I'm giving a lecture on the future Tuesday

I will consider some new ideas on our place in the universe by extrapolating some long-range trends into the future. Specifically, there are two trends I will discuss: the expansion of intelligence from the beginning the universe to the information age, and the increasing control that humans have over nature.

Here are some keywords on the topics we’ll cover and discuss after the meetup:

Technological evolution, intelligence expansion, natural versus intelligent evolution, science and pseudoscience, accelerating change, costs and benefits of technology, doomsday scenarios, Malthusianism, Kardashev scale, post-humanism, optimism versus pessimism.

We will meet in the second floor community room of the Central Market in Plano.

Details and RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/ExaminedLife/calendar/12346397/

The reality we live in at the scale at which we live in it is a chaotic dynamic system. Very long range predictions are not likely to come true unless the initial conditions are know exactly which they almost never are. That is why we cannot predict weather accurately more than ten days out.

Bob Kolker

Punxsutawney Phil says six more weeks of winter.

Punxsutawney Phil says six more weeks of winter.

We shall see.

Bob Kolker

Here are the notes I used for the talk. There is a video, but it needs editing.