Future of Caveman2Cosmos

[JosEPh_II]

Some eras have almost 2x more techs than others.

And why is this a concern?

 

[Septimius]

Normally I know better than to wade into these kinds of debate, but I'll take the bait.

The fact that the world is warming up, primarily as a result of CO2 emissions, is something that I consider to be well-established and I'm not seeing any authoritative sources against it. There is, however, a wide range of well-justified opinions on questions such as,

1) What is the sensitivity of global temperatures to CO2 level?
2) How severe an impact on human civilization and on the biosphere should we expect?
3) What is the best response?

My organization has been incorrectly labeled as "climate denier" because we question many of the traditional Green solutions to the problem. For a critical look at Marc Jacobsen's 100% renewable energy proposals, I recommend the following:
http://greensocialthought.org/archive/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Pages-single-23-28-SR60-.pdf

We support development of advanced nuclear energy and carbon capture and sequestration, as well as direct air capture and we have started thinking about geoengineering. I find that taking a broad view of the range of solutions is a good way to make progress and depolarize wicked debates. Accusing one's opponents of nefarious agendas is a good way to stymie progress.

Very reasonable approach. I'd say that question no. 1 sort of feels like a Trojan horse for trying to evade the problem. Because I'm fairly certain the answer has been given. Whenever we as humans have encountered a problem on this scale, we have been able to change our ways trough consistent dealing with the problem and not trying to play it down - case in point, acid rain is no longer a serious problem in the Western world. Whereas the Chinese are fast destroying their ecosphere from the many coal plants they have and are still building.

The real problem is we may be able to solve our electricity supply with renewables, but not our energy supply. Also renewables are currently fickle and not capable of delivering a constant supply of electricity, so it's still going to be necessary to use other sources to supplement renewables. As it is, renewables is the supplement to our regular supply, which is primarily coal. 3/4 of the planets electricity and energy supply comes from coal.
It goes without saying that coal is the absolute greatest culprit in the release of Co2, so stopping the use of it is the greatest priority.

As it is, the only alternative we have that can deliver a constant supply, is nuclear. But since Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and most recently Fukushima, this has not been a popular topic to bring up politically.

 

[Rmi]

There is no halfway compromise between acting now, and letting everything go to **** because you rake in record profits and don't care about the results because you are obscenely rich and will live in a nice air-conditioned bubble.

The whole misdirection and 'fake news' propaganda campaigns of the far right are not meant to actually be agreed on, they are just there to misinform and sow doubt. The status quo is stagnation. That is a win already.

 

[Septimius]

It could be interesting to have effects that are only unveiled by certain techs, but have these effects influence the game in subtle ways, until you learn of them and can actually start doing something about them - like acid rain.

 

[pepper2000]

Moving back to C2C-relevant material, my initial plan when I designed the late game tech tree was to have only the Cosmic Era after the Galactic. Some of the techs that are currently early Cosmic would have been late Galactic, and the last two eras would have been about 80 techs each. I later decided to line them up with a five-level extended Kardeshev system. Also, the later eras are shorter to leave room for expansion, which is always possible.

 

[JosEPh_II]

The whole misdirection and 'fake news' propaganda campaigns of the far right are not meant to actually be agreed on, they are just there to misinform and sow doubt. The status quo is stagnation. That is a win already.

Say What??? That's the Far left's agenda!

 

[Thunderbrd]

Say What??? That's the Far left's agenda!

Sorry but the only truly fake news I see is coming from far right sources. I mean, they lie outright without shame to their base who takes them to be some kind of voice of honesty but the reality is it's no more verifiable than a market tabloid, and often IS a market tabloid.

On the left, the media is pretty much 100% verifiably accurate BUT it's what they don't say that you need to be looking out for.

 

[JosEPh_II]

If you think the Huffington Post, for example, is verifiablely accurate you are Greatly fooled, Greatly Fooled! Your Leaders are pulling you around by the nose hairs!

I'll stop and say no more cause what you've just stated is foolishness in the extreme. And I don't want to fight over this in this forum.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

If you think the Huffington Post, for example, is verifiablely accurate you are Greatly fooled, Greatly Fooled! Your Leaders are pulling you around by the nose hairs!

I'll stop and say no more cause what you've just stated is foolishness in the extreme. And I don't want to fight over this in this forum.

The Australian version seems to be Richmond supporters - that is not good!

 

[Thunderbrd]

If you think the Huffington Post, for example, is verifiablely accurate you are Greatly fooled, Greatly Fooled! Your Leaders are pulling you around by the nose hairs!

I'll stop and say no more cause what you've just stated is foolishness in the extreme. And I don't want to fight over this in this forum.

Don't worry Joe... my Dad agrees with you and I'm just as frustrated with him, but like you, I still respect and care about him. We can disagree. As I stated earlier, I believe the deeper issue here is that both right and left are pretty much mostly a propagandic effort for some wealthy folks out there looking to enlist our opinions to support the freely growing power they've been soaking from the masses and using to guide opinions and policy. Right or left, most are serving some big $ interest, often rival big $ interests and that's right where the divides are that are being argued over. Truth is, neither side cares about those of us caught under the super-wealthy line.

I'll try to let it go here at this point.

 

[raxo2222]

And why is this a concern?

Well its harder to balance eras in such way, that they begin in timely fashion on calendar.
Otherwise its not much of concern.

I wonder at what technological distance (unresearched techs that aren't dead end) civilizations lose common ground.
450 techs is difference between primitive hunter gatherers and modern era civilization or modern era civilization and aliens that achieved mastery of everything.

50 techs is difference of half to almost whole era.
There difference depends mainly on absolute technological levels of these civilizations.

At 5 techs there is not much difference at any point except for last era late techs.

On end of Nanotech era you have Kardashev 1 civilization, that colonized cislunar space, moon, mars and venus.
Transhuman - Kardashev 2 - Solar System civilization
Galactic - Kardashev 3 - Galactic civilization
Cosmic - Kardashev 4 - Universal civilization
Transcendent - Kardashev 5 - Multiverse civilization.
So looks like on Nanotech era exponential growth slowly gets even more exponential.

 

[tmv]

So looks like on Nanotech era exponential growth slowly gets even more exponential.

That's mostly due to the fact that technology in that chart is far more "coarse-grained", due to the fact that we know so little about it. If the Information Era was designed like the later ones we wouldn't differentiate between diskettes and flash drives.

There are real techs in the tree (like Writing, The Wheel, Currency, Sanitation) and tech-lets (like Dadaism), so just counting the number of techs doesn't tell you the whole story.

 

[raxo2222]

That's mostly due to the fact that technology in that chart is far more "coarse-grained", due to the fact that we know so little about it. If the Information Era was designed like the later ones we wouldn't differentiate between diskettes and flash drives.

There are real techs in the tree (like Writing, The Wheel, Currency, Sanitation) and tech-lets (like Dadaism), so just counting the number of techs doesn't tell you the whole story.

Then how many techs Information and earlier eras would have, if they were designed like future eras?
3/4 of current amounts? or closer to half?

 

[tmv]

Not even half, I think. Future era techs are more like vanilla techs in that regard, so probably one fifth, at most. The world in a hundred years is far more distant from us, tech-wise, than the world a hundred years ago. Just like 1917 was closer to 1817 than to our time. It has been that way for quite some time (at least since the Renaissance), and there is no reason to suppose that this kind of acceleration will stop anytime soon.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Then how many techs Information and earlier eras would have, if they were designed like future eras?
3/4 of current amounts? or closer to half?

Setting arbitrary numbers of tech for an Era is not what happened. The Tech tree has evolved significantly over the last 9 years this mod has had in it's existence. From the 260+ Tech that Rise of Mankind ( the foundational Mod for C2C) had to it's current number of 900+. No era was ever planned to have an exact number of Tech Before we split the Modern and Future Eras into it's current set of New eras. And even these are not set in stone for their exact numbers. Probably Never will be either. Too much innovation by the Modding Team for that to happen. Because you have to understand the this Modding team for c2C has been a fluid transition from the earliest set of modders to the current set. DH and T-brd (and Hydro when he shows up) are the current Elder statesmen of the Mod. StrategyOnly has handed the reins over to T-brd and DH (if he still wants it). Modders like Pepper2000, Toffer90, and myself are the junior modders in terms of longevity in actual modding. Even though some of us have been here as fans and beta testers since the beginning, speaking for myself.

 

[Septimius]

If you think the Huffington Post, for example, is verifiablely accurate you are Greatly fooled, Greatly Fooled! Your Leaders are pulling you around by the nose hairs!

I'll stop and say no more cause what you've just stated is foolishness in the extreme. And I don't want to fight over this in this forum.

I'm so happy I live in Scandinavia, here we actually have media that aren't completely broken by outside money. US media really is a dumpster fire, where comedians seem to be the only really trustworthy people left. And I say this following both Time, CNN, MSNBC and others. Because US politics is really the best entertainment these days. Fox is a disaster zone full of rapists and crazy people, Huffpost I just stay well clear of, as they seem too sensationalist to be any good.

If I want the truth, I go to science related newsletters. I don't trust any media to relate properly what they're saying.

 

[Toffer90]

Misinformation, also called "fake news" these days, have very little to do with left or right political leanings, everybody can be dishonest regardless of their political leaning.
Huffington post is pretty far right in my opinion.
The only far left news outlet I know about is Le Monde Diplomatique and Venezuelan Analysis.
LMD has a pretty high standard in regards to objectivity, VA only covers news related to Venezuela and is probably not so objective, but most of what they write is verifiable as far as I have seen.
I don't read VA too much though, only now and then to get another perspective on what goes on in that part of the world, western media always leaves me with a thousand questions and almost no answers when it comes to Venezuela.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I think you may have a whole different definition of Right and Left in other countries. Here, Huffington Post is a left leaning publication, as is Time, CNN (far left), MSNBC(rather strongly biased left and my personal favorite because the one time I found them inacurate they called themselves out on it). Fox is VERY Right biased. Breitbart is pretty much the core of the right wing news media, along with Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. And the National Inquirer.

Of course, neither side talks about things like what's really happening between the Saudis and the US and the bombings in Yemen and so on. It's almost like both wings are a part of the same buzzard, just looking to divide the opinions of the people into entire paradims of outlooks that can never be mitigated by any discussion. Almost like it was planned out to be that way. You think?

 

[Toffer90]

I think you may have a whole different definition of Right and Left in other countries.

Indeed, in certain places in the US the word socialist can be used as an insult while in Norway even politicians on the far right, those who are mostly opposed to the state actively trying to reduce the distance between rich and poor, are not afraid to take the socialist stance in certain political questions now and then.

 

[pepper2000]

In the last two eras especially, the tree can feel a little monotonous because most of the techs revolve around some novel new place to colonize or some new "material" to build stuff out of. Techs relating to art and culture dry up, and there are no religions in the Information Era or later. We have "Galactic Warfare" and "Cosmic Warfare", which are pretty generic compared to things like Semi-Automatic Weapons. There is more I would like to do, but I've added so much that at some point we have to draw the line, or at least keep the growth rate slow enough that we can absorb what is going on.

Again, this is part of why I broke the future eras into one more than the right number for keeping them balanced. That's to leave room to fill these gaps.

Interesting that this discussion of the far future tech tree is juxtaposed with debate about contemporary political issues. I haven't put any serious thought into what politics might be like in the distant future. By the Galactic Era, contemporary political debates will seem as arcane as Medieval theological debates seem to us. When we're talking about transhumanism and posthumanism and hiveminds, the whole enterprise of politics makes less sense and will likely be superseded by something entirely different. Have any futurists or science fiction authors presented a serious look at what posthuman politics might look like?

Not even half, I think. Future era techs are more like vanilla techs in that regard, so probably one fifth, at most. The world in a hundred years is far more distant from us, tech-wise, than the world a hundred years ago. Just like 1917 was closer to 1817 than to our time. It has been that way for quite some time (at least since the Renaissance), and there is no reason to suppose that this kind of acceleration will stop anytime soon.

I'm not sure if this is right or not, but as a counterpoint, I would suggest some of the works of the economic Tyler Cowen. In particular, The Great Stagnation and The Complacent Class are well-written books that make the case that in the last 40 years or so in the United States (and I presume other wealthy countries) most forms of progress have slowed down considerably. I suspect a major reason there is so much dissatisfaction right now is that, though conditions are not objectively bad by any reasonable measure, there is a very big gap between what people expect and what is actually happening.