Most people don't realize just how fast technology is evolving, so let me put things into prospective for you. In November of 1972, the video game Pong was released. Two bars on a screen and a dot to bounce between them. This simple technology captivated the world, as we had never seen anything like it. News flash, 1972 was only FORTY SIX YEARS AGO. In the grand scheme of things, this is a minuscule amount of time. In 2002, I remember my math teacher telling me I needed to know long division because "I wasn't just always going to have a calculator in my pocket." LOL okay Mrs. Yelverton. Now I can literally pull out my phone and say "OK Google" and a pizza will show up where ever I am in under an hour. I think it's safe to say long division is the least of my worries as long as as I have my Google phone in my pocket, which is always. In 2002, however, no one saw this coming. Heck, remember in 2007 when the first iphone was released? The camera was amazing, the phone operated seamlessly at high speeds, and the whole thing seemed unreal. If you tried using the first iphone today, you would laugh at the terrible camera quality and be frustrated with how long things take to load. Remember, that was just over ten years ago. So the question is, what will the next ten years bring that will make us laugh at our current technology? Or even just five years since the growth has been more than exponential? We currently have virtual reality Occulus Go goggles that are very realistic (and I could have my Google phone deliver me a pair right now for $199.99) but while you are wearing the goggles, you are aware that it isn't reality.....but in forty six years? Is it possible we could have graphics processors so powerful that they process data that is indistinguishable from reality? The artificial intelligence so powerful that the creations in the simulation could not even tell they were just a simulation? What if humans have already created this, and we are just in one of those "games" or "simulations" RIGHT NOW!?
I assure you, I am not crazy to think this. Here is a video of Elon Musk, the closest person we have to real life Iron Man, explaining this theory and why he believes it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBKRuI2zHp0
Mr. Musk isn't the only brilliant mind to talk about this, as Neil deGrasse Tyson and other famed physicists have mentioned the possibility as well.
Is quantum mechanics just computer code? Is the Big Bang just when our masters flipped the on switch? After watching the video, could any of you now consider this as a reasonable possibility?
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ReplyDeleteI have often wondered about this myself. I don't know if you play video games, but there was one called "No Man's Sky," which was essentially a game that autogenerated millions of galaxies that you as a player could explore and colonize in a space ship, each with its own environment, living organisms, etc.. The game was designed to continuously create its universe almost randomly (according to an algorithm of course). And I wondered, "what would happen if a player found a solar system like ours, with a planet like ours, with people like ours...?" Wouldn't that mean that computer simulations are capable of creating a universe like the one we know? Or worse, what if one day such a space ship were to find us... Scary thoughts. Anyways, building on your comments about the rapid evolution of technology, how do you think such rapid technological advancements impacts human evolution? And do you think there is a certain point where our technology will end up completely destroy our ability to survive in nature as we were evolutionary designed to do (would this happen if we were living in a simulation), or would you believe that we have passed that point? Do you think that our human biology is compatible with the products of our minds?
ReplyDeleteOne article I read from EMBO reports on NCBI cites popular academic writings arguing that evolution as applies to other animals in nature is "no longer relevant to humans" (Stock, J. T. (2008). Are humans still evolving?: Technological advances and unique biological characteristics allow us to adapt to environmental stress. Has this stopped genetic evolution? EMBO Reports, 9(Suppl 1), S51–S54. http://doi.org/10.1038/embor.2008.63). Rather, we depend more on culture and technology for survival, and our adaptation to such changing elements has allowed many of us to survive for far longer than our ancestors. Do you agree with this? I do, because I see it evidently in everywhere in society, mainly as a double-edged sword with MANY negative consequences. One negative impact I've noticed is the major toll on human physiology in the last few decades. For example, fast food, fast cars with long commutes, office jobs, and video games are just a handful of MANY elements contributing to a sedentary lifestyle, which, when coupled with the long term stress associated with such things, has lead to the rise of many new and mainly human diseases, such as obesity, cancer, dementia, and diabetes. Our culture has similarly lead to negative consequences, as evident in the rise of mental illness including a major rise in depression, otherwise known as "a disease of modernity." This study hypothesizes that a "mismatch between past human environments and modern-day living" may be causing rising depression rates, supported by many different elements of modern life that contribute to depression (Hidaka, B. H. (2012). Depression as a disease of modernity: explanations for increasing prevalence. Journal of Affective Disorders, 140(3), 205–214. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2011.12.036). Hidaka's quote best sums how I feel about modern lifestyles and the technological advancements that allowed it to happen; "Modern populations are increasingly overfed, malnourished, sedentary, sunlight-deficient, sleep-deprived, and socially isolated."
Pretty gloomy comment, but I think this is the truth of our dire situation. I think technology is humanity's undoing.
Bryan,
DeleteI agree that technological advancements have certainly decreased the health of the global population, but I also see it as the solution humans will use to make these adverse effects go away. On top of trying to colonize mars, innovating solar technology to stop climate change, and building an underground super transportation system to eliminate traffic, Elon Musk has another company called Neuralink which is a brain-computer interface. Essentially, the goal is to be able to upload and download data directly to the brain from a computer. This is eerily similar to the scene in the motion picture the Matrix, where character Neo is instantly able to master martial arts after being connected to a computer. Clearly, this technology is still in the early development stage, but just the fact that it is already in development should be eye opening - especially with how fast technology is evolving as I stated earlier. So how will this get rid of the negative effects on health that technology has shown to leave on humans? Well perhaps when this technology has been fully developed, an unhealthy person could just download their thoughts and entire consciousness into realistic computer and live in a world like "No Man's Sky" with whatever healthy body they choose (similar to Steven Spielberg's "Ready Player One"). This could even lead to immortality as the human body would be useless if the consciousness of a person was able to live in a perfectly created realistic computer system. This sounds like science fiction, but if a person from the year 1900 saw the technology we have available today it would certainly seem as science fiction to them. With a third of the world on Facebook today we practically already live on the internet, Neuralink would just physically take us there. Whether people are ready or not for a product such as Neuralink, development is underway and we will just have to see where the next fifty years takes us.