THE HUMAN FUTURE: A Case for Optimism



Soundtrack: https://melodysheep.bandcamp.com/album/the-human-future-original-soundtrack Patreon: http://patreon.com/melodysheep Change is coming. Humanity is entering a turbulent new era, unprecedented in both Earth and Human history. To survive the coming centuries and fulfill our potential as a species, we will have to overcome the biggest challenges we have ever faced, from extreme climate change, to rogue A.I., to the inevitable death of the sun itself.

The headlines make our chances look bleak. But when you look at our history and our tenacity, it’s clear that humanity is uniquely empowered to rise to the challenges we face.

If we succeed, our potential is cosmic in scale. Incredible prosperity is within our reach. Being optimistic is not only justified, it’s a powerful weapon in the fight for a higher future.
—–
Story, visual effects, music & Sound by melodysheep (John D. Boswell)
Narrated by Will Crowley

Soundtrack coming soon to all major music platforms.

Thank you to Protocol Labs for sponsoring this video: protocol.ai

ADDITIONAL VISUALS & MODELING BY

Unknown Dino
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Samuel Krug

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26 thoughts on “THE HUMAN FUTURE: A Case for Optimism”

  1. honestly, when I began this project, I was preparing to make a doomer-style "final warning" video for humanity. but over the last two years of research and editing, my mindset has flipped. it will take a truly apocalyptic event to stop us, and we are more than capable of avoiding those scenarios and eventually reaching transcendent futures. pessimism is everywhere, and to some degree it is understandable. but the case for being optimistic is strong… and being optimistic puts us on the right footing for the upcoming centuries. what say the people??

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  2. This video lifted something off my chest that I didn't even fully realize was there. Sure, I saw that things are generally looking grim. For years, I have been growing increasingly pessimistic about the world, about its future, and about humans in general. I found myself bitter and disappointed that the future was probably going to only be worse than the present. I looked back on the whole wide history of humanity and wondered if we had reached a peak and would proceed to destroy ourselves through ignorance, vindictiveness, and spite. Given all of that, I thought that I was doing a pretty good job of just trying to keep on going and do what I could about problems that are too big for me to solve.

    Yet watching this video made me feel such a wave of relief. I don't have to worry that this is it, that there isn't a purpose to anything I do because it's just going to be swallowed up by the greedy maw of extinction. I can dream of a better future and trust that someone will see it. I can weave my own story and know that something of it will last into that golden age. I can live and believe that there is some purpose behind the struggle.

    Thank you, Melodysheep, for this beautiful video. It means more to me than these scant, bare words could ever truly express.

    Reply
  3. Nuclear Energy could reduce greenhouse gasses by 85% effectively ending man made global warming within 10 years,… generation 4 reactor could repurpose spent fuel reducing its radioactive lifespan to hundreds of year Vs hundred of thousands of years.

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  4. 14:30 ok, good video so far, but this solution in stupid. Erosion, ok, meteorites??? The moon is the shield of the Earth, look at her, filled with impacts. Solar radiation? The magnetig field of earth is the protection against that, Luna has no magnetic field. This is basic stuff.
    15:03 basically, The Worm Emperor of Dunes idea.
    For any literate person 19:57 Lithium batteries and sustainable future are not in the same page. This requieres some reading, but you will se it.
    21:05 the is one human trait that is not here and is going down now a days. Guess it.
    21:17 You dont want to live forever.
    25:48 There are multiple subspecies, but you are not ready for that conversation.
    26:59 Seeeeee jajajajajajaja i told you.
    28:35 thats a lot of steel. If you want to do that better start in Mars. Lower Gravity, less energy to lift all that material to the Moon. And again, the Moon is the meteorite shield of the Earth, it WILL BE HITTED. So gotta invest in antimeteorite artillery or something similar. Also, if you change the orbit of the Earth seasons and the 365 days per year could change. That can fuck up the planet to extintion.

    Final note: very normie concepts (and half baked), but the final message is on point.

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  5. This was fuckin insane in terms of its quality. Realllllly REALLY great video.

    How in the hell did you get those clips? Did you create it with AI? I loved it everything! Especially the optimistic message.

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  6. 'We can achieve what no other species has done; become a multiplanetary species'

    Tardigrades: 'what, you think we have our genetic traits for fun?'

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  7. "To save the Earth" made me tear up 🥲

    Btw you are my favorite YouTube channel, your videos are so exceedingly well done, sometimes I think you are from the future.
    Keep up the good work, cheers.

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  8. You have faster computer and a way to tell a story. Everyone have not gone anywhere do your best.Ty for all your hard work. Only hurt and left alone will comeback others will not remember to take revenge even if they do have a reason for your future gen make a case. I am thinking don’t worry too much for your future gen everyone and and everything is alright. Bye as Krishna said i am everything and Iam everyone it’s just a body. Face it. Ty for your time.

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  9. Life is formed by energy-dissipating structures. In an open thermodynamic system such as Earth, the greater the internal complexity of these dissipative structures, the more energy they consume to maintain this complexity and the more entropy (i.e. disorder) they gener-ate outside of them.

    Human societies are not immune to these thermodynamic constraints. More specifically, the technosphere constantly requires energy inputs to power its operation. This is a direct consequence of the "memetic mutations" that our cultural memory allows, having begun from the first hominids, starting from cut stone through the conquest of fire to the Neolithic revolution, then other developments in technoculture leading to the cumulative use of all the primary energy sources available on our planet. All industrial revolutions from the steam engine to 5G rely on the abundance of energy to support them.

    Jacques Monod pleaded that chance and necessity were masters of our destinies. He recognized that a thread connected these two notions, namely that the emergence of complexity requires an increase in energy at the entrance and disorder at the exit . For his part, Ilya Prigogine has shown that in systems far from equilibrium receiving their energy from the outside, complexity appears by promoting energy dissipation . The human species is no exception to this fundamental rule. Let the energy run out and the complexity collapses like a column of water gaining the shore when it is no longer fed by the heat coming from a lake.

    It is probably necessary for the matrix, from which technology emerged that allowed our civilization to consume energy from the Earth with "full steam ahead" and "foot to the floor", to deeply mutate. Our technocultural memory must stop forging tools whose complexity requires ever-increasing energy inputs, upstream or downstream. I deeply doubt that such a declining path will become voluntary, as human technoculture constitutes a sort of "strange attractor" requiring the consumption of ever-increasing amounts of energy. The future of our technological civilization could follow different trajectories, but they all tend towards an increase in its complexity, therefore the energy input required for what is delivered to be useful (i.e. exergy) its maintenance and the production of entropy (disorder) outside of it.

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  10. ¡Hermosísimo video! La calidad tanto de las imágenes como de la narración es exquisita. Sinceramente, es un video que te hace reflexionar.

    Reply
  11. Este video me hizo sentir orgulloso de ser humano, es algo difícil de explicar, pero es una sensación de satisfacción conmigo mismo y los 8 mil millones de hermanos con los que comparto el planeta tierra.

    Obviamente no todo es bueno, o como me gustaría, pero se está haciendo el esfuerzo diariamente para acabar con esos problemas.

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