191–200 of 221 posts
https://upgrader.gapminder.org/ A quick test to see how up to date you are on some important trends in the world. I was surprisingly out of date with how well things have become.
I'm a PhD student in physics and I am really, really optimistic about how the field will be developing going forward. People are well aware of the glamorous fields of physics: cosmology and particle physics. These are the disciplines that concern the frontiers of the very large and the very small respectively. I don't care so much about those. The frontier that I'm most interested in is the most abstract one: complex…
I can go to historic archives of any time period that left a written record and find someone with a pessimistic take like your. Obviously the details are different, but there are always many bad signs for someone to point out. In the end life isn't perfect, but it generally has gotten better
Honestly? I try not to think about the future because doing so brings wave upon wave of existential dread. Things aren't looking good, and it might be a bit of a hedonistic maxim but if thinking about it just makes me feel worse why should I? Let me work away at achieving my "local optimum" since that's all I can realistically do.
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> Energy is a major direct and indirect input into the price of pretty much everything. The other major factor, of course, being land. While I don't expect many major economies to implement a Land Value Tax in the near term, to balance out these costs more fairly among citizens and corporations, it's worth noting that we are about to see peak population being reached in China [2025] and the EU [2026], which may have…
Land is a very minor component of the price of anything. In much of the country you can buy a square mile for a few million. Labor is the other big component.
Yet in other parts of the country people pay that for 1000 square feet.
The fact that people aren't building skyscrapers or gold mines in "much of the country" doesn't mean that there isn't high demand for housing or precious metals.
I would be interested to know, for example, how much energy would cost if there were unlimited free space (with good weather and topography) for installing solar panels within easy transmission distance from all energy consumers.
In that sense, energy prices are dependent on land prices.
There's many things to be optimistic about, but the complex nature of society means progress will likely look like a slow crawl towards the right direction, but we'll eventually get there. One place to look at are teenagers. They grew up with the internet and open access to information. If you sit down and speak with any of them, they are more aware of the areas that need improvement and are not afraid to speak out a…
Do you really think there are reasons to be optimistic about the new generations? What little of them there will be, given the drops in fertility rates.
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sex robots to look like your favorite celebrity On the face of it that sounds like "wahey, sexy fun!", but if you consider it for a second you're actually suggesting a life without a real relationship with another person which is beyond depressing. If that tech becomes mainstream humanity has a major problem.
I see what youre saying, but then again, think of those who are unfortunately disabled, maimed, disfigured, socially inept, etc who have never/may never have a fair shot at a relationship. For them, sex robots/robotic companions could be a fantastic thing given that theyd accept them unconditionally. It could have the ability to fill an emotional and/or physical void for them.
For one, there's the fact we seem to be contaminated by pessimism but it's hard to find an intelligent explanation for it. The arguments are so bad that they include absurdities like our civilization being unable to overcome an actively manufactured political division.
The world order is changing rapidly and moving towards a multi-polar world. That means the US and the west cannot impose their will on countries that doesn't suit their interests. Regime change operations and other tactics used by the US will be much costly in the coming decades because there will be other powers to counter that.
That means millions of people will live peacefully with less violence. Without their life disrupted suddenly because someone thousands of kilometers away decided to change things over in their country.
However, there is looming threat to this prospect, how the US will handle it's internal politics. The more failed it becomes internally the more external power projection will be needed to maintain it's dominance. Most of the troubles happening around the world right now can be traced back to the US efforts to contain China's growth. If you look at holistically, this shouldn't be this way, if the US spent most of the defense budget in public education and health care, it doesn't need to worry about China. It can keep it's dominance while there is a wealthier China existing on the other side.
However, as history has repeatedly shown, the pendulum always swings back. Empires crumples and new powers replaces it.
There is a glorious future awaits for those living in China, India and other rapidly developing countries.
In the short term, all the fundamentals of the economy are doing well -- unemployment rate, corporate profits, wages are up, et cetera. Sure the stock market is doing poorly. The stock market isn't the economy.
Perhaps a reason to be optimistic is that this trend will reverse, but it is hard to see a road to that. In the medium term, we are looking at a large population of retirees to be supported by a dwindling working population, that are also faced with servicing a massive debt that the older generation accumulated; at the same time faced by a rising challenger nation. That sounds like it could be dreadful, actually.