I just want to die before things get too crazy for humanity.   

Someday there will be an unstoppable world of artificial intelligence and when man will merge with machines. The only people I guess would care would be elderly people. I wish I could've grown up while my parents were, if not for society hating LGBT groups back then. I don't want humanity to become something else, I'm really depressed and hurt, and ensuring I die before the inevitable is the only way I can do something about it. I'm on the verge of tears as I type this. I'm speaking from the heart. I want to live my whole life ahead of me as a human being, but that's not going to last forever, and I only feel like I have a limited time during my lifetime to "smell the roses".

There's no legitimate skepticism that this won't occur in our lifetimes.

There has always been fear of the future. About the year 1000 AD they thought things were so bad that Jesus would be returning. The black death, the founding of the United States, the French Revolution, the great depression, World War I, Stalin converting Russia to a communist government Mao doing the same for China, World War II the Cold War when we thought we might wake up as  vapor and many other events in history. Governments are pretty useless for fixing problem like this but the every day person is the one who brushes the dust from the disaster off and then starts building a new and better world. Somehow we will survive and when I look at what man has done in spite of government, I have hope for the future.

Some future dinosaur will be putting us in the tank of her car! 

I don't waste my time being fearful of the future. I can't do anything about that. So...screw it. If everything is cool, that's fine. If World War 3 breaks out and we get wiped out in a nuclear holocaust, oh well. It is what is or what will be.
Meh....

I'll still have to pursue life to the fullest and try to forget things like that for now I guess. My point was that I showed concern because the 'singularity' is supposed to happen during my lifetime.

'The Singularity'? I had to google that - I see it's some sort of prediction or prophecy. If that's what you mean, let me reassure you: people have been making 'predictions' about the future since the dawn of time; it's human nature to worry about the future and to try to foresee what might happen. Humans have wonderful imaginations and it's pretty easy for any of us to speculate about the future and come up with ideas of what might happen. But that's all they are: products of our fertile imagination. Not facts.

The thing with a prediction is this: if you wait long enough, something will eventually happen that you can then go back & say was predicted. Natural disasters occur; wars break out; leaders are assassinated... and as soon as something like that happens, you can easily go back and say 'this sounds like that thing Nostradamus mentioned!'. But it's just a coincidence. Because our history is peppered with war, disease, famine and natural disaster - so it's pretty easy to guess that such things, having happened so many times before, may happen again... and then when they do it's equally easy to say 'I told you so!'.

All of these so-called soothsayers make far, far more wrong predictions than right ones - but the people who want you to believe in them will cherry-pick the few that have later been (coincidentally!) matched to actual events, often adjusting and reinterpreting them to better fit those events, and they'll quietly ignore all the wrong ones.

As for this 'Singularity': it's hardly surprising that a computer scientist, with years of experience in the industry, could start speculating about what might happen with computing in the future. A couple of the things he's guessing about will be proven to be more or less true (but probably somewhat different than he imagined), but most of them will be completely off the mark. Trust me, the future will unfold in a completely different way than any of us can predict. If in doubt, go on YouTube and look up old episodes of an old TV show called 'Beyond 2000', in which educated, experienced researchers and scientists made predictions about what the future might hold. A few things have happened - but most of it is hilariously off the mark! And the same will prove true for this 'Singularity'. He's already been proven wrong in many of his predictions (and right in a few) - just like everyone else who tries to guess the future.

So basically, don't worry about it. After all, Hippolytus said Jesus would return in the year 500; Christopher Columbus predicted the end of the world would happen in 1658; Mother Shipton was thought to have said the end of the world will come in 1881; Jim Jones thought a nuclear holocaust would happen in 1967; the Jehovah's Witnesses thought Armageddon would be finished by 1975; Pat Robertson thought it would happen in 1982 (which he later changed to 2007); Nostradamus predicted the world would end in 1999; the Mayans thought it would end in 2012; Grigori Rasputin thought we would all perish in a world-wide fire in 2013.

We're still here.

I remember my nephew working himself into a real state of worry about 2012 - did he feel silly come 2013.

As noted above, people have been predicting the end of the world since the year dot. And yet... here we are.

It's true we could be wiped out tomorrow by a monster asteroid we never saw coming, it's very plausible and has certainly happened a few other times in the earth's history. Massive solar flares, nuclear war, global warming, plague, whatever, it's all possible. But also, it may never happen. Might as well live your life instead of living under a rock in the expectation of some foretold doom that may never happen.

If you really look at it you will realize there is a power erosion taking place.
Going from G 8  to  G 20  to b r i c k countries more and more countries want peacefully equal and fair solutions.
"There is enough for everyones demand but not everyones greed"
There is a new development b ank under way called A I I B .
They may help realize positive inventions.

Large conflicts have been avoided. So will be large c atastrophes.
Don't underestimate that there are also positive people.

Concerning m eteors there are even systems in place.
And concerning other things remember the consent from the movie wargames: its best not to play this games ...

There are many promising inventions that can help people, like lab grown vaginas.

Maybe one day in the future there will be t elepathic interfaces.
But such things are there to help people and not the other way around.

Don't get distracted by someone painting a dim picture.

People basically are the same all over the world.
They want to live together in peace and enjoy life.

hugs

There are countless ways to envision a terrible future...if you're fearful, it's best to learn as much as possible about the danger, and consider the ways to divert or delay that future.

Work to make it better, for yourself and for others!

I think some things are best ignored, and focusing on them is unhealthy. It would be the same as if you got depressed about about your impending death, which you know, is actually going to happen. Most people manage to put those  kinds of thoughts aside and get on with life. If you can't then perhaps a therapist? That seems to work for the usual gender stuff.

If you want some positive thoughts about AI, well, they are our children. Who would not want their children to be more than their parents? I actually find the thought of humans remaining unchanged for all eternity depressing. Is this really the best we can be?

I also don't rate our chances of long term survival very highly if we remain as we are today.

the planet is going to blow sooner or later , it's just the way it is

Quote from: stephaniec on May 10, 2016, 11:27:32 AM
the planet is going to blow sooner or later , it's just the way it is

I would like to remind you that thought creates.
Its not only written in christian traditions that the faith of a seedling can move mountains.
There is some truth in it.
The faith of a few people can be enough for a whole world.

Have some hope that there are enough good people to keep it going and make for a happy ending.
You can see it on an international stage where people are willing to cooperte peacefully instead of making for larger conflicts.
Many things being acceptable even a few years ago are unacceptable now, including violent solutions.

Have some hope and keep on doing a few good things.

hugs

In the face of so much bad (that has always existed). I choose optimism and i will ride that unicorn until the end.

I see so much positive around us. Science is actively working on so many solutions from curing disease to extending life indefinitely. I'd like also to believe that at some point at least a group of us will leave this world and establish another one.

Finally, i do find hope in my faith also, that life is just a transitionary state.

I feel that there has never been a better time to live as a trans person. The future looks even brighter for us. I love my life and I look forward to my future. Life is good.

While the idea of hackable humans is a bit frightening, I think some of the world politicians are much more dangerous.

dear girl, there are more serious problems for sure, that will be occuring in future, like your whole country getting nuked, your country becoming a place of slavery, through exploiting of earths recourses you may eat chlor chicken one day .. oh .... that's already legal in america.
Don't worry about a future with artifical intelligence, that's not something to be depressed about!

We'll make it beyond the stars. Don't worry.

The world was supposed to end New Years Eve 1999 because of the year 2000 bug that would crash every computer on the planet. The truth was us programmers were talking about it 20 years before that and were fixing the code so they didn't crash. New Years day we all woke up and nothing happened.

When I was a child I saw in the news paper where nuclear fusion was 20 years off. Guess what, it's still 20 years off.

When science starts making predictions that they don't know anything about and the singularity is one of them, they can really get things wrong. Don't believe everything you read.

I hope the singularity makes me wholly XX and gives me a working uterus.
I'm tired of being considered a guy in a dress.

Speaking of my own psycho-frustations only btw. 

Oh yeah, I do find all the hive mind stuff creepy. I don't understand why anyone would want to exist as the Borg from Star Trek. Hopefully that won't happen and individuality will win out.

The singularity is only going to happen if there's enough money in the world to get us there. And you know, most of the world's money is fiat money we pretend to have... I'm kinda more worried about the wake up call for that than the terminators. We can't even fund proper space programs any more.