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nomads

It boils down to risk and how risks are perceived.
Humans thrive on risk one way or another.
Whether its base jumping today or hunting wild animals yesterday.
 
Hell, even Star Trek would not be interesting if their was no possibility of danger lurking around the corner.
 
I think what quarky is ultimately asking is do we want to live in a dangerous virtual reality or a dangerous real one.
 
quarky said:
Wouldn't the hunter-gatherer experience be the tits?
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May I quote from the Holy Book of Simpsons, last Sunday:


Bart's blackmailing Homer, and forces him to "act like a caveman" in front of his class. Among other things he has the caveman do is, "Now act like you sprained your ankle and it's a death sentence!"

Hunter-gatherer life is all fun and games until someone gets a paper cut.
 
Beerina said:
May I quote from the Holy Book of Simpsons, last Sunday:


Bart's blackmailing Homer, and forces him to "act like a caveman" in front of his class. Among other things he has the caveman do is, "Now act like you sprained your ankle and it's a death sentence!"

Hunter-gatherer life is all fun and games until someone gets a paper cut.
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There was/is always opium ;)
 
gambling_cruiser said:
Hunter-gather utopia fans: imagine a problem with a root of a tooth and no dental surgeon on the whole planet
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Beerina said:
Bart's blackmailing Homer, and forces him to "act like a caveman" in front of his class. Among other things he has the caveman do is, "Now act like you sprained your ankle and it's a death sentence!"
Click to expand...
You're forgetting the rules of the game here. We're not talking about returning to the past. We're talking about a future in which we are able to enjoy the positive side of a more nature-oriented existence AND the technology to counter those drawbacks.
 
The mention of nomads and the future made me think of the the nomadic "cities in flight" stories of James Blish. It seems to me not all that far-fetched to envision space nomads, whose ships would, naturally, have everything necessary to sustain life, assuming very basic raw materials could be found.

Also, one set of nomads seems to have reasonably successfully resisted absorption by their host cultures. I refer here to the Gypsies or Romani.
 
Delvo said:
You're forgetting the rules of the game here. We're not talking about returning to the past. We're talking about a future in which we are able to enjoy the positive side of a more nature-oriented existence AND the technology to counter those drawbacks.
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If you are talking about holiday-hunter/gatherers, then yes, that's possible, or maybe one out of ten- or hundred thousand people live full-time this lifestyle. The world does not have the space for 7 billion people living as hunter/gatherers, nor the berries or roots or wild animals.
Without modern agriculture and all what is needed to keep it going the vast majority of mankind would be starving to death in quite a short time.
 
gambling_cruiser said:
If you are talking about holiday-hunter/gatherers, then yes, that's possible, or maybe one out of ten- or hundred thousand people live full-time this lifestyle. The world does not have the space for 7 billion people living as hunter/gatherers, nor the berries or roots or wild animals.
Without modern agriculture and all what is needed to keep it going the vast majority of mankind would be starving to death in quite a short time.
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In 2007, 923 million people were reported as being undernourished, an increase of 80 million since 1990-92.
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from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation


Well that's progress for you.

Going from 1 million well-fed hunter gatherers before agriculture to 923 million starving people 12 000 years later.

or better still

80 million more starving people in the last 17 years.

Ah but don't forget if we measure things in percentages of total population then everything looks a lot more rosy.

Hell yes. Lets have 6.7991 billion more people if we only have to lose 923 million of them to starvation.
 
Delvo said:
You're forgetting the rules of the game here. We're not talking about returning to the past. We're talking about a future in which we are able to enjoy the positive side of a more nature-oriented existence AND the technology to counter those drawbacks.
Click to expand...

Quite right. We've learned a lot of tricks. I suspect that the ocean could support many millions by itself, if used wisely.

I heard a statistic recently that claimed a 1/3 of the U.S. population is in cars at a given moment in daylight. People move a lot, too. We're quasi-nomadic already.

As for the ankle sprain or paper cut causing death in the 'primitive' human: I think the point is exaggerated. Fossils and archeological digs often find evidence of people surviving harsh injuries.
 
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quarky said:
Of course. This is a sci-fi philosophy meandering.

Describe the ideal future life style for humans, if you dare.
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With the steady increase of storage capacity in smaller and smaller spaces, as well as the boost of computing power that will be brought with quantum computers, humans will soon have petabyte hard drives installed in their brains that will be able to record and store sensory perception.

With these brain augmentations, perfect recall of any experience will be possible, as long as that experience was had after the device was installed. It is only a small step from here to begin editing those sensory perceptions, mixing and matching them to create new experiences. But you can only make so much out of your own experiences.

The next step after this will be to have a global server, where all experiences of all people can be uploaded to. Want to go to Paris? Millions of people have been there. They have looked wherever you imagine that you are turning your head, they have smelled that flower you just picked. Soon every scrap of the world would have been looked at touched smelled, and uploaded to share with the rest of humanity.

Once we have all the data of anything that can be seen or touched, then we can truly begin to create our own worlds for our own personal enjoyment, or to be shared and experienced with others. Want to fly through the sky, shooting fireballs out of your hands to explode the casinos in las vegas? This can be crafted out of existing sensory input, then edited further by others who use it. Open source perceptions.

Then all that is left is to use the same new computing powers that brought us this new paradise to also bring us the robotic caretakers who will watch over our bodies as we are in constant enjoyment within our created utopia.
 
Third Eye Open said:
With the steady increase of storage capacity in smaller and smaller spaces, as well as the boost of computing power that will be brought with quantum computers, humans will soon have petabyte hard drives installed in their brains that will be able to record and store sensory perception.

With these brain augmentations, perfect recall of any experience will be possible, as long as that experience was had after the device was installed. It is only a small step from here to begin editing those sensory perceptions, mixing and matching them to create new experiences. But you can only make so much out of your own experiences.

The next step after this will be to have a global server, where all experiences of all people can be uploaded to. Want to go to Paris? Millions of people have been there. They have looked wherever you imagine that you are turning your head, they have smelled that flower you just picked. Soon every scrap of the world would have been looked at touched smelled, and uploaded to share with the rest of humanity.

Once we have all the data of anything that can be seen or touched, then we can truly begin to create our own worlds for our own personal enjoyment, or to be shared and experienced with others. Want to fly through the sky, shooting fireballs out of your hands to explode the casinos in las vegas? This can be crafted out of existing sensory input, then edited further by others who use it. Open source perceptions.

Then all that is left is to use the same new computing powers that brought us this new paradise to also bring us the robotic caretakers who will watch over our bodies as we are in constant enjoyment within our created utopia.
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You mean a Matrix where the technology are our slaves instead of our masters?

The Bizarro Zion. Neo is rolling over in his grave :)
 
!Kaggen said:
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation


Well that's progress for you.

Going from 1 million well-fed hunter gatherers before agriculture to 923 million starving people 12 000 years later.

or better still

80 million more starving people in the last 17 years.

Ah but don't forget if we measure things in percentages of total population then everything looks a lot more rosy.

Hell yes. Lets have 6.7991 billion more people if we only have to lose 923 million of them to starvation.
Click to expand...
It's not my fault that mankind counts now about 7 billion people.
Returning to 1 million well fed hunter gatherers means that about 6.999 billion will have to die without descendants, that's much better? Really?
 
quarky said:
Quite right. We've learned a lot of tricks. I suspect that the ocean could support many millions by itself, if used wisely.

I heard a statistic recently that claimed a 1/3 of the U.S. population is in cars at a given moment in daylight. People move a lot, too. We're quasi-nomadic already.

As for the ankle sprain or paper cut causing death in the 'primitive' human: I think the point is exaggerated. Fossils and archeological digs often find evidence of people surviving harsh injuries.
Click to expand...
And the that proves what? That some can survive awful suffering for a while.
If you brake your leg would you prefer a modern ER treating your injuries or a shaman telling you only the strong survive?
 
I don't care about the mental masturbation in the NOMA thread.
I don't know what you want to show me.
I stated an opinion "I prefer Star Trek utopia over hunter gatherer utopia".
I didn't say "I'll prove the current state of affairs is moral superior to the state of affairs 20000 years ago".
So what?
 
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