e.g. in Peru.

    http://www.catholicculture.org/news/features/index.cfm?recnum=20466

    Though the actual political stance of the RC is somewhat up to debate, German Roman Catholics are somewhat proud Cardinal von Galen

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clemens_August_Graf_von_Galen

    because of his stance against Nazi racism and euthanasia, though the are somewhat silent on him being politically to the right even of most German Catholics, e.g. the Zentrum party and him somewhat supporting the attack on Poland and the war with the Soviet Union.

    Nevertheless, this might indicate one of the reasons I hope for a strong conservative RC church to be around for some time, though of course not too strong; it might help to mitigate some of the lunacies we're about to meet in the 21st century, though of course there is always the risk it will keep quiet about said lunacies if the party in question instigates some of the RC church's very own lunacies (but then, RC internal politics being something of a shark aquarium might mean something of a control in this one); this mitigating role gets bonus points since especially in the current US situation, the RC teaching is to the "left" on some issues, while quite to the "right" on others, so it could be quite effective when splitting partisan camps.

    That the RC church condemns heresies by one side more than by the other or that at least those condemnations get more publicity is something of a problem with this point of view.

    You don't see many of those Catholic families with eight or ten children that were common in the 1960s.

    Which not necessarily indicates use of contraception. Declining birth rates go back to the late 19th century,

    http://www.marathon.uwc.edu/geography/demotrans/demtran.htmhttp://www.marathon.uwc.edu/geography/demotrans/demtran.htm

    while e.g. intrauterine pessars became available only in the early 20th.

    Please note that according to this one

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_birth_control_methods

    breastfeeding in the form of Lactational amenorrhea

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactational_amenorrhea

    has a lower failure rate than most forms of "the pill", condoms etc.

    (BTW, was this one of the reasons for wet nurses with kings etc? Many heirs to choose from?)

    And when I see the fun with fertilit treatments, I sometimes wonder if there are other factors for humans to switch between r-and k-strategies...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory

    Latin American Catholics are losing ground to the (US Derived) "Prosperity Gospel" Protestants.

    Which might illustrate my point, in my book with the "Prosperity Gospel" guys

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology

    means supporting the RC church against them for a social conscious agnostic is not just permittable, but mandatory, of course as long as it's not curtailing religious freedom.

    IIRC, many of those "Eastern" Catholic denominations are more likely to be in intercommunion with the Anglican Community than the Pope/Bishop of Rome.

    Err, certain?

    IMHO this makes no sense, since the definition of an "Eastern Catholic Church", or, to use another term "Uniate Church" is that it has full communion with Rome:

    http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19641121_orientalium-ecclesiarum_en.html

    As such, they are also called "Particular Churches";

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particular_church

    at the moment, there are about 23 Particular Churches, where the largest one, the Latin Rite, is what you'd call plain Vanilla Roman Catholicism. It is also the only Western one, though with some Anglicans joining and keeping their married secular clergy, there might eventually be a second one.

    Historically, most of these "particular churches" stem from churches that were in schism with Rome, with part of these churches joining in with Rome, in the case of the Chaldean Catholic Church

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaldean_Catholic_Church

    originally part of the Church of the East

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_East

    affectionally known to Central Asian history nerds by the term "Nestorian", this goes back to 451, with the establishment of full communion somewhere between the 17th and 19th century. In most cases, this meant part of the original church remained outside the communion, in the case of the Chaldeans this is the Assyrian Church of the East

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_Church_of_the_East

    with both uniate church and original church generally on non-speaking terms. Which means that the official RC party line is the CIA line on political assasinations,

    http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/01/are-americans-assassinating-iranian-scientists

    e.g. "We don't do this kind of thing(any more)"

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Christianity#Rejection_of_uniatism

    Please note this was in relation with the Orthodox Churches, so in the case of the CoE, the rules might differ. And that the CIA uses a similar line. Eh.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki

    As for "Eastern churches" in communion with the CoE, there is one of the Keralan St. Thomas Christian Churches

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malankara_Mar_Thoma_Syrian_Church

    though on the other side, there are two of those in full communion with Rome (don't ask, it's complicated...).

    OTOH, the CoE is in communion with several Old Catholic Churches which broke away from RC in the late 19th century

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Catholic_Church

    since about 1931

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonn_Agreement_(religion)

    so maybe you were thinking about this one?

    722:

    In my experience, out of context breathless praise comments like this are spam sticking the wedge in.

    723:

    Maybe the raccoons won't even need raccoon heroine -- just automated feeders that can access their work before paying them.

    724:

    This is a common problem in vegetation mapping. Any times trees invade a herb- or shrub-dominated habitat, or shrubs invade a grassland, or grasses invade a shrubland, you get this kind of "foam."

    Isn't this an inherent problem for binary classification of fractal forms?

    You could have used some sort of probability scale for Savannah. If the "edges" weren't too rugged, the area could have iso-probability of Savannah lines. If too rugged, just set the whole polygon at that probability. Whether that is useful is dependent on the application.

    725:
    In a savanna, the grass-filled gaps between the trees come at all scales, so you have to make an arbitrary definition of how close the trees are to count as forest, and far apart they are to count as grassland. Or you can make a similar rule about the amount of grass in a given area. The two definitions will almost certainly conflict, and neither lets you accurately map the savanna.

    Ah, like any young science that has the tools to finally go quant in a big way, you're having problems with formulating definitions. And of course what you need is . . . more polygons. Same as it ever was (This btw was the critique von Neumann had concerning the development of economics as a hard science.) But it will come, in time.

    Who knows? Maybe the field will have become so mathematized by 2512 that they won't say "he's a physics professor" to indicate the canonical smart guy; they'll say "he's an ecologist" instead. And physics guys will be the ones who's core mathematical competency on goes up to differential equations - real math illiterates, iow.

    726:

    There was no attached URL and no obvious spam spoor.

    727:

    I wonder what cloning technology will look like in 500 years? I just came across this blog entry today: http://scienceblogs.com/lifelines/2012/11/14/cloning-endangered-animals/

    728:

    "The product from freezing the Martian atmosphere (after first crashing out CO2) would be about 50% argon, 45% nitrogen, and a little oxygen (which would presumably be supplemented from other sources). Nitrogen fixing bacteria should be able to work with that, with perhaps a little performance enhancing genemod."

    It'd be a lot of performance enhancement; the amount of nitrogen in the available atmosphere would be ~50% of what they're used to.

    729:

    And physics guys will be the ones who's core mathematical competency on goes up to differential equations - real math illiterates, iow.

    Since that math level would do you no good at QM or relativity I seriously doubt that.

    730:

    "When machines do all the useful work, ordinary people don't need wages any more than capitalists need workers. If the only thing preventing 80% of the population from switching to prosperity from poverty is a few antediluvian rentiers, elections will quickly fix that state of affairs."

    Think of 'wages' as 'claims upon output'.

    As for dealing with rentiers, please note that they tend to have vastly more clout than their numbers would otherwise imply. Otherwise Wall St would be littered with gallows.

    731:

    Sasquach: " Actually, the Southern Baptists (Attended with my Grandmama for a while) are better at enforcing doctrinal and organizational conformity."

    Trottelreiner: "Err, since we're talking about Southern "True Love Waits" Baptism, that might not say that much. ;)"

    Not particularly; the doctrine might be down on that in print, but not in practice. Think of the SBC's relationships with the Mormon Church - 'it's a cult!' right up until a political alliance was convenient, and then that line was dropped (for 2012, at least).

    732:
    And physics guys will be the ones who's core mathematical competency on goes up to differential equations - real math illiterates, iow. Since that math level would do you no good at QM or relativity I seriously doubt that.

    Really? Bra-ket notation is just standard linear algebra. I'll give you tensors and Einstein notation, but also note that those are just extensions of linear algebra - vector spaces are just modules over a ring that happens to be a field as well.

    I admit to being a little out of date, but what else are they teaching these days? I'll also note that we ran often ran too many sections on (partial) differential equations at the insistence of the physics department, so I'm wondering what's changed in the last ten years or so.

    733:

    I'm probably the wrong guy to ask, but probability distributions and manifolds come to mind. Also group theory for subatomic models of matter. Physicists usually use bleeding edge mathematics before mathematicians understand the theory.

    734:

    Wow, spoken likely a truly second-rate scientist, with that extra condescesion that comes from ignorance.

    Drawing more polygons is precisely the most wrong answer.

    The reason savannas hold so many species is that all those tree-and-gap complexes set up a multitude of gradients from sun to shade. A huge number of species can find the right conditions somewhere in there, due to all the gradients.

    Unfortunately, as most ecologists know, polygons are precisely the opposite of gradients. By imposing polygons on a system that's generating a complex of gradients, you map the system as a mass of uniform polygons, which misses the most important property of the entire savanna.

    So you want to map the savanna as a species rich niche generator? You're stuck with the non-definable, arbitrary edges again.

    This is an important lesson that a lot of people forget when they fall in love with GIS programs: polygons are models, simpler than reality. Quite often, these polygons are useful. Sometimes they are the worst solution. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop map-geeks from trying to polygonize the world.

    This can be a real problem. In Europe, polygonizing vegetation has been going on a lot longer than it has in the US, and there are parks around that were set up to contain the "good examples" of vegetation types. The result is that it's a lot harder to find gradients in Europe than it is in the US. There's a lot less diversity in Europe, and there are quite a few formerly common species, especially in places like England, that need savanna-like conditions to survive. This is a real challenge for land managers, because it forces them to chose whether to put their maps or conservation first.

    Anyway, SoV: your assignment for the weekend is to derive the physics of describing foams from the well-known physics of air and beer. Have fun.

    735:

    Er, you seem to be in thunderous agreement and confused enough not to realize it. Now, I don't have your domain specific knowledge, but give me a little credit for knowing the basics of mathematical modelling - are you seriously telling me that performing some sort of weighted average on polygons one inch wide wouldn't give you far better resolution? Good enough resolution to capture a more detailed (and accurate) description of these gradients?

    Cuz see, if you're working with data that has a geographic component, you've got no choice but to use some sort of cell.

    Further, you just said the definitions these people were using were bad ones for a number of reasons. But when I say it, all of a sudden I'm being condescending? Even though this is a bog standard problem with mathematizing physical phenomena?

    Sheesh. No point in continuing this conversational fork.

    736:
    I'm probably the wrong guy to ask, but probability distributions and manifolds come to mind. Also group theory for subatomic models of matter. Physicists usually use bleeding edge mathematics before mathematicians understand the theory.

    Probability distributions seem to be typically taught before (partial) diffy-q. I'll grant you that in the other two cases these come later in the typical core courses, but with all due respect, physicists don't learn much theory in either case (and only then in specialized branches); what they actually pick up are recipes that are really easier than some of the other stuff that's come before.

    And as for "Physicists usually use bleeding edge mathematics before mathematicians understand the theory", puhleeze. That's just so much physics fanboy wankery, and usually motivated by the usual couple of examples where what the physics types reinvented was clunkier (like the bra-ket notation) than what was already available. There's a reason why I switched from physics to math :-)

    But this is an interesting tangent. The very notion of mathematical proof may be vastly different in the 26th century what we are accustomed to.

    737:

    Unfortunately, that doesn't stop map-geeks from trying to polygonize the world.

    I don't really need to agree with this, I just thought it was a nifty sentence that should be quoted. Although it's true. At least out in the real world things are rarely mapped into equal-sized tessellating hexagons. Gosh, but I've seen a lot of hex maps over the years.

    I'm curious what you think a better mapping method would be. Maybe something with a N-dimensional rating system? Perhaps some scheme to map an area as a fractal surface rather than a geometric shape? This is not my field, and I suspect I don't even fully understand the questions yet.

    738:

    Ok then - Explain why the National Grid is twice as efficient as the CEGB said it was when it's supplying electricity for electric cars, but slightly less efficient than they said when supplying electricity from wind and hydro stations in the Highlands of Scotland (hence the energy surcharges we're all paying for the low carbon sources).

    739:

    You're using entirely too many ideas based on what we know today, and relying entirely too much on existing technology in imagining this future. You don't seem to be thinking in terms of exponential advancement at all.

    Five. Hundred. Years.

    We won't even be able to imagine- AT ALL- what life will be like in 100 years. Not saying it isn't fun to try anyway, but 500? Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

    740:

    Thank you for a neat summary of my problems with AGW.

    Yes, climate change is happening (but it has always happened).

    The issue is with the dogma that says that the sole cause of this is is manmade CO2, and therefore if we cut CO2 emissions everything in the garden will be lovely again.

    741:

    Even though lifespans may increase to hundreds of years, the period of natural fertility will remain the same at under 50 years for females and a few decades more for men.

    This will cause an extended "young adulthood" which will delay the "career grind" until after 50. Sort of like we treat teenagers now. Once past child bearing age, and when the hormones have calmed down, you would be expected to become responsible and start careers and assist descendants. I wonder how much a great great great great great grandparent knows about the new generation?

    742:

    We can't really know if humans will still be around, or if so what our societies will be like, but we can bound things.

    Nuclear fission offers specific energies within 3 orders of magnitude of matter-antimatter annihilation. Existing photovoltaic systems operate less than a factor of three from theoretical limits. Existing heat engines operate less than a factor of two from the maximum theoretical efficiency. Likewise chemical rockets are operating within a factor of two of the best possible. Communications latency between distant points (e.g. Mars and Earth) is already at very nearly 100% of the theoretical maximum, the speed of light in vacuum.

    There's a lot of head room left in efficient computing: today's machines are 5-6 orders of magnitude away from the Landauer Limit. But even that is exhausted quickly on a program of exponential advancement. Trends that are recognizably exponential today will not maintain their pace for 500 years because they cannot.

    743:

    There's a lot of head room left in efficient computing: today's machines are 5-6 orders of magnitude away from the Landauer Limit. But even that is exhausted quickly on a program of exponential advancement.

    More to the point, we've already got a hell of a lot of computing power, and what exactly the benefit of having 5-6 orders of magnitude more is not terribly clear.

    We've long since reached the point where the human ability to generate bug-free, secure code is more of a limiting factor than the hardware.

    744:

    We've long since reached the point where the human ability to generate bug-free, secure code is more of a limiting factor than the hardware.

    Which suggests that at some point, machines will be doing the coding. Although we have had lots of false starts on this, I expect that at some point we will move away from coding as a craft and have it truly machine generated.

    745: 742 para 2 - Seconded. I remember MS Office coming on about 30x 720kb floppy discs, rather than being in compressed format to get it onto a CD-ROM. Even with the need to swap discs, it didn't take any longer to install either.
    746:

    Even though lifespans may increase to hundreds of years, the period of natural fertility will remain the same at under 50 years for females and a few decades more for men.

    Are you talking about women running out of eggs? I am willing to bet that biotechnology capable of defeating aging process will also be capable of generating new eggs when needed.

    747:

    Which suggests that at some point, machines will be doing the coding.

    Our approach to the problem so far has been to build libraries of functions, allowing coders to capitalize on the efforts of previous coders. Most of these libraries have few and tolerable bugs when used alone, but they are rarely used alone.

    Seamus Young described the resulting fun here:

    http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=9557

    748:

    What's he talking about; I can write Ada83 and Fortran77 in any language, even C!

    749:

    Let's hope they're not using Ada 83 or Fortran 77 in 500 years.

    750:

    Even though lifespans may increase to hundreds of years, the period of natural fertility will remain the same at under 50 years for females and a few decades more for men.

    Really?

    It turns out that post-menopausal women can become pregnant successfully via IVF.

    So even if longevity medicine doesn't delay menopause, there's no reason to rush into pregnancy -- especially if ova are donated at a young age and frozen for later use. (Post-menopause oocyte donation for IVF is where the problems apparently lie.)

    751:

    Even though lifespans may increase to hundreds of years, the period of natural fertility will remain the same at under 50 years for females and a few decades more for men.

    This is turning out to be a well quoted paragraph - good! The possibilities are not nearly played out yet.

    I'll point out that women may remain fertile much longer, since the ability to control menstruation would be very handy. While I don't have them myself, I've got it on good authority that periods can be very annoying! When methods to pause that cycle without undesirable side effects come along, they're likely to be popular, and women might well reach several hundred years old with plenty of eggs left.

    That's the conservative answer, of course; by 2512 I won't rule out rejuvenations or re-sleeving into new bodes. Or ways to make babies without a mother's womb, for that matter.

    ObSF: Spider Robinson's short story about a post-menopausal woman coming out of crygenic storage; among other changes, she's too young for anyone to want to have children with her. Too Soon We Grow Old, I think; I can't find the collection on my shelf at the moment.

    752:
    And by the way, Vegetius was wrong then, and is still wrong now.

    Somewhat OT, but am I the only one who thinks learning from Late Anquity Roman(including Byzantine) military leaders is somewhat akin to learning from the 1980 edition of the IBM Staff Handbook OGH alluded to in his autobiography?

    753:

    "There's a lot of head room left in efficient computing: today's machines are 5-6 orders of magnitude away from the Landauer Limit."

    I think it is more like 10-12 orders of magnitude

    754:

    Gosh, screwed up my name.

    I love your writing, Charle, although as a Jewish Conservative who went to Texas Christian for undergrad, UTMB in Galveston for Medical School, UCLA for Psychiatric training, and started my practice in Alabama (I now live in NW MN---go NORTH from Fargo to get to my house), I have a few differences of opinion with my fellow landtzmann, but this is your playground. (In particular, this: there is no safer place to be a Jew, outside, say, New York City, than in the deepest, bible thumping South. I have lived, as a known gold star of David wearing Jew, in Los Angeles (5 years), Chicagoland (18 years) Alabama (7 years), Texas (eight years), and Kentucky (5 years). The deepest, most Southern part was Alabama, and that is truly where I felt safest. Much more so than Chicago.)

    So, let me tell you a few things you have missed in the next 500 years prediction, assuming no TEOTWAWKI scenarios.

    1)The Northernmost portions of the Northern Hemisphere will become more populated. Either AGW exists, and the tropical regions will become too hot and Minnesota will become very temperate, or AGW is bogus, and energy mastery will allow more to live here. I love Minnesota, by the way.

    2) I predict the "Griffin's Egg" scenario of Michael Swanwick will come true. I'm saying this as a practicing psychiatrist and psychopharmacologist in the US. In 500 years, you will be able to write your own personality, and possibly your own cognitive skills.

    3) There will still be Jews, and Jewish delis, despite the Hamanistas who wish to do us in. And the right way to make Matzohballs will still be fluffy, not hard. (My favorite---Jerry's Deli, on Ventura Blvd., North Hollywood, CA)

    And finally, Charlie: your work brings much joy. When is the next Laundry book coming?

    755:

    "Don't get hung up on the AK-47 bit. RPG-7s are a serious threat to a tank, and future weapons development is likely to see offense continue to outrun defense. Does it matter whether they're using cheap assault rifles, cheap railguns, or cheap unidentified future weapons?"

    No, they're not a serious threat to modern tanks, and not to the better medium armored vehicles.

    756:

    " Also, the last time we had a world with negligible economic growth (antiquity to 1600 AD, roughly), constant warfare made it necessary to generate a bigger cohort of military-aged males than competing nations/tribes could field."

    And high infant mortality and the need for agricultural labor......................

    And from my point of view even then the countries and systems which thrived were ones which leveraged their manpower (via better ships, cannon, logistics and tactics).

    757:

    We worked over the RPG bit earlier in the thread, near the 530s.

    And from my point of view even then the countries and systems which thrived were ones which leveraged their manpower

    You seem to have missed the whole fourth-generation war thing. Any history of the Vietnam conflict or a quick read of the War Nerd archives will set you straight. Short version: when high tech, highly trained, expensive forces fight poor, desperate, irregular forces, the high tech forces inflict disproportionate casualties but the low tech forces win the conflict unless the high-tech forces go full-on exterminationist (which, for political reasons, they usually can't).

    758:

    Newton invented calculus, some physicists came up the idea to calculate real integrals in the complex plane. But I agree that physicists are more interested in recipes than theory.

    Btw, I studied math and computer science, that's why I am the wrong guy to ask about what physicists really do ;-)

    Unless quantum computing has a break through I guess proofs will be pretty much the same as today. Acceptance for computer aided proofs will probably be higher.

    If there is a quantum theorem prover at some time in the future, then that will probably a game changer.

    759:

    Let's hope they're not using Ada 83 or Fortran 77 in 500 years.

    Of course not. Payrolls and accounting will still be running on COBOL and Autocoder systems running in emulation mode on the latest whiz bang hardware.

    And people will still be arguing about C arrays and range checking.

    760:
    Newton invented calculus, some physicists came up the idea to calculate real integrals in the complex plane.

    You might want to check up on the history of calculus. And if it was physicists that first came up with methods to calculate real integrals in the complex plane . . . that's news to me. I'd like to see a cite. I always thought it was guys like Cauchy, Riemann, et. al. who did that. But here's something on the epistemological front that's kinda mind-blowing:

    Unless quantum computing has a break through I guess proofs will be pretty much the same as today. Acceptance for computer aided proofs will probably be higher.

    NO. And it's not because of anything like a "quantum prover". Let me give an example. You know the formula for adding up the first n integers? 1+2+. . .+n=n(n+1)/2? Well, there are a variety of ways to prove it, for classical notions of proof. Induction, for example. But one of the ways that was not considered a proof was saying, "Well, I tried it for a bunch of numbers and it worked every time, so it must be true." Hoo, boy, you say that, even as an undergraduate and that will get you bounced hard.

    At least, back in my day. Nowadays, you can say that "Well, I tried this for 200 different random numbers and it worked every time, and the probability that this statement was false and still getting the correct answer is far less than 10^10^-200." Huh? That's not fair!

    And that's not the only new wrinkle. It could very easily be that statements about proof - once a high art - are about as automated and routine as calculating the probability that an automated search of a (huge) database has not returned a single right answer to your query. To me, this would be about as mind-blowing as it would to a medieval scholar to find out that not only is "free-will" something of a category error, it's not even particularly relevant.

    Epistemic revolutions are every bit as significant as technological and cultural ones.

    761:

    More to the point, we've already got a hell of a lot of computing power, and what exactly the benefit of having 5-6 orders of magnitude more is not terribly clear.

    We've long since reached the point where the human ability to generate bug-free, secure code is more of a limiting factor than the hardware.

    For some things there's a clear benefit. For example, Berkeley researchers got a PR2 robot to solve the complex vision and control problem of folding towels, but it takes about 25 minutes to fold one towel. The main bottleneck is in computing; the algorithm works and the machine's sensors and actuators are already good enough. A hundred times faster and it's ready to do the job for real.

    Or as another example, researchers have programmed small quadrotor drones to fly with extreme dexterity, but the vision-based navigation system needs to run on external computers. The flyers are limited to prepared test environments where powerful PCs are standing by to process images. Current computers compute fast enough but they need too much energy to ride along with with a small battery powered flyer.

    But I agree that software is in general a harder challenge. There's nothing like Moore's Law for it. The availability of new computing resources has far outstripped our ability to use them efficiently or solve altogether new problems. We already know how to built provably correct and secure programs but the incentives are against it in 99.99% of cases. And I think that there will be more tools in the future to ease program development, but it will be more like good libraries and optimizing subsystem generators than a "do what I mean, not what I say" software genie that replaces human developers.

    762:

    For creating a liveable environment on Mars, what's the latest on how well humans might get along with Martian soil? I've seen suggestions of hexavalent chromium, arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, and perchlorates at concentrations high enough to do nasty things.

    That's not a showstopper, of course, but if it turns out that Mars is hideously poisonous, then on top of creating a breathable atmosphere in the deeper parts of Vales Marineris, we'll also need to cover all the soil and keep all the dust out.

    I expect we're waiting on results from Curiousity to put some hard numbers on this.

    763:

    There's about 600 ppm of carbon monoxide in the Martian atmosphere. That tends to argue against the presence of perchlorates (which would react with CO to form chlorates and carbon dioxide), but may imply the presence of minerals with toxic metal carbonyls.

    764:

    Ooo... nickel tetracarbonyl, fatal at 3 ppm. The iron penta isn't too friendly either.

    A slight drawback for any colonists wanting to go outside or make soil to grow food.

    765:

    There will still be Jews, and Jewish delis, despite the Hamanistas who wish to do us in.

    At last, a prediction for 2512 that we can all agree on!

    766:

    At least, back in my day. Nowadays, you can say that "Well, I tried this for 200 different random numbers and it worked every time, and the probability that this statement was false and still getting the correct answer is far less than 10^10^-200." Huh? That's not fair!

    That's still no proof. Even to prove that statement you'd need to have a proven error model that let you predict the probability. Without a model, all probabilities are 50%.

    About the sum of the first n integers: if you can argue that the formula must a polynomial in n, you can deduce from 1+2+...+n < nn that it is O(nn), so max exponent is 2. Then you only need to test 3 different points to prove the formula correct.

    767:

    Oops, MT ate my <:

    you can deduce from 1+2+...+n < nn that it's O(nn), so the max exponent is 2.

    768:

    Speaking of the War Nerd, Brechter has a new column over here, I just found it.

    769:

    When is the next Laundry book coming?

    First week of July, 2014! I'm aiming to finish the first draft this month.

    (Sorry, there's another novel already in the queue for summer 2013.)

    770:

    Write faster or you'll never catch Asimov!

    771:

    Can we rewrite the Three Laws of Robotics for a computational demonology focus? I think we can:

    1) No robot shall wake the Old Ones, nor through inaction allow the Old Ones to be awakened.

    2) No robot shall call up any entity that it can't put down, unless necessary to prevent a breach of the first law.

    3) No robot shall lfajksd;kfuhfaplf Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fthagn!

    772:

    Are you arguing that the Phoenix lander did not find perchlorates? If so, on what basis are you discarding what appears to be a direct measurement in favor of your speculative argument about the tiny amount of CO in teh atmosphere?

    773:

    I hadn't heard about any measurements from the Phoenix lander. I'd be surprised to see chlorates and CO in the same environment, but if that's what they measure, that's what they measure. It's a bit surprising, since perchlorates are extremely oxidizing. OTOH the martian atmosphere is thin and I don't know how deeply the lander drilled for its sample.

    In general I don't follow all of the news from Mars because it seems fairly frivolous to me. YMMV.

    774:

    There does seem to be some news pending from the Curiosity rover; rumors say the SAM unit has detected something interesting, but nobody's ready to go on the record about just what yet.

    For those of us who've been around a few years, just the fact that there IS news from Mars is a sign of living in a science fictional future. It's 2012, and we get more news from Mars than from Alaska or the Outer Hebrides.

    775: 769 - By my reckoning, even if he doesn't retire, catching Issac will require Charlie to write a book about every 6 months. That would almost certainly mean no more Liz Kavenaugh. :-( 773 Para 2 - No news from the Outer Hebrides means that nothing newsworthy (at least to people outside the islands) has happened here. Trust me; I have excellent reasons for claiming that I know whereof I speak.
    776:

    As Isaac Asimov wrote over 400 books, and I've written maybe 20-24 (I don't keep count rigorously), catching him would require me to write and publish not one book every six months, but one book per month for the next 32 years, i.e. until I turn 80.

    I do not believe this is a feasible goal.

    777:

    I knew it was over 100 Asimovs, but I think 400 must include stuff like "collected essays", "Before the Golden Age" (which he editted, and contains at a guess 60 pages of his original writing. It was variously published as 3 or 4 volume sets, so could count as up to 7 books), and count "I, Robot", "The Rest of the Robots" and "The Complete Robot" as 3 separate works (TCR is IR + TRotR in one volume).

    Anyway, as you might have guessed, I don't want you to try and match him.

    778:

    I'm pretty sure people with Asimov's output do things like stick all their blog posts together into one book and publish them. Articles, essays, etc all get bundled and printed.

    I'm not saying this is a bad approach, just different.

    FWIW I've never read more than a couple Asimov books, and what little I have read did not grasp me particularly.

    779:

    A couple of years back I was invited to be guest of honor at Boskone, the SF convention thrown by the New England SF Association (NESFA). NESFA runs a very interesting "small" press -- they do hardcover and trade paperback runs targeting the collectors' market -- and one of their draws is that at each Boskone they publish a book of the guest of honor's work. (This is alongside their main line of doing things like, for example, publishing the collected out of print works of famous dead SF authors in lovely well-produced hardcover editions.)

    In the end, I had a brain wave and we ended up blowing the dust off "Scratch Monkey", my zero'th novel (nearly published by Millennium in the UK in 1995, but for a clusterfuck of misunderstandings involving me, my agent, and an editor). (Note: it is a very good thing that SM was not published as my first novel in 1995, because my career would have subsequently tanked.)

    However, before we settled on the idea of doing that, I trawled my blog for interesting essays ... and stopped after I came up with nearly 400,000 words of stuff to distill down. Note: that's about the size of "The Lord of the Rings". And this was not my entire blog -- just the more significant essays. The CMAP series and "How I got here in the end" stuff, and the other highlights linked from the sidebar off the front page, run to over 60,000 words, or around 180 pages: I could easily throw together several volumes of essays culled from this blog, and some of them might even be interesting.

    On the other hand ... prospective sales of a book of essays by me would be quite low, even in a signed limited-edition hardcover. And the amount of editing work it would take to thrash them into shape would be, shall we say, better spent writing new stuff.

    Maybe one of these days I'll parcel a bunch of them up, give 'em a polish, and release them as cheap ebooks. Say, $3 for 100,000 words of non-fiction? But right now, I have other priorities (like, erm, finishing Laundry Files book #5, and then writing the [big reveal, now that only the die-hard blog followers are reading this] "Merchant Princes: The Next Generation" trilogy.

    780:

    I'd be surprised to see chlorates and CO in the same environment, but if that's what they measure, that's what they measure. It's a bit surprising, since perchlorates are extremely oxidizing.

    Perchlorates and chlorates are good oxidizers at high temperatures but pretty stable at Mars-ambient temperatures. Much like molecular oxygen is a very good oxidizer at high temperature, yet a mixture of oxygen and methane will remain stable indefinitely if not heated or exposed to radiation.

    781:

    Perchlorates and chlorates are good oxidizers at high temperatures but pretty stable at Mars-ambient temperatures.

    "Pretty stable" while cold doesn't surprise me. "Stable over geologic time periods" does.

    782:

    I'm pretty sure people with Asimov's output do things like stick all their blog posts together into one book and publish them. Articles, essays, etc all get bundled and printed.

    Issac Asimov predated the blogging era, but yes - he had quite a few books that were collected essays; I'm sitting a meter or two away from at least a dozen paperbacks compiling his science essays, for example.

    And nobody matches his output. I heard Ben Bova tell this story years ago: A bunch of SF authors are at a table at a convention, introducing themselves. Asimov gets up and says in essence, "Hi, I'm Issac Asimov; I'm currently working on Foo, Bar, and Baz." Struck by a sudden inspiration, Bova leans over to Gordie Dickson next to him and whispers, "To Tell the Truth." Bova then stands up and tells the assembled fans, "Hi, my name is Issac Asimov and I'm working on..." And this goes on down the whole table; one at a time the authors all get up and announce themselves as Issac Asimov, and the projects they're working on.

    The folks who knew better were amused; presumably those who didn't thought they knew how Issac Asimov really got his prodigious output.

    783:
    On the other hand ... prospective sales of a book of essays by me would be quite low, even in a signed limited-edition hardcover. And the amount of editing work it would take to thrash them into shape would be, shall we say, better spent writing new stuff.

    Oh Ho, now this is interesting! Asimov to me is his pre-60's sf, one or two fictive works in the 70's, and where I got a lot of my science education in the 60's. As a science popularizer he was the best, bar none. But modern authors - not just OGH - don't seem to do much of this sort of thing anymore. And thinking about it, does any sf zine do much in the way of science essays these days? Charlie's reluctance to do a book of the things might be a variant of the Vonnegut observation.

    784:

    It may appear that we are too pessimistic about radiation on the surface of Mars.

    Mars is safe from radiation

    If correct, that means less worry when making sorties from base and maybe even not having to worry much about protecting the crops.

    785:

    "And thinking about it, does any sf zine do much in the way of science essays these days?"

    Analog SF - https://www.analogsf.com/2013_01-02/index.shtml

    786:

    You'll have to trust me that I'm not clicking on your link, but there is so little of this sort of thing going on that I'm guessing this is either John Cramer's old column, or it's direct spiritual descendant. Am I right?

    787:

    Yes, they always run a science fact article

    788:

    I'd say the fact that there are so few of these things that I can name them without clicking makes my point; there really isn't a whole lot of science exposition columns out there anymore. Note that what little there is tends to be gosh-wow stuff (and a lot of that distinctly long in the tooth) as opposed to what Asimov did, which was explain no-nonsense science. Stuff like what it means to say that electrons have spin, or why vacuum is far more rigid than steel.

    789:

    What happened was a market shift.

    Asimov wrote a buttload of science columns, leveraged them into books, then dominated the pop-sci market in the 1970s before the current fashion for high profile scientists writing books on their own field came in.

    The newspapers and magazines who published those columns don't do so to anything like the same extent these days, and popular science books turned into a market segment in their own right -- too large for any one name to dominate.

    790:

    Asimov's name had also reached the brand name status level where just putting the name on the cover guarantees sales, once you have that kind of mojo it makes sense to save even what you write on a napkin as it has monetary value.

    OT: I'm regretting the long and secure password I entered for this account since the remember me logged in prompt does nothing, naathing. Gonna go with 1234 next time... :P

    791:

    @625:

    So why aren't we colonizing the Gobi Desert?

    Because another "we" owns that land.

    Same problem people are faced with when they get upset over how a different country handles its land or resources.

    Colonizing Mars doesn't look so difficult by comparison.

    792:

    Asimov's collections often have little historical or autobiographical notes preceding the individual stories. I had noticed what a wide variety of places he managed to sell a story to - technical journals, back when they still paid for articles; private-circulation magazines, "fluff" magazines, commissions of various sorts.

    I learned an awful lot of history from Asimov... and that knowledge is a process, not an absolute. Both have done me very well over the years.

    I had a very interesting conversation with a Bulgarian physicist in the late 1980s. Somehow the subject moved to Asimov and the guy went nonlinear; Asimov was a charlatan and a faker, and probably mutilated puppies. Turned out he'd never even read anything by Asimov; he was just regurgitating the Party line he'd learned in college. I always wondered what Asimov might have said to have got them so riled up. It was worse than the Babdeez reaction to "Asimov's Guide to the Bible."

    793:

    It was worse than the Babdeez reaction to "Asimov's Guide to the Bible."

    Could you clarify? I don't know who Babdeez is, and Google is not helpful.

    795:

    The correct mapping solution for something like a complex savanna depends on what someone is trying to map. A single, two dimensional map isn't going to capture every property that's important.

    The above may sound trite, but I've been told "we want a good map, and it needs to be pretty," which tells you the sophistication of some land managers when it comes to maps. It's more useful for such bosses to be more explicit what they need the map for. Pretty maps have their uses (cf: National Geographic magazine), don't get me wrong. Unfortunately, they're not the right tool for quite a few jobs. I'm not a geographer, but one of my favorite books on the subject is How to Lie with Maps.

    With a savanna, something like species count per acre can be equally useful, because it shows up the unique property of the savanna area. Unfortunately, those data aren't uniformly available, and species count depends quite strongly on who is doing the count and when they do the count. Something like the dominant plant species is much easier for field techs to determine accurately, and that's what normally gets measured.

    796:
    The newspapers and magazines who published those columns don't do so to anything like the same extent these days,

    Exactly - hence my reference to Vonnegut's observation.

    As I grow older, my evaluation of the Big Three keeps changing. Right now I'm of the opinion that in some sense Asimov was a truly unique phenomenon, the polymath explainer extraordinaire. I really don't much care for a lot of the pop-sci expos written by "real scientists" these days, for the simple reason that they usually don't do a very good job of it. Perfectly understandable, they're scientists first and writers second.

    But Asimov - ah. Every so often I go back and check out one of his science books. The last time it was "An Easy Introduction to the Slide Rule". And despite this being something of a dead technology, he made it sound really cool all over again. A rare talent, that.

    797:

    Asimov was a truly unique phenomenon, the polymath explainer extraordinaire.

    I agree. His science writing was a model of clarity. No ambiguity. And what a delight to read. Amongst my Asimov collection of science writing, I even have his book on algebra which blows away most elementary algebra textbooks.

    Yet when you read most of his SF, you can see what the Clarke-Asimov Treaty was about.

    798:

    Asimov was a much, much better science writer than SF novelist. Or rather, novelist. He had the SF ideas all right -- he had tons of them, and they were very good by the standards of his day. The characterisation and style side of things? Not so hot. (Ahem. That of his fiction that attempts to portray human interactions has not stood the test of time well.)

    But when he wasn't trying to write fiction, but to explain ideas, he shone.

    799:

    Well, the bad news is that people like me still read SF for the ideas rather than characterisations. The latter just gets in the way of a good SF story.

    800:

    I agree that I read SF for the ideas. However, a bigger part of why I read ideas is to read about people who aren't consumed with their relationships with other people, to the exclusion of all else. They seem so limited to me.

    Yes, I'll admit that people who spend their lives working with ideas, science, nature, exploration, and so forth do not generally have either the depth or the complexity of those who socialize for a living. Nonetheless, I'm more sympathetic to the people who are, by circumstance or character, nerds and geeks. To me, that's what science fiction is for. Mainstream literature can have the soap operas, so far as I'm concerned.

    801:

    @625:

    TRX: "Because another "we" owns that land.

    Same problem people are faced with when they get upset over how a different country handles its land or resources.

    Colonizing Mars doesn't look so difficult by comparison."

    I believe that the original question was not asked as 'we, Americans/Brits' but 'we, humans'.

    As for 'doesn't look so difficult by comparison.', jss - start with travel, and then go to a frozen near vacuum.

    802:

    people like me still read SF for the ideas rather than characterisations.

    I came to the work of our generous host through the Laundry novels; I tend to prefer fantasy to SF. The shift happened during college (I'm a chemist by training).

    Fitting good, nontrivial scientific ideas into a narrative framework is hard. Even the best I know of (here I'm thinking of our host, Vinge, and Peter Watts) are pretty hit and miss at it, at least to me (I tend to pick up on certain types of incongruous details). Fantasy and horror offer me a simpler proposition. It's the big lie principle at work; a work pretending to be realistic usually has inconsistencies that annoy me, but a tale of admitted bullshit is easy to accept.

    803:

    I tend to agree. "Hard" SF no longer has the appeal it once did, for several reasons, not least the fact that modern science and technology rapidly moves ahead of most SF. Also, being a Transhumanist, I no longer see "people" in the future of any sort we would now recognize. So it's far easier to go for Fantasy where technology is indistinguishable from magic and the setting is contemporary or historical.

    804:

    I think there's a happy medium. For me, if SF is to be convincing, it needs to either eschew humanity completely (Greg Egan's "Diaspora" springs to mind) or portray it's human protagonists relatively believably. Which means giving them a bit more depth than simply using them as sock puppets for ideological talking points.

    Yes, this includes writing fiction in which the nerds and the geeks get to go center-stage a lot. (Because the mainstream authors aren't interested in that audience.)

    This all goes back to what we do when we read fiction, which is: attempt to build a mental model of the inner workings of the mind of somebody else, not to mention a virtual stage for them to speak their ghostly lines on. And it also speaks for one of the things we do when we stop reading fiction: when we utter the seven deadly words, "I do not care about these people" and close the book.

    805:

    Most predictions predict faster change than actually occurs. Just set the projected date about ten times as far out, because you can't extrapolate from observed recent rates. 2000 to 2500 might not be like 1500-2000, it might be like 0 to 500. Change is not a line or even a single curve. It's like a structure collapsing (except backwards). Something critical breaks and there's a rapid period of reaching a new equilibrium, then there's new stability when only small changes are made. Then after a while another shift leads to a cascade that speeds up, reaches a maximum, then fades.

    It may be that our recent crescendo of changes is likely to taper off. And five hundred years may not be long enough for a new breakthroough, only for a series of improvements. For one thing, tech changes disript power structures, but once the change slows the power structures reassert and are motivated to stall change. With globalization there may be no outside competitor to drive a new cascade if there is limited expansion into space as the OP suggests.

    In that situation a particularly interesting question is how longevity progress will be phased in. Will we suddenly wake up one morning and be able to get a cheap immortality pill? That would lead to a lot of fast change. Will it be forever a hundred years away--except secretly available to the very rich? That would be unstable, somebody would break faith unless the regime had a truly firm grasp. Will it be harnessed for maximum profit with incremental changes that cost the most money that the most payers will pay for as long as possible? That kind of rings true, but is kind of boring.

    Another issue is what rights future governments will give manufactured people. Where do you draw the line between an extension of self and a theoretically viable but enslaved other "person," or persons. A lot hinges on critical directions in the near future regarding political and legal foundations being laid.

    806:

    Agreed. In fairness, I should point out that I was unfair to mainstream authors such as TC Boyle, whose San Miguel and When the Killing's Done are as much about two islands and what they do to people as they are about the people. They are "real science" fiction.

    While some SF writers do write stories about ideas, most SF (according to Sturgeon's Law, at least) seems to be about a shiny grimy future stories.

    "Shiny" is about all the props that lampshade that the story is set in a SF future (as opposed to the horses and six-shooters of the western, the bustier of the bodice ripper, etc). They're also, to be honest, one of the great attractions of the genre. The gizmos tend to be memorable long after the stories are forgotten, and they're even used as a metric to measure how "prophetic" the stories were.

    Grimy is where the authors add "realism," a throw some scuffs, dirt, and other stuff to make it feel "real." Characters all too often have shiny interiors and grimy exteriors too. For my generation, Star Wars is the touchstone of this idea, the "lived-in" universe, as opposed to the unabashedly shiny gizmos that preceded it.

    Yes, this is the Sturgeon's law description of science fiction. A few writers do much better.

    Still, the future comes in a distant third in SF. For most SF writers, it's generally about staging some favorite story into a new environment. For others, it's a linear projection of some trend without proper consideration of time, or a projection of one's prejudices. It's the future as a blank stage, rather than the future as a foreign world to be explored. One experiment I like conducting is asking people to imagine a few hundred thousand years of future human history. It's been done (Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men), but not often. The most telling comment I heard from someone was that, if we were still human even a few centuries from now, they would consider that a terrible failure of progress.

    It's an interesting paradox, isn't it? SF fans claim to want to read stories about SCIENCE fiction, a literature of ideas set in a future peopled by believable characters. At the same time, so many cringe when asked to contemplate a deep future populated by, well, real people. Perhaps, as that telling comment had it, science fiction is really a literature that reaffirms our belief in progress? If so, one could argue that the reason science fiction is suffering as a genre is a reflection of the beating Progressivism has been taking, as opposed to a prejudice against science in general.

    807:

    On paper I would sign down as someone who enjoys big ideas and doesn't care for soap operas. But in practice, Lois Bujold can sit me down for a wedding without much trouble, while Stephen Baxter's eon long galactic wars just seem to be made of lego.

    Take something like Ringworld, Louis Wu's characterization is what brings the scale of the megastructure to the reader. I wouldn't call Niven a master of character, but Louis is probably his most fleshed out character, an almost posthuman from an advanced civilization but who is still relatable, and by that allows us to experience by proxy the wonder that is the ringworld, the fleet of worlds, etc.

    when we utter the seven deadly words, "I do not care about these people" and close the book.

    Yes, I do that increasingly as I get older. I did it with Watts' Behemoth (Whichever was the second one in that trilogy), Baxter's manifold trilogy and I'm sorry to say, Scratch monkey (Then again it is unpublished for a reason). Some of Banks novels I've finished but wished I hadn't.

    Someone like Baxter needs to collaborate with a Clarke or Pratchett to inject a little humanity in his grand designs.

    808:

    Someone like Baxter needs to collaborate with a Clarke

    He did:

    The Light of Other Days

    Time's Eye Sunstorm Firstborn

    Once you get away from his far future Xeelee universe stories, his characters are well rounded, IMO.

    809:

    I know he did, and having compared the difference gives me the certainty to assert he needs it.

    I actually preferred the Xeele saga because it was given as a framework of the story that this was a history of the far future so no character was going to stick around for more than a chapter or two as the ages raced on.

    810:
    String theory is the edge of science. You're doing science when your theories are falsifiable.

    Well, "edge of science" has some ambivalence, it could mean both "close to the boundary of science and not-science/pseudoscience", which we could call "parascience", or it could mean "bleeding edge of science".

    If we go with the first meaning, this indicates there are areas close to the edge of science where falsification is difficult, and even if we do a divide with falsifiability, it stands to argue falsifications close to "the edge" are maybe not as rock-solid as somewhere else, e.g. when the effects are kinda small or we have multiple somewhat probable assumptions for the variables. Which translates to something of a sliding rule of falsifiability, with an arbitrary cut-off. E.g. a p-value of 0.05, though that one has some problems...

    http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=6006

    Which means we either go with science where there is no true falsification, or with not-science where there is some falsification.

    If we go with the second, this could indicate that it helps for science to drop falsifiability for a time to progress.

    Both meanings indicate that falsifiability is a strong indicator for most kinds of science, but there are areas of science where it's not that diagnostic (first meaning) or where we can't use it (second meaning). Both meanings indicate there is something more to science then just falsifiability and repeatability. Nevermind there is also pathological science that shows both, at least for a time.

    But then, there are other indicators some work is scientific, e.g. coherence, e.g. we judge hypothesis by their adherence to things like conservation of energy etc. Till we see the exception clauses, e.g. CP violation:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP_violation

    811:

    To go back to the uploaded pope (or any other authority figure), while true uploading might be hard on multiple levels, there is always the cyborg approach, e.g. we substitute part of the brain for an artificial ersatz.

    Please note that the late John Paul II was suffering from Parkinson's, where we already use something called a "brain pacemaker"

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_pacemaker

    While this is far from emulating parts of the brain, I guess emulating things like the breathing reflex etc. is not that far off.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_implant

    Now emulating autonomic responses might seem somewhat trivial, but keep in mind fast breathing is one of the ways we measure our arousal, so even something trivial as fixing breath and heart rate might change emotional responses:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misattribution_of_arousal

    If we go for implants that help with e.g. memory retrieval, there are likely bigger effects on emotions, since memory retrieval is quite tied to emotional processing. When you think about embarassing episodes, you filter things out, and/or you don't think about it often, and/or you have perfect memory of them because of high arousal, but what if some implant plays in the perfect lifelog for the Alzheimer's patient, or you have to decide on some on-the-fly edits to keep embarassment low?

    So, maybe we are about to see some rules akin to the Byzantine ones where a disabled emperor was unfit for the job, which meant assasination was not the only way to moderate absolutism

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_mutilation_in_Byzantine_culture

    never mind quite some of those returned after a nose job:

    http://www.badassoftheweek.com/justinian.html

    As for the bioconservatist stance, I don't insist on MPTP injections for them to know what Parkinson's feels like, but I guess one month on a high potency typical neuroleptic is minimum for anybody rambling about brain pacemakers etc. destroying humanity and virtue in suffering.

    812:

    I liked Scratch Monkey

    813:

    I liked parts of it, sure, but in the end I dropped it literally because I didn't care if the plucky humans would defeat the crazed AI, plus I find post singularity dystopias give me the heebie jeebies. Not something that's likely to happen with Mo and Bob. Hell, I'm even invested in Angleton.

    814:

    I followed your thoughts until you mentioned Fusion as the energy source of the future. Then I realized that this is a true fantasy article and not realistic. Fusion may or may not workout as possible, but it is definitely NOT going to be scalable in the world that will exist when/if it is ever proven possible.

    That we will even burn up 1/4 of the possible hydrocarbons before it all shuts down is also not likely. The world financial system will all collapse way before either can happen. The reset will not be based on the globalization of money or resources, but national or possibly regional systems. There will not be multi-billions to spend on a new energy system. There will likely not even be enough to manage the storage of all the nuclear waste already spread around the world.

    Techies have a hard time accepting that they are NOT going to save the world, but are definitely going to have a hand in it's continued destruction as they have had for the last 100 years. In 50 years, cities will be abandoned. Tech will be back to the 1800s. There is no revival and glorious future ahead and by 2512, there will probably only be tribes wandering the desert earth.

    815:

    Forgive me, but I need to beat that particular idea to death, hard.

    Puh-leeze! We are never, ever going back to the 1800s. Time's arrow points resolutely forward. We're not going back to a pure hunter-gatherer lifestyle either, no matter how many nukes fly.

    I agree that fusion is problematic, and (absent a miracle) it depends on a massive scale of civil and grid engineering that's going to be freaking hard to maintain, given how many problems we're having maintaining our existing infrastructure (I get boringly repetitious about the biggest problems being political, not technical, but you're right. Techs can't enable idiot politics forever. At some point, we need to force our leaders to grow up or get out).

    So we have a Long Decline. Thing is, we don't go backward. We'll decline progressively forward For example: we've got the most efficient cookstoves on the planet right now, they're getting better at Moore's Law speeds, and the new stoves are cheaper and better than old pot-bellied stoves. What's driving the revolution is a desire to cut indoor cooking smoke as a cheap public health measure, and it's working. So even if we decline back to wood stoves, they'll be much better than the ones before, because people are only now figuring out how fire works and how to maximize cook-stove efficiency cheaply. This doesn't even go to cheap solar cookstoves, which weren't around a century ago.

    With the military, we'll see the death of $200 million stealth fighters, but they're already being replaced by much cheaper drones. Army bases used to have spotter planes over them, and now they fly blimps. We'll have AK-47s as long as there's an ammunition industry to feed them (because they're cheap to make), but once they're gone, surprise! there are high tech black powder guns out there that perform extremely well, courtesy a couple of decades of black-powder deer hunting seasons. Nobody will be shooting Brown Besses, no matter how bad it gets. (Before you ask, yes, I doubt people will give up on cartridge ammo. The only advantage black powder weapons have is that they're more durable and easier to keep fed under low tech circumstances)

    Similarly, we won't go back to land line phones. I'll bet we figure out how to make cell phones at the city or village levels. If nothing else, people will cobble together short-wave radios out of remarkably simple junk. A while ago, we figured out here that a city could probably put together a 1980s level computer using only raw material inputs, so I doubt computers will go away entirely either, if the global electronic industry collapses.

    This is the critical point: with billions of people in the world innovation will continue, even as things fall apart. The future may be as "primitive" as the 1800s, but it won't look much like the 1800s.

    If we nuke ourselves back to the metaphorical Stone Age, we won't go back to hunting and gathering either entirely. Farming and goat herding allow people to live in areas that are effectively inaccessible to hunter-gatherers, and I'm pretty sure that, no matter how bad things get, people will save a few goats and some seeds. That's all it takes to restart that life style, and it won't look much like the neolithic, either.

    816:

    Doomsayers like Makati1 either assume all modern knowledge will be somehow lost, or lack imagination in how this knowledge can be applied. Even with muscle power and waterwheels your only energy sources, you can do an awful lot if you understand electricity, thermodynamics, and germ theory of disease. Bronze Age people had everything necessary to create decent hygiene and to drastically reduce infant mortality -- all they lacked is knowledge of microbes. So yes, anything short of total extinction of humanity will result in a future very different from ANY past.

    817:
    We're not going back to a pure hunter-gatherer lifestyle either, no matter how many nukes fly.

    Actually, going back to a pure HG lifestyle would mean major technological developments, especially since most of the historical prey species are long extint and we'd have to find new ones. Personally, I guess pigs are nice, but non-trivial to kill.

    You just have to look at the history of Paleo-Eskimo cultures, where the contemporary Inuit or Thule people are only about 1000 years old, to see innovations and its effects.

    818:

    I somewhat agree. However, one of the best things for a home survival kit is a bunch of rat traps, because you can get by with eating rats and pigeons, so long as you've already learned how to eat them before the disaster strikes. Post-crash hunters and gatherers have things like rats, pigeons, and raccoons to forage on.

    The basic point, though, was that hunting and gathering only works if there's enough present THAT YOU CAN EAT for you to survive. The neat trick about farming or goatherding is that it lets you take resources you can't eat (dirt, shrub leaves) and turn them into things you can eat (a garden, milk products). This is why farmers and herders can live at higher densities than can hunter gatherers, under most circumstances. Places like Polynesia could not have been colonized without agriculture, and I wonder if parts of the Eurasian steppes required herding before people could really thrive out there.

    Make no mistake: hunting and gathering as a survival lifestyle is the best, especially for an individual or a small group. People adept at hunting and gathering can survive all sorts of crap, at least in the short run. A civilization crashing probably won't go back to a small population of hunter-gatherers though. I suspect it will go back to peasants instead, with some people claiming the land, while other people tame a herd and bug out.

    819:

    Incidentally, for those interested in obscure survival books, I recommend Jim Corbett's Goatwalking, although it's only partially about how to take a herd of goats into the desert and "go wild with them." Fun reading.

    820:

    Actually, going back to a pure HG lifestyle would mean major technological developments, especially since most of the historical prey species are long extinct and we'd have to find new ones.

    Actually, that might be kind of cool. Suppose there's a fad for this in, say, the 23rd century; it could be hundreds of years old by 2512. I don't know how popular nomadic stories of the steppes are in Eurasia, but we've got plenty of retro fantasies about Native American tales over here.

    I can imagine various tribes moving around the restored American plains, hunting Neo-Beefalo with laminate bows from almost-period hardly-genetically-engineered horses; this might be a moderately reasonable subculture. There are folks into the subsistence lifestyle in Alaska today; if we ever see large areas elsewhere becoming less populated I can see historical recreationists getting into nomadic lifestyles.

    821:
    However, one of the best things for a home survival kit is a bunch of rat traps, because you can get by with eating rats and pigeons, so long as you've already learned how to eat them before the disaster strikes.

    "Hole food! Hole food! Rat! Rat! Rat-onna-stick! Rat-in-a-bun! Get them while they're dead!"

    Err, sorry, just got carried away. As for the pigeons, while pigeon pie may not to everyone's taste, at least not to some friends I talked to, they have something of a reputation for being a delicatesse.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squab_(food)

    For the farming/herding, I wholeheartedly agree on that one, AFAIR the factor with population densities was something on the order of hundred, though most early (and later) agriculturalists had quite a problem with protein defiency. I just wanted to point out that IMHO our notions of "the simple life" of HG are mistaken; my personal acquaintance with reenacters and run-ins with the notorious ADHD project(1) have not exactly changed that one.

    (1) IMHO there are two kinds of procrastinators, those that do nothing and those that do too much...

    822:

    Actually, I guess a kind of HG lifestyle might be of interest to our techno-nomadists

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technogypsie

    as a kind of fallback mechanism or point of personal pride, though the Ancient Greek ideas of autonomia makes little economic sense (but then, coming out of the Bronze Age collapse might explain something of a survivalist mindset).

    Though then, don't get me started on our crusty "you have a (insert local currency here)? my dispo is late..." crowd. Err.

    BTW,

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neotribalism

    "My use of ancient Sumerian Cuneiform in my photography is to show that prior to current times, ancient and primitive art, was created by the tribal shamans or master artists skilled in symbols, materials and sacred (fetish) items"

    Major fail, I guess.

    823:

    Another way to think of hunting and gathering is that, once the high tide line of 9 billion people recedes, there's going to be a tremendous amount of crap lying around, waiting to be reused. The kind of bricolage needed to make all this stuff useful very definitely requires hunting and gathering skills. Just not paleolithic ones.

    As it is, animal hunting has long been the realm of either the wealthy or the outsiders, and I suspect it will remain that way.

    824:

    there's going to be a tremendous amount of crap lying around, waiting to be reused. The kind of bricolage needed to make all this stuff useful very definitely requires hunting and gathering skills. Just not paleolithic ones.

    And it's going to be very messy. I just discovered that the standard plastic gallon milk cartons around here have recently changed their composition. Used motor oil will eat through the current composition. Says he who collects his used oil and taking is to the oil recycling point periodically and now gets to clear up a patch of concrete. Fortunately it's a slow leak. :(

    So far the Costco branded milk cartons don't break down which gives me another reason to shop there.

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