Seems you could have a barge offshore of a country, with a nuclear reactor, which powers reverse osmosis and pumps the fresh water onshore,

I have to laugh when the response to "demand will outstrip supply" is "we need to be more efficient about water use" without addressing the endlessly climbing demand.

Too many humans. Too much consumption. Not enough natural resources.

We need to look for ways to slow population growth, such as making life so awful that people either won't have the time to have children or they will actively decide to not procreate because the world is too messed up to bring children into it.

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The following submission statement was provided by /u/filosoful:

Landmark report urges overhaul of wasteful water practices around world on eve of crucial UN summit

The world is facing an imminent water crisis, with demand expected to outstrip the supply of fresh water by 40% by the end of this decade, experts have said on the eve of a crucial UN water summit.

Governments must urgently stop subsidising the extraction and overuse of water through misdirected agricultural subsidies, and industries from mining to manufacturing must be made to overhaul their wasteful practices, according to a landmark report on the economics of water.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/11tjlos/global_fresh_water_demand_will_outstrip_supply_by/jcjd0ub/

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The laws of thermodynamics were discovered in 1850. So only about 170 years ago. It's very possible we will find flaws or loopholes in this between now and the predicted heat death of the universe. We have an almost unfathomable amount of time to discover new laws that may exist.

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Landmark report urges overhaul of wasteful water practices around world on eve of crucial UN summit

The world is facing an imminent water crisis, with demand expected to outstrip the supply of fresh water by 40% by the end of this decade, experts have said on the eve of a crucial UN water summit.

Governments must urgently stop subsidising the extraction and overuse of water through misdirected agricultural subsidies, and industries from mining to manufacturing must be made to overhaul their wasteful practices, according to a landmark report on the economics of water.

Lol blow it up? This post is asking about using resources to plan to prevent a hypothetical event billions or trillions of years in the future hahahaha. Sorry I just can't take this seriously anymore.

I am saying that talking about a billion years from now is not only useless for planning purposes, but actually meaningless as an exercise, because a trillion things will happen that you could never have conceived of. If some remnant of humanity exists in some form that far in the future, who's to say it still exists in 3 dimensions? Or experiences time? Or cannot travel to other universes? Yes, I'm confident that saying you want to save the universe from a death that may not occur for a trillion years is the pinnacle of hubris.

I would say humans extending life/ becoming immortal is first. Then finding a way to live in another solar system second.

If we aren’t around for the end of the universe then what does it matter?

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By reducing the population by 33%

> True AGI implies that it has its own wants and needs

How do you propose we ensure those wants are in line with human values? Or do you believe in some kind of nebulous more intelligence = better morality construct? Friendly reminder that we can't even ensure humans are aligned with societal values.

And decent ai will replace the massive amount of therapists who suck, and they will be better off for it.

Yes, because small companies buy multi-million dollar launches to go to space and proceed to fake data from extremely sensitive and accurate measurement equipment, all of which are verified by outside sources. I can see them making a claim and never delivering on it, but a launch is a totally different animal. In order to pull off the scam, you would have to be able to fake a mass of data. That scenario is so complex/silly that you can't possibly believe they would go through that much trouble just to fool people momentarily. They and their partner clearly think they have something and have enough data to back up and justify a rocket launch.

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'Im feeling lucky'

But, since we're on the topic of how to control for effects over extremely long timelines, what do you think about the fact that earth life will die off in a relatively short period of time unless it can intelligently organize in order to colonize other solar systems? This solar system has a relatively near expiration date as far as the habitability for all life as we know it is concerned. Earth life has probably been around for more time than it has left before the sun kills everything here.

This period of time is so dynamic with regards to extremely long-term outcomes because we're so close technologically to being able to save earth life from this expiration date, but it's a damaging and dangerous time too. We're on the edge of destruction and salvation simultaneously, and the outcome depends on how successful we are at working together as a group to wield technology in favor of our interests (including long term ones).

The point of the above being that earth life is middle aged or elderly at 4 billion years old, considering the life cycle of this solar system. The only chance earth has to make an impact on a more distant future than a few billion more years years is for a species like humans to make space colonization possible. Could another intelligent species have performed this whole process better? Maybe, but a lot of the ills of our society and impact on ecology are integral to how a society must develop technologies like this, it just depends what kind of instincts you have to fight against as a group while doing it.

I feel like saving earth life from a relatively near-term death sentence is better than barring technological advancement because it created an ecological disaster. Lots of natural things cause ecological disasters, but instead of getting nothing out of it, we could be saving the only life we know of in the universe. Since we've already found ourselves in this position, I think the responsible thing to do is to do our best to control and stabilize climate and ecology while we take advantage of a potentially fleeting opportunity to help life get off this planet. It spent 4 billion years cooking up different creatures and destroying them, and now it's produced one that might be strong enough to leave the nest and make something of itself before this incubation chamber dries up. I feel compelled to take advantage of the opportunity.

There's a popular analysis called the Fermi Paradox, which postulates that the likelihood of technologically advanced alien life existing within a given proximity to earth seems higher based on a scientific analysis than we observe in space. We don't see robust evidence of technologically advanced alien life anywhere, and it begs the question "Why do we find ourselves so alone in our observable section of the universe?" The possible answers are:

•Maybe life is really difficult to get the right conditions for in the first place.

•Maybe technologically intelligent life is really difficult for life to evolve into.

•Maybe technologically intelligent life overwhelmingly tends to destroy itself with its own technology before it can use it to save itself and exist for a long time.

•Or maybe there are plenty of other aliens, and we either live in a simulated universe just for us, made by an alien, or the aliens overwhelmingly use technology that doesn't produce recognizable electromagnetic signatures for whatever reason.

The mainstream interpretation is that the evidence feels a little stacked against life being difficult to start in the first place, just because of the vast scope of the observable universe. The same goes for the idea that technologically intelligent life would be too difficult to evolve because of the competitive edge afforded by it, and based on the variety of intelligence we see across the animal kingdom. The third idea feels particularly compelling because this advanced technology does indeed feel dangerous to wield. The fourth possibility doesn't have robust evidence supporting it, but it's a possibility and should be included for the sake of rigor.

Futurists (Futurologists?) talk about what may be the "great filter" which has kept the universe so devoid of technologically advanced alien life, and worry that we may be close to encountering it. Considering how profoundly alone we find ourselves in the universe, I don't feel comfortable being so quick to throw away the one chance we know of to preserve life for the future.

I, for one, would like to welcome our new AI overlords.

>True AGI implies that it has its own wants and needs, and would not just be a prompt machine like current AI.

You can have intelligence that doesn't want, at least in theory. I'm sure that there has been a few monks and hermits across history that have been intelligent without desiring much if anything.

I'm just explaining that the distant future can be affected by current events, and that some people do place value on those future outcomes. You're the one claiming that this is absolutely untrue and impossible. That sounds like a better example of hubris than my analysis is.

I get that your message is that you'd prefer to focus on nearer-term outcomes, and that's valid, but that doesn't mean it's pointless to talk about how distant futures could be affected by near-term developments.

Most of what you're doing here is just expressing your emotions, hyperbolically claiming absolutes and adding nothing to an actual analysis of this topic. I'm being literal and a little more specific about the content of this topic, which I think is a better contribution than what you've made here.

> I'm not sure how to respond to this because it doesn't disprove the findings of the double slit experiment.

It's an article explaining those experiments; of course it doesn't "disprove" them. The point is that it shows your understanding of them is flawed.

In particular, it clarifies that the difference is the measurement, not the observer. Note what you originally said:
> Conscious observer is the differentiating variable. Everything else is the same. The photon is always measured, it’s never not measured.

And note what you just quoted:
> "Indeed, the results of both Truscott and Aspect’s experiments shows that a particle’s wave or particle nature is most likely undefined until a measurement is made."

So the differentiating variable is the details of the measurement, either when/where it's measured (before/after passing through the slits) or how often it's measured (second beam splitter). There is no difference in the presence of the conscious observer; contrary to what you were saying, the article clarifies that that is not the differentiating variable.

> The presence of an observer is necessary to experience the world. If a tree falls in a forest, and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound? > > No it doesn't. Sound is the result of the disturbance of a medium, usually air, oscillating between 40 and 40,000 hz striking our eardrum, which sends a signal to our brain that produces the sensation of sound.

You're essentially begging the question here by using a definition of "sound" that is not valid for physics:
> "In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the reception of such waves and their perception by the brain."

It only seems like an observer is necessary for "sound" because you're using the wrong definition of the word; you're trying to reason about physics using a definition meant for human psychology. It's no more valid than trying to reason about calculus using the wrong definition of the word "integral".

> We have immediate threats to human extinction right now, literally today.

We aren't a monolithic species

> and no species or planet or star or even photon has ever existed that long.

By that logic why not just say blow it all up because the universe in its current form hasn't always existed since there was one

Your definition that you say humans lack despite being human seems to confuse sapience with wisdom