poor是什么意思_poor在线翻译、解释、发音、同义词、反义词_英语单词大全_911查询
poor是什么意思
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poor是什么意思 poor在线翻译 poor什么意思 poor的意思 poor的翻译 poor的解释 poor的发音 poor的同义词 poor的反义词 poor的例句 poor的相关词组
poor英 [p?:(r)]　美 [p?:r]　danci.911cha.com比较级：最高级：poor 基本解释形容词贫穷的，贫乏的; 令人怜悯的，可怜的; 匮乏的; 低劣的名词the poor 贫困者，穷人poor 同义词形容词poor 反义词形容词poor 相关词组1. as poor as a church mouse : 赤贫；poor的反义词手机查看poor的意思，微信扫一扫页面右侧二维码。关注 911查询大全 后发送 poor 即可poor 相关例句形容词1. How's your poor father?&&&&你可怜的父亲怎么样了？2. He's still in poor health after his illness.&&&&他病绑身体仍很虚弱。3. That country is poor in natural resources.&&&&那个国家自然资源贫乏。4. My family used to be poor.&&&&我家过去很穷。名词1. The rich ought to help the poor.&&&&富人应该帮助穷人。poor 情景对话overdose-(吸食过量)A：Did you hear about John?&&&&&&听说了汤姆的事情吗？B：No. What happened?&&&&&&没有，什么事？A：He overdosed on heroin.&&&&&&他服用海洛因过量。poor的近义词B：Oh my god. He used drugs?&&&&&&哦，天。他吸毒？A：I guess so. Supposedly, it was the first time he did heroin.&&&&&&我想是。据称，这是他第一次吸食海洛因。B：His poor family.&&&&&&他的家人真可怜。poor什么意思A：Yeah.&&&&&&是呀。Psychological Counseling-(心理咨询)A：One of my students told me she was very depressed today.&&&&&&我的一个学生告诉我她今天心情很坏。B：Why?&&&&&&怎么了？A：Her father is dying.&&&&&&她的爸爸快死了。B：Oh, that’s very sad.&&&&&&哦，真令人难过。A：Yeah, she’s broken up about it, poor kid.&&&&&&是呀，她无法承受这件事，真可怜。B：What did you do?&&&&&&你怎么做的？A：I talked to her for a while, but she’s really depressed. So, I made an appointment with the school counselor for her.&&&&&&我跟她谈了一会儿，但是她还很沮丧。所以，我便为她约了学校的咨询顾问。B：That’s a good idea. The counselor is a psychologist. He’s better trained to handle these sorts of things.&&&&&&这个办法不错。顾问是心理学家。对于处理这些事情他受过良好的培训。A：Yeah, that’s what I told her. I’m glad she’s reaching out for help, instead of trying to deal with this on her own.&&&&&&是，我也是这样和她说的。我很高兴她可以求援而不是自己一个人承担了。B：Yeah, me too.&&&&&&是的，我也有同感。海关申报A：May I see your passport, please?&&&&&&请把你的护照给我看一下。B：Yes. Here you are.&&&&&&好的。在这里。A：Are you traveling on business or for pleasure?&&&&&&你这次旅行是为了公务还是游玩？B：I'm going to visit my older sister in New York.&&&&&&我来看望在纽约居住的姐姐。A：How long will you stay?&&&&&&你打算在纽约呆多久？B：For several months.&&&&&&几个月。A：Do you have anything to declare? Jewelry or cash?&&&&&&你有没有什么东西要申报？珠宝或现金？B：No, I haven't. The only things I brought were my own clothes, my notebook computer and some gifts for mysister.&&&&&&没有。我所携带的东西只是一些自己的衣物和笔记本电脑，还带了一些送给姐姐的礼物。A：I'm sorry. I'm afraid I'll have to check these, too. Did you bring any fruits, vegetables, fresh meats orplants into this country?&&&&&&对不起，恐怕我也得检查一下。你有没有携带任何水果、蔬菜、鲜肉或植物进本国？B：Oh, would you kindly allow me to bring in the civet durian? It is the favorite of my sister.&&&&&&喔…您能允许我带些榴莲吗？它是我姐姐最喜欢的水果。A：Sorry, rotten fruit is not allowed.&&&&&&对不起，腐烂的水果不允许带进来。B：But it is NOT rotten. It naturally has the special flavor.&&&&&&但是它不是腐烂的水果。它天生就是这种特殊的味儿。A：Well, perhaps. But perishables are also not allowed.&&&&&&是吗，也许吧。但易腐烂的东西也是不能带进来的。poorB：Oh, my poor sister!&&&&&&哎，我可怜的姐姐！poor 网络解释1. 911查询·英语单词1. 贫穷的：戏终时按照惯例安排了一段歌舞,在我们贫穷的(poor)歌舞技巧中,努力的向音乐剧靠齐,也就是舞蹈或肢体动作是有戏感的,而且跟歌词结合的,不过影片中小演员们抢拍严重[4],自己看了都只有「囧」字可以形容.2. 2. 可怜的：ble) 2:不好的(Bad) 3:可怜的(Poor) 4:中立的(Neutral) 5:美好的(Fair) 6:优良的(Good) 7:极好的(Superb) 一般说来农业、手工业、商业、军事、建造纪念物所需的建筑(行会和劳力营)和政府类建筑的造币厂等都对吸引力有坏的影响,poor 双语例句1. 1. Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please: Due to 〈1.the poor weather condition at our airport 2.the poor weather condition over the air route 3.the poor weather condition over the Shanghai airport 4.aircraft reallocation 5.the maintenance of the aircraft 6.the aircraft maintenance at our airport 7.the aircraft maintenance at the Shanghai airport 8.air traffic congestion 9.the close-down of Shanghai airport 10.communication trouble〉（11）, the 〔supplementary〕flight CA2986 to Shanghai has been delayed.&&&&乘坐〔补班〕CA2986次航班前往上海的旅客请注意：由于〈1。本站天气不够飞行标准 2。航路天气不够飞行标准 3。上海天气不够飞行标准4。飞机调配原因 5。飞机机械原因 6。飞机在本站出现机械故障 7。飞机在上海机场出现机械故障 8。航行管制原因 9。上海机场关闭 10。通信原因〉（11），本次航班不能按时办理乘机手续。2. 2. With many of the poor, hunger is a constant problem.&&&&食不果腹是许多穷人经常存在的问题。3. Why the dress, you poor dear-the picture you coppice of the girl in the hall.&&&&那套衣服呀，可怜的宝贝儿------你模仿的大厅里那幅少女的画像。4. And some PR are tall, as it happens has sth used to one's own advantage, can go selling a link, how much Qian Yiyue, do not have a thing to be being stolen happy, only poor did not give Google pay intribute.&&&&而有的PR高的呢，正好有资本，可以去卖链接，多少钱一月，没事偷着乐，只差没给google进贡了。5. If we don`t have the developed productive force, we will just fall into a vicious circle of poor equalitarianism of communism society.&&&&而要推动生产力的进步，就需要资本充分而全面的发展，因此，我们要采取措施保证资本有节制的发展。6. And the situation of poor people can not be too much, the Egyptians loved to try on the road home can taste, try a way to save the geese eat the oil with some of the East on the road, then found a number of goose use of more not only raised to eat slaughtered just so simple.&&&&和现代人的状况差不了太多），这些埃及人为了路上还能尝尝心爱的家乡味，想尽了法子要储存鹅油与一些路上吃的东东，从此发现了鹅更多的一些用途，不只是养大宰来吃吃那么简单而已。7. After this accident the poor boss asked them to his office, crying, and complained a lot.&&&&事后彭格列可怜的兔子首领哭天抢地把两个人叫到首领办公室抱怨说骸你刚出水牢就这么闹不怕直接躺医院我管不着但是不要一回来就拆房子啊还有云雀学长我求求你敢情你不住在这里也不要说拆就拆啊难道我要睡马路么，对此，云雀和骸当默契的哼了一声以示轻蔑。8. Join the poly acrylic resin or chloridizing polypropyrene, and so on can improve the business card printing HDpE and membership card making sex is based on their miscibility with HDpE is poor for the HDPE as blends of dispersed and home ownership scheme flats open film surface, obviously beneficial to bond with ink.&&&&加入聚丙烯酸树脂或氯化聚丙烯等之所以能够改善HDpE的制卡和会员卡制作性是基于它们与HDpE相溶性较差，当其在HDpE为基体的共混体系中构成分散相并居开薄膜表层时，显然有利于与油墨的粘结。9. In the US, I was a poor student.&&&&在美国，我是个穷酸的留学生。10. I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy&&&&我只是个穷酸小孩，我不要同情11. They racked their brains to invent some way of seeming to be very poor.&&&&&&他们绞尽脑汁，要想出看上去极为穷酸的办法。12. 12. It is clear that businesses in the sales process, with poor grades to replace defective products sold to Miss Wang excellent.&&&&&&很明显，商家在销售过程中，用等级差的次品来代替优等品卖给了王女士。13. I studied English bypast, but my English is poor still&&&&&&在过去的日子里，我学习过英语，但我的英语还是很差14. Perhaps, when you encounter when scavenging, you will ignore, because you can not judge the poor people scavenging it is the case.&&&&&&也许、当你遇到拾荒人时、你会不屑一顾，因为你无法判断拾荒人的贫困情况是否属实。15. Without ready access to safe water, the poor – especially women and girls – spend much of their time scavenging for it.&&&&&&由于安全用水得来不易，穷人、尤其是妇女和女孩，得花大量时间找水。16. The man is poor, he is old.&&&&&&这个男人很穷，他很老。17. The man is very old and poor.&&&&&&这个男人很老，很穷。18. Years later he returned, old and poor, for a last''.&&&&&&多年后他回来了，又老又穷，想最后''。19. A long time ago, there lived a poor but honest man, and his wife.&&&&&&很久很久以前，在日本有一对很穷但很诚实的老夫妇。20. Rich or poor, young or old, we all have problems.&&&&&&富有或穷，年轻或老，我们全部有问题。poor 词典解释1. （人）贫穷的，贫困的&&&&Someone who is poor has very little money and few possessions.&&&&e.g. The reason our schools cannot afford better teachers is because people here are poor...&&&&&&&&&&&我们的学校请不起好老师的原因是因为这里的人穷。&&&&e.g. He was one of thirteen children from a poor family.&&&&&&&&&&&他是13名来自贫困家庭的孩子之一。2. （国家、地区等）贫穷的，贫困的&&&&The people in a poor country or area have very little money and few possessions.&&&&e.g. Many countries in the Third World are as poor as they have ever been.&&&&&&&&&&&很多第三世界国家仍和过去一样穷困。&&&&e.g. ...a settlement house for children in a poor neighborhood.&&&&&&&&&&&为贫民区儿童设立的街坊文教馆3. 可怜的；不幸的&&&&You use poor to express your sympathy for someone.&&&&e.g. I feel sorry for that poor child...&&&&&&&&&&&我为那个可怜的孩子感到难过。&&&&e.g. Poor chap — he was killed in an air crash...&&&&&&&&&&&不幸的家伙，他死于空难。4. 劣质的；糟糕的&&&&If you describe something as poor, you mean that it is of a low quality or standard or that it is in bad condition.&&&&e.g. The flat was in a poor state of repair...&&&&&&&&&&&公寓严重失修。&&&&e.g. The gap between the best and poorest childcare provision in the European Union has widened...&&&&&&&&&&&欧盟最好和最差的儿童保育服务之间的差距扩大了。poorlySome are living in poorly built dormitories, even in tents...有些人住在建筑质量很差的宿舍里，甚至帐篷里。They were dressed and fed poorly.他们的衣食状况都很糟糕。5. （数量、比率等）不理想的，不合理的&&&&If you describe an amount, rate, or number as poor, you mean that it is less than expected or less than is considered reasonable.&&&&e.g. ...poor wages and working conditions.&&&&&&&&&&&低薪和恶劣的工作条件poorlyDuring the first week, the evening meetings were poorly attended...第一周时，晚上的会参加人数很少。For one of the top ten releases in rock history, the record sold poorly.作为摇滚音乐史上的10大唱片之一，它的销量却差强人意。6. 不熟练的；蹩脚的&&&&You use poor to describe someone who is not very skilful in a particular activity.911查询·英语单词&&&&e.g. He was a poor actor...&&&&&&&&&&&他是个蹩脚的演员。&&&&e.g. Hospitals are poor at collecting information.&&&&&&&&&&&医院收集信息能力很差。poorlyThat is the fact of Hungarian football — they can play very well or very poorly.那就是匈牙利足球的现实，他们能踢得非常棒，也有可能非常糟。7. 贫乏的；缺少的&&&&If something is poor in a particular quality or substance, it contains very little of the quality or substance.&&&&e.g. Fats and sugar are very rich in energy but poor in vitamins, minerals and dietary fibre.&&&&&&&&&&&脂肪和糖类热量很高，但维生素、矿物质和膳食纤维贫乏。&&&&e.g. ...soil that is poor in zinc.&&&&&&&&&&&缺锌的土壤poor 单语例句poor是什么意思1. " Poor business is also another reason why we moved out, " he says.2. Both Beijing and Shanghai real estate markets are entering a downward trend, experiencing an unusually poor business season.3. Sorensen told China Business Weekly that the company's efforts in China are focused on diabetes, given poor public awareness about this chronic disease.4. He said it is merely a despicable act for the island to criticise the motherland in such a poor excuse.5. Poor countries have been driven out of the race and are unable to buy enough food.6. The children wear threadbare clothes and use poor stationeries so as not to ask their families for money to buy new ones.7. Wu called the members of her group " poor wretches " and " liars " over their failure to buy cigarettes from her.8. It not only ridicules the poor judgment of the buyer, but also criticizes the unnecessary efforts the seller has spent in making the case.9. The story is about a prince, who by accident trades lives with a poor waif of the same age.10. The results showed that all of the cameras had problems caused by poor design.poor是什么意思,poor在线翻译,poor什么意思,poor的意思,poor的翻译,poor的解释,poor的发音,poor的同义词,poor的反义词,poor的例句,poor的相关词组,poor意思是什么,poor怎么翻译,单词poor是什么意思常用英语教材考试英语单词大全 (7本教材)
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poor的用法
学习啦【英语知识大全】 焯杰
　　poor有可怜的;贫穷的;低劣的等意思，那么你知道poor的用法吗?下面跟着学习啦小编一起来学习一下，希望对大家的学习有所帮助!
　　poor的用法大全：
　　poor的用法1：poor的基本意思是&贫困的,贫穷的&,用于描写长期或临时处于贫困状态的人,也可指那些被认为没有足够钱的人所具有的卑劣、无知和不道德; 用于物时,还可作&低劣的,次等的&&贫乏的&&贫瘠的&解,主要指在数量上、质量上不足或低于期望值。可用作表语,也可用于名词前作定语,可用于比较等级。
　　poor的用法2：poor作&可怜的,不幸的,遗憾的&解时,指对境遇表示怜悯和同情,没有比较级和最高级,在句中只用作定语。
　　poor的用法3：poor前可加定冠词the而用如名词,表示一类人,意思是&穷人&,可以作主语、宾语,但不能加不定冠词,也不能在词尾加 -s 。the poor做主语时,谓语动词应用复数形式。
　　poor的用法例句：
　　1. Conditions for the poor in Los Angeles have not improved.
　　洛杉矶穷人的境况仍未得到改善。
　　2. This courtroom battle has been a poor advert for English justice.
　　这场法庭上的争论为英格兰的司法制度做了一次拙劣的广告。
　　3. The expedition was wrecked by bad planning and poor navigation.
　　这次探险因计划不周和导航不利而失败。
　　4. She has a poor complexion and pock marks on her forehead.
　　她满面菜色，额头上有些麻子。
　　5. Poor Dr Pegler got terribly behindhand with his appointments.
　　可怜的佩格勒博士大大落后于当初的约定。
　　6. Rust and flaking paint mean the metalwork is in poor condition.
　　生锈和掉漆说明金属配件损毁严重。
　　7. His moodiness may have been caused by his poor health.
　　他的喜怒无常可能是身体欠佳所致。
　　8. Poor Jane was in rather a spin about the party.
　　可怜的简对这次聚会真有些不知所措。
　　9. Residents in general are poor and undereducated, and live in sub-standard housing.
　　居民们普遍都很贫穷，受教育程度低，居住条件较差。
　　10. A spell of poor health took the edge off her performance.
　　一度身体欠佳令她表现有失水准。
　　11. Rose was a poor cook and a worse mother.
　　罗丝不太会做饭，更不会当母亲。
　　12. They believe that a tough, materially poor childhood is character-building.
　　他们认为一个艰难贫困的童年有助于性格的培养。
　　13. The worst part of the set-up is the poor instruction manual.
　　安装时最糟糕就是操作指南讲述不够清楚。
　　14. The second-hand version is a poor copy of the original.
　　盗版版本是对原版的低劣复制。
　　15. Watercolour still seems somehow to be the poor relation of oil painting.
　　水彩画似乎仍比油画略逊一筹。
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How will the future view us? Tom Chatfield asked some of the world’s best minds, and discovered that we will be seen as barbaric in ways we may not even realise.
By Tom Chatfield
I had a discussion that made me ask a disconcerting question: how will I be viewed after I die? I like to think of myself as someone who is ethical, productive and essentially decent. But perhaps I won&t always be perceived that way. Perhaps none of us will.No matter how benevolent the intention, what we assume is good, right or acceptable in society may change. From slavery to sexism, there&s plenty we find distasteful about the past. Yet while each generation congratulates itself for moving on from the darker days of its parents and ancestors, that can be a kind of myopia.I was swapping ideas about this with Tom Standage, author and digital editor of The Economist. Our starting point was those popular television shows from the 1970s that contained views or language so outmoded they probably couldn&t be aired today. But, as he put it to me: &how easy it is to be self-congratulatory about how much less prejudiced we are than previous generations&. This form of hindsight can be dangerously smug. It can become both a way of praising ourselves for progress rather than looking for it to continue, and of distracting ourselves from uncomfortable aspects of the present.Far more interesting, we felt, is this question: how will our generation be looked back on? What will our own descendants deplore about us that we take for granted?
Some possibilities are more obvious than others.
may move towards the margins of acceptability, given the intensive use of resources and cruelty they represent. Another kind of profligacy the future might regret is the over-prescription of antibiotics. In terms of prejudice, meanwhile, our descendants may & hopefully & wonder how still-marginalised groups like transgender people ev let alone how some parts of the world continued to criminalise homosexuality, reject equal rights for women, or hold some groups of workers in modern slavery.All this, of course, is really about what we ought to about those wishes we desperately hope to see fulfilled, and the kind of world we hope to leave behind. What, I wondered, would some of today&s most influential thinkers make of my question?
Since our handling of the environment is perhaps the most vital legacy we&ll leave our children, I made my first approach to the founder of one of the most influential of all modern environmental ideas: James Lovelock, the British scientist behind Gaia theory. He seemed an appropriate first port of call as his Gaia theory proposes that the Earth itself can be seen as a self-regulating system, and that the changes brought by humanity will have profound consequences for its ability to sustain life and civilisation as we know it.Born in 1919, Lovelock has already lived through more profound global transformations in social norms than most of us will ever experience. In answering my question, however, he took a personal view, considering how his own children might look back on the present in years to come. &With four children, nine grandchildren and at the latest count seven great grandchildren,& he explained, &I feel fairly qualified to answer.&
His actual living descendants, he says, appear to be less angry about the present than might be expected. &They seem to take the present era for granted and only deplore specifics, such as tribal wars.& It&s the generation still unborn that will be maddened by the consequences of today&s environmental profligacy.&Were I still reproducing,& Lovelock told me, &I suppose my children born recently would in a decade or so begin to deplore the failure of our governments (irrespective of political colour) to keep [the UK] habitable. Have we forgotten that we nearly starved in World War Two? We need energy also to survive&& & and this, at anything like our present level of comfort and development, is far from assured.
For many people I know, there&s something existentially paralysing about climate change: a disbelieving horror matched to feelings of impotence, denial or despair. Yet our descendants may feel quite differently, argued my next expert & Kate Raworth, an economist at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute, who specialises in &the rewriting of economics to make it a fit tool for addressing the 21st Century&s social and ecological challenges&.Raworth believes that our children will &deplore our persistently linear thinking and doing&. In other words, the way we tackle problems like climate change in isolation. Over time a different way of seeing the world according to &systems thinking& will emerge. The trouble is, she explains, we tend to treat fields like education, economic growth and environmental impact as if they are not related, but they&re all interconnected & we just don&t fully understand how yet. &The economy is nested within society which is nested within the planet, and these systems are all interacting with each other.&
It&s a hopeful thought to set alongside Lovelock&s prognosis. A future society will have &a far wiser understanding of how the planet functions, how our pressure on it threatens our own well being, and how our economic mindset needs to reflect that,& says Raworth. And this wisdom should bring profound changes to the way we live and think about our world.One contemporary tenet that Raworth believes will soon become archaic is the insistence that evaluating anything from health to nature means quantifying its market value. &From the impact of HIV/AIDS to climate change, if you want your issue heard, get an economist to put a price on it& Future generations will be amazed that we were still putting GDP at the centre of national economic policy,& she told me, &even while we knew we were running down the very social and environmental wealth on which it was all based. Rather than asking what is really going on, we&re happy to pretend that something doesn&t count if we don&t care to count it.
For thinkers like Raworth, a hopeful vision of the late 21st Century is one in which &material metrics& play a larger part than mere finance in judging the success of societies. She sees it as a world where &our carbon, land, nitrogen and water footprints will be part of our own ways of monitoring our personal and national lifestyles, alongside our health and sense of wellbeing&.
Raworth&s insistence on re-thinking the present was a vision that, in a different sense, the author and Financial Times columnist Tim Harford echoed when I spoke to him. For Harford, one great short-sightedness in our current measuring of the world is national border controls & and the way in which global migration is assessed in terms of value, costs and benefits.&We allow ourselves such freedoms in the developed world, and we like to tout our concern for the very poor,& he explained. &Yet we think it's natural that someone born in, say, Somalia, must stay in Somalia and not come to Europe or America & and that if that person has a hard life, the fault is with Somalia and not with our border guards. When we argue about the costs and benefits of immigration, the fact that immigration might be of some benefit to the person migrating is rarely discussed.&
It&s an idea that begs some fundamental questions. Will where someone is born still dictate their prospects through the coming centuries? In what sense can we hope to measure the flourishing of individuals across the world as a metric of human progress, rather than the productivity of nations?From
to those of
and , the world already bristles with attempts to move forward on these fronts. A more radical answer, however, is that the most meaningful way of bettering our future is not simply to seek enhancements, but rather to focus on lessening the suffering of the poorest and most vulnerable.For the philosopher Peter Singer, this lessening of suffering is a moral imperative more urgent than any other & and one that should not be restricted to the human race. As he bluntly replied when I put my question to him, &the way so many of us wallow in our affluence while doing very little to help those in extreme poverty& is one clear flaw that the future ought to deplore, alongside our treatment of animals, which &will (I hope) seem to [our descendants] as barbarous as the Roman circuses now seem to us&.
Singer backs his polemical work with practical advocacy. His website
provides a framework for lessening suffering. On the site, he ranks 10 carefully selected charities to whom you can give money today.It&s a sentiment I found echoed by Roman Krznaric, cultural thinker and author of the book Empathy: A Handbook for Revolution. &The biggest future crisis our children (and their children) will have to face is declining social cohesion,& he told me. &Communities are being fractured by growing urbanisation, and an overdose of free-market culture has ratcheted up levels of narcissism to record levels.&
As an antidote to this narcissism, Krznaric recommends a new form of emphasis on empathy as a fundamental human value: on promoting &the ability to step into the shoes of other people and look at the world from their perspective& as the ultimate social glue. Only through building empathy, he argues, can we hope to thrive together in a future of increasingly scarce resources and escalating competition & something for which his work sets out a detailed practical programme.At the other end of the scale, another apathetic act that we may one day regret is our attitude to the risks of major catastrophe. If you take a long enough view, it&s fairly certain that one day humanity will face a threat or disaster that will kill whole swathes of Earth&s population & or even bring us to the brink of extinction. And how we prepare for that day will define us in the eyes of the survivors.This is the terrain of Nick Bostrom, the founding director of the
in Oxford, and a thinker who has made it his business to weigh and measure worst conceivable futures. "If humans are still around after a massive catastrophe," Bostrom told me, &they may look back and think it a grave dereliction that we did not do more to reduce existential risk. But if humanity is gone, and there is nobody left to deplore our era, that doesn't make us any less deplorable.&
Bostrom has a list of potential &game over& scenarios that includes global pandemics, nuclear weapons, nanotechnology (highly destructive miniscule machines self-reproducing and destroying life as we know it), synthetic biology (artificially-created organisms able to infect, kill or take over the world&s ecosystems) or artificial intelligence (super-intelligent machines that decide they&re not interested in the continuation of human life).For Bostrom, the question is not simply how we deal
it&s whether we should take seriously even the slight chance of something happening that could end human life as we know it & a question he and his colleagues answer with a resounding &yes&. And it is far worse if we are fully aware and do not act. &The harms that are most obvious,& he told me, &are the ones for which we may carry the heaviest moral responsibility.&For Steven Pinker, there&s one risk above all on Bostrom&s list that nobody can ignore: nuclear weapons. The professor of psychology at Harvard and prolific author has recently explored the place of violence in modern societies. His 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Naturemakes the case that violence has actually declined over time. When it comes to , however, a shattering possibility still hangs over us.
As he put it to me, nuclear weapons &violate every norm of civilised warfare& disproportionate to any threat, indiscriminate in killing civilians in inconceivable numbers and in poisoning the environment. They are useless as an ordinary weapon in war, and their effectiveness as a deterrent depends entirely on the willingness of leaders to murder millions of innocent civilians&. And, most alarmingly, &though the taboo against using them has held for two thirds of a century, the probability of use through an accident or in the hands of a fanatic is not zero&.So what happens if the worst case scenario arrives, and something like a nuclear war devastates the planet? For Nick Bostrom&s colleague at the Future of Humanity Institute, the philosopher Stuart Armstrong, our responsibilities to prepare for existential risk are not only about prevention & but also about how we prepare our descendants for possible aftermaths.&One thing we are interested in,& he told me, &is whether the Industrial Revolution can be repeated. After most disasters there would be some survivors. Would they be able to rebuild technological civilisation? And what could we do that might enable or help them to rebuild?&It&s a chilling thought. If a catastrophic event undoes much of the last few thousand years of development, will our descendants be able to rebuild industrial civilisation & and is there anything we can do to help them? Put like this, almost everything we&re doing today can feel extraordinarily short-sighted.&If there is a disaster,& Armstrong argues, &our descendants will resent us for not preparing resources to help them. We are bad at keeping records.& Our generation stores its most vital information on CDs, hard drives or in the digital cloud, assuming that we will always have the means to power and decode these. If the future loses this technology, much of their past and its achievements will effectively cease to exist.
What can we learn from all this? As I digested the responses I have heard, it became clear that speculating about future disapproval is a sobering existential process: an attempt to see the peculiar circumstances of our own time through more impartial eyes & and to admit just how peculiar we are.Hopefully, the future will be too busy getting on with its present to spend much time looking backwards. But while the early 21st Century belongs to us, one imperative is clear: we must try to stretch our imaginations beyond present concerns. As a final conversation with the science fiction author Greg Bear brought home to me, our capacity to think about the future is one of our species& most remarkable talents. The power of great science fiction, Bear argued, is that it does not so much predict the future, as shape it. &Good books change the way we think,& he says, &and thus, their futures can&t come true&not completely.&The truth is we will never escape some measure of disapproval from our descendants. If, though, we can grasp their possible futures with sufficient faith and rigour, we may achieve the best anyone can hope for: averting the worst, aspiring toward the best, and handing on a culture (if not a planet) in better shape than the one we inherited.What do you think future generations will deplore about our behaviour today? Let us know onour
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