Technology, the end of mankind - my theory

[Freechoice]

APES for fucks sake. And no, writing ''pretty much'' doesn't change anything about you being entirely wrong.

But, you have been flinging Bullshit around in this Thread, I can see where you might be getting the monkey thing from.

Does that mean you're going to go apeshit on him?


OT: God, there are just some days where I wish you didn't have to articulate any kind of counterpoint to topics like this. When will we learn from the mighty /b/ about how to close topics like this?

 

[michael87cn]

So I've been recently doing a lot thinking. And if you question the results of my thinking, I don't blame you, everyone else questioned them just as well.

A couple of thousands of years ago, all that mankind was, was pretty much just monkeys with clothes on. It lived in harmony with it's environment. It had to fight nature constantly to survive, just like every other species.

But because humans are good at making stuff, we started farming and living in bigger and bigger groups and formed cities. Then we slowly started making our life easier and easier through miraculous inventions. These inventions allowed us to sustain a higher number of population. But we were never satisfied, we always needed more. Then we got the real machines, they needed fuel, but we had a lot of it.

Now because of the machines mentioned before, we have been able to sustain an exponential population growth, there's more homo sapiens than there ever was before, and it's all thanks to these machines, they allow us to live. But what if these machine stopped working? What if there was an end to this fuel? It would become impossible, for this 6 billion people to continue living. Thus, we need more and better technology just to stay alive.

Just like drug addiction, technology doesn't only harm us, but everyone and everything around us. The greatest mass extinction since dinosaurs is currently underway, because of technology. The whole planet is dying, because of technology. All life on this planet could die at any moment, if a handful of humans push wrong buttons and launch some nukes.

In the end, there are only two ways out, stop using technology (cold turkey) and maybe survive. Or continue the cycle of technology addiction and hope to keep up with the ever-increasing needs.

I'm not sure if anyone else has come up with these results, but atleast I haven't heard of it.
I'd love to hear what you think of technology and whether you agree with me or not.

EDIT: In this case ("A couple of" != 2)

Everyone on the planet won't suddenly drop dead once we run out of fuel. We would do what we have always done in the past and adapt according to change. There are other forms of generating energy that do not require fuel. Heat or steam for example can be generated by burning just about anything from wood to plants. And the earth has plenty of those and they are a renewable resource unlike fuel.

We would adapt to change and our technology would adapt with us. Of course, it might take a couple hundred years and a couple of new brilliant inventors like in the past, but we would not all sit around and die. Necessity, you see is the mother of all invention.

Also, if fuel were to expire I imagine yes, we would lose some of our more pleasant luxuries but I also think our society would adapt and if need be we would all move out of the cities and into the wilds, where we could farm and live off the land again. At least until we could design some kind of renewable fuel source. There is plenty of earth to feed and water 6-7 billion people.

Personally I think that the fuel dependent era should have never happened. Steam is a much better resource because you can't run out of it. Heat is a basic element that is easy to generate and many technologies can run off of it.

 

[HalfTangible]

The most destitute people alive today have a higher standard of living than our ancestors had prior to technology. What you're defining as "fine" was a life of starvation, illness, predators, and high infant mortality. So for this to be true you first need to explain how life pre-tech was good, and then explain how the advances of technology have made things worse. You have your work cut out for you.

Yes, The life was simplier and a lot harder. What I'm trying to say is that technology limits our lives. But yes, it also expands them.

You keep talking about dependency on technology, but this is as silly as discussing how zebras are dependent on their stripes or how sea anemones are dependent on their poison. Technology isn't an addiction; it's an adaptation. Every organism is dependent on its adaptations.

You can call it adaption, but the symptoms still remain. And technology isn't yet physically a part of us.

Explain how having technology that lets us save billions of lives makes us evil. (By the way, one of those lives belongs to my little brother. So you're going to need one hell of an argument to tell me why we're evil for developing the technology that saved him).

Our species does a lot more harm than good to our environment. Except for a few nutcases, we only focus on ourselves. I think this little brother, just like most humans, ends up costing the environment more than he does for it.

Limits AND expands? You can't do something and not do it at the same time...

What symptoms? The improved livelihood? The knowledge that we can't live on this planet forever in any case, even if we DO find a way to sustain all our resources indefinitely (which is impossible)

You would have us lie down and wait for death because our survival is going to hurt the planet for a while. Yeah, that's sensible. =P

 

[RJ 17]

One of the major things that separates man from animal is that there is no process of natural selection for humanity. Well, at least not anymore there isn't. Children born with horrible birth defects that would otherwise kill them are kept alive with technology and live on. I'm not saying that this is bad, necessarily, but the fact remains that since humans have no natural predators, there's no way to thin the herd. So of course we'll need more and more as there is no natural means to keep our population in check.

That said, however, technology is the natural progression of mankind. We've come to a bit of stagnation lately with truly innovative ideas (not the frickin' iPhone, I'm talking about something like harnessing the power of electricity) are coming few and far between. First thing on the check-list is to find a truly self-sufficient fuel source. Next comes a true mastery of space travel. And at that point, most of mankind's problems will be gone as we're finally able to sprawl out across the cosmos.

Whether or not we ever get that far, however, remains to be seen. That's just my theory on where technology will drive mankind. Not to its doom, but to its destiny.

 

[Maveroid]

Not really a theory. I am sorry to say that we have most likely all come to a similar conclusion until we realized that history repeats itself. We found a way to survive until now, we will find another way to survive longer.

No food on Earth? Colonize new planet.
No fuel? Find a different source of fuel.

Whatever it is, everything has a solution, we just have to be ahead and find it before the problem actually happens. Mankind won't just die if it controls the environment or the environment stays the same. The more we control the environment (like making our own weather changes and such, which we are already doing as far as I know or have at least experimented with it) the less danger there is. Who knows, maybe we'll be able to make some crazy magnetic field that will keep meteors from crashing here (you know, like in animes and sci-fi movies).

Don't you worry! The only problem is that we keep ourselves from solving these problems because we are too occupied with the systems that we have established to keep ourselves under some sort of control. Honestly, if anything could kill us except uncontrolled environmental changes, its ourselves and our focus/hate on the system which should be, in theory, totally in our control. Right now it seems like we are closer to becoming mother nature than establishing a stable and working government

 

[jaketaz]

Okay so in back-to-back sentences you have: "It lived in harmony with it's environment" and "It had to fight nature constantly to survive". I don't think "living in harmony" means what you think it means.

If the problem is that this population can't survive without technology, and this planet can't support our population, and it's human nature to try to improve things and continue creating new technology, then the obvious answer is that the population needs to decrease.

You say that we've been able to "sustain exponential population growth" but then say the planet is "dying" because of the technology our population has created. No one knows how long it will take for the population to outgrow the planet, but as it is, with the number we have now, there are many people living in terrible conditions because of the greediness of those that have more. There IS enough food to feed the number we have now, and there IS enough scientific advancement to deal with the majority of discovered diseases, and there IS enough scientific knowledge to educate people on how to keep our numbers down and WHY we should care about doing that.

Studies have shown that a huge number of environmental problems are due to population issues, and even more studies have shown that one's education is directly correlated with the number of offspring one produces. So the best thing you can do for the planet is to educate yourself, because then you'll be smart enough to realize that Earth doesn't need you to pass on your genes, and will actually be quite better off if you don't.

 

[Guffe]

Spoiler: The whole wall of text

I get the impression that you're a junior high or high schooler who's learned a little bit about science, technology, and history, and are coming to all the wrong conclusions by building on what little you've learned with wild speculation. While I like your enthusiasm, you should learn to do research when you reach the end of your knowledge on a subject, or you will write posts like the one you just did. Here and now it's not so bad, but later in life you can make a real fool of yourself by doing this.

For starters, we were not monkeys 2,000 years ago. Rome was an empire 2,000 years ago. Before that it was a republic. Before that, there were the Greeks. Before that, there were dozens if not hundreds of other civilizations. The oldest written document is estimated to be 5,500 years old.

Also, we are not and have never been Monkeys. We are apes. Monkeys showed up after their branch and our branch of the evolutionary tree separated.

No organism in the history of life has ever been "in harmony" with its environment. They are only kept in balance with everything else by external forces, most of them derived from the presence of predators, the availability of food, and the prevalence of disease.

We aren't even the first organisms to cause environmental devastation and climate change. Blue-Green algae did that 3.3 billion years ago. They altered the composition of the atmosphere so drastically that they poisoned and killed off over 90% of all life on the planet. It was the greatest mass-extinction the world has ever experienced. The toxic gas, by the way, was oxygen. The atmosphere got polluted with a corrosive, dangerously reactive gas, and everything that survived evolved to either hide from it or use it as metabolic fuel.

You are right that as our production has gone up, our energy demand has gone up as well. However, it's really ignorant to characterize it as an addiction. It isn't even unusual or unnatural. It's merely a parallel to the same kind of mechanism that drives an organism's, or a community's calorie intake based on their size. Doesn't matter if the community is a bacterial colony, an ant hill, a city, or a civilization. The inability to sustain large populations is far from unprecedented. Yes, if it happens to us it will be a bigger crash, but it's not apocalyptic, and the mass famine will be followed by a period of stability or even growth.

The whole planet is most certainly not dying. As I said before, it's faced far bigger crises than us. The earth is too big, its climates too varied, and its life too adaptable, to be sterilized by anything short of complete crustal melting. Freeze it, bombard it, boil away its oceans, life will still persist on the earth in some form.

Now if you're worried about us, then sure, there's reason for concern. Even then though, just because we've adapted to be dependent on technology doesn't mean we're totally screwed if we run out of our main energy sources. A lot of people will starve, but there will be survivors, and they will get by with whatever's left.

Also, how is quitting technology cold turkey better than moving forward? Not even (some) non-human apes abstain completely from the use of tools. An energy crisis is bad but nowhere near as devastating as simply quitting technology.

I must say I came here (the thread) expecting nothing but I really enjoyed reading your post.
I have nothing to inform to the topic itself but your post was nice to read.
Thank you.

 

[Soods]

What symptoms?

The general drug addiction symptoms, such as increasing need for the drug, and of course the withdrawal symptoms like death or illness.

 

[cynicthnkr]

Well I can't comprehend such deep thoughts. So I am going to write what the initial post sounded to me.

Current petrol reserves will end in 60 years and coal in 150 - Lets just burn the current reserves right now.
Our sun will run out of fuel in 4.5 billion years,- so lets just nuke it now (I hate waiting.)
My new laptop won't work ass well after a decade - Well I'll just hammer it right now.
Someone might be fool enough to deploy planet wide nuke - I might as well do it first.

Due to a heart disease I am completely on medicines and won't live as long as other people - so just kill me now.

{On a completely unrelated note my biggest concern right now is not end of world but end of free information flow on internet due to to a new law waiting to be passed in usa court}.

 

[BrassButtons]

But compared to other animals, we are clearly on the top.

Got any data to support this?

Yes, The life was simplier and a lot harder. What I'm trying to say is that technology limits our lives. But yes, it also expands them.

This is a contradiction. You either need to clarify the specific ways it has limited us and the specific ways it has expanded our lives (and then show why the limits are worse than the expansions), or you need to abandon this line of argument.

You can call it adaption, but the symptoms still remain. And technology isn't yet physically a part of us.

The adaptation is our ability to build and use technology. Do you have evidence that this adaptation is actually an addiction, and that it is bad for us?

Our species does a lot more harm than good to our environment. Except for a few nutcases, we only focus on ourselves. I think this little brother, just like most humans, ends up costing the environment more than he does for it.

And this is bad because...? Why should we care about the environment, beyond what we need from it to survive? Why should we sacrifice ourselves for the environment?

 

[Soods]

Got any data to support this?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13335683
"Simply put, our planet no longer functions in the way that it once did. Atmosphere, climate, oceans, ecosystems? they're all now operating outside Holocene norms. This strongly suggests we've crossed an epoch boundary."

"Species extinction is currently running 100 to 1000 times faster than background levels, and will increase further this century."

I can not think of any other animal species that has accomplished this much.

This is a contradiction. You either need to clarify the specific ways it has limited us and the specific ways it has expanded our lives (and then show why the limits are worse than the expansions), or you need to abandon this line of argument.

We can't live without technology. <- Limiting part
Technology allows us to do awesome stuff. <- The expanding part

The adaptation is our ability to build and use technology. Do you have evidence that this adaptation is actually an addiction, and that it is bad for us?

Quoting me:
The general drug addiction symptoms, such as increasing need for the drug, and of course the withdrawal symptoms like death or illness.

And this is bad because...? Why should we care about the environment, beyond what we need from it to survive? Why should we sacrifice ourselves for the environment?

Greed and selfishness are few of the widely agreed evils. Probably because of those damn religions. By no means is technology useless, but it is morally questionable.

 

[BrassButtons]

Got any data to support this?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13335683

You're using a news article reporting on science. This is dangerous. If you want to actually know what the science says you need to look at the source--otherwise you're a non-scientists looking at what other non-scientists think the scientists have said. If you really want to understand this you need peer-reviewed journals, not BBC News. Note that I don't expect that level of research on an internet forum, and will accept this as you providing data (I wouldn't know enough to draw conclusions from the original data anyway). I'm just suggesting that if you're really interested in this subject you should look at the actual scientific texts.

I can not think of any other animal species that has accomplished this much.

Your inability to think of something is not data. You've provided support for half of your claim (that humans have had a large and in some ways damaging impact) but not the other half (that our species is the only species to have had such an impact). Half of your argument is based on an Argument from Ignorance.

We can't live without technology. <- Limiting part
Technology allows us to do awesome stuff. <- The expanding part

Alright, now we're back to you needing to explain why we would be better off if we didn't rely on technology and could not do the awesome things it allows us to do. With technology we are alive, and our standard of living is high. Without technology most of us are dead, and our standard of living is low. Why is the second option preferable?

The adaptation is our ability to build and use technology. Do you have evidence that this adaptation is actually an addiction, and that it is bad for us?

Quoting me:
The general drug addiction symptoms, such as increasing need for the drug, and of course the withdrawal symptoms like death or illness.

You're looking at this superficially.

First, using more technology cannot be compared with increased drug use unless our need for more technology is a result of developing a tolerance. The concept of tolerance doesn't make any sense in this context, so this evidence falls short.

Second, merely suffering illness if you don't have something is not the same as suffering from withdrawal. Withdrawal is an illness that is directly caused by the lack of the substance. The lack of technology does not cause illness or death. Instead it is other forces, which we've used technology to fight, which are the cause of illness and death.

Greed and selfishness are few of the widely agreed evils. Probably because of those damn religions. By no means is technology useless, but it is morally questionable.

Telling me "because it's bad" is not the same as explaining why. I get that you think using technology is morally questionable. I'm asking you why I should share that opinion.

 

[Thaluikhain]

One of the major things that separates man from animal is that there is no process of natural selection for humanity. Well, at least not anymore there isn't. Children born with horrible birth defects that would otherwise kill them are kept alive with technology and live on. I'm not saying that this is bad, necessarily, but the fact remains that since humans have no natural predators, there's no way to thin the herd. So of course we'll need more and more as there is no natural means to keep our population in check.

Not entirely true. A lot of pressures have decreased, yeah, but not completely gone away. Large numbers of people still die before they reproduce, even with our technology today. Less than in previous years, yes, but that slows evolution, it doesn't stop it.

Also, humans don't have natural predators as such, but are preyed upon in various ways by other humans. There's usually no eating involved, but there's still a lot of killing.

Not to mention diseases, in many parts of the world, plague is still a serious concern.

 

[RJ 17]

One of the major things that separates man from animal is that there is no process of natural selection for humanity. Well, at least not anymore there isn't. Children born with horrible birth defects that would otherwise kill them are kept alive with technology and live on. I'm not saying that this is bad, necessarily, but the fact remains that since humans have no natural predators, there's no way to thin the herd. So of course we'll need more and more as there is no natural means to keep our population in check.

Not entirely true. A lot of pressures have decreased, yeah, but not completely gone away. Large numbers of people still die before they reproduce, even with our technology today. Less than in previous years, yes, but that slows evolution, it doesn't stop it.

Also, humans don't have natural predators as such, but are preyed upon in various ways by other humans. There's usually no eating involved, but there's still a lot of killing.

Not to mention diseases, in many parts of the world, plague is still a serious concern.

And yet the human population is increasing, not stagnating or decreasing. I'm not arguing any of the points you made, they're all 100% true. The fact remains, however, that Natural Selection as partaining to the best possible traits most suited for survival being passed down to the next generation is almost non-existant amongst humans...at least in technologically advanced cultures.

If you haven't seen it already, I'd suggest watching a movie called Idiocracy. It's a "sci-fi" comedy that takes the stance that rather than reaching a future of enlightenment and advancement, we're actually heading for a future filled with morons and jackasses. The case it makes at the beginning of the movie for how this came to pass is funny.....and yet rather terrifying because it rings pretty true.

 

[Thaluikhain]

One of the major things that separates man from animal is that there is no process of natural selection for humanity. Well, at least not anymore there isn't. Children born with horrible birth defects that would otherwise kill them are kept alive with technology and live on. I'm not saying that this is bad, necessarily, but the fact remains that since humans have no natural predators, there's no way to thin the herd. So of course we'll need more and more as there is no natural means to keep our population in check.

Not entirely true. A lot of pressures have decreased, yeah, but not completely gone away. Large numbers of people still die before they reproduce, even with our technology today. Less than in previous years, yes, but that slows evolution, it doesn't stop it.

Also, humans don't have natural predators as such, but are preyed upon in various ways by other humans. There's usually no eating involved, but there's still a lot of killing.

Not to mention diseases, in many parts of the world, plague is still a serious concern.

And yet the human population is increasing, not stagnating or decreasing. I'm not arguing any of the points you made, they're all 100% true. The fact remains, however, that Natural Selection as partaining to the best possible traits most suited for survival being passed down to the next generation is almost non-existant amongst humans...at least in technologically advanced cultures.

I tend to agree with that, but "almost non-existent" is not the same as "non-existent".

On top of that, things have been that way for a tiny time period, not long enough for evolution to have done much to humanity anyway. If things stay that way indefinitely, then it'd become a factor, but nobody knows what the world will be like in a mere 200 years, let alone the thousands necessarily for evolution to be a concern.

 

[RJ 17]

Snip for space.

Fair enough, but I should clarify. By "almost" non-existant, the "almost" accounts for 3rd world countries and areas that do not have the benefit of modern medicine and technology. In such places it is still "only the fittest survive". However, as the topic is specifically about technology's affect on man, for the sake of this discussion places without technology do not count.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Snip for space.

Fair enough, but I should clarify. By "almost" non-existant, the "almost" accounts for 3rd world countries and areas that do not have the benefit of modern medicine and technology. In such places it is still "only the fittest survive". However, as the topic is specifically about technology's affect on man, for the sake of this discussion places without technology do not count.

I'd disagree there, even in developed countries people still die young, modern technology has come along way, but still fails people occasionally.

 

[BrassButtons]

One of the major things that separates man from animal is that there is no process of natural selection for humanity. Well, at least not anymore there isn't. Children born with horrible birth defects that would otherwise kill them are kept alive with technology and live on. I'm not saying that this is bad, necessarily, but the fact remains that since humans have no natural predators, there's no way to thin the herd. So of course we'll need more and more as there is no natural means to keep our population in check.

Not entirely true.

Forget the 'entirely' part--it's not true at all. Natural selection is a game you can't not play.

 

[Caverat]

"We should abandon technology."

Says the man distributing messages on a global network of computers relayed through geosynchronous satellites and with enough cumulative power to simulate small universes down to the atom.

Took the words right out of my head. Reading the original post reminded me of the Retro pirates from Wing Commander: Privateer, saying humans should abandon technology and return to a more primitive stage, while flying starships to spread their message...

Also, anyone who suggests humans should revert to lifestyles where most people had a life expectancy of 30ish years, and a infant mortality rate greater than 50% clearly doesn't know what they are talking about.