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

[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]

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

Do you have a full-time job?

Leave it to funkvervogt to throw personal attacks at people instead of any kind of real reasoning. Definition of reactionary.

You know who else wrote in run-on sentences? Every European philosopher in history prior to the 1940s and a good portion of them still do.

[erowind]

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.

Having the knowledge you have and being so sure of it's truth and not joining an intentional community of some kind to build resilience is insane to me. 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. 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.

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.

[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]

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.

If you do end up trying intentional community at any point and it doesn't work, don't let an initial failure dissuade you if you still feel drawn to it. It takes time to find the right people, the right structure, etc for anyone. Building community comes more naturally later when you find a right fit, but initially it can be very hard because of how isolated our culture is and how none of us are usually taught how to build community growing up. I'm going to DM you some resources

[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.