/r/Futurism
A subreddit focused on the technological advancements, systemic changes and scientific breakthroughs that will shape the future of humanity.
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/r/Futurism
I am talking total immersion. Where you can't tell the difference between being in the real world and the virtual one you are visiting.
Think of the word disaster. That has a temporal element to it. There is an implication that it was or is something that happened that was unusual and destructive. If an area gets hit by disaster after disaster and unable to ever recover then what do you call that?
I think our use of language and understanding of the world is still in many ways similar to the understanding of the industrial revolution. The closest approximation to what we face is that of a war, but happening all over the place. Crisis also implies that it's temporary, because in most people's experience they can think of numerous crisis that had a morning after.
I see this as related to the word sensationalist, because when things get extreme to a point even the most sensationalist words in our language don't capture reality. When someone says space is really big that's not something we have an intuitive understanding of. When an article says there is genetic evidence of a past point in Earth's history people use the same denial tactics that have been used and it works. People mistake evidence for proof and vice versa. They look outside and see that it's cold, and think see that's evidence it's not a problem. When people hear that it could reach wet bulb conditions they assume you can just turn on the A/C, because for most of their life that was the solution.
There is a scenario that I dread to my core, and that is prolonged wet bulb conditions in an urban environment coupled with grid failure. If wet bulb conditions exist and you can't cool yourself you will cook alive in your own skin. This can happen in hours. Sometimes it takes weeks to restore power, but by then anyone who couldn't leave is probably dead. We can imagine the devastating effects of an atomic weapon, but you don't need energy expelled all at once to be deadly sometimes just a few degrees can do it. We don't have words for what it would sound like as an entire city dies slowly over an agonizing afternoon. We don't have a concept that at some point most of the adults will be dead and all that's left is a planet of children. The adults will by and large try and make sure the children survives because that was what worked evolutionarily. We don't have the capacity to communicate what we may face.
From what I can tell the main argument against silicon based life is that the binding energy of the molecules tends to be too strong to allow for complex self catalyzing chemical reactions. It makes sense that we don't find silicon based life on Earth because the temperatures on the surface of the Earth aren't even close to what is needed for breaking bonds in silicon, but what about a situation like Venus where you have a sort of solvent and you have very high temperatures and pressures in a complex chemical environment?
If an organisim used silicon based DNA it might not denature even on the surface of Venus. It might be resistant to radiation because mutations happen when it gets hit by something that can overcome the binding energy of the molecule. That's why there is ionizing and non-ionizing radiation and you don't get cancer from most light bulbs.
I hope there isn't life on Venus for my own reasons, but I'm also not sure that it's impossible. I also think given the scope of the universe and the general diversity of composition of planets that such a form of life is probably out there. I'm almost as certain of this as I'm certain that life exists on other planets.
I just want to say that Elon Musk has made himself a very important player in terms of technology and now government. He used Twitter and his other companies to try and get Trump elected, and it was very clear there were innate conflicts between MAGA and Musk. His reckless behavior in terms of satallite deployment could cause Kessler syndrome, and his obsession with Mars means our first attempt to inhabit another planet will most likely fail. If he didn't want things to get political he could have made a few different choices. He didn't have to try and bribe people to vote for Trump. He didn't have to push for massive budget cuts that will impact the entire world. This won't be a pro Musk echo chamber.