Thanks for posting.

that galactic civs are at all possible. Civs may be very rare and trapped on their own star systems. Doesn’t mean we are faced with immediate doom, our system has about 5 billion years of use left.

and thought-provoking. Thanks for posting!

were born in. Into it he threw a part of himself, a spark of consciousness, that would spread with every human child that was born. The catch: these conscious beings would have no memory of who they really were, a part of an all-powerful God. That allowed God to vicariously enjoy all the emotions of joy, fear, love, hate etc that make life happy, exciting, scary, pleasurable. Every once in a while someone remembers what we actually are and tries to explain it to his or her fellow humans. They usually find some followers who believe them, but eventually the knowledge gets buried in the layers of meaningless ritual and absurd dogma we call religion.

If they got off their spaceship and said they were here to convert us to christianity.

No offense Elon -- loved the car in space -- too cool to the nth power -- but computer graphics have advanced to the point where it's far easier to create whole worlds in a Hollywood basement than to actually take steps toward going to any. We've seen 3 'Death Stars' (if you count the planet-thingy) and innumerable aliens on our Imax screens. Launching ourselves into the void in tin cans to reach planets we already know to be pretty nothing places seems... I dunno... anticlimactic somehow. I don't like that. I want space to be the big deal that it truly is.

When an actual neural interface allows full sensual immersion in synthetic environments, I'm afraid the real world in technologically advanced countries will stop advancing and come to resemble a teenager's room. For that reason, IMO, the creation of a computer-neural interface is a filter event.

Humanity may use marriage to computers to reach farther, or to stop reaching altogether. In addition, countries that have citizens jacked-in to virtual reality may also become vulnerable to being over-run by groups who are one step out of the iron age. Progress could end that way too. Long-short, this may be a rocky century. But-hey, all of our avatars will be amazing.