End of the world

The Questions of (an) upper being(s) ignored:

My opinion + Arguments.

I don't think so. To believe the technological end ("end of the tech tree") is near is a fallacy which results from limited Knowledge. Nobody is able to see what will be invented in the future. 200 years ago nobody could have ever imagined something like a Computer.

For example something similar happened also in Physics. There was a time when physicists thought that they had found everything with Newton's laws and research would come to an end soon. Then Einstein came with his new theory and turned everything on its head.

You can never know if you have reached the end because we can only look back and only guess what's coming next. Our species has a history of more then 12.000 years and within that we have never really reached an end, despite many predicting it in the most different times. So why should we reach it now in the next 10 years?

Byter said:
200 years ago nobody could have ever imagined something like a Computer.

240 years old programmable robot:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_programming

All religious stuff are just human conceptions anyway. Humans are part of the biological evolution like any other species. And they have been at their strongest, healthiest, most intelligent, best fit at the end of the Paleolithic (~12,000 years ago).

There's a virus, it can kill. There are allways virusses that kill. This one pokes into a huge economical bubble that blew up over the past 15 years and now partly pops (but everything is being done atm to make the next one even bigger).

So, get the hitch hikers guide and a towel. Use the towel. And don't panic.

Story: Sailing between Sardinia and Corse (calm, boring, hot mediterranean summer conditions) we received a distress call from a nearby motorboat (one of these floating refridgerators with isolating comfort) yelling for help because they had run out of fuel, nautically by no means a reason for distress. They were counting all that didn't work, the air condition, the engine, the fridge, the autopilot … and so on. Our laughter floated from the cockpit over the calm seas, and when they had finally stopped somebody responded: “Shut up, Spaghetti, and die like a man !” (Sorry dear Italian colleagues, I love you all, but this really had happened).

:-)

NikiTo said:

Byter said:
200 years ago nobody could have ever imagined something like a Computer.

Points for you. I meant digital Computers (??), one of the earliest of those being Zuse Z3, Atanasoff-Berry-Computer, Colossus.

@Byter The idea is more revolutionary than the implementation. How you differentiate between the computer of Atanasov built from lamps and computers working with silicon? It is the same centuries old revolutionary idea. Just the implementation varies.

A concept/idea - “you should not divide by zero”,

The same concept/idea is valid in both mechanical and digital hardware -

Calin said:
we are the ultimate form of intelligence in the universe

Do you have a mouse in your pocket?

@NikiTo Well you already differentiated between these two as you named a difference. lol

However that's actually a good Point you brought up.

But you understand my Point? You do not have the possibilities with Computers from 1000/500/200 years ago compared to the possibilities nowadays. And with the missing possibilities never had such “inventions” as for example electronical games/Video-games.

@Byter Yes i understood you the first time, but i wanted to show you there is more than the last century.

I think quantum computers could be something people could not imagine 200 years ago. It is not only about new hardware but a new concept too.

All of the rest is just about speeding up the implementation of the same old concept.

(Depends of the game. I guess, somebody could play a ping-pong game on a huge mechanical computer. )

(i have to admit too that the concept of programming evolved with time. Just as the hardware evolved. But it is the same thing evolved and optimized. Quantum computers are a revolution in all of the aspects. Although, it is still more of a concept than a practical useful implementation)

@NikiTo I mostly agree with you now but I am not going to ask any more because it is not relevant to the original topic.

But thanks. I have never thought About it this way

fleabay said:

Do you have a mouse in your pocket?

I don`t know. but go ahead with your argumentation

Calin said:

fleabay said:

Do you have a mouse in your pocket?

I don`t know. but go ahead with your argumentation

OK. I surmise you don't have a mouse in your pocket. I think if you did, you would know about it. Since you seem to be oblivious to knowing if you have said mouse in pocket, then in all likelihood you have no pocketed mouse.

We think you should really get a mouse for your pocket.

Alright, I follow your advice.

@fleabay wtf. Does this have any deeper meaning?

Calin said:
So do you think we have reached the end of times?

I think we have reached the end times about as much as we had 1000 years ago. After all, 1000 years ago “we” had all received Salvation and Redemption and all that mumbo-jumbo and the Second Coming was imminent. To what end was any future? (I put “we” in quotes because the original question is already biased to a Eurocentric/Western viewpoint).

We haven't come anywhere near general artificial intelligence. Nowhere. The programmable algorithms we today call “artificial intelligence” are impressive in their very narrow, limited ways but are not anything near Terminator-level technology. You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but today's “AI” is only artificial, not intelligent. We have not yet achieved the hubris of breathing life into the creature that will be our own destruction.

When it comes to understanding the universe around us, we have barely begun to scratch the surface. If you think that pundits, activists, and personal bloggers have secure knowledge of pretty much everything, you should obtain and read Plato, Kant, and Hume (for starters, and keeping withe the Western cultural theme) to get a grasp of epistemology and the philosophy of knowledge. We are mere children casting stones into the vast dark sea of knowledge.

So, no, I don't think we've reached the end of times. Maybe the end of civilization, but that is more due to our ignorance than our intelligence.

Bregma said:
We haven't come anywhere near general artificial intelligence. Nowhere. The programmable algorithms we today call “artificial intelligence” are impressive in their very narrow, limited ways but are not anything near Terminator-level technology. You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but today's “AI” is only artificial, not intelligent. We have not yet achieved the hubris of breathing life into the creature that will be our own destruction.

Completely agree!

But we should not forget that this statement applies to NNs. Nowadays AI is 99.99999% about NNs, because NNs are popular. It is just a fashion. NNs are 60 years old concept(Perceptron). Concept of NNs was globally abandoned once, and now it is retaken again only because computers are faster. Old school AI developers were programming AI in LISP And ASM. Just "recently" NNs became a fashion. Maybe, some day, people will forget about fashions and likes and will try to create an AGI for real, using ALL of the approaches to AI available. Who knows. Chances of a breakthrough are minimal, but not a complete zero.

I predict the moral end of humanity in any case. Humanity will degrade back to the levels of cavemen. We already completely lost the technology to send humans to the Moon.
I can guarantee the moral end of humanity, for I have been observing the development of the masses during the whole second half of my life.

Lol ! It was a individual feeling expressed in the OP. For every individual out of nature there is a limited lifespan. Some species live longer (e.g. trees), some not so much (e.g. insects). Species come and go, and evolution naturally is a constant competition over niches. Adapt, or give way. Individuals don't count. Technology helps us humans a bit and prolongs our individual lifespan, but taken away most of us won't survive for more than a few weeks and few would get as old as we do, statistically spoken. We're not hunters & gatherers any more.

Interestingly, the human caused mass extinction that's currently going on means the “end of times” for quite a lot of species. Only a few care. And all of us are only concentrated on their own lifespan at most, normally just on the last few years. Which is ridiculous viewpoint in the context of an evolution that relies on generations coming and going (which automatically includes “end of times” for individuals, species, whole niches, …), only to keep the pace of variation and adaptation. The metaphorical red queen hypothesis, though a gross simplification and not without critique, can describe that. And, may i say so, the expression has a strong aspect of cultural background to it. Some people have other problems than a virus going around.

"End of times" for the biological evolution comes when the biosphere collapses. There are projections for when that happens and they are not as far away as the sun turning too hot or plate tectonics coming to a stand still. It is closer …

Be it as it may … on with my tinkering at the PC :-)

@Green_Baron Individualism is perfectly fine. Greediness is bad. Most of the crimes and all of the ecological disasters are because of greediness, not because of individualism.

As @green_baron sad if an (human) individual dies for him the whole world Ends, for the rest only his life Ends.

If humanity dies then this is still not the end and even if we should be enslaved or researched everything that's possible it is still not the end.

Maybe a better Question would be:

What do you see as the end (of the world)?

Is there even an end of the world, Needs there to be one?

End is the moral end of humanity.

If we look at humanity as mere biomass, it is nearly impossible to end. Tardigrades travel through space and can originate another pile of biomass anywhere else in the universe. Life can not easily end.

But if you look at humanity as a social and intelligent event in nature. Then this can end soon.

Imagine an alien visiting Earth and seeing “Scull Breaker challenge” or people getting high by self asphyxiation…