My Theory for the Purpose of Humanity

There is one thing that we humans will probably never beat: Time. Time is our enemy in this game of we call life. Every single one of us is going to die, and there is nothing we can do about it.

Not to sound depressing, but we have asked the same question since we achieved higher levels of thinking ages ago: Why are we here?

Well, I think, that our purpose is to develop machines that last forever. Machines, that not only can beat time, but also travel in space. Is that the next level for evolution? I think so.


Any thoughts?

...ok I'll bite...

Do you not think that Humanity is a machine that lasts forever, if we carry on breeding like we do we should last 4ever.

A machine is not humane just a machine

Originally posted by Valorian
...ok I'll bite...

Do you not think that Humanity is a machine that lasts forever, if we carry on breeding like we do we should last 4ever.

A machine is not humane just a machine

Well,

I think my main point is how fragile Humans are. Furthermore, objects made out of strong metals can withstand much more. You and I are not going to last, yet, a computer, with a source of energy, can last a very long time, and in space.

Sooner or later, this Earth will be swallowed by the sun. That being said, if we want our "story" to continue, we gotta get outta here.

Originally posted by Mouth
Machines, that not only can beat time, but also travel in space. Is that the next level for evolution?

Evolution for humans won't be creating independent vehicles or contraptions...it will be slowly replacing human tissue with mechanic components.

Within a few hundred years, if we can manage to keep from blowing ourselves up, humans will have synthetic eyes, eardrums, joints, hearts, and supplements to their brains.

Humans with no implants will be known as "freshies" and will do nothing but tend massive compost fields producing ethanol for their cybernetic masters.

Or something like that...

I wonder about this question all of the time. For now, I feel that our "purpose" is to ensure the survival of Earth life beyond the Earth. To try to understand the Universe, after all, we are the Universe.

For whom are we creating these machines, if not for ourselves? Why would machines need to travel through space without a human purpose? Are they supposed to serve a human purpose? Are you proposing that we are slaves to the machines? An unwilling/ignorant surrogate mother to the chest-burster so-to-speak? I'm not sure I'm clear on where you're going with this.

There are plenty of interesting, and sometimes even plausible-sounding 'spiritual' answers as to why we are here, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone mention a purpose such as this. You'll have to clarify as to what exactly you mean.

To be fair,..... who the heck would want to live forever on this planet anyhow? I imagine that after about 300 years it might get a little boring IMO. We wouldn't be able to sustain new life, so breeding would have to be curbed. We'd have to steralize a lot of people to prevent uncontrolled breeding. I can see why you'd want to keep someone like Einstein alive, as long as he continued working on his theories,... but the regular Joe Shmoe? I don't know. I didn't spend too much time thinking about it yet, so you'll need to make yourself more clear before I continue.

I guess I will try....

As I stated before, Time is something we have not been able to overcome thus far. Nothing can stop that coundown of your heartbeat. There is a specific number for every being on this planet that starts counting down, and once it hits zero its over.

Machines on the other hand, don't have that problem. They are inorganic.

And since we do have to leave Earth at some point, and our bodies cannot live in space, and everything is so far away, why wouldn't machines be the creations by which we beat time?

Originally posted by Essedarius
Evolution for humans won't be creating independent vehicles or contraptions...it will be slowly replacing human tissue with mechanic components.

Within a few hundred years, if we can manage to keep from blowing ourselves up, humans will have synthetic eyes, eardrums, joints, hearts, and supplements to their brains.

Humans with no implants will be known as "freshies" and will do nothing but tend massive compost fields producing ethanol for their cybernetic masters.

Or something like that...

A very interesting description of the future, worthy of a sci-fi novel.

I, on the other hand, believe we'll learn how to create live tissue (via cloning), and learn how to do flawless transplants of all sorts,.... maybe genetically modify ourselves to regrow missing parts in case of an accident, maybe even recreating an entire human body from a strand of DNA to bring it back to life (something that might look like a scene from the movie "The Fifth Element"). In fact I've seen them re-grow a human ear on the back of a mouse (not very humane, but the process is basic at this point compared to what we might have in the future). I've also heard that years from now we'll be able to regrow our damaged teeth. I think that this kind of genetic manipulation might be a better solution than replacing human parts with machines/robot parts. Hell, maybe one day we'll have robots composed of live tissue instead of metal parts. I've already heard about computer chips combined with mouse/rat brains.
It looks to me that we won't have complete need of metal/machine replacements if we can simply regrow any tissue, and perform a flawless transplant,.. maybe even transplanting memories from one brain to another,.... simply receiving a new body. Just some thoughts from the top of my head.

Originally posted by Mouth
Machines on the other hand, don't have that problem. They are inorganic.

And since we do have to leave Earth at some point, and our bodies cannot live in space, and everything is so far away, why wouldn't machines be the creations by which we beat time?

Machines still need upkeep, and can malfunction (built and designed by human hands/brains, therefore imperfect) . To me, human tissue sounds safer than metal parts that wear out, or need regular check-ups. Of course I'm aware that regular check-ups at the Doctor's office are necessary as well, but the ordinary healthy body will last longer than a machine would. Some people live over 80 years never having seen a doctor's office. Of course eventually, maybe hundreds or thousands of years from now we might perfect our methods, but I'm willing to bet that regrowing parts will become far easier than designing the perfect machine/parts to replace our organs or limbs.

Genetic manipulation also might make it possible for us to survive on different planets. Of course we might no longer look "human", but if we're thinking 'survival' only, it won't matter. We're working on finding out how to teraform other plantes to suit our biology. We may not have to 'change' ourselves to cope with another planet's environment at all.

The earth will be here for millions of years. We're nowhere close to being swallowed up by the sun. We may get hit by a large meteor, but the sun (at this point) is the least of our worries in my humble opinion.
So,..... IMO, I don't think we need to become machines (so-to-speak) in order to live longer lives and beat time. There are other ways.

EDIT: UHHH!!! I just had a thought! What if we designed machines to find other habitable planets while carrying human DNA, and then rebuilding our bodies from that DNA, implanting our memories inside our new bodies,.... once they deem the environment safe for our habitation? We would just need to figure out how to preserve that DNA for many, many years,... maybe centuries. Just a quick idea. I'm sure I'm not the first to think of it. We would be utilizing machines and live tissue to continue to beat time.

One more thing I want to add,... we'd first have to design machines that could last for centuries without needing maintenance. That might be a big problem to overcome.

[edit on 16-8-2006 by 2manyquestions]

[edit on 16-8-2006 by 2manyquestions]

Which is more a man,
the man without a mind,
or the machine without a soul?

Ha, but seriously, sometimes I like to toy with the idea that what if we are all robots. Like, some unkown race built us and their materials were bones, muscles, etc. and over time we killed them all. Kinda like what some people fear robots will do to us in the future.

Oh, the possibilities are endless...

we will eventually figure out exactly what causes the aging process, and with that knowledge be able to slow it down considerably to vastly increase our life expectancy.

Machines are just as fragile as humans...their parts wear out just as human cells, bones, joints etc do. The only difference is that they are easier to repair at the moment. However genetics and the like are relatively new fields with a lot of progress being made in what has been quite a short time

Originally posted by Mouth
There is one thing that we humans will probably never beat: Time. Time is our enemy in this game of we call life. Every single one of us is going to die, and there is nothing we can do about it.

Not to sound depressing, but we have asked the same question since we achieved higher levels of thinking ages ago: Why are we here?

Well, I think, that our purpose is to develop machines that last forever. Machines, that not only can beat time, but also travel in space. Is that the next level for evolution? I think so.


Any thoughts?

I always wonder what the next step of human evolution will look like. I always wondered why homo-sapiens always seem to be the end all for evolution on this planet.

As history shows every species changes over the course of time. What will humanity become in the several million years assuming we survive that long.

No species on earth has ever been shown to hit a perpetual wall of evolution because life is constantly changing all the time.

If you believe in the theory of evolution we have changed alot in the past several million years at least according to science.

If our species makes it for a couple more million years will we even still consider ourselves human? Seems after a while we might evolve to something more advanced. I doubt in a billion years we will be the same boring people fighting over whos guy in the sky is better on this planet.

I do not believe we there is an answer to why we are here. There is no reason why we are here. An answer to this question implies that we were created by something which implies a god or an alien race which planted the seeds for life on earth, both of which I find highly unlikely. Also nothing is timeless, everything has a beginning and an end. Even if a machine is developed which could exist "forever" it would cease to exist at the end of the universe.

I also must disagree that some sort of "super-human" or post-human will either be created by bio-engineering, cybernetic enhancements, or natural selection and will be the next rulers of earth. We are in the last age of man being most intelligent species on earth. Human's will invent machines that are more intelligent then themselves in the next 100 years. These machines will be able to surpass humans in every fashion of intellectual thinking and reasoning. Once this invention is made, it will be last invention mankind ever need and possibly will make. Since these machines are intellectually superior in every way they will be able to not only be able to create new innovations faster than humans, but design even more intellectual machines in a shorter amount of time. These machines will go on to do the same thing and so on and so forth. Man wont be able to keep up and even if we implement saftey measures into these AIs so that they will not hurt humans, eventually humans will dissappear because we will be so far behind. However things once thought impossible to solve will be easily solvable by these machines which is kind of exciting.

Originally posted by Mouth
There is one thing that we humans will probably never beat: Time. Time is our enemy in this game of we call life. Every single one of us is going to die, and there is nothing we can do about it.

Not to sound depressing, but we have asked the same question since we achieved higher levels of thinking ages ago: Why are we here?

Well, I think, that our purpose is to develop machines that last forever. Machines, that not only can beat time, but also travel in space. Is that the next level for evolution? I think so.


Any thoughts?

Stupidity and prejudice ideology is more of an enemy to humanity than time.

Surely we are all mortal and that cannot be helped, but we'll still be alive (hopefully most of us) when we reach contact with an extraterrestrial race and perhaps we can politely ask them to rejuvenate our deteriating bodies.

That or maybe our technology sometime soon may reach such an advancement.

[edit on 22-8-2006 by Timeseer]

That definitely would run in accordance with the real meaning of life and that being to survive the bad and the good.

ummm.... your all wrong, the purpose of humanity is to live the life we were given in anyway that we wish. It would be a curse if we were to live forever. Who cares about surviving, you live your life the way you want until your times up.

Originally posted by Circa
ummm.... your all wrong, the purpose of humanity is to live the life we were given in anyway that we wish. It would be a curse if we were to live forever. Who cares about surviving, you live your life the way you want until your times up.

That is actually true. You are free to live your life anyway you wish... but that won't excuse others from living life the way they wish, even in the means of excluding you from doing whatever you want. Because after all, fair is fair.

So basically, Mouth, your point is that humanity should beat time? Isn't time just a human invention? A concept in our brains, a concept on paper, to keep track of-- time? To have a sense of events as they occur, to measure durability?

If we look at our world, the universe, regardless of our precious invented "time" and its linguistical meaning in our brains, then there probably is no time - everything just happens in the moment.


Anyway, if we'd want to - or have to - beat time, we would have to totally "uninvent" it, totally get rid of the idea and sense of time which we humans invented ourselves and have gotten used to for many many centuries, and is something very important in human civilization. I think it'd be pretty difficult

Or something like that...

Hahaha, ah my. Quite the ending to that story.
But yeah, like the post above; time is just a human invention. Much like luck, or love. Well, not like...But not unlike.
Our reason to live isn't to construct robots in the hopes of... Of telling stories. The meaning of life is to procreate.
We exist, to continue existing.
Well, that or to end.
A meaning... I'm not so sure we have a "meaning" to have a "meaning" doesn't one need to assign it?

Originally posted by Mouth
I guess I will try....

As I stated before, Time is something we have not been able to overcome thus far. Nothing can stop that coundown of your heartbeat. There is a specific number for every being on this planet that starts counting down, and once it hits zero its over.

Machines on the other hand, don't have that problem. They are inorganic.

And since we do have to leave Earth at some point, and our bodies cannot live in space, and everything is so far away, why wouldn't machines be the creations by which we beat time?

It looks as if you're going two directions in general: you have this idea that our purpose is to let humanity survive and you have the idea that we have to beat time (and somehow you possibly try to connect these two). As if you're saying we must beat time in order to achieve human survival. IF we beat time, the concept of it, we will not necessarily secure survival.

But tell me something... Why do you think - taken from your opening post - that our purpose is to beat time? Because it's something we still "haven't beaten" yet? That's not a good argument. Then you continue to say how "every single one of us is going to die, and there is nothing we can do about it," as if this should be connected and logically following from the time-beating part. Why is time an enemy?