How do we imagine the world in 2030 to be?

Nothing could be worse than the world thirty years ago, except the world forty or more years ago.

2030 isn't thirty years in the future either, but sixteen. Just a little further ahead than 2000 was back.

Nothing could be worse than the world thirty years ago, except the world forty or more years ago.

Why so? Did you have a miserable childhood? I had a lovely childhood. And already as a child I knew that everything goes worse as time moves on. Thus far it has been completely confirmed.

The best life in the world was about thousand years ago. And then about three thousand years before that. Maybe times will become tolerable again in another two thousand years. What made you pick 2030 specifically?

The best life in the world was about thousand years ago.

Probably.

The more I study about medieval ages the more I see how the past is distorted by the falsity people learn at schools.

Urbanisation towards 2030.

Bright lights, big cities

Global desertification is picking up...

...and I am not so sure about the quality of the "invulnerable areas". Estonia for example has been rapidly and radically deforested during the past two decades. In our climate there's no agriculture possible without sufficient forests to circumscribe the fields. And cities are of course desert landscape from the ecological point of view.

A little over a year ago I wrote this...and 2014 was even better.  You know, whether it's local pub gossip, television bulletins or newspaper headlines, we're more interested in what's going wrong than with what's going right.  Judging the world through headlines is like judging a city by spending a night in its jail--you only see the worst problems.  Objectively, 2014 has probably been the best year in history. Take war, for example--our lives now are more peaceful than at any time known to the human species. In a century that began with 9/11, the Iraq war, and genocide in Darfur, the claim that we are living in an unusually peaceful time may strike you as somewhere between delirium and absurdity, but there are fewer conflicts today, and wars don't kill as many people as they did in the Middle Ages, for instance.  Also, global rates of violent crime have plummeted in the last few decades and certainly the rise of education has played a large part in that.  The Isis atrocities are all the more shocking perhaps, because they come against a backdrop of unprecedented world peace. 


As usual however, religiosity continues to play its part in promoting violence and abuse.   There has been a large increase in the number of countries with high or very high levels of social hostilities involving religion.  Incidents of abuse against religious minorities were reported up, there were rises in religious motivated threats of violence, harassment of women over religious dress, mob violence related to religion, sectarian violence, and religion-related terrorist violence.  We've all read the headlines pertaining to this, but look it up if you wish, in this PEW study, which shows religiously-inspired violence going up and all other violence going down. 


I like to balance the good with the bad and try to get the whole big-picture of my reality.  Others will continue to read and expound upon all the atrocities in the world which would often include looking at the advances in science as bad or even blasphemous.  However, look on the bright side--if science can continue eroding religious belief at its present pace, we may one day soon actually live in a real paradise.     

The study can be found at...
http://www.pewforum.org/2014/01/14/religious-hostilities-reach-six-year-high/

I like to balance the good with the bad and try to get the whole big-picture of my reality.  Others will continue to read and expound upon all the atrocities in the world which would often include looking at the advances in science as bad or even blasphemous.  However, look on the bright side--if science can continue eroding religious belief at its present pace, we may one day soon actually live in a real paradise.

Last things first...you'll not see 'a real paradise' in your lifetime, and at 77, I certainly won't.

Scientists can and have produced things that are harmful on a grand scale.

I'm an agnostic who has a jaundiced view of religion. I see it as a silly diversion from the real world, but I don't see it as necessarily damaging. The great majority of adherents far outnumber the madmen who are running around with machetes and toxic brews.

Relatively speaking, the number of people whose outlook is shaped by science is small. We're all bathed in the world of science, but few of us have our outlooks shaped by it.

Scientists can and have produced things that are harmful on a grand scale.

Do you really believe it was a scientist's idea to build an atomic bomb?  Puuuuullllleeeeease!    

Scientists can and have produced things that are harmful on a grand scale.

Do you really believe it was a scientist's idea to build an atomic bomb?  Puuuuullllleeeeease!    

Who built it then? The Pope?

Do you really believe it was a scientist's idea to build an atomic bomb?  Puuuuullllleeeeease!

Didn't Einstein write to President Roosevelt asking him to do just that...?

Really, James, did you ever actually go to school? [ see here... ] Do you have intermet access?
Or do you just read Howard Zinn's high school texts... ?

You and Jimbro should form a club! (But I'm being unfair to Jimbro: He's the Groucho Marx of the Left, who'd not deign to join any club that'd have him as a member!)

Scientists are -- people, sometimes paying attention and involved.

Global desertification is picking up...

...and I am not so sure about the quality of the "invulnerable areas". Estonia for example has been rapidly and radically deforested during the past two decades. In our climate there's no agriculture possible without sufficient forests to circumscribe the fields. And cities are of course desert landscape from the ecological point of view.

We are now in 2015, halfway to 2030 if we take the year 2000 as a starting point. 2030 is not far away. How the world in 2020 will be is pretty much a given, but there is still some leeway for 2030.

Water supply is an issue. While we're getting less desert in parts of the world, we are getting more in others, and crucially many of the migration patterns are into arid and semi-arid regions with high water stress. Climate change may also make some highly populated areas drier. Cities are not deserts, on the contrary they are highly diverse biotopes, to the annoyance of those needing pest control.

Scientists can and have produced things that are harmful on a grand scale.

Do you really believe it was a scientist's idea to build an atomic bomb?  Puuuuullllleeeeease!    

Who built it then? The Pope?

Shapeshifting reptilians obviously

Global desertification is picking up...

...and I am not so sure about the quality of the "invulnerable areas". Estonia for example has been rapidly and radically deforested during the past two decades. In our climate there's no agriculture possible without sufficient forests to circumscribe the fields. And cities are of course desert landscape from the ecological point of view.

I assume the little yellow blob in .de is more or less the state of Brandenburg, also known as "Germany's sandbox". Not exactly a dry area ( go a couple centuries back and much of it is swamp ) but prone to erosion without sufficient vegetation.

Didn't Einstein write to President Roosevelt asking him to do just that...?

see here

In 1947 Einstein told Newsweek magazine that "had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, I would have done nothing."

[irony tags on] Wasn't nobody there to explain Einstein that the atomic bombs have saved human lifes? [/ irony tags off]

Quote from: jseaton2311 on 2015-02-10, 13:00:16Do you really believe it was a scientist's idea to build an atomic bomb?  Puuuuullllleeeeease!Didn't Einstein write to President Roosevelt asking him to do just that...?

I was certainly aware of the letter, I simply remember it as a warning to the president that the Germans were making enriched uranium and the potential of a uranium chain reaction bomb.  I see now that Einstein did suggest the US begin it's own investigation into the potential of nuclear chain reactions. 

So, what do you need...10 Hail Marys and 10 Our Fathers to sufficiently absolve me of my error?  Must be nice sitting back guzzling booze and reading the posts here, only to chime in once in while to bust somebody's balls.  How much drawing of attention away from your wife and children does all that boozing do, Einstein?    

I reckon by 20130 the prayer mats will be everywhere. 

18,000 years is a long time

On a prayer mat I would think 18,115 years would feel even much longer.

Water supply is an issue. While we're getting less desert in parts of the world, we are getting more in others, and crucially many of the migration patterns are into arid and semi-arid regions with high water stress.

Speaking of which: 5 mln Beijing residents drink 'southern water'

About five million Beijing residents are now drinking water from a tributary of the Yangtze River, two months after a key section of China's massive south-to-north water diversion project was put into operation.

Beijing has received more than 50 million cubic meters of water from the south since Dec. 12, when water began to be routed from the central Chinese province of Hubei to the capital, said the Beijing south-to-north water diversion office on Thursday.

The first stage of this middle route -- one of three routes involved in the project -- starts at Hubei's Danjiangkou Reservoir, which stores water from the Hanjiang River, a tributary of the Yangtze River [running out in Shanghai].

A 1,432-km-long canal brings the water to China's thirsty northern regions, including the cities of Beijing and Tianjin, and the provinces of Henan and Hebei.
The amount of water flowing along the middle route is expected to increase from the current 9.5 billion cubic meters to 13 billion cubic meters by 2030.

Two out of the six water plants in Beijing are using the "southern water" as their sole source. The other plants are mixing the southern water with domestic water.

On a prayer mat I would think 18,115 years would feel even much longer.

Have you actually tried a prayer mat or a meditation cushion? Time does weird things when you get on them. A few moments may seem like a millennium, but a few millennia like a moment too - at the same time.

How much drawing of attention away from your wife and children does all that boozing do, Einstein?

"Puuuuullllleeeeease!"
That's water over the bridge... (You've heard of extreme weather events?)

James, you know what you are; and you repeatedly show others here...

My "boozing" does help me get by.

Your whatchamacallit helps you.

I wouldn't take that away from you.

2030 is close by: I suspect scientific understanding will (due to proponents such as you...) wane, but its influence grow. Not the actual understanding -of course- but the "scidolitry" you espouse.

My "boozing" does help me get by.

'...[to] get by'--to cope.

You need liquor to cope with life.

Regardless of the circumstances, this is not a good thing to own up to, imo Oak.  And not because it is liquor, but simply because it is anything other than your own good intellectual resources.  At one time I thought I could cope with life better using various escape mechanisms and all it did was lead me to depression and suicide (that's not to say this is where you are heading).  I finally discovered that life does not need to be coped with generally, if one lives its parts on life's own terms.  Regardless of how weak you may consider my intellectual resources to be, I am 'myr' ahead of you on this point, imho.    

By 2030, political correctness totalitarianism will be so much that people can't interact freely anymore.
By 2030, everybody, without exception, will be constantly monitored with computer systems.
By 2030, the police will start burning books.
By 2030, many of us will be already at concentration camps.
By 2030, some of us will keep fighting against 2030.

By 2030, political correctness totalitarianism will be so much that people can't interact freely anymore.
By 2030, everybody, without exception, will be constantly monitored with computer systems.
By 2030, the police will start burning books.
By 2030, many of us will be already at concentration camps.
By 2030, some of us will keep fighting against 2030.

Do you always live your life by taking things to their absolute worst possible conclusion?  It certainly explains your hope and prayer of everlasting life in some supernatural paradise however.  Kind of a shame that anyone has to miss out on the enjoyment of reality or the reality of enjoyment (however one chooses to slice it).  Oh well.......  

Do you always live your life by taking things to their absolute worst possible conclusion?

I'm being realist, not pessimist, I just read the sign of times. You too can do it, you just don't want to and do like the ostrich, prefer to put the head into the sand so you don't see what comes to you. It's more comfortable.

We're facing dark times, really dark ones, the 2030 I described it's being prepared for some time, probably since the end of WWII.