What's the craziest thing that could realistically happen in the next 50 years?

We should be sinking geothermal heat exchanging loops to generate power and suck energy out of the system. What's the worst that could happen, lol

Huge leaps in energy storage and renewable energy technology make it very easy to do away with fossil fuels. Renewables and energy storage are currently at the Commadore 64 stage to analogize them to computers. There will be huge leaps forward in efficiency of renewables and capacity of energy storage well within our lifetimes.

Politically, China's demographic collapse is going to radically change the world. China will no longer be the world's manufacturer in about 10-15 years. There will be huge shifts in manufacturing to other Asian nations (primarily Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines) and to Mexico and the Americas, with the US taking over a lot of microchip productions. And when the demographic sh#t hits the fan, there will probably be a revolt against Xi's government that will make Tiananmen Square look like child's play.

We discover that we are indeed living in a simulation.

On a tangential note, does anyone else ever think about what if they are, in fact, the simulation. Alone. The chosen one. What if I am the only conscious being, or “God” if you will. What if everything that I perceive to be happening is simply the simulation at work and/or simply a construct of my own imagination. I am everyone. One conscience.

For example, you might say, of course you are not alone — I am reading your post that I didn’t type. But perhaps you are the “God” in this scenario and you are only perceiving that I have typed this to you, and I don’t exist.

I don’t know how to properly explain this feeling. Mostly I am just curious if this is a common thought and if anyone has a better way to explain it. And the more I think about it, the more possible it seems.

Sorry for the tangent, but as I have been contemplating my mortality lately (cancer), sometimes this thought trips me up, because I cannot think of any concrete way to prove or disprove this theory.

Bol beats Sydney and takes her world record.

A volcano like Rainier exploding.

Likely one- Trump wins election then in 2028 refuses to leave office under whatever pretext. Massive protests and counter-protests between Trump supporters and people who want to keep democracy, possible civil war or secession of States.

Unlikely one- MPox becomes global pandemic

To be clear I do not think the tail risks with biotech are an existential danger anywhere near the level that nukes are. The same technology that empowers bad actors with biology empowers the good actors at roughly the same rate of development, but the bad actors are massively outnumbered. You don't have the same thing with nukes because there's no "cure" to the effects of nuclear war.

We should be much more concerned about how to properly navigate the economic and cultural impacts of advanced biotech, because those are going to be huge and will 100% happen in some form at some point.

I would add admission to/verification of that the universe is actually teeming with life.

I would argue that the logistical hurdles to making a 'super virus' are relatively small. You just need a molecular biology lab and enough nucleic acid synthesis capacity. The knowledge hurdles are obviously huge / fantasy-land right now, but with enough advancement of biology the only barrier would be access to the correct information.

I definitely agree that nukes pose vastly, vastly larger real risk. My statement was too extreme.

We already have parents selecting embryos for 'intelligence' genetic scores that are effectively meaningless now. At some point those scores may not be meaningless for intelligence and many other traits. That's going to be a big change.

These things would be huge very welcome changes.

I don't really know much about China. What would be the chances that China breaks up a la The Soviet Union? What we now know as "China" breaks into smaller independent nations, some maybe still practicing Chinese communism, while other fully embrace capitalism?