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Do you think humanity is doomed?

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    Do you think humanity is doomed?

    Even a causal eye can see that folks are generally getting dumber and dumber as time rolls on and what with the internet feedback loop that seemingly defines modern life most people literally don't have a mind of their own, preferring instead to parrot cliches or regurgitate predigested perspectives and that's before we even get into the echo chamber culture of discussion groups and forums that perpetuate, validate and consolidate said idiocy.

    It almost seems like Idiocracy was a documentary (if you haven't seen it yet please do) of days to come as the trajectory that the population is on doesn't really bode well as a quick glance at what's popular, top searches, water fountain talk, paper headlines and other general areas of fascination all point toward the same direction of global dip****tery that ranges from inane to farcical and yet they lap it up daily like the Pavlovian puppets they are.

    Strange days on a planet filled with clockwork orangutans. I do wonder if who or what will come along to wake humanity from its collective torpor because most folk simply cannot see or grasp the bigger picture or implications of what is going on around them as they are simply so wrapped up in the familiarity of their own ignorance.

    #2
    I can never be sure how much of this is actually true, and how much of it comes from me hitting my 30s and becoming more aware of it.

    I mean Socrates complained about the generation that followed him. Then again, the classical civilisations of Greece, Rome, Egypt and so on no longer exist.

    I don't personally feel "humanity" is doomed. That being said, I do wonder about our civilisation in comparison to those above, and wonder how long it has left before something happens to it.

    The difficult thing to factor in to all this is global communication, and how that affects things; Rome, Egypt, Akkadia, Babylonia, Sumer - these were all different civilisations with greater or lesser influence but on a certain level, they were all kinda similar; people with common languages/customs grouping together for security and such. Those people lived, farmed, mined, wrote, paid taxes, had families and died in a reasonably similar way.

    The internet changes things, because in 1000BC, the ordinary events of a person's life in Carthage had no bearing on those of an ordinary person in Cyrene. Hell, the events of kings in China often had no bearing on those of kings in Europe. This has been the same since the dawn of man, but it changed within the last decade.

    The part of this which worries me is that we've seen proof that while this technology has moved on, humanity's critical faculties have not kept pace. The prevalence of "fake news" and how we are all so easily maniupated by filter-bubbles online is a testament to this. That, to me, is the greatest threat to humanity right now. Remember those videos a while back where someone was able to synthesis an Obama video? That kind of stuff scares the **** out of me, because I can't help but feel at some point something's going to go very wrong with that. Something involving that, AI, networking and marketing algorithms, and a case of mistaken identity.

    I look at Trump, in the whitehouse, and I wonder if that has already happened.

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      #3
      No, when The Rock becomes president then you'll be able to say it has already happened, this is just the idiotic foreplay to get the populace ready. Technology is killing humanity and its so easy to see, people talk but there is no communication and folks with the biggest followings online tend to be virtual shut ins offline as they are so vested in their persona.

      Was speaking to a youngster a while back and I said how clubbing must be crap for him now as back in my day (pulled wholesale from the Dummies Guide to Yelling at Clouds) we actually had fun instead of preening for photos to make it appear like we're having fun and that in a nutshell is the bones of the issue as folks are living for the reflection, the sizzle and not the steak.

      Darn MGS2 was right, looks like I finally got round to playing it at the right time, eh? Or as Deus Ex stated:

      Its not the end of the world... But you can see it from here.

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        #4
        Originally posted by replicashooter View Post
        Was speaking to a youngster a while back and I said how clubbing must be crap for him now as back in my day (pulled wholesale from the Dummies Guide to Yelling at Clouds) we actually had fun
        I can certainly appreciate that internet culture must have made things very different for this generation, what with the internet being so present in people's lives.
        Last edited by Asura; 09-01-2018, 21:32.

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          #5
          Originally posted by Asura View Post
          I can certainly appreciate that internet culture must have made things very different for this generation, what with the internet being so present in people's lives.
          Yep yep. In our day *grumble grumble* the world may have been a stage but now its a performance bitches!

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            #6
            Oh god not more of this nonsense.

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              #7
              You need to cheer up, son!

              It's hard to see past the fog of Trumping Brexits, but plenty of good things happened last year.

              Remember all those ice bucket challenges? The funds helped research that has found a way to stop the increased activity of glial cells, restoring the nervous system's immune defenses and increasing life expectancy.

              Peggy Whitson broke the US record for the most cumulative days spent in orbit.

              Scientists invented a spray gun that shoots stem cells onto burn victims to regrow their skin without scars.

              A woman donated all the food from her canceled $30,000 wedding to feed the homeless.

              Harvey Weinstein was finally called out, which could be a pivotal moment for a change in equality.

              Roy Moore, the Republican candidate in staunchly Republican state, Alabama, lost the election.

              Australia allowed same-sex marriage.

              Women in Saudi Arabia were granted permission to drive.

              BONUS: Trump's Twitter was turned off by a disgruntled employee!

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                #8
                Nah, we're fine. Thing is, you're looking on a really small timeline. Whereas if you widen the timeline, you'll see that humanity generally is in a MUCH better place than we ever were. There are godawful things happening and some absolute ridiculousness and people being so shortsighted and greedy and selfish and... wait, was trying to be positive here... but I think even with all of this and the individual examples of awfulness, you can go back in history and find that the awfulness was far worse and far more widespread. As hard as it is to see sometimes, we ARE improving.

                The big problem seems to be that our advances that can lead to the destruction of the planet/ourselves seems to have grown faster than our compassion and willingness to be better to each other. And that's really what it's about rather than the vagueries of the first post here.

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                  #9
                  The second those dinosaurs get off that island it's over. I kept saying, that second park was a mistake. Nature finds a way.

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by QualityChimp View Post
                    You need to cheer up, son!
                    Nice one from my favourite sport just last week, Buffalo Bills (NFL) had the longest play off drought of any US sports team. To get to this seasons play offs, they had to win their last game of the season plus Baltimore playing at home against Cincinnati (who are pretty poor) had to lose.

                    Buffalo won and the players then had to watch the end of the Baltimore game from their locker room, Andy Dalton the Cincinnati quarterback lobs in a last second touchdown to send Buffalo to the playoffs.

                    Buffalo fans thank Dalton by donating to his charity - currently they've added over $350,000.

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                      #11
                      AI will finish us off before we can do a proper job.

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                        #12
                        Originally posted by charlesr View Post
                        AI will finish us off before we can do a proper job.
                        This is very true. And in the mean time people are entertaining themselves to death and completely missing the big picture of wha gwan, seen?

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                          #13
                          I don't think sociaty as a whole is culturally doomed. Like all of human history before us we live in a tiny blip which will be looked back on and studied. Culture, like time, simply continues to plod on and change as it goes.
                          I would however say that, as a species, Humanity is unfortunately doomed. There seems to be any number of things that could end up killing us all; be it AI, climate change, energy shortages, nukes...
                          Having a crazy in the Whitehouse doesn't help.
                          Shame really, because if Humanity pulled together we could really achieve something.
                          I often wonder what an advanced alien species would think of us if they stumbled upon our planet, nothing good I imagine.

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                            #14
                            A poem regarding our future:

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