LagrangeCalvert
March 25th, 2008, 08:58 PM
Suppose for a moment, we were completly aware of the future; When we would die, when our species would die, or when what our species becomes would become echoes and dream.....gone. Suppose the end of the human race was a LOT closer than any of us could imagine. Also....suppose I am completly wrong - this is a better possibility than any...but this is just a thought string I cannot get out of my head.
Math - in theory - is right all of the time. So statistics with this great logic we have called math is in essence "infallable". But if your theories are wrong to begin with, then your math means squat. I digress.
Lets talk about population. Sheer numbers..... dictate odds. 10:1 for instance arent bad odds....but by far arent great odds. 100:1 - odds I’d rather not have. 1K:1 or even a Trillion to one....... again I digress. This was just to get you to THINK about odds, probabilities....things that could happen as opposed to what will happen.
Lets say I put "YOUR NAME" on a ping pong ball and pour either 10 or 1,000 blank balls in a container that spits them out one at a time......and then when you draw at random you pull out yours on the third or fourth try..... dumb luck you would say if there were a thousand......but if there were only ten you would say the odds were better....probabilities were set a little better for you....... This is to get you to think a little harder......thinking yet?
Lets talk about the future shall we?
We know that our population is an exponential curve that is skyrocketing to no end. We might go screwing until the population crashes and we ruin the planet ( I doubt it) OR we might figure out how to manage our numbers and never make it off the Earth (a possible scenario) .....then again, if your like me you have always felt other eyes looking down on you in space.....we might reach the stars and our population will be in the trillions of trillions one day in a billion or trillion years (The most likely scenario.....IF.....) .....I know this can make your head spin but stay with me here and keep thinking about all the things I have already written.....
Think.... in the history of the world in any of these scenarios THE VAST MAJORITY OF HUMANS HAVE NOT YET BEEN BORN.....If we don’t kill ourselves/blow ourselves up, the planet and its inhabitants could easily live for another billion years naturally - that is before the sun expands into a red giant and engulfs the Earth. I digress.
Suppose the third Graph is right.....we escape the clutches of this planet and populate the stars..... In our galaxy alone there are four hundred billion stars... With planets that will be habitable for more than a mere billion years... suppose our future humans or whatever they would be then would have a populace in the trillions......... Confused yet....... good....... so here is a summation of this thought string.
Probabilities and odds can dictate possible outcomes.... so why would I have you play the ping pong ball game? Have you ever wondered why you were here - NOW. Ever asked yourself why am I alive during this time?
The reason I feel were doomed is probability. Odds are IF we became a space fearring race, we - any of us...your friends for that matter too WOULD NOT BE BORN DURING THIS TIME! Think about the sheer odds of "If we humans survived into the far future, why wasn’t I born during that era/time?"
So you see where I am going with this? The odds of not being born in a far future are dumbfounding. Its a google of a percent, that if we were to become a space fearring people, that we would be born at this time in history.
Therefore I believe we would be better off to look at how we can better ourselves, our planet and our tech. so IF all of us are the google of a percent, we give those born in the far future a chance.
Math - in theory - is right all of the time. So statistics with this great logic we have called math is in essence "infallable". But if your theories are wrong to begin with, then your math means squat. I digress.
Lets talk about population. Sheer numbers..... dictate odds. 10:1 for instance arent bad odds....but by far arent great odds. 100:1 - odds I’d rather not have. 1K:1 or even a Trillion to one....... again I digress. This was just to get you to THINK about odds, probabilities....things that could happen as opposed to what will happen.
Lets say I put "YOUR NAME" on a ping pong ball and pour either 10 or 1,000 blank balls in a container that spits them out one at a time......and then when you draw at random you pull out yours on the third or fourth try..... dumb luck you would say if there were a thousand......but if there were only ten you would say the odds were better....probabilities were set a little better for you....... This is to get you to think a little harder......thinking yet?
Lets talk about the future shall we?
We know that our population is an exponential curve that is skyrocketing to no end. We might go screwing until the population crashes and we ruin the planet ( I doubt it) OR we might figure out how to manage our numbers and never make it off the Earth (a possible scenario) .....then again, if your like me you have always felt other eyes looking down on you in space.....we might reach the stars and our population will be in the trillions of trillions one day in a billion or trillion years (The most likely scenario.....IF.....) .....I know this can make your head spin but stay with me here and keep thinking about all the things I have already written.....
Think.... in the history of the world in any of these scenarios THE VAST MAJORITY OF HUMANS HAVE NOT YET BEEN BORN.....If we don’t kill ourselves/blow ourselves up, the planet and its inhabitants could easily live for another billion years naturally - that is before the sun expands into a red giant and engulfs the Earth. I digress.
Suppose the third Graph is right.....we escape the clutches of this planet and populate the stars..... In our galaxy alone there are four hundred billion stars... With planets that will be habitable for more than a mere billion years... suppose our future humans or whatever they would be then would have a populace in the trillions......... Confused yet....... good....... so here is a summation of this thought string.
Probabilities and odds can dictate possible outcomes.... so why would I have you play the ping pong ball game? Have you ever wondered why you were here - NOW. Ever asked yourself why am I alive during this time?
The reason I feel were doomed is probability. Odds are IF we became a space fearring race, we - any of us...your friends for that matter too WOULD NOT BE BORN DURING THIS TIME! Think about the sheer odds of "If we humans survived into the far future, why wasn’t I born during that era/time?"
So you see where I am going with this? The odds of not being born in a far future are dumbfounding. Its a google of a percent, that if we were to become a space fearring people, that we would be born at this time in history.
Therefore I believe we would be better off to look at how we can better ourselves, our planet and our tech. so IF all of us are the google of a percent, we give those born in the far future a chance.