Why is everyone here such a pessmist?

[thunderstar]

first colony to alpha centauri around year 3000 seems way too optimistic to me, but i have no doubts that around that year solar system will be heavily colonized

[cesarcurado]

Wouldn't call is pessimist, just realist.

Our sun won't last forever, it is expected to last some billions of years.

If we don't find a new home, outside the system or a way to protect ourselves/live without our sun, we will get extinct.

The way the technology is advancing, it is pretty fast, but I don't think we will be seeing faster than light tech soon enough

[Seret]

The way I see the future there are 2 possible outcomes: we finally actually start regulating

the population so we don't overpopulated

Luckily population tends to regulate itself at a certain point of the development cycle. Most developed nations actually have about zero population growth due to births, some are actually shrinking. There's a point countries go through called the demographic transition where rising standards of living lead people to choose to have less children. So if we can get the standard of living up in the poorer countries then population growth is expected to slow.

The rate of increase has already fallen from it's peak, so we're starting to see the effects of this already. The UN's estimates put the world topping out at about 10 billion somewhere around the end of this century.

So there you go, a nice little nugget of optimism for you on a Monday morning!

Edited December 16, 2013 by Seret

[John FX]

A smart person can see ALL the obstacles in the way and deduce it is impossible.

A less smart but very determined person will just try over and over and sometimes succeed.

A stupid person will sit over there telling both of them they just can`t do it because they cannot see a way.

Sometimes the smartest people are the ones least able to see a way forward.

This is why they are pessimistic.