Interesting. This is like a bizarro version of the future where it is both impossible to destroy the world and to do anything interesting with an enduring human civilization. Or maybe more concretely, a bizarro future created by an enduring but linearly progressing society that stagnates shortly before Kardashev Type 1.
Even the article on space exploration seems to ignore the various modern-ish ideas for fusion engine spacecraft (or older but still practical nuclear pulse propulsion designs) instead talking about how the stars might be just out of reach, instead of mentioning that we could send a probe to Alpha Centauri within a decade or two if we as a global civilization actually cared to devote the resources.
I mean, the series starts by linking to the FHI Global Catastropic Risks conference and then summarily dismissing it.
WHAT are the odds we will avoid extinction? In 2008, researchers attending the Global Catastrophic Risk Conference in Oxford, UK, took part in an informal survey of what they thought were the risks to humanity. They gave humans only a 19 per cent chance of surviving until 2100. Yet when you look more closely, such extreme pessimism is unfounded. Not only will we survive to 2100, it’s overwhelmingly likely that we’ll survive for at least the next 100,000 years.
Global effects come from an impact roughly every 500,000 years, so the odds are about 20 percent for a catastrophic, civilisation-threatening impact within 100,000 years.
Interesting. This is like a bizarro version of the future where it is both impossible to destroy the world and to do anything interesting with an enduring human civilization. Or maybe more concretely, a bizarro future created by an enduring but linearly progressing society that stagnates shortly before Kardashev Type 1.
Even the article on space exploration seems to ignore the various modern-ish ideas for fusion engine spacecraft (or older but still practical nuclear pulse propulsion designs) instead talking about how the stars might be just out of reach, instead of mentioning that we could send a probe to Alpha Centauri within a decade or two if we as a global civilization actually cared to devote the resources.
I mean, the series starts by linking to the FHI Global Catastropic Risks conference and then summarily dismissing it.
What’s interesting is that the survey report actually says something quite different:
Now, who managed to be more confused by the presented fiction than actual reality? I totally failed.
Aw.
That doesn’t reassure me.