"Charles Haynes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I agree with you that the situation will change radically,
I don't think you do, in that I think you're not thinking along the same lines that I am. I suspect in less than 30 years we're going to have AI and molecular manufacturing. Given those two things, I think all bets about just about all topics are off. Anyone who starts a conversation with the words "by 2075 the situation will be that..." is by definition completely wrong -- we have no idea what the situation will be like past 2050 on any level at all. It is possible that I'm off by 20 years, but in any case I doubt that long term speculation about what Japan will be like "after the population crash" is no more productive than people in 1908 speculating about how New York would handle the mounds of horse excrement that would doubtless be clogging the streets by 1950. Indeed, it is far worse, because much less changed between 1908 and 1950 than will change between now and 2040. > I do not see that happening in Japan. I could see a smaller and > smaller population of citizens eventually ruling a large population of > resident aliens, but not granting them citizenship, nor much political > control. These are very tame speculations that assume something we know to be untrue, which is that technology isn't advancing rapidly and that the human race will not be radically altered by that advance. What if, for example, aging is "cured" in the next 20 years and the population decline halts because of that? What if by 2050 we have robots as capable as people capable of managing most of society's needs? What if we have robots that are more capable than people and humans end up as their treasured pets? What if half the population uploads into machines and the concept of population becomes utterly incomprehensible? These are just a small sample of possibilities -- if we really encompassed the full range I think one would rapidly see that discussions of this sort are fruitless. We have no idea of what the world will be like in, say, 60 years. Speculation is virtually impossible. I don't even think my crystal ball works to 2015. -- Perry E. Metzger [EMAIL PROTECTED]
