Not Doom, Not Hopewash, the Third-path Future.

[Ken_J]

There is an abundance of Doom in visions of the immediate future. To the degree that so few people see any chance for humanity to survive long enough to emerge into a better future. What some of us might call the great filter is destined to spell our end.

It's not hard to find things that support this sort of thinking. The climate, a pandemic that was once in a century but will likely be one of several this century, former once in a lifetime economic crisis now seeming to get reruns every few years, decreasing life expectancy... etc.

The counter argument is harder to rely on. It's main argument seems to be "we had a worse pandemic, multiple in fact, through history. we had the great depression and financial issues before that. Life expectancy for most of human history was around 20 years, and we made it through all that to land on the moon, split the atom and harness it for power, we've cures for illnesses that used to be certain death, and so much more"

And it's my experience in life that tells me that Hopewashed future optimism is deluded... but so is the Doom-brigade. The Future is never so absolute. There has to be a third path that is more likely to be our future.

We won't get the drexlerian nano-utopia, the Star trek federation earth, but neither will we have a desolate dying earth, with echo domes, with city state 1984 and Brave new world, subsisting on soylent green supplied with ingredients by states of perpetual war between archologies in the vast global wasteland.

what do you imagine the world to look like as we go forward? What's the 'Third-path? I will maybe return with a follow up post with some ideas of my own.

[funkervogt]

what do you imagine the world to look like as we go forward? What's the 'Third-path? I will maybe return with a follow up post with some ideas of my own.

Climate change will get worse before stabilizing at a level that doesn't make Earth uninhabitable for humans. The resulting future climate will be less pleasant than today's, but bearable.

AGI won't be created until after many or most of the people on this forum are dead. Ditto for radical life extension technology.

Hostile AGIs will cause death and destruction, but will be kept in check by friendly AGIs that are just as powerful.

Computer-generated virtual realities, custom-made android friends and lovers, and ultra-curated news/culture content bubbles will balkanize reality even further and cause more atrophy to human social skills. The upside is that people will be more content in many ways, and each hour they spend in VR or alone with androids will be one less hour they could get hurt or hurt someone else in the real world. Crime and accidents will decrease.

Unions and un-fireable government employees will delay the full adoption of machine workers by decades. If technological unemployment starts getting bad, it will become a political issue, and elected politicians will pass laws that force companies to keep humans on their payrolls, even if it is unprofitable to do so. You'll still have to clock in each morning at your job even if there is little or no real work to do, and you will still be a low-status loser if you don't have a job at all. Workplaces will fill up with make-work and non-value-added projects that staff have turf wars over, bully each other over, and take too seriously. The fabulously wealthy, lucky and beautiful "Rich Kids of Instagram" types will still taunt the world through social media.

Life in the U.S. will get worse in many ways (e.g. - more crowded, more congested, higher cost of living, more racial strife), but it will never get bad enough to trigger another civil war or government collapse. We'll just limp on forever, with predictions about impending doom dangled in front of our faces forever.

We will build bases on the Moon and Mars, but it will take longer than people like Elon Musk predict, and the bases will be small and disappointing. Like the ISS and the Antarctic bases, the general public will lose interest in them shortly after they are founded. The bases will start out with single-digit human populations, and though each might have a waiting list of thousands of willing colonists who want to move in, the expansion rate will be severely limited by limited life support capacity. In other words, if you want to move to the Mars base and help out, your eagerness is not enough--you will also need to pay $1 billion to have a module the size of a small bus containing your bedroom, your oxygen generator/CO2 scrubber, your water purifier, your tools, your other possessions, and some raw materials transported from Earth to Mars' surface so you're not draining the scarce resources of the other colonists.

Only trivial numbers of humans will be living off Earth before AGI gets so powerful and advanced that we realize there's no real point in sending more humans out on space missions. AGIs might take over Earth and make this decision for us.

[MythOfProgress]

boy are we getting desperate, lol. im amused but im also concerned with the wave of posts and comments with the quintessential four-letter words of "hope" and "doom" or their synonyms arising up more than usual.

the process you're currently experiencing(or will be in the midst of experiencing) is referred to as ego-death, its the psychological mechanism that most humans have- the thing that tells us how important we are and that we matter(usually in regards to the things that we identify with)-and it'll dawn on us that we are not the protagonists of our stories, but prisoners of our own biological nature. same as with every organism associated with finding resources in their pursuit of survival. considering we are nearly at the halfway point in the decade, this is more than enough time for people to start waking up to the fact that we are fucked in 27 different directions. the good thing about this is, you're not alone in experiencing this.

however, the existentialist person is probably gonna say somewhere along the lines of how "we may not matter in the grand scheme of things, but we matter to each other" which granted isn't necessarily wrong, but in the context of our climate being irreparably fucked- this does not matter.
is everything gonna be fine because its fine? or is it fine because im repeating it to myself and if i say otherwise it would mean great emotional discord?

And it's my experience in life that tells me that Hopewashed future optimism is deluded... but so is the Doom-brigade. The Future is never so absolute.

this kind of reminds me of that scene out of that movie "Don't Look Up" where the scientists Kate(Jennifer Lawrence) and Randall(Leonardo DiCaprio) who are sitting in the white house room with the president and her lackeys(Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, etc), they pretty much tell her based on the empirical evidence that exists- that they are 99(99.78% to be exact) percent certain that the asteroid is gonna hit and end all life on Earth. The president and her son in response, almost automatically latch onto the 1%(0.22% with the previous figure in mind) possibility of it not happening and try to move the goalposts in addressing the situation, with one of her cronies suggesting they lower the possibility to 70% when addressing the situation publicly.

this is exactly what this post boils down, moving the goalposts. sure it's not "absolute" in the sense that whenever a scientist is discussing a "theory"(usually in response to someone who says "its just a theory"), they're only "just" working with well-substantiated claims, empirical evidence that they can repeatedly demonstrate or have ideas that are widely accepted in the scientific consensus. it will never be absolute in that regard since most scientists don't like to say 100% because the process or philosophy of the scientific method which heavily discourages against this, but we know for a fact shit is gonna hit the fan sooner or later. it already has for a good portion of our society at the very least.

[Ken_J]

boy are we getting desperate, lol. im amused but im also concerned with the wave of posts and comments with the quintessential four-letter words of "hope" and "doom" or their synonyms arising up more than usual.

so glad to amuse you.

the process you're currently experiencing(or will be in the midst of experiencing) is referred to as ego-death, ... protagonists of our stories, but prisoners of our own biological nature....

I had my first experience of ego death in the 90s. I'm familiar enough with it to know that's not what this is about.

And it's my experience in life that tells me that Hopewashed future optimism is deluded... but so is the Doom-brigade. The Future is never so absolute.

this kind of reminds me of that scene out of that movie "Don't Look Up" ... this is exactly what this post boils down, moving the goalposts...

not the same thing at all.

If you go onto any social media location and listen to anyone below the age of 40, they've given up. Kids in their late teens early 20s talking about giving up on trying to figure out what to do with their lives because the world is dying and AI will take all the jobs and economic inequality will doom them to living in a cardboard box... but AI are just tools. they can be used by you and me as well as they can be by big companies. money is made up bullshit it's not a force of nature and inherent law of physics. Humanity decides how economics work, and we can change that system.

The climate is a stickier wicket but not as in the end times bag as it being perceived. During the 80s we thought the hole in the ozone would doom us all, we thought that acid rain would doom us all, we thought the rainforests would be gone by now and doom us all, we thought the whale populations were doomed, we thought we'd have a nuclear war somewhere in the world by now dooming us all to nuclear winter. Hackers, drugs, a race war, near earth asteroids, chemical and biological weapons, famines, plagues, wars, y2k, etc...

we've literally been counting the second to doom on the end of the world clock for more than 50 years. and it both reminds me of the crazies who waited for the day the mayan calander told us the world would end.

Some shit got better, some got worse, and we are not going to be dead next week, month or even next year. And in the mean time we collectively can have an effect on which things get better and which things get worse. Will we all benefit evenly. nope, my chronic health problem likely mean I'll be lucky to see another 15 years. Will I make a difference... not really unless we are calculating butterfly effects. Some of us were just hoping to be around to see some greatness and maybe watch the start of the next age of wonders for humanity.

the problem with profits of doom is that when people internalize hopelessness they stop having things to work toward, and when they stop working towards a better tomorrow then they cause the doom they feared. It's self fulfilling prophesies.

In don't look up, the doom is all at once and even then they had the chance and ability to change the course of things. And they f-ed it up.

our doom is less certain, will take longer than a human lifetime to happen, and there are so many variables that we can manipulate to get non-doom outcomes that still look like struggle and complete changes to the world and humanity but are not the end of the world or people... that the giving up mindset is definitely not something we should internalize. but in post global pandemic days it's becoming the common narrative, to the degree that one sees doom everywhere people are talking, but no hope that isn't empty platitudes. there's a whole future of worlds between those two markers that is entirely achievable and has some of humanities greatest days ahead, but not if everyone gives up because they can't or won't think anything other than doom is our destiny.

[Cyber_Rebel]

We won't get the drexlerian nano-utopia, the Star trek federation earth, but neither will we have a desolate dying earth, with echo domes, with city state 1984 and Brave new world, subsisting on soylent green supplied with ingredients by states of perpetual war between archologies in the vast global wasteland.

what do you imagine the world to look like as we go forward? What's the 'Third-path? I will maybe return with a follow up post with some ideas of my own.

So, Cyberpunk then?

Personally, I don't believe things will be that bad either. Humanity really just experiences certain uncertainties throughout our history which shakes up our current process of being, to the point to where it feels like everything will collapse. Humanity will adapt to whatever change comes.

Not sure about Star Trek, but I certainly do hold a more positive view of the future than I did a few years ago. A possible "third path" as you phrase it, is us simply working towards a better future and adhering to scientific progress. Does it truly hurt anyone to be cautiously optimistic? Does it not accomplish more to focus on the prospects of something better, than envision a dystopian hell? The problem really is our priorities, which are often petty, banal, and doesn't take into account a long-term view of things. Perhaps if we stopped focusing on the insignificant things, we can better focus on actual issues which leads us towards a better society all around.

I'm not saying you must hold a ridiculous ideal which may or may not ever come, but to not miss the silver lining, in which things actually do get better for a majority of people. Don't lose perspective, even if it seems like your personal experience hasn't been too hopeful.

[MythOfProgress]

The climate is a stickier wicket but not as in the end times bag as it being perceived.

read the latest IPCC reports(which i consider to be highly conservative as a result of fossil fuel companies and various governments in place that have vested interests in paying to downplay the information in regards to how horrific the situation is with our climate), you'll come to recognize at best what you've just said is a misconception.

During the 80s we thought the hole in the ozone would doom us all, we thought that acid rain would doom us all, we thought the rainforests would be gone by now and doom us all, we thought the whale populations were doomed, we thought we'd have a nuclear war somewhere in the world by now dooming us all to nuclear winter. Hackers, drugs, a race war, near earth asteroids, chemical and biological weapons, famines, plagues, wars, y2k, etc...

we've literally been counting the second to doom on the end of the world clock for more than 50 years. and it both reminds me of the crazies who waited for the day the mayan calander told us the world would end.

hypothetically speaking, i get into a car and drive that car. i get into a car crash. i walk away miraculously unscathed. flash forward a few years down the line, i get into another car crash and once again, barely anything happens to me besides a graze. surely, i'll survive the next car crash because i survived the past two? right?

leaving aside the flawed logic in this sentiment aside, it seems as if you're of the thought that the problems you've listed out were just clear-cut, present and immediate dangers that somehow got resolved through human ingenuity/willpower, the overestimation of them as merely minor problems or eschatological concerns on the part of people who weren't very well-versed in the processes of collapse to say the least and attributed it to the supernatural (in their defense, they did not have access to the same amount of information that we do nowadays, but please don't place supernatural doomsday predictions as being in the same category as scientific evaluations, both use an entirely different process in reaching their conclusions )- as opposed to recognizing them as overtime processes that constantly work in the background(some of which still exist to this day) as most people just focused on their own lives and successes(or failures, take your pick), merely kicking the can down the road for as long as possible and forgetting about them entirely if only to make their own lives easier.

Some shit got better, some got worse, and we are not going to be dead next week, month or even next year.

throughout my post history have you noticed i haven't actually placed any hard dates? rather than resort to strawmans of my position, i'd actually reckon you try to wrestle with the idea that we've most likely underestimated climate change and what it means to live in a world that's become unstable and large swaths of it uninhabitable.

Some of us were just hoping to be around to see some greatness and maybe watch the start of the next age of wonders for humanity.

and you're actually trying to tell me this isn't you coping? a techno-utopian age influenced by millenarianism(at least in the secular, transhumanist, technological sense) and self-preservation? i mean theres nothing wrong with wanting to live a better life with better prospects- im sure most of us would want something like that- simultaneously i think theres a point in time where we start to let biases and emotional stakes get involved- turning realistic benefits into fantastical technologies that promise to uproot and change our lives permanently.

the problem with profits of doom is that when people internalize hopelessness they stop having things to work toward, and when they stop working towards a better tomorrow then they cause the doom they feared. It's self fulfilling prophesies.

no, its the other way around , "doomism" is something that is brought about by the inaction against climate change, it doesn't promote it. this is something that is being driven into our lives on the daily as the walls start to close in on us and the metaphorical noose tightens around our necks.

that's kind of the issue i have with people with like Michael Mann who have a tendency to hyper-fixate on the climate "doomers" as opposed to the denialists, attempting to color the "doomers" as being a different stripe of denialists- oftentimes trying to be "positive"/"optimistic" in the face of adversity. toxic positivity does not help anyone and only ensures people will continuously make the wrong decisions in regards to something like the climate collapse(like having children in a world where they will most likely die prematurely as an example). its almost as if he's trying to compensate for his inability(not out of incompetence or malice, but sheer scope of the problem) to do anything about the situation by going after a fairly small minority of people who've recognized the crux of the issue compared to the larger portion of the population that remains unaware and willfully ignorant(if not resistant entirely to learning about the issue).

In don't look up, the doom is all at once and even then they had the chance and ability to change the course of things. And they f-ed it up.

our doom is less certain, will take longer than a human lifetime to happen, and there are so many variables that we can manipulate to get non-doom outcomes that still look like struggle and complete changes to the world and humanity but are not the end of the world or people...

mostly using it as an analogy, not as a reference point for how our collective future will look overall. when it comes to the other forms of collapse(economic or (geo)political) i'd probably be hard-pressed to agree with you considering these are usually gradual decays marked by significant events of failure at certain points of time- which is a lot more digestible given the circumstances,"limping" our way along towards a less appealing future as you'd put it.

however environmental collapse at this point in time, is an exponential process that once started, cannot be stopped. more precisely i'm referring to the runway greenhouse effect occurring, caused as a result of tipping points we failed to avert in a timely manner(the common example i've listed throughout a few of my posts being the ice caps melting and releasing more greenhouse gases in the process)- worsened by additional positive feedback loops we tripped off in the process of doing so.

[funkervogt]

I had my first experience of ego death in the 90s. I'm familiar enough with it to know that's not what this is about.

I had ego death for the first time in 2017. You're right that MythOfProgress has no no clue what he's talking about...again.

and you're actually trying to tell me this isn't you coping? a techno-utopian age influenced by millenarianism

Ironically, your own belief in global warming doomsday is probably influenced by millenarianism. It's just an "end to history" of a different sort.

[MythOfProgress]

I had ego death for the first time in 2017. You're right that MythOfProgress has no no clue what he's talking about...again.

if this really was the case- you would think the other text you wrote earlier would come from a sci-fi novel catering to escapist fantasies, in contrast to the realization that most of the fantastical technologies probably wouldn't come to fruition as a result of physical limitations and change our lives for the better alongside being able to understand we dont live in a reality that caters to human existence(we force it to for lack of better wording), usually staying rooted in a more grounded world be the thought process to walk away with- but if you guys like to see yourselves as being the (un)lucky precursors to an advanced civilization that just happened to be born too early, who am i to judge? i've got plenty fantasies of my own.

Ironically, your own belief in global warming doomsday is probably influenced by millenarianism. It's just an "end to history" of a different sort.

not really a belief, this is something we've observed in the modern-day and if the scientific consensus states that this is the case, then i'm not really gonna argue with it. on the other hand, i'm not too sure how'd you come away with the notion that i'm "influenced" by millenarianism despite my aversion to mythological stories/themes, unless you're trying to redefine the word itself to mean something else entirely- otherwise i think you've got it mixed up with another word.

[SerethiaFalcon]

Removed for personal reasons.

[wjfox]

I have nothing to lose in the future since I don't expect to live another year (or rather, will be surprised if I do – unaddressed medical issues).

I am so sorry to hear that.

[funkervogt]

if this really was the case- you would think the other text you wrote earlier would come from a sci-fi novel catering to escapist fantasies, in contrast to the realization that most of the fantastical technologies probably wouldn't come to fruition as a result of physical limitations and change our lives for the better alongside being able to understand we dont live in a reality that caters to human existence(we force it to for lack of better wording), usually staying rooted in a more grounded world be the thought process to walk away with- but if you guys like to see yourselves as being the (un)lucky precursors to an advanced civilization that just happened to be born too early, who am i to judge?

Take a deep breath and realize it's OK to not write run-on sentences.

i've got plenty fantasies of my own.

Yes. Dystopian ones, which you broadcast on this forum every day.

Do you have a full-time job?

[MythOfProgress]

Take a deep breath and realize it's OK to not write run-on sentences.

sorry if that bothers you, that's just my writing process- but you're right in terms of me needing to organize my thoughts better. still though, this does not address the earlier point i was making.

Yes. Dystopian ones, which you broadcast on this forum every day.

yeah, but this aint one of them though. exactly where is the fantastical part of people dying? like i'd understand if this was under the prospect of someone who thought they were gonna live out some type of fallout-esque existence(the game, not the nuclear radiation itself)- where they would embark on numerous adventures, sometimes being a warlord or cult leader of a society, others being a lone wolf survivalist prepper type(or forming intentional communities, since that's preferable to going solo); sometimes being a hero when the right moment calls.

unfortunately i have no delusions about myself being one of the few survivors left alive in a hellish landscape with any of these archetypes in mind(nor would i want to be one of them, the living tend to envy the dead at a point in time like that). i've already mentioned before i'm not putting any mythological/narrative spin on this to mean anything to me, it's just mass death. doesn't have to mean anything beyond a massive tragedy that could have been averted or delayed had we prioritized this more.

admittedly; like the billions of other people that exist- i do rely on the system to survive(going off-grid, being apart of the Amish or an uncontacted tribe might extend some time out depending on how prepared they are but still aren't immune to the laws of physics in action; contending with climate change on steroids is mostly gonna be a losing battle) - so inevitably when it's done cannibalizing itself and crashes from its unsustainable practices, my fate isnt gonna be any different from all the other people who'll meet their demise even with the foreknowledge that i have at my fingertips.

on a slightly unrelated note- i don't think it takes that much time to drop in, leave a comment then drop out to resume any activities IRL, but i guess mileage varies depending on who you are.

Do you have a full-time job?

sure, but i've already got the sense we're gravitating towards an ad hominem rather than engaging my arguments on their premise.

[erowind]

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[erowind]

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[MythOfProgress]

I'm not even in the same camp as you and I'm working towards joining/co-founding a rural ecovillage, I'm also part of an urban intentional community right now, though I understand this isn't possible in most places for most people

already got it right on the first go, might have one of those near me based on some previous research i did in my area but from reasons ranging from financial to familial or personal, i don't think its feasible for me to make that move quite just yet.

This applies to building resilience and making things better where we can in general, whatever may be possible for a given individual. It doesn't make any sense to me to constantly talk about how we're all going to die and do absolutely nothing about it. The only thing that makes me feel better at all about any of this is doing something about it. Even if 90% of us do die, it will still be a better path there if we take as much action as possible.

i don't disagree with this sentiment, after all being a determined defeatist is the ideal when it comes to the environment- on the other hand for reasons you've alluded to in the previous statements not everyone has that chance of being able to make that change- whether they're too invested in the system or too trapped in it to make it work; the same applies wherever. i can minimize my footprint as best as i can on most fronts, still it's not good enough and i recognize that.

If you are taking substantive action forgive me, but I've never seen any kind of call to action in your posts so that's where the assumption comes from.

nah you're good, just dont wanna be the person that demands change even when they haven't changed themselves- that and the fact i'd rather not make any active statements towards people who are (mostly) just trying to survive on a day-to-day basis.

[erowind]

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[wjfox]

AGI won't be created until after many or most of the people on this forum are dead.

This seems too pessimistic, given what we've seen in recent years, and particularly the last six months or so. Most people now seem to believe it will be achieved this decade, at least in a "weak" form. Tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars are flowing into the industry. China, the U.S., and other world powers are in a race to develop it first.

The floodgates have clearly been opened in terms of LLMs, and alongside this, practically every week there's some new video demonstrating the advancing capabilities of robots. Combine the two, along with neuromorphic computing and other "brain"-like tech, and I just don't understand how you can think it's so far off.

Ditto for radical life extension technology.

The thing is, we don't actually need to wait 100+ years, or whenever the life extension treatments are "perfect".

We can reach LEV by using a series of intermediate or "bridge" technologies, which aren't quite radical enough to halt aging completely, but can buy enough time to serve as stepping stones to the really exciting developments later on.

It's looking like we'll see the first of these stepping stones in the next 10-15 years or so. They won't be revolutionary – perhaps helping with grey hair, wrinkles, knee/joint pain, heart problems, etc.

But perhaps 20-25 years after that – accelerated by AI and in-silico studies – the next generation of treatments will be accurate and efficacious enough to be considered "practically LEV". Hence my estimate of ~2065.

There's another crucial factor you ignore. During the second half of this century, there'll be enormous pressure on governments to address the looming demographic crisis, spiralling health costs, etc. and stagnating/declining populations. For this reason, I believe it's likely that LEV treatments will eventually become vital for economic stability and will therefore be offered for free.

[Ken_J]

I think in large part the Doom mentality is a consequence of uncertainty. We got too confident with our belief in there being a menu of options for what life could be for people. The work hard, and get ahead; 2.5 kids and a home. Kids go to college, retire and travel, be taken care of in your old age... those have all been recent creations and they were not built to weather the changes that everything experiences. And culturally there is a desperate attempt to return to what people knew in their childhood (specifically boomers). There's a sunk cost and confirmation bias issue in the belief that their way worked and we need to go back to it, that completely ignores the fact that the circumstances that allowed it to work are not there anymore, you can't go back to those ways.

But those certainties were an anomaly anyway. and the advancement of technology has always been a story of accelerating changes. and changes aren't always for the better, but nor are they the doom of everyone caught in them. For every DDT there is a decline in infant mortality. The boomers lucked out in reaping a remarkable time of stability benefitting from the overlap of pay offs of struggles from the previous generations and cling to those after their ability to function has diminished.

What I think we'll see going forward is a return to some of the antiestablishment mindsets divesting the boomer institutions of their stranglehold on progresses needed to move forward.

Investment in filtration techniques can start removing microplastic, forever chemicals, and other environmental contaminants. Even desalinate water and capture greenhouse gasses.
Increases in additive manufacture can reduce waste streams. rooftop solar and wind, with improved storage options and increased efficiency appliances will change production.
Food grown in vertical farming and alternatives to livestock factory farms can help with the burden of meeting the needs.

these are all things we can already see, and there are other things that we can't even now forsee. much like people in the 70s not seeing the personal computer coming and how it will change the world. Or the 90s failing to forsee the smart phone.

The biggest issue we face is the coming culture war. Where the culture coming up have been raised in a system that they never were aware was being propped up past it's ability to function. They don't know any other way, and they've never been allowed to break away and change anything. And their lack of unity is going to complicate the attempt to break boomer dominated systems. But in it's own way a plurality of new ways may be beneficial in undoing the problem of monoculture and it's inability to adapt quickly and innovate to the pressures of an increasingly instable world.

The need to cultivate alternative power structures so that the regressive and sunk cost boomers can be circumvented or done away with will be the hardest thing. It requires a fight that is run by old school rules of zero sum, I got mine and don't care if you can get yours, resist change, never take responsibility for your actions, and keep the long game of the ponzi scheme going where they keep running a tab they will die leaving behind for their kids and grand kids... We'll never get all of it out of the systems. It will be a bloody battle just to cut it back enough to allow alternatives to flourish in place and eventually take over leaving the toxic ways to little pockets like the Amish/Mennonite.

But we also have to be prepared to weather volatile and uncertain times. the luxery of backed up system to hold up everything will not be there through the radical changes we need to make, and there will be big mistakes and failures that hurt more than anything we've seen in living memory. These will make a lot of people want to give up, and run back to what felt more stable and secure. but those old system had already failed and the stability was an illusion, we can't go back, though many will try. And in the end if the things we build up to take it's place are not built to adapt and change, they will calcify in place and we will find ourselves in a repeat of the now, with a broken system propped up past it's ability to sustain, drawing a debt against the future of humanity and clinging to things that are damaging to our long term futures... that will need to be overthrown and uprooted for the next next way of doing things.

[Tadasuke]

I expect very very useful, easy to use and practical AIs in the early 2040s or even in the late 2030s. I don't expect "climate doom" happening at all, not even in a million years. Climate will get 1 or 2 ℃ hotter than in 2023, but we will manage. Better than today, with nearly everyone having air conditioning in their house.

However, the problem is that with being older there are more responsibilities, more health problems and also, the worlds of the future (or the present) has different problems than in the past. In the 2000s I thought 'let's just get trough this terrible decade to the 2010s when life will start being decent'. In the 2010 I thought 'let's just get trough this terrible decade to the 2020s when life will start being decent'. In the 2020s I think similarly about the 2030s. I wonder if I will be wrong again or I will be correct this third time. It is not impossible to be correct the 3rd time, because economical and technological progress does happen. 10x performance/price and 10x performance/watt in computers every 10 years does mean 1000x in 30 years which is what some very optimistic futurists expected from 10 years. So it does seem likely that the 2030s will be significantly better than the 2000s which had their own problems I remember, but I was younger then with less responsibilities and less health problems.

The 2030s will be hotter but richer, a bit healthier and with better computers, much better AIs and electric autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles. So they will be different. AR and VR will probably suck before the late 2030s or early 2040s. However, they will continue getting exponentially better. I expect 3% GDP per capita and 17% computing/constant price growth in the 2020s. 5% GDP per capita and 26% computing/constant price in the 2030s. AGI will get invented in the 2030s, but will not become superintelligence immediately, it will take at least a decade for that. Life is going to get better on the average, on the whole in most places of Earth. In the 2030s there will be outposts on the Moon and on Mars, each housing at least a dozen of people of all races and genders. There will be also a separate commercial space station around the Earth in the 2030s. There may be a space station around Moon or Mars by 2043. By 2050 there might be 1000 people living on Mars, but certainly not 1 000 000. That can happen by 2080 I think. 30 years later than Elon Musk wishes.

Half of current FutureTimeline userbase is going to be alive in the year 2123 in my opinion. Not because of a single big invention, but because of a plethora of smaller improvements in medicine, health, fitness, food, drinks, living standards and safety.

Earlier this year, I read a university research paper, explaining that:
▹ in the 13th century, in England, there were usually as many as 200 murders per 1 million citizens
▹ in the 17th century, in England, there were usually as many as 100 murders per 1 million citizens
▹ in the 1850s, in England, there were around 30 murders per 1 million citizens
▹ in the 1890s, in England, there were around 10 murders per 1 million citizens
▹ in the year 2017 (it changes year to year), in England, there was only 0.16 murder per 1 million citizens

This clearly shows, that most countries today are much, much (hundreds of times) safer than they were in the 17th century. Excluding or including war, doesn't change that. The world started getting visibly safer in the 18th century and that on average continues to this day.

[Tadasuke]

From what I see, in the last 14 years people have been mostly (you could certainly find some exceptions) much more widely applying 2010 technology or ideas, instead of introducing some totally new, completely groundbreaking technology or ideas into useful practice on a wider scale (perhaps with the exception of AI).

In 2024 real World GDP PPP is probably about ~50% greater than in 2010 (which is non-trivial, as that could take 220 years in the past). I expect approximately 100% greater in 2030. Humanity is richer than ever before, that's for sure. Developing countries are ... well developing, and some of them rather quickly (as a point of comparison, in Hungary between 1870 and 1913, GDP per capita was growing 1.5% a year and that was considered good growth, almost doubling in 44 years).

Computation per dollar (not overly specialized and adjusted for inflation) in 2024 is about 10x greater than in 2010. More like 100-200x inside handheld devices like iPhones. Networks are also about 100 to 200x faster. You can buy a 20-22 TB 3.5" HDD for the price of 3 TB 3.5" HDD back in 2010. There are already expensive datacenter HAMR 30-32 TB 3.5" HDDs, useful especially for tech-giants. Cameras in handheld devices like Apple iPhone 14 are getting pretty good, even in dim-lit conditions and in motion. AI is allowing for automating some of the boring and tedious work here and there. Self checkout is getting more popular. There are a lot more modern buildings around than in 2010.

Overall, things are better than in 2010, but not immensely so. What has been the most impressive to me is the construction boom I've been observing in my city and in some other cities as well. Although building technology is rather similar to 2010, there is so much more of it. Photovoltaics are common and electric cars are now something you see everyday unless you live in some extremely poor place. Heat pumps and energy storage are the rage now. My uncle has a heat pump and my other uncle is going to have one soon. My grandma has an electric bicycle, because they are now affordable and old people can actually benefit from them unlike me. Delivery people in their 20s, 30s and 40s are using electric bicycles.