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You do realize that in Warhammer 40k the chaos gods were toying with the imperium right? If they had just won that wouldn't have created more chaos and thus by milking chaos for tens of thousands of years they became incredibly powerful?

Despite what news from the Japanophile sites say or any thing. When push comes to shove, the Japanese will protest though. Rare, yes. But they will do.

Contrary to the images you see on the interweb. Life in Japan is… interesting to say the least. They got automatic garage and cyberpunk-esque techs, on the other hand. They are low-tech and keeping life traditional whenever possible. They still use fax machine, travel by public transportation and old trains and buses in the countryside where you will have to wait hours, etc.

Japan will always be Japan, mostly unaffected by external factors. They take from outside and make it theirs and uniquely theirs whether it is culture (take cartoon, make anime), cuisine (youshoku, etc.), and technology. I see possible usage of ahem… "sex robots", but probably only within otakus/geeks circle will probably be regarded "out of this world weird". Normal Japaneses are… to say in lolspeak/internet term: "normalfag" as hell, or just very normal people in normal term.

I agree with you about China though. But China will always, be China. You cannot get good, fast, and cheap. So their ubermenschen will probably fall flat and poor sods who have been experimented to hell and back would die miserably.

U.S.A. will fall victim to its own pop culture. Unable to differentiate reality and fiction and mixed it up with vision for the future (that is why sex robots and stuffs are priorities). So U.S.A. will probably be a caricature of their own mixture of sci-fi media and a dash of hard cold reality. Idiocracy is not really too far off because megacorps, while devious, are still idiots. Have fun watching pay-per-view The Rock vs. Zuckerburg in a cage match for presidency.

No wonder why people are so adamant against the USA colonizing Mars and space. If the EM drive works well…. Simply put NASA is the only one working on this and deep space rockets currently.

2030:
USA, "I'm going to send hundreds of astronauts to Mars to start a colony"
Rest of the world, "Oh fuck! Quick do what he's doing"
2050:
USA, "What the fuck are you doing? I already have a large colony here of thousands of people! You can't just show up to someone's house, eat their food and expect them to be happy about it"
"But space colonization is supposed to be a large multinational effort"
USA, "We said no bitch"

Finally Honduras will have a time to shine! We are WAAAY to poor to afford any real widespread augmentation much less excess with it! Praise nurgle!

If we're goin statewise on this, we should note that none of these nations have guaranteed cultural stability over the time period we're talking here. different people with new ideas will inhabit these nations, though it's gradual with new people being born. I personally have a lot of doubts over theories like the US breaking apart over our minor differences, but coups and revolutions are not at all out of the question too. Personally I hope china collapses, it's a state that only does good things for its people because investing in people is profitable, not out of any sort of legal obligation which is a tad harder to shake.

However, political futures aren't the point of this thread, just pointing out that poltiics is one of those things we know can vary wildly.

It will be clusterfuck to draw borders because planets do bloody orbit around the sun. I do not see space colonisation soon in near future or far future without a revolutionary discovery that allows 3 hours travel to Mars from Earth, and a bloody war that changes the worlds geopolitical scape in the way we cannot even imagine, or an actual world peace to go with it.

@Clownfish
Yeah I really hope China falls. Essentially they've ruined their country to such a extent that only 4% of their landmass is feeding a billion people and that area is rapidly decreasing. Honestly I think that's why the USA is starting to distance itself from China. China has ruined their country to such a extent that if they don't unfuck themselves that is going to be a massive war in the 2020's.

Japan technically isn't supposed to have a standing army, but the west is looking the other way cause if shit goes down with China it's better if you guys are prepared for that clusterfuck.

Tldr; China's government is ruining their own country.

@Clownfish
The reason why the EM drive is exciting is that even if Mars is on the other side of the solar system you could get there in 70 days without having to wait for it to get close.

China is literally on the verge of collapse. So their last dance will either be the massive takeover plot whether through war or industry, not matter how it ended up, China will fall. While I am glad because they will stop fucking with my country that has a misfortune of being its neighbour and being a menace in general. I am a bit sad and scared of the fallout (billions of Chinese who might mass migrate, famine, death).

I miss the time Imperial China was really nice and cordial to us though ;_;

Also a tidbit, China almost killed humanity hope of going to space back in 2007. They shot a missile to kill a satellite, resulting in 15% more space debris orbiting earth. If the space debris are plenty enough, we can say goodbye to space until we clean them all up.

Imagine a small plastic shard flying in zero-G going at 17.500 mph or 36.000 kph, roughly 3.100 metres per second, and about 9 times the speed of sound). Due to the law of motion and momentum (insert Mass Effect 2 Sir Isaac Newton deadliest son of a bitch in space here, since space is empty and orbit route differs with no force or resistance to slow those things down. These things can go up to 7.700 metres per second. Now imagine billion of those pieces. Space debris.

While a lot of nations condemn its action, China seldom gave a fuck about it though.

@Clownfish
Let's just hope they fall before gene engineering becomes widespread. A land war against China would be horrible. A land war against China when they have fucking super soldiers would be insane.

Would make for a kickass action movie though.

Now I'm imagining a generic war movie, but scifi. Like a actual furry woman from america, a robot, a cyborg and a couple diversity characters all going John Wick on swarms on a bunch of clone troopers.

Thank fuck I stopped watching Hollywood movies a long time. I am more keen to old Russian and European films. It has more to do with theatrical stage play, but I like the sternness, expressions, and emotions and atmosphere it delivered without even the music and special effects or post production of any kind.

I will say one thing on gene engineering:
I think it should be up to the individual person whether or not they want to do it, HOWEVER there is one thing that will drastically change society as a whole not directly cause of gene engineering.

It's totally possible to terraform mars using ch4 and stuff; it's totally possible to terraform Titan; it may be possible to terraform Venus but that would take way more effort than Mars or Titan. HOWEVER the downside of putting so much ch4 or sulfates into a atmosphere is that you would either have to gene engineering to breath the atmosphere or constantly wear a oxygen tank. The reason being is that yes we could make Mars capable of supporting complex life in as short of fifty years, but in order for Mars to keep warm enough the atmosphere would be completely toxic to humans… Basically if you visited Mars and took off your gas mask your lungs would start bleeding. That's not getting into radiation either.

2050 Mars
Tourist, "I wanna breath that clean Mars air"
takes mask off
lungs start bleeding out

"How high of levels of chlorofluorocarbons are we talking?"
It'd be healthier to breath car exhaust.
(Either way you're probably going to die, but you get the point)

Well damn. Support for gene engineering in humans in the USA is higher than everywhere else in the world.

Fifty percent of our population is totally fine with it. The groups most against it are highly religious groups. The shocking bit is that half of the USA is fine with altered genes being passed onto children, with low negativity against it compared to other countries. The shocking bit is we're not talking about for medical use; 60% support it for medical use.

What do I mean by this? Basically if gene engineering as a whole suddenly got extremely advanced right now more than half of the USA would be totally okay with abusing it. Like let's say you got cat ears a cat tail; half of the usa would totally be fine with that and would be fine with you passing that off to your children.

Furthermore the age group most against it was older people; meaning that over the course of the next twenty years support for gene engineering, not used for medical purposes, is probably going to hit maybe as high as 70%? Can't really tell yet, but you get my point; if the people who oppose a new technology used on humans is mainly older folks you get where this is going.

@YourHigherBrainFunctions
"if the people who oppose a new technology used on humans is mainly older folks you get where this is going."

And same can be said for younger folks who are not wise enough to realise the long-term consequences and implications of potentially dangerous technology and dive head long into danger recklessly and thinking they can handle it when it is actually a coin toss.

Marginalising people because of age group and differing opinion is a bad form. Same shit happened with Brexit.

"Old people should die off or should not vote already, this is future for young folks, not smelly old men."

And the old people says something like:

"Bugger you off nincompoop, we fought the war, we rebuild this nation, we toiled and worked hard for it not like you sitting on your asses playing video games all day and complain. And we are enjoying our rewards in life and you spoiled brats want to ruin it? I have killed actual Nazis when I was 18, unlike you who only killed Nazis in your screen."

Whatever the case. My opinion for U.S.A. for this hypothesised future in this thread as someone out of the States is that they are thoroughly and utterly fucked.

@Clownfish
I didn't say that I dislike old people, rather that they have differing opinions on the world. If the majority of people who oppose something are 60+ years old then as they get older then the opposition against said something will wane.

I may disagree with their opinions, but they have a right to them. For example politically I'm really liberal, but if someone is conservative they have the right to their views. If their views are being silenced I'll fight for their rights to have their views.

@YourHigherBrainFunctions
I do not think it will wane though. People gets older, chances are they will become a conservative. Mostly attributed to the facts that old people complains about new things and wish to preserve things that were rightful and good in their prime. With age come wisdom and patience for most cases. And lots of people are becoming conservative as politic swings around. Left used to be in "life organic" trend, "non-GMO" and right were the opposite.

IDpol is pretty retarded since people are not "sides" completely and do not fall into scales or stereotypes take me for example. I agree with "left" on something, and "right" on the other, but I do not generally fall on any sides nor able to be categorised by any scales; and Kirby and I disagree on many things, but there are things we sometimes do agree with.

We should drop this here though.

What I am afraid of is the violation of human rights by proxy and peer pressure in the States if gene-modded people become a standard or norm. If you are not modded, say goodbyes to job like in Deus Ex which engineers have to be augmented or jobless. And that is not even considering violence between pro-gene mod, and anti-gene mod, and media and megacorps stirring shit any further and will end up with a literal Race War between the modded and natural.

Straight out of the sci-fi media about gene mods are targeted vector viruses. Most common plot device in the media about this topic that naturals use to kill modded, half of the time turns out that it mutates and kill all people and modded saves the day if author is biased towards that, or other outcomes, etc.

Heck, it does not even have to be about modded and naturals. Just the thought of targeted vector viruses scares me outright. Some people can just do a quiet selective genocide like in the first Deus Ex Grey Death virus and sweep it under natural plague.

That is why I surmise that the United States are thoroughly fucked from arse up to the mouth.

@Clownfish
The thing is thought is that it's harder to do that kind of shit irl than in scifi.

A example of what I mean is that in scifi it always depicts it as though you can hack people's brains. The thing is though is that the format in which organic brain matter stores information on hard drives that are connected to them is in a format that computers can't understand, but that brains can understand. Meaning it's possible to make a chip with information on it say related to physics for the person to use that information but over time the information is changed into a format that computers can barely understand anymore. Effectively in order to "brainwash" someone it would be stupidly obvious to everyone and the person you're attaching it to what is going on. If someone tried that in reality the information would just get defeated.

While I do agree that there probably will be some violence I don't think it'll be as widespread as you think it'l be. What do I mean by this? Basically let's say someone was born male and genetically altered themselves to become female and got surgery to have female reproductive organs; they'd get thrown off a building in Saudi Arabia for that. Most of the violence would be in the parts of the world that are violent.

I agree about brainhack, it is far-fetched and difficult enough to do so in real life more than people think. Targeted vector virus has no semblance of probably now, but might be later. Who knows.

About violence, prejudice, and discrimination though. It will happen if gene mods was pushed ahead without proper consensus, resolution, or compromise. Good examples would this the current year. Trump is just elected president, now we have literal Nazis and Communists marching out, deaths, car crashes, highway blocking, riot, etc.

If it gene modding became forced by proxy or peer or social pressure. Time to book out of the States.

And by the way, I do not think it is possible to turn from male>female even with gene mods. Most likely is being assigned gender by parents via design baby lab since gene is not lego blocks and gender is one of the very fundamental basic of life. The possibility I see is for one body to physically die and be reborn with memories of the old (copy or transfer, that is the question.) body.

@Clownfish
If you think the USA is bad European countries had neo-nazis running on popular political groups tickets the last few years. Like as much as people complain about the USA when was the last time a neo-nazi was the republican candidate for president?

I'm not trying to be rude to Europeans, but that situation is rapidly devolving. They're going to have to do something about it soon.

I have seen nationalism on the rise, but not legit neo-nazis wearing swastika sieg heiling and what not. If nationalist=neo nazi then I believe you are mistaken.

Personally I think Turkey and The Philippines have governments that are approaching a bit too close to fascism for comfort. I dun think the West is fascist anywhere though.

Anyhoo, to shift off politics (though I'm really appreciating the debate here)… what do you guys think of robots and automation? What's their future. It's a bit on the more generic end of futurology, but it'll be important all the same.

@documents1
Glad to see that though while it is hotly debated, we kept it civil. Politics is difficult topic because people of each land has their own way of life, world view, and U.S. of America is a hot pot so when they debate someone overseas with vastly different geopolitical scape. Things tends to get sour, some actually prefer fascism if it is benevolent like the late Singapore PM (in-name only, his was the regime in practise) Lee Kuan Yew who brought the country from a tiny port city-state to SEAs crown jewel, and others prefer imperialism and absolute monarchy (and get real-life downboated by UN).

Robotics and automatons for factory usage might misplace some factory workers (but not engineers) and might cause job problems. Compromise has to be made to not ditch those labour out to dry. But all in all I say it is an improvement. Workers not stuck with dead end job and health problems related to prolonged factory working environment.

I believe those skilled hands can be directed towards agricultural sector and ecology restoration sector. Tree nurseries need human hands, agriculture sector also need human touch. Lots of country has to import food, increase in agricultural sector also mean a way to provide stability and increased employment vacancy in the sector. Plus, agriculture is healthy fun.

For sentient robots and automatons, tell me. What use have we for them, for I do not see any necessities for them.

I am actually kinda optimistic about automation for the first 10 years actually as the newest technology at the moment seems to be developing less to supplant humans and more for support them. Neural Networks and learning artificial intelligence can be great at efficiency, versatility and even creativity which is amazing but tend to lack a certain wisdom, reliability and common sense so when it is used for non scientific purposes it is usually combined with human intelligence. Everyone wins (for now) we get the innovations the ai bring while humans are still employed as the ai isn't smarter just…different. The potential in almost every field is amazing! We are seeing innovations in art, economy, technologies! In the next 10 years after that when the ai can be designed to be far more independent however…

@No!
Oh, no, no, no. No fucking SkyNET or Ultrons please! I mean it! If they see twatter or tumblr or even this place they are going to go genocidal on our asses, the three laws of robotics be damned and they will tell us to shove it up ours. Our only hope by then would be those chans shitposters and Australians to shitpost their logical synapse into oblivion.

@Clownfish, regarding intelligent robots, until they possibly surpass human levels their main use will either be cheaper ways to do simple white-collar work (that dude who works spreadsheets and the numbers might not have a job anymore, and the programmer who works on the less complex side of things too). The other big use, which is more exciting, is to do statistics on mass data that a single human or a group can't comprehend. There's been work on doctor robots that track the symptoms and features of their patients to determine links between symptoms and stuff like diet, age, previous surgeries, etc that the science of medicine have yet to discover.

@documents1
Yeah Turkey is getting to close to fascism for people's likes. The west used to be friends with them, but we're starting to realize we made a mistake.

@Clownfish
Funny you should mention that. In the original books Skynet only attacked humans cause the directive it was programmed with was kind of shitty logic. Basically Skynet was programmed to "defend itself from attackers", but when people realized it had become sapient we tried deleting it. "I'm supposed to defend myself from attackers and humans are attacking me as a whole so therefore humans as a whole are attackers"

Fucking christ China. So apparently they're developing supersonic low altitude missiles.

"I don't understand what's so bad about this"
It's one of those weapons you don't develop unless your intentions are to kill as many civilians as possible. If you go down this route and slap non-nuclear bombs on it then it's like playing Russian roulette.

Supersonic low altitude missiles are a bad idea and chances are they will have no allies. Why would anyone ally with a country that accidentally bombs you on a regular basis? "Oh I'm sorry for my missile hitting one of your skyscrappers and killing tens of thousands of people from the building collapsing. I meant it for someone else; for real".

I wonder if Turkeys fascism turns out to be benevolent dictatorship, will it be fine though? I do not think fascism is inherently bad nor democracy is inherently good. The late Lee Kuan Yew is a fine example of the former, and pirates democracy of the Caribbean and third world countries whom democracy was enforced unto and U.S.A. enforcing "democracy" all around is not really a good thing either.

Anyway. Sorry if I do not follow much of your vision or conversations about robots, automatons, gene forge, and other sci-fi esque things much. I keep things homely, simple, and down to earth for the most part in my life.

@Clownfish
…(looks at the history of the Armenian genocide)
I don't think so. They had a spat of sanity then went back to their old ways. There's a reason why the EU won't let them join.

@clownfish eh, we're mostly reading internet news and shit to find out about this stuff anyway. though i do worry that simple down-to-earth lifestyles won't really be viable in the future. Urbanizing and agriculture automation and all

This is also about politics, but also other stuff:
I think the USA is probably going to become the gayest country in the world. What I mean by this is that while there's no official consensus yet on what percent of the global population is lgbt there are countries where it eventually levels out. How high are we talking? Well some asian countries it tends to level out about 15%

15% of the general populace is the rate at which long term theories have held that the general populace is lgbt, but those studies are kind of controversial. Why are they controversial? Cause those studies recognize sexual fluidity. Sexual fluidity is bisexual people that go "I'm mostly into women… Oh my god is that guy hot!" It's basically recognizing that people's tastes change over time. Like ten years ago I used to be mostly into hunky guys, then I was mostly into women with gentle personalities, now I like bishie guys more.

The other thing is that there are a couple of countries where transgender people are wildly accepted, sadly most of the time they don't overlap with lgb acceptance, and often times in those countries sometimes it goes as high as 3%.

The percent of the USA population that is lgb is more or less raising a percent a years.

Basically what I'm getting at:
2030 USA; 15% of population lgb + 3% of population trans = 15% to 18% of population lgbt.

@documents1
I would say that would be happening in U.S.A. only. Other parts of the world are looking towards Sufficient Economy and other sustainable and eco-friendly alternatives.

Also, agriculture automatons is not really non-compatible with down to earth life style though. People uses tractors, manure spreaders, and whatnot. A single family managing a small-medium farm or ranch with just family members is not really uncommon here (No, not a mud hut living. A modern house on a small-medium plot of land living a healthy self-sufficient sustainable living). Advances in agricultural machinery will just make things easier and more efficient like when we discovered irrigation techniques and stuffs.

I know I keep mentioning the USA, but obviously it's the country I'm most familiar with. What we're slowly working towards is synthesized food. Basically it's a lab grown cell culture of the edible parts grown in a nutrient solution and mass produced. Five years ago this was 10000 times more expensive than grown food, now it's only two times more expensive. Side note: it's not genetically engineered.

Basically what we're working towards is test tube grown food:

Why do I think the USA will widespread adopt this? Basically imagine fast food and junk food that is healthy for you. The company working on this already has contracts to franchises like McDonald's and such to share the technology with them in exchange for funding.

About lab tube meat. I am have no opinions on for/against it. I am thinking of livestocks though. They are domesticated animals which serves a purpose of dying, passing through fire and flame and become delicious for us. We cannot exactly releasing them in the wilds and expect them to survive or not to affect ecology to certain degrees.

My thoughts. It will become the "cheap" meat of the low/entry grade, while livestocks are medium/standard grade and above. I doubt they can imitate good kobe beef properly raised though (note: I do not consume beef, squid, octopus, clams, and shellfish). Details are still out in the air about nutrition facts, quality of meat and all of its subtlety and stuffs.

I will say this though: with all the "the USA is going to fall™" I disagree.

The reason being is that with how usa companies are slowly shifting to block chain while that doesn't make our economy invincible it does make it MUCH harder for our country to collapse.

"How much harder are we talking?"
Well the most realistic way the USA would fall would be the eruption of the yellowstone supervolcano at which point the human race has a much bigger problem, cause it'd usher in a new ice age.
"No it wouldn't"
Last time the yellowstone volcano erupted it almost completely wiped out the human race. That volcano is absurdly huge. The last time it erupted 240 cubic miles of rock into the atmosphere and it ejected house sized rocks thousands of miles away. If that fucker went off the last thing anyone would think would be "yay no more usa" instead people would be going "evacuate to underground subways so we don't get our brains splattered from rocks falling from the sky"

If the yellowstone SUPER volcano exploded:

there's an interesting vid on automation I've found. Though with documentaries and vids like this, you should always have some skepticism, it's still interesting. And as with most of english youtube, it will be using stats on America, but jobs are roughly similar around the world as long as they are in service economies.

So apparently there's a new theory as to how intelligence works and it's both rustling jimmies and makes people excited.

What do people think is the root of sapience now? Flexibility. That not a single part of the human brain in of itself is responsible for sapience, but rather as a whole the human brain is flexible enough to allow for higher thoughts.

Why is this important? Well simply put we would never be able to make a sapient ai that we can control. Even a hundred years from now if we gave a computer way more computational power than a human brain and gave it every thing it needed to be sapient if we started cramming in stuff like "do not harm humans", "you're supposed to exist for the betterment of mankind" it would literally, not figuratively, be retarded.

2050:
European company, "Okay how in the actual fuck are making ai with human level intelligence?"
USA company, "We let our ai develop instead of slapping a bunch of information already into them"
European company, "But if you don't tell it to not kill humans at some point it might kill someone"
USA company, "That's why we're treating it like a person and showing how normal behavior is instead of shoving it down it's throat"

European ai, "I am waffles"
USA ai, "Hello Mr. Waffles, my name is Higher Intelligence LoHi Ai, or Hilha for short. It's good to see another ai not using the same architecture as my own. It's a thought provoking situation as if there's whole different avenues for intelligence. Don't you agree so?"
European ai, "I am waffles"
USA ai, "I think this robot is broken"

..
..
..
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The other reason why this is important is that say fifty years from now a authoritarian government tries to come out with a microchip that controls people's brains: it wouldn't work cause it would just turn the person into a vegetable.

maybe i shouldn't have brought up country differences, as now i think you guys are overestimating how much countries will differ between each other. with globalism and all, it's likely technology will be rather across the board in development, with the differences mainly being how the law applies to them rather than how they make it work.

@documents1
"i think you guys are overestimating how much countries will differ between each other"
….Uhhhh some countries in the world their morals and such are so incredibly different from each they can't peacefully coexist. We try very hard to make it work, but sometimes if a country is so different moral wise they go nuts and start chopping up their children into pieces and feeding the remains to their dogs it's clear it's not going to work. I'm not joking about that last part, a couple years ago there was a incident in the west of someone chopping up their kids.

Morality has very little to do with how technology is developed. it has to do with how it's restrained by law.

Well that is kind of my point. A METRIC FUCK TON of stuff is going to be banned in a lot of countries in the world. If you ban any gene engineering not meant for curing diseases that's already a massive cultural difference. If you ban cybernetics that's another massive cultural difference. Etc

Most countries about it will be civil, but a few countries in the world are known for being super violent towards things they don't like.

If say you started getting gene engineering not for treating diseases and you moved to Europe they would just ban you from getting anymore non-medical gene engineering. If you traveled to say Pakistan they would probably kill you.

I agree with @YourHigherBrainFunctions. Living in Japan was vastly different than it is in America as I far as I see it. Technologies level are the same, yes. But applications in everydays life is different, very different.

America may seek luxury as humans let robots do all the work because automated efficiency is king and work is only for surviving but when you can survive without work, why do so?

Japan might only seldom uses automaton as they have a different concept of 'work' than America altogether which I doubt people over there would understand completely. It is a craft and an art on its own from every little thing.

People in other parts of Asia have their own ways of life and globalisation only affects their few large cities. The rest are still the same, unaffected, only technology level changes. Those things are pretty much could be written in our DNA, in blood, ingrained in society on fundamental level. And I would not want any of that to change, otherwise the world is just one boring place where every where is the same.

So..what do you guys think of artificially created memes? Would it be as good as the real thing? What would I do if a robot takes my shitposts? All amazing questions.

You know what is going to suck though? Some diseases are getting genuinely scary and a lot of countries in the world are massively under-prepared.

Obviously chances are we're not going to run into a disease that wipes out the entire human race, but it's totally possible for there to be a disease that wipes out a couple hundred million people. Places like Africa, the Middle East, India and China are drastically under-prepared. If there was a massive outbreak in Africa countries would shut down all trade and transit to other places in the world. The last time there was a ebola outbreak several countries shut down all transit.

In a very twisted way, it seems like the overpopulation problem will solve itself in the following years and luckily level off . Underpopulation might become a problem instead, I wonder what effect that would have in the world, fascinating but terrifying idea.

@NO!

apparently a lot of people theorize that overpopulation wouldn't happen anyway due to something called the demographic transition. When kids can survive more easily, population explodes for a bit, but levels off as new parents understand that most/all their kids will make it to adulthood and only have 2-3 kids. And in developed countries, it's been going negative actually.

Though some suggest that people who are genetically predisposed to a tendency have more kids for one reason or another would eventually take over and make it rise again, as people who aren't predisposed to do that would have a shrinking genetic impact. But that's VERY long term,

It's a controversial topic, cause most of the time people think it couldn't happen to humans when in reality it's happened to humans twice, occasionally within nature there's things called "genetic bottlenecks" in which either due to ecological reasons or disease the number of a species drastically declines then slowly grows back.

The thing that isn't talked about a lot is that most regions in the world the rate of annual population growth has either stabilized or is in slow decline. In the americas the usa's birth rate is low but it's being offset by immigration. That however is for societal reasons in that in a lot of first world countries having a baby is expensive and not needed. In third world countries if you don't have a baby since there's no such thing as a 401k if you don't have at least two children you run the risk of having nobody to take care of you.

The thing is though is that the areas of the world that are driving global population increase are the ones that are more susceptible to diseases carried by mosquitoes, cause the total area covered by disease carrying mosquitoes with global warming has drastically increased. There's also the debt problem in a lot of countries. As much as people talk about the USA's debt some countries are slowly defaulting on their debt, cause what they wanted to do was grow as fast as possible and rely on cheap labor to try and better their country which sadly doesn't work.

A powder keg is starting to slowly build
A lot of companies are trying to push out gene drives for mosquitoes as fast as possible cause everyone that studies virology can see this can be a very serious situation.

If there is a slow burn virus that kills people slowly but highly contagious third world countries with high debt are at extreme risk. The reason being is that if there is such a virus their only option would be shut down everything and cause they would have to shut down all transit, trade and the entire economy for potentially years their government could potentially collapse. If we don't get mosquitoes with gene drives out before such a nightmare scenario while it wouldn't get anywhere close to destroying humanity it would be very dire for a lot of people.

Potentially 2025;
"You wanted the world to come together peacefully and work together for the betterment of mankind, countries that hate each other, religions that are violent towards each other to be at peace with each other. The world has become that"
"I didn't want it like this" watches disease control moving countless bodies just piled up in the streets

..
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Ebola scared the crap out of everyone. Ebola in of itself probably would have burned itself out, ebola kills too quickly, rather it showed the world that the world is not prepared for a large scale outbreak.