Population decline

[Speleofish]

Whenever the issue of assisted dying is discussed, someone comes up with the counter-argument that old people will be pressurised into seeking euthanasia. This is a very strong argument in favour of extremely tight controls of assisted dying but doesn't invalidate the proposal that there are circumstances in which help with dying is far more humane than prolonged palliative care. The majority of people can be kept comfortable with an acceptable quality of life with good palliative care, but some can't. These people deserve better 'care' than we provide at present. It should be possible to produce a tightly written law with adequate safeguards to prevent abuse. It shouldn't allow assisted dying on demand, but only after a patient has demonstrated a sustained, consistent desire to die and only after a very thorough consideration of their circumstances.

 

[darren]

Soylent Green has got a lot to answer for.

 

[JasonC]

This is a very slippery slope.

If euthanasia were legalised, over time, this would put considerable pressure on the elderly and vulnerable to "do the right thing" and stop "being a burden on society". We should be protecting the elderly and vulnerable, not labelling them as a burden and certainly not pushing them to kill themselves to make space for us!

There is also the obvious risk that beneficiaries would put pressure on elderly relatives, or sign paperwork against the will of the elderly in order to pick up an inheritance before it is depleted by old age care.

This isn't the kind of society I want to live in.

Ah, but what about when it's you that is elderly and vulnerable?  Say you've avoided an early death from doing something exciting or catching an exotic illness, and you face another 10 years of not recognising your family, having to be spoon-fed and your arse wiped? 

This is not a position I want to be in, and it would be nice to think I can express my wishes while I still can, and have relatives or doctors carry them out without being prosecuted.

 

[crickleymal]

I agree. I don't want to be like my parents hanging around waiting to die. But there have to be proper safeguards

 

[AR]

I would suggest reading the late Terry Pratchett's essays on this matter, as published posthumously in "A Slip of the Keyboard" - as you'd expect, thoughtful and well-reasoned, and sprinkled with his trademark humour.

 

[Robert Scott]

We are just leaches on a floating ball of gas relying on another planet for energy which is actually in a process of supernova, and when the sun reaches supernova it will take half of our immediate universe with it
Just saying

The mass of the Sun is too small to form a supernova.

.

It would still wipe us and many other planets out and would create a bigger knock on effect.
But hey the human race will be sipping cocktails on Mars by then 

Our sun will eventually in about 3 to 4 billion years start its progress to a Red Giant. It will grow and grow. Consuming our Earth and then Mars and then possibly Jupiter.
At some stage, our species needs to find a "Goldilocks" planet that has recently become agreeable somewhere. My offspring would need to pick the best and bravest to start the mission. Let's hope

they choose better than "brave and unthinking"

 

[owd git]

Worry less! you are all now one day closer to death. (Roger Waters.) 
O.G.

 

[AR]

Worry less! you are all now one day closer to death. (Roger Waters.) 
O.G.

I'll see your Roger Waters and raise you an Alice Cooper - "Enjoy your death, it's a one-in-a-lifetime experience"

 

[pwhole]

Arguably one of the benefits (or even reasons) for increased longevity is precisely for the reasons mentioned above - the long space flights that will be needed to colonise other planets. or even just a decent career in the space industry. I can't think of any other advance in transport (and thus advances in all connected lifestyles, for want of a better word - someone (probably R. Buckminster Fuller) once coined: 'livingry') that has had less enthusiasm from the public, despite the moon landings. Boats, wagons, trains, bikes, cars, planes and everything up to spacecraft were gleefully adopted by everyone, and the democratisation of travel has always been the definition of 'progress'. Yet even with the popular interest in space in movies and TV, the overall enthusiasm for the 'next step' is relatively low amongst the public - possibly as there's nowhere obvious yet 'to go'. Not even boldly, where no man has been before.

However, space will need a huge amount of infrastructure to construct, and will undeniably need a lot of labour to do that. How many people have they thrown at that shit-stupid 'World Cup' stadium complex in Qatar? And for what? If it even goes ahead it'll be empty now. All the technologies that support the space industry will need a lot of labour to make all the components and widgets and more trivial items that go into every programme. There are plenty of companies in Britain quietly making a good living making plastic components, lighting units, ventilation systems and nutrient solutions for the hydroponics industry - which occasionally also grows salad and strawberries amongst its bulging repertoire. They're not struggling, as they've identified a 'growing' market and gone for it - and only make components, so 'it wasn't me, guv'.

The US had the money and the skills to begin building a moonbase in the early 1980s until Ronald Reagan diverted the entire budget to his 'Star Wars' laser-weapons program - which, predictably didn't work, and just pissed everybody off so they didn't want to work with them. If they had started work on the moonbase then, arguably they would probably be hiring rather a lot of labourers right about now to begin building the first 'moontown', starting of course with bars, casinos and brothels. What else are those labourers going to do with their spare time?

Speaking of spare time, anything by R. Buckminster Fuller is well worth reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller

He also produced the only map to show the Earth as it really is, with no deformation anywhere. Strangely it never gets mentioned, probably as it has 'funny edges'. It's on my wall above my desk here:

https://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/big-ideas/dymaxion-world/dymaxion-map

 

[JasonC]

.... If they had started work on the moonbase then, arguably they would probably be hiring rather a lot of labourers right about now to begin building the first 'moontown', starting of course with bars, casinos and brothels...

Yes, arguably.  Arguably, pigs will attain the power of flight.

Meaningful space colonisation is science fiction, and will remain so.

When we can solve relatively simple problems like feeding all humans adequately, and living in our one planet sustainably, then maybe we can make such fantasies real: until then, forget it.

 

[andrewmcleod]

He also produced the only map to show the Earth as it really is, with no deformation anywhere. Strangely it never gets mentioned, probably as it has 'funny edges'. It's on my wall above my desk here:

It's still got distortion; it just attempts to minimise it. You could make a map with even less distortion by using more cuts.

It is impossible to accurately represent the surface of an oblate spheroid on a 2d plane.

 

[pwhole]

Well if you told someone in the Victorian era that in the future they'd be able to go on holiday anywhere in the world with a maximum of 24 hours travel time they'd also say pigs will fly. Or if you said you could build a skyscraper nearly a kilometre high they'd say you were a lunatic. But some of them rolled their sleeves up and got on with it, and here we are.

We can solve all those problems, like feeding all humans adequately, and living on our planet sustainably now - we just don't.

 

[pwhole]

It's still got distortion; it just attempts to minimise it. You could make a map with even less distortion by using more cuts.

It's less than one percent distortion though, and it's evenly spread across the whole surface, unlike other projections, as it's just the 'puffing up' of each triangular face to be spherical. The idea of the map being cut as it is was to show the entire earth's surface as one interconnected landmass, and more cuts would ruin the straight-line measurements (though the area between Japan and Australia is the compromise bit that doesn't work). But essentially you can draw a straight line between any two destinations and it will be the flight-path an airliner would take, as it's spherical.

 

[mikem]

Quite a number of species go through boom & bust lifestyles, the most notable being lemmings & locusts.

 

[andybrooks]

I'm surprised to learn that a flight from Perth (Australia) to Buenos Aires would want to go via the North Pole.

 

[pwhole]

It doesn't - it goes across the blank triangles at the bottom, and the edges all join up when made into a sphere. Clearly this is all too much for some. Try Perth to London as that doesn't cross any triangles? Flight paths were just an example I used, not the main reason for the map's existence.

 

[Duck ditch]

Hans Rosling shows a ray of hope on global population decline.  His TED talk is informative.

There is over 1000 billionaires in this world growing richer everyday.  When asked to pay more taxes when they reach more than 999million, they baulked . Instead they pay for political influence.  Greedy greedy greedy.  Take it off if they don?t fund green technology and development.

We will have vast wheat fields in Greenland and Antarctica before  terraforming Mars because it?s easier.  Meanwhile Bangladesh drowns and Africa bakes. 

Er right er,, is there a games room in this virtual club hut?

 

[pwhole]

The United Arab Emirates just successfully launched a mission to Mars from Japan - the first ever space trip from a Middle East country. They specifically referred in the broadcast to the need to move away from oil extraction and moving young people into space research technology for future careers:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-53394737

 

[Duck ditch]

I find space exploration interesting. International cooperation, sharing knowledge is successful in space.  Terraforming the moon and mars has to start with oxygen.  The moon is only about the size of Australia so perhaps trial it there.

However Antarctica has oxygen.  No international cooperation though. 

2095 billionaires according to Forbes.  99% tax after the first 500 million. Plough it into saving Earth. 

 

[JoshW]

An entirely different question, but there appear to be smart people in this thread.

How small would the diameter of a planet have to be, for us to recognise that it was spherical. to clarify, as Earth is so big, walking on flat surfaces feels like flat surfaces, how small would the planet have to be for it to feel like we were walking on a round thing?