For quite a long time, the voices of philosophers, sociologists, esotericists and futurologists have been heard that in the very near future humanity should change or die. Like, we are about to reach a certain threshold of development, beyond which the old life will be impossible. Is it so? And, if so, what are these predictions based on?
EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION
Let's start with the fact that in the history of civilization, such thresholds have arisen more than once. Quantitative accumulations always require a transition to a different quality, and if such a transition for some reason does not take place, the accumulations perish. The first serious threshold, which we can judge with a certain certainty, is the so-called Neolithic revolution. Man was faced with the need to move from stone tools of labor, hunting and gathering, nomadic camps in primitively organized tribes, to a completely different life. Agriculture, sedentary life, the ability to melt metal and make weapons and tools from it. The emergence of property, writing, cities, rudiments of statehood, division of labor. From a historical point of view, the Neolithic revolution took place almost instantly,began about 12 thousand years ago in Mesopotamia (the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers) and for several millennia spread throughout the world. What is 5-7 thousand years compared to hundreds of thousands that lasted the Stone Age? The moment is. By the way, not all of this "moment" was experienced, failing to change and cross the evolutionary threshold. Neanderthals. This quite reasonable, strong and skillful branch of people disappeared from the face of the earth, leaving only a faint trace in our genes and bones and stone tools at their ancient sites - a subject of study by archaeologists.a strong and skillful branch of people disappeared from the face of the earth, leaving only a faint trace in our genes and bones and stone tools at their ancient sites - a subject of study by archaeologists.a strong and skillful branch of people disappeared from the face of the earth, leaving only a faint trace in our genes and bones and stone tools at their ancient sites - a subject of study by archaeologists.
After the Neolithic revolution, several more, not so large-scale transitions took place, as a result of which early class, ancient, medieval, early industrial and industrial world civilizations arose and then disappeared.
ASTROLOGICAL APPROACH
The fact that the Age of Aquarius is about to come or even has already come on Earth has not been heard, probably, only by the lazy. It should change the era of Pisces, which began shortly before the birth of Christ and either has already ended, or will end just about (opinions of different astrologers on this matter differ). The change in astrological eras is associated with a gradual displacement of the earth's axis relative to the stars. For example, during the time of ancient Babylon, humanity lived in the conditional era of Aries. Then it moved to Pisces and now Aquarius is next in line. There are a lot of hopes connected with this zodiac sign. It is believed that Aquarius will push humanity towards intensive spiritual development, help raise culture, science and technology to a new level, and defeat most diseases. The Age of Aquarius promises an end to wars and the thoughtless exploitation of Earth's resources;human settlement of the solar system and even the galaxy, unlimited possibilities. As you can see, the astrological approach inspires, gives a lot of hopes for a better future, but traditionally does not take into account the objective factors that characterize the development of mankind: demography, energy saturation of civilization, climate change and many others. Nevertheless, in this case, it is interesting in that the predictions of astrologers largely coincide with the conclusions of scientists.
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EXPLOSIVE GROWTH
Friedrich Engels was one of the first to speak about the continuous acceleration of scientific knowledge and technology. Already in the middle of the 19th century, he wrote that the rate of development of science directly depends on the amount of knowledge accumulated by previous generations. Later, similar thoughts were expressed by the Russian and Soviet scientist Vladimir Vernadsky. British mathematician Irwin John Goode in 1965 introduced the concept of "intellectual explosion", which, in his opinion, should occur when one computer creates another - superior to the human mind. The Strugatsky brothers wrote science fiction writers about the "vertical progress" in which a new race of people would appear - ludens, with incredible capabilities. In their opinion, ludens will be as different from people as a modern man in his intellectual and technical capabilities differs from some Australopithecus. Finally, in 1993, the American professor of computer science and mathematics, as well as the famous science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, proposed the term "technological singularity", which is now accepted throughout the world and denotes the coming explosive growth of progress in all spheres of human activity. As a result of what and when will it come? “When progress is guided by an intelligence that surpasses human intelligence, it will become much faster,” writes Vinge. - In fact, there is no reason to believe that progress will not begin to produce more and more intelligent entities and at an ever faster pace … we will enter a regime that differs from our human past no less radically than we humans ourselves differ from lower animals. The uncontrollable chain reaction will begin to develop exponentially with no hope of regaining control over the situation. The changes that were thought to take “thousands of centuries” (if they happen at all) are likely to happen in the next 100 years.”
According to Vinge and other adherents of the theory of technological singularity, it is inextricably linked with the emergence in one form or another of artificial intelligence, many times superior to human and may occur as early as the 30s of this century. However, this theory also has a lot of opponents who believe that a person will never allow artificial intelligence to control his life, even for his own, human, immense happiness. But they do not argue with the fact that in the near future humanity, one way or another, will change.
THE LAW OF 10 BILLION
After all, as the Soviet and Russian scientist Sergei Kapitsa wrote, “… of all global problems, in fact, the main one is the number of people who live on Earth. How many of them, where are they being driven. This is the central problem in relation to everything else, at the same time it was least solved. " Sergei Petrovich himself, shortly before his death, put forward an interesting theory on this matter. We all know that progress is accelerating. Over the past hundred-odd years, the number of changes that have happened to us has exceeded the number of those that have happened to humanity in the previous thousand. Of which, in turn, there are more than those that happened in the previous million years. But Kapitsa noticed an interesting fact. By the time the next leap forward in the development of human civilization took place, the number of people who had ever lived on Earth was equal to 10 billion. I.e,before the neolithic revolution, 10 billion people lived and died on the planet in a million years. The next 10 billion were born and died in the early class era. The next ones go to antique. Another 10 billion lived their lives in a thousand years of the Middle Ages. And so on, right up to our time. Now there are about 7 billion people on Earth, which means that the next 10 billion are born and die during the life of one generation. So the next progressive leap of mankind has already begun and is taking place before our eyes, we just often do not want to notice it for purely psychological reasons. “For some reason, many people like to see in this signs of an impending disaster,” wrote Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa. - But the catastrophe is more in the minds of people than in reality. A physicist would call what is happening a phase transition:you put a pot of water on the fire, and for a long time nothing happens, only lonely bubbles rise. And then suddenly everything boils. This is how humanity is: the accumulation of internal energy is slow, and then everything takes on a new form."
What this species will be, no one can say for sure yet. But it will definitely be there, and this is encouraging. Albeit careful.
Akim Bukhtatov