There are a great many scenarios for the development of human civilization. We have selected the most, in our opinion, scary and amusing:
Fake vacuum
In short, according to this scientific theory, our Universe, being part of another even larger Universe, is now in a state of a temporal phase. If we imagine everything in the form of a single image, then the big Universe is a pot of boiling water, and our Universe is one of the small bubbles that form at the bottom. As a result, sooner or later, the bubble will still reach the surface of the water (even if it will take it for billions of years) and our entire world, along with everything we knew, will disappear overnight without any warning, and we will be unable to do anything with to do it.
Great filter
A theory put forward in 1996 by Robin D. Henson offers an answer to the question: If there is life elsewhere in the universe, why haven't we discovered it yet? She claims that somewhere in the Universe between the planets where there is no life yet, and the planets with a developed civilization, there is a certain Great Filter - unknown factors that prevent the emergence of life or destroy it on the planets falling under their influence. These factors either destroy the planet as such, or destroy life on it. This means that humanity falls under one of three development scenarios:
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- We are an exception - our planet has already passed through the Great Filter, but for some reason, life was not destroyed.
- We are first. This version implies that the conditions in our universe have only now become favorable for the development of highly developed life that can inhabit other planets.
“We haven't reached the absorber yet. In this case, everything is very sad and the discovery of life on Mars or Europe will be just disgusting news, because it will mean that the meeting with the Great Filter is still ahead.
Brain in a container
This theory is often used to describe experiments aimed at identifying specific features of our understanding of knowledge, reality, truth, reason and meaning. She admits that:
- the brain is the source of our consciousness;
- the brain functions using electrical impulses;
- external stimuli can affect the brain;
- any external stimulus can be simulated to some extent artificially so that the brain cannot distinguish an artificially created external stimulus from a real one.
The most interesting thing is that according to this theory, you yourself can be a "brain in a container." And all life around you is nothing more than an artificially simulated reality.
The philosophical school of Solipsism has quite interesting views and to some extent reveals this concept.
Highly evolved creatures from another dimension
Imagine if there was a special kind of person whose life would take place exclusively in 2D format. We could just watch them from above and they wouldn't even know. Existing exclusively in 2D space, they would not have imagined how someone could look at them from above.
Now imagine a person living in 4D space. He can observe us from his 4-dimensional world, and we will never understand this. They may be right behind us and we will never know, we will never know. Just as we could interact with a person from the 2D dimension, so they could interact with us. But until they themselves want it, we will never even know about their existence.
Carl Sagan's Flatland Theory explains very well this concept of creatures living in another dimension (and much more).
Fermi paradox
You may have heard about this. Imagine an anthill in the middle of a forest. And right next to the anthill, we are building a huge 10-lane highway. And here's the question: will the ant understand what a 10-lane highway is like? Will the ants understand his technology and the intentions of the creatures building this highway next to their anthill? That's just it. Likewise, we can not only catch signals from the mysterious Planet X, but, quite likely, we will not understand what kind of organisms live on it, and what they do. They are as far from us as we are from ants. And even if one day they want to teach us their technology, it will be tantamount to explaining the phenomenon of the Internet to ants.
When Francisco Pizarro went to conquer Peru, did he stop at an anthill to socialize? Was he so generous that he helped ants build an anthill? Did he put off achieving his goal in order to destroy the anthill? Or is the whole story with the anthill - sheer nonsense and would never have interested Pizarro? Here we have the same situation.
Basilisk Roco or Rise of the Machines
This thought experiment paints a rather grim picture: one day, artificial intelligence from the future can return to the past and punish all those who prevented him from coming to power earlier.
All of this is very similar to the futuristic version of Pascal's wager, which invites people to take into account the ideas of the technological singularity or even donate money to its supporters to reduce the likelihood of "punishment".
Some even believe that even the very knowledge of this theory increases the likelihood of being punished later by artificial intelligence. Now you know about it and, if anything, do not thank.
Well, in conclusion, we report that the version of the uprising of the machines is also associated with ontological proof of the existence of God, which makes it even more likely.
Fear theory
All human activity, except for those aimed at survival, was carried out out of one fear: the fear of disappearing without a trace. Our understanding of ourselves and self-esteem in general is only a protective buffer designed to deal with the excruciating anxiety that arises every time we think that our life will end sooner or later.
Culture is a gigantic mass illusion, necessary only to reduce the fear of imminent death and what awaits us after it.
In addition, we call individual works of art eternal and put a special meaning in the concepts of family and children - all this in order to somehow justify our existence in the face of death.
We console ourselves with our value systems and everything that comes from them: biological relationship, national or political affiliation, religious beliefs, and so on. The same can be said about mankind's belief in achieving a decent standard of living by means of technological progress.
Indeed, many technical advances in the West are aimed at (at least) a psychological escape from the fact of death: routine phrases during a funeral, all these funeral offices that do their best to take death out of the usual course of life - right from home a person goes to the morgue or to the crematorium.
All these ingenious ideas were introduced only to hide from the harsh reality. The truth is that everything we have ever done and are doing is motivated by the usual fear of death.
Quantum Suicide / Immortality or Multiverse Theory
The man sits on a chair and holds a gun in front of him, aimed directly at his head. And this is not just a gun - it is a device that measures the intrinsic angular momentum (spin) of a quantum particle in a room. If the particle rotates clockwise - the spin is positive: the gun fires - the person dies. If the particle rotates counterclockwise, then only a click sound is heard and the person survives.
The man exhales nervously and pulls the trigger again - a click. The direction of rotation of the particle is counterclockwise, the spin is negative. He pulls the trigger again - another click. And again. The man continues to try, but the result remains the same: the gun does not fire. And this despite the fact that the gun is loaded and working properly. No matter how many times a man tries, the gun will still not fire. He will continue his journey into eternity, becoming immortal.
But back to the beginning of the experiment. The direction of rotation of the particle is clockwise - the spin is positive. The man pulls the trigger and the gun fires - the man is dead …
But wait - the man has already pulled the trigger for the first time, and all subsequent times - the gun did not fire. How can he be dead? The man does not know, but he is both alive and dead at the same time. Each time he pressed the hook, the universe bifurcated. And it will continue to bifurcate with each new pull of the trigger. This thought experiment is called quantum suicide.
The out-of-galaxy hypothesis
The next theory is my favorite. She believes that as soon as the area of the universe where civilization lives is literally saturated with the results of the intellectual development of this civilization (a microscopic level of technological singularity is reached, a black hole is created, etc.), civilization will simply leave the already known macroscopic world in order to continue development his intellect, complicating the structure of his own world and, ultimately, will disappear from the original part of the universe, which explains the Fermi paradox.
Sciences such as astrobiology make it possible to test this hypothesis. Thus, one can take into account the limits of space, time, energy, and the compression of matter as the determining factors of growing changes that should lead the cosmic intelligence to miniaturized technologies of the future that are developing at an incredible speed.
As a result, civilization will be more likely to be able to cross the boundaries of the known area of the universe and equip colonies in other, so far unknown areas, than to continue expansion within the framework of the universe as we know it now.
Absolute extinction
We are living in what biologists call the sixth mass extinction. It will be hard for the species that will exist after us. Moreover, until 1800 (when the world's population reached 1 billion people), the situation was not so sad. Over the past 215 years, the world's population has increased to more than seven billion people.
This rapid and dramatic increase in population has had a terrible impact on the state of our planet, and the situation will continue to deteriorate if we do not learn to live within the framework of environmentally friendly technologies or simply die out.
Anna Kiseleva