Mankind moving from type 0 to type 1 society.

[RC]

http://www.wimp.com/mankindsociety/

Question: What is the likelihood that mankind will destroy itself?

Michio Kaku: I say looking at the next 100 years that there are two trends in the world today. The first trend is toward what we call a type one civilization, a planetary civilization, a civilization that resembles something out of "Buck Rogers" or "Flash Gordon." A type two civilization is stellar. They consume so much energy they can play with stars. That is for example the Federation of Planets in "Star Trek." "Star Trek" would represent the typical type two civilization. Then we have type three, which is galactic like the Borg or "Independence Day" or the empire of "The Empire Strikes Back." That is a type three civilization, which is truly galactic. Now by the time you reach type two, you are immortal. Nothing known to science can destroy a type two civilization. Comets, meteors, earthquakes, even a supernova a type two civilization would be able to survive even a supernova.

The danger is the transition between type zero and type one and that’s where we are today. We are a type zero civilization. We get our energy from dead plants, oil and coal. But if you get a calculator you can calculate when we will attain type one status. The answer is: in about 100 years we will become planetary. We’ll be able to harness all the energy output of the planet earth. We’ll play with the weather, earthquakes, volcanoes. Anything planetary we will play with. The danger period is now, because we still have the savagery. We still have all the passions. We have all the sectarian, fundamentalist ideas circulating around, but we also have nuclear weapons. We have chemical, biological weapons capable of wiping out life on earth.

http://bigthink.com/michiokaku#!video_idea_id=24407

[phasma ex machina]

1. Too much ego makes civilizations vulnerable to impulsive stupid behavior.

[napoleon_in_rags]

2. "because we still have the savagery"

Where does he expect it to go?

[pnwest]

13. i love me some Michio Kaku, but really...he thinks in a hunnerd

years we won't still have ALL those same human foibles?

[tridim]

3. Religion has to go first.

And I'm not sure that'll ever be allowed to happen.

[Angry Dragon]

5. You find sentient life, it will undergo a huge transformation

[tridim]

6. I bet the fundies will try to convert them.

Either that or they'll just edit the bible again.

[malakai2]

8. I think they would fall back on dominion.

Over all things.

[napoleon_in_rags]

10. Allowed by whom?

The religious masters who the adherents of reason can't beat? At some point acknowledging a natural draw toward religiosity in humans or advantages thereof becomes a simple expression of reason. If religiosity is so inferior why do you believe it can never be overcome?

[Angry Dragon]

4. wrong place

[RC]

7. Sorry, misunderstood.

Last edited Sat Feb 11, 2012, 02:05 PM - Edit history (1)

[Angry Dragon]

16. I was responding to someone else

[alfredo]

9. I enjoyed that very much

[Fearless]

11. I don't see man changing enough for that to happen in 100 years...

Maybe 300, maybe, if we don't fall into a worldwide "Dark Age" or fossil fuels run out quicker than we have a replacement in place.

[Speck Tater]

12. The reason SETI has not found an civilizations on distant planets, and...

why no aliens have colonized our corner of the galaxy is that the vast majority of civilizations, probably close to 99.99% of them, destroy themselves right around the stage where we are now.

It is becoming easier and easier for a single person or a small group of people to unleash some kind of doomsday event on a planetary scale. Whether deliberate bioterrorism or accidental genetic engineering mistakes with food crops, or some kind of nuclear holocaust, every year brings us closer to the time when any one person will be able to destroy the whole of civilization.

And the chances are good that if civilization gets leveled, even if the human race survives, since all the easy to reach resources have already been depleted, we won't get a second chance to rebuild because without high technology to help us we will be unable to extract the hard to reach resources we would need to rebuild, and we'll be permanently stuck in a replay of the middle ages. And this time the dark ages will last for 10,000 years or more.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. Another reason is that it would take thousands of years to reach the nearest star

(Alpha Centauri) with current technology. Even with speed-of-light travel, it would take four years.

If there are sentient beings on other planets, they are so unimaginably far away that unless their scientific and technical knowledge is unimaginably greater than ours, we're all stuck in our own planetary systems.

[ret5hd]

21. with speed of light travel, what would be the elapsed time from the travelers...

perspective?
.
.
.
.
.
answer: zero

[Odin2005]

20. The reason SETI has not found any signals is because the galaxy is enourmous.

[originalpckelly]

23. You don't know that's true.

What are you the encyclopedia galatica or something?

Give me a break. You are hypothesizing about shit which you know nothing about, whatsoever.

[Speck Tater]

26. Not my hypothesis. Google "Fermi Paradox". The idea originates...

... with minds far more knowledgeable than my own.

After you find "Fermi Paradox" on Wikipedia, scroll down the page to "Doomsday Argument" and you will discover that this is one of the standard proposed theoretical resolutions of the Fermi paradox.

So is it me you are criticizing, or the idea? If it's the idea you are criticizing, don't tell me about it. Go tell it to those great minds that dreamed it up in the first place.

[Speck Tater]

30. Consider the evidence...

Throughout history civilizations have destroyed as much as they were capable of destroying. It follows that as we become capable of destroying more we will eventually destroy more.

As for your observation:

Even the "we may destroy ourselves" fear/notion is predicated not just on the idea that we would destroy ourselves, but that we could. And who is to say the survivors, if there were any, wouldn't rebuild and even go further than we have to date?

The progress we've made so far was predicated entirely upon easy to reach fossil fuels. Those are now gone. If we lose what we have we will never be able to recover it. In fact, when the fossil fuels we have run out civilization as we know it is over and done.

The rise and fall of industrial civilization will be a short blip on the timeline of history.


Yes, we will probably survive as a species for another million years or so, but we will never colonize other planets. In the long run of history we were hunter-gatherers. In the long run future we will be hunter-gatherers again. Hunter-gatherers do not send or recieve interstellar messages, and hence the lack of any such messages.

[Speck Tater]

32. Consider also that every highly advanced technological civilization

given the tendency of intelligent creatures to enjoy play, probably has at least thousands, if not tens of thousands of computer simulations of worlds running on their planet, similar to, but far in advance of our own "Second Life", "Everquest" and "World of Warcraft."

Given that there are tens of thousands of simulated worlds for every real world the odds overwhelmingly favor that THIS world of ours that we think of as real is actually just such a simulation. And the reason we have not seen any SETI signals is that that particular scenario is not written into the script of this particular simulation.

As for the apparent size of the universe, well given that it is probably a simulation, its host computer might be as much as several meters on a side! Wow! Immense by any standards! The fact is, we don't know, and can't know, except perhaps between games when we're
"in heaven" getting ready to enter the next game. But of course to make the game seem more real we undergo voluntary temporary amnesia regarding our true nature for the sake of the role playing. So trying to figure out that this is just a game, while we are within the game, is kind of like the chess pieces discovering that they are just pawns. It's not likely.

Or then again this might all just be God's dream.

[Speck Tater]

36. Nice song. Thanks.

Just as I was getting out of the Air Force Elvis had jumped the shark by going Hollywood and the Beetles were just beginning to emerge as "Love Me Do" made the charts in the UK, and I, too, jumped on the Transcendental Meditation bandwagon and chased my share of imaginary butterflies through the strawberry fields. Now that I'm in the "twilight of life" and preparing to "meet my maker" there is some small measure of comfort and consolation to be found in the possibility that perhaps the world doesn't work quite the way the materialists believe it does. (And having encountered a few ghosts in my many years, I KNOW that reality is not what it appears to be.)

As for me, I'm at that point in life where one can choose to believe whatever is fun to believe, and to hell with what the youngsters think. And to tell the truth, this reality is one that I have NEVER taken very seriously.

[Rex]

14. I've always admired the Vulcan people.

Hopefully we don't shoot them this time around.

[alterfurz]

15. When Jung was asked, "Will we make it?" he always replied...

..."If enough individuals do their inner work."

Paleolithic emotions, Stone Age emotions--we’ve inherited those nice and pure. We have medieval institutions. And we have godlike technology. Put those three together and you have a very dangerous mix. -- naturalist/biologist E.O. Wilson

[Speck Tater]

22. Which underscores the fact that in order to survive as a species...

... we must continuously struggle against our true nature. Generation after generation must continue to struggle, and if, at any instant, the balance tips too far against us it's Game Over, and we won't get a second chance. That's why I put our chances of survival as a technological civilization at less than 1%.

[originalpckelly]

24. The only thing that's changed is the technology.

That's all.

If you really think about it, that's all it really is.

We've not magically changed, just the way we communicate with one another. I think it's harder, however, to think of other people as so foreign and scary when we can learn so much about their culture.

The real changes I see society going through are with technologies you probably haven't even heard of. Things that will restore the ability of people to speak freely, even in a digital form. That we will come to a point where you don't have to pay a fee to get the service, because of distributed communications infrastructure.

[tabasco]

17. Fuck that shit.

Globalization is only good for the rich.

[originalpckelly]

25. No, no it isn't.

If you think of it as a narrowly defined thing that the wealthy have created, OK. On the other hand, if you think of it as a way for the normal people to come together, then it's not at all bad. It's harder to go off and fight in a war against someone you care about. We have to bring down the walls that divide us going forward.

[Zalatix]

35. Yes, yes it is.

Globalization is killing jobs AND the environment.

Whatever benefits you think globalization creates, a vast swath of our population won't even survive to experience.

We'll be fighting wars internally instead of externally. See: Greece, and soon, America.

[Odin2005]

19. K&R, Love Kaku!

[eShirl]

27. maybe by then we'll be a society of transhuman/cyborg/cylon "mankind"

[Raffi Ella]

29. Interesting stuff.

I always wonder what else we haven't invented yet - flying cars etc etc. I never thought about this kind of 'invention', playing with the weather and all that. So interesting.

T4p.

[Motown_Johnny]

34. Paperless Society, Jet Packs, Flying Cars...

... all these things brought to you by visionaries who consider what could be done, not what is most likely to be done.

In 100 years we damn well better have solved our energy problems or we are headed back into the dark ages for all but the lucky few.

We already have a problem with fresh water and that is just going to get worse.

The global population is exploding and starvation is still very real for most regions of the planet. In another 100 years the problem could be much much worse.

There are still territorial disputes all over the world and it is unlikely that these will be resolved in the next 100 years.

There is no way to predict emerging diseases and/or pandemics but I think we have all seen a pattern and expect it to continue.

Then there are natural disasters such as those that could destroy a type 0 civilization. We might get lucky and not experience any of these in the next century but that is not for certain by any means.

The effects of climate change also are unknowable for that far out but I think we can all guess just how bad that might be



I'm filing this article under "imaginative fiction". It is right up there with the paperless society.