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]

I'll try predicting too. 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). So, the whole doom/utopia debate is meaningless to me. It definitely gives you a very different perspective in life to be at the point I am in my life. This prediction is for 50-100 years from now.

Anyways, I'll predict the middle path would be that humanity shrinks in population due to many different issues (some natural, some artificial), but, that we don't necessarily lose our access to technological development, nor do we fully collapse. Rather, it develops in pockets instead. For a while, governments become more authoritarian (especially due to the influx of illegal immigrants), and a lot of companies seem to collapse overnight (due to lack of future preparedness/lack of relevancy). But the world on the other side is very different than what it was before.

Millennials (my generation) died earlier than expected due to being generally poorer, more stressed, having less strong family bonds, and getting more diseases/being heavier. This causes some of the population shrinkage, especially due to not as many having children. Gen Z and Gen Alpha end up benefitting from the rapid decline of the Millenial generation, due to not having to care for Millenials in their old age as much, and due to more resources being freed up. However, there is still a struggle based on what the wealthy and corporations are doing with those freed-up resources (among other emerging issues). No generation before or after sees as rapid of a decline though.

Eventually, ai becomes its own force of nature, so to speak. Unpredictable, but not necessarily always the villain. Small groups of humans eventually live off of Earth, mostly scientists as the requirements to even go into space are rigorous and expensive (monetarily and resource-wise). Some humans have become cyborgs, living in what appear to be their own small ecologies, often in especially wealthy communities.

Governments eventually become less controlling as they do not have the energy or resources to govern large areas anymore, rather, they focus on smaller areas. So, governance itself is more scattered and uneven. Places that become really hot and almost unlivable start to have roaming/migrating populations that remain small, but wander around based on the weather, looping between areas based on the extremes, not having permanent homes. Like other nomadic groups of the past, but possibly with portable technologies. Other populations adapt by creative means of living (underground/other adaptations?).

Tourism is too expensive, and sometimes even dangerous, so people more often either stick to their local areas or use a technology like VR to go on “vacation.” Of course, there are also always the tourists that go on vacation to get into danger too. Also, some tourists do go on scuba diving expeditions to places underwater due to rising seas. That becomes a thing.

Hypercapitalist societies are stubborn in implementing anything like an ubi, so some groups end up splitting off from the wider society like a more modern version of the Amish. In other places, many jobs end up being paper-pushing jobs that could be done in 2 hours but are stretched out to 6 – 8 hours a day. More towns centered around one corporation have popped up, especially in hypercapitalist societies with governments that are unable to hold control of all areas. Huge cities are rarer, due to resources/expense. There is less population sprawl as well. The world has become a more insular, dangerous place at times, but, it isn't doomed and it isn't a utopia either. Resources are also constantly changing due to what is available, so you don't always find things locally purchasable as easily as in the past (though there is experimentation in some areas with other ways of creating resources, such as through technology or creating something similar with what is locally available). There is also a constant battle between groups trying to protect the resources that remain (or trying to replenish them), and the groups trying to exploit what remains.

Popular topics in entertainment/media: Idealizing the luxuries of the past, cyborgs, non-ai-created content, experimental ai-created content, conspiracies/hoaxes, environmental disasters, dangerous tourism (often resulting in death/injury), videos of undersea parts of cities/towns/other areas once above water, living in space/on planets (rarer videos), experimental lifestyles, nomadic lifestyles, simple/traditional/rough lifestyles, cooking popular meals with resources that are available (mimicking it), portable technologies, efficient technologies, videos built off of videos from other generations, lifestyle hacks, life in extremes, sightings of rare animals/plants...etc.

[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.