A Frightened Optimist On The Future of Humanity

In actual fact, the amount of resources (atoms, power) in the Earth are orders of magnitude beyond what humans need for thousands of years, even assuming exponential growth. And the carrying capacity of the Earth has grown as fast or faster than population, explicitly because more people means more innovation and more capital which means higher carrying capacity. What's more, the per capita quality of life grows linearly with population, meaning a quadratic increase in available resources overall. More people = more prosperity. It's not a zero-sum game.

Inoculate yourself against the Malthusian ideology of the Club of Rome. The world is not ending, as much as their anti-human agenda would want you to believe.

H.G. Wells ends the Time Machine with: "for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made - thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so."

It sounds obvious when you say it, but here we are. Philosophers themselves have either (a) taken an "ethnographic turn" (c/o John Dewey) where they realize the limitations of there own expertise and figure the standard they should strive for is being stronger describers of reality, disentangling its confusions, or (b) acquired expertise in the thing they are philosophing about, which makes them a kind of theorotician or highly informed historian.

If Bostrom ain't writing code how do we know if he is grounded in anything?

> Yes of course surveillance capabilities increase the states’ ability to suppress the restless populations…

> With some of the developments in nuclear technology, we now have the ability to wage wars that would have immediate planetary implications. So our technological prowess is galloping, whereas our wisdom and ability to peacefully cooperate with one another seems to develop at a slower pace. So, I think we need to spur on this cooperation horse to make sure that we can keep up with the galloping technological horse.

> If we think about this as a race between our growing powers and our ability to use those powers wisely, it seems unclear who will win that race.

What is stopping people from refraining from unethical use of technology, right now? Nothing. Yet many people still don't refrain, and think if something profitable can be done, if people can be manipulated or used in a certain way, then it's "smart" to do that. What'd be the the problem with not having growing disparities of power, and first becoming decent societies, and then getting to play with all sorts of fancy tech?

> If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.

-- Stephen Hawking

And that inequality and making people superflous will lead to the possibility of atrocities that will be committed because they can be over in an instant, with nobody but perpetrators left to accuse them. Even right here on HN I had a short conversation with someone who earnestly thought we will and should be replaced with GAI, the next step in evolution so to speak, and that people should work towards that in secret, because people wouldn't accept being superseded by something much "better". I don't know what would lead to such an outlook, but it exists.

Just corporations doing mass surveillance isn't an absence of mass surveillance, the difference would be governments (a singular state is not mentioned, nor a police state) doing that too, preferably in working democracies, the achievement of which is part of the above "using our powers wisely" (and choosing wisely, whom we empower to do what on our behalf).