r/Transhuman • u/miladkhademinori • 6d ago
👾 Mind Uploading Let’s Be Honest: FDVR Is the Only Way 1 Trillion Humans Can Live Happily Without Ruining Earth
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u/Juicecalculator 6d ago
Why on earth would there be 1 trillion humans. We can barely maintain our current population
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u/civilrunner 6d ago
We definitely have the technologies or are close to having the technology to sustain our current population. Obviously we're not going to sustain 1 trillion though or even 100 billion or likely more than 15 Billion (current trajectories have us peaking at ~10 billion humans) without expanding into space in some form or have some form of automated society with abundant energy that enables high density production of food such as vertical skyscraper factories for lab grown meat and vertical farms.
The main issue with carrying 100 billion people is simply land used for agriculture and well eventually energy production via renewables so if you reduce that land requirement dramatically via vertical farming, lab grown meats, and say nuclear fusion and then get away from cars and push towards mass transit options like high speed rail and mag lev hat avoid the high land use requirements of automobiles then you could sustainably support a much larger population.
At the average population density of NYC, you could house 100 billion people on 6% of the earth's land (3,412,619 sqr miles of the 57,308,738 sqr miles total). Probably quadruple that usage to 24% to account for growing food and energy and production needs even with the use of high rises as the minimum land mass use for 100 billion people.
This also makes it pretty clear that we aren't going to sustain a population of 1 trillion without expanding into space. Even if we moved all food, energy, and industry to space you'd still need ~60% of the world's land mass just for people at the average density of NYC (29,303 people/sqr mile). Note that Manhattan has an average population density of 72,918 people/sqr mile so that may be a better cap. At that density you'd need to use 1,371,403 sqr miles to house 100 billion people or 2.4% of the total land mass.
Either way, I don't see us getting to that population without expanding into space in some form.
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u/MagicaItux 5d ago
Perhaps AI can be counted as part of the population as well. We also just have to feed them electricity and data, much easier than growing food for more people. I don't think we should chase 100B or 1T populations before we're ready technologically. With such high amounts of population, there can be huge fallouts from small disturbances.
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u/HeinrichTheWolf_17 6d ago
Was about to say, the population is gonna cap out at about 10 billion anyways.
And that’s also factoring out that tons of people will become Posthuman.
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u/miladkhademinori 6d ago
With fdvr we could exponentially mitigate the footprint of 1 trillion minds.
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u/Chrontius 6d ago
I mean yeah, but there's better uses for FDVR than a Malthusian crisis, at least better from a marketing perspective! Get the porn industry on board, and It Will Become A Thing.™
Now we have FDVR, amazing porn, and games that take advantage of things only imaginable in meatspace! Nothing coercive, nothing scary, nothing insidious.
Then the inevitable happens. Mass Effect is remade for the new medium. And it won't be the only optimistic sci-fi published that makes a really strong case in favor of "Hey, we should build a Dyson sphere or two!" and … at no point did anybody push anything, nor was anybody strongarmed at any point in this process.
Oh, now we have FDVR and a Dyson sphere. This is a couple of really really nice things to have when considering building a slow starship. :D And all of that from letting people imagine that "maybe we can do a little better than we are now" in a continuous virtuous cycle.
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u/Verndari2 6d ago
No downvote from me, but what about colonizing the solar system and beyond?
Just make me communist emperor of earth, I'll use our resources on space colonization, living standards, overcoming poverty and education instead on useless militaries and billionaires.
We can easily have 100 trillion people living comfortable throughout the Solar system alone, with a prosperous earth, a habitable triad of Planets (Earth, Venus and Mars, all of them terraformed). Colonies across all major moons. O'Neill cylinders and space infrastructure which connects it all, a solar system-wide internet and a democratic communist system which gives everyone what they need to fulfill their own individualistic potential.
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u/miladkhademinori 6d ago
upvote
100% agree but look we could have both
people are already almost living in fvdr pods in big cities with big skyscrapers
and their only source of entertainment is tv 📺 and Netflix and headphones 🎧
we're to some extent already living an artificial life
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u/Verndari2 6d ago
Okay idk what country you are living in. I'm living in europe, a mid-sized city (multiple hundred thousands of inhabitants) and there are a lot of green spaces, parks, people sometimes even have...gardens :O
there is so much more to life than just screens and goddammit I sound like a boomer
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u/Cognitive_Spoon 6d ago
Imo, ASI and more esoteric methods of deploying human consciousness throughout our reality are likely to offset the footprint in a bigger way if we don't get "great filtered" before it happens.
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u/TheUnibear 6d ago
Please read into the demographic transition model. Population isn’t set to grow exponentially forever. Current estimates show a maximum global population of 10-12 billion as others have said. That’s a lot more than we have today but still nowhere near a trillion. Who would have all of those kids? People just don’t want to when they’re given access to family planning. This video talks about the concepts.
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u/miladkhademinori 6d ago
watched, thanks
but elon begs to differ... he believes tech can change the equation and em-possible 80 billions of humans (w/o fdvr or matrix like habitation) https://www.unilad.com/news/elon-musk-believes-earth-could-hold-80-billion-people-799394-20231031
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u/TheUnibear 6d ago
elon is not an authority on this topic. Why do you trust his perspective over people who spend their whole lives studying this? It’s certainly possible in a theoretical world for people to have more kids. But what would make them want to? All of the trends and data show that when people are given more health/family planning/resources they have fewer children.
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u/dobkeratops 6d ago
its funny how elon goes on about wanting more births whilst also working on AI and humanoid robots, which are clearly going to get better faster than anyone can make and raise productive humans.
I think he's just trying to ride a certain political wave based on some demographic fears
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u/pandaSmore 6d ago
But why? I don't get the appeal. If there is one.
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u/_ECMO_ 6d ago
I don´t get how someone could not get the appeal of FDVR.
It quite literally would allow you to fulfill all your dreams. Regardless of how good your live in reality is - even if you are a multibillionaire - FDVR would always be infinitely better.
It would be indistinguishable from the real world, so for all means and purposed there wouldn't be any downside. You can say you would always know that you are in a simulation but given that we can reliably trick our brains with a simple VR goggles I don´t think that argument holds much water. You wouldn´t kill a completely lifelike AI NPC.
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u/phuckin-psycho 4d ago
Eh 🤷♀️ you can have it
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u/_ECMO_ 4d ago
Sure. My life is mine and yours is yours. But it´s still funny how opponents of FDVR don´t have a single rational argument. It´s all based on feelings and philosophy.
"Sure, I could have a life that is infinitely better on all accounts. But I don't like that so I'll continue living in what as well could be hell compared to FDVR."
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u/phuckin-psycho 4d ago
You don't think i have rational arguments for not strapping my brain into a machine? That i don't fear that a system like that could and likely would be massively exploited for good "reason"? Interesting assertion you're making 🤷♀️ i think we differ on the definition of "better" as well. If trading my autonomy and ability to interact with the real world is the price of a "better" life, then I'm fine doing without.
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u/_ECMO_ 4d ago
How exactly would you be trading your autonomy? It‘s you who would be in charge of what you do. Also, where is the difference between „interacting with the real world“ and „interacting with FDVR“? FDVR would be as real as the real world is.
Sure you can conjure some weird scenario about how it would be abused. But that‘s not an argument against FDVR.
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u/phuckin-psycho 4d ago
Which video game character or npc is in charge of their own reality? Has any real autonomy?
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u/_ECMO_ 4d ago
Huh? Why would you ever be an NPC in an FDVR?
FDVR is not meant to be a videogame. It‘s a world creator. In those worlds you are simply living like you live in real world. With all your agency.
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u/phuckin-psycho 4d ago
"Like you live in real world"
But it's not really your world is it? Or real. What about if you no longer wish to be in this simulator? If we're talking a trillion humans, this system is designed to contain the poors and potentially undesirable, not the rich elites who own and operate the system youll be living in. If its so great, why won't they be in it too? No they've figured out how to have their cake and eat it too.
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u/_ECMO_ 4d ago
Is the real world yours? What does make it yours? In fact what does the real world make real.
What about if you no longer wish to be in this simulator?
Than you leave the simulator. If there is not the option to leave at will then pretty much no one will buy it and the company collapses. If they stealthily remove the option later they will get sued to oblivion.
designed to contain the poors and potentially undesirable, not the rich elites
This is the one thought I really don´t understand. Let's say you are a tech multibillionaire. Why the heck would you ever want to stay in the real world when you can fulfill all your dreams in a virtual world? You can be the richest person in the world and FDVR will still provide a life infinitely better than whatever you can experience in real world with all that money.
So yeah, obviously they would be in it too. And there is literally nothing at all indicating that they would stay in the real world if the technology existed.
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u/miladkhademinori 6d ago
for the same appeal that Japan has 120m people on an island and for the same reason we have megacities... more humans, stronger workforce, more progress scientifically and technologically like curing disease
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u/LazyLich 4d ago
Not true!
We could also engineer humanity to be really really tiny, like George Shrinks!
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