ShawnD said:
I'm not going to say Kaku is wrong or anything since he hopefully knows a lot more than I do, but he seems to be making a lot of assumptions, and some of the things he points out as being signs of a changing era are things that have been around for hundreds if not thousands of years.
His reference of EU and NAFTA as a sign of trade globalization may be true, that doesn't mean politics will globalize as well. Historically there have been many huge empires like the Romans, the Mongolians, and maybe even USSR, but they all collapsed in favor of smaller nations with more local governments. Even in your own country you can probably name a few instances of alienation and separatism. California (just a little bit) in the US. Quebec in Canada. Ireland in UK. To top it off, the League of Nations and United Nations are both effectively useless global governments. People just don't seem to want globalized government, and that throws a wrench into Kaku's assumption that civilization is headed that way.
In one sense I think you make some good points - in particular the part about wanting local governments is interesting. But I also think there is a big difference between the Mongolians and NAFTA. NAFTA is an agreement that seeks to unite economies, whereas the rest mentioned were conquerers. Perhaps the philosophy of the former Soviet was admirable in that they were interested in the well being of the average person, but they were also concerned about political and military power. Trade agreements are about economics and global competition.
He said English is the current international language, which is true. At one time French was the big language you had to know. As China and India get more powerful, I would expect Mandarin and Hindi to become more widespread. He is correct that international languages exist, but they are not a sign of globalization and a changing civilization.
How many countries do we have represented here at PF? Already we see the barriers between countries breaking down with the first international conversation in human history taking place today on the internet. However, with the language translation software coming along this point may be moot. It might be argued that the true international language is binary.
He said terrorists resist the changing of civilization because they are seeing the beginning of a "new planetary civilization", which is not entirely true. Some time around 1300AD, a Muslim scholar thought it was a good idea to attack science and say it was evil, which was strange because up until that time the Middle East was the basically the center of scientific advancement (our number system is Arabic, most of the stars have Arabic names, even the word "algebra" is an Arabic word). The war between Islam and science is nothing new; it has been around for literally 700 years, and it's not restricted to terrorists.
You jumped from "planetary civilization", to science. In fact the terrorists are using science as a weapon to take down modern civilization. They wish to end the influence of modern society on traditional societies. Terrorism is about religious beliefs, control, and influence, not science.
He said that the numbers would predict lots of other type 1-3 civilizations across the universe, but that seems a bit exadurated. The numbers predict lots of planets where life can exist. From there you need to ask how many of those hypothetical planets will actually have life on them. How many of those planets with life will have advanced civilizations, or even multicellular life. Then of those planets that have advanced civilizations, how many of them will have made the leap from Type 0 to Type I?
Gotta agree on that one. Although we are able to make better estimates for some Drake variables, we really have no idea what the odds are for life to occur.
Kaku then says if we actually get into space and have starships, we may find civilizations that did not make the jump to Type I and died because of an irrated atmosphere or an overheated planet (global warming). This seems like a very strange thing to say because it assumes there's no way to stop pollution or global warming, and that we absolutely must get into outer space or we will die.
Kaku is pretty pessimistic about our future. One night I was listening to him talk about this, and he seems to think we have most likely already passed the point of no return [AGW]. But his message is about suriviving what lies ahead.
It's a bit confusing when a scientist goes on about things he probably imagined when he fell asleep in the tub. Is it just a story? Is it supposed to be scientific? Is he trying to teach us or is he trying to entertain us? Nobody knows but him.
The fact that he is a scientist doesn't imply that he always speaks for science. He is also a human being who is concerned about the future of humanity. He also wants to sell books,
but I think the books are the chicken, not the egg [which comes first]. He has a message that he has worked very hard to get out, and he tries to convey his message in terms that will appeal to the general public since this is his target audience.
