The emergence of science has changed the way the world develops. What will the future world look like?

All kinds of domestic aircraft shuttle over the city, busy and orderly; All-day space elevators take people away from the earth, where people will carry spacecraft to sail among the stars and come and go among many living planets in the solar system; Endless energy and highly prosperous social civilization are our imagination of the future world.

Most importantly, we believe that all this will come true in the end, and the only dispute is when it will come true. Since the Australopithecus era, human beings have appeared on the earth for about 4 million years, and human civilization originated between the Tigris River and the Euphrates River in 4000 BC. After the emergence of human civilization, the whole human development has experienced rapid development, slow development, stagnation and retrogression, and these stages have appeared repeatedly. Take China as an example. During the feudal dynasty of thousands of years, there was no obvious progress in human civilization.

People under the feudal dynasty could not foresee that the future would be better than the present, and it was indeed the case. With the emergence of science, the development mode of the world has undergone earth-shaking changes.

Compared with the whole human history, the birth of science is very short. Generally speaking, the establishment of Newtonian mechanical system is regarded as the symbol of the birth of natural science, which took place in the17th century, that is to say, the birth of science is only over 300 years. It is these 300 years that the world has been completely different. 300 years ago, mankind was still struggling to find a good horse. Now, thousands of artificial satellites have circled the earth. 300 years ago, mankind was still looking up at the starry sky and symbolizing God in the night sky.

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The stars pray, and now we can detect them at close range through space probes, and have some preliminary alien transformation plans. Now, everyone can foresee that the future will be better than the present, and the unthinkable now will inevitably appear in the future.

From where? The future may not be better than the present? Arrive? Will the future be better than the present? This is the change that science has brought to human civilization and changed the way the world develops.

Just like this, we feel a little more sorry for no reason, because we have no chance to see the future world living in the present, and the only thing that can comfort our hearts is our imagination. Of course, imagination is meaningful only if it is based on reality. It took only 300 years for science to transform the world beyond recognition, so how far will human civilization progress in another 300 years or even thousands of years?

In fact, this is a difficult thing to predict because there are too many variables involved. The first is a stable development environment. Peace and stability are the cornerstones of development. On the premise of stable development, a world similar to the one described at the beginning of the article may really appear in a thousand years, but if the premise of stability changes, everything will be completely different.

The progress of science has not only brought benefits to human civilization, but also some side effects.

For example, after the birth of science, the losses caused by war are much greater than before the birth of science. This is because science has made weapons and equipment different, and the damage it can cause is completely different from the past. Obviously, the lethality of weapons in the future will be even more amazing. If human beings can't adjust their own contradictions well, once the future war breaks out, let alone the development of civilization, the earth itself will fall into crisis.

But development will not be absolutely balanced, so contradictions will always exist, so it is not in line with objective laws to try to completely eliminate contradictions. To avoid contradictions from turning into wars, we must place our hopes on the development of artificial intelligence technology. Now human beings have entered the era of artificial intelligence, but today's artificial intelligence is still very weak, that is, artificial intelligence technology without independent consciousness. Once the strong artificial intelligence technology is developed in the future, it is not impossible for robots with independent consciousness.

The outbreak of war in human history is closely related to one factor, and that is emotion. Without the influence of emotions, war can be completely avoided as long as effective constraints are realized.

For example, the nuclear limitation in today's world, as we all know, once a nuclear war breaks out, the world will be destroyed. Under such strong constraints, the war should never break out, but the reality is obviously not the case. People will still be worried about the emergence of war, and they are more worried than before. Now that you have achieved strong constraints, why worry?

The reason is that human beings are influenced by emotions and will make irrational choices. With the development of artificial intelligence technology in the future, machines are responsible for social management and decision-making. Machines have no emotion and their behaviors are restricted by logic. Therefore, under strong constraints, war will be completely avoided, which is also the key to maintain the eternal and stable development of mankind. Of course, the over-developed strong artificial intelligence technology will also bring some potential threats, which requires human beings to be cautious on the road of artificial intelligence development.