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Old 1st December 2016
J65nko J65nko is offline
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Default This is the most dangerous time for our planet - Stephen Hawking

An interesting article where Stephen Hawking comments on the current state of the world : https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...net-inequality

I hope this topic will not degrade into a heated debate, else I will have to close the thread
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Old 7th December 2016
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Well, someone needs to respond to this! We should have a poll for it (that's a less controversial way to do it) and the question would be: "Will humanity exterminate itself within the next 50 years, or not?"

My vote: it's an absolute certainty.

I was not that excited about Hawkings "A brief history of time" - I'm a fan of popular physics, but more on the order of Heinz R. Pagel's "symmetry" and Joao Magueijo's "Faster than light" - but I tended to agree with much of the article.

He's really just reiterating the concern of Enrico Fermi in the thought vein of Enrico's "The Great Filter" - which is that at some point, technology becomes both too powerful to be used responsibly, and too easy to obtain and to replicate, and thus it destroys the civilization that created it (with the help of members of the unlucky life form (which in our case, woud be humans)). The answer to the Fermi Paradox explains why we've never been contacted by alien life forms, in spite of (Fermi's) calculations that would otherwise make such a contact reasonably certain.

Synopsis: Lifeforms always extinguish themselves when a certain threshold is reached wherein the technology starts to increase at a very steep (exponential) rate. It is around this time that far-travel by that civilization would be possible, or at least communications would be, but the window of time, within which the civilization exists, is too short, and such a civilization vanishes before its window is coincident with another's.

So, Fermi, here's a +1 for ya!
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Old 7th December 2016
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An interesting theory, but too simplistic and based on assumptions.
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Old 7th December 2016
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rons View Post

Synopsis: Lifeforms always extinguish themselves when a certain threshold is reached wherein the technology starts to increase at a very steep (exponential) rate. It is around this time that far-travel by that civilization would be possible, or at least communications would be, but the window of time, within which the civilization exists, is too short, and such a civilization vanishes before its window is coincident with another's.
Can you give one concrete example of a lifeform that has done this?
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Old 7th December 2016
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Can you give one concrete example of a lifeform that has done this?
No, but I can't supply a single example of the alien contact that would prove Fermi's theory wrong, either.

If you read him, and his theories and his rationale speaking for the existence of (probably) many "come and gone" civilizations (over the billions of years) - it's plausible. Obviously all theory. Bright guy though.
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Old 7th December 2016
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Quote:
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Can you give one concrete example of a lifeform that has done this?
I saw this documentary once: 12 Monkeys. Very interesting.
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Old 7th December 2016
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Quote:
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I saw this documentary once: 12 Monkeys. Very interesting.
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Old 8th December 2016
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I know some actually counting on this

In Egypt we have a proverb that goes like this "Yala Beena | Let's go", you say with a sarcastic sound
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Old 6th April 2017
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There is no doubt in my mind that we are in a "time period" , that could be called "the most dangerous time". Or times, some people are calling it "The Last Days" , End times,..etc. It is something that even as a child, I found not only a disturbing thought, but just like we are born, and grow, become old, and die,..everything has it's cycles, this not only includes humans, but planets, starts etc,....however I don't think anybody can predict exactly how much time we have, I don't think "humanity" will completely exterminate their selves, as a human maybe I should say "ourselves", self extermination, suicide, etc, goes completely against my most basic instincts. So one needs to separate their self, from the others, and this is possible, there are ways to escape, but I suspect it will be , or is a very few that will find the means to escape.

As for "alien" contact, or intervention, well if a ex human, came from some where light years from here, we certainly might think it is a "alien", or call it a alien.

"Humanity" as we know it, maybe is just a stage, my thoughts are it is the first stage, like a unborn baby, still in the womb. Then when it is born, that still is a very early stage, and so on.

I don't know, it is all mostly a mystery to us,.... I do think at different times, in the history of mankind,
our "ancestors", and even the One creator, have and do make attempts to contact some of us, and try to show us how to survive, or escape the pending doom. More then just "think" I am convinced of that.

There are many books on the subject,.. one that I read years ago (over 40 years ago) , I found very interesting, The Morning of the Magicians
There are some other books, I would like to suggest, but don't want to go "religious",...then there also
is the histories of some of The People, on this planet,..particularly the "Hopi", they have recorded and kept accounts of the planet being destroyed on more then one occasion,..and "The People" survive, humanity is
a broad term, but I am convinced that there will all ways be some humans, or humanity, then a small portion
of humanity eventually goes on to the the next stage, and new humans will continue to ne born.
When this planet no longer supports that, there will be a few on another , new planet, and the cycle will repeat it's self.
I don't think anyone, any human can completely grasp all the mysteries of the universe and cosmos.
Any way, it is all to "cosmic" for me, and writing this made my sleepy,... so for now that is
all .
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Old 11th April 2017
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I wonder to what extent the apocalyptarian aspects of a culture are driven by people entering the middle-age phase of their life where rapid growth stops and maintenance and decline begins?

A couple of other links along the same lines of the OP article:Henny Penny revelations aside, I like to imagine that a sober analysis is possible and that there are prudent projects underway:Regarding the OP article that claimed to be written by Steven Hawking (I wonder if that means "from the office that manages the public persona of Steven Hawking"?), there seemed to be an implied or suggested meaning behind the term "inequality" that probably deserves some exploration. I am reminded of how the US popular political culture use of the word "Freedom" changed from the implied "Freedom from tyranny" to "Freedom to self-gratify".
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Old 23rd July 2017
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I saw a program last night where the speaker, some retired official form a previous Administration, stated we were more at risk now for nuclear war than during the Cold War.

The Russians have plans to wipe the US out in the event they would lose such a war, like nuking Yellowstone and setting off the SuperVolcano, or superweapons detonated of the Pacific coast that would create a tsunami hundreds of feet high.

They have set off the most powerful hydrogen bomb ever detonated at some 56 kilotonne and supposedly have the Satan bomb that is even more powerful.
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