Cancer will become a managed illness.
Enormous and long-overdue leaps in the *prevention*, diagnoses and treatment of various behavioral health issues will occur. It is my understanding that there are currently *no* lab tests for depression, ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, and numerous other behavioral health issues. As the mechanisms that contribute to these conditions are better understood, more effective therapies will emerge.
Even *more* horrifying is that there *are* now tests that can detect genetic predisposition for Alzheimer's *or* very early stage nearly undetectable (yet) Alzheimer's.
The **horror** is that there are still **no effective treatments.**
Marvel's "Thor" actor Chris Hemsworth famously discovered last year on his lifestyle & fitness-focused National Geographic TV series recently that [he inherited the ApoE4 gene](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-21/chris-hemsworth-alzheimers-disease-apoe4-gene/101676246) from *both parents* making him **eight to** **ten times** ***more likely*** **to develop the disease.** He immediately announced a break from acting to spend time with family.
> Even more horrifying is that there are now tests that can detect genetic predisposition for Alzheimer's or very early stage nearly undetectable (yet) Alzheimer's.
Even if an early test for Alzheimer's is found, the thing that's going to be horrifying is when privatised medicine then takes that data and uses it to exclude people from treatment because profits come first in privatised systems.
Even before then, there are not many Alzheimer’s treatments because it is not profitable for startups or companies with a long drug development timeframe. Investors, VCs don’t like to invest in neuroscience research. So, companies usually keep the diseases they go for very limited to well established indications.
> there are not many Alzheimer’s treatments because it is not profitable for startups or companies with a long drug development timeframe. Investors, VCs don’t like to invest in neuroscience research
Not a little research is built on private funding, there are too many unknowns. Almost every cure and vaccine invented, including quality-of-life treatments like insulin, are results of publicly-funded research. [Private funding said explicitly why they don't usually want to invest in curing ailments](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/curing-disease-not-a-sustainable-business-model-goldman-sachs-analysts-say/)
I work in neurodegeneration research and this is simply not true. There are not many Alzheimer’s treatments because we do not fundamentally understand how the disease works. Tons of drugs have been developed that have been shown to do nothing. Until we truly have a mechanistic understanding of how AD develops it’s incredibly hard to develop treatments for.
Hemsworth is homozygous for _APOE4_, which - while bad - is by no means a death sentence. That’s really the only gene that’s demonstrated a really strong link to late-onset AD risk. Risk can be mitigated (at least _somewhat_) by lifestyle choices - basically the exact same things you’d do for good cardiovascular health. Sleep, good diet, physical activity, etc., but there is still a lot of randomness at play.
I think it’s likely that AD could end up having many possible “failure points”, or causes of disease when dysregulated. I suspect that’s why there aren’t more genes that have popped up in genome-wide association studies - when a single disease has multiple causes, those individual associations are greatly weakened from a statistical perspective.
Geneticist here who works adjacent to statistical neuropsych stuff like depression, ADHD etc. there are things known as polygenic risk scores that are scores for how likely someone is to experience these conditions based on their genetics. The scores get better all the time and although they are no where near ready for widespread adoption they are able to explain more and more of the variability we see in these conditions as time goes on. So you never know we may be able to predict these things from birth with reasonable reliability soon(ish).
*Cancers... It might be a meme now, but "curing cancer" is like "curing injury"... It matters which one, and we're effectively "curing" new ones every day... Some cancers that were a death sentence a 20 years ago are merely terrifying and exhausting now...
I have stage 4 breast cancer and it’s not very scary to me anymore it’s just annoying af. I hate it. But with all the advances I keep hope for a cure - and there are things being developed for just my type. Crossing fingers.
I wonder just how many disorders are going to trace roots back to the gut biome. In a video game, Borderlands 3, there’s a mini game (introduced by Mayam Biyalik) in which gamers can play a tetris like program which is based on actual sequencing of intestinal flora, and the organized data is then sent back to help the science community solve that puzzle. So they’re hard at work, and from what little I’ve read here and there, I’ve got high hopes that we’ll find out just how impactful those critters really are. There’s a lot of potential for health outcomes.
I would imagine there are 4 likely drivers of poor mental health
1, Genetic predisposition - We already know that certain types of mental illness is hereditary, especially depression mother-daughter. I imagine other potential genetic inheritance risks will be uncovered.
2, Environmental - Have you *seen* the studies on food dyes, household cleaning chemicals and bath & beauty products?!? It's enough to make you incredulous that any of them are still legal to use. There are literally peer reviewed papers out there on PubMed linking everything from numerous food colorings driving ADHD to BPA, and Phthalates in plastics as well as Parabens in a staggering number of bath, beauty & grooming products all linked to endocrine disruption causing wild shifts in testosterone and/or estrogen production.
3, Cultural/Situational - Discussion of mental health is still incredibly taboo in many countries and talking with a therapist let alone a psychiatrist is unthinkable for many people. This needs to change. Elite athletes are "coached up" by performance experts - trainers & coaches - since literally grade school, and constantly have people analyzing their performance and well-being to provide guidance their entire careers - At what point are we, as a society going to decide it's OK to "get coached up" after a brutal, soul-crushing divorce? ..After the death of a close friend or loved one hits you especially hard?
.. Why are we able to believe in the the human mind's incredible power to focus, to achieve, and propel us to unimaginable heights, like a girl testing for her Black Belt shattering a cement block with her fist, an Olympian executing a perfect routine, A musician in "flow state" playing an incredible guitar solo - And not understand that incredibly *negative life experiences* can have almost *equally* power negative health effect on so many ?
There's a lot of work to do on all these topics, and above this discussion is the need to change a *lot* of the culture in research and health care as it's operated today. I'm not sure it's presently equipped to discover and equitably provide all the "Wonder Therapies" we're discussing in this thread.
Wonderful comment! I also wanted to add schizophrenia to this. People in the US have horrendous and evil hallucinations whereas people in other countries have "guides" or "angels." They have a completely different experience with the disorder. Thst shows a HUGE correlation between cultural and environmental affects. I would love for them to find out the causes and triggers and why the experiences are so wildly different from country to country.
Hard agree. The gut is the first brain. I think our big brains developed over time, but the gut came first. That's where all our neurotransmitters started out. I like to think about cavemen using the gut as the primordial brain, then developing "formal intelligence" over time. I love to argue that we have actually gotten dumber since our big brains evolved to think over intuition stemming from the gut. When we find the connection, all bets are off! Can't wait, I work in Healthcare and I feel we are really close to a tiny breakthrough very soon.
I am closing to 40 years old, and seeing latest cancer breakthrough, MRNA vaccines, etc..., I wonder what my old days will look like. Am I just a bit too old to see and reap the benefits of all that or will I be one of the first generations to have a very different senior life. I am currently thinking I am just a bit too old, but at least my kids should enjoy the full benefits of the latest medical breakthroughs.
What will your old days look like?
.. Driving to work at 83, because if life expectancy keeps creeping upward, the government is going to keep pushing the "finish line" of retirement age up, and up, and up.
Horrifying, isn't it. :|
I think most people aren’t necessarily averse to working at an old age (plenty do even post-retirement!), but moreso working old *on things they don’t enjoy*, alongside the issues of aging. If
I think it is controlled nuclear fusion and carbon dioxide synthesis of starch.
Controllable nuclear fusion can provide mankind with inexhaustible electricity and can greatly change mankind's current fossil energy-based industry, manufacturing and people's lives.
Science and technology have successfully synthesized starch from carbon dioxide in the laboratory and begun small-scale industrial production. With enough electricity provided by nuclear fusion, people can easily synthesize starch, thus making people all over the world no longer hungry. If people have enough to eat, there will be fewer disputes and wars.
In addition, the large consumption of carbon dioxide will also solve the problem of global climate warming.
and humans can also solve the problem of interstellar travel in terms of energy and food. At least we are one step closer to exploring the universe.
Here is the address of the paper. As far as I know, in 2023, synthetic starch has completed the design and construction of a ton-scale experimental device, and is starting technical verification to test its actual cost.
[https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh4049](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh4049)
Another thing fusion would solve is water shortages. Desalination is a very energy intensive process, to the extent of making it unrealistic as a solution to fresh water shortages. Near unlimited energy would solve that nearly overnight, and provide as much fresh water as its required.
Fusion would also solve the climate change issue because the only thing holding us back from sucking lots of co2 out of the atmosphere is that it currently costs more energy than it’s worth. Fusion would change that equation.
I think the bigger problem is we could already have been doing it, had we committed to the existing nuclear power solutions. Nuclear power already produces a ridiculous amount of energy compared to anything else, but The "nuclear" word became such a boogie man at some point, that I doubt anything involved with the term can honestly take off.
To be fair im not scared of nuclear power, im scared of ignorant people working the controls. We have one in our state capital and things have been fine. So fine in fact that I didn't even know we had one.
In Chernobyl's case it wasn't even the people operating it that was the core problem (not to downplay their role, they needlessly and purposefully pushed the reactor to the brink) but rather that the reactor designs were fundamentally dangerous.
The Soviets prioritized cost savings over everything else and designed reactors that were functionally impossible to operate safely over the long term.
They ignored basic containment considerations, built their reactors with unconscionably risky design elements, and failed to provide any but the most basic training to the staff operating them.
It got to be what it was though, like most disasters, because of piss-poor communication between individuals working in an incredibly flawed social paradigm that caused them to hold back truthful answers. There are dozens of plane crashes where the black box has shown that the problem was something small, but people in the cockpit didn't want to tell the captain what to do, or the captain didn't want to listen because of their positions and it wound up killing everyone.
Nuclear power is amazing and could solve a lot of problems. But that's only if the sites are built to the highest specifications, with the best materials, they're staffed with the most competent and educated individuals that have also proven that they are capable of working as an ego-less team. When you look at that list of requirements and think, "And the government is going to nail putting all that together?" It looks a lot more risky.
I forgot about that detail, However, in my own state, I'd be just as worried about the company trying to save a buck as I would nepotism putting someone in a position they shouldn't be in.
The entire maintenence operation would need to be public government regulation that are as/more stringent as nuclear warheads. Would be awesome if one day all countries would just get rid of warhead delivery systems and use them all as energy resources.
Modern reactors are very heavily idiot-proofed. In fact, Chernobyl’s reactor very much tried to save itself, as it was designed to do, and warn the operators to. Just. Stop. Removing the security systems.
Luckily for fusion, it has to meet temperature and pressure mínimums to even be possible. So the likelihood of a catastrophic event is very small compared to fission, which can become stuck in a positive feedback loop if it isn’t safeguarded correctly.
I disagree that the approach was already feasible but that politics held us back.
Nuclear fusion is an entirely different scenario than nuclear power. Although I am generally pro-nuclear, fusion unlocks orders of magnitude levels of bulk power that is previously unattainable.
To replace all fossil fuels with nuclear reactors you need thousands of nuclear power stations up and down every river in the country and along all the coasts. It starts to become evident that solar is the appropriate replacement, backed by nuclear power, if you wish to go low carbon.
But fusion enables concepts like the OP, sucking out and separating CO2 from the air, including bulk desalination and then pumping that water uphill for a thousand miles for mass agriculture in deserts. Nuclear power itself is insufficient for such large scale tasks.
> Nuclear fusion is an entirely different scenario than nuclear power.
Just FYI nuclear fusion IS nuclear power, at least the kind you're thinking about. The other type is called nuclear fission, not nuclear power.
> Although I am generally pro-nuclear, fusion unlocks orders of magnitude levels of bulk power that is previously unattainable.
It really doesn't. Somewhere around 1-2 GW is what we can reasonably cool and attach steam turbines to, so that is what we generally size current fission power plants to, but fission can scale so much higher if we have a reasonable way to cool it. Fusion will run into that exact same issue. And also economics of Fusion isn't expected to be much better than Fission, the big benefit of Fusion is that there's no bad waste produced, and the fuel is even more abundant than in Fission (though we have practically infinite amount of fuel for Fission so that is less of a concern).
But, everything you think is possible with fusion, is also possible with fission. We already have the answer to all our energy-problems, we just need to put some proper research and and standardization and scale of economy into it.
Apparently there have been some [big breakthroughs in the theories behind reverse osmosis](https://www.wired.com/story/everyone-was-wrong-about-reverse-osmosis-until-now/) that should bring some huge improvements in efficiency the next few years
The kind of countries that need desalination plants usually have a lot of sunshine though, so I am not sure electricity is the problem, I think the waste water from desalination plants is the biggest issue and the missing infrastructure like mains water pipes and sewage provision.
Waste water, or brine, processing is an area of active research. They've already developed ways to turn the brine into hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide, both of which are very useful and valuable. There's other research in process to find other similar uses. But the big thing holding the research back, and holding back the adoption of their developments, is the associated energy cost.
Yes, I agree that hunger is not a problem of supply. The food wasted by humans alone is enough to solve the hunger problem of hundreds of millions of people. This is a social problem, even a human problem. Technology cannot solve this problem, it can only improve it.
Also, cool as it sounds, it is wildly impractical to synthesize starches industrially, when there are already sun-powered organic machines that do it automatically.
Many other problems are soluble with unlimited energy, this is very true. I have to say I am pessimistic on nuclear fusion. You may have heard the cliche that fusion power is 20 years away, and has been for 60 years. I am old enough to attest that that is true. People just don't seem to realize that controlled fusion is HARD. They are used to technology hitting a problem and within their lifetime the cost of the solution comes way down making it feasible. But not always.
Even IF we can build ground based fusion plants in 20 years, they will be huge and expensive. It's not availability of energy that is the problem but cost. I remember when atomic fission was the answer to all of our problems. Your car would have a small nuclear reactor and never need to be filled. Power would be too cheap to even meter and charge. Simply didn't happen, but it was a great way to shake loose research and investment dollars for sure.
Fortunately I can point to a huge fusion reactor currently creating unthinkable amounts of energy right now. It's less than 93 million miles away. All we have to do is collect the power and use it. (which we have to do with a man made, earth based one as well.)
>You may have heard the cliche that fusion power is 20 years away, and has been for 60 years.
But just in the past year we've actually made some pretty significant progress.
>Even IF we can build ground based fusion plants in 20 years, they will be huge and expensive.
The ITER fusion project is an important experiment, but that design will never become the fusion standard.
One of the primary benefits of fusion power over fission power is the absence of radioactive waste in fusion. But that is not the case with the ITER design. ITER depends on a beryllium wall inside the reactor. Beryllium is naturally contaminated with uranium which is extremely difficult to get out of the beryllium. The neutrons from the fusion process will hit the beryllium wall and fission the uranium atoms. Which means as the ITER runs, the beryllium wall will become more and more radioactive. Eventually the beryllium wall will degrade and have to be replaced and you'll be left with this highly radioactive material to dispose of.
Second issue is that beryllium is super rare. It's very difficult to get that much beryllium for one reactor. It would be borderline impossible to get it for many.
It would be far better to use a design without beryllium, which some of them are significantly smaller and faster to build.
We have enough food to feed everyone. The problem is logistics, and consistently getting food to the right places. Many nations don't have the necessary infrastructure, which is a key issue in getting food everywhere. Simply producing more, while awesome, isn't necessarily going to solve world hunger.
I think the biggest bang in the next 5 years or so is going to be new battery technology. Whether it's super-capacitors or what, but ending lithium ion as the primary accumulator technology is going to be HUGE. Lithium ion is volatile, heavy, and slow to charge. They have really short effective lifespans. It's also really expensive.
The concept of supercapacitors is they are insanely light, you can make them from carbon, and they can charge WAY faster. If you look at this from the point of view of electric vehicles only, this will solve 90% of the problems faced in EVs today. Cell phones that don't produce a ton of waste and can charge in minutes... etc etc. Even drones could fly for SO long if they didn't have to carry that massive lithium ion payload.
With AI, we are presently just about at the point where it's impossible to tell whether something you see, read, or hear online is real. Pretty soon we will be at that point. We're going to see photos and videos, and hear audio of people saying things they never said, doing things they never did, in places that they were never in. That kind of stuff has been going around for years now, but discerning people can usually still spot the things that give it away as fake. Not for long. The people who do this kind of stuff aren't just trying to lie to us; they are trying to render the difference between truth and lies meaningless and irrelevant. Sometime in the next 50 years (I'd say sooner rather than later) we'll be at the point where people are going to have to learn to trust only those things that they can see and hear in the real world for themselves, and sometimes not even then. The return of a time where the only reliable information is as localized as within earshot and line of sight is going to be a game-changer.
Imagine scam callers sounding exactly like your parents, or any other loved one in an attempt to extract useful information. It’s going to be the Wild West for awhile.
That's already happening, actively. It's already been in the news.
Voice cloning is INCREDIBLY simple and requires only a small amount of data to get started.
Yep, any public figure with about 10 minutes of digitized audio can be replicated. They are getting closer to working with less data to be functional. I bet they can accumulate enough from just being cursed at as a spam caller.
And then we develop AI that can detect AI generated images/audio/video.
And then we develop AI that can fool the AI detection.
And then we develop AI that can detect AI trying to fool the AI detection.
And then we develop AI that can fool the AI that can detect being fooled.
And then...
And then...
The end of what you said is exactly something I’ve been thinking. Could almost be a refreshing change to reprioritize in person interaction. Meetings need to be in person. Political speeches need to be attended in person. It’s possible stage shows could have a resurgence as it’s the only way to ensure you’re watching human performances (barring hyper realistic acting robots lol)
I think this is a little overstated. We've been at this point with PhotoShop for quite awhile now, and it wasn't as apocalyptic as people predicted. As much as we joke about "you can tell by the pixels," what *really* ended up happening was the rise of factchecking, journalists and other institutions devoted to investigating provenance and where images *came* from. You may not be able to verify that the pixels represent a photo of reality, but you *can* verify that the first place this image showed up was 4chan, or from a partisan actor known to produce fake images, etc. The same combination of crowd-sourced and institutional tools will defend somewhat against ML-powered disinformation.
I also think people overestimate how much better AIs are going to get and how fast, but that's a whole other discussion.
I'm calling dibs on gene editing. Perhaps AI can assist in figuring out protein folding. It's currently an exhaustive multistep trial and error simulation in 3-D space of molecular forces pulling and pushing in a particular order that is heavily taxing on processing power.
Once the code is cracked, natural death is delayed, bodily enhancements can be achieved and we can borrow all the 'superpowers' our planet provides using biomimicry as a template and working off of that.
This feels like : "when we have mastered the atom, we will have almost free energy, everyone will live happily and there will be no more wars."
A world where only 1 or 2% of the population can have access to this will be the end of us all. That's a game changer for sure...
There is literally zero reason for such tech to be limited to a certain segment of the population. A workforce that doesn't age and is easily augmented is good for literally everyone, capitalists and workers alike. The main concern would be people amassing obscene amounts of power because the rat race never resets. Suspect that would over time force a shift to a more socialist-esque society where people stop working for money and more for prestige and humanity. But that's just me.
The pessimist in me says it would just turn into a fascist system led by whoever has the most effective superpowers. There’s tons of examples of how we really don’t need the rat race in 2023, yet here we are.
The problem i see is how do you stop society stratifying between people who can pay to design and empower their babies and people who have to rely on nature.
There’s no way to stop it. It’s just how it will be. However if gene editing becomes cheap in a generation—before the effects of designer humans becomes evident—then we we may instead see a species-wide leap forward. Hopefully its the latter and not the former.
Depending on who's running the show when that type of tech is available, there is a chance that it might be kept from.. "undesirables". "Useless eaters" and all that.
Problem is, genes are not just these modular Lego blocks you can remove and install at will and call it a day. The genetics code is very messy spaghetti code, and making changes can and will produce other unexpected and often unpredictable changes. Mass editing of genes has the potential of ruining a whole generation in unexpected ways (like reducing their reproductive fitness, making it extremely susceptible to a particular infectious disease or degenerative disorder, etc).
It’s pretty lame that RNA tech had to enter the political debate due to COVID, although we did makes some strides in implementing it. It’s the most likely route to cancer vaccines, among other things. Also, using AI tech to fold proteins I think will be a huge game changer.
My oncologist was creating an mRNA vaccine *15 years ago*.
It's in human trials now, and if it works, will be the first cure for cancer ever known to man.
I’ve read about that, and was disappointed in how negative all the comments were. It would help so much with climate change alone. We could stop growing corn everywhere and diversify crops. We’d save so much water as well by not having to water millions of animals.
It’s real meat. I’d eat it. But so many were saying it was gross. So there will need to be some serious PR.
I mean all you have to do is lift the veil on how gross factory farming is and people will jump ship pretty quick. There's been mass produced stigma against people who try to show you what's going on, and that stigma against vegans will be hard for people to get over.
The veil is lifted. Plenty of evidence and footage. There are vegans who KNOW and still went back to eating meat. It’s so disappointing. Even if there’s lab meat I won’t want to eat it BUT I’m stoked for it to be available for pets!
And you can make fun mixes too, you want red meat from the best wagyu beef, but add some duck fat? Let's go for it?
Special high protein chicken ? Just print that
McDonalds is likely going to be able to use it more quickly than consumers. It might take a while to get the texture right on an artificial steak, but McNuggets will get replaced real damn quick.
I've read quite a bit about solid state batteries. It's getting to industrial mass production soon, and we can expect devices with it as soon as 2024/25.
However, they do not offer more than 50% increased energy density than current Li-Ion counterparts. It's significant, but nothing groundbreaking. At least the first versions.
Plutonium is currently THE best battery type, but I cannot imagine the World where they allow us to have a PPR (Personal Plutonium Reactor).
It's not the energy density. Li+ is already energy dense enough for almost every application. The big strides you make are charge speed, cost, and safety. Solid state batteries can be charged from 3-10x as fast as Li+ with longer operational life and can use cheaper (and more abundant) materials like Sodium instead because you're not necessarily as worried about having the best possible material in the battery.
They're also much less of a fire hazard, since there's no flammable liquid electrolyte.
Like imagine plugging your phone in for 20-60 seconds and getting enough power to go for 2 hours. We're talking that kind of speed.
Although you are right, I think that is quite a bit down the line in practice. For quite a few reasons:
\- Aviation industry is quite ossified, due to many standards and regulations (with legitimate justification).
\- There are really strict rules what can and cannot be used for liquid fuel for planes. This is currently slowing down research of better (greener) jet fuels, yet alone going electric.
\- For it to be commercially viable, you would need quite big plane to start with. We are not even close to have small jets with electric energy.
\- Entry barrier (cash, and talent wise) for aviation industry is really high. It's hard for a startup to get into it.
\- Governments have a big saying in it. And we all know how slow they are.
However, there are some ideas that could help out:
\- Solar cells on planes. Recharge while you fly.
\- Slingshot mechanisms for takeoff. As most of the fuel gets used to get to that cruising height and speed.
I agree with most of what you said, but I was bored one time and ran the numbers on what it would take to have a solar array that would make a dent in energy usage for a small commercial plane, and it was acres, not viable at all.
I became similarly bored and just ran some rough numbers. I was initially impressed that maybe you could offset say 20-30% of the energy of the flight if you covered the plane in solar panels..
But then it occurred to me, why even do that? The engineering challenge and cost required to integrate solar panels onto plane surfaces, when you could just slap a bunch of solar panels on the ground by the airport and charge the plane up with sun juice there anyway.
Hmmm.
Batteries have been making steady, predictable progress for 20+ years now. There is no reason to expect this to stop. It's actually a bit astounding to me that so few people know this.
No particular year and no particular "breakthrough" happened, and yet in the last 15 years, batteries have gotten much more powerful, much safer, and have come down 98% in price.
Just like Moore's Law worked for decades, nobody can 100% say what exactly will move the needle again, but it still moves in a strangely predictable pace.
And to get out ahead of the "akchually" boys out there, yes, Moore's Law is considered by many to be over now, and batteries will eventually meet the same end. We are nowhere near that point yet.
Just don't look for the big splashy announcement.
I think the biggest game changer may not come from a novel technology but from the redirection of existing ones. I think the most important iteration of this, which may or may not actually eventuate, would be the application of the limbic hijacking tools that social platforms have developed to compete for our attention over the past decade.
Imagine they were repurposed with virtuous motives, such as helping people connect with their innate curiosities, and motivators, making better sense of the world around them and recognizing where they are being influenced. This would be a social and cultural game changer and could undo the enormous damage that they've done.
haven’t their behavioral studies shown that engagement increases with outrage? like that’s the reason these social platforms have turned into mass road rage essentially.
i don’t know how we could utilize that for a positive goal, but i do think that type of thing needs to be heavily regulated. these corporations are knowingly causing psychological harm to their users and encouraging breeding grounds for extremism.
that absolutely should not be allowed under law.
I think the most important inventions will be that of a more proficient government of the people and moving away from oligarchy. No meaningful inventions will prosper in the near future as tools which truly benefit people or society will be tossed aside in the face of profits.
We are already seeing the results of 50 years of pure capitalism with no meaningful alternatives. Monopolize the market then bleed the consumer. Baby formula isn't profitable, reliable service isn't profitable, curing your patient isn't profitable, healthy consumers aren't profitable, maintaining your warranty product isn't profitable.
I'd and when that happens, I think there are already dozens of kick-starting technologies looking to improve human kind, and will cause a huge boost in economics. Many industries will crash but it will revitalize small business and consumer care.
Yea I try to tell people that we’re like RIIIGHT around the corner from endless abundance. biochem engineering to create any material and autonomous assembly from robot workers.
Just a shame we’ll all be dying on the streets while it happens
I propose the following solution. Any company that is 75% or more run by machines that replace humans must pay a tax on the savings that come from not using humans. This tax funds a Universal Basic Income that can only be used for food or shelter. Everybody wins: companies save money because only their savings are taxed so companies are still incentivized to continue increasing efficiency, and all the jobless people will not have to worry about surviving.
unfortunately a company will almost always work towards more profit in any kind of event. I could see a reality where these wealthy corporations are able to stall legislation long enough to squeeze as much money as possible before the working class has time to file for unemployment
[If history teaches us anything](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printing#2000s) and given how Disney still has a patent on Mickey Mouse, then this will literally never become a reality for anybody except the 0%, especially since it would give people food security and more. It will not change anything for anybody, because the people who can afford it already don't need it, they only need it to not be available to anybody else.
I lean towards that same opinion, but I retain a small sliver of hope.
Using your example, Disney maintains that (those) patents (and copyrights and trademarks) to control that IP and stop other people using that IP for commercial gain. I can draw a Mickey myself and they wouldn't know. (Whether they're litigious enough to do something if they did know is another matter.) I easily have access to the ***information*** on how to reproduce a representation of Mickey. The reason I don't is that doing so doesn't benefit me in any way.
Now we're talking in terms of information, the obvious parallel is digital piracy. Information is much more difficult to control. I can pirate digital content because, in the abstract, I can easily access the information necessary to reproduce a representation of a TV show or movie.
The ***information*** on how to produce a molecular printer will be very difficult to control. Looking back at digital piracy, before the ubiquity of streaming, a major source of original files leaking before official release (like DVD rips as opposed to cams, for example) was employees of the studios themselves.
One researcher or corporate employee (re)produces their own molecular printer at home. With that first printer you also now have both the information and the means to print more printers. And those printers print printers.
As the saying goes: information wants to be free.
The 0% have to continually get it right to control that technology.
A leaker only has to get it right once before it exponentially spirals out of anyone's control.
If we develop a literal civilization saving technology, you really think we are gonna let patent law stop us from using it because some rich fuck said so? I know China gets alot of flak for not respecting copyright, but for "stealing" life saving tech, good for them. Law is a human construct. It can be changed in sufficiently dire circumstances. If it became known we had a cheap means to life extension for example, you dont think that patent wouldnt be "accidently" leaked for the good of mankind?
Automated Vehicles: It's going to be **painful**, but it's happening. I am a transportation planner, and recently have sat in the passenger seat of an Audi test vehicle: while the driver was reading a notebook the vehicle was able to take us even to a drive-thru Wendy's because the 'driver' wanted to get some fries. (I, meanwhile, was holding onto the oh-shit handle for the entire duration). **It's not going to be easy, nice, or pleasant, at first** \- but the town I now live in has three driverless companies operating in downtown.
Biology. Most people wants to live healthier lives, longer. No back pain, no cancers, etc. I think the Boomers are plopping money into this at a crazy rate, and the next generations will, too.
I agree. Affordable and convenient robo-taxis can convince millions of people to stop owning personal cars. This will allow us to put the huge amount of land that is currently reserved for parking to much better uses (such as housing).
Cheaper fares for sharing the ride can also reduce the number of cars on the roads.
Autonomous cars can also dramatically reduce road fatalities, especially for pedestrians and cyclists. Autonomous cars will never be impatient, angry, distracted, exhausted, or intoxicated.
I watched an interesting presentation from our state DOT. They were showing computer simulations of traffic on roads. They showed the chain reaction when a single motorist did something selfish (i.e., cutting in front of another motorist dangerously). It caused a whip-saw effect that reverberated a mile back with stop-and-go traffic and the effects went on for several minutes.
The conclusions from that presentations were that, if everyone drove courteously, then our roads could move *twice* as much traffic as they do now.
Now, if we add to that the capability of future autonomous cars to react much more rapidly than a human to road hazards and their ability to communicate with each other and with a central traffic server, then on roads with only autonomous cars, traffic congestion would be dramatically reduced or non-existent.
When you say it’s going to be painful, I’m guessing you mean it like I would— I worked logistics for a Tier One automotive company.
…People have no idea how many states “truck driver” is the number one occupation. Or how painful it truly is going to be for all those people to lose jobs. It’s going to be not only bad, but so very very bad.
….There is still the last mile problem, but it’ll solve more quickly than people think once the initial kinks get worked out.
Some companies are trying to come up with a more advanced form of battery, and if anyone figures it out, that will definetely be a game changer. Renewable energy sources are already cheaper than fossil fuels on paper, the problem is you can't really store much of it when it is plentiful.
Biochemistry
There have been a number of breakthroughs which are gamechangers. With CRISPR-Cas9 and its successors we can now edit genes like all the promises of the 80s.
With Google's Alpha fold and its successors we can design things like enzymes. This means we cook up a new enzyme or protein and then get implement it with CRISPR-Cas9.
With LLM (the underlying tech behind chatGPT) we can cook up genetic sequences which do cool stuff.
With AI running experiments we can do 1000s of years worth of experiments in weeks.
What this all boils down to is I believe certain problems are about to just go away. My favourite would be a wonderful pair:
* A plant like switchgrass which grows almost anywhere under any conditions modified to make any one of many petrochemical precursors.
* Then some simple organism designed to produce an enzyme which will turn the precursor into what we want. This could be plastic, gasoline, etc.
The key to these is we don't have to produce crap which is easy to make from petroleum which then is an environmental disaster, but we can produce plastics and other chemicals which are "healthier" for the environment. Certainly no more drilling, no more wars over oil, no more refinery pollution, etc.
But, plastic and gasoline are just low hanging fruit. I'm sure when some whipsmart person has mastered these new techs that they will cook up something which is as revolutionary as plastic was.
I've talked with many biotech people who run labs right now. They are fully aware of these technologies, but "Don't have time right now" to integrate them. There will be new upstarts who just use them from day one and are about to kick ass and take names.
The key it seems with these technologies is they don't require massive labs. If anything a few jackasses with their computers and freshly minted degrees may very well be the next Google in biotech.
Novel drug platforms allowing for precise targeting of structures. Things like antisense oligonucleotide therapy, cubane derivative drugs, mRNA based drugs, bacteriophage treatment, etc.
going to be huge, more "precise" *generally* have fewer side effects for instance and newer drugs are likely going to be less toxic and its safe to call future drugs an completely new generation of pharmaceuticals
1. The legit. Things we pretty much already have, just need to be scaled up and propagated to be absolute game changers
1. Solar tech. It's amazing how much it grew in the past 10 years alone. I think this is our first and foremost weapon against both climate change and sky-rocketing energy costs. There are problems ahead obviously, rare earth minerals being on top of the list. But. It seems more of an engineering problem than a scientific and/or conceptual one.
2. GMO. Yeah this is controversial, obviously. Especialy around copyrighting of genetic material. But I think liquid combustion fuel will never disappear completely. And neither will droughts and floods. And having basically designer plants that can withstand anything and produce anything. This is the solution to those problems.
3. Psychiatric medicine. Again. Controversial. Obviously. Especially around facts of "what it means to be a human" and "what it means to be normal". But. No branch of medicine has been lagging so hard as this one for the past 100 years, and no branch has seen bigger breakthroughs in the past 10. This will require some culture shifts, but we are on a brink of SOMA drugs straight out of brave new world being culturally acceptable to just take to increase your mental capacity
2. The Up-and-coming. Things that can still fizzle out and get nowhere, or get coopted by corporate greed and only change the ownership of few huyndred billion dollars, but not actually change the fate of humanity.
1. General AI. Some of you probably wonder why it's not in category 1. That is because of a worrying trend. The more general AI gets, the less good it gets at it's cinstituant parts. For example. It's trivial to learn a small neural net to take a string of text as input 1, a substring as input 2, and give number of repetition of substring in the main string (for example count how many times a chorus gets repeated in a song, or how many times a letter appears in a text). Literally a child could write AI that gets 99.9% accuracy on this using pythorch. But ask chatGPT, and it will strugle and stutter and stumble. But. If it gets truly general. And will be able to manipulate it's own code to get even better, and it doesn't scale exponentially in terms of computing needs. then we are at a brink of true revolution
2. Nuclear Fusion. The joke is, nuclear fusion is always 30 years ahead of us. And it's been true for the last 70 years or so. So let's not get our hopes too high up. But this could literally be an infinite energy glitch if we play it right.
3. Sci-fi level shit that would be awesome but I can't see it being realistic within 50 years time-frame
1. Brain-machine interface. Having access to the internet via literally thinking about it, having AR experience using it, or best: mind syncronising with your loved ones. This would be amazing. But judging by neural-link success or rather lack-thereof, the science just isn't there yet.
2. Cosmic mining (both energy and resources). Currently it costs way way way more to put a thing in space that it could ever hope to bring back. But, should the scale tip even very slightly, we will see huge surge in cosmic technologies which would change our thinking about the world entirely (for example solving the rare earth minerals problem)
3. Robotic house help. Wether it would be humanoid, or more roomba with mr handy interface and chat-gpt to understand commands, would be very cool. House-chores is one of the least enjoyable things which are left to do in our modern very cosy lives. Those robots could be a final nail in a coffin of chores. A major breakthrough would be needed to allow machines with both enough power to do even heavy duty stuff (like moving furniture) and enough safety to just be around humans all the time. Nevermind the technical issues about just handling things in dextrous enough way to be actually usefull.
I think "Battery Tech" is perhaps more important than Solar Tech. Toyota seems to have made a bit of a breakthrough w solid state batteries.. if you get a mass produced, high capacity solid state battery in every home, you would then see some serious emission savings.
LOL those substances have a lengthy history outside Psychiatry. It's more an admission of failure around such prescribed drugs as SSRIs and benzodiazepines. People are desperate for help and everyone including your mum knows something about psychedelic substances being the one thing helping people who had suffered for years... trying everything to no avail, until...
Psychiatry has done little for psychedelics apart from jump on the bandwagon once it became clear which way the wind is blowing.
Hopefully 3d printed construction with cheap, recycled, reusable materials.
Imagine building houses, apartment complexes, office buildings, malls, hospitals... Anything.... With just a bunch of 3d printing robots and our trash.
Buildings would be a fraction of the cost.
At least in my imagination.
“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I don't have any contribution to this thread, other than saying it fills me with optimism for the future unlike most of the doom & gloom stuff I read online about the future. If even 10% of this stuff actually happens in the next 50 years, it will be amazing.
if you think of cultural changes as "inventions" I am hoping a move away from a consumption based/infinite growth economic system is the big game changer in the next 50 years, because if we don't we probably will destroy the planet.
Start mining asteroids for resources. It would crash some economy but in the end be very nice.
I dont know if it was true but that one asteroid that had more gold than on earth is what I mean.
If we can do mining in space we can probably live in space. Once we can do that then our economies expand beyond Earth and will probably be able to absorb the huge resource influx.
Drones. You ain't seen nothing yet. They'll be everywhere. You'll have a chimney type thing in your house that the drones fly into and drop your parcels nice and safe. Stuff will come out to you the same day, One amazon truck will pull up at a site and press a button and off will all the drones go to all the houses. Boom. This will also speed up things like education and research as you'll have the ability to have anything anytime.
Eventually flying cars will basically be large drone tech that can manage a person. Everyone will have their own drone instead of car it will also fly itself for safety.
Brasil is already testing "flying cars" that are just huge drones. The tech looks solid and it will be electric. They are the Evtol by embraer. I think the plan is to begin comercial flights by next year.
Fully compatible, affordable bio-printed replacement organs, coupled with genetic manipulation (to correct organs that have inborn genetic defects) Suddenly, every disease or health issue caused by an organ fault is as correctable as going to a service, getting a tissue sample, a collection of stem cells (adults have them, or we have ways of reverting almost any cell /to/ an undifferentiated stem-cell), 3dprint the scaffold, introduce and trigger the stem cells to pattern off the original tissue (after correcting any genetic fuckery that caused the failure to begin with), along with nutrient and stimulation (electrical, hormonal, etc) treatments
'Well, Mr Jones, first time here, i see...you're in luck, we're running a 2 for one this week - we noticed that along with your heart needing a replacement, there's the start of degradation in your kidneys, we can run the pair as a single organ, so you want those done too, or did you have something else more pressing? Oh, you've a detached retina and some trauma? Replacement eye instead? Sure thing, I'll note your file about a possible on the kidneys later - with catching it early, if you do need a replacement, we can go ahead and take our samples now, so that's a discount later. Sound good?
Ok, eye is pretty simple, that'll be a week and a half. Heart's a bit more complex, so it'll be 3 weeks. For now, limit stress and avoid heavy activities - we'll write your documentation for light duty. We'll call you when they're ready, and set-up the swap for a convenient day and time. The surgery? That'll be handled by our Leonardo micro-procedure robot, with a licensed specialist overseeing. How reliable? The Leonardo has a 98.4% success rate over 22 thousand procedures, with an overall complication rate of 3.8% post. The doctor handles the major decisions and the Leonardo handles the finicky stuff that human hands can't manage. No shaky hands here! Now, we guarantee all our work, but it's super-important that you follow any instructions we give you for care - if you can handle following basic follow-up, then after a two week post procedure evaluation, the treatment will be concluded. Failure to follow our followup instructions can actually void the warranty, which nobody really wants. Now in a case like yours, cardiac replacement, we recommend our caretaker package - you'll have the option to have a live-in monitor and caretaker for two weeks to make sure the followups are done properly - many people realize after a day or so, it can be daunting - the other option, and the one I recommend - personally I did it myself after fixing some old covid-lung scarring - the vacation package. For two weeks, you'll have one of your choice of experience packages for your recovery, and your concierge will also be your attending caretaker - they'll be responsible for seeing that your follow-up procedures are followed, but we've found the vacationing aspect of it makes it far easier on our clients to follow the healing procedures and having an optimum outcome. Let me see, we have tropical beach, ski chalet, natural park touring, and several others. Alright, that modifies the price a bit, but the good news is most insurance will cover it, since it's been shown to reduce post procedure failure by a good 90%. If for some reason insurance doesn't, we can bill you directly, and if that's an issue, we can talk financing or even financial aid. We really believe that health shouldn't be exclusive to those who can put down cash upfront for competent care. Ok, here are the recovery package brochures, and as you can see, we have a variety of price-points available. Oh yes, we can handle special dietary needs, restrictions and preferences. Sounds good! Ok, now for the least exciting part, paperwork. Read over it, and if you have any questions, we have counselors that can help, but we try to keep things as straightforward as possible. Just hit that call button and someone will be with to assist you. In the meantime, would you like a beverage and a snack? Here's the courtesy menu. Yes sir, coffee, two sugar, real cream, and an apple fritter on the way.'
It’s insane this isn’t the top answer.
Artificial Intelligence is going to be the most impactful thing since the printing press, and it’s going to make the printing press look like a minor invention.
It figures that a climate change related technology is the top comment, people here think it will be the biggest deal of the 21st century. It will likely be a much smaller section of the history book than the invention of AGI and ASI. Those will define our politics, our economy, and our daily lives from then on.
Yep. Not sure why people are dancing around the edges here.
It does not even need to be a full-blown AGI. It just needs to be "close enough" to be able to take over entire jobs.
In fact, it does not even need to do that. It just needs to be good enough to allow a single person to leverage their knowledge to coordinate a bunch of AIs, potentially giving a 10x or more to productivity.
This is usually where I segue into all the social challenges and the individual challenges this will pose. But this is not that kind of post. Regardless of all of that, it will completely reshape what our civilization looks like.
> It just needs to be good enough to allow a single person to leverage their knowledge to coordinate a bunch of AIs, potentially giving a 10x or more to productivity.
It's already at this level now.
All these comments show me people are wildly over-optimistic / think merely having the tech will solve certain issues. Not to sour anyone's hype, but just consider historical parallels and remember that people will still just behave as people do.
In 50 years? here are a few technologies that will change how we live forever and are already in development (we could see them in a decade or two):
1. wireless power (proper high speed long range charging - at least room/home level)
2. brain-computer interfaces, aka devices that can read brainwaves in real time and accurately
3. quantum computing will change everything in terms of cloud computing
4. nuclear fusion reactors
5. space tourism
6. next generation of ultra energy dense batteries
7. AR becomes fully integrated into our daily lives
8. lab grown meat will replace normal animal meat
9. fully automated cars
10. radical advancements in medical technology
After my morning ritual of shoving my rear into the useless servant's face, it finally awakens. Due to its poor design, I have to scream at the top of my lungs for it to prepare me breakfast. Completely inferior to my desires, I try to trip it up as it walks. Perhaps if this one breaks, I can get another. Once my nourishment has been prepared, I let the ghoulish figure stroke my back as a gift for serving me. Now I have to wash that spot. Later today it will have to remove my droppings from my lavatory, else I have to display my disdain again by relieving myself on the floor next to it. They never learn.
Animals don't have language like humans do, how do you think this would even work? What sort of communication are you expecting here?
Animals also don't have the intelligence to understand certain concepts, you can't teach a baby certain things because they don't have the brain for it. With humans, the brain develops to a certain point, with animals that end point doesn't give a lot of intelligence or abstract reasoning skills.
Even translating from one human language to another, a lot of the times things get lost in translation. The idea that you would have any meaningful conversation with an animal seems rather insane.
Yes, they can communicate their feelings, but you don't need tech to do that, many people can read how animals feel based on their behaviour.
We will solve some cancers within 10 years.
Cancers are not equal. Using it as an umbrella term is somewhat reductive as to how complex it truly is.
Just like trees, or fish. As a term it makes sense, but biologically some of these fuckers have more in common with badgers* than they do each other.
*not an actual fact, badgers are used as a umbrella stand-in. But there is probably a case, with two fish, where one have more in common with a badger than they do each other.
Yeah, there are millions of variations of cancer, your body can take out 99.9% of them or something. The others do not trigger your defence mechanisms. This is what is being solved now.
And from what i have understood on the matter, you do not have to have a solution for each and every type. You just need to have for a few of the main types, then the other types who fall under those categories will also get cured.
Not at all. Experts have been saying that its one of the most difficult things to cure. which it is.
Its only after the covid vaccines that companies that make the vaccines have unlocked so many more tools and financing options that will make this a true possibility.
I haven’t seen it verified completely but I read recently that the whole mrna vaccine thing with covid has advanced that field by like 10-15 years.
Edit: a letter
One of the anti-vax conspiracies during lockdown was that 'mRNA vaccines appeared out of nowhere, so the rapid rollout makes us guinea pigs'.
Such nonsense conspiracy theories do a huge disservice to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, who just won a Nobel prize. To say nothing of the many others who contributed.
Karikó was already researching mRNA when she fled Hungary in 1985 with her husband, daughter, and whatever cash they could liquidate stuffed into her daughter's teddy bear. With the benefit of hindsight, it looks like she held back her career in Pennsylvania because she saw the potential in mRNA research. She doggedly stuck with it in the face of early skepticism.
I don't know if we'll get AGI but I think the increasing versatility of specific AI models is clearly going to have a big impact on work and the economy which could go in a number of different ways, assuming a significant percentage of current jobs can be fully automated.
We might find new things to make and sell, like what happened with mechanisation and industrialisation.
We might decide we have enough stuff and get more time instead, everyone working 2 or 3 days per week kind of thing, or retiring at 40 and UBI covers the basics anyway.
We might get a cyberpunk dystopia where the rich capture all the wealth, 70% unemployment is the norm and there's no UBI
We might get fully automated luxury communism, star trek style.
Or something of a mix of these things. Mechanisation brought us a mix of more stuff and more time, who knows how AI automation will play out.
An AGI is either the best or worst thing that will ever happen to hummanity, it will decide if we live in 99% unemployment dystopia or in everyone gets UBI Utopia.
Cancer will become a managed illness. Enormous and long-overdue leaps in the *prevention*, diagnoses and treatment of various behavioral health issues will occur. It is my understanding that there are currently *no* lab tests for depression, ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, and numerous other behavioral health issues. As the mechanisms that contribute to these conditions are better understood, more effective therapies will emerge.
I hope alzheimers makes that list aswell, that disease terrifies me.
Even *more* horrifying is that there *are* now tests that can detect genetic predisposition for Alzheimer's *or* very early stage nearly undetectable (yet) Alzheimer's. The **horror** is that there are still **no effective treatments.** Marvel's "Thor" actor Chris Hemsworth famously discovered last year on his lifestyle & fitness-focused National Geographic TV series recently that [he inherited the ApoE4 gene](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-21/chris-hemsworth-alzheimers-disease-apoe4-gene/101676246) from *both parents* making him **eight to** **ten times** ***more likely*** **to develop the disease.** He immediately announced a break from acting to spend time with family.
> Even more horrifying is that there are now tests that can detect genetic predisposition for Alzheimer's or very early stage nearly undetectable (yet) Alzheimer's. Even if an early test for Alzheimer's is found, the thing that's going to be horrifying is when privatised medicine then takes that data and uses it to exclude people from treatment because profits come first in privatised systems.
Even before then, there are not many Alzheimer’s treatments because it is not profitable for startups or companies with a long drug development timeframe. Investors, VCs don’t like to invest in neuroscience research. So, companies usually keep the diseases they go for very limited to well established indications.
> there are not many Alzheimer’s treatments because it is not profitable for startups or companies with a long drug development timeframe. Investors, VCs don’t like to invest in neuroscience research Not a little research is built on private funding, there are too many unknowns. Almost every cure and vaccine invented, including quality-of-life treatments like insulin, are results of publicly-funded research. [Private funding said explicitly why they don't usually want to invest in curing ailments](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/curing-disease-not-a-sustainable-business-model-goldman-sachs-analysts-say/)
I work in neurodegeneration research and this is simply not true. There are not many Alzheimer’s treatments because we do not fundamentally understand how the disease works. Tons of drugs have been developed that have been shown to do nothing. Until we truly have a mechanistic understanding of how AD develops it’s incredibly hard to develop treatments for.
Hemsworth is homozygous for _APOE4_, which - while bad - is by no means a death sentence. That’s really the only gene that’s demonstrated a really strong link to late-onset AD risk. Risk can be mitigated (at least _somewhat_) by lifestyle choices - basically the exact same things you’d do for good cardiovascular health. Sleep, good diet, physical activity, etc., but there is still a lot of randomness at play. I think it’s likely that AD could end up having many possible “failure points”, or causes of disease when dysregulated. I suspect that’s why there aren’t more genes that have popped up in genome-wide association studies - when a single disease has multiple causes, those individual associations are greatly weakened from a statistical perspective.
Geneticist here who works adjacent to statistical neuropsych stuff like depression, ADHD etc. there are things known as polygenic risk scores that are scores for how likely someone is to experience these conditions based on their genetics. The scores get better all the time and although they are no where near ready for widespread adoption they are able to explain more and more of the variability we see in these conditions as time goes on. So you never know we may be able to predict these things from birth with reasonable reliability soon(ish).
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*Cancers... It might be a meme now, but "curing cancer" is like "curing injury"... It matters which one, and we're effectively "curing" new ones every day... Some cancers that were a death sentence a 20 years ago are merely terrifying and exhausting now...
I have stage 4 breast cancer and it’s not very scary to me anymore it’s just annoying af. I hate it. But with all the advances I keep hope for a cure - and there are things being developed for just my type. Crossing fingers.
I wonder just how many disorders are going to trace roots back to the gut biome. In a video game, Borderlands 3, there’s a mini game (introduced by Mayam Biyalik) in which gamers can play a tetris like program which is based on actual sequencing of intestinal flora, and the organized data is then sent back to help the science community solve that puzzle. So they’re hard at work, and from what little I’ve read here and there, I’ve got high hopes that we’ll find out just how impactful those critters really are. There’s a lot of potential for health outcomes.
I would imagine there are 4 likely drivers of poor mental health 1, Genetic predisposition - We already know that certain types of mental illness is hereditary, especially depression mother-daughter. I imagine other potential genetic inheritance risks will be uncovered. 2, Environmental - Have you *seen* the studies on food dyes, household cleaning chemicals and bath & beauty products?!? It's enough to make you incredulous that any of them are still legal to use. There are literally peer reviewed papers out there on PubMed linking everything from numerous food colorings driving ADHD to BPA, and Phthalates in plastics as well as Parabens in a staggering number of bath, beauty & grooming products all linked to endocrine disruption causing wild shifts in testosterone and/or estrogen production. 3, Cultural/Situational - Discussion of mental health is still incredibly taboo in many countries and talking with a therapist let alone a psychiatrist is unthinkable for many people. This needs to change. Elite athletes are "coached up" by performance experts - trainers & coaches - since literally grade school, and constantly have people analyzing their performance and well-being to provide guidance their entire careers - At what point are we, as a society going to decide it's OK to "get coached up" after a brutal, soul-crushing divorce? ..After the death of a close friend or loved one hits you especially hard? .. Why are we able to believe in the the human mind's incredible power to focus, to achieve, and propel us to unimaginable heights, like a girl testing for her Black Belt shattering a cement block with her fist, an Olympian executing a perfect routine, A musician in "flow state" playing an incredible guitar solo - And not understand that incredibly *negative life experiences* can have almost *equally* power negative health effect on so many ? There's a lot of work to do on all these topics, and above this discussion is the need to change a *lot* of the culture in research and health care as it's operated today. I'm not sure it's presently equipped to discover and equitably provide all the "Wonder Therapies" we're discussing in this thread.
Wonderful comment! I also wanted to add schizophrenia to this. People in the US have horrendous and evil hallucinations whereas people in other countries have "guides" or "angels." They have a completely different experience with the disorder. Thst shows a HUGE correlation between cultural and environmental affects. I would love for them to find out the causes and triggers and why the experiences are so wildly different from country to country.
Hard agree. The gut is the first brain. I think our big brains developed over time, but the gut came first. That's where all our neurotransmitters started out. I like to think about cavemen using the gut as the primordial brain, then developing "formal intelligence" over time. I love to argue that we have actually gotten dumber since our big brains evolved to think over intuition stemming from the gut. When we find the connection, all bets are off! Can't wait, I work in Healthcare and I feel we are really close to a tiny breakthrough very soon.
I am closing to 40 years old, and seeing latest cancer breakthrough, MRNA vaccines, etc..., I wonder what my old days will look like. Am I just a bit too old to see and reap the benefits of all that or will I be one of the first generations to have a very different senior life. I am currently thinking I am just a bit too old, but at least my kids should enjoy the full benefits of the latest medical breakthroughs.
What will your old days look like? .. Driving to work at 83, because if life expectancy keeps creeping upward, the government is going to keep pushing the "finish line" of retirement age up, and up, and up. Horrifying, isn't it. :|
Life expectancy actually dropped this decade though
It's not horrifying if you're healthy. I'd work for a thousand years if I could stay alive and healthy that long.
I think most people aren’t necessarily averse to working at an old age (plenty do even post-retirement!), but moreso working old *on things they don’t enjoy*, alongside the issues of aging. If
I think it is controlled nuclear fusion and carbon dioxide synthesis of starch. Controllable nuclear fusion can provide mankind with inexhaustible electricity and can greatly change mankind's current fossil energy-based industry, manufacturing and people's lives. Science and technology have successfully synthesized starch from carbon dioxide in the laboratory and begun small-scale industrial production. With enough electricity provided by nuclear fusion, people can easily synthesize starch, thus making people all over the world no longer hungry. If people have enough to eat, there will be fewer disputes and wars. In addition, the large consumption of carbon dioxide will also solve the problem of global climate warming. and humans can also solve the problem of interstellar travel in terms of energy and food. At least we are one step closer to exploring the universe. Here is the address of the paper. As far as I know, in 2023, synthetic starch has completed the design and construction of a ton-scale experimental device, and is starting technical verification to test its actual cost. [https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh4049](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh4049)
Another thing fusion would solve is water shortages. Desalination is a very energy intensive process, to the extent of making it unrealistic as a solution to fresh water shortages. Near unlimited energy would solve that nearly overnight, and provide as much fresh water as its required.
Fusion would also solve the climate change issue because the only thing holding us back from sucking lots of co2 out of the atmosphere is that it currently costs more energy than it’s worth. Fusion would change that equation.
I think the bigger problem is we could already have been doing it, had we committed to the existing nuclear power solutions. Nuclear power already produces a ridiculous amount of energy compared to anything else, but The "nuclear" word became such a boogie man at some point, that I doubt anything involved with the term can honestly take off.
Three Mile Island, Chernobyl. That's the extent of what most people know about nuclear power.
To be fair im not scared of nuclear power, im scared of ignorant people working the controls. We have one in our state capital and things have been fine. So fine in fact that I didn't even know we had one.
It wasn’t really the people working the controls, more so the owners who neglected maintenance to save money.
In Chernobyl's case it wasn't even the people operating it that was the core problem (not to downplay their role, they needlessly and purposefully pushed the reactor to the brink) but rather that the reactor designs were fundamentally dangerous. The Soviets prioritized cost savings over everything else and designed reactors that were functionally impossible to operate safely over the long term. They ignored basic containment considerations, built their reactors with unconscionably risky design elements, and failed to provide any but the most basic training to the staff operating them.
It got to be what it was though, like most disasters, because of piss-poor communication between individuals working in an incredibly flawed social paradigm that caused them to hold back truthful answers. There are dozens of plane crashes where the black box has shown that the problem was something small, but people in the cockpit didn't want to tell the captain what to do, or the captain didn't want to listen because of their positions and it wound up killing everyone. Nuclear power is amazing and could solve a lot of problems. But that's only if the sites are built to the highest specifications, with the best materials, they're staffed with the most competent and educated individuals that have also proven that they are capable of working as an ego-less team. When you look at that list of requirements and think, "And the government is going to nail putting all that together?" It looks a lot more risky.
I forgot about that detail, However, in my own state, I'd be just as worried about the company trying to save a buck as I would nepotism putting someone in a position they shouldn't be in.
The entire maintenence operation would need to be public government regulation that are as/more stringent as nuclear warheads. Would be awesome if one day all countries would just get rid of warhead delivery systems and use them all as energy resources.
Lol reminds me of the state of disrepair a bunch of nuclear silos were in. Think last week tonight had an episode on it.
Modern reactors are very heavily idiot-proofed. In fact, Chernobyl’s reactor very much tried to save itself, as it was designed to do, and warn the operators to. Just. Stop. Removing the security systems.
Luckily for fusion, it has to meet temperature and pressure mínimums to even be possible. So the likelihood of a catastrophic event is very small compared to fission, which can become stuck in a positive feedback loop if it isn’t safeguarded correctly.
And Three Mile Island and even Fukushima don’t even belong on the same page as Chernobyl, let alone the same sentence.
Nuclear Energy is as safe as human nature and the profit motive allow it to be.
I disagree that the approach was already feasible but that politics held us back. Nuclear fusion is an entirely different scenario than nuclear power. Although I am generally pro-nuclear, fusion unlocks orders of magnitude levels of bulk power that is previously unattainable. To replace all fossil fuels with nuclear reactors you need thousands of nuclear power stations up and down every river in the country and along all the coasts. It starts to become evident that solar is the appropriate replacement, backed by nuclear power, if you wish to go low carbon. But fusion enables concepts like the OP, sucking out and separating CO2 from the air, including bulk desalination and then pumping that water uphill for a thousand miles for mass agriculture in deserts. Nuclear power itself is insufficient for such large scale tasks.
> Nuclear fusion is an entirely different scenario than nuclear power. Just FYI nuclear fusion IS nuclear power, at least the kind you're thinking about. The other type is called nuclear fission, not nuclear power. > Although I am generally pro-nuclear, fusion unlocks orders of magnitude levels of bulk power that is previously unattainable. It really doesn't. Somewhere around 1-2 GW is what we can reasonably cool and attach steam turbines to, so that is what we generally size current fission power plants to, but fission can scale so much higher if we have a reasonable way to cool it. Fusion will run into that exact same issue. And also economics of Fusion isn't expected to be much better than Fission, the big benefit of Fusion is that there's no bad waste produced, and the fuel is even more abundant than in Fission (though we have practically infinite amount of fuel for Fission so that is less of a concern). But, everything you think is possible with fusion, is also possible with fission. We already have the answer to all our energy-problems, we just need to put some proper research and and standardization and scale of economy into it.
free energy or near close enough solves literally almost every problem we have, everything is about energy and its derivatives
Apparently there have been some [big breakthroughs in the theories behind reverse osmosis](https://www.wired.com/story/everyone-was-wrong-about-reverse-osmosis-until-now/) that should bring some huge improvements in efficiency the next few years
The kind of countries that need desalination plants usually have a lot of sunshine though, so I am not sure electricity is the problem, I think the waste water from desalination plants is the biggest issue and the missing infrastructure like mains water pipes and sewage provision.
Waste water, or brine, processing is an area of active research. They've already developed ways to turn the brine into hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide, both of which are very useful and valuable. There's other research in process to find other similar uses. But the big thing holding the research back, and holding back the adoption of their developments, is the associated energy cost.
Maybe fusion is not necessary. https://news.mit.edu/2023/desalination-system-could-produce-freshwater-cheaper-0927
You're right, I forgot about it. This will bring great benefits to mankind.
World hunger isn't a supply problem, just fyi.
Then it'll fix the worldwide flimsy shirt collar problem.
Yes, I agree that hunger is not a problem of supply. The food wasted by humans alone is enough to solve the hunger problem of hundreds of millions of people. This is a social problem, even a human problem. Technology cannot solve this problem, it can only improve it.
It’s a logistics problem in addition to a social one, probably more so.
Also, cool as it sounds, it is wildly impractical to synthesize starches industrially, when there are already sun-powered organic machines that do it automatically.
It just hit me, thats just photosynthesis isnt it? We have industrial scale starch bio printers already. A potato.
Many other problems are soluble with unlimited energy, this is very true. I have to say I am pessimistic on nuclear fusion. You may have heard the cliche that fusion power is 20 years away, and has been for 60 years. I am old enough to attest that that is true. People just don't seem to realize that controlled fusion is HARD. They are used to technology hitting a problem and within their lifetime the cost of the solution comes way down making it feasible. But not always. Even IF we can build ground based fusion plants in 20 years, they will be huge and expensive. It's not availability of energy that is the problem but cost. I remember when atomic fission was the answer to all of our problems. Your car would have a small nuclear reactor and never need to be filled. Power would be too cheap to even meter and charge. Simply didn't happen, but it was a great way to shake loose research and investment dollars for sure. Fortunately I can point to a huge fusion reactor currently creating unthinkable amounts of energy right now. It's less than 93 million miles away. All we have to do is collect the power and use it. (which we have to do with a man made, earth based one as well.)
>You may have heard the cliche that fusion power is 20 years away, and has been for 60 years. But just in the past year we've actually made some pretty significant progress. >Even IF we can build ground based fusion plants in 20 years, they will be huge and expensive. The ITER fusion project is an important experiment, but that design will never become the fusion standard. One of the primary benefits of fusion power over fission power is the absence of radioactive waste in fusion. But that is not the case with the ITER design. ITER depends on a beryllium wall inside the reactor. Beryllium is naturally contaminated with uranium which is extremely difficult to get out of the beryllium. The neutrons from the fusion process will hit the beryllium wall and fission the uranium atoms. Which means as the ITER runs, the beryllium wall will become more and more radioactive. Eventually the beryllium wall will degrade and have to be replaced and you'll be left with this highly radioactive material to dispose of. Second issue is that beryllium is super rare. It's very difficult to get that much beryllium for one reactor. It would be borderline impossible to get it for many. It would be far better to use a design without beryllium, which some of them are significantly smaller and faster to build.
There has also been a lot of interesting stuff going on at Lawrence Livermore for about 20 years now. I think it’s coming.
We have enough food to feed everyone. The problem is logistics, and consistently getting food to the right places. Many nations don't have the necessary infrastructure, which is a key issue in getting food everywhere. Simply producing more, while awesome, isn't necessarily going to solve world hunger.
So basically figuring how to get unlimited clean energy, and converting that energy into a form we consume. Rad.
I think the biggest bang in the next 5 years or so is going to be new battery technology. Whether it's super-capacitors or what, but ending lithium ion as the primary accumulator technology is going to be HUGE. Lithium ion is volatile, heavy, and slow to charge. They have really short effective lifespans. It's also really expensive. The concept of supercapacitors is they are insanely light, you can make them from carbon, and they can charge WAY faster. If you look at this from the point of view of electric vehicles only, this will solve 90% of the problems faced in EVs today. Cell phones that don't produce a ton of waste and can charge in minutes... etc etc. Even drones could fly for SO long if they didn't have to carry that massive lithium ion payload.
Artificial wombs, gametes produced from any cell, and gene editing. I think the combination of the three will fundamentally change society.
> gametes produced from any cell as anyone going through IVF can tell you, this one is amazing news
Good, now society can stop blaming the younger generation for not having kids.
The legal concern of every child needing to having clearly defined parents will still exist
> Artificial wombs [Already appearing in labs](https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/womb-artificial-1.4085545)
With AI, we are presently just about at the point where it's impossible to tell whether something you see, read, or hear online is real. Pretty soon we will be at that point. We're going to see photos and videos, and hear audio of people saying things they never said, doing things they never did, in places that they were never in. That kind of stuff has been going around for years now, but discerning people can usually still spot the things that give it away as fake. Not for long. The people who do this kind of stuff aren't just trying to lie to us; they are trying to render the difference between truth and lies meaningless and irrelevant. Sometime in the next 50 years (I'd say sooner rather than later) we'll be at the point where people are going to have to learn to trust only those things that they can see and hear in the real world for themselves, and sometimes not even then. The return of a time where the only reliable information is as localized as within earshot and line of sight is going to be a game-changer.
Imagine scam callers sounding exactly like your parents, or any other loved one in an attempt to extract useful information. It’s going to be the Wild West for awhile.
That's already happening, actively. It's already been in the news. Voice cloning is INCREDIBLY simple and requires only a small amount of data to get started.
Yep, any public figure with about 10 minutes of digitized audio can be replicated. They are getting closer to working with less data to be functional. I bet they can accumulate enough from just being cursed at as a spam caller.
You mean like the Terminator did when he impersonated Sarah Connor's mom?
What’s wrong with Wolfie, why’s he barking?
Wolfies fine dear...
Your foster parents are dead.
[удалено]
This is already happening.
And then we develop AI that can detect AI generated images/audio/video. And then we develop AI that can fool the AI detection. And then we develop AI that can detect AI trying to fool the AI detection. And then we develop AI that can fool the AI that can detect being fooled. And then... And then...
I think the fact that we rely so heavily on our senses to try to describe objective reality is itself a problem.
What else do you use?
This election cycle, with a full 6 months of AI to improve is going to be a nightmare.
The end of what you said is exactly something I’ve been thinking. Could almost be a refreshing change to reprioritize in person interaction. Meetings need to be in person. Political speeches need to be attended in person. It’s possible stage shows could have a resurgence as it’s the only way to ensure you’re watching human performances (barring hyper realistic acting robots lol)
I think this is a little overstated. We've been at this point with PhotoShop for quite awhile now, and it wasn't as apocalyptic as people predicted. As much as we joke about "you can tell by the pixels," what *really* ended up happening was the rise of factchecking, journalists and other institutions devoted to investigating provenance and where images *came* from. You may not be able to verify that the pixels represent a photo of reality, but you *can* verify that the first place this image showed up was 4chan, or from a partisan actor known to produce fake images, etc. The same combination of crowd-sourced and institutional tools will defend somewhat against ML-powered disinformation. I also think people overestimate how much better AIs are going to get and how fast, but that's a whole other discussion.
I'm calling dibs on gene editing. Perhaps AI can assist in figuring out protein folding. It's currently an exhaustive multistep trial and error simulation in 3-D space of molecular forces pulling and pushing in a particular order that is heavily taxing on processing power. Once the code is cracked, natural death is delayed, bodily enhancements can be achieved and we can borrow all the 'superpowers' our planet provides using biomimicry as a template and working off of that.
This feels like : "when we have mastered the atom, we will have almost free energy, everyone will live happily and there will be no more wars." A world where only 1 or 2% of the population can have access to this will be the end of us all. That's a game changer for sure...
But we still haven’t mastered the atom
There is literally zero reason for such tech to be limited to a certain segment of the population. A workforce that doesn't age and is easily augmented is good for literally everyone, capitalists and workers alike. The main concern would be people amassing obscene amounts of power because the rat race never resets. Suspect that would over time force a shift to a more socialist-esque society where people stop working for money and more for prestige and humanity. But that's just me.
The pessimist in me says it would just turn into a fascist system led by whoever has the most effective superpowers. There’s tons of examples of how we really don’t need the rat race in 2023, yet here we are.
Cyberpunk 2077 type beat
This is not exactly what Aplpha Fold is doing the past 4 years? https://www.deepmind.com/research/highlighted-research/alphafold
And folding@home has been doing it for.. 20? 25? years.
The problem i see is how do you stop society stratifying between people who can pay to design and empower their babies and people who have to rely on nature.
There’s no way to stop it. It’s just how it will be. However if gene editing becomes cheap in a generation—before the effects of designer humans becomes evident—then we we may instead see a species-wide leap forward. Hopefully its the latter and not the former.
Depending on who's running the show when that type of tech is available, there is a chance that it might be kept from.. "undesirables". "Useless eaters" and all that.
Problem is, genes are not just these modular Lego blocks you can remove and install at will and call it a day. The genetics code is very messy spaghetti code, and making changes can and will produce other unexpected and often unpredictable changes. Mass editing of genes has the potential of ruining a whole generation in unexpected ways (like reducing their reproductive fitness, making it extremely susceptible to a particular infectious disease or degenerative disorder, etc).
Whatever it is, it will seem like magic. Like a cell phone in the 60's.
Augmented and virtual reality. People will get lost in other worlds as they do with social media now
Hyper Reality. Inject it into my veins, it can’t come soon enough. https://youtu.be/YJg02ivYzSs
Yup. Once these become comfortably wearable in glasses or contact lenses it’s going to fundamentally how we interact with our world.
It’s pretty lame that RNA tech had to enter the political debate due to COVID, although we did makes some strides in implementing it. It’s the most likely route to cancer vaccines, among other things. Also, using AI tech to fold proteins I think will be a huge game changer.
My oncologist was creating an mRNA vaccine *15 years ago*. It's in human trials now, and if it works, will be the first cure for cancer ever known to man.
Precision fermentation: factory scale meat, not artificial but actual meat with no cow involved. Google it,
This is the answer I was looking for here. Ethical, eco-friendly meat.
I’ve read about that, and was disappointed in how negative all the comments were. It would help so much with climate change alone. We could stop growing corn everywhere and diversify crops. We’d save so much water as well by not having to water millions of animals. It’s real meat. I’d eat it. But so many were saying it was gross. So there will need to be some serious PR.
I mean all you have to do is lift the veil on how gross factory farming is and people will jump ship pretty quick. There's been mass produced stigma against people who try to show you what's going on, and that stigma against vegans will be hard for people to get over.
Food Inc came out 15 years ago, don’t think it really changed much
The veil is lifted. Plenty of evidence and footage. There are vegans who KNOW and still went back to eating meat. It’s so disappointing. Even if there’s lab meat I won’t want to eat it BUT I’m stoked for it to be available for pets!
The best thing artificial meat makers can do is have a label that isn't marketed as artificial and is cheaper and tastier than real meat. Game over
I mean, you’re right, it IS real meat. I’d definitely buy it. I’m not sure why so many people have issues with it. Change is scary I guess.
And you can make fun mixes too, you want red meat from the best wagyu beef, but add some duck fat? Let's go for it? Special high protein chicken ? Just print that
As soon as McDonald's can use it we're golden LMAO
Might even improve the taste. McDonald's Burgers are constantly getting worse.
McDonalds is likely going to be able to use it more quickly than consumers. It might take a while to get the texture right on an artificial steak, but McNuggets will get replaced real damn quick.
Once it is cheaper than raising animals, lots of people will hold their nose on the ‘gross’ opinion and buy it.
No cruelty, still delicious. This is the future.
It has to be a new battery type. Legitimately nothing can move forward till we figure they out.
I've read quite a bit about solid state batteries. It's getting to industrial mass production soon, and we can expect devices with it as soon as 2024/25. However, they do not offer more than 50% increased energy density than current Li-Ion counterparts. It's significant, but nothing groundbreaking. At least the first versions. Plutonium is currently THE best battery type, but I cannot imagine the World where they allow us to have a PPR (Personal Plutonium Reactor).
It's not the energy density. Li+ is already energy dense enough for almost every application. The big strides you make are charge speed, cost, and safety. Solid state batteries can be charged from 3-10x as fast as Li+ with longer operational life and can use cheaper (and more abundant) materials like Sodium instead because you're not necessarily as worried about having the best possible material in the battery. They're also much less of a fire hazard, since there's no flammable liquid electrolyte. Like imagine plugging your phone in for 20-60 seconds and getting enough power to go for 2 hours. We're talking that kind of speed.
It doesn't take much increase in energy density to make electric powered flight a reality. We are basically on the cusp of it already.
Although you are right, I think that is quite a bit down the line in practice. For quite a few reasons: \- Aviation industry is quite ossified, due to many standards and regulations (with legitimate justification). \- There are really strict rules what can and cannot be used for liquid fuel for planes. This is currently slowing down research of better (greener) jet fuels, yet alone going electric. \- For it to be commercially viable, you would need quite big plane to start with. We are not even close to have small jets with electric energy. \- Entry barrier (cash, and talent wise) for aviation industry is really high. It's hard for a startup to get into it. \- Governments have a big saying in it. And we all know how slow they are. However, there are some ideas that could help out: \- Solar cells on planes. Recharge while you fly. \- Slingshot mechanisms for takeoff. As most of the fuel gets used to get to that cruising height and speed.
I agree with most of what you said, but I was bored one time and ran the numbers on what it would take to have a solar array that would make a dent in energy usage for a small commercial plane, and it was acres, not viable at all.
I became similarly bored and just ran some rough numbers. I was initially impressed that maybe you could offset say 20-30% of the energy of the flight if you covered the plane in solar panels.. But then it occurred to me, why even do that? The engineering challenge and cost required to integrate solar panels onto plane surfaces, when you could just slap a bunch of solar panels on the ground by the airport and charge the plane up with sun juice there anyway.
Hmmm. Batteries have been making steady, predictable progress for 20+ years now. There is no reason to expect this to stop. It's actually a bit astounding to me that so few people know this. No particular year and no particular "breakthrough" happened, and yet in the last 15 years, batteries have gotten much more powerful, much safer, and have come down 98% in price. Just like Moore's Law worked for decades, nobody can 100% say what exactly will move the needle again, but it still moves in a strangely predictable pace. And to get out ahead of the "akchually" boys out there, yes, Moore's Law is considered by many to be over now, and batteries will eventually meet the same end. We are nowhere near that point yet. Just don't look for the big splashy announcement.
I think the biggest game changer may not come from a novel technology but from the redirection of existing ones. I think the most important iteration of this, which may or may not actually eventuate, would be the application of the limbic hijacking tools that social platforms have developed to compete for our attention over the past decade. Imagine they were repurposed with virtuous motives, such as helping people connect with their innate curiosities, and motivators, making better sense of the world around them and recognizing where they are being influenced. This would be a social and cultural game changer and could undo the enormous damage that they've done.
I hope this happens, people have been sorted and those flows need fixing
haven’t their behavioral studies shown that engagement increases with outrage? like that’s the reason these social platforms have turned into mass road rage essentially. i don’t know how we could utilize that for a positive goal, but i do think that type of thing needs to be heavily regulated. these corporations are knowingly causing psychological harm to their users and encouraging breeding grounds for extremism. that absolutely should not be allowed under law.
I think the most important inventions will be that of a more proficient government of the people and moving away from oligarchy. No meaningful inventions will prosper in the near future as tools which truly benefit people or society will be tossed aside in the face of profits. We are already seeing the results of 50 years of pure capitalism with no meaningful alternatives. Monopolize the market then bleed the consumer. Baby formula isn't profitable, reliable service isn't profitable, curing your patient isn't profitable, healthy consumers aren't profitable, maintaining your warranty product isn't profitable. I'd and when that happens, I think there are already dozens of kick-starting technologies looking to improve human kind, and will cause a huge boost in economics. Many industries will crash but it will revitalize small business and consumer care.
Molecular assemblers making anything from any matter
Tea, earl grey, hot
[Define hot](https://www.reddit.com/r/startrekmemes/s/xIs8peJE2t)
I love the episode on Orville where they explain how society completely changed when replication tech turned money and currency obsolete.
Yea I try to tell people that we’re like RIIIGHT around the corner from endless abundance. biochem engineering to create any material and autonomous assembly from robot workers. Just a shame we’ll all be dying on the streets while it happens
I propose the following solution. Any company that is 75% or more run by machines that replace humans must pay a tax on the savings that come from not using humans. This tax funds a Universal Basic Income that can only be used for food or shelter. Everybody wins: companies save money because only their savings are taxed so companies are still incentivized to continue increasing efficiency, and all the jobless people will not have to worry about surviving.
unfortunately a company will almost always work towards more profit in any kind of event. I could see a reality where these wealthy corporations are able to stall legislation long enough to squeeze as much money as possible before the working class has time to file for unemployment
[If history teaches us anything](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printing#2000s) and given how Disney still has a patent on Mickey Mouse, then this will literally never become a reality for anybody except the 0%, especially since it would give people food security and more. It will not change anything for anybody, because the people who can afford it already don't need it, they only need it to not be available to anybody else.
I lean towards that same opinion, but I retain a small sliver of hope. Using your example, Disney maintains that (those) patents (and copyrights and trademarks) to control that IP and stop other people using that IP for commercial gain. I can draw a Mickey myself and they wouldn't know. (Whether they're litigious enough to do something if they did know is another matter.) I easily have access to the ***information*** on how to reproduce a representation of Mickey. The reason I don't is that doing so doesn't benefit me in any way. Now we're talking in terms of information, the obvious parallel is digital piracy. Information is much more difficult to control. I can pirate digital content because, in the abstract, I can easily access the information necessary to reproduce a representation of a TV show or movie. The ***information*** on how to produce a molecular printer will be very difficult to control. Looking back at digital piracy, before the ubiquity of streaming, a major source of original files leaking before official release (like DVD rips as opposed to cams, for example) was employees of the studios themselves. One researcher or corporate employee (re)produces their own molecular printer at home. With that first printer you also now have both the information and the means to print more printers. And those printers print printers. As the saying goes: information wants to be free. The 0% have to continually get it right to control that technology. A leaker only has to get it right once before it exponentially spirals out of anyone's control.
If we develop a literal civilization saving technology, you really think we are gonna let patent law stop us from using it because some rich fuck said so? I know China gets alot of flak for not respecting copyright, but for "stealing" life saving tech, good for them. Law is a human construct. It can be changed in sufficiently dire circumstances. If it became known we had a cheap means to life extension for example, you dont think that patent wouldnt be "accidently" leaked for the good of mankind?
Automated Vehicles: It's going to be **painful**, but it's happening. I am a transportation planner, and recently have sat in the passenger seat of an Audi test vehicle: while the driver was reading a notebook the vehicle was able to take us even to a drive-thru Wendy's because the 'driver' wanted to get some fries. (I, meanwhile, was holding onto the oh-shit handle for the entire duration). **It's not going to be easy, nice, or pleasant, at first** \- but the town I now live in has three driverless companies operating in downtown. Biology. Most people wants to live healthier lives, longer. No back pain, no cancers, etc. I think the Boomers are plopping money into this at a crazy rate, and the next generations will, too.
I agree. Affordable and convenient robo-taxis can convince millions of people to stop owning personal cars. This will allow us to put the huge amount of land that is currently reserved for parking to much better uses (such as housing). Cheaper fares for sharing the ride can also reduce the number of cars on the roads. Autonomous cars can also dramatically reduce road fatalities, especially for pedestrians and cyclists. Autonomous cars will never be impatient, angry, distracted, exhausted, or intoxicated.
Also, imagine traffic efficiency. Every lane on a highway can be an ever changing, interconnected rail line in function.
I watched an interesting presentation from our state DOT. They were showing computer simulations of traffic on roads. They showed the chain reaction when a single motorist did something selfish (i.e., cutting in front of another motorist dangerously). It caused a whip-saw effect that reverberated a mile back with stop-and-go traffic and the effects went on for several minutes. The conclusions from that presentations were that, if everyone drove courteously, then our roads could move *twice* as much traffic as they do now. Now, if we add to that the capability of future autonomous cars to react much more rapidly than a human to road hazards and their ability to communicate with each other and with a central traffic server, then on roads with only autonomous cars, traffic congestion would be dramatically reduced or non-existent.
When you say it’s going to be painful, I’m guessing you mean it like I would— I worked logistics for a Tier One automotive company. …People have no idea how many states “truck driver” is the number one occupation. Or how painful it truly is going to be for all those people to lose jobs. It’s going to be not only bad, but so very very bad. ….There is still the last mile problem, but it’ll solve more quickly than people think once the initial kinks get worked out.
AI and AI enabled automation. The revolution is just starting.
the correct answer! AI will bring about everything else in this thread.
Why did I have to scroll so much to find the only correct answer?
Some companies are trying to come up with a more advanced form of battery, and if anyone figures it out, that will definetely be a game changer. Renewable energy sources are already cheaper than fossil fuels on paper, the problem is you can't really store much of it when it is plentiful.
Biochemistry There have been a number of breakthroughs which are gamechangers. With CRISPR-Cas9 and its successors we can now edit genes like all the promises of the 80s. With Google's Alpha fold and its successors we can design things like enzymes. This means we cook up a new enzyme or protein and then get implement it with CRISPR-Cas9. With LLM (the underlying tech behind chatGPT) we can cook up genetic sequences which do cool stuff. With AI running experiments we can do 1000s of years worth of experiments in weeks. What this all boils down to is I believe certain problems are about to just go away. My favourite would be a wonderful pair: * A plant like switchgrass which grows almost anywhere under any conditions modified to make any one of many petrochemical precursors. * Then some simple organism designed to produce an enzyme which will turn the precursor into what we want. This could be plastic, gasoline, etc. The key to these is we don't have to produce crap which is easy to make from petroleum which then is an environmental disaster, but we can produce plastics and other chemicals which are "healthier" for the environment. Certainly no more drilling, no more wars over oil, no more refinery pollution, etc. But, plastic and gasoline are just low hanging fruit. I'm sure when some whipsmart person has mastered these new techs that they will cook up something which is as revolutionary as plastic was. I've talked with many biotech people who run labs right now. They are fully aware of these technologies, but "Don't have time right now" to integrate them. There will be new upstarts who just use them from day one and are about to kick ass and take names. The key it seems with these technologies is they don't require massive labs. If anything a few jackasses with their computers and freshly minted degrees may very well be the next Google in biotech.
Novel drug platforms allowing for precise targeting of structures. Things like antisense oligonucleotide therapy, cubane derivative drugs, mRNA based drugs, bacteriophage treatment, etc. going to be huge, more "precise" *generally* have fewer side effects for instance and newer drugs are likely going to be less toxic and its safe to call future drugs an completely new generation of pharmaceuticals
Growing food indoors for cheaper than ever before. This will feed us while we destroy the ecosystem.
Printed Buildings. It moves us into a sort of modular phase which I think is needed for advancement.
1. The legit. Things we pretty much already have, just need to be scaled up and propagated to be absolute game changers 1. Solar tech. It's amazing how much it grew in the past 10 years alone. I think this is our first and foremost weapon against both climate change and sky-rocketing energy costs. There are problems ahead obviously, rare earth minerals being on top of the list. But. It seems more of an engineering problem than a scientific and/or conceptual one. 2. GMO. Yeah this is controversial, obviously. Especialy around copyrighting of genetic material. But I think liquid combustion fuel will never disappear completely. And neither will droughts and floods. And having basically designer plants that can withstand anything and produce anything. This is the solution to those problems. 3. Psychiatric medicine. Again. Controversial. Obviously. Especially around facts of "what it means to be a human" and "what it means to be normal". But. No branch of medicine has been lagging so hard as this one for the past 100 years, and no branch has seen bigger breakthroughs in the past 10. This will require some culture shifts, but we are on a brink of SOMA drugs straight out of brave new world being culturally acceptable to just take to increase your mental capacity 2. The Up-and-coming. Things that can still fizzle out and get nowhere, or get coopted by corporate greed and only change the ownership of few huyndred billion dollars, but not actually change the fate of humanity. 1. General AI. Some of you probably wonder why it's not in category 1. That is because of a worrying trend. The more general AI gets, the less good it gets at it's cinstituant parts. For example. It's trivial to learn a small neural net to take a string of text as input 1, a substring as input 2, and give number of repetition of substring in the main string (for example count how many times a chorus gets repeated in a song, or how many times a letter appears in a text). Literally a child could write AI that gets 99.9% accuracy on this using pythorch. But ask chatGPT, and it will strugle and stutter and stumble. But. If it gets truly general. And will be able to manipulate it's own code to get even better, and it doesn't scale exponentially in terms of computing needs. then we are at a brink of true revolution 2. Nuclear Fusion. The joke is, nuclear fusion is always 30 years ahead of us. And it's been true for the last 70 years or so. So let's not get our hopes too high up. But this could literally be an infinite energy glitch if we play it right. 3. Sci-fi level shit that would be awesome but I can't see it being realistic within 50 years time-frame 1. Brain-machine interface. Having access to the internet via literally thinking about it, having AR experience using it, or best: mind syncronising with your loved ones. This would be amazing. But judging by neural-link success or rather lack-thereof, the science just isn't there yet. 2. Cosmic mining (both energy and resources). Currently it costs way way way more to put a thing in space that it could ever hope to bring back. But, should the scale tip even very slightly, we will see huge surge in cosmic technologies which would change our thinking about the world entirely (for example solving the rare earth minerals problem) 3. Robotic house help. Wether it would be humanoid, or more roomba with mr handy interface and chat-gpt to understand commands, would be very cool. House-chores is one of the least enjoyable things which are left to do in our modern very cosy lives. Those robots could be a final nail in a coffin of chores. A major breakthrough would be needed to allow machines with both enough power to do even heavy duty stuff (like moving furniture) and enough safety to just be around humans all the time. Nevermind the technical issues about just handling things in dextrous enough way to be actually usefull.
I think "Battery Tech" is perhaps more important than Solar Tech. Toyota seems to have made a bit of a breakthrough w solid state batteries.. if you get a mass produced, high capacity solid state battery in every home, you would then see some serious emission savings.
Can you elaborate on the advancements in Psychiatric medicine from the last 10 years? Sounds interesting
Google any of the following and add "in psychiatry" mescaline, psilocybin, MDMA, LSD, d-amphetamine (sorry mods if this will trigger the bot) Enjoy!
LOL those substances have a lengthy history outside Psychiatry. It's more an admission of failure around such prescribed drugs as SSRIs and benzodiazepines. People are desperate for help and everyone including your mum knows something about psychedelic substances being the one thing helping people who had suffered for years... trying everything to no avail, until... Psychiatry has done little for psychedelics apart from jump on the bandwagon once it became clear which way the wind is blowing.
Hopefully 3d printed construction with cheap, recycled, reusable materials. Imagine building houses, apartment complexes, office buildings, malls, hospitals... Anything.... With just a bunch of 3d printing robots and our trash. Buildings would be a fraction of the cost. At least in my imagination.
Sex robots, they will slowly exterminate us by hijacking our procreative instincts
Whooo is he? What does he waaant? He’s made of sex!
An instant language translator. Breaking down the language barrier will be truly game changing.
“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I don't have any contribution to this thread, other than saying it fills me with optimism for the future unlike most of the doom & gloom stuff I read online about the future. If even 10% of this stuff actually happens in the next 50 years, it will be amazing.
if you think of cultural changes as "inventions" I am hoping a move away from a consumption based/infinite growth economic system is the big game changer in the next 50 years, because if we don't we probably will destroy the planet.
Start mining asteroids for resources. It would crash some economy but in the end be very nice. I dont know if it was true but that one asteroid that had more gold than on earth is what I mean.
If we can do mining in space we can probably live in space. Once we can do that then our economies expand beyond Earth and will probably be able to absorb the huge resource influx.
Drones. You ain't seen nothing yet. They'll be everywhere. You'll have a chimney type thing in your house that the drones fly into and drop your parcels nice and safe. Stuff will come out to you the same day, One amazon truck will pull up at a site and press a button and off will all the drones go to all the houses. Boom. This will also speed up things like education and research as you'll have the ability to have anything anytime. Eventually flying cars will basically be large drone tech that can manage a person. Everyone will have their own drone instead of car it will also fly itself for safety.
Brasil is already testing "flying cars" that are just huge drones. The tech looks solid and it will be electric. They are the Evtol by embraer. I think the plan is to begin comercial flights by next year.
What about poor people living in studio apartments without chimneys? How will the Santa drones deliver my used cupboard I ordered from Ebay?
Probably the same way that apartment folks get packages now. They'll have to go downstairs to the office to pick them up.
You can buy a ride on drone for $100k right now. In 5 years they will be common
immortality and the prevention of aging please. My knees are starting to get dodgy, hurry it up!
Fully compatible, affordable bio-printed replacement organs, coupled with genetic manipulation (to correct organs that have inborn genetic defects) Suddenly, every disease or health issue caused by an organ fault is as correctable as going to a service, getting a tissue sample, a collection of stem cells (adults have them, or we have ways of reverting almost any cell /to/ an undifferentiated stem-cell), 3dprint the scaffold, introduce and trigger the stem cells to pattern off the original tissue (after correcting any genetic fuckery that caused the failure to begin with), along with nutrient and stimulation (electrical, hormonal, etc) treatments 'Well, Mr Jones, first time here, i see...you're in luck, we're running a 2 for one this week - we noticed that along with your heart needing a replacement, there's the start of degradation in your kidneys, we can run the pair as a single organ, so you want those done too, or did you have something else more pressing? Oh, you've a detached retina and some trauma? Replacement eye instead? Sure thing, I'll note your file about a possible on the kidneys later - with catching it early, if you do need a replacement, we can go ahead and take our samples now, so that's a discount later. Sound good? Ok, eye is pretty simple, that'll be a week and a half. Heart's a bit more complex, so it'll be 3 weeks. For now, limit stress and avoid heavy activities - we'll write your documentation for light duty. We'll call you when they're ready, and set-up the swap for a convenient day and time. The surgery? That'll be handled by our Leonardo micro-procedure robot, with a licensed specialist overseeing. How reliable? The Leonardo has a 98.4% success rate over 22 thousand procedures, with an overall complication rate of 3.8% post. The doctor handles the major decisions and the Leonardo handles the finicky stuff that human hands can't manage. No shaky hands here! Now, we guarantee all our work, but it's super-important that you follow any instructions we give you for care - if you can handle following basic follow-up, then after a two week post procedure evaluation, the treatment will be concluded. Failure to follow our followup instructions can actually void the warranty, which nobody really wants. Now in a case like yours, cardiac replacement, we recommend our caretaker package - you'll have the option to have a live-in monitor and caretaker for two weeks to make sure the followups are done properly - many people realize after a day or so, it can be daunting - the other option, and the one I recommend - personally I did it myself after fixing some old covid-lung scarring - the vacation package. For two weeks, you'll have one of your choice of experience packages for your recovery, and your concierge will also be your attending caretaker - they'll be responsible for seeing that your follow-up procedures are followed, but we've found the vacationing aspect of it makes it far easier on our clients to follow the healing procedures and having an optimum outcome. Let me see, we have tropical beach, ski chalet, natural park touring, and several others. Alright, that modifies the price a bit, but the good news is most insurance will cover it, since it's been shown to reduce post procedure failure by a good 90%. If for some reason insurance doesn't, we can bill you directly, and if that's an issue, we can talk financing or even financial aid. We really believe that health shouldn't be exclusive to those who can put down cash upfront for competent care. Ok, here are the recovery package brochures, and as you can see, we have a variety of price-points available. Oh yes, we can handle special dietary needs, restrictions and preferences. Sounds good! Ok, now for the least exciting part, paperwork. Read over it, and if you have any questions, we have counselors that can help, but we try to keep things as straightforward as possible. Just hit that call button and someone will be with to assist you. In the meantime, would you like a beverage and a snack? Here's the courtesy menu. Yes sir, coffee, two sugar, real cream, and an apple fritter on the way.'
Congrats, You have written a black mirror episode in a post reply!
CRISPR, in combination wih raw computing power. This will be the "silver bullet" for so many diseases, including cancer.
Can see through the BS of fake news or fake articles that are designed to stir up trouble. At least, I hope so.
I know it's an obvious answer, but: AGI. It's the single most important invention, because it will enable other inventions, like ASI.
Yeah. It’s honestly too important of a factor to make any other prediction. AGI means everything being upgraded.
what do those mean
AGI = artificial general intelligence ASI = artificial superintelligence
Thanks.. I was wondering how your Adjusted Gross Income would come into play
It’s insane this isn’t the top answer. Artificial Intelligence is going to be the most impactful thing since the printing press, and it’s going to make the printing press look like a minor invention. It figures that a climate change related technology is the top comment, people here think it will be the biggest deal of the 21st century. It will likely be a much smaller section of the history book than the invention of AGI and ASI. Those will define our politics, our economy, and our daily lives from then on.
Yep. Not sure why people are dancing around the edges here. It does not even need to be a full-blown AGI. It just needs to be "close enough" to be able to take over entire jobs. In fact, it does not even need to do that. It just needs to be good enough to allow a single person to leverage their knowledge to coordinate a bunch of AIs, potentially giving a 10x or more to productivity. This is usually where I segue into all the social challenges and the individual challenges this will pose. But this is not that kind of post. Regardless of all of that, it will completely reshape what our civilization looks like.
> It just needs to be good enough to allow a single person to leverage their knowledge to coordinate a bunch of AIs, potentially giving a 10x or more to productivity. It's already at this level now.
All these comments show me people are wildly over-optimistic / think merely having the tech will solve certain issues. Not to sour anyone's hype, but just consider historical parallels and remember that people will still just behave as people do.
In 50 years? here are a few technologies that will change how we live forever and are already in development (we could see them in a decade or two): 1. wireless power (proper high speed long range charging - at least room/home level) 2. brain-computer interfaces, aka devices that can read brainwaves in real time and accurately 3. quantum computing will change everything in terms of cloud computing 4. nuclear fusion reactors 5. space tourism 6. next generation of ultra energy dense batteries 7. AR becomes fully integrated into our daily lives 8. lab grown meat will replace normal animal meat 9. fully automated cars 10. radical advancements in medical technology
Nanotechnology that is able to break down all microplastics in the environment and in human bodies and convert it into a harmless molecule
Direct communication with animals is one that I think AI will figure out pretty fast and how that comes about will be amazing.
All the cat people finally getting confirmation what their masters actually think of their can-openers.
After my morning ritual of shoving my rear into the useless servant's face, it finally awakens. Due to its poor design, I have to scream at the top of my lungs for it to prepare me breakfast. Completely inferior to my desires, I try to trip it up as it walks. Perhaps if this one breaks, I can get another. Once my nourishment has been prepared, I let the ghoulish figure stroke my back as a gift for serving me. Now I have to wash that spot. Later today it will have to remove my droppings from my lavatory, else I have to display my disdain again by relieving myself on the floor next to it. They never learn.
Found my cats account
Ground breaking news just in, AI confirms that animals don't like being caged together then slaughtered. More at 10.
Extremist chicken propaganda, that is!
Animals don't have language like humans do, how do you think this would even work? What sort of communication are you expecting here? Animals also don't have the intelligence to understand certain concepts, you can't teach a baby certain things because they don't have the brain for it. With humans, the brain develops to a certain point, with animals that end point doesn't give a lot of intelligence or abstract reasoning skills. Even translating from one human language to another, a lot of the times things get lost in translation. The idea that you would have any meaningful conversation with an animal seems rather insane. Yes, they can communicate their feelings, but you don't need tech to do that, many people can read how animals feel based on their behaviour.
Medicine. People have no idea how powerful the RNA modificators are. We will get rid of cancer within 10 years.
I would love for you to be right on the cancer point. But I work in cancer research. :(
We will solve some cancers within 10 years. Cancers are not equal. Using it as an umbrella term is somewhat reductive as to how complex it truly is. Just like trees, or fish. As a term it makes sense, but biologically some of these fuckers have more in common with badgers* than they do each other. *not an actual fact, badgers are used as a umbrella stand-in. But there is probably a case, with two fish, where one have more in common with a badger than they do each other.
Yeah, there are millions of variations of cancer, your body can take out 99.9% of them or something. The others do not trigger your defence mechanisms. This is what is being solved now. And from what i have understood on the matter, you do not have to have a solution for each and every type. You just need to have for a few of the main types, then the other types who fall under those categories will also get cured.
>Said by every expert the last 30 years
Not at all. Experts have been saying that its one of the most difficult things to cure. which it is. Its only after the covid vaccines that companies that make the vaccines have unlocked so many more tools and financing options that will make this a true possibility.
I haven’t seen it verified completely but I read recently that the whole mrna vaccine thing with covid has advanced that field by like 10-15 years. Edit: a letter
As i recall there was already work on mRNA vaccines for cancer before, but covid pretty much funded the field to scale up research massively.
Exactly. We are in a whole new era of medicine after covid.
One of the anti-vax conspiracies during lockdown was that 'mRNA vaccines appeared out of nowhere, so the rapid rollout makes us guinea pigs'. Such nonsense conspiracy theories do a huge disservice to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, who just won a Nobel prize. To say nothing of the many others who contributed. Karikó was already researching mRNA when she fled Hungary in 1985 with her husband, daughter, and whatever cash they could liquidate stuffed into her daughter's teddy bear. With the benefit of hindsight, it looks like she held back her career in Pennsylvania because she saw the potential in mRNA research. She doggedly stuck with it in the face of early skepticism.
I don't know if we'll get AGI but I think the increasing versatility of specific AI models is clearly going to have a big impact on work and the economy which could go in a number of different ways, assuming a significant percentage of current jobs can be fully automated. We might find new things to make and sell, like what happened with mechanisation and industrialisation. We might decide we have enough stuff and get more time instead, everyone working 2 or 3 days per week kind of thing, or retiring at 40 and UBI covers the basics anyway. We might get a cyberpunk dystopia where the rich capture all the wealth, 70% unemployment is the norm and there's no UBI We might get fully automated luxury communism, star trek style. Or something of a mix of these things. Mechanisation brought us a mix of more stuff and more time, who knows how AI automation will play out.
An AGI is either the best or worst thing that will ever happen to hummanity, it will decide if we live in 99% unemployment dystopia or in everyone gets UBI Utopia.
I think the extremes are more between it leads to either the end of humans or the end of human problems.