Are we at Peak Humanity now?

Lol at page 1. This thread and then just below it 'has the world gone mad'.
 
dLockers said:
Lol at page 1. This thread and then just below it 'has the world gone mad'.
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We are still on page 1 now? Even for those plebs who only view 30 posts per page in the forum settings :p

Back on topic, I think we peaked around 2007 time. Then the cancer known as Facebook/Twitter came along and Insta soon after, brainwashing the population into a woka agenda.
 
In terms of western society I feel like we hit the peak in around the 90s and have been on a steady decline from 2000 with a drop off a cliff since 2010
 
Op says most of humanity lives in comfort. False. Most of humanity lives below the poverty line. It's just not seen as frequently in the UK.

We as a species are a million miles from peak humanity, we're fast approaching peak Orwellian society though.

Peak humanity can only largely be argued as something similar to Star Trek, when no human wants for anything, population boom and size will matter less when we can start living off planet, of course feeding everyone is another problem until replicators are invented.
 
Combat squirrel said:
Op says most of humanity lives in comfort. False. Most of humanity lives below the poverty line. It's just not seen as frequently in the UK.

We as a species are a million miles from peak humanity, we're fast approaching peak Orwellian society though.

Peak humanity can only largely be argued as something similar to Star Trek, when no human wants for anything, population boom and size will matter less when we can start living off planet, of course feeding everyone is another problem until replicators are invented.
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Agree with this - I did try to put some context in my initial comment by stating perhaps my view is a bit first world centric, and I agree there is a large proportion of the world's population below the poverty line.

Just looked up the Orwellian definition and I think that is where we are at (Quote from Google):

"Orwellian" is an adjective describing a situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society.

I touched on the Star Trek analogy and I hope future generations can get to this point, agree that once we have sussed getting off the planet sustainably and can survive in space for the long term, developed much more efficient energy sources, stopped fighting among ourselves and of course solved food supply we will have opened new horizons and will have much more potential.
 
I'm terms of the UK I'd say the peak has passed.
I can't comment on 'the world' as its too far from my personal experience

Pension age is increasing
Cost of housing is out of control
Population is falling
Tax incomes are being squeezed
Automation taking jobs


It does make you wonder how long the NHS has left?
How we will finance end of life care.

Things like depression etc are hard to gauge. Is it more visible as its talked about more?
Is technology really making things better or more complex?
Kids on computers24/7 from a really young age.
Pollution/climate change

I'd say my parents (now pension age) generation have had the best innings. Where you could work a in a medicocre job, retire mortgage free, have raised a family, not too much influence from social media etc amazing pension.


There are many things better now, womens rights, acceptance of others etc. But overall if. I could chose to live in any point of history it would be my parents.

It certainly isn't terrible now. There are a variety of jobs. You can keep social media out of your life if you want.

No idea how we are going to get round the pension time bomb and cost of living (housing)
 
flea.rider said:
peak as in evolution ? then no .. but there will be a couple more wars till we sort ourselves out .. man has great potential ..we also have a great greed and a wanting for more ..
once we lose this we will be going in the right direction ..
but those that control will always be the obstacle.
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Rroff said:
We are far from an enlightened species - many people's approach and outlook when it comes to life is little removed from animal - going through the actions of the path directly in front of them rarely questioning things. Around the world there are many people living under senseless persecution, etc.

Carl Sagan had a hope there was an emerging consciousness of self-awareness and bettering ourselves both for the sake of ourselves and the world we live in but he was hopelessly optimistic - the likes of Elon Musk have realised we aren't going to come to it for ourselves.
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Why do you both think we are going to deviate much from being greedy and being like animals. That is very much part of human nature..

We are a flawed species
 
Bassmansam said:
Why do you both think we are going to deviate much from being greedy and being like animals. That is very much part of human nature..

We are a flawed species
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we will evolve .. we will invent... the monetary system will crash we will have a war and on the rebuild things might get better
it's either that or we will all become serfs again .. but in time maybe another 2k yrs we will change or die .. it's that simple ..
 
I can only assume you all tune into the wrong news sources to have such a dismal view of the world. Humans are incredible despite being deeply flawed, and we have achieved things that only 5 or 10 years ago would have seemed simply impossible. Our trajectory is still exponential but unfortunately the disparity between haves and have nots is growing far too large. Inequality is currently feeding our economic growth and the next industrial revolution (automation) is going to be a key turning point. Things like universal basic income are going to be critical as not everyone will have productivity we want to pay for. The marginal cost of items will be close to 0 so everyone can have everything. I'm not sure what that means for the cost of experiences but it'll surely be high in demand when everything else has an abundance of supply. It's not the best example but we're seeing this now in consumer tech where folk are holding onto devices longer than ever before, shifting the world towards services and subscriptions. People who are standing still (I'd argue quite a few of the posters above given their comments) are going to be distinctly left behind unfortunately. No different to every other generation of folk musing about the good old days.
 
potatolord said:
"People never recognise the golden years until they are over."
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Said the tribes of people having 5 kids on the basis at least 3 may die... Or the people who got caned at school... Or the people who fought and died for their country to maintain basic freedoms.

The world is the most advanced, peaceful and prosperous for the most amount of individuals, ever. A lot of the folk moaning about change are typically those who have had a lot, for a long time.
 
Oh, I'm not moaning about my circumstances- far from it.

I have a close to zero risk of my house being sacked and burned by robbers, unlimited clean water, food, lighting and energy. My children are educated for free and I could travel 500 miles in a day in my own personal transport, on a whim.

I'm lucky every day, and say this to my wife regularly.

Many people either don't realise how lucky we are, or are choosing not to believe the evidence.
 
I think 'the west' had probably passed its peak and its facing a host of economic (eg wealth disparity, manufacturing base, worker skills, debt...), social, and international politicical problems, but newer fresher and fitter countries like China will push technological progress in the next century, even if their attitude to human rights etc is different to what many of us would like to see. Can see the human rights side of things improving in general over time though... Seems like things normally trend in that direction.

Overall I think humanity has yet to reach its peak, and it will be driven by technology, but there may be some humps in the road ahead (such as the climate crisis, realignment of global politics etc), and there is always possibility of catastrophe (eg AI turns on humanity, a meteorite lands, supervolcano goes off, climate change is at the worse end of possible predictions and the whole Greenland ice cap melts in a very short space of time, global nuclear war, etc).

How 'high' that peak is will depend on whether we reach any hard limits on technology. Personally I think things like developing proper AI, commercial fusion power, completely automated farming and production of essential items etc are a matter of 'when', not 'if'. There are other things that I'm not sure about (eg will significant progress in microprocessors become impossible in a couple of decades? If we develop a working AI but each instance needs supercomputer level resources (and always will do due to reaching a ceiling on microprocessor tech) then will it have much of an impact on how the world is run? Will materials science continue advancing or will we reach a wall such that things like a space elevator remain out of reach?)
 
flea.rider said:
we will evolve .. we will invent... the monetary system will crash we will have a war and on the rebuild things might get better
it's either that or we will all become serfs again .. but in time maybe another 2k yrs we will change or die .. it's that simple ..
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And during all this we will probably wipe out most other life on Earth. Leaving only the indestructible cockroaches, some bacteria and whatnot.

I have no real worry about humanity being wiped out. But I do fear that before this should happen, we will take everything else down with us. Because in our mindset, everything exists to service ourselves.
 
Quartz said:
I disagree. Once we get off this planet resources are pretty much infinite.
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Only if there are viable ways of mining everything on an industrial scale and on an interstellar scale and on an ever-increasing scale. Continuing as we are with the level of space travel that you're referring to would result in an ever-increasing population too. At best, it would mean pushing the point of collapse further into the future at the cost of making the problem bigger (due to the vastly larger population).

In addition to that, I wasn't referring only to resources. Our current setup isn't sustainable for other reasons too. Advances in technology reduce the amount of work that has to be done by people. We're rapidly approaching a point in which the existing economic (and thus social) setup will no longer be possible.

Stumble Bum said:
Peak humanity??

We still have people being extremely ***** to each other because they believe in imaginary friends.
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Which might be the peak that humanity reaches. The OP's question is "how high up will humanity get?" not "how high up can humanity possibly get?"
 
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