Ask a ScienceBlogger
dmunger | May 17, 2006This week's Ask a Scienceblogger question is "will the "human" race still be around in 100 years?"
The short answer is yes.
The slightly longer answer is this: we could face a number of catastrophes, including a pandemic, massive global warming, nuclear war, or all of the above. Our numbers could be reduced to a tiny fraction of what they are today. But we will most certainly still exist.
From a cognitive science perspective, there are a couple other interesting possibilities. What if, within the next 100 years, we succeeded in creating artificial intelligence that appeared to match human…
jlynch | May 16, 2006The mothership asks "Will the "human" race be around in 100 years?"
I answer, yes.
I'm not really too taken with the question, hence my brevity.
jstemwedel | May 16, 2006It's "Ask a ScienceBlogger" time again, and the question of the week is whether the human race will be around in 100 years.
Folks, I don't want to get all Clintonian on you (William Jefferson, not George), but I'm going to have to say, it depends what you mean by "human".
Certainly, it's possible that nuclear mishap, poorly scheduled meteorite, or disease (ask Tara) will take us out in the next 100 years. My predictive powers in such matters aren't so good. Yours probably aren't either. It wouldn't surprise me if the coakroaches are the ones left to tidy up, but 100 years seems relatively…
pharyngula | May 16, 2006Seed has started this thing they're calling "Ask a Science Blogger," in which we're supposed to take provocative questions and answer them here. You know, like those ice-breaking party games, supposed to get the social bonding thing going, foster unity, etc. Only thing is, they don't quite get the idea yet—they're asking the science bloggers to come up with questions to ask the science bloggers. "What's that?" I say, "why not cut out the middleman and not ask the questions that nobody's asking that we're being asked to answer? Saves time."
That's too mean-spirited, so let's turn it around in…
evolgen | May 16, 2006SEED is asking us the following question:
"Will the "human" race be around in 100 years?"
Considering: (1) the entire universe is just an artifact of my imagination; (2) when I die everything in the universe (including humans) will disappear; and (3) I doubt that I will live 100 more years. I'd say, "NO, the human race will not be around in 100 years." These questions are so much easier when you don't constrain yourself within the bounds of reality.
tlambert | May 16, 2006This week's ask a ScienceBlogger question is "Will the 'human' race be around in 100 years?"
Yes. Even a big nuclear war or genetically engineered super-virus won't kill everybody. That leaves the possibility of the Singularity arriving and everybody transforming themselves into something different. Well, I don't think the Singularity is at all likely and even then there would be plenty of people who would want to remain human.
Results of last week's ask a ScienceBlogger.
(I know 2525 is more than a hundred years in the future -- I'm referring to this.)
pharyngula | May 15, 2006Our Seed Overlords have submitted yet another question to their blogulous oracle, i.e., us: Will the "human" race be around in 100 years?
I don't think it's a particularly good question, I'm afraid. The answer is simply "yes". If the question were about prairie chickens, cheetahs, or chimpanzees, it would be a more challenging question, but with a population of 6.5 billion of us, I don't think there's much doubt. We'll be here. The only question is what state we and the world will be in. I'll speculate a bit on possible outcomes.
We keep going as we have been. The population is double what…
tlambert | May 9, 2006ScienceBlogs has a new feature where all the bloggers answer a question. Today's question:
"If you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why?"
Easy. Cold fusion. Don't get me wrong --- I think it's great that I can run my whole house off one little "Mr Fusion" unit. And we'd probably be facing problems from global warming if we were still pumping out CO2 like in the old days. But it's just too easy to turn cold fusion devices into bombs. I don't have to list all the destruction that terrorists have caused with them.
dmunger | May 9, 2006All the ScienceBloggers have been asked to write about the recent invention they could wipe off the face of the earth. Their answers have been the usual suspects: nuclear bombs, land mines -- truly awful stuff -- and they might be right.
However, I'm not enough of a historian to know what the full impact of nuclear weapons has been. Maybe if the Bomb hadn't been invented, we would have had a World War III by now. Therefore, I've decided to nominate the Ab Lounge. True, it hasn't caused any wars, but imagine what watching your favorite TV show would be like if you weren't incessantly tormented…
apalazzo | May 7, 2006Seed is disseminating questions to its bloggers (I guess a la www.edge.org) so this week the question is:
If you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why?
The invention I would choose to uninvent? I spent the weekend asking some friends. Some answers were machine guns, the atomic bomb, spam, cars ...
Cars did strike something deep in me. Along the lines of Heathcote Williams' Autogeddon:
If an Alien Visitor were to hover a few hundred yards above the planet
It could be forgiven for thinking
That cars were the dominant…
jlynch | May 5, 2006As Janet and RPM have noted, the mothership has initiated an "Ask A ScienceBlogger" feature - a weekly question that us SBers will (briefly) tackle. This week the question is "if you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why?"
Like Janet, my first impulse was to answer "cell phones" and (also like Janet) I then realized that it wasn't the phones but the idiots who use them (loudly) in public or when they should be concentrating on something else (driving, child care, listening to people ...). RPM's answer - nuclear weapons…
jstemwedel | May 5, 2006ScienceBlogs is introducing a new feature called "Ask a ScienceBlogger" wherein the ScienceBloggers are all asked to respond to a question. (You'd never guess that from the name, would you?) The first question is:
If you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why?
I was thinking of going with cell phones, but I don't really hate cell phones per se -- I just hate people yapping on them while they're driving, and I have seen other drivers create similarly dangerous situations by driving while applying mascara or driving…
evolgen | May 5, 2006The grand overlords behind ScienceBlogs are asking us:
If you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why?
That's simple, atomic weapons. Not only for the damage they have cause, but for the perpetual state of fear they put us in because of the morons responsible for making the decisions regarding their use.