John Hands – The Future of Humanity: Why we Should be Optimistic
Are there grounds for authentic optimism about the future?
John Hands will discuss his new book, THE FUTURE OF HUMANKIND Why We Should Be Optimistic. He evaluates current major predictions for our future:
(1) Extinction by natural disasters, by nuclear war, by artificial intelligence, or by population explosion and climate change.
(2) Survival by colonising space or by extending individual healthspans and achieving immortality.
(3) Transformation by uploading individual minds to computers or holograms.
John argues that, although the three categories of predictions are very different, they have three things in common:
(a) They are speculations starting from the then current level of scientific and technological development.
(b) They have a very low, if not negligible, probability of being realised; in those cases where specific predictions can be tested against outcomes, all have been disproven.
(c) They make the implicit assumption that the future of the human species is determined by the future of individual humans.
By contrast, John’s unique forecast projects into the future the distinct pattern in the scientific evidence of an accelerating cosmic evolutionary process over some 15 billion years up to the present revealed his last book, the award winning COSMOSAPIENS. This showed humans evolving in 3 stages from the origin of the universe. Continuing this pattern of cooperation, complexification, and convergence into the future suggests a radical change for the fourth stage of our evolution. It will not be an evolution of individual humans but an evolution of humans as a whole through the cooperation of minds to create a collective consciousness that will escape its biological roots and spread throughout the universe.
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About the speaker:
John Hands was trained in science, specialising in chemistry at the University of London. He has tutored in both physics and management studies for the Open University, was a visiting lecturer at the University of North London and then RLF Fellow at University College London where he began writing COSMOSAPIENS, the research for which took ten years to complete. The book was endorsed by leading scientists and philosophers, and won awards and glowing reviews in the national press. It was published internationally to great acclaim.
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Speaker
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John HandsAuthorJohn Hands was trained in science, specializing in chemistry, at the University of London. He co-authored two research studies and also published one book in the social sciences. He tutored in physics for Britain’s Open University, was visiting lecturer at the University of North London and then RLF Fellow at University College London where he began more than 10 years writing the award-winning COSMOSAPIENS Human Evolution from the Origin of the Universe. He spent a further six years writing its sequel THE FUTURE OF HUMANKIND Why We Should Be Optimistic, which was published in 2023. He has also written three novels and has been published in 12 countries.
