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Sashinii t1_itnu2rt wrote

Neocortex enhancement is by far the most exciting future development that people can think of right now because anything beyond qualitative differences is currently completely unknown.

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dnimeerf t1_itnv78j wrote

Here is the better question Is our civilization as it is responsible enough for transdimensional transteleportation? No? How long will it take us to break free of our elite slavers and establish the foundation for a better future for our progeny? If things go well about 30 years. Why I will win the 2024 US Presidential election by a landslide victory as a write in party free candidate.

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darklinux1977 t1_ito0hvf wrote

Transhumanism, like AIG, we are not going to cut it, but once again, the politicians, via "popular" opinion and other manipulators, who came to call it "satanism", it will happen, not 2023 will not be two days before, there will always be obscurantists and reactionaries.

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Sashinii t1_ito4qfk wrote

Replying to sheerun (#212,177)

The world sucks in a lot of ways, but it's still statistically better than ever before, and we're on a positive trajectory thanks to accelerating technological progress.

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sheerun t1_ito5n5o wrote

Replying to Sashinii (#212,243)

We live in society of multiple facades, brain-computer interface won't change it. It will serve every facade. Top ones to gain power, middle for money and surveillance, then lower layers of society indeed will use it in positive ways. All I'm saying it can unleash as many good things as bad things, and wealthy will get this technology first. Software, especially Open Source is more forgiving than hardware.

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Sashinii t1_ito6uod wrote

Replying to sheerun (#212,317)

There won't be money in the future that has nanofactories.

Corporations are already shitting themselves at the prospect of AI music synthesis and the same most definitely applies to AI in general; they know that their control over damn near everything will soon be over and they hate it, but I'm happy that corporations will become completey worthless in the near future as a result of the democratization of technologies that far surpass the bullshit sold by the rich.

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CDeruiter5963 t1_ito7dx8 wrote

Transmission of data in place of physical travel. That is, sending out dataships with atomically precise manufacturing capabilities to different places in the galaxy. These dataships could have design plans/material feedstock for anything from lab equipment and electronics to foodstuffs to even biological organisms.

Depending on your views around consciousness, we could even have crews of uploaded minds on these dataships that can then resleeve into a printed body upon arrival to the destination.

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I-Ponder t1_itob4ms wrote

Replying to priscilla_halfbreed (#211,984)

I believe that’s called Full Dive VR.

But yeah, that would be amazing! You could live out any and every fantasy.

I personally want to live in an accurately simulated StarTrek universe. :)

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Martholomeow t1_itob50n wrote

I think of anything related to deep space travel as science fiction. As much as i try, i can’t see any point to FTL travel.

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ghostfuckbuddy t1_itoc4qc wrote

Yeah, some way to reverse entropy. That's the ultimate problem.

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imlaggingsobad t1_itoehpj wrote

I think the end game for our species is space exploration and BCIs. BCIs will also open up the door to mind uploading and full-dive VR.

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thegoldengoober t1_itoek1d wrote

Replying to grossexistence (#212,955)

That's actually a theory as to why we don't see the universe teeming with advanced life. That any species that becomes advanced enough to do it is also advanced enough to immerse themselves in simulated realities, and therefore never have reason to keep expanding.

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strangeelement t1_itof2sb wrote

If somehow there is some multiverse out there that can give access to unlimited alternative copies of this world, it would be more worlds than FTL would ever allow. The point of exploring other worlds is to have more and if it's easy to move between them, even large cargo, that beats any spacefaring logistics. Infinite worlds, even if in the same place in spacetime, pretty much accomplishes the best of what FTL is about. Aside from meeting powerful and friendly alien civilizations, which has the risk of meeting powerful and very unfriendly alien civilizations.

So it would be better in terms of real estate and safety, pretty much remove all threats if we can simply move to safe dimensions if anything universe-ending happens, and solve the Fermi paradox. If it's better to have infinite worlds in the same place, no need to slog around in slow spacetime, everyone sticks at their infinite homes.

The holy grail of finding planets is always Earth-like planets and surely copies of Earth are the best you can have, especially if infinite. That would be better than FTL in most aspects. Other than the possibility of hot alien sex, which has the possibility of horrible alien sex.

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Gaothaire t1_itofvr6 wrote

Replying to strangeelement (#213,104)

There's a sci fi series, The Long Earth, that's like this. One day people learn you can just step sideways to another pristine Earth. Really interesting concept, went on for like 5 books, though I do feel like they didn't do as much with all the ideas they brought up as they could have.

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BinyaminDelta t1_itogfd3 wrote

Replying to imlaggingsobad (#213,056)

Yeah, people who mock the metaverse (as a concept, not the Zuck version) are fooling themselves about how addicting it will be.

I remember the first time I used an Oculus and it was so immersive, I forgot my friends were in the room.

True full-dive would be technological lucid dreaming, and probably the most addicting experience any human has experienced.

Anyone who tries it will want it.

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ActuaryGlittering16 t1_itoih51 wrote

Replying to thegoldengoober (#213,059)

That’s a really interesting theory, never thought of this before but makes sense.

However I do think their tech would allow them to send probes or something similar around the universe just to map it and explore it. Surely they’d want to know what’s actually out there.

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archpawn t1_itol78w wrote

If we were limited to just this star system, and built a Dyson sphere around the sun and then used that to power minds running as efficiently as possible, that works out to being able to support a population of about 2.5*10^31. This is the same as the population if every star in the observable universe had an earth-like planet with a population of a billion.

Admittedly, if you have FTL you could go beyond the observable universe, but it's not like we're limited to just one star system without it. We could populate the entire cluster before long.

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Primus_Pilus1 t1_itols92 wrote

Replying to Gaothaire (#213,156)

Actually there was huge amount of concept space left on the cutting room floor compared to how that far could be stretched. Hyperdimensional Interstellar Empires and their clashes.

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cy13erpunk t1_itomgjv wrote

FTL poses a LOT of real-world problems around causality and locality-vs-non-locality

it is not something that is going to be easily addressed, if its even possible in this dimension of reality [ie 3d space and 1d time]

good video about it ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an0M-wcHw5A

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Anenome5 t1_iton4ut wrote

Replying to ghostfuckbuddy (#212,875)

Eh not really. Why bother trying to reverse it when it can be near indefinitely forestalled.

Isaac Arthur has done the math, and we know of ways to, for instance, vastly extend the life of stars by removing their iron, for instance, and adding new hydrogen. And we can store massive quantities of fuel for them. Turn billions of years into quintillions of years.

Ways to run virtual civilizations on the energy output of black holes, long after the entire universe has gone dark.

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Anenome5 t1_iton8d1 wrote

FTL will never exist, that's both freeing and liberating. It means we own the galaxy without much risk of another species coming to dominate the universe, as would surely have already happened if FTL were possible.

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thegoldengoober t1_itorjum wrote

Replying to ActuaryGlittering16 (#213,398)

Yeah, I don't see why not. Unless they don't see the reason. Maybe it's better for them to just turn the matter to computonium. Maybe their simulations are so close to reality that they figure any reason to search the universe might as well be done in their simulations where they have god-like powers to explore beyond what they could outside of them. Or maybe none of this is related at all. It's fun to speculate though. At the very least it's fun sci-fi.

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Gaothaire t1_itp2sca wrote

Replying to Primus_Pilus1 (#213,718)

They could clash, or they could treat it as a Star Trek post scarcity utopia. When everyone can have a whole Earth's worth of resources, what's left to fight over. A ruling class starts getting uppity about controlling people to inhumane ends, and you just step 100 Earths widdershins and find yourself a nice Edenic forest, untouched, undeveloped, where you're free to forage and hunt and fish to your heart's content. Live like a real human again.

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ghostfuckbuddy t1_itp5z8q wrote

Replying to Anenome5 (#213,852)

Sure, we could and it would be more technologically feasible. But as long as we're in sci-fi territory, I still think there's a huge difference between delaying oblivion and preventing it.

When we're young time seems to move at a glacial pace, but the older we grow, the faster time seems to move and the more we panic about our mortality. I think a similar psychology would still play out, only over astronomical timescales. And at least with normal death we still have some symbolic immortality through our children or societal impact. But at the end of the universe we'll just be staring into the dark, meaningless void. I think the second-half of the universe's lifespan could be pretty psychologically rough if a solution isn't found.

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koelti t1_itp6p8t wrote

Replying to ActuaryGlittering16 (#213,398)

I think if we can create virtual worlds indistinguishable from reality, wouldn't reality kind of lose its value? What is even real then? How can we be sure we aren't in a virtual world already?

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CSGradApps t1_itp892y wrote

Replying to koelti (#215,596)

We can’t be sure… in fact the simulation hypothesis states there’s a decently high chance we are currently in a simulation, potentially one layer of many layers… shit is mind-fucking if you think about it too much lol

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Anenome5 t1_itsuvxb wrote

Replying to ghostfuckbuddy (#215,538)

> But as long as we're in sci-fi territory

That's just the thing though, there's nothing "scifi" about the idea of starlifting and extending the life of a star or storing hydrogen fuel for burning later. It's a mundane concept that could definitely be done, not a scifi idea that could not be done.

> When we're young time seems to move at a glacial pace, but the older we grow, the faster time seems to move and the more we panic about our mortality. I think a similar psychology would still play out, only over astronomical timescales.

I don't see why. A being with no mortality would also have no fear of mortality. In the future, and this part is more on the scifi scale, it is likely humanity will merge with machines and obtain essentially eternal "life" thereby, if a mechanical body could be called a form of life.

Such a being might be destroyed, but could be backed up in a thousand different places and thus able to resurrect over and over again. What would such a being have to fear?

> But at the end of the universe we'll just be staring into the dark, meaningless void. I think the second-half of the universe's lifespan could be pretty psychologically rough if a solution isn't found.

Turn inwards and build VR worlds, is the obvious answer, because such a place can be far better than the real world we live in now while feeling and looking just as real. This is considered one of the solutions to Fermi's paradox as well, in a universe where FTL is not possible, turn inwards, go virtual.

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