Module 8: Why the future does not need us?

Question 1

Human interest on technology allows them to expand the range of what?

Answer 1

Human experiences

Question 2

He is an American computer scientist who is well-known for having written the essay “Why the future doesn’t need us?”, where he expresses deep concern over the development of modern technologies.

Answer 2

William Nelson Joy, commonly known as Bill Joy

Question 3

What are the four positive views?

Answer 3

Material Standard of Living
Untimely Death is reduced
Improvement in Evolutionary View
Reduced Suffering

Question 4

Several achievements of modern society draws through the idea that life is getting better.

Answer 4

Material standard of living

Question 5

Fewer people die in accidents, epidemics, and murder.

Answer 5

Untimely death is reduced

Question 6

Society is seen as a human tool that is gradually perfected.

Answer 6

Improvement evolutionary view

Question 7

Traditional religious view of earthly life as a phase of penance awaiting paradise in the afterlife breaks the knowledge that life is getting better.

Answer 7

Reduced Suffering

Question 8

What are the two negative views?

Answer 8

Contemporary Social Problems
Society Drifting away from human nature

Question 9

Life is getting worse typically fueled by concern about contemporary social problems. One of the kind problems is deviant behavior, such as criminality, drug use, and school refusal.

Answer 9

Contemporary Social Problems

Question 10

This view of deterioration is often part of the idea of society drifting away from human nature because society has changed a lot, while human nature is not.

Answer 10

Society drifting away from human nature

Question 11

Notes that the societies need to protect certain resources such as food, energy, and natural resources in order to sustain their populations.

Answer 11

Tainter (1990)

Question 12

What are the two different classes of scenarios involving societal collapse?

Answer 12

Local Societal Collapse
Global Societal Collapse

Question 13

Individual societies can collapse, but this is doubtful to have a determining effect on the future of humanity if other advanced societies survive and take up where the failed societies left off.

Answer 13

Local Societal Collapse

Question 14

We suppose new kinds of threat (e.g. nuclear holocaust or catastrophic changes in the global environment) or the trend towards globalization increased interdependence of different parts of the world an create a vulnerability to human civilization as a whole.

Answer 14

Global Societal Collapse

Question 15

Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC) were powerful weapons had an enormous risk.

Answer 15

Weapon of Mass destruction (WMD)

Question 16

Are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuse.

Answer 16

Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics (GNR)

Question 17

An ultra-intelligent machine be defined as a machine that can surpass all intellectual activities of any man however clever.

Answer 17

Good (1965)

Question 18

Within 30 years we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence shortly after the human era will be ended.

Answer 18

Vernor Vinge

Question 19

It is also known as “technology”

Answer 19

The New Pandora’s Box

Question 20

According to _________, there are four future scenario for the Humanity and Technology.

Answer 20

Nick Bostrom (2004)

Question 21

What are the four future scenario for the Humanity and Technology (Nick Bonstrom, 2004)

Answer 21

1. The extinction scenario
2. The recurrent romance scenario
3. The plateau scenarios
4. The cumulative probability of post humanities

Question 22

If humanity goes extinct, it stays extinct.

Answer 22

The extinction scenario

Question 23

The scenario assumes that technological civilization will hesitate continuously within a relatively narrow band of progress.

Answer 23

The recurrent romance scenario

Question 24

The recurrent collapse scenario in the level of civilization is theorized to remain confined within a narrow range; and the no longer the time frame considered, the smaller the probability that the level of technology growth will remain within this range.

Answer 24

The plateau scenario

Question 25

Like extinction, increases monotonically overtime. Contrast to extinction scenarios there is a possibility that civilization that has achieved a post human condition will return to a human condition.

Answer 25

The cumulative probability of post humanities.

Question 26

It is the theory/ concept that is of an advantage level of technological or economic development that would involve a radical change in the human condition, whether the change was brought by biological enhancement of other causes.

Answer 26

Post Humanity Theory