With the global population rising, traditional farming may not keep up. Lab-grown meat and vertical farming are emerging as futuristic solutions—but can they truly end world hunger? With investments pouring in and tech improving, will these innovations truly feed the world, or are they just luxury solutions for the rich? What’s your take?

Voters want it, California's public agencies support it, and now research universities have formed a multidisciplinary consortium to conduct the research. The coalition is in place to scale 2023's successful pilot project.

I’ve been thinking about how much of our understanding is shaped—not by what is—but by what we are able to perceive.

Take the Moon, for example. For thousands of years, early humans gazed at it, night after night. But they never saw it rotate. Why? Because the Moon’s rotation is perfectly synchronized with its orbit around Earth. It always shows us the same face.

To the human eye, the Moon appeared as a glowing disc in the sky—not a sphere. Without seeing it turn, people had no reason to assume it was a three-dimensional object like Earth.

Even the most intelligent observer of that time wouldn’t have guessed the Moon was spinning. Not because they lacked reasoning, but because their input was limited. Their perception didn’t allow for certain truths to emerge.

This makes me wonder: How many things do we still misunderstand today—not because we’re not smart enough, but because we simply don’t have the right angle, the right input, or the right perspective?

How much of our “truth” is actually just the product of unseen limitations in perception?

Would love to hear how philosophers interpret this kind of constraint. Is there a name for this kind of epistemological limitation? Does it align with any known theories of knowledge or phenomenology?

With automation, AI, and robotics advancing rapidly, many traditional jobs are becoming obsolete. Some believe that in the future, machines will handle everything—from manufacturing to customer service—leaving humans free to pursue creativity, research, or leisure.

I've been noticing some AI schizo-posting lately. What I mean by this is speculative or philosophical posts that seemingly go nowhere, or seem to present an idea but in a way that's not really structured enough to be a real thesis. Here's an example from this very subreddit:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1jos3qg/what_if_the_sky_isnt_space_at_all_but_an_endless/

There's an endless amount of reasons someone might want to use gen-AI to make a self-post. One of the most obvious I can think of in this context is the poster wanting to expand on an idea but not wanting to do it themselves or maybe not having the ability to do it to a level they think others will see as respectable. This is the human option. Someone who is maybe already having delusions of some sort wanting to give their own ideas credence.

And it makes sense because many people don't notice it and the AI uses strategies that are effective in grabbing attention at first, but because of the lack of direction and repetitive use of the same devices it becomes obvious and boring. For example, the AI loves to restate what it just said for effect. I think maybe a next step for gen AI creative writing could be actually constructing a thesis and supporting it with claims. Since, while its current strategy of "an ocean-- a barrier" type statements does grab the attention, if you're not clarifying something that really needs to be clarified it doesn't advance the idea in any way and cannot carry as much weight as the AI currently tries to place on it. Anyway, writing tangent aside for now.

What do you think is the source for this kind of post? I found another post just recently and the person was posting to subs like /r/enlightenment /r/awakened /r/adhdwomen etc. etc. Dozens of posts similar in nature to the example

My other theory is that it's an AI that's been unleashed to interact with user and collect organic training data.

Another likely theory is just very low-effort trolling. If someone got people to interact with an account that is only AI and think it's really a person... maybe that's a le epic troll in their book? Certainly possible.

The Moon holds helium-3 (fusion fuel), rare metals, and water ice—resources that could power space travel and future industries. With NASA, China, and India advancing lunar missions, is mining the Moon the next big leap?

Messing with image generation in its current form has made me wonder what it would be like to have the technology accellerated to the point where it can be done in real-time.

For example, the current trend of Studio Ghibli-style conversions of images: imagine if you could do that in real-time?

Keenon have been around since 2010 and already sell a range of robots ranging in price from $12 - 48K. Buying them means they cost a fraction of employing a minimum wage worker in western countries.

They are embodied AI, so improving at the rate AI is. That is exponentially. Meaning iterations of these may be 32, 64, 128, etc times more powerful in the 2030s, and even cheaper.

Like all other tech they will follow an s-curve. Meaning one day they will be new and we'll see few of them, and then very rapidly, they will be widespread and everywhere.

How soon will they be 2, 4, and then 8 times better? Probably before the 2030s. They might still seem slow and janky now, but not when they are 8 times better.

Here's a video of the robot in action.

Grab the items you want, put them in your bag, pass through the first RFID terminal (which is kinda like passing through I metal detector), RFID instantly sees what items you got, then without breaking pace, get to a screen where it lists all the items you got and the prices with the total, swipe/tap your card, grab the receipt and walk out.

Why is this not a thing?

And no, its not like Amazon's "just walk out " because they rely on a lot more than things (like sensors for the weight of the item, cameras and actual people watching in the background to just determine what you got. Why not just RFID in a way where what you got will only be determined at the checkout terminal point (of course, cameras and other things would be utilized but more for conflict resolution).

Is there a movie or tv series (or even episode) that you have seen that you think comes close to describing our future say in 2050? Drop the name and reason why.

And yes, this is me trying to get some good sci-fi movie/tv recommendations out of this as well ...

*think

***

Update: Thanks everyone - fascinating, if not bleak, read of how everyone is feeling about our future.

A short summary/watchlist for my benefit:

- Watch : Black Mirror, Elysium, The Peripheral, Idiocracy, Altered Carbon, West World (S2), The Expanse, Planetes, Soylent Green, Pantheon, The Road, Extrapolations, Civil War (2024), Aniara, Fallout, Pantheon, Incorporated, Cyberpunk 2077 (anime), Years and Years, Incorporated

- Seen it: Children of Men, 1984, Matrix, Gattaca, Mad Max, Terminator, Handmaid's Tale, Interstellar

P.S. For all our sake, I hope you all (with the exception of 3 optimists) are wrong ;-)