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Strongly Agree

1 (2.9%)

Agree

0 (0%)

Neutral/Tossup

12 (35.3%)

Disagree

13 (38.2%)

Strongly Disagree

8 (23.5%)

Total Members Voted: 34

[MetalSlimeHunt]

On the one hand, tech is getting better and better, and people are prospering, and will continue to prosper, and tech will get greener, and people are being more reasonable.
On the other hand, people will continue to be poor and starving, corporations and the ultra-rich will continue to be too greedy, people will continue to be idiots, privacy will continue to be infringed, war will continue, and reality shows will still dominate the airwaves.
So, it's a tie.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking; it really comes down to what your definition of "the world" is.

For this exercise, I was considering "the world" to mean both Earth and the whole of human civilization.

[lordnincompoop]

Well, I for one consider the world to be me, and the anything within a 3km radius of my flat.

[Sowelu]

Anything short of complete nuclear devastation that ends in the total annihilation of the human race is a bright future, and will continue to proceed towards that bright future at all times, though there may be very minor setbacks along the way.

We are so, so close to offworld colonization.  We'll be living on the Moon this century, and on Mars next century.  I firmly believe that.  It's possible that someone may set foot on Mars in my lifetime--though I'm sure they would not get a return trip.  Offworld colonization is the first step to immortality.

We are rapidly approaching something that resembles an artificial-intelligence singularity.  Okay, maybe I don't believe in a real technological singularity.  But at the very least, it'll be along the lines of a bunch of metaphorical mass gathering together and forming a star and planets, instead of drifting aimlessly in space as random unconglomerated matter.  The things that will come out of this are incredible.

Even if we do manage to kill ourselves off, our ancient rusted relics are going to absolutely blow the minds of whatever sapients are next to evolve some millions of years from now.  You can bet they'll learn from our mistakes (IE don't blow yourselves up dammit).

But more realistically and closer to the present:  The world's infrastructure is increasing at a rapid pace.  Disease is declining.  Starvation is declining.  There's barely such a thing as a third-world country anymore:  Some places suck to live, by North American or Western European standards, but they're improving day by day.  The belief that there is a firm distinction even between "first world", "second world" and "third world" is a myth.  But, again, infrastructure is being improved, and technology that is directly relevant to poor regions is constantly advancing.  It's not going backwards, it's just not.

Environmental science and awareness is improving faster than we're killing ourselves.  Yes, we will suffer from global warming, but we are smart monkeys gosh darn it.  We will adapt and we will slow and eventually stop the process, and maybe even take a couple shots at reversing it.  No matter what happens, though, life will go on...WITH us.  And even if we make a chunk of the equator uninhabitable, and only survive by decreasing insolation with artificial smog, you know what?  We can deal with 80% of the sunlight we used to get, and we can learn to live in those deserts.

Oh yes.  We are clever monkeys indeed.  The future is always, always, unceasingly bright.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I realized that I haven't stated my own position yet, so I will do so in a single statement.

Not everything is perfect, and it probably never will be, but I think it's still a beautiful day in this neighborhood.

[ein]

antibiotic-resistant virus's, and vengeful reptoids will.

‼
D:

Anyway, judging by how bad things have been lately, I do believe it will get better.
It may continue to slowly fall, but then things will start looking up.
Also, I'm of the 'happy apocalypse' camp.
I believe that the lessened population and relatively deserted urban areas will provide a calm, peaceful life for those left.

[Nadaka]

Every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

So, uh...

I need a good way of deciding when to change the poll, so how about this: You can all vote to move onto another statement, which shall be done upon reaching four votes. You can also all anti-vote to preserve the current topic. Obviously, you can only do one at a time.

[ToonyMan]

I'll go with strongly agree.  Overall I'd say things are better now than they ever have been, and hopefully technological progress and relative political stability will persist.

I agree.

[Bouchart]

It will be a grim decade.

[AntiAntiMatter]

I vote for a new topic.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Specification: Please bold your votes and anti-votes so that they will stand out and not be missed.

Votes to a new statement: 3

[Cthulhu]

It will be a great-ass decade.  One of the things I'm adamant about doing is trying to keep perspective.  Sure, pop music seems horrible compared to the greats of the "good old days," but then again the greats are all I remember.  For every great band there were seven or eight or ten or twenty awful bands.  Sure, there's a lot of murder and rape and horrible crimes going on compared to the "good old days," but I wasn't there for the "good old days," back before every notable event was beamed directly into your TV/Computer so it seems like there are a lot of these crimes when actually violent crime has been steadily dropping.

It's all about perspective.  Ooh, antibiotic resistant viruses.  There are disease outbreaks every few decades, and there have been forever.  Ooh, war.  Compared to World War 2 et al, this is a pretty clean war.

[alway]

Not everything is perfect, and it probably never will be, but I think it's still a beautiful day in this neighborhood.

Heh, that gave me the mental image of an alternate version of Mr. Roger's intro song thing.

Anyway; yep, Sowelu pretty much summed up my thoughts, more or less. Technology is spreading and increasing to the point where even essentially complete nuclear devastation would only set us back a hundred years or less.

The sum of the world's knowledge is so backed up at this point, it would be hard to destroy enough copies to send us back before the 20th century. The modern mass-production printing presses mean even the most backward of country bumpkins have at least a few books laying around, with hundreds, if not thousands or millions, of copies scattered worldwide. Even in a nuclear scenario in which 99.99% of all copies of human knowledge were destroyed, that would still leave dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands, of copies of many books which would allow for a total or near total rebuilding of our technology base within a century at the most. Aside from books, there are plenty of webservers distributed in secure warehouses around the globe with a higher, albiet slightly more fragile, information density. That basic education has been declared a human right by much of the world also ensures that so long as someone survives, we would be up and running in relatively short order. There are many bunkers which would also survive to save people and information during a nuclear scenario.

So yeah, I would take it a step further than Sowelu and say that not even a nuclear war would be capable of setting us back more than a few hundred years and stunting technological growth for a couple more (due to low population).

[Shambling Zombie]

We're all doomed, but I plan on having fun along the way and trying to make others happier as well.

[Taricus]

We're all f****d, Better start WWIII and get it over with.