In 1775, a year before the Declaration of Independence was signed, a Harvard professor named Edward Wigglesworth did the math on American population growth and could barely contain his excitement. He had found that the colonists were doubling their numbers every 25 years, mostly through births, and at that pace he projected that by the close of the 20th century there would be “ONE THOUSAND TWO-HUNDRED AND EIGHTY MILLIONS” of us (his capitalization, not mine). A billion Americans, and then some.

Sadly, there are only about 340 million of us today. We should be asking not just why we so badly undershot Wigglesworth’s hopes, but also whether we are about to start counting down instead of up.

If America’s population does decline, it will strain our entitlements system, damage the economy, reduce innovation and entrepreneurship, and cause serious labor shortages. But the majority point of view — held by major institutions like the Census Bureau, the United Nations and the Social Security trustees — is that the United States probably won’t face population decline until the 2080s, or even beyond 2100.

It really shouldn't be surprising that the populace is declining after the tax system and medical insurance system we have in place. When you give all the food (money via tax breaks, which makes health-insurance easier to afford) to one group but not the other (rich over everyone else), don't be surprised when the other group doesn't have kids. The food pot is a zero-sum game. So, when all the food is going to one group, hunger sets in for the others. This means they don't have kids.

This guy is basically saying a lot of people will have to die (starvation) for the good of the ecconomy. When have I heard that before? Seems like there was a plague recently, and they said this very thing then too. What was it again?

Nope, the French knew what to do at the end of the 1700s.

I don't think the problem is inherently that AI is coming about. I think the problem is that the rich and powerful are racing to AI when we don't have a social safety-net to handle the mass unemployment this will cause. AI would be fine (mostly) if people weren't also at risk of losing their homes, food, and healthcare because of it. We are racing to replace human thought and production, but not ensuring people will be able to still eat.

America’s population wasn’t expected to start falling until 2081. Trump’s immigration crackdown means it could happen as soon as this year.

https://archive.ph/Wh2NB

Wait, I don't get this. I thought chatGPT was a word game related to words weighed by associations and probabilities. Now, chatGPT can operate a humanoid robot? Something smells fishy.

Don't worry. Only the filthy plebiscite will have to deal with the consequences. We'll be fine, so we'll triple down.

-Jeff Bezos to his investors, probably

Looks like we're going to be stuck with the gerontocracy in Congress for the foresee future.

Is this how we get Cylons? I think this is how we get Cylons.

Anonymous moderation on a supposedly open forum [email protected] is an astonishing act cowardice and dissent of views. When Planck himself said that the birth of quantum mechanics was an "act of desperation" and a "mathematical trick" the only thing left to moderate is ignorance.

Gödel’s Lesson: A “singularity” is math’s failure, not reality’s limit. The forthcoming Information Dynamics framework avoids it by treating existence as eternal resolution-transitions.

IMAGINE: In 2124, androids and humans coexist seamlessly. You’re sitting in a cozy cafe, watching two people have an intimate, almost lovers' conversation. One of them has a small glowing emblem on their wrist, an unmistakable sign that they are an android, required by law. Despite this, their connection feels real, deep, and natural, as if they’ve been in each other’s lives for years. The emblem is the only thing separating them from being human, but the conversation, full of quiet affection, feels indistinguishable from any other intimate exchange.

Given the growing movement to remove the emblem, would you support it or feel it should stay?

HEAR ME OUT BEFORE YOU DOWNVOTE.

Disclaimer: The hyperloop is an absolutely shit idea right now. I do not support building in any form right now.

Now to the shower thought: Theoretically, a hyperloop can get you from place A to place B on the planet in less than 40 min (back of the napkin calculations assuming constant acceleration and deceleration of around 1G). Being completely underground (more on that below), it would also be a really good piece of infrastructure safe from arial/orbital bombardment.

Now to the obvious problems: We need the tube to be very very straight to achieve high speeds without killing our passengers. We would want the hyperloop to enter city centers. Building such a straight thing in city centers would require a lot of demolition. Therefore, we would have to get it underground. Bringing it on the ground again outside cities doesn’t make sense because we would be introducing steep upward curves, thus reducing its maximum speed. Therefore, it makes sense to build this thing completely underground. Building underground also gives us many more benefits like not having to do much land acquisition, safety from violent attacks and so on.

Our tube would have to be incredibly airtight. It absolutely cannot have any leaks anywhere. Also, we need to be able to achieve incredibly low chamber pressures and maintain them.

If we are building this underground, we would need a shit load of energy to dig and transport the material outside the tunnel. We would also need a shit load of steel and other resources for these incredibly long tunnels.

Where do we get this energy? Where do we mine these resources without destroying the planet? Now this is where the “future” part comes in. We would need energy to be incredibly cheap. The only viable long term method (by “long term”, I mean it from the civilization time scale) would be via nuclear fusion. When is nuclear fusion happening? Well, it’s only 30 years away! /s Jokes aside, the energy source might be when nuclear fusion not only becomes possible, but also incredibly cheap (the nuclear reactor shouldn’t cost billions lol).

About the resources? Well, we probably need to mine them on the moon, no? The moon has A LOT of them right on the surface. If we can mine them and send them back home, we solve our resources problem!

Well, you might ask- doesn’t it make more sense to just have spaceships with engines propelled by nuclear fusion that exit the atmosphere, go at hypersonic speeds and then drop in? Why build expensive underground continent spanning tunnels? Well, what if we are attacked by aliens? They could easily blockade our airspace. Hell, just dropping a few million stealthy pebbles in our lower orbits would be enough to stop all hypersonic travel (the risk of ships exploding on contact with these pebbles would be too high for air travel to continue). Hypersonic spaceships would also face the problem of traditional aircrafts- you would need to build spaceports far from city centers. These spaceports would require a lot of space and cause a tremendous amount of noise pollution (constant sonic booms for every launch and landing).

Therefore, I think I have made my mind. I think I would be voting for a hyperloop proposal that possibly would be tabled in our direct democratic government a 100-150 years from now!