37 replies to this topic

[advancedatheist]

Academic.  Human or transhuman migration to the stars will not begin for centuries, long after society in the Solar System reaches a very advanced state.  This is necessarily true because of the enormous resource base required for interstellar travel on a reasonable time scale. 

Yeah, well, Peak Oil has started to change the look of the "resource base" we'll have for the rest of our species' existence. (I look forward to the release of BP's Statistical Review of World Energy in the next month or so, because I suspect it will show nearly zero growth in the world's oil supply from 2005 to 2006.) I've already noticed a change in how the business and financial media treat the prospect of declining oil supplies -- from Peak Oil as some crank theory to Peak Oil as a reality affecting the business environment.

[bgwowk]

Academic.  Human or transhuman migration to the stars will not begin for centuries, long after society in the Solar System reaches a very advanced state.  This is necessarily true because of the enormous resource base required for interstellar travel on a reasonable time scale. 

Yeah, well, Peak Oil has started to change the look of the "resource base" we'll have for the rest of our species' existence.

Peak Oil? All the fossil fuel on Earth burned at once wouldn't be enough energy to launch one starship. Peak Oil is the local village running out of drift wood for campfires. The "resource base" eventually controlled by humans and their progeny will be the entire energy output of the sun (Kardashev Type II civilization), and more. Humans have survived planetary ice ages. They'll certainly survive "Peak Oil".

[Athanasios]

#*chanting* Humans! Humans! Humans! *chanting*

$h=humans;
while ($h < immortal multi-planet species)

{
$h++;
}

#/off topic

I always liked this quote, and have found it quite fitting:
"saying we are running out of resources is like saying we are running out of brains"- Robert Anton Wilson

[bgwowk]

Exactly. There are profound evolutionary forces in favor of that subroutine, provided we allow semantic latitude in continuing to call human what humans will become.

[Athanasios]

Exactly.  There are profound evolutionary forces in favor of that subroutine, provided we allow semantic latitude in continuing to call human what humans will become.

Definitely, I tried to encapture that with H++, an attempt at a transumanist reference. Code pun? [lol]

[advancedatheist]

Peak Oil?  All the fossil fuel on Earth burned at once wouldn't be enough energy to launch one starship.  Peak Oil is the local village running out of drift wood for campfires.

Brian, you should know better than that. Modern agriculture can't sustain the current world population without burning about ten calories of energy from fossil fuels to deliver one calorie of food energy to the dinner table. Scientists pointed out this dependency over thirty years ago (pdf). By now at least half the protein in our bodies incorporates nitrogen artificially fixed by burning fossil fuels. The downward turn in these resources will cause the classic Malthusian die off. Kind of like what happens on islands where human settlers cut down all the trees and burn the driftwood faster than it washes on shore, in fact.

The "resource base" eventually controlled by humans and their progeny will be the entire energy output of the sun (Kardashev Type II civilization), and more.  Humans have survived planetary ice ages.  They'll certainly survive "Peak Oil".

Now you sound like an Extropian still living in 1990. I thought middle age and the 21st Century's non-science fictional banality would tend to reality-check such pronouncements.

Peak Oil means that we'll have to relinquish space travel, Brian, just as we've already had to relinquish commercial supersonic transport (the Concorde). We don't have a serious successor vehicle to the Space Shuttle, I've noticed.

Yes, humanity will probably survive Peak Oil, but at a long-term social level somewhere between hunter-gatherers and feudal peasants, because we've already consumed most of the easy, high-yield resources needed for an industrialized lifestyle. I don't see how they'll manage to make liquid nitrogen and keep us in suspension. Keith Henson pins the future of cryonics on building satellites to beam more solar power to Earth (part of that Kardashev Type II fantasizing), something that nobody with real money at his disposal plans to build.

[bgwowk]

Yes, humanity will probably survive Peak Oil, but at a long-term social level somewhere between hunter-gatherers and feudal peasants...

Mark, I had always thought your position was that Peak Oil would lead to economic turmoil later this century. If you are now saying that without fossil oil humans could NEVER progress beyond "hunter-gatherers and feudal peasants" in ANY amount of time, that is so ridiculous as to not merit further discussion.

[MichaelAnissimov]

Brian,

Problems like jailing people for weed are likely to be fixed on this planet before people are forced off it.

If in the future, a single microbe-sized replicator can use asteroids and sunlight to convert itself into a planet-sized cloud that launches itself towards Earth, consuming everything in its way, then don't you think a little bit more civilization-wide scrutiny would be required?

I know it sounds like a moral question, but it's actually a technical question: in the future, can one unwatched person do enough harm to ruin it for everyone? If the answer is yes, then transparency and oversight will be necessary. It need not be oversight in the sense of a police state, but a barely noticeable background intelligence watching things.

I'm not advocating a Sysop per se, but just a singleton, which is a certain type of social structure.

As I've also argued on my blog, people stuck in space will also be frozen in time and alienated from all culture, because us Earthies will accelerate our cognitive speeds many millions of times over, while space pioneers remain static. Eventually, you will just turn into stationary rocks in our telescopes. Of course, from your own point of view you will be traveling... but missing out on the opportunity cost of fun here on Earth.

I am anti-tyranny, when tyranny is defined as noticeable inconvenience and repression. Was it tyranny when you were forced to go to medical school in order to earn your M.D.? The sort of oversight I am talking about is very innocuous.

Speaking of Leary, the guy knew all about cryonics but still chose to die for good. For this, he is a hypocrite. (Though I support his push for the legalization of psychoactives.)