The Knowledge Brawl

December 17, 2011 | Filed under: TIF Knowledge Society | Posted by: BADRI NARAYAN

The Knowledge Brawl

Sitting at home, bored. Figuring out how to put that empty mind to work. Presenting to you the Knowledge Brawl : Let us know what you think. Collect facts, search google and come up with some logical at the same time explanatory answer. Reply as a comment. if someone has a better aspect of going about the question than anybody else, you are welcomed to put interject that person.

QUESTION 1 : Where do you see India and China 400 years down the line?

28 Responses to The Knowledge Brawl

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_asia_s_rise_how_and_when.html

Hans Rosling comes out with a funny and interactive talk and a statistical analysis as to exactly when will India and China will take over the economy, thus 400 years down the line we shall be superpowers that cannot be challenged.

BADRI NARAYAN
December 17, 2011 at 1:25 am
400 years down the line, India and China, won’t matter. Either the Earth would have reduced to a rubble, or the present concepts of nationalism would have…

Sajal
December 17, 2011 at 11:49 am
No, buddy it is only India and China that would matter no one else…according to the famous comedian Russell Peters…because they remain the 2 most largest populations in the world and given the fact that the world is mixing nowadays, everyone is going to be a part of India and China 400 years down the line…

BADRI NARAYAN
December 17, 2011 at 4:49 pm
- Don’t be sure of Earth’s survival!!!
  
  Sajal
  December 17, 2011 at 5:03 pm
Although 400 years is a long time, but I think Badri is right, India and China would expand to encompass entire civilisation, except the poles I guess!

The future would probably have the world act as a common society, each nation acting for a specific body of the society… for eg USA will have only armies preparing for Extra terrestrial attacks, Australia would be the sports hub and so on

anwesha
December 17, 2011 at 5:53 pm
- Yes! That is one probability, but I strongly believe Humans, have just a window of 50-100 years, if they wish to survive. Otherwise, we’ll be just another speck in the universal timeline…
  
  Sajal
  December 17, 2011 at 6:22 pm
Come on guys, where is everybody, wasting your knowledge commenting on you tube videos? Fuel your brains. We have started the brawl we need manpower, back us up….

The Indian Fusion
December 17, 2011 at 7:09 pm
humans are too adamant to give up that easily..

Focusing in India – China, the two might just learn to live as good neighbors. Economically they are quite dependent on eachother. Human Resource is abundant in both the countries and so they have quite the potential to actually dominate other countries, but India has too many internal problems to sort out first. In that count, I guess China might just overtake USA in terms of financial powers. India will have to work hard to keep up with the competition…

Ekta Pal
December 17, 2011 at 8:07 pm
Reflecting on the current economic downturn gripping entire Europe and America and the economic autonomy exhibited by China, China indeed becomes the obvious vote for being the next Super Power because gone are the times when the Power of a nation used to be determined by that nation’s military arsenal. Rather, the nation with the most stable economy will rule the roost.
As far as India is concerned, we are developed and alert enough to defend our rights and though our economy does get affected with trends elsewhere, its a resilient one. We would be doing extensive trade with China.

Today many South Asians are known to be the Brains behind many a successful western ventures but the future American and European markets would be vying for investors from our side of globe.

Mohit Agarwal
December 17, 2011 at 9:02 pm
- Although down the line India will also grow up to give a hard time for the chinese economy. Just taking an example by comparison, before the recession strangulated the Americans and European countries, if China will be the next America then India will be UK (quite ironical but true), and in that case trading with China will lessen. We would be have a strong economy but a much weaker administration taking care of that, which will not be the case with China.
  
  BADRI NARAYAN
  December 17, 2011 at 11:50 pm
Sajal has put a very strong point forward! Do you really think we are gonna survive for next 400 years!!!!! People here are taking this survival thing for granted but its time that we realize that our next 20 years are not going to be as same as the last 20 years! With the world’s population increasing exponentially with time, the world needs more energy to sustain! To generate more energy we have to increase our energy production by consuming natural resources at even faster rate. Soon there will be a time when the coal and oil prices will increase to an extent where it wont be profitable to generate energy from them but for the sake of survival debts will be taken to pay these prices! Debts will increase abruptly and due to constant GDPs economies will reach a limit where no more debts will be possible and then the economies will start collapsing! Governments will go bankrupt and the money (which is just a representation of wealth) will carry 0 value! Now, welcome to an age where there will be wars for resources and survival.

Accelerated consumption of oil and other natural resources will not only affect economies but also the environment! Increased population will need more food to eat and more space to live and releases proportional CO2 . So we start loosing vegetation, water as well air quality. Global warming will start showing more adverse trends. Then the world will witness not only the collapse of economies but also the collapse of sustainable environment!

And all this is not very far away! In 2009 worldwide coal consumption was 7,577,379.00 million tons and was increasing at the rate of 5% annually. Worldwide oil consumption is 87 million barrels/day increasing at a average rate of 5% annually. And proved reserves of oil in the world are 1.472 trillion barrels.

All the scenario given above will start becoming reality after 70-80 years only. So,the way I see it, what happens after 400 years is not much of a concern right now and neither it is predictable! What is the concern right now is how do we tackle all this mess that we have created. Many of us might start thinking that scientists will do something about it! But what if they failed? Or if they succeed, what it would be that will save our ass? Even nuclear power will also run out at one time as Uranium iss not that abundant to keep the world running. And the waste the nuclear reactors produce affects the environment more adversely than CO2, resulting in the catalysis of the above scenario.

The only breakthrough that can save us is success in carrying out controlled nuclear fusion. nuclear fusion is the only possible source that can be produce enormous energy without producing harmful wastes (in this case waste is Helium, not that harmful). And hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe!

Till then we need to optimize our energy consumptions and live a reduced lifestyle (not to be confused with low quality lifestyle!).

Like I said the next 20 years are not gonna be the same as the last 20 years! Forget about what happens after 400!!

Anshuman Chandrawat
December 18, 2011 at 1:47 am
first of all, hats off to the question itself! considering we cannot predict China’s movement a day beforehand, how can we say what it has in store for the next 400 years! Frankly speaking, I cannot fathom how a country almost at par with us in terms of population and resources can get so far ahead of us….

but if I rack my brains hard enough, I hate to say this, but I think China is gonna dominate ALL the countries

Jayant
December 18, 2011 at 6:27 pm
waha tak meri najar nahi jaati,, binoculer se dekhna padega

Pritesh Panchal
December 18, 2011 at 6:50 pm
well,considering all d above facts we can say that india n china will lead the world bt their are smthings tht need to be cnsiderd also except these facts.
Growth and power will be on the verge of increment and even if we find materialistic and physicl replacements for depleting resources,we cant stop certain thngs which can be responsible for the end. Wars n internal conflicts are the major threats on the development which can gain speed at a temendous rate once ignited cz still certain sparks are there which need some time and required thng which can be provided by any small incident.
i’ld lyk to draw ur attention to certain articles i found,i think u’ld read n brood over them,
Its time that we realize somethings that world does not consist of just few people like us intellectual or those who have excess to such thoughts n facilities,we r just lyk d percentage of fresh ater on this world,and untill we come out of our cmfort zones n cocoons just brooding n discussing n mking things in our mind instead of looking observing and doing smthing in real world,we dont even need to have to wait for 400 years,eve in 40 years or some we can just be a spectator of rise and decine of a civilization,rather than just reading them in our history books.
START,SLOW GROTHR,ACCELERATION,STAGNANT & SUDDEN FALL dats wat is the real truth in every aspect of this nature be it just of a life of a small insect colony or civilization of mighty brains of us…..

http://books.google.co.in/books?id=Pl6HWhdxI8YC&pg=PA102&lpg=PA102&dq=effect+of+inner+conflicts+and+border+conflicts+on+india+and+china+economy&source=bl&ots=vXR4tICEWO&sig=Qj1xjf5utNziaurTYs5z3jnaFwE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=pejtTv7MINDprQeWh7HvCA&ved=0CFQQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=effect%20of%20inner%20conflicts%20and%20border%20conflicts%20on%20india%20and%20china%20economy&f=false

http://asiafoundation.org/in-asia/2011/10/19/are-internal-conflicts-holding-asia-back/

now dis for some example from past-
http://www.newciv.org/ncn/ncs/vision2.html

misha
December 18, 2011 at 7:11 pm
I agree with all that you have stated Anshuman but still let us for once believe that earth has somehow survived for 400 years, then where in your opinion, would China and India stand?

Mohit Agarwal
December 18, 2011 at 8:11 pm
I am ashamed at all of you! You call your self part of India’s intelligent youth and yet all that you guys have come up with in arguments is that the Earth will be destroyed in the next 400 years? Or that because of India and China’s huge population we might lead the world? Or other such rubbish!

How dare you! How dare you even try to insinuate what will happen 400 years from now and yet not factor in any technological development? Are you not engineers? Are you not thinkers? What are if not these? Morons?

To believe the vilest of vile rumors yet overlooking the ever undying human spirit? Our ancestors, the humble monkeys, survived ice ages and mammoths and sabretooths and what not! We send people to the Moon and send spaceships to space! How dare you even try to predict something so big without for a second pausing and thinking of what technological marvels there might be 400 years from now!

I imagine spaceships and colonization of planets and what not and all you guys think of are China and India?

i am ashamed, Indian Fusion is bigger than this. Think bigger, think better. It’s 400 years not 4!

Shashank
December 18, 2011 at 9:52 pm
- It’s the ever undying spirit only, of which, I’m wary of Shashank!
  Had we not been what we are, I might not have been questioning the planet’s survival….
  
  My comment was not to signify that humans will be dead within the next 100 years(optimistic prediction ) It was to signify the window that us humans have, within which we need to come up with solutions, solutions to the ever-increasing problems of resources, of space, of hygiene and so on.
  
  To survive, inter-stellar travel is of prime importance, because one thing that I am sure of is the planet will rot!!
  Whether it’s Natural or Artificial Agents, that’s still to be seen, but yeah, we’ll need to be able to travel in space.
  
  Drastic changes in technologies, a departure from what we currently have is required, fusion is one, but maybe some other resource might come up, which would be far more feasible; that’s how science works!!
  
  Sajal
  December 18, 2011 at 10:58 pm
When I finished reading Shashank’s comment, I felt like I ended up reading some 6th standard student’s essay on “A vision of 2400 A.D”!
Come on man!!! How can you be so naive!!! If you want to hear stuff like space ships and colonization of other planets, then go watch Star Wars and all. If you ask any sensible and aware person about the near future, he will definitely tell you about the uncertainty the world is facing nowadays regarding the future.

There is a large difference between a philosopher and an engineer. Engineers offer practical solutions to real problems, not some utopian visions on open ended questions!

You are talking about colonizing other planets, can you even give some sensible solution to very fundamental problem, that would be faced in “colonizing other planets”, of setting up communication system! With even the nearest star being 4.2 light years away, how are we supposed to set up a real time communication system with our signals taking at least 4.2 years to reach the destination and again 4.2 years to reach us back. It will take 8.4 years to say “Hi” to the person sitting over there (if any) and receive the same from the other end and this guy is calling other people moron for not proposing this shit as the future!

And don’t say that because monkeys survived ice age that’s why we will also survive these times and scientists will come up with something that would solve all the proposed problems. As I said engineers focus on providing practical solutions to real problems, we must try and think what can be the solution to these problems.

This communication problem can only be solved if either our messages travel very much faster than light in space (which is not very likely as this is restricted by theory of relativity) or all this inter-stellar travelling stuff is carried out through wormholes, i.e. by using the tendency of space to wrap around things having mass, to decrease the actual distance between the starting point and the destination. (I don’t have a clue how a wormhole can be created!)

And as far as need of some drastic technological breakthrough is concerned I think fusion is the only practical option present right now. Its not very likely that a new resource would just come up suddenly. Hydrogen is the only thing that can help us sustain forever, as all other resources will get cherished one day or the another. But yeah, who knows if something really comes up!

Anshuman Chandrawat
December 19, 2011 at 12:20 am
- Man! Answer Mohit too…!
  
  Sajal
  December 19, 2011 at 12:37 am
@ Mohit: To answer your question I will have to make few assumptions.

1. Earth survived the currently approaching crisis.
2. India remained a sovereign and financially independent state.
3. Second assumption can only be true if India got rid of corruption, shit leaders and this poor governance system.

India being a tolerant country will gain enormous respect, power and wealth. On the other hand, China, being mean, undemocratic and inflexible, will lose trust and might suffer many financial and political loses due to it but I bet “Made in China” label will still be as common as today.

The whole world will witness an increase in intellect and social harmony. There will be lesser wars and there will be no terrorism.

There will be a deeper understanding of fundamental principles of physics. We will be able to figure out the true nature of gravity and we will also come up with a theory which will accommodate both quantum mechanics and general theory of relativity. Moreover, increased and deeper understanding of gravity will enable us to develop technology capable of creating wormholes, endowing us with the power of exploring the untouched parts of the universe. We will come in contact with other civilizations in the universe.

Science will start grasping the roots of astrology. Medical science will not be limited only to curing of physical body but will also gain insight to the astral bodies. Man will start rediscovering his inner powers like the ones described in our epics! Its not just the science that will be developing but humanity as a whole.

And India will be the center of all this. The land of ‘Holy men of Himalayas’ will regain its roots and will undergo an era of renaissance!

Anshuman Chandrawat
December 19, 2011 at 1:36 am
@Anshuman Chandrawat.

Ok buddy, I thought my little attempt at wisdom will open every one of your eyes but since you still ply on with that drivel let me drop a knowledge bomb on you.

Imagine humans 400 years ago, the year would be 1611. What do we know about 1611. Did they have satellite communication? No. Did they have landlines? No. Did they have cars, electronics, anything? No. Did they even think all this was possible? Absolutely not!
Because frankly I think there were people like you even back then.

The best form of communication they could think of was pigeons, or one of those smoke signals. For travel they had bullock carts, horse-drawn carriages etc. You get the picture?

Look buddy in terms of evolution there is almost no difference between a man of the 17th century and a man of the 21st century and yet we are poles apart! If you map our progress over the last 400 years, we realized that the world was round, then went about colonizing everywhere and there were the same concerns as yours, communication. Every colonizing man, woman was worried about communication. They could not imagine a form of communication that would allow them to talk to people in the same city at the same time let alone people in different continents!

Gee I wonder if they ever invented that stuff? What’s it called, a telephone? And what’s that thing in your hand? What’s it called? The one you use to send idiotic messages to your friends? Yes! Mobile phone! And where is this we are communicating? Internet!

Now you might be angry at me or think I am being daft, but I am damn sure that 400 years down the line the world will be as different as todays world is to a 17th century man.

In fact forget the 17th cinetury! Even in the 19th century this stuff hadn’t been thought of! Man learned to fly in the 20th century and look where he is now! On the moon, in space! He is everywhere! Not because of nay sayers like you! But because people like me write this stuff in 6th and realize that it can be done!

Faster than light communication you say? Muons travel faster than light or have you kept yourself in hibernation? DO you understand the possibilities when I say muons travel faster than light? I don’t think so, daft as you are. So let me elaborate.

These particles for a start will be researched on, like always. Not by you! No! You would spoil the broth! No it will be researched by intelligent people. People who believe that one day with the help of these particles, with the isolation of the higgs boson from other particles we will be able to send communication from one point to another faster than light. Much faster too!

And maybe on day we will do it ourselves! Travel faster than light! I cannot imagine what the world in 400 years time will be. Neither can you, especially not you with the limited imagination of yours. So next time you try to chastise me about being juvenile I suggest you go back and do some juvenile work of your own. You limit yourself in more ways than one by thinking that there are no further tech innovations coming apart from fusion.

In fact why don’t you start reading sci-fi. Something i am sure you hate doing right now. there is a reason why people like Isaac Asimov, H.G.Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinline etc are respected. They were writers but they inspired a whole generation of people to innovate. They laid out bigger dreams than I did in their books. Not just colonization of other planets! They talked about more than that!
I am but a humble man compared to these geniuses and yet I count you as something much more inferior at the moment. A man with no imagination is no man at all. You can improve on that, buy these books, read them. You will understand the bigger picture!

in the end though I would like to say that this whole topic is what I would call a sci-fi debate. If you want to predict the future of countries you talk 10 years down the line or 20 or 30 or 40! not 400!!

that is sci-fi territory and believe you me I have participated in my fair share of these debates. 400 years before there was no USA, the world map hadn’t been drawn! Who is to say that in the next 400 years we won’t have mapped the galaxy? How can we even remotely think otherwise when our ancestors have shown what they can do with nothing but a compass and stars to guide them?

Columbus didn’t set out with GPS tracking or a satellite phone! And yet he changed the world! Why can’t you people believe that man will soar to new heights in 400 years? Is it too much to ask?

And anyways, India and China in 400 years? Please, if we are still countries then it will only be in name. We have already seen what the internet is doing to the world, 100 years down the line there will be movements for 1 world, where there will be no countries only region large governing bodies. This because already the borders are porous, borders which were supposed to divide people a 100 years ago mean nothing when you can chat with anybody on the planet in a heart beat. The borders are porous even now and 400 years down the line, they will be non-existent.

Shashank
December 19, 2011 at 7:11 am
First of all…amazing idea of a knowledge brawl during vacations….!
As to the topic…about 400 years ago India and China used to be the leaders in world trade while US was just about discovered and United Kingdom was being formed. Gradually, India became a colony of the british and US became a superpower..Now after about 400 years India and China are once again one of the world’s leading economic powers. So i guess there’s this cycle of events and we’ll see phases of dominance from different countries of the world and maybe 400 years down the line India and China after seeing some tremendous highs and some lows will once again rule the world..

Namrata Yadav
December 19, 2011 at 2:10 pm
What the hell is moderator doing?

Mohit Agarwal
December 19, 2011 at 10:12 pm
@Shashank: Your comment was just about a sense of self-righteousness, egotism and of course, a lot of negativity. I don’t find it appropriate to answer all that that you wrote in your comment. Just want to tell you that:

-Higgs bosons are hypothetical and their presence is not confirmed yet and experiments regarding the same are being carried out at large hadron collider.

- “Muons travel faster than light” is not a rule of thumb! There were some experiments in a research project named OPERA in which indicated it, but verification regarding the precision of these experiments is ongoing. Its too soon to go ahead and say “muons travel faster than light” as a rule of thumb.

And I bet you really didn’t get it when I said “There is a large difference between a philosopher and an engineer!” Never mind! Having a vague imagination is easy but providing solid grounds for it is the real job.

I didn’t approve of an article by Chetan Bhagat in Sunday’s TOI named “Save us from lerds”. But after reading your comments I am in total agreement with Chetan Bhagat!

And one last thing Shashank. If you were trying to teach us all that who is a fiend, then…. congratulations!!!! You succeeded!!!

Have so much to say but have to end because people like you are not worth wasting time with! Now kindly spare us from more of your so called knowledge bombs!!!!

Anshuman Chandrawat
December 19, 2011 at 10:13 pm
Please mind your tongues, people..!
It’s good to debate, but within limits!
I’ve edited the comments a bit, but in future they will be deleted.
Regards!

Sajal
December 19, 2011 at 10:31 pm
Yeah Thanks Sajal! You saved the Knowledge brawl from becoming YO MOMMA!!
\m/

Mohit Agarwal
December 20, 2011 at 1:04 pm
It was supposed to be a brawl of mind…I guess someone took the term literally..

Namrata Yadav
December 20, 2011 at 6:58 pm
Well, the discussion really got heated up unnecessarily! I apologize to everyone for that! I request all of you to forget/ignore all this and let us continue putting forth our ideas. Let the brawl resume!

Anshuman Chandrawat
December 20, 2011 at 10:14 pm

The Knowledge Brawl

QUESTION 1 : Where do you see India and China 400 years down the line?

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