I used to think The Watchmen approach would be an effective one as well, however these days I'm really wondering just how many politicians and corpos would sell out to warlord aliens if they could.
In order to prevent the nearing WWIII, the greatest mind alive, Ozymandias, puts together a plan for world peace in which he fakes an alien invasion. His idea being that with the threat of an extra-terrestrial invasion at hand humanity must unite as one to defeat a common enemy.
Half of the population wouldn't believe in an alien invasion and they'd blame it on wOkE pEoPlE
Well I guess we know what side you'll be on 😳
I want to say 'turncoat' but 'moleskin' seems more appropriate 🐭
This really. There are good people in the world, unfortunately the sociopaths and psychopaths tend to gravitate to positions of power, the few leading the many to extinction.
And the rest are DNA coded to go hard/wet over these strongman sociopaths that they can't help but want to please them and do their bidding . It's fucking sick.
If you can afford it. And those that can don't want to because they like how things are now, with everyone else's necks under their heels.
Well, sure, explosives and high levels of radiation tend to change biology... they also accelerate the heat death of the universe, so that's two birds with one missile, I guess? 🤷
Twicefold. First, while manufacturing the explosive, we use some organized energy to arrange some stuff in an explosive form, with the expended energy turning into waste heat and increasing entropy. Then the explosive explodes, turning even more of the organized energy in the shape of chemical bonds, into heat, aka entropy.
Fusion bombs have the best conversion ratio from matter, which is the highest level of energy organization, into heat, which is the most entropic, with only some of the energy going into kinetic and radiation forms before also turning into waste heat.
Without explosives, it would take a tiny bit longer to convert that usable and organized energy into waste heat via other processes.
(the acceleration for the largest fusion bomb is likely on the order of less than 10^-400^, but it's something)
Oh the good ol’ “there’s nothing we can do”
Scratching your asshole is also hardwired, doesn’t mean we have to do it…
Somewhere around the time when there is three humans left on the planet, two of them will unite together to kill the third one. For a brief moment after the third one is dead the last two humans will be united in not knowing which one will attack the other one first.
I came here to write something along the lines of this.
And the last couple of humans will spend an awul lot of time reassuring each other that circumstances beyond their control forced them to react like they did and there was no way they could have done anything differently.
Let's face it, while there were/are promising moments, we as a species are a failed experiment.
Makes me ponder that old bit of wisdom. Why does Ross, the largest friend, not simply eat the other five?
I have this personal belief that a lot of problems in this world would be solved if we ended poverty.
The mental health pandemic, conflicts, corruption. It all gets exaggerated because people can't fulfill basic needs or even pursue happiness. People are then more easily weaponized and subverted.
A little rant here, but I blame liberalism and US politicians purely for abusing their influence on a worldwide basis. Not that Europe isn't part and parcel of the issue, but if we look at Nixon, Reagen, "new public management", "trickle down economics", not to mention subverting US labour in a capitalist persuit to export manufacturing and fabrication to COMMUNIST CHINA, we see that "leaders" of politics and industry ruined modernity with their hypocrisy and social manipulation to justify degenerate greed, narcesism and idolatry.
I don't think it was fully intentional. I truly believe they have swallowed their own KoolAid - in that they are delusional, as well as degenerate while wearing "the emperors new clothes" and manipulated politics to conform to their delusions. This should be the issue of our time, in that poverty can be eradicated if we just got our collective heads out of our asses.
End rant.
It isn't in our nature as a species to unite and work together. The closest we got was COVID and even the threat of mass viral death only united us for about 2-3 weeks before people were starting fights over closed hair salons.
COVID really killed my faith in humanity, and it blindsided me. I truly believed people in general would come together in such a situation, but it just... didn't happen. Giving people shit for wearing a mask? Or, heaven forbid, having the audacity to request someone wear a mask around you? Let's not forget the people hoarding toilet paper like that's an appropriate response. I know it sounds small in the grand scheme of things, but it requires a certain level of "fuck you, i got mine" to buy three-dozen rolls of TP when the shelves are already bare.
Same.
There was a two-week period here in Kansas City where the city reopened without a mask mandate (one was later ordered prior to the 4th of July) and I went to the gym for the first time in two months.
Zero masks. Zero people distancing. No one sanitizing after using the hand scanner to enter.
That was my breaking point. I now expect the worst in people as a general rule.
Sadly, I don't think it'll ever happen.
There is always going to be someone that wants power over others. And someone who hates others. It's human nature. We'll never be like the perfect Star Trek world, all chummy and getting along.
More like The Expanse.
The United Earth government in Star Trek looks almost as unrealistic as Faster Than Light travel.
A united earth government isn't contrary to any physics law I'm aware of, but that would take a strong political will, not just from leaders but from the general population, as well as a very long time.
The European Union has been a work in progress for 70 years to integrate different countries into one political system. Lots have been done, but it's still far from a small-scale United Earth. Every country hold onto its sovereignty, and a consensus from all 27 member states is required for many things, so it's moving rather slowly.
The Expanse but without the space travel.
Our meatbag bodies just aren't made for space travel, living off-planet would be unbelievably hard and all "colonies" would be dependent on Earth, and a magical engine that breaks the laws of physics will never be invented
10^106 years, when "the universe enters the so-called Dark Era and is expected to consist chiefly of a dilute gas of photons and leptons. With only very diffuse matter remaining, activity in the universe will have tailed off dramatically, with extremely low energy levels and extremely long timescales."
The Culture series from Ian banks shows how that can happen: beneficial AIs take over and govern to the good of all living beings.
I was considering a sci-fi concept in which a super-intelligence orders of magnitude more aware than any human comes to be. It has sufficient resources to give specific instructions to all humans at any given point in time which will always lead to optimal consequences for that person if followed, although the person may choose not to follow the directions and have things go poorly. When all humans fall in line and are essentially living in a utopia from their perspective, the AI is pooling the results of their behavior to collect resources to enhance itself. Eventually, it transcends physical existence and discards the human race like trash, and almost all humans perish in mass famine and diseases. The remaining humans develop for another few thousand years and, having learned nothing, start working on making another AI to replace the last one.
It's a nice fantasy, but the reality is the people who have the resources to make the AI are wiring it to further concentrate wealth and power in their own hands, and anything that develops from that will almost inevitably have that at its core. I will believe a paperclips scenario or skynet far more readily than an AI that achieves hypersentience and somehow comes to the conclusion that the most fruitful course of action is to make the greedy violent hairless apes, the ones that fucked up the planet for every other living creature, as happy and comfortable as possible.
As long as it takes to develop brain implants that no longer get rejected or make you die from vomiting, and everyone gets to join "𝕏, the unified consciousness".
(* what we work towards, may no longer reflect any individual desires)
Globalization is already well underway, our economies are entertwined, our technological advances, our medicine, knowledge, and even entertainment.
There is war, incompatible theologies, racism, hate, and all sorts of stuff that has the appearance of not being "united". As long as humans exist those things will persist. We're not robots, our flaws exist because of the nature of our biology.
I think it's fair from at least this perspective to say we're already united.
I don't know how long, but I'm still hopeful. Humanity has gone from small groups of nomadic family groups, to early city states housing thousands, to countries uniting millions. The mediocrity of modern capitalism makes us forget what we've achieved through the millenias.
The radical transformation we are provoking on our ecosystem will humble us and push us as a specie to adapt yet again. It'll be quite a ride and who knows what's on the other side.
I think one of the best ways to unite people is a common threat or enemy. Since an alien invasion is unlikely, we're left with a couple less clear scenarios that I can think of:
A crazy rogue nation hell bent on plantary destruction would probably get a unified response. Best candidate is a Republican controlled United States or perhaps another petro state ignoring carbon emissions with climate change really getting bad.
Climate change just gets really bad and demands a coordinated response.
An international revolution that removes power from the currently ruling classes. My thinking here is that international conflict is started by oligarchs and other elites across the world. For example, I doubt the average Russian would even consider invading Ukraine if it weren't for those at the top running a shit economy and using the media to spread lies. Similar for the Chinese and Taiwan, Americans and the whole world, etc. I just have a hard time believing large human populations would fight over something in this age without being encouraged to do so by those who would benefit.
The closest thing to a planetary threat, is giving control of the military to some AI... but given that several countries are already working on that, the more likely outcome is for everyone to get killed by everyone else, before anyone can unite.
Hundreds of millions or even billions years for our brains to evolve? From my limited understanding, humanity works as expected.
I don't think that's likely, we are apes not angels.
Sometimes we have conflicts, some are probably resolvable, some represent fundamentally opposed interests.
We can try to make society different, so there are fewer situations that lead to irresolvable conflicts. That project will never end.
Whether this gives you hope or grief is largely up to you.