My view is far sunnier than most, much more so than yours. You see long term possibilities for average humans (as opposed to a post-human future), which is akin to apes hoping that humans won't evolve. The result would be an Earth that simply dies without sending its "seeds" (3D printers) to other worlds.impermanence wrote: ↑January 5th, 2021, 11:58 amOptimistic? :)Greta wrote: ↑January 5th, 2021, 1:06 am
As I said, the apparent short-term prognosis is a nightmare. Medium term is far from promising - for humans. Long-term, though, I am confident that there is a grand future ahead for post-humans. Think of it as akin to the future of apes. For most apes, the 21st century will bring extinction in the wild, wiped out by one particular type of ape that fulfilled more of the potentials of the ape mind.
A small percentage of humans too will transcend and leave the rest in their dust. The trends are clear. Non-empowered humans, though, are doomed, and we are clearly on track to wipe ourselves out with delusionality, corruption, dishonesty and tribalism. I may be optimistic but I have no interest in rose-tinted glasses or euphemisms. As I say, an omelette requires broken eggs.
The great thing about life is that we really have no clue what's going to happen. I was down the YouTube rabbit hole the other night and came upon a portion of one of my favorite TV shows when I was a kid back in the 60's called, "The 21st Century," with the American news icon Walter Cronkite narrating. This episode was about what the house of the year 2001 would look and be like. Other than getting the big TV and computer influences correct, everything else was a pipe-dream and waaaay off [and they were only predicting 34 years ahead].
The reason it is so difficult to predict the future is that 99.9% of what determines it has not occurred as of yet, so with the acceleration of technology and other transformations taking place, it's nearly impossible to know what's coming down. Even somebody as brilliant as Karl Marx had no idea what he was talking about when he thought he could interpolate forward.
Don't be so negative. Sure things are going to be challenging for a while as society goes through this transition [and who knows, perhaps WWIII is in the offing] but you never know what good will come from it, as well. Stay positive and try to enjoy yourself. You must admit, Greta, it's amazing time to be alive!
The future is easy to predict. The impossible aspects are those most subject to chaos: 1) the timing of events and 2) the path of events leading to predictable futures. Predicting thirty-four years into the future is vastly more difficult than predicting roughly what happens in the very long term.
We know the Sun will expand to become a red giant. We know that the oceans will boil away entirely within a billion years, and that terrestrial life will be gone long before that time. We know that biology and space do not mix, and that any human modified to survive in space will no longer be recognisably human (ie. post-human).
Humans have no future but our machines do. The only questions will be 1) if there is any natural human brain tissue within those machines 2) if the machines can become sentient - or both.
There is a glorious future ahead, just not for humans as we know them, who are a simpler form of what is to follow. From what you have seen of humans, do you think their loss would be a bad thing? Everything about humans - aside from what's happening at the top - screams that we are due for extinction. We are incapable of sustainability, of controlling our numbers, of controlling our consumption, of controlling our violent urges and we keep falling for sweet lies to avoid hard truths. As you noted, we cannot even control our appetites.
Corporations and machines are the future. That is not dystopian - they are the "good guys". The villains are the blind and hate-filled masses and the media organisations that pander to their worst instincts (the corporate "ecosystem" has its parasites too). You could say that I am so far right wing that I go right around the political dial to the left :)
The only reason I vote for parties that try to slow inequality is because 1) right wing parties are too corrupt and 2) slow change beds down better than fact change (and I am sentimental about the inevitable and rapid eradication of non-human animals). Otherwise, I am very much in the corporations' corner, hence my optimism.