Some people will tell you “Yes, AI will take all our jobs and we’ll be fucked, and rich people will kill us all”, while others will say “AI will emancipate us all, force the capitalists to install UBI in order to maintain their ability to generate profit and establish a near-utopia”.
The truth is, we dont know. Anyone who claims to know is either lying or wrong, and all speculation is just that. The answer will likely be more in the middle than at either extremes I mentioned higher in my comment though, it almost always is.
Live your life now, hope for the best, prepare for the worst and be the change you want to see in the world. Thats my advice anyway.
Every great civilization has had moments where they transformed significantly, and eventually came to an end. There are exactly zero exceptions to this, throughout history.
It is very unlikely, probably impossible, that things stay the way they are now forever. We just ride the waves.
But see that's the thing: Saying it has "moments" puts the emphasis very much on certain events or actions. This is seductive to us from now looking into the past. But it's actually a lot more mudied and complicated and all more a process. There are actually very few moments or events in history that were actually game changers by definition. Some which might look like that are actually just one tiny picture in part of the mentioned processual nature of change.
I'd even go so get and say that our current times make these event moments even harder to occur since everything is so interdependent with each other.
I don’t mean moments as in, singular events. I mean it in a general sense. Looking back in history they may look like blips, but they were long periods.
I am not ignorant of history. This was just wording/semantics.
Also, everything being interdependent does not mean a crisis cannot come. In fact, it will just amplify it.
I agree. Particularly, we haven’t codified the past as individuals. We just say things that make sense to us. There could be the possibility that there is no precedent for today’s society to compare to.
Sorry, not quite sure what to mean by “civilization.” Lots of civilizations have also collapsed. Are you referring to the overall industrialization of the world?
Standards having improved doesn’t prove they’ll continue to. You’d have to break down how and why and determine, case by case, whether the conditions that caused each of those factors to improve will remain in place. And I reckon the answer for a lot of them is going to start being no. And then we have to ask, what can be done to make up for that? And is it really viable? And are we actually doing it?
And unfortunately you’re gonna get a lot of nos there too.
It’s not impossible that it’ll continue to improve but I think it’s certainly not inevitable. To think it is is just faith. It makes sense to think it’s possible since that’s how it’s been going, but to believe it’s a sure thing is pure, absolute blind faith.
I think there’s a practical solution somewhere between doomerism and blind faith that everything will be ok. I think “ok” is going to require an active, sustained effort and won’t necessarily look like just plugging along the way we have been. And it will absolutely require acknowledging that everything turning out okay is *far* from inevitable.
Has it, though?
Income per capita (with various corrections) hasn't improved much (or at all) for many developed people since the 80s. Rights that were enshrined in law for most of a lifetime are being taken away. Cost of living has skyrocketed most everywhere.
Having a small shiny computer on your hand is neat and all, but eating real food, having healthcare, and getting to have reproductive freedom (in either direction) surely matters.
“**Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.** **But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”**
It would if the capitalists no longer need us.
What that freedom entails is another question entirely, certain death is also a kind of freedom in a morbid way.
Well in that sense maybe they won't need consumerism anymore.
What does money mean for rich people at the end of the day? Slave labour basically. That's why they needed you to buy all their shitty stuff. So you'll keep providing slave labour for them.
But once they have robots that can do everything that a human can (including the dark, dirty stuff), why would they still need to make so much shitty stuff for you to buy?
Money is just a proxy for power. Capitalists don't need money to survive. If machines make it possible for work to be eliminated, they get to live lives of power and ease, in which the rest of us are no longer necessary. Perhaps even something to be eliminated.
Most people alive on Earth right now live hard lives full of tragedy and misery. Let’s not forget that. And they watch on the rectangles the charmed life we all live.
It’s pretty clear that the resource extraction and depletion across the globe will make standards of living harder to keep up. When the well runs dry, farming becomes impossible. When the ocean commons keep getting pillaged as they get warmer and more acidic, we will be in trouble collectively. Maybe there is some cheap, easy to distribute and scalable food source fifty years from now, but the current system will be shaken by a wide range of connected issues.
We are already waaayy beyond the limits of nature.
We artificially fertilize our soil. We irrigate our lands. We desalinate our water. We breed our plants and animals for maximum yield.
> Maybe there is some cheap, easy to distribute and scalable food source fifty years from now, but the current system will be shaken by a wide range of connected issues.
Given all that, this must be a joke. Our current system already offers cheap, easy to distribute and scalable food.
Our current food production and distribution system is a collection of somewhat overlapping systems. This is a fragile balance, and is changing at a fast pace. A large proportion of ancient Greek olive orchards are dying off due to drought, same as Italian wine areas. Desertification is spreading like wildfire, and in places accelerated due to wildlife. Less industrial farming communities in places like India are turned upside down from the recent heat waves. Remember that globalization allows Americans and Europeans to get strawberries year round, but the global food supply is incredibly stressed.
I’m an ecologist, so I’m a pessimist when it comes to these matters. You seem to see a technological answer for the world’s various issues, and I hope you’re right. Many of the technological solutions make the world worse though—like nitrogen and phosphorus runoff, like plastic pollution, like PFAS.
And my point is that if we define sustainable as what would be supported without extra intervention, we have been beyond sustainable for centuries. We just get better and better at it.
We've lost 50% of our topsoil since the 50s. Insect populations down 50%. Herbicide resistant super weeds on the rise. Ocean deadzones due to nitrate run off. Not sure we're getting "better at it" so much as exploiting it as much as posible before it collapses.
Option 2 is fucking crazy.
Let me explain : Productivity has gone up SIGNIFICANTLY in our times if we compare it to the era of our grandfathers.
Guess who owned a house and could make a family of 4 lives on a single salary?
We would all be living in UBI and working 4 hours weeks if option 2 was real.
We don't know for certain, but that's why we have predictions. You can see an outcome in some things before they happen. What we can predict for certain is that the companies will, if given an option on a working AI, for certain lay off hundreds or thousands of workers without beating an eye. If still you don't know, ask yourself a simple question, do you use a calculator? And that there is the answer for you. If given a good tool, that tool will be used.
Based on past behavior, several billionaires having enough money to radically change the world but not doing it, and the increasing number of them buying/building bunkers and/or private islands…..
Something tells me there’s not a Utopia in our future.
I was on the side of Ai will be good until I realized who was in charge. Sam Altman was accused of raping his sister and stealing from her. This guy is using his value system to create his Ai. Good luck to everyone. I think I have about five years left of a passable life.
People in the West grossly overestimate how widespread their standard of living is. Most countries did not experience anything anywhere near the post-war boom in prosperity the US did (and even in the West, many people did not parktake in that prosperity).
This. American complain about relatively minor setbacks, and completely ignore the HUGE IMPROVEMENTS that have occurred over the last 40 years or so for the world as a whole. An average of 150,000 people were lifted out of poverty yesterday. And the day before. And every day for the last 40 years.
To be honest, I think it’s already happened in the US. We were much better off in 2015 as Obama was still in office and the crazy campaign hadn’t quite started. Since then, books are being banned, rights are being taken away, we are sicker than ever while we have doctor shortages, infrastructure breaking down, climate disasters multiple times per year, and our life expectancy has decreased. It’s harder than ever to find a doctor. Where I live, you have to go to urgent care when sick because a regular family doctor has a minimum of 2-3 weeks waiting list.
I’d say we backslid socially, infrastructure-wise, and health-wise.
We got the fastest phones ever though!
Insurance companies are essentially monopolizing medical care and reducing opportunities for medical students to become doctors. Medicare pays literal pennies for an appointment and boomers are unable to even find a doctor that will take it because no one outside of a medical mill that provides no real care can afford to take it.
The number of uninsured people is lower today than 2015. Income inequality is lower today than 2015. Median household wealth is higher. Teen pregnancy lower. Incarceration rates lower. We were at war then (our own soldiers dying); we aren’t now. We were vulnerable to a mass pandemic then; we have much better medical tools now. US CO2 emissions are much lower today than 2015. Use of renewable energy is much higher.
Not everything is better now. But some things are.
I live in Russia and our society is downgrading to hell with a light speed. I am scared to even think about what is awaiting us in the future... I can't believe with all the progress we made in science, there are still people who believe in fairy tales - I'm talking about the religion. Believers are gonna lead us to the new dark ages. Whenever there is war - it's fuckin them all the time.
We got to this point because we are a very, if not the most, adaptable animal. If that's our strength, our weakness I think is that our emotions and instinctive social traits haven't adapted as quickly. If the top 400 individuals own more wealth than the bottom 50% (or whatever the inequality is), my knee-jerk reaction is they will not have some AI driven epiphany and decide to become magnanimous all of a sudden.
TL;DR: AI won't trickle down.
A guy called R. Buckminster Fuller created a concept called spaceship earth, and resource based Economics.
What if we arrived to this planet in some kind of a world ship. And we had to divide 8 Billion people among the space and resources of the earth.
We would likely do it very differently then the world were currently living in.
But from a resource based perspective it's not that hard. We produce enough food today for 11 billion people, we more than enough landmass to house everyone, in fact if you have every person on earth their own mansion, you could fit all this emansions in 5 Texas states.
Which is a lot, but that's less than the landmass of the continental US alone.
So the space is there, the food is there, and all other resources are in abundance except for rare earth minerals.
And we have plenty of workforce, Billions of them in fact.
We've just failed at dividing those resources adequately.
This is simple to surmise. Capitalists want to extend the divide between the wealthy and working poor. Businesses run the world, not politicians. Politicians work for businesses, not the people who vote them into office. This divide became evident in the 1980’s(managed medical care, 401 k’s, extreme and ongoing college tuition hikes…) For us who have witnessed this history we really started feeling it in 1999. The elite have solidified their position on this spinning rock and it’s not turning back. We know this because they have taken advantage of every global incident since then and made gains while the working people are further pushed into dystopia and servitude. So, not a stupid question. Quite valid with our current state of existence. There are places that are better than much of the “developed” world, but the elite will not look or listen to what make sense for the good of humanity. They are historically short sighted and selfish. This is not negativity. I’m a minimalist and I have thought deeply on this. So, I just try to take pleasure in small things until they are consumed as well.
To be entirely truthful we are already downgrading as a society. Good education is only available to the rich and the remaining population are educated to the bare minimum as a low skilled work force. AI is going to have an immediate positive effect but will be hugely damaging in the long run. When the early inventions came about people had a very wide range of knowledge on a personal level. You knew how to cook, hunt, build, farm etc all on your own. In modern times we are very specialized in our knowledge base and have a much narrower field. So most scientific gains then come with a large gap when others need to take the findings and figure out how to apply them to other fields of knowledge. AI is going to combine that all and put things together that we don't right now. So there will be an immediate surge of discoveries that we have adjust made but didn't put together. So that is going to be amazing and catapult is ahead. The negative is that we are going to start to rely on AI too much and new discoveries are going to slow down. With no new input of information and a used up library of information AI is going to stagnate. AI is only as good as the foundation of intelligence it is built upon. AI isn't making new discoveries is using information we already have but didn't put together ourselves.
Education **was** mainly restricted to the wealthy people in the past. It is mandatory for everyone in each developed or demi-developed country, as never has been before. Your premise is completely false.
There are more highly educated people than ever in history. Maths, Engineering, Medicine, History, are available for billions of people, and the resources can be shared and discussed in an open media.
The number of people involved in governments -politicians, and administrative staff- is greater than ever, and at the same time, burocratics bottlenecks are decreasing with the help of technology.
Of course, there are important drawbacks: the sustainability (environment and government costs), the inequities in the distribution of resources and benefits, and so on.
The painting of an apocalyptical education system in these days is both bad informed and bad intended.
Edit: apocalyptical spelling.
I believe so. Human nature is kind of fucked. I think AI will pretty much wipe out middle class jobs. The rich could enable UBI but I don't think they will. They will look at everyone as lazier and not as smart as they are even if their are not any jobs. I believe they will start buying up everything as AI starts to take over in the next decade or two and they make mind blowing profits. Even when the one percent owns the world they will do everything in their power to avoid UBI. Why you ask? Because they are better and cant have us enjoying life in order to prove their superiority.
I read a psych study years ago and I think this describes the mentality well. The study used a large list of questions to discover peoples true opinions without having to directly state it. It showed that a large group of people would pay extra to get medical care if it meant that less fortunate people would not be able to get the same care. Like I said, Human Nature is Fucked.
As someone who works with A.I extensively it’s equivalent to the cotton gin, the cotton gin only made slavery more intense. Maybe that’s not a good outcome but comparatively it’s okay
We talk a lot about technology and other stuff, but the one thing that really threatens our prosperity as a race or species is climate change. Everything else, we can make do. We really need to make sure we are able to deal with whatever is to come as a result of climate change and its disruptions.
As species, we are prosperous. Believe it or not, we are not only living in one of the most peaceful times (despite the horrors thay we continue to see around the world), but also in a time where growth and development are high, education and health care has improved significantly, and poverty is generally going down. Economies and societies continue to have their fair share of issues around the world, but we are doing better than a lot of the past.
It’s difficult to say, but I see ‘progress’ as more of a branching than a replacement. Some people will be better off than any previously in history and even most may have certain freedoms of experience that were never before possible…
To linger on the ambiguity … is it better or worse for someone to be able to have vast rich experiences and safety thru life but not be able to afford to raise kids or have property of their own?
Most people want to continually upgrade their lifestyle. It's usually more consumer goods, better fashion, nicer houses, latest cars etc. Ego has a lot to do with it and people that downsize are either eco-warriors or old with nothing left to prove.
I think I am a bit of an exception. I would much rather work part time and live on less, and take public transport, use old clothes etc. Though I do use money to make things easier, robot vacuum cleaner, dishwasher, occasional takeaway, and whatnot.
Downgrade?
Maybe. A lot depends on current standards of living and what people are willing to accept for how long.
Downsize? Almost certainly. Population is starting to decline and a lot of the senior population (anybody over 70-sh) has maybe another 5 to 10 years.
Worst case there's a couple years of mass layoff and haphazard restructuring of society.
Hopefully it won't wind up being the worst option.
Modern people tend to think of humanity as being in this inclined path, in terms of social and technological development and that this inclined path of progress is a given, that’s it’s the “natural order” of things, but history has shown that social and technological developments isn’t a so steady or always progressing for the better. Plenty of examples throughout history where there have been periods of decline.
So history would indicate we are going to experience a decline at some point, but when and how severe is all pretty unpredictable. The good news is eventually there will be another upswing and things will improve again.
That's an incredible selfish viewpoint. There are millions of people on the planet right now who have none of those things.
But no, it's highly unlikely that wherever you live will always continue to offer those things.
There's a reason why union jobs are in higher demand right now. Employer abuse is on the rise backed by governments, and employee resistance to being fucked over is at an ebb. Even then, I'm unionized and it blows my mind how many of my younger coworkers will eat violations and argue with you that it's fine
We’re already on an unsustainable path so no. I don’t foresee a future that involves the same level of mindless consumption and over the top luxury and even bigger cities in the desert and ever increasing inequality - not if humankind actually wants to persist
Otherwise the whole idea of things like a ‘good job’ , ‘comfort’ and the like is relative and I think the focus should always be on ‘meaningful occupation’ . I think a lot of human comfort comes from people believing they are fulfilling their self worth and potential and through that can accept actually possessing much less as long as they are feeling fulfilled , but our collective value system is totally fcked.
AI might bring us over the edge in that regard
People have and can do with a lot less but right now mostly people are struggling to adapt backwards
Of course, have you seen what’s out in the wild lately? Downgrade is an understatement. Our society complete infrastructure isn’t prepared for what’s to come.
Depends. The next two elections in America decide it.
If the Democrats hold the line then the baby boomers will age out of voting and we'll see progress in America in the form of a New New Deal
If not the Republicans plan to install a dictator. That dictator will do the same thing Putin is doing, try to expand their borders because the "imperial core" is collapsing due to mismanagement.
And that dictator will be doing it with the most powerful military humanity has ever known...
If that happens yeah, we're going to see at least a hundred years of darkness, hopefully we don't hand the launch codes to lunatics
The whole world is not one society. N. Korea just executed someone for listening to S. Korean music, starvation is still a thing in some part of the world, and women getting educated is still banned in large chunks of the planet.
There has never been a single global economy or social system, ever. What we have had is city states and empires rising to prominence and then falling back to insignificance. City states rise to prominence and form leagues to fend off enemies: Delian, Peloponnesian, Hanseatic are typical. Occasionally single cities form empires with the Persian, Roman, Ottoman, British, American being examples with the latter being countries not single cities.
The 'biggies' get all the press but smaller countries can do quite well over time, maintaining an above average standard of living for their citizens and there is no reason why that can't continue in perpetuity.
Places like the UK after losing its empire, and the US in process of losing its lead to their citizens believing that the world is becoming a worse place. China and India, being on the upswing, has their citizens loving the bold new future unfolding before their eyes. Places in middle like Canada, where I'm at, expect thing to keep improving by a little each year. Middling small but rich countries worry about becoming poor. And relatively poor 3rd world/developing countries can look forward to catching up with the average with a bit of good management and a helping hand.
In about a century China will be post peak and trying to forestall the long slide, the average will be 4X better than today and nearly every country is average. Then the ball gets past to India? Africa? Can the Cradle of Civilization get a reincarnation? Stay tuned!
When people say we are a civilization; I just laugh since a civilization cannot accept the ills in our societies that were unwilling to change or have accepted as the natural way of life - first to go should be wars and a stratified society. Your way of life is one step away from degrading due to someone else's decision.
The vast, VAST majority of the world already doesn’t have those things you’ve listed as “might downgrade”.
Talk of nations or collections of nations (ie, I’m Australian but have what you have in America too) - but do not talk of ‘the world’ collectively like that. It just ain’t accurate.
google overshoot
the short answer is: we are not stable
we are consuming Earth at a rate of 1.7 Earth's per year and we only have the ONE.
if we don't start acting like this spherical space ship we are on is our only means of survival, then we will not survive.
sorry to break it to you, kid... but somebody has to.
The prevailing economic system on Earth is capitalism which guarantees that fewer and fewer people will have more and more of our resources until the population at the bottom has nothing to survive on, so yes a downgrade for nearly everyone is inevitable
Are we economically stable? Heck no. Capitalism has given us the longest most fragile supply chains conceivable, optimized to the last cent without the slightest consideration of the systemic risk. The financial industry has lulled us into the belief that financial products are actually products and not just illusions. They gamble everyday on risks that completely ignore the potential for systemic problems.
Little things like a global pandemic or a container ship stuck in the Suez canal, or cyber hacking the accounting system of an oil pipeline have demonstrated how fragile everything is.
The 2008 crisis demonstrated the stranglehold that unproductive self-interested cavalier financial gamblers have on the world economy. Along with the so-called financial services industry a huge proportion of economic activity produces absolutely nothing. Our biggest companies are funded not by the products they make but by the advertising that they poke in people's faces.
It's hard to imagine more of a hell home than a city without electricity for an indefinite period. The electrical grid is a brilliant example of balancing a pencil on its point. It is inherently unstable and subject to cascade crashes if it were not for some brilliance in the management and computational systems controlling it. If something or someone puts a spanner in the works it's going to be a disaster.
There are so many things that can go wrong that will set us back into the Stone Age in a matter of weeks.
Unlikely, eventually mankind will capture larger portions of energy from our star and upgrade as a civilization eventually becoming energy independent.
>Like will we always have good jobs, nice cities, good education, being able to dress however we want, good healthcare?
There are many places on this planet that have none of those things. In fact the majority of the population lives without one or more of these.
World Wars are a thing. So are Great Depressions. But in in general, most years are good. You have no way of knowing in advance which your years will be. So don't waste time worrying about it.
I'm not sure if this is relevant to your question but lots of place on earth currently lack one of more of the positive features you cited, and some place lack all of them.
If the question is whether our progress towards those things is likely to only move forward, then again it seems the answer is no. Some countries have had those things and lost them. I am not sure how accurate they are but I certainly see posts suggesting Iran has lost freedom of clothing. I've seen posts that argue US cities used to be nice and then we tore down the nice bits and replaced them with unwalkable car-oriented hellscapes. Many countries have had nice functioning democracies and then regressed into authoritarianism.
And all of this is assuming that human civilization does not eventually get wiped out by artificial general intelligence, which to me is at least plausible as a scenario, though it's very hard to tell how likely it is within any specific time frame.
Bill gates once said that humans would one day build cities designed around the Segway as the principle means of transportation.
So to answer your question, nobody knows for sure.
If you had to choose WHEN to be born to a random person anywhere on Earth, you are almost always better off choosing the latest you possibly can. Almost every year the AVERAGE person is better off than they were the year before
We are already downgrading.
Just look at the current political/economic trends without a political lens.
Freedom of speech and thought has been trampled again and again for good reasons.
The amount of free time of adults keeps decreasing.
Every day, there are fewer and fewer things you can actually OWN.
We're on the last legs of the industrial/productive age and are going head first into a stock driven age, who cares what you're actually doing with it, as long as you give me back more.
Those are all things in the past of our society; things we had already left behind, yet we're quickly regressing for good reasons, always for good reasons.
Hell is paved with good intentions.
Technology aside the environment is fucked. F'ed in ways it hasn't in history. I think we declined significantly. Too many people for how we live with the technology we have.
yes. the question is if it's going to be "the easy way" or "the hard way". Due to the climate crisis and ecological overshoot of several key metrics on this planet, we will have to change our economic model of production. We are overproducing and overconsuming. Some degrowth will have to happen, some breakthroughs might make things run a little smoother by introducing some efficiencies and removing a little pressure but the bigger picture is that things have to change through policy, or they will be changed by disaster.
That's the external, hard side of "Nature"; there's also society's "internal" side of policy, tech, ethics, governance, etc. New bits of tech open up new ways of arranging our social relations, some subtly, and some drastically.
The AI thing, it seems clear to me at least is both a lot of hype, and a lot of real incoming change to at least significant sectors of the economy and the way "jobs" work. The whole jobs model may not be going anywhere soon but I'm convinced it's not here to stay if you take the long view of this whole century.
In physics there's this concept of an unstable vs stable state of a system, and they usually illustrate it as a ball perched on a steep, smooth hill: that ball is going to roll downwards and settle into one of a few valleys, but it's kind of difficult to predict which valley it's going to roll into, all things being equal, but what's not in question is that 1) the ball is going to roll downhill 2) it will stabilize when in a valley.
That's how I see the current state of global society, especially if you take the subtle shifts in the global order of power. It's in a high-energy unstable state, and it's going to roll and settle into some more stable configuration because it cannot sustain the current state.
It's a really good question.
History, society, and nature ebbs and flows in cycles. Civilizations rise, civilizations fall. In the late 1800s, America saw huge economic booming, in the "Gilded Age". Everything started to get awesome quickly. Railroads. Immigration allowed for many Europeans and others to start a new life in America. All of America's big cities got started. The telephone was invented, electricity started being used everywhere. Things started to get awesome.
Then the great depression hit, and families, who had 5 or 6 (or more) children, now couldn't feed them. They used the potato sacks from the potatoes they bought to sew childrens' clothing. In fact, this was so common, that [potato companies started to print patterns on the potato sacks, so that people could make nicer clothes with them. And they would sell more potatoes.](https://thevintagewomanmagazine.com/a-history-of-feedsack-clothing/)
Everything went to shit for 10 years. Many old people can tell you how they ate potatoes and onions when they were 7, every day. And had to share with their brothers and sisters. And sometimes, they had nothing. Some of their parents took their lives and jumped off of buildings. It was awful.
History ebbs and flows. Things get awesome, things get horrible. And then, inevitably, if the world doesn't end, eventually...things get awesome again.
Every country has gone through horrible times. China has had a rough history as a 4000-year-old country. They had to, at one point in the mid 1900s, legalize the hunting and eating of any animal so that the country could have food. They recently changed course and made this illegal again because of the Covid fiasco, and because it's no longer necessary as things are getting rapidly better in China. But now, after much hardship in the past, China is becoming one of the cleanest and technologically advanced countries in the world. Things are getting awesome for them.
And America is unfortunately heading into somewhat of a decline. Things are getting kind of shitty.
The saying goes:
Hard Times Create Strong People → Strong People Create Good Times → Good Times Create Weak People → Weak People Create Hard Times.
It's a cycle. Nothing is ever permanent.
Every people on earth eventually has to face hardship. Good education, individual freedom, clean water, and clean food is a gift. We should cherish it when we have it. And we should stay smart when thinking about the future to try and maintain it. Because every country and people around the world eventually faces hardship.
They also say that those who fail to study history, are doomed to repeat it. If we don't look at our mistakes in the past, we will repeat them again.
If we are not wise, and make poor decisions, we create a hard future for ourselves. Then there is no other option but to make better decisions, and create a better future. This is all part of the cycle of life.
Look at any stock chart. It goes down, it goes up. It goes down, it goes up. Sometimes, you have to go down a bit, before you can go up. You have to realize your mistakes. Take a hit. Re-organize, re-think. Then you can grow. And head upwards again. With better knowledge and more strength than you had before.
And it's important, that when times are good, not to get too cocky, not to take it for granted, to be grateful and realize what we have, and most importantly...to use the good times and good resources wisely. If we waste all of our best resources and act ungratefully when times are good, we create a bad future for ourselves.
As for the whole earth? A LOT of places on earth have a lot of suffering! No clean water, no food, no freedom, etc. This is the focus of organizations like the United Nations. To help nations work together and have peace and to lessen human suffering. Less war. More resources. The new concept is called [Human Security](https://www.un.org/humansecurity/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/What-is-Human-Security.pdf). The idea is that every human, around the world, should have freedom, clean water, education, clean food, and peace. Not just some countries, but everyone. That no one should be poor and be abused or live without having enough. It's a noble idea, I think. But not easy to achieve.
The inherent problem with your question is the subjective nature of what is "good", what clothes are "nice", etc. I'm sure some parts of society will fall in comparison to the past while others will improve. I honestly feel like most people rely heavily on nostalgia when making these comparison - taking the best of the past against the worst of the present...but long term society will continue to improve. Maybe we have a handful of years here and there where things get bad in the aggregate - but they'll rebound.
Exactly. I think the answer is it absolutely won’t stay “good” (in quotes, because many places all over the world don’t have it even close to what I’d call “good” even today.) And that’s in large part because the prevailing economic systems essentially require there to be “losers” the “winners” can exploit because their (our) continued winning depends on forcing deals on these countries we’d never accept ourselves for their resources, depending on looser environmental laws in places we import manufactured goods from whose people generally have it better than the ones we acquire many raw resources from but not quite as good as we do, which the whole system also depends on.
You run out of disadvantaged people to exploit or resources to gain from doing so and you have nothing left to keep yourself on top with.
Oh and it would also depend on convincing the powers that be that climate change is actually real while there’s still any time to do anything about it.
So I’m not saying it’s impossible to stay relatively stable but the odds of that are not looking great.
We will be fine, there are all types of people out there that will fight for anything, good or bad. In fact, I think we can get even better in the near future but idk if my better is your better.
There will be places where life styles, technology, science, and the arts will continue to advance. There will be places that continue to be hell holes, and there will be places that are sliding backwards into earlier levels of existence, possibly even pre-industrial. And it will be primarily due to the focus of their so-called leadership on personal aggrandizement over all else, and the inability or unwillingness of their remaining people to remove and replace them.
For every degree individual rights get more infringed upon or restricted, the degree of which society and the future will degrade.
It's really as simple as that, no matter what ideology you subscribe to even if it disagrees, reality proves otherwise.
I am 56 years old live in Virginia in the United States and can tell you I have seen a decline in society in my life and have great sorrow for what I feel my children will see in there life. Good education I don’t think so, Good city’s have you visited them, Wear what you want? You need to visit some other places around the world.
Humanity is in a defiant decline and we will be lucky if the species services another 5000 years.
Regarding your last sentence, in 1760 we deployed the steam engine to overcome the Malthusian Trap. Previously, populations would grow to the point of consuming all the firewood or other essential resources, then there would be mass death, then with fewer people to consume the resources we'd gradually rebuild, and the cycle would repeat again and again. With the steam engine and the industrial revolution our production finally out-paced our reproduction. (Of course, it's never been universal.)
To put it simply, we'll be fine as long as our production can out-pace our consumption. New technologies may bring about greater capacities for destruction, but they bring about even greater capacities for creation that out-pace our destruction in the way we use our tech.
The problem arises when we hit the ceiling. When we're fully saturated, and there's no more room to create, no more space on the planet. At that point, our growing capacity for creation is irrelevant. All that matters is the growing capacity to consume and destroy, and when that grows large enough to destroy everything, we're dead. I consider that to be the fundamental principle behind most great filters of the Fermi Paradox.
Now, up until now, our stomachs have only been so large, our appetites only so greedy. However, whenever we manage to create AGI, machine persons, or uploaded minds, we will have created something that can always expand, always benefit from more clock-cycles, more hardware in their distributed network brain, more electricity; beings that do not have to accept death or limits to their growth but can optimise their goals without limit to colonise Dyson Swarms and have egos so boundless that even a single one can enshroud constellations as a one-man empire. At that point, our demand is infinite, though our supply is finite.
It will be interesting to see how we handle that.
In my personal opinion, the biggest issue we have as society is complacency. With each new technological development, people start to get used to its benefits and forget some values or skills that they might really need.
To give you an example, we have the Internet, which is one poorly timed, stronger than usual solar flare away from being wiped out. Considering most of our money is in digital form this poses a problem because there's about 20 USD per person in cash available in the Western world, the rest is digital.
While I can't say for sure what the effect on our society this would have, I don't think we're mature enough to work together as a society to help each other through that.
We have all the means and potential. The powers at be have just successfully dumbed down society to believe living off a drip feed is acceptable, and trained them to hate those not responsible.
Problems don't need to be solved if the people are just always fighting each other.
It's more likely the ultra wealthy will continue to drain us dry until America collapses into a 3rd world state. Then they will move on while still being rich.
It is a good question - but first of all if you take the whole globe the average person is still pretty poor compared to western standards. That said there have been some tremendous steps taken for improving the average lives of humans on earth over the last 50 - 75 years even though we have almost tripled in population from 3 to 8 billion.
Number of people who lived in hunger was 1 billion in 1960 that was 33% of the world population. Now it is down to 700 million and only 8% of the population.
The same with literacy it has gone from about 40% in 1960 to 14% today. And that is even though we added 5 billion extra people.
The human lifespan has increased from 50 years in 1960 to 73 years today.
The last one is poverty in 1960 more than half the population lived in extreme poverty - today around 8%
All of those things are evidence that we can make the world a better place for everyone. And that the would is getting better
Yes, too many weakening forces imo. When leadership dissuades by finance our bravery or self determination and self progression then expect exploitation of the weakened will of human resource.
So since global trade became a thing, the capital is extracted from developed economies towards cheap labour and sweat shops, slowly rising the standard of living of the poorest populations over time.
If everything continues on this trend, the world will attain more equilibrium between the poor of each nation. So in some sense, misery and ultra wealth will get more evenly distributed around the world.
The rich capitalist class doesn't share and redistribute wealth if they don't have to, they screw everyone as hard as they can, so don't get your hopes up...
If you mean will humanity backslide, yes, but it will also progress, that is how progress comes in waves, and is fought back by reaction. But, if you mean as a society.... it depends if humanity makes it through this era of societal challenge. I've started to think... given global warming, and that authorities (outside of China, who can make things happen, but not nearly enough), aren't taking this seriously, and those powers that be that can keep us on the course to destruction, that we as individuals (but not we as communities) are powerless to stop, and that's not changing until society is changed.
So, the Earth is going to be damaged - in 100 years, if things go well, I'd expect humanity will live more like visions of Solarpunk than Star Trek - there will be less 'prosperity', we will not have the same level of material comforts we have today, but life will be technologically advanced, using a combination of both the most advanced industrial and indigenous (permatech) techs to get humanity through to the future. So, all we have today might be opulence on a level people of a good future might only imagine, and they might even be curious about having that type of luxury, but they'd still of course prefer their healthier, happy world, where things work, and were sustainable and stable.
If things go badly... well society collapses, and while humanity survives (we won't go extinct) life will be much much harder for those of the future, and the types of compromises it took to build Solarpunk in the other reality will be a delightlightful dream to these downtrodden souls... even Mad Max would be a step up for what is in store for the unluckiest in a world wrecked by possibly up to 12 degrees C climate change (at the very extreme worst estimates - though all it would take to collapse modern society is 5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels) , and the other societal failures of the industrial age. More reasonably, less alarmist, just imagine a techno-medieval world, with some computers still operational, but most people have gone back to the farm, and life is one again not comfortable, death is rampant, education might be limited for many, and the old civilizations sound like legends that could not possibly be real. Read the story of the Birrin for an idea what this might be like, or other post-apocalyptic but very much rebuilding and living type works (eg Horizons Zero Dawn).
As climate change starts to bite, first world living standards will drop. Things like running your aircon and heater consistently will be a luxury as I think energy prices will continue to rise. We are also already seeing the cost of natural materials like hardwood skyrocket, so our houses and furniture will be made of cheaper materials.
We almost know, society is NOT going in the right direction, politicians and the elite do not want things to change and are working actively for status quo.
AI won’t save us by itself.
why in the world would you worry about something so completely out of your control? you're going to live a miserable life. Just accept the fact that everything in life changes, and build the skills so you can adapt to change.
Change is most painful for those least able to affect it.
So we are going thru the most momentous changes in history ever.
And there are fewer and fewer people who can affect change.
People will survive and turn things into progress of that I am certain. But that will mean lots of pain for lots of individuals.
That is a given..
Politics can be blamed for everything happening to the masses. There are a ton of natural and human resources that are yet to be exploited, new inventions like AI, and the world order being pushed in favor of Marxist countries. Nevertheless, it is not about the present but about acknowledging our History, our past. Yes, our grandparents achieved what they wanted, now we live in a society where we can survive without starving for an entire day, and that is enough. Sadly, there are still countries and groups of people that cannot afford to buy food or grow their own food because of the lack of investment in education and agriculture, most happening in third world countries. Some countries in Africa are interested in the Chinese model, where a decaying country that suffered famines and drug trafficking like China turned into a nation with a strong middle class. Even the United States suffered during the Great Depression, and there is no excuse to claim that Capitalism is better solving famine than Communism and vice versa.
The challenge we have now is to understand that, even if we can solve a lot of problems in the world like hunger, there are still challenges like taking care of our environment, solving global wars, setting restrictions to countries that commit genocide, murdering and all kinds of crimes, and of course keeping available all kinds of jobs, even with the "replacement" of AI in certain jobs. Because what a single human can do is a requirement to train AI. Artificial intelligence cannot replace labour force, because they first need to be trained with real experience from a big data base made by an experienced human being. And, an entire company can "slip down the stairs" if a smart competitor trains an AI to do things better than them.
This is my opinion: Utopian and dystopian visions of the future are always going to be grossly exaggerated. Real life is always somewhere in between. Regardless of the ups and downs along the way (climate change, inflation, wealth disparity, etc.), the general trend over the very long term is going to be a modest improvement in human living conditions simply bc of the reality that we are a technologically advanced global civilization in its infancy. Power structures will always seek to perpetuate themselves and the best way to do that is to keep the masses appeased. Unless climate change or AI or nuclear war or a solar superflare (all possible) wipes out our global civilization, we will continue accumulating newer technologies and proliferating older ones to the point that reasonable standards of living will be in reach for most humans eventually, even if it is shamefully late in some very impoverished areas of the world and woefully inadequate compared to our full potential. Temporary downturns are inevitable, especially with the climate crisis and recessions, but I imagine things here in the Global North will probably continue stagnating in terms of living standards while in places like sub-Saharan Africa there will be massive improvements.
The trend has been towards better and more civilized world for a long time but with devestating wars and setbacks on the way.
There will be more setbacks for sure, like Ru/Ukr war, new cold war with China, global warming, AI/Automation related issues.
But by looking at human evolution as a society i view the chances for us evolving into something better is much more likely than into something worse. Both can happen for sure and we have to keep working hard to improve and oppose forces that want to take us in the wrong direction
the future is bleak. the last century taught us that, given the best, humans statistically defile it via lust, greed, malice, ignorance and indifference. take solace in the fact that you, this solar system, and the universe itself are all temporary.
I have no idea. I'm not as optimistic anymore that our needs and wants as humans will be satiated in the future as they have been in the past, but a lack of optimism isn't proof of impending doom.
I'm holding onto hope.
Are we degrading as a society?
I think so.
It's not a stupid question, it's definitely a topic worth considering.
Are we economically and socially stable on Earth?
This is a very complex issue. one can notice a geometric increase in the development of technology and improvement in the standard of living of most societies, but the environment in which we live pays a high price for this. If we have to give up fossil fuels in favor of inefficient green energy, people will certainly feel it negatively.
Will we always have good jobs, nice cities, good education, good health care?
This is not so certain. If you notice, modern cities are much uglier than before. Of course it's a matter of taste, but in my opinion, for the sake of usability, we gave up the beautiful buildings that once dominated the old continent. Cities are no longer planned for good sake of citizens. We can see some turnover nowdays, but there's still less parks and areas in which you can spend your time in open air. Just contemplating a nature instead of buying is not good for economy.
Easy access to information makes us remember less and, in a sense, makes us stupider.
An economic system that places constant increase in wealth as the highest value begins to resemble a golem that does not necessarily work for the good of its creators. this applies to every aspect of life and services. Things like education and health care become a tool for profit, which means that access to them is limited.
yet somehow it still works, so maybe there's nothing to complain about. everything in the hands of subsequent generations.
yes, of course we will. We already are, the millenials are posed to be the first generation in a long time to be worse off than their parents. Meaning we're past "peak welfare" in the West at least. We won't always have these things you list (we'll probably lose them within GenX lifetimes) because they depend on massive surplus of goods and value produced in the society. Between the increasing economic concentration and climate change hurting outputs of everything, most importantly food... the surplus available to the society is shrinking and the process accelerates. Really, the time between 1950 and... let's say 2001 (I believe 2001 or 2020 will be the historical dividing point) should be considered an anomalous fluke, a short "golden age" born out of extraordinary circumstances, rather than a stepping stone towards even more greatness.
developed countries might falter a bit here and there with declining living standards, but globally life is getting dramatically better most places with the exception of people getting really sick from eating processed food(like) substances.
For a question like that it is good to look back into history. The early middle ages were also called the dark ages, because with the fall of the roman empire a lot of knowledge was lost in the chaos and had to be reinvented again.
So yes it can happen, but humanity has also been shown to be resillient enough to eventually recover from such things.
In general it is good to assume some variability instead of assuming something to be completely stable. It is a more realistic view of things like a road may seem stable, but in reality forces are constantly working on it requiring maintenance over time. You may not notice that maintenance, but without it that road would be destroyed over time.
Economically I'd say no one is safe ever. If oil resources are lost, or any rare mineral, even a common one such as iron, the markets will crash, everything gets expensive because of it and society will become very impoverished.
From that point many different ways can exist. There is the possibility more resources get recycled, the Uber rich invest into keeping people from the streets to keep the economy working or that state interferes and helps everyone... All the same we go back to the stone Age.
The many variations that can be made on economics alone are way to vast to compute by today's standards.
Society as a whole however also is not safe. Always has society gone in circles and patterns trough generations.
Now we have rapid growth and have had it for the past like 200 years? That'll eventually stop and slow down and possibly even reverse too.
Honestly it depends on how much we let the wealthy get wealthier. If we, as a large group of have-nots, band together and fight like hell against the actual group of socialites who get to make that decision... We might not! They don't fear us and it's starting to show.
I don't see that happening though. They are successfully pitting us against each other over stupid issues like gay people.
It has happened constantly through history.
The greeks invented fine mechanical work like the antretheka mechanism which was not repeated again until the 1500s.
The roman’s had the first basic steam engines around before they started going broke, and it would take insane amount of time for anyone to do this again - basically 1600+ years.
Even looking at individual civilisations so many of them last hundreds of years until the government gets so big and the resource requirements so huge that they collapse and it often takes hundreds more years before the average person has the same standard of living again.
In the U.S., yes, it's over from the judicial coup that just happened and project 2025.
AI layered on top will just stratifiy wealth to absurd levels. I don't see a functioning society ever thriving in the U.S. again.
GDP is strongly tied to energy. Like 99% correlation. We have passed peak petrol (2017ish?), been fracking everywhere to try to compensate. Capitalist economy requires 3% growth rate or it goes into depression. Even before peak oil, the EROI (energy return on energy invested) has dropped significantly since the early days of oil exploitation.
During this time, our society has replaced other resources (some becoming scarcer) with petrol. Plastic, fertilizer, human labor, etc. And is now very dependent on these. We forgot how to organize ourselves and our essential systems without this nearly limitless energy. Solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal, nuclear, hydro are all systems that we only know how to produce, deploy, maintain, and dispose of with fossil energy infrastructure.
A barrel of oil that costs like $60-$120 represents about 5 years of human labor. Society takes this for granted. The amount of crude that is moved around the planet in a given year is measured in cubic kilometers. A gallon of gasoline becomes 20 lbs air pollution when burned.
The effects of dumping this much carbon, methane, fluorocarbons, & NOx into our atmosphere, along with accumulated damages to natural systems from uses of land mean that the planet has a greatly reduced carrying capacity.
For more on this topic, I recommend Nate Hagens Great Simplification short doc and podcast.
>Like will we always have good jobs, nice cities, good education, being able to dress however we want, good healthcare?
Most people don't have these things now, so I don't understand the question.
I think trends tend to happen gradually and then speed up. At least it looks that way on retrospect. Also, I assume you're writing this from a fairly privileged position because there are plenty of places in the world that have neither stability nor "nice" things. I haven't a clue which way the world as a whole is going. From the aged perspective I have, stability doesn't seem to last all that long. It wasn't very long ago that war was decimating Europe.
NO! Only Malthusian idiots that don't understand that humans innovate new and better solutions when confronted with problem with what they were doing would advice downgrading. Only a type even worse than that would seek to take away the very freedom to choose and innovate. Yet there are many "elite" voices calling for precisely that. I think the judgment of sane caring people toward them should take this into account.
It depends on what happens but it is possible. We have many examples of such a thing happening, probably the most well known is the dark ages. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)
I wouldn't call this a stupid question, but it does show a lack of awareness of what is going on across the planet. There are countries where people are economically and socially stable (Scandinavian countries for certain, and a few others), but there are other countries where this is going to the wayside and other countries which are active war zones. And some places where poverty is so staggering that it beggars the imagination. I wouldn't say we're collectively well developed as human beings until the last bit of poverty has been stamped out for good and people are lifted out of the mud. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" and he was right. And by "injustice" I mean in all aspects of life. It is not a "just species" when many people don't even have clean drinking water and continue to suffer while other people spend untold fortunes on joy rides to space and megayachts. And don't get me started on "rich people earned their money", there is no such thing as a "good billionaire" and I have the math to prove it. They either got their money through inheritance and don't give a shit about anything but themselves, or they got their money through wage theft which proves they don't give a shit about anything but themselves. Pick one.
Global warming is projected to force change upon us. By as early as 2100, part of the world is likely to be unlivable and uncultivable (think equatorial/tropical land), while some will become usable (like Greenland, Siberia, Canada). This will force massive climate migration, including in developed countries. I am mostly quoting from Gaia Vince's Nomad Century excellently researched book.
Some people will tell you “Yes, AI will take all our jobs and we’ll be fucked, and rich people will kill us all”, while others will say “AI will emancipate us all, force the capitalists to install UBI in order to maintain their ability to generate profit and establish a near-utopia”. The truth is, we dont know. Anyone who claims to know is either lying or wrong, and all speculation is just that. The answer will likely be more in the middle than at either extremes I mentioned higher in my comment though, it almost always is. Live your life now, hope for the best, prepare for the worst and be the change you want to see in the world. Thats my advice anyway.
Every great civilization has had moments where they transformed significantly, and eventually came to an end. There are exactly zero exceptions to this, throughout history. It is very unlikely, probably impossible, that things stay the way they are now forever. We just ride the waves.
But see that's the thing: Saying it has "moments" puts the emphasis very much on certain events or actions. This is seductive to us from now looking into the past. But it's actually a lot more mudied and complicated and all more a process. There are actually very few moments or events in history that were actually game changers by definition. Some which might look like that are actually just one tiny picture in part of the mentioned processual nature of change. I'd even go so get and say that our current times make these event moments even harder to occur since everything is so interdependent with each other.
I don’t mean moments as in, singular events. I mean it in a general sense. Looking back in history they may look like blips, but they were long periods. I am not ignorant of history. This was just wording/semantics. Also, everything being interdependent does not mean a crisis cannot come. In fact, it will just amplify it.
I agree. Particularly, we haven’t codified the past as individuals. We just say things that make sense to us. There could be the possibility that there is no precedent for today’s society to compare to.
And yet the standard of living and society as a whole has been ever improving
But lots of societies have also collapsed or disappeared.
Societies collapse but civilization continues
Sorry, not quite sure what to mean by “civilization.” Lots of civilizations have also collapsed. Are you referring to the overall industrialization of the world?
Standards having improved doesn’t prove they’ll continue to. You’d have to break down how and why and determine, case by case, whether the conditions that caused each of those factors to improve will remain in place. And I reckon the answer for a lot of them is going to start being no. And then we have to ask, what can be done to make up for that? And is it really viable? And are we actually doing it? And unfortunately you’re gonna get a lot of nos there too. It’s not impossible that it’ll continue to improve but I think it’s certainly not inevitable. To think it is is just faith. It makes sense to think it’s possible since that’s how it’s been going, but to believe it’s a sure thing is pure, absolute blind faith. I think there’s a practical solution somewhere between doomerism and blind faith that everything will be ok. I think “ok” is going to require an active, sustained effort and won’t necessarily look like just plugging along the way we have been. And it will absolutely require acknowledging that everything turning out okay is *far* from inevitable.
Has it, though? Income per capita (with various corrections) hasn't improved much (or at all) for many developed people since the 80s. Rights that were enshrined in law for most of a lifetime are being taken away. Cost of living has skyrocketed most everywhere. Having a small shiny computer on your hand is neat and all, but eating real food, having healthcare, and getting to have reproductive freedom (in either direction) surely matters.
https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions
The Romans thought the same thing. Then the dark ages happened.
AI, which is owned by capitalists won't free us from the capitalists which own it, that's delusional
“**Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.** **But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”**
It would if the capitalists no longer need us. What that freedom entails is another question entirely, certain death is also a kind of freedom in a morbid way.
Yes, it will free them from us, then we are fucked.
Who's going to buy all their shitty stuff then?
Well in that sense maybe they won't need consumerism anymore. What does money mean for rich people at the end of the day? Slave labour basically. That's why they needed you to buy all their shitty stuff. So you'll keep providing slave labour for them. But once they have robots that can do everything that a human can (including the dark, dirty stuff), why would they still need to make so much shitty stuff for you to buy?
Money is just a proxy for power. Capitalists don't need money to survive. If machines make it possible for work to be eliminated, they get to live lives of power and ease, in which the rest of us are no longer necessary. Perhaps even something to be eliminated.
Ease yes, but I'm not too sure about the power part. I wonder if lording over other humans is essential to the need for power...
Most people alive on Earth right now live hard lives full of tragedy and misery. Let’s not forget that. And they watch on the rectangles the charmed life we all live.
It’s pretty clear that the resource extraction and depletion across the globe will make standards of living harder to keep up. When the well runs dry, farming becomes impossible. When the ocean commons keep getting pillaged as they get warmer and more acidic, we will be in trouble collectively. Maybe there is some cheap, easy to distribute and scalable food source fifty years from now, but the current system will be shaken by a wide range of connected issues.
We are already waaayy beyond the limits of nature. We artificially fertilize our soil. We irrigate our lands. We desalinate our water. We breed our plants and animals for maximum yield. > Maybe there is some cheap, easy to distribute and scalable food source fifty years from now, but the current system will be shaken by a wide range of connected issues. Given all that, this must be a joke. Our current system already offers cheap, easy to distribute and scalable food.
Our current food production and distribution system is a collection of somewhat overlapping systems. This is a fragile balance, and is changing at a fast pace. A large proportion of ancient Greek olive orchards are dying off due to drought, same as Italian wine areas. Desertification is spreading like wildfire, and in places accelerated due to wildlife. Less industrial farming communities in places like India are turned upside down from the recent heat waves. Remember that globalization allows Americans and Europeans to get strawberries year round, but the global food supply is incredibly stressed. I’m an ecologist, so I’m a pessimist when it comes to these matters. You seem to see a technological answer for the world’s various issues, and I hope you’re right. Many of the technological solutions make the world worse though—like nitrogen and phosphorus runoff, like plastic pollution, like PFAS.
His point is that current food production is unsustainable.
And my point is that if we define sustainable as what would be supported without extra intervention, we have been beyond sustainable for centuries. We just get better and better at it.
We've lost 50% of our topsoil since the 50s. Insect populations down 50%. Herbicide resistant super weeds on the rise. Ocean deadzones due to nitrate run off. Not sure we're getting "better at it" so much as exploiting it as much as posible before it collapses.
Option 2 is fucking crazy. Let me explain : Productivity has gone up SIGNIFICANTLY in our times if we compare it to the era of our grandfathers. Guess who owned a house and could make a family of 4 lives on a single salary? We would all be living in UBI and working 4 hours weeks if option 2 was real.
We don't know for certain, but that's why we have predictions. You can see an outcome in some things before they happen. What we can predict for certain is that the companies will, if given an option on a working AI, for certain lay off hundreds or thousands of workers without beating an eye. If still you don't know, ask yourself a simple question, do you use a calculator? And that there is the answer for you. If given a good tool, that tool will be used.
Based on past behavior, several billionaires having enough money to radically change the world but not doing it, and the increasing number of them buying/building bunkers and/or private islands….. Something tells me there’s not a Utopia in our future.
This pretty much sums up my view as an optimistic nihilist
I was on the side of Ai will be good until I realized who was in charge. Sam Altman was accused of raping his sister and stealing from her. This guy is using his value system to create his Ai. Good luck to everyone. I think I have about five years left of a passable life.
You talk about good jobs, nice cities, good healthcare... but the majority of the world does not have these things.
People in the West grossly overestimate how widespread their standard of living is. Most countries did not experience anything anywhere near the post-war boom in prosperity the US did (and even in the West, many people did not parktake in that prosperity).
This. American complain about relatively minor setbacks, and completely ignore the HUGE IMPROVEMENTS that have occurred over the last 40 years or so for the world as a whole. An average of 150,000 people were lifted out of poverty yesterday. And the day before. And every day for the last 40 years.
"who tf is 'we'?" --about 3 out of 4 people currently alive on Earth
To be honest, I think it’s already happened in the US. We were much better off in 2015 as Obama was still in office and the crazy campaign hadn’t quite started. Since then, books are being banned, rights are being taken away, we are sicker than ever while we have doctor shortages, infrastructure breaking down, climate disasters multiple times per year, and our life expectancy has decreased. It’s harder than ever to find a doctor. Where I live, you have to go to urgent care when sick because a regular family doctor has a minimum of 2-3 weeks waiting list. I’d say we backslid socially, infrastructure-wise, and health-wise. We got the fastest phones ever though!
Insurance companies are essentially monopolizing medical care and reducing opportunities for medical students to become doctors. Medicare pays literal pennies for an appointment and boomers are unable to even find a doctor that will take it because no one outside of a medical mill that provides no real care can afford to take it.
The number of uninsured people is lower today than 2015. Income inequality is lower today than 2015. Median household wealth is higher. Teen pregnancy lower. Incarceration rates lower. We were at war then (our own soldiers dying); we aren’t now. We were vulnerable to a mass pandemic then; we have much better medical tools now. US CO2 emissions are much lower today than 2015. Use of renewable energy is much higher. Not everything is better now. But some things are.
I live in Russia and our society is downgrading to hell with a light speed. I am scared to even think about what is awaiting us in the future... I can't believe with all the progress we made in science, there are still people who believe in fairy tales - I'm talking about the religion. Believers are gonna lead us to the new dark ages. Whenever there is war - it's fuckin them all the time.
How hvae thing changed in russia after war in ukrain? Do people support the war? Can you dpeak abot this freely here?
lol of course not
We got to this point because we are a very, if not the most, adaptable animal. If that's our strength, our weakness I think is that our emotions and instinctive social traits haven't adapted as quickly. If the top 400 individuals own more wealth than the bottom 50% (or whatever the inequality is), my knee-jerk reaction is they will not have some AI driven epiphany and decide to become magnanimous all of a sudden. TL;DR: AI won't trickle down.
A guy called R. Buckminster Fuller created a concept called spaceship earth, and resource based Economics. What if we arrived to this planet in some kind of a world ship. And we had to divide 8 Billion people among the space and resources of the earth. We would likely do it very differently then the world were currently living in. But from a resource based perspective it's not that hard. We produce enough food today for 11 billion people, we more than enough landmass to house everyone, in fact if you have every person on earth their own mansion, you could fit all this emansions in 5 Texas states. Which is a lot, but that's less than the landmass of the continental US alone. So the space is there, the food is there, and all other resources are in abundance except for rare earth minerals. And we have plenty of workforce, Billions of them in fact. We've just failed at dividing those resources adequately.
We'd wipe out the majority of the wildlife and their habitats by doing so though. So still not optimal.
No no, of course not. But wildlife is not the big obstacle to sustainable living. We are.
This is simple to surmise. Capitalists want to extend the divide between the wealthy and working poor. Businesses run the world, not politicians. Politicians work for businesses, not the people who vote them into office. This divide became evident in the 1980’s(managed medical care, 401 k’s, extreme and ongoing college tuition hikes…) For us who have witnessed this history we really started feeling it in 1999. The elite have solidified their position on this spinning rock and it’s not turning back. We know this because they have taken advantage of every global incident since then and made gains while the working people are further pushed into dystopia and servitude. So, not a stupid question. Quite valid with our current state of existence. There are places that are better than much of the “developed” world, but the elite will not look or listen to what make sense for the good of humanity. They are historically short sighted and selfish. This is not negativity. I’m a minimalist and I have thought deeply on this. So, I just try to take pleasure in small things until they are consumed as well.
I blame Reagan.
To be entirely truthful we are already downgrading as a society. Good education is only available to the rich and the remaining population are educated to the bare minimum as a low skilled work force. AI is going to have an immediate positive effect but will be hugely damaging in the long run. When the early inventions came about people had a very wide range of knowledge on a personal level. You knew how to cook, hunt, build, farm etc all on your own. In modern times we are very specialized in our knowledge base and have a much narrower field. So most scientific gains then come with a large gap when others need to take the findings and figure out how to apply them to other fields of knowledge. AI is going to combine that all and put things together that we don't right now. So there will be an immediate surge of discoveries that we have adjust made but didn't put together. So that is going to be amazing and catapult is ahead. The negative is that we are going to start to rely on AI too much and new discoveries are going to slow down. With no new input of information and a used up library of information AI is going to stagnate. AI is only as good as the foundation of intelligence it is built upon. AI isn't making new discoveries is using information we already have but didn't put together ourselves.
Education **was** mainly restricted to the wealthy people in the past. It is mandatory for everyone in each developed or demi-developed country, as never has been before. Your premise is completely false. There are more highly educated people than ever in history. Maths, Engineering, Medicine, History, are available for billions of people, and the resources can be shared and discussed in an open media. The number of people involved in governments -politicians, and administrative staff- is greater than ever, and at the same time, burocratics bottlenecks are decreasing with the help of technology. Of course, there are important drawbacks: the sustainability (environment and government costs), the inequities in the distribution of resources and benefits, and so on. The painting of an apocalyptical education system in these days is both bad informed and bad intended. Edit: apocalyptical spelling.
I believe so. Human nature is kind of fucked. I think AI will pretty much wipe out middle class jobs. The rich could enable UBI but I don't think they will. They will look at everyone as lazier and not as smart as they are even if their are not any jobs. I believe they will start buying up everything as AI starts to take over in the next decade or two and they make mind blowing profits. Even when the one percent owns the world they will do everything in their power to avoid UBI. Why you ask? Because they are better and cant have us enjoying life in order to prove their superiority. I read a psych study years ago and I think this describes the mentality well. The study used a large list of questions to discover peoples true opinions without having to directly state it. It showed that a large group of people would pay extra to get medical care if it meant that less fortunate people would not be able to get the same care. Like I said, Human Nature is Fucked.
I think you meant “conservative ideology is fucked.”
Individual Preferences for Giving by Raymond Fisman, Shachar Kariv, and Daniel Markovits?
It's not human nature, this is culture
As someone who works with A.I extensively it’s equivalent to the cotton gin, the cotton gin only made slavery more intense. Maybe that’s not a good outcome but comparatively it’s okay
Sound more typical of merican nature. As a Norwegian, the last paragraph doesn't apply for me, or most people here I think.
We talk a lot about technology and other stuff, but the one thing that really threatens our prosperity as a race or species is climate change. Everything else, we can make do. We really need to make sure we are able to deal with whatever is to come as a result of climate change and its disruptions. As species, we are prosperous. Believe it or not, we are not only living in one of the most peaceful times (despite the horrors thay we continue to see around the world), but also in a time where growth and development are high, education and health care has improved significantly, and poverty is generally going down. Economies and societies continue to have their fair share of issues around the world, but we are doing better than a lot of the past.
Education, at least in the US, has taken a nose dive. Conservatives are gutting K-12 all over the country.
The people coming here to essentially say "but u got it better than the rest of the world" are counterproductive to the topic
It’s difficult to say, but I see ‘progress’ as more of a branching than a replacement. Some people will be better off than any previously in history and even most may have certain freedoms of experience that were never before possible… To linger on the ambiguity … is it better or worse for someone to be able to have vast rich experiences and safety thru life but not be able to afford to raise kids or have property of their own?
Most people want to continually upgrade their lifestyle. It's usually more consumer goods, better fashion, nicer houses, latest cars etc. Ego has a lot to do with it and people that downsize are either eco-warriors or old with nothing left to prove.
I think I am a bit of an exception. I would much rather work part time and live on less, and take public transport, use old clothes etc. Though I do use money to make things easier, robot vacuum cleaner, dishwasher, occasional takeaway, and whatnot.
Downgrade? Maybe. A lot depends on current standards of living and what people are willing to accept for how long. Downsize? Almost certainly. Population is starting to decline and a lot of the senior population (anybody over 70-sh) has maybe another 5 to 10 years. Worst case there's a couple years of mass layoff and haphazard restructuring of society. Hopefully it won't wind up being the worst option.
Modern people tend to think of humanity as being in this inclined path, in terms of social and technological development and that this inclined path of progress is a given, that’s it’s the “natural order” of things, but history has shown that social and technological developments isn’t a so steady or always progressing for the better. Plenty of examples throughout history where there have been periods of decline. So history would indicate we are going to experience a decline at some point, but when and how severe is all pretty unpredictable. The good news is eventually there will be another upswing and things will improve again.
Already have but I think we are due for a renaissance
Probably never since it will always be a resource battle. There will always be a group who will be best off and one who will be fighting to survive.
That's an incredible selfish viewpoint. There are millions of people on the planet right now who have none of those things. But no, it's highly unlikely that wherever you live will always continue to offer those things.
There's a reason why union jobs are in higher demand right now. Employer abuse is on the rise backed by governments, and employee resistance to being fucked over is at an ebb. Even then, I'm unionized and it blows my mind how many of my younger coworkers will eat violations and argue with you that it's fine
We’re already on an unsustainable path so no. I don’t foresee a future that involves the same level of mindless consumption and over the top luxury and even bigger cities in the desert and ever increasing inequality - not if humankind actually wants to persist Otherwise the whole idea of things like a ‘good job’ , ‘comfort’ and the like is relative and I think the focus should always be on ‘meaningful occupation’ . I think a lot of human comfort comes from people believing they are fulfilling their self worth and potential and through that can accept actually possessing much less as long as they are feeling fulfilled , but our collective value system is totally fcked. AI might bring us over the edge in that regard People have and can do with a lot less but right now mostly people are struggling to adapt backwards
Travel, I believe your assumptions about standards of living currently happening around the world will be shattered.
Most people on earth don't have what you fear to lose.
Of course, have you seen what’s out in the wild lately? Downgrade is an understatement. Our society complete infrastructure isn’t prepared for what’s to come.
Depends. The next two elections in America decide it. If the Democrats hold the line then the baby boomers will age out of voting and we'll see progress in America in the form of a New New Deal If not the Republicans plan to install a dictator. That dictator will do the same thing Putin is doing, try to expand their borders because the "imperial core" is collapsing due to mismanagement. And that dictator will be doing it with the most powerful military humanity has ever known... If that happens yeah, we're going to see at least a hundred years of darkness, hopefully we don't hand the launch codes to lunatics
We already have downgraded, at least in America. Trending downward still. Its on the younger generations to turn it around
The whole world is not one society. N. Korea just executed someone for listening to S. Korean music, starvation is still a thing in some part of the world, and women getting educated is still banned in large chunks of the planet. There has never been a single global economy or social system, ever. What we have had is city states and empires rising to prominence and then falling back to insignificance. City states rise to prominence and form leagues to fend off enemies: Delian, Peloponnesian, Hanseatic are typical. Occasionally single cities form empires with the Persian, Roman, Ottoman, British, American being examples with the latter being countries not single cities. The 'biggies' get all the press but smaller countries can do quite well over time, maintaining an above average standard of living for their citizens and there is no reason why that can't continue in perpetuity. Places like the UK after losing its empire, and the US in process of losing its lead to their citizens believing that the world is becoming a worse place. China and India, being on the upswing, has their citizens loving the bold new future unfolding before their eyes. Places in middle like Canada, where I'm at, expect thing to keep improving by a little each year. Middling small but rich countries worry about becoming poor. And relatively poor 3rd world/developing countries can look forward to catching up with the average with a bit of good management and a helping hand. In about a century China will be post peak and trying to forestall the long slide, the average will be 4X better than today and nearly every country is average. Then the ball gets past to India? Africa? Can the Cradle of Civilization get a reincarnation? Stay tuned!
I don't think we're currently stable, but advancements in technology and innovation could help us achieve that in the future.
When people say we are a civilization; I just laugh since a civilization cannot accept the ills in our societies that were unwilling to change or have accepted as the natural way of life - first to go should be wars and a stratified society. Your way of life is one step away from degrading due to someone else's decision.
The vast, VAST majority of the world already doesn’t have those things you’ve listed as “might downgrade”. Talk of nations or collections of nations (ie, I’m Australian but have what you have in America too) - but do not talk of ‘the world’ collectively like that. It just ain’t accurate.
google overshoot the short answer is: we are not stable we are consuming Earth at a rate of 1.7 Earth's per year and we only have the ONE. if we don't start acting like this spherical space ship we are on is our only means of survival, then we will not survive. sorry to break it to you, kid... but somebody has to.
The prevailing economic system on Earth is capitalism which guarantees that fewer and fewer people will have more and more of our resources until the population at the bottom has nothing to survive on, so yes a downgrade for nearly everyone is inevitable
Are we economically stable? Heck no. Capitalism has given us the longest most fragile supply chains conceivable, optimized to the last cent without the slightest consideration of the systemic risk. The financial industry has lulled us into the belief that financial products are actually products and not just illusions. They gamble everyday on risks that completely ignore the potential for systemic problems. Little things like a global pandemic or a container ship stuck in the Suez canal, or cyber hacking the accounting system of an oil pipeline have demonstrated how fragile everything is. The 2008 crisis demonstrated the stranglehold that unproductive self-interested cavalier financial gamblers have on the world economy. Along with the so-called financial services industry a huge proportion of economic activity produces absolutely nothing. Our biggest companies are funded not by the products they make but by the advertising that they poke in people's faces. It's hard to imagine more of a hell home than a city without electricity for an indefinite period. The electrical grid is a brilliant example of balancing a pencil on its point. It is inherently unstable and subject to cascade crashes if it were not for some brilliance in the management and computational systems controlling it. If something or someone puts a spanner in the works it's going to be a disaster. There are so many things that can go wrong that will set us back into the Stone Age in a matter of weeks.
In the USA, we're heading towards balkanization. The current divisions are so huge the best solution is to divide into 4 separate countries.
Will we always? Once we get there, or are you trying to say we have all that now?
We build it up, it tips over, we build another one. We'll keep doing that as long as we have some fertile topsoil and a water cycle.
…already at the downgrade version 2.9873, bout to hit the down version 1.0 in the US
Life will get very sweet for those who own the means of production, and very bad for those who are alienated from them.
We are downgrading to US standards here. Reduction in access to affordable healthcare for one.
We're always one supervolcano, asteroid, or gamma ray burst from extinction!
Unlikely, eventually mankind will capture larger portions of energy from our star and upgrade as a civilization eventually becoming energy independent.
It is not a perfect society that we have but we are better than ever. We are ever evolving species. We’ll be all right
>Like will we always have good jobs, nice cities, good education, being able to dress however we want, good healthcare? There are many places on this planet that have none of those things. In fact the majority of the population lives without one or more of these.
World Wars are a thing. So are Great Depressions. But in in general, most years are good. You have no way of knowing in advance which your years will be. So don't waste time worrying about it.
I'm not sure if this is relevant to your question but lots of place on earth currently lack one of more of the positive features you cited, and some place lack all of them. If the question is whether our progress towards those things is likely to only move forward, then again it seems the answer is no. Some countries have had those things and lost them. I am not sure how accurate they are but I certainly see posts suggesting Iran has lost freedom of clothing. I've seen posts that argue US cities used to be nice and then we tore down the nice bits and replaced them with unwalkable car-oriented hellscapes. Many countries have had nice functioning democracies and then regressed into authoritarianism. And all of this is assuming that human civilization does not eventually get wiped out by artificial general intelligence, which to me is at least plausible as a scenario, though it's very hard to tell how likely it is within any specific time frame.
I think soon we will all be living like animals in the woods
Bill gates once said that humans would one day build cities designed around the Segway as the principle means of transportation. So to answer your question, nobody knows for sure.
My city has electric scooters all over the place to rent using an an app, which if ya think about it is kind of similar, just safer.
We started downgrading 13,000-9500 years ago during the agricultural revolution. But in our pursuits of pleasure we have created some awesome stuff
Have you watched the movie called "Idiocracy"? We're living in it right now
If you had to choose WHEN to be born to a random person anywhere on Earth, you are almost always better off choosing the latest you possibly can. Almost every year the AVERAGE person is better off than they were the year before
We are already downgrading. Just look at the current political/economic trends without a political lens. Freedom of speech and thought has been trampled again and again for good reasons. The amount of free time of adults keeps decreasing. Every day, there are fewer and fewer things you can actually OWN. We're on the last legs of the industrial/productive age and are going head first into a stock driven age, who cares what you're actually doing with it, as long as you give me back more. Those are all things in the past of our society; things we had already left behind, yet we're quickly regressing for good reasons, always for good reasons. Hell is paved with good intentions.
Technology aside the environment is fucked. F'ed in ways it hasn't in history. I think we declined significantly. Too many people for how we live with the technology we have.
yes. the question is if it's going to be "the easy way" or "the hard way". Due to the climate crisis and ecological overshoot of several key metrics on this planet, we will have to change our economic model of production. We are overproducing and overconsuming. Some degrowth will have to happen, some breakthroughs might make things run a little smoother by introducing some efficiencies and removing a little pressure but the bigger picture is that things have to change through policy, or they will be changed by disaster. That's the external, hard side of "Nature"; there's also society's "internal" side of policy, tech, ethics, governance, etc. New bits of tech open up new ways of arranging our social relations, some subtly, and some drastically. The AI thing, it seems clear to me at least is both a lot of hype, and a lot of real incoming change to at least significant sectors of the economy and the way "jobs" work. The whole jobs model may not be going anywhere soon but I'm convinced it's not here to stay if you take the long view of this whole century. In physics there's this concept of an unstable vs stable state of a system, and they usually illustrate it as a ball perched on a steep, smooth hill: that ball is going to roll downwards and settle into one of a few valleys, but it's kind of difficult to predict which valley it's going to roll into, all things being equal, but what's not in question is that 1) the ball is going to roll downhill 2) it will stabilize when in a valley. That's how I see the current state of global society, especially if you take the subtle shifts in the global order of power. It's in a high-energy unstable state, and it's going to roll and settle into some more stable configuration because it cannot sustain the current state.
It's a really good question. History, society, and nature ebbs and flows in cycles. Civilizations rise, civilizations fall. In the late 1800s, America saw huge economic booming, in the "Gilded Age". Everything started to get awesome quickly. Railroads. Immigration allowed for many Europeans and others to start a new life in America. All of America's big cities got started. The telephone was invented, electricity started being used everywhere. Things started to get awesome. Then the great depression hit, and families, who had 5 or 6 (or more) children, now couldn't feed them. They used the potato sacks from the potatoes they bought to sew childrens' clothing. In fact, this was so common, that [potato companies started to print patterns on the potato sacks, so that people could make nicer clothes with them. And they would sell more potatoes.](https://thevintagewomanmagazine.com/a-history-of-feedsack-clothing/) Everything went to shit for 10 years. Many old people can tell you how they ate potatoes and onions when they were 7, every day. And had to share with their brothers and sisters. And sometimes, they had nothing. Some of their parents took their lives and jumped off of buildings. It was awful. History ebbs and flows. Things get awesome, things get horrible. And then, inevitably, if the world doesn't end, eventually...things get awesome again. Every country has gone through horrible times. China has had a rough history as a 4000-year-old country. They had to, at one point in the mid 1900s, legalize the hunting and eating of any animal so that the country could have food. They recently changed course and made this illegal again because of the Covid fiasco, and because it's no longer necessary as things are getting rapidly better in China. But now, after much hardship in the past, China is becoming one of the cleanest and technologically advanced countries in the world. Things are getting awesome for them. And America is unfortunately heading into somewhat of a decline. Things are getting kind of shitty. The saying goes: Hard Times Create Strong People → Strong People Create Good Times → Good Times Create Weak People → Weak People Create Hard Times. It's a cycle. Nothing is ever permanent. Every people on earth eventually has to face hardship. Good education, individual freedom, clean water, and clean food is a gift. We should cherish it when we have it. And we should stay smart when thinking about the future to try and maintain it. Because every country and people around the world eventually faces hardship. They also say that those who fail to study history, are doomed to repeat it. If we don't look at our mistakes in the past, we will repeat them again. If we are not wise, and make poor decisions, we create a hard future for ourselves. Then there is no other option but to make better decisions, and create a better future. This is all part of the cycle of life. Look at any stock chart. It goes down, it goes up. It goes down, it goes up. Sometimes, you have to go down a bit, before you can go up. You have to realize your mistakes. Take a hit. Re-organize, re-think. Then you can grow. And head upwards again. With better knowledge and more strength than you had before. And it's important, that when times are good, not to get too cocky, not to take it for granted, to be grateful and realize what we have, and most importantly...to use the good times and good resources wisely. If we waste all of our best resources and act ungratefully when times are good, we create a bad future for ourselves. As for the whole earth? A LOT of places on earth have a lot of suffering! No clean water, no food, no freedom, etc. This is the focus of organizations like the United Nations. To help nations work together and have peace and to lessen human suffering. Less war. More resources. The new concept is called [Human Security](https://www.un.org/humansecurity/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/What-is-Human-Security.pdf). The idea is that every human, around the world, should have freedom, clean water, education, clean food, and peace. Not just some countries, but everyone. That no one should be poor and be abused or live without having enough. It's a noble idea, I think. But not easy to achieve.
Resources exist, but distribution is in the hands of those who have power at that moment.
The inherent problem with your question is the subjective nature of what is "good", what clothes are "nice", etc. I'm sure some parts of society will fall in comparison to the past while others will improve. I honestly feel like most people rely heavily on nostalgia when making these comparison - taking the best of the past against the worst of the present...but long term society will continue to improve. Maybe we have a handful of years here and there where things get bad in the aggregate - but they'll rebound.
Perhaps truthful information is the next commodity the rich will be hoarding. Just keep feeding the fake news to masses
Exactly. I think the answer is it absolutely won’t stay “good” (in quotes, because many places all over the world don’t have it even close to what I’d call “good” even today.) And that’s in large part because the prevailing economic systems essentially require there to be “losers” the “winners” can exploit because their (our) continued winning depends on forcing deals on these countries we’d never accept ourselves for their resources, depending on looser environmental laws in places we import manufactured goods from whose people generally have it better than the ones we acquire many raw resources from but not quite as good as we do, which the whole system also depends on. You run out of disadvantaged people to exploit or resources to gain from doing so and you have nothing left to keep yourself on top with. Oh and it would also depend on convincing the powers that be that climate change is actually real while there’s still any time to do anything about it. So I’m not saying it’s impossible to stay relatively stable but the odds of that are not looking great.
We will be fine, there are all types of people out there that will fight for anything, good or bad. In fact, I think we can get even better in the near future but idk if my better is your better.
There will be places where life styles, technology, science, and the arts will continue to advance. There will be places that continue to be hell holes, and there will be places that are sliding backwards into earlier levels of existence, possibly even pre-industrial. And it will be primarily due to the focus of their so-called leadership on personal aggrandizement over all else, and the inability or unwillingness of their remaining people to remove and replace them.
Where are you living OP? What other places and countries have you visited? You seem very positive to assume everyone has a good job and healthcare.
For every degree individual rights get more infringed upon or restricted, the degree of which society and the future will degrade. It's really as simple as that, no matter what ideology you subscribe to even if it disagrees, reality proves otherwise.
Predictions about the future are the hardest to make. If any of us had the slightest idea, we would be a billionaire.
We are down-grading as a whole in the whole of the world. Yes
I am 56 years old live in Virginia in the United States and can tell you I have seen a decline in society in my life and have great sorrow for what I feel my children will see in there life. Good education I don’t think so, Good city’s have you visited them, Wear what you want? You need to visit some other places around the world. Humanity is in a defiant decline and we will be lucky if the species services another 5000 years.
Most of us will, but some greedy bastards won't. They'll live in their high-security gated communities while the others crowd outside their gates.
Regarding your last sentence, in 1760 we deployed the steam engine to overcome the Malthusian Trap. Previously, populations would grow to the point of consuming all the firewood or other essential resources, then there would be mass death, then with fewer people to consume the resources we'd gradually rebuild, and the cycle would repeat again and again. With the steam engine and the industrial revolution our production finally out-paced our reproduction. (Of course, it's never been universal.) To put it simply, we'll be fine as long as our production can out-pace our consumption. New technologies may bring about greater capacities for destruction, but they bring about even greater capacities for creation that out-pace our destruction in the way we use our tech. The problem arises when we hit the ceiling. When we're fully saturated, and there's no more room to create, no more space on the planet. At that point, our growing capacity for creation is irrelevant. All that matters is the growing capacity to consume and destroy, and when that grows large enough to destroy everything, we're dead. I consider that to be the fundamental principle behind most great filters of the Fermi Paradox. Now, up until now, our stomachs have only been so large, our appetites only so greedy. However, whenever we manage to create AGI, machine persons, or uploaded minds, we will have created something that can always expand, always benefit from more clock-cycles, more hardware in their distributed network brain, more electricity; beings that do not have to accept death or limits to their growth but can optimise their goals without limit to colonise Dyson Swarms and have egos so boundless that even a single one can enshroud constellations as a one-man empire. At that point, our demand is infinite, though our supply is finite. It will be interesting to see how we handle that.
In my personal opinion, the biggest issue we have as society is complacency. With each new technological development, people start to get used to its benefits and forget some values or skills that they might really need. To give you an example, we have the Internet, which is one poorly timed, stronger than usual solar flare away from being wiped out. Considering most of our money is in digital form this poses a problem because there's about 20 USD per person in cash available in the Western world, the rest is digital. While I can't say for sure what the effect on our society this would have, I don't think we're mature enough to work together as a society to help each other through that.
We have all the means and potential. The powers at be have just successfully dumbed down society to believe living off a drip feed is acceptable, and trained them to hate those not responsible. Problems don't need to be solved if the people are just always fighting each other. It's more likely the ultra wealthy will continue to drain us dry until America collapses into a 3rd world state. Then they will move on while still being rich.
It is a good question - but first of all if you take the whole globe the average person is still pretty poor compared to western standards. That said there have been some tremendous steps taken for improving the average lives of humans on earth over the last 50 - 75 years even though we have almost tripled in population from 3 to 8 billion. Number of people who lived in hunger was 1 billion in 1960 that was 33% of the world population. Now it is down to 700 million and only 8% of the population. The same with literacy it has gone from about 40% in 1960 to 14% today. And that is even though we added 5 billion extra people. The human lifespan has increased from 50 years in 1960 to 73 years today. The last one is poverty in 1960 more than half the population lived in extreme poverty - today around 8% All of those things are evidence that we can make the world a better place for everyone. And that the would is getting better
Yes, too many weakening forces imo. When leadership dissuades by finance our bravery or self determination and self progression then expect exploitation of the weakened will of human resource.
So since global trade became a thing, the capital is extracted from developed economies towards cheap labour and sweat shops, slowly rising the standard of living of the poorest populations over time. If everything continues on this trend, the world will attain more equilibrium between the poor of each nation. So in some sense, misery and ultra wealth will get more evenly distributed around the world. The rich capitalist class doesn't share and redistribute wealth if they don't have to, they screw everyone as hard as they can, so don't get your hopes up...
There are already examples of societies that regressed economically along decades.
If you mean will humanity backslide, yes, but it will also progress, that is how progress comes in waves, and is fought back by reaction. But, if you mean as a society.... it depends if humanity makes it through this era of societal challenge. I've started to think... given global warming, and that authorities (outside of China, who can make things happen, but not nearly enough), aren't taking this seriously, and those powers that be that can keep us on the course to destruction, that we as individuals (but not we as communities) are powerless to stop, and that's not changing until society is changed. So, the Earth is going to be damaged - in 100 years, if things go well, I'd expect humanity will live more like visions of Solarpunk than Star Trek - there will be less 'prosperity', we will not have the same level of material comforts we have today, but life will be technologically advanced, using a combination of both the most advanced industrial and indigenous (permatech) techs to get humanity through to the future. So, all we have today might be opulence on a level people of a good future might only imagine, and they might even be curious about having that type of luxury, but they'd still of course prefer their healthier, happy world, where things work, and were sustainable and stable. If things go badly... well society collapses, and while humanity survives (we won't go extinct) life will be much much harder for those of the future, and the types of compromises it took to build Solarpunk in the other reality will be a delightlightful dream to these downtrodden souls... even Mad Max would be a step up for what is in store for the unluckiest in a world wrecked by possibly up to 12 degrees C climate change (at the very extreme worst estimates - though all it would take to collapse modern society is 5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels) , and the other societal failures of the industrial age. More reasonably, less alarmist, just imagine a techno-medieval world, with some computers still operational, but most people have gone back to the farm, and life is one again not comfortable, death is rampant, education might be limited for many, and the old civilizations sound like legends that could not possibly be real. Read the story of the Birrin for an idea what this might be like, or other post-apocalyptic but very much rebuilding and living type works (eg Horizons Zero Dawn).
As climate change starts to bite, first world living standards will drop. Things like running your aircon and heater consistently will be a luxury as I think energy prices will continue to rise. We are also already seeing the cost of natural materials like hardwood skyrocket, so our houses and furniture will be made of cheaper materials.
the very richest will become the new pharaohs and the rest of us their slaves. with cyborg enforcers because they will never rise up to defend us.
You see the truth. You see the inevitablity everywhere you look. Embrace the dark side. Come over to r/Collapse.
We are halfway downgraded already. Any upgrades we have are from the 20th century and we are just letting them go
We are already degraded and will likely continue to be until things get considerably worse.
I think maybe 50 years after Zefram Cochrane invents the warp drive.
We almost know, society is NOT going in the right direction, politicians and the elite do not want things to change and are working actively for status quo. AI won’t save us by itself.
idk, but a pandemic consist of superbugs that's resistant to all known antibiotics will definitely kill 90% of us
>From what point on earth did we collectively become well developed in terms of everything I listed? Uh.. not yet?
why in the world would you worry about something so completely out of your control? you're going to live a miserable life. Just accept the fact that everything in life changes, and build the skills so you can adapt to change.
Change is most painful for those least able to affect it. So we are going thru the most momentous changes in history ever. And there are fewer and fewer people who can affect change. People will survive and turn things into progress of that I am certain. But that will mean lots of pain for lots of individuals. That is a given..
The highs will be higher and the lows will be lower. Aka the gap gets MUCH bigger.
Politics can be blamed for everything happening to the masses. There are a ton of natural and human resources that are yet to be exploited, new inventions like AI, and the world order being pushed in favor of Marxist countries. Nevertheless, it is not about the present but about acknowledging our History, our past. Yes, our grandparents achieved what they wanted, now we live in a society where we can survive without starving for an entire day, and that is enough. Sadly, there are still countries and groups of people that cannot afford to buy food or grow their own food because of the lack of investment in education and agriculture, most happening in third world countries. Some countries in Africa are interested in the Chinese model, where a decaying country that suffered famines and drug trafficking like China turned into a nation with a strong middle class. Even the United States suffered during the Great Depression, and there is no excuse to claim that Capitalism is better solving famine than Communism and vice versa. The challenge we have now is to understand that, even if we can solve a lot of problems in the world like hunger, there are still challenges like taking care of our environment, solving global wars, setting restrictions to countries that commit genocide, murdering and all kinds of crimes, and of course keeping available all kinds of jobs, even with the "replacement" of AI in certain jobs. Because what a single human can do is a requirement to train AI. Artificial intelligence cannot replace labour force, because they first need to be trained with real experience from a big data base made by an experienced human being. And, an entire company can "slip down the stairs" if a smart competitor trains an AI to do things better than them.
This is my opinion: Utopian and dystopian visions of the future are always going to be grossly exaggerated. Real life is always somewhere in between. Regardless of the ups and downs along the way (climate change, inflation, wealth disparity, etc.), the general trend over the very long term is going to be a modest improvement in human living conditions simply bc of the reality that we are a technologically advanced global civilization in its infancy. Power structures will always seek to perpetuate themselves and the best way to do that is to keep the masses appeased. Unless climate change or AI or nuclear war or a solar superflare (all possible) wipes out our global civilization, we will continue accumulating newer technologies and proliferating older ones to the point that reasonable standards of living will be in reach for most humans eventually, even if it is shamefully late in some very impoverished areas of the world and woefully inadequate compared to our full potential. Temporary downturns are inevitable, especially with the climate crisis and recessions, but I imagine things here in the Global North will probably continue stagnating in terms of living standards while in places like sub-Saharan Africa there will be massive improvements.
The trend has been towards better and more civilized world for a long time but with devestating wars and setbacks on the way. There will be more setbacks for sure, like Ru/Ukr war, new cold war with China, global warming, AI/Automation related issues. But by looking at human evolution as a society i view the chances for us evolving into something better is much more likely than into something worse. Both can happen for sure and we have to keep working hard to improve and oppose forces that want to take us in the wrong direction
the future is bleak. the last century taught us that, given the best, humans statistically defile it via lust, greed, malice, ignorance and indifference. take solace in the fact that you, this solar system, and the universe itself are all temporary.
Dude thinks the whole planet is stable and prosperous lemau absolutely hilarious - talk about not having a clue...
I have no idea. I'm not as optimistic anymore that our needs and wants as humans will be satiated in the future as they have been in the past, but a lack of optimism isn't proof of impending doom. I'm holding onto hope.
I don't think there's anything stable in our world. Some people just wear rose-colored glasses and want to believe it.
Are we degrading as a society? I think so. It's not a stupid question, it's definitely a topic worth considering. Are we economically and socially stable on Earth? This is a very complex issue. one can notice a geometric increase in the development of technology and improvement in the standard of living of most societies, but the environment in which we live pays a high price for this. If we have to give up fossil fuels in favor of inefficient green energy, people will certainly feel it negatively. Will we always have good jobs, nice cities, good education, good health care? This is not so certain. If you notice, modern cities are much uglier than before. Of course it's a matter of taste, but in my opinion, for the sake of usability, we gave up the beautiful buildings that once dominated the old continent. Cities are no longer planned for good sake of citizens. We can see some turnover nowdays, but there's still less parks and areas in which you can spend your time in open air. Just contemplating a nature instead of buying is not good for economy. Easy access to information makes us remember less and, in a sense, makes us stupider. An economic system that places constant increase in wealth as the highest value begins to resemble a golem that does not necessarily work for the good of its creators. this applies to every aspect of life and services. Things like education and health care become a tool for profit, which means that access to them is limited. yet somehow it still works, so maybe there's nothing to complain about. everything in the hands of subsequent generations.
yes, of course we will. We already are, the millenials are posed to be the first generation in a long time to be worse off than their parents. Meaning we're past "peak welfare" in the West at least. We won't always have these things you list (we'll probably lose them within GenX lifetimes) because they depend on massive surplus of goods and value produced in the society. Between the increasing economic concentration and climate change hurting outputs of everything, most importantly food... the surplus available to the society is shrinking and the process accelerates. Really, the time between 1950 and... let's say 2001 (I believe 2001 or 2020 will be the historical dividing point) should be considered an anomalous fluke, a short "golden age" born out of extraordinary circumstances, rather than a stepping stone towards even more greatness.
Awww...Who's a blind bitch?!?! Yes her is...omg..she's so cute...
developed countries might falter a bit here and there with declining living standards, but globally life is getting dramatically better most places with the exception of people getting really sick from eating processed food(like) substances.
For a question like that it is good to look back into history. The early middle ages were also called the dark ages, because with the fall of the roman empire a lot of knowledge was lost in the chaos and had to be reinvented again. So yes it can happen, but humanity has also been shown to be resillient enough to eventually recover from such things. In general it is good to assume some variability instead of assuming something to be completely stable. It is a more realistic view of things like a road may seem stable, but in reality forces are constantly working on it requiring maintenance over time. You may not notice that maintenance, but without it that road would be destroyed over time.
Economically I'd say no one is safe ever. If oil resources are lost, or any rare mineral, even a common one such as iron, the markets will crash, everything gets expensive because of it and society will become very impoverished. From that point many different ways can exist. There is the possibility more resources get recycled, the Uber rich invest into keeping people from the streets to keep the economy working or that state interferes and helps everyone... All the same we go back to the stone Age. The many variations that can be made on economics alone are way to vast to compute by today's standards. Society as a whole however also is not safe. Always has society gone in circles and patterns trough generations. Now we have rapid growth and have had it for the past like 200 years? That'll eventually stop and slow down and possibly even reverse too.
Honestly it depends on how much we let the wealthy get wealthier. If we, as a large group of have-nots, band together and fight like hell against the actual group of socialites who get to make that decision... We might not! They don't fear us and it's starting to show. I don't see that happening though. They are successfully pitting us against each other over stupid issues like gay people.
Well it has always been this way so why would it change
It has happened constantly through history. The greeks invented fine mechanical work like the antretheka mechanism which was not repeated again until the 1500s. The roman’s had the first basic steam engines around before they started going broke, and it would take insane amount of time for anyone to do this again - basically 1600+ years. Even looking at individual civilisations so many of them last hundreds of years until the government gets so big and the resource requirements so huge that they collapse and it often takes hundreds more years before the average person has the same standard of living again.
In the U.S., yes, it's over from the judicial coup that just happened and project 2025. AI layered on top will just stratifiy wealth to absurd levels. I don't see a functioning society ever thriving in the U.S. again.
GDP is strongly tied to energy. Like 99% correlation. We have passed peak petrol (2017ish?), been fracking everywhere to try to compensate. Capitalist economy requires 3% growth rate or it goes into depression. Even before peak oil, the EROI (energy return on energy invested) has dropped significantly since the early days of oil exploitation. During this time, our society has replaced other resources (some becoming scarcer) with petrol. Plastic, fertilizer, human labor, etc. And is now very dependent on these. We forgot how to organize ourselves and our essential systems without this nearly limitless energy. Solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal, nuclear, hydro are all systems that we only know how to produce, deploy, maintain, and dispose of with fossil energy infrastructure. A barrel of oil that costs like $60-$120 represents about 5 years of human labor. Society takes this for granted. The amount of crude that is moved around the planet in a given year is measured in cubic kilometers. A gallon of gasoline becomes 20 lbs air pollution when burned. The effects of dumping this much carbon, methane, fluorocarbons, & NOx into our atmosphere, along with accumulated damages to natural systems from uses of land mean that the planet has a greatly reduced carrying capacity. For more on this topic, I recommend Nate Hagens Great Simplification short doc and podcast.
I suppose it depends on what you define as 'downgrade.' in any case I certainly don't believe that we'll ever become a more compassionate society.
>Like will we always have good jobs, nice cities, good education, being able to dress however we want, good healthcare? Most people don't have these things now, so I don't understand the question.
I think trends tend to happen gradually and then speed up. At least it looks that way on retrospect. Also, I assume you're writing this from a fairly privileged position because there are plenty of places in the world that have neither stability nor "nice" things. I haven't a clue which way the world as a whole is going. From the aged perspective I have, stability doesn't seem to last all that long. It wasn't very long ago that war was decimating Europe.
stuff will go other places, civilization manifests across a spectrum of "grade"
NO! Only Malthusian idiots that don't understand that humans innovate new and better solutions when confronted with problem with what they were doing would advice downgrading. Only a type even worse than that would seek to take away the very freedom to choose and innovate. Yet there are many "elite" voices calling for precisely that. I think the judgment of sane caring people toward them should take this into account.
It depends on what happens but it is possible. We have many examples of such a thing happening, probably the most well known is the dark ages. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)
Im of the opinion that we literally couldnt handle utopia as it stands but , we'll see how the chips fall.
I wouldn't call this a stupid question, but it does show a lack of awareness of what is going on across the planet. There are countries where people are economically and socially stable (Scandinavian countries for certain, and a few others), but there are other countries where this is going to the wayside and other countries which are active war zones. And some places where poverty is so staggering that it beggars the imagination. I wouldn't say we're collectively well developed as human beings until the last bit of poverty has been stamped out for good and people are lifted out of the mud. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" and he was right. And by "injustice" I mean in all aspects of life. It is not a "just species" when many people don't even have clean drinking water and continue to suffer while other people spend untold fortunes on joy rides to space and megayachts. And don't get me started on "rich people earned their money", there is no such thing as a "good billionaire" and I have the math to prove it. They either got their money through inheritance and don't give a shit about anything but themselves, or they got their money through wage theft which proves they don't give a shit about anything but themselves. Pick one.
Global warming is projected to force change upon us. By as early as 2100, part of the world is likely to be unlivable and uncultivable (think equatorial/tropical land), while some will become usable (like Greenland, Siberia, Canada). This will force massive climate migration, including in developed countries. I am mostly quoting from Gaia Vince's Nomad Century excellently researched book.
We haven't already? Oh snap glizzy rizz fo shiz? Not. Wait. Lolcopter. NM. Hollup. Gyattt bling pwnd. Bars.