If humans colonised a new Earth...

Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by revelcharlie, Nov 27, 2016.

  1. Dr.Meow

    Dr.Meow Contributor Contributor

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    You mentioned a lot of things, but you still haven't answered how we would realistically get to another planet while still being alive. Currently impossible. Technology would have to be pretty damn advanced just for the people to make it, so it might just be better for them to live out the rest of their years on earth rather than die miserably in space.

    Also, our planet is already dieing if you haven't noticed. In about a hundred years or so we might have to be considering this as a real thing, unless we finally start using hydrogen instead of fossil fuels and start building hundreds of nuclear plants. We make horrible decisions for our future, but we could change it if we started arresting, executing and making an example of those who hold the wealth, who also refuse to start giving out water powered cars for the sake of survival. A technology that does exist, but has been completely shut down by the auto industry. If you're talking about the world ending, the next few generations will have to deal with it...too bad we'll all be too uneducated to do anything about it. Idiocracy anyone? lol
     
  2. Karl Derrick

    Karl Derrick New Member

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    You're right. For some reason I was under the impression that the probe having reached interstellar space meant that the probe was at a distance equivalent to about half way from here to Proxima Centauri.

    I have to look better into that someday and see where was the source of my confusion...

    Well, I guess that makes my points about travelling in space even more substantial. Even if space crafts would be faster than our fastest probes, realistically speaking, people would have to live in them for many, many generations.

    Would they still remember the initial goal when they reached there? :) I wonder if the goal wouldn't be redundant then, though.
     
  3. zoupskim

    zoupskim Contributor Contributor

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    We could just upload our brains into quantum computers, leave the autopilot on, and soar timelessly into space. I'm sure we'd hit a fertile planet eventually, but even then we wouldn't need one because we'd be transhuman cyborg consciousnesses.

    Why try to change the nature of the universe, and space, and time, when we can just change ourselves?
     
  4. Rickard Eriksson

    Rickard Eriksson Member

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    Do you see any difference between a quantum computer and a human brain? On autopilot? And daydreaming? Well I dont
     
  5. Karl Derrick

    Karl Derrick New Member

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    That's what I said in my first post. No one has yet figured that out. However, figuring it out doesn't imply "pretty damned advanced" technology. That's one set of problems with a set of specific solutions. We might figure it out with just a few years or decades of thinking about it, if scientists were thinking about it in the first place, and it's conceivable we might come up with something currently (assuming it's possible to begin with). I think at this point it's at the liberty of the fiction writer to either ignore that problem entirely, or come up with a fictitious solution. I've only ever started writing one sci-fi story, and pretty much ignored it.

    That's what I was thinking about when I mentioned the controversies it would create, but in fiction you can also go over that and pretend all went relatively well, or at least "well" enough to eventually get done. Realistically speaking, though, I agree, it won't ever happen in the foreseeable future as long as the collective mindset is like the one we have.
     
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2017
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  6. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    But this is one of the things Heinlein addressed in Time Enough for Love. They had rapid FTL (a few weeks between stars, IIRC, in a craft about the size of a bus, privately piloted), but when Lazarus Long went to colonize.... I forget the planet's name... he was back to using a wagon (pulled by an intelligent mule) and chopping wood. True, Heinlein's planets were all basically terra nulla Earths just waiting for humanity's gentle attentions, but I think it makes sense that, on any planet we can live unaided on the open surface, people will try and use locally sourced materials and simpler technology, rather than simply landing Scranton, PA. down on the surface like in Cities in Flight.
     
  7. Dnaiel

    Dnaiel Senior Member

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    No one is ever going to upload a brain or even a model of a mind into a quantum computer. That's an entirely different kind of computer that sounds fancy for sci-fi. But it's not a conventional computer that we're all familiar with like the one in front of you right now. QCs can solve certain kinds of math problems, but you're not going to do a lot of the things with it that you do on a PC. Running even a rudimentary, weak AI on a quantum computer is really pushing it.
     

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