“Two guys wanted to build a thing called an airplane. People go up in it and fly like birds. Ridiculous, right? What about breaking the sound barrier, or rockets to the Moon, or atomic energy, or a mission to Mars? Science fiction, right?” – Contact
What’s the difference between a cat and a comma? A cat has claws at the end of paws and a comma is a pause at the end of a clause.
(Note: No podcast tomorrow (busy) and we’ll see about Friday’s post.)
Last week (link below) I wrote about the barriers that mankind has crashed through, and how each one has had a significant impact that was transformative on what humanity was – we are certainly not the same people that we were before fire, agriculture, or even the Industrial Revolution.
We’ve changed immensely based on pushing through these barriers. I mean, if hot women had more babies and humanity is always getting sexier, at some point will we reach a barrier where we’re just too sexy?
Seriously, though, what other barriers remain?
Reality
What about . . . reality?
Already a good portion of the world spends some part of each day in an alternative reality, some where they fight demons, or fight post-apocalyptic mutants, or pretend to be a gay black man in feudal Japan. These games are quite stunning today, complete with large, sprawling maps, realistic graphics, and a storyline even though they assume that feudal Japan had the same DEI quotas as Ubisoft®. Regardless, many of these virtual worlds take weeks or even months to finish.
The woman pictured is an attorney, though. Tarara Boom, D.A.
And that’s what exists now. Imagine not far into the future where, when A.I. is added in with a touch of VR, the entire experience becomes so immersive that it becomes hard to distinguish it from reality, and with 50% of adults feeling disconnected from others, this gives a hollow but attainable replacement.
Imagine a sandbox universe where you form a startup company like Apple™ and run it until it’s the biggest company on Earth. Or live as a Viking. Or relive whatever fantasy you can imagine, or even live different branches of your own life, making a different choice each time.
For many, video games and InstaFace© are already addictive. Forming them so that they spike and manipulate your endorphins in a manner to maximize your engagement would be infinitely more addictive that SnapGram™.
Scott Adams predicted if we could ever meld Star Trek’s™ holodeck with a sex doll, the human race would be extinct in one generation, and this would be the killer app.
Literally. And it looks like he is right:
Overheard Zoomer conversation: “You can live out your craziest fantasies on video games. The other day on The Sims™ I had a family, a house, and a job!” (as found)
Biological Limitations
What if, in real time, you could have an A.I. jacked into your brain, while having various implants or tools that cover for whatever frailty we squishy meat sacks exhibit. We do have many tools already, to a certain extent: spacesuits allow us to survive the vacuum of space, while submarines can protect us at the bottom of the ocean. Well, some submarines.
But now add in A.I. What if instead of learning arduously over the span of months or years that you could learn it instantly, so you could read Shakespeare in the original Klingon? Or what if you never forgot anything you didn’t want to forget, and could replay the sights, sounds, and sensations of any event in your life? What if you were gene-edited to be nearly immortal, with the possible exception of a random supernova or nuclear war?
A frog did a DNA test and found it was a tad Polish.
What if your consciousness were just uploaded to the ‘net?
What would you do? More importantly, at what point would modifications create something the no longer was something we’d even identify as human, and imagine that the current crop of leaders would be the best we’d ever, ever have?
Uncertainty
What will happen next year is always a crapshoot, right?
Well, no. In large brushstrokes the future is very predictable. If I drop a glass, when it hits the ceramic floor of my kitchen, it’s going to break. That’s not very far into the future, but it’s extremely accurate.
There are things very far into the future that are predictable as well to a high degree of accuracy. We can predict exactly where the Moon will be on April 17, 7265 A.D. at 9:31:30 A.M. GMT.
The movie (and story) Minority Report used psychics to predict the future, but what if there was an algorithm that knew who was most likely to commit crimes? What if the stock market could be gamed to the point where investing was no longer gambling? A.I. can already predict consumer behavior with an 85% accuracy according to an MIT study.
What would that do to economies?
ChatGPT did my taxes in the style of Ernest Hemingway: “For Free: Four quarterly tax payment vouchers, never used. (meme as found)
The Tyranny of the Speed of Light
Okay, let’s assume that there’s no physical way to beat it. The gulf between stars is enormous, and no one can cross it in a dozen lifetimes. But what if we just sent A.I.? To an A.I., being powered down for thousands or even millions of years wouldn’t necessarily be relevant. As long as the core state of being were retrievable after a cosmic voyage, time is meaningless.
Perhaps, just perhaps, A.I. might seed a star in a distant part of the Milky Way with programmed biological package, a Genesis Device™, if you will, designed to recreate biological life far away. Or drop a machine that turns entire solar systems into tasty floating PEZ™ artifacts?
Or it just might go full Berserker™ and destroy anything it can, because, Tuesday.
I guess that’s why the Vikings called English villages chopping malls.
Breaking through these barriers has taken us from small bands of hunter-gatherers to what we are today. But it isn’t technology alone – we are not the same people that wandered the steppe, and the current tech trends are weakening the bonds of the societal atom: the family, and without that, humanity can no longer exist. Just as we used technology to change the world, that same technology has changed us as well.
What will we be in the future? I mean, besides incredibly sexy.
Sub-replacement family sizes started with the boomers and their “I’m spending my childrens’ inheritance” bumper sticker, not the following generations with video games. Amplified by promotion for humans to die out to save the planet.
On average first world female instincts may not be able to handle fertility control, so badly the result is extinction. “Accidental” and “unplanned” pregnancies, which are neither, may be the formerly normal route for first pregnancy.
Marriage is now porn. Like Playboy magazine, pleasant wives who don’t try to castrate you do exist. But now they’re really rare.
Attempting to live in a fantasy world in their head is common. Most humans have an imaginary friend in the sky.
Not just first world – most places are in a collapse.
If A.I. can theoretically make us all supersmart or capable in ways we were not before (recall Neo’s surprise when knowledge of martial arts is downloaded into his brain – “I know karate!”) what are the chances that it can be leveraged somehow to rid us of the plague of obesity? Can it be used to regulate hunger and food lust, make one prefer bean curd to Cool Ranch Doritos? Can it, in fact, cure John Wilder of his PEZ fetish?
What about alcohol and drug addictions? Gambling addiction? Pedophilia? Are we really on the cusp of perfecting human beings, or at least directing their motivations and predilections in the direction that TPTB wish for us? That would be one way of corralling us pesky dissidents back onto the plantation. Imagine waking up one day firmly convinced that a Disney princess with five o’clock shadow is perfectly normal and fine.
Yikes. Put it back in the box and tell Pandora to sit on it.
“Can it, in fact, cure John Wilder of his PEZ fetish?”
It’s only a fetish if it is weird. PEZ is in the same category as good bourbon, a fine cigar or a vintage wine. So better to describe John as a PEZ afficionado.
Jbird
I can confirm I had a good bourbon (not great, but good), a nice Rocky Patel, but no wine tonight. Life is good.
A perfect world is not one meant for humans.
…
There’ll be a sign for all to see,
For certain that it certain be,
Then Love shall die and Marriage cease,
And Nations wane as babes decrease,
And Wives shall fondle cats and dogs,
And Men live much the same as hogs.
~ Mother Shipton Prophesies – Circa 1540
It’s an example of the stupidity of the “scientific” community that they blame men/boys for not wanting to date or marry – and it’s somehow a “mystery” – the continuing tradition of never holding women’s behavior accountable for anything. When 90% of women (regardless of how repulsive) believe they are so superior that they only give the top 10% of men the time of day (princess programming) and the bottom 70% of men aren’t even considered human by these same women, well, guys are pragmatic and they will find something else to do (games, hobbies, friends, etc). Over 50 years of radical (((Feminism))) has achieved it’s goal of destroying the nuclear family – or at least punching enough holes in it that sinking is inevitable. Women today use “No-Fault Divorce” as a tool to gain a lifetime of cash and prizes – and men see this – and are walking away. Additionally, false accusations from a woman can destroy a man’s life and cost him his freedom – and when the accusations are proven to be false, the women just walk away unscathed (e.g. Tyler Skaggs vs Kelsey Turner). Even though it was proven that Turner intended to extort Skaggs, she was allowed to walk away without zero accountability.
Look up HoeMath on YouTube and watch some of his breakdowns – or just peruse social media for women giving other women dating/marriage/divorce advice to see why the only winning move in the game is not to play.
Population collapse is unavoidable given current trends and the unwillingness to place blame where it belongs and have the backbone to act on it. Sex bots – or AI with “haptic devices” – would just seal the deal more quickly. Sex Bots that can cook, clean, and rub your shoulders? It’s over.
Mother Shipton seems to be spot-on yet again … well … except no mention of Sex Bots.
Excellent comment, top to bottom, and bonus points for Shipton reference.
Satan and yes there is one, has a plan for AI. It’s at the end of the Book
If so, it’s a movin’ quickly.
Years & years ago, William Gibson wrote about artificial reality in two of his novels. In “Idoru” a main character “marries” a female hologram. Can’t remember the 2nd, but a character fell into a drug induced state, viewing into artificial reality goggles every waking moment.
At the time, thought both were incredulous. Today, not so incredulous. I’d hazard the guess that 90%+ of Gen Z can’t handle interpersonal relationships, so TikTok becomes their reality.
The idea of the female hologram companion was presented in BladeRunner 2049. I think it would be very appealing to a lot of men given the toxicity of Feminism/Feminists.
BLADERUNNER. LOL
And they don’t understand file structure.
It’s not gonna be a technological future once the oil and natgas and eventually even coal runs out. We are currently having one wild and crazy civilizational party over just a few centuries as we frantically burn up the sunshine accumulated and stored by millions of years of plant growth. As we are forced first by politics and then necessity to start accumulating paltry amounts of solar energy in real time via silicon panels or windmills, civilization will collapse even further back to collecting solar energy with only crop plants and grazing herds – just as we did for thousands of years before the party started.
Cheap and abundant energy is the ultimate barrier. All energy is ultimately solar energy except for nuclear, and I am personally doubtful we’re gonna have the wisdom to tame that for the good of all without wiping ourselves out.
From a societal standpoint, we have an ongoing tension between knowledge and secrets. People hoard secrets because secrets enable power, but with the spread of instantaneous knowledge those secrets are increasingly hard to retain and possess. Joe Biden and Julian Assange and Nina Jankowicz and Fort Knox and USAID and Georgia election ballots and Pentagon audits and COVID and Ukraine funding and Nord Stream and JFK and UFOs are all about secrets. We would not need to worry about an AI figuring out the stock market if all relevant data were on a blockchain for all to see with no price spoofing etc on the Level II screens.
So another barrier to overcome in the future is eliminating the downside of secrets with this amazing internet capability we have developed while retaining the quaint concept of privacy. I’m not sure that is even possible or what it would look like.
Our final barrier is a biological one. At the moment we have so much focus on “AI” that we are not paying enough attention to “DNA”. CRISPR technology means that human evolution itself just got turbocharged. The level of brain and brawn possible to future generations is virtually unlimited. Add in tech implants to make cyborgs and the results are almost unimaginable.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1826409318578565326
As for the light barrier…I suspect interstellar travel is not for humans. The universe does not care about expanding our Pacific ocean adventures with ships into galactic ones like Star Trek. The lightspeed C may be effectively a quarantine protocol. Still…life finds a way. Maybe the Greys have a thing or two to teach us when they are finally uncovered by the Deep State.
A.I. would nearly certainly be seen as an existential threat by aliens.
I am far less concerned with the total number of babies as I am with who is having those babies. We don’t really need more people in America but we do need to change the proportion of which groups are having them.
I too have questioned the constant mantra that we always need to grow. We often hear we need more people, more gdp, more quarterly profits, more stock market growth etc. Yet at the same time our infrastructure is falling apart, many areas are overcrowded and natural resources like water and energy are being strained.
To me, a flat population is not a bad thing but politicians need population growth to support their ponzi schemes. So no surprise that they will sell out their own culture to make keep it going.
J-bird
Demography is destiny. The future belongs to those who show up.
Big 10 4 McChuck. I th8nk we a4e about to find out who will show up.
Yup. And revive the concept of “nation”.
Any economic theory, implemented in AI or not, that reduced the uncertainty in the financial markets would force the markets to evolve into something different and more uncertain. It’s not a physical system with laws to understand, it’s a competition ruled by evolution, with actors who can change the rules as part of the evolving state.
Lathechuck
Not necessarily – it might force the markets into memes. Bitcoin, anyone?
Asimov predicted where our world is headed in his book “The Naked Sun”–a society served by technology where the few human inhabitants can hardly stand being around each other let alone try to reproduce.
(Zardoz sneaks in through the back door)
“but what if there was an algorithm that knew who was most likely to commit crimes?”
We already have that algorithm, it’s called skin color, but the Woketardian’s have already stamped that Unfortunate Reality “RAYCISSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!”
If you think the violent crime rates in Lichtenstein vs. Singapore vs. Venezuela vs. Libya vs. Zambia are all just random chance, you haven’t been paying attention.
And try to recall that before they imported The Diversity, Stockholm was never the Rape Capitol Of Europe, ever, not even once for 30 seconds, at any time in the last 500 years.
Almost like there were no other factors in play, except one.
QED
I am thinking that is why the euros want a war. The mob either gets drafted or flee.
They don’t want a war.
They want ethnic cleansing.
Featuring boxcars for certain, and probably rubber rafts going the other way.
When they start rounding up The Diversity and shipping them out in batch lots, and strafing incoming boats in the Mediterranean Sea (like they should have started doing fifteen years ago), you’ll know they’ve finally gotten serious.
Not before.
It’s nasty and discomforting, but the Yourapeons have this in their cultural DNA, since before Vlad The Improver. It’s time for them to dust off that manual.
Bingo. And now the entire West is noticing exactly that.