Why Is It Whenever Someone Is Asked About The Future
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Core Imposter
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Historically, I've never heard of weapons not being used because they were too deadly. People in my family died of gas on WWI battlefields.
I once got a ticket for doing 145 in a 35 mph zone. I was airborne over each and every hill.
Seems reasonable to expect history to repeat, as it always has.
I once got a ticket for doing 145 in a 35 mph zone. I was airborne over each and every hill.
Seems reasonable to expect history to repeat, as it always has.
Flying cars are an example of a lack of imagination. "I imagine a future a lot like the present but with cool stuff added in."
As long as nuclear weapons exist, there's the risk that one will be used as an act of aggression. Even at very low odds, given enough time, your probability of a nuclear war approaches 1.
Buy flying cars wouldn't be like that! The fun part of doing jumps like that is the moment of 0g when you feel like you're floating. What you're feeling is falling. A flying car wouldn't give you that anymore than you feel like you're falling when you're in an airplane.
As long as nuclear weapons exist, there's the risk that one will be used as an act of aggression. Even at very low odds, given enough time, your probability of a nuclear war approaches 1.
Buy flying cars wouldn't be like that! The fun part of doing jumps like that is the moment of 0g when you feel like you're floating. What you're feeling is falling. A flying car wouldn't give you that anymore than you feel like you're falling when you're in an airplane.
History_Buff
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Also, flying cars would be an incredible disaster, unless they can fly themselves, and completely lock the driver out.
I mean, look how inattentive people are now when they drive. Now imagine they have a third axis they have to pay attention too. That's without the physics being significantly different, as they very well might be.
I mean, look how inattentive people are now when they drive. Now imagine they have a third axis they have to pay attention too. That's without the physics being significantly different, as they very well might be.
rugbyLEAGUEfan
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And then it stops in mid air and Waylon Jennings adds the voiceover , and in your rearview mirror you see Boss Hogg eating ya dust
Core Imposter
Felon
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You have to admit though, and I take this as direct evidence of the existence of God, that its remarkable how few people are killed driving. Seriously, a lot of those people can't put a noun and a verb together but can drive 15 miles over the speed limit day after day and hit nothing. Nothing.
ZeletDude
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This is how I feel about it... I mean imagine people trying to drive thousands of feet above the Earth.. would be kind of funny...
IdiotsOpposite
Boom, headshot.
And just where would we put the up-down turn signal anyway!?
Core Imposter
Felon
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Well, really in the future we will have smart cars and smart highways and will just tell the car where to go and it will.
Only rich people and government employees will have flying cars.
Only rich people and government employees will have flying cars.
kramerfan86
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To me that seems like faulty statistics. The odds of an event like that arent additive just like your odds of winning the lottery dont keep increasing each day you buy a ticket, every day you have the same 1 out of some insane number chance, the tickets you bought 2 weeks ago have no effect on that probability. Now if you by the 14 tickets on one day the probability becomes additive so the more countries that develop a large arsenal the higher the odds.
At least from my understanding of probability, I could be wrong.
BasketCase
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Two reasons: because flying cars have been cool ever since the Jetsons came sailing into everybody's homes via the TV set, and because people have an unhealthy fascination with Doomsday scenarios.
ParkCungHee
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It's true that buying a ticket for two weeks won't increase your chances of winning tonight, just as the possibility of nuclear war since the 1950s doesn't make nuclear war more likely now.
However, you're looking at past events and counting only one present. It's true that if I buy one Lottery ticket tonight, my chances are slim. But the more nights in the future I expect to participate in the lottery, the greater my chances of winning are.
If my chances are one in a million, and I expect to participate in 10 million drawings, my chances of winning at least once increase dramatically over playing once.
Likewise with Nuclear Weapons. While the chances of a nuclear war are exceedingly slim, we have a drawing every day, and expect to have a drawing every day in the future.
kramerfan86
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Mathematically though I dont believe the odds ever actually start improving, your chances dont actually rise by the math you just have a "better" chance because you keep trying and therefore are never out of it. Probability in terms of independent events never reach that 1/1 sure thing status like he was suggesting, that is the trap gamblers get themselves into when they think a certain machine is "due" or the roulette wheel is "due" to land on black. Nuclear war might happen eventually, but the odds of it arent steadily approaching a sure thing status where its guaranteed to occur.
Like I said though I could be totally off base, as good as I am at math probability was never my strong suit.
Like I said though I could be totally off base, as good as I am at math probability was never my strong suit.
ParkCungHee
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While it's true that the odds will never reach one, they will always approach one.
Keep in mind, this isn't one on any given day, just one during the given time period.
What he's talking about is closer to, for example, from the Casino's perspective, the chances of a slot machine or roulette table paying out is pretty much 1. They know that the machine/table will be played over and over again, and while each time the odds are the same, they know that paying out is basically a certainty. They know this and plan around this.
So it is when talking about the future use of nuclear weapons. So long as the situation remains basically the same (no abolition of Nuclear Weapons, no miracle devices rendering them inert, no heat death of the universe) the chances of them only go up with time.
It is more likely that there will be nuclear war in the next 2,000 years then there will be in 1,000. I can increase my chances by projecting 3,000, or 5,000 or 10,000 years into the future.
More time, better chances. While these jumps may, in themselves, be insignificant, from say .000001 to .000026, it is an increase, and as long as you keep increasing, your chances become something like .99999999.
Keep in mind, this isn't one on any given day, just one during the given time period.
What he's talking about is closer to, for example, from the Casino's perspective, the chances of a slot machine or roulette table paying out is pretty much 1. They know that the machine/table will be played over and over again, and while each time the odds are the same, they know that paying out is basically a certainty. They know this and plan around this.
So it is when talking about the future use of nuclear weapons. So long as the situation remains basically the same (no abolition of Nuclear Weapons, no miracle devices rendering them inert, no heat death of the universe) the chances of them only go up with time.
It is more likely that there will be nuclear war in the next 2,000 years then there will be in 1,000. I can increase my chances by projecting 3,000, or 5,000 or 10,000 years into the future.
More time, better chances. While these jumps may, in themselves, be insignificant, from say .000001 to .000026, it is an increase, and as long as you keep increasing, your chances become something like .99999999.
kramerfan86
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Fair enough, like I said probability was never a favorite of mine. Either way, its such a tiny probability I dont think its really one to worry about approaching 1 status. We'll all be dead or off the planet by the time it wanders up to there.
azzaman333
meh
They're common future projections because they are very easy to imagine.
I think in the future we'll simply walk onto a QTP (quantum-tunneler pad) and tell the chip in our brain where we want to go.
Nuclear war, of some kind is inevitable - let's hope it's small and far away, between two or more nasties we don't like anyway.
"Lack of imagination", - you got that right. I seldom read scifi anymore, it's so tame and regurgitated.
IAM
Emperor
The skys are too crowded already with existing aircraft no way you could put another 100,000,000 manually controlled aircraft on this planet. Plus the effort and energy required. We are many decades, or longer, from an energy source that would allow that.
The doomsday scenario is based on human willingness to use a nuke. That will happen in my opinion. I would say over the next 40 years there's a 75% chance a nuke will be used. Using a nuke is like the last drop of water that breaks the dam. Someone will retaliate.
The doomsday scenario is based on human willingness to use a nuke. That will happen in my opinion. I would say over the next 40 years there's a 75% chance a nuke will be used. Using a nuke is like the last drop of water that breaks the dam. Someone will retaliate.
