How can the human race survive the next hundred years?

Question

Am I busted for ripping off Stephen Hawkings? At least if you answer my question, you have better odds of getting a best answer nod!

Answer 1

Truth?

We can't. I seriously think we need to just ask for a "Do over" and scrap the whole human race and start from square one.

cruel answer? Well it is a cruel world. And the logic stands right before us and yet closed minded people will NOT open their minds long enough to listen to anyone but themselves. So we've come to an empasse. There is no solution. If we don't just scrap it and start again......we'll certainly find some other creative way to put an end to our world anyway. *sigh*

Answer 2

I guess I should rip off my answer to Stephen then:

We are like cucarachas, not so easy to kill off. I am afraid though that the next 100 years will be some tough sleading.

I am a great admirer of your work and have read most of your popular books, although I regret to admit that I think your idea of moving into space is silly. It is worse than silly really it is counter productive. The Earth needs to be protected and if folks think they have an out they may not work hard enough at protecting it. We have a relativly poor track record in that regard so far.

Answer 3

Barring some Extinction-Level-Event, I don't think mankind will have a problem surviving that relatively short span of time...

As for lasting untiI, say, the Third Millennium, --- well, my thoughts tend to side with those who feel that mankind may not make it.

I like M-n-G's 'Do over' idea as I, too, feel that we have reached an impasse. However, I wouldn't place the blame solely on the shoulders of close-minded ignorance, as the naively open-minded are as much to blame for the current woeful state of humanity...

There is a delicate balance here for the mind:
"Too closed",... and any enlightening thoughts will be difficult to come by.
"Too open",... and you will waste a great deal of your life sifting through tons of moronic input to find a few pieces of 'truth'...

...Perhaps the end of humanity IS the best solution, after all...

"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking

Answer 4

We'll need to start changing our way of life, or face extinction. It's a fact, our way of life is destroying the earth, our health, and more.

Operation:Earth (www.operationearth.org) says:

1. Go vegetarian/vegan - farm animals create waste which pollutes everything around it - land, water, crops, air, etc.

2. Reduce Reuse & Recycle. Reuse everything you can, be creative! Buy post-consumer recycled products.

3. Compost food scraps & more in an old garbage can.

4. Buy organic! Organic saves the earth from pesticides & other harsh chemicals which pollute our land, air, and water.

5. Invest in renewable energy sources such as sun, wind, & water. Ask your local energy company about it.

6. If you are 18+ - VOTE! Under 18? Join the cause. Get active going door to door, handing out pamphlets, protesting - make your voice heard!

Answer 5

Haha, yeah will Dr. Hawkings be reading all, what, 10,000 answers?

Dont think so!

I say go for alternative energy sources and learn to turn the other cheek-- there's too much escalation in every conflict, and one of these days it'll get out of hand. Then again, if it could get seriously out of hand wihtout going nuclear, it may increase our chances of survival past 100 years by lowering the population. Though that's kind of a sick thought, so I'll stop there.

Answer 6

We need to construct ourselves a massive freezer. This is going to take the efforts of all humanity and will require enormous cooperation. I suggest in order to insure our survival we need to freeze everybody for at least 243 years. By that time our supercomputers will have resolved all our problems and will have developed hover cars.
I am cautiously optimistic about this scenario, the other scenario I envision is the ascension of Oprah from cultural icon to Empress of the World. Which to be perfectly honest freaks me out a bit.

Answer 7

My astronomer friend, Oligvy, assures me that it is very unlikely that anything catastrophic will happen any day soon. I had often wondered if he was right on account of suspecting that at one time life existed on Mars, but Oligvy assures me that the chance of anything living on Mars is a million to one. And yet I have to wonder about the recent event of observing a strange green erruption from the surface of Mars through Oligvy's telescope just the other night...

Answer 8

stop ripping off Stephen Hawkings' questions!!!! :P maybe they can pull their heads out of their rear ends, get along, and try to deal with our problematic world.

Answer 9

Since my original answer to professor Hawking’s question was on page 266, I really don’t think that anyone will ever read it. I can’t even get to it myself. I tried to go to it, but I could only scroll through 3 pages at a time. What a stupid system! What is so difficult about putting in a “goto” button? I also tried searching keywords that I know are in my answer, but no help there either. Luckily, I composed my answer in Word and saved a copy, so for your reading pleasure, here it is:

There are several major wildcards we will need to pay attention to. Artificial intelligence (AI) will radically change the rules of the game once it develops to a higher level (a combination of neural network and quantum computing will eventually lead to unpredictable levels of creativity, speed, and overall processing power). We cannot really predict (we can barely even imagine) what role AI will play, but it is crucial that we develop this technology to help us deal with the immensely complex problems awaiting. (As global population rises and technology of all sorts becomes more sophisticated, a variety of problems will become unmanageably complex, with technology to handle this additional complexity.) We will also need to be developing space technology allowing us to move major mining and manufacturing operations into space to minimize polluting the earth. I doubt that we can prevent another doubling of the earth’s population, but sometime very soon we will be forced to deal with global population control. No matter how fancy our technology becomes, the earth simply cannot sustain more than a few more population doublings, and these doublings will be happening unbelievably fast as we hit the steep part of the exponential growth curve. Eventually we may be able to make use of living space in outer space, but this will NOT affect population pressures on earth in the next 100 years. We simply cannot get large enough numbers of people into space to make any significant dent in earth’s population, and even if we tried, we would probably wreak the earth’s atmosphere in the process. No, in the next 100 years we need to focus on controlling terrestrial population unless we are willing to let billions of people starve and/or wallow in unimaginable poverty. Earth’s resources simply cannot sustain 10 or 20 billion people with the sorts of technology we are likely to have within the next 100 years. We will also need to get a good political handle on weapons of mass destruction. Rising population will exacerbate social/economic pressures leading to “crazy-making” environments in which desperate people and desperate governments will do anything to survive. This is where AI could play a role. The raises the specter familiar to many sci-fi fans – machines taking control over humanity – but unless we find a radical, non-technological solution to population growth fairly soon, we will need incredibly smart machines to assist us with many of our problems – for better or worse! Human psychology and spirituality will ultimately play the biggest role. We simply cannot sustain a consumer mentality in the face of population doubling. We will ultimately NEED to adjust our attitudes and values in order for ANY proposed solution to work. I can suggest a variety of ideas here, but this answer is already getting too long for this format. We basically need to focus on technology and psychology/spirituality that will make it possible to minimize per capita resource use and waste production.

Answer 10

Well we seem to have survived the last hundred years and I haven't seen any meteorites fly towards us lately so for now lets just be grateful for the NOW.