When I was young I was looking forward to a bright, golden future for humankind, but the older I got, the more this broke down. Meanwhile I fear that we are moving towards a total collapse of our (alleged) civilization, which, as I view it now, isn’t really that much “civilized”, especially as a huge majority of us doesn’t seem to be aware of how vulnerable the dynamic equilibrium of the ecological niche is that we live in and that we live off.
So much for climate and ecology.
But there’s more: our indifference against others:
in case The Guardian decides to put up a paywall there
Humans are able to survive under harsh conditions: in the Sahara desert, close to the North Pole, etc. So I don’t believe that human civilization will disappear. However, as natural resources are depleted and our environment becomes more and more polluted, I expect more poverty and armed conflicts in the future.
The climate crisis might severely hurt more and more species on earth, including humans. But I also think at least some humans might survive and be able to adapt.
But then there’s also the threat of AI. Maybe it’s less likely of becoming a big problem, but once it does, it could be even more devastating than the climate crisis.
IMHO I don’t want to sink in pessimism. Because it seems hard to anticipate what will be. And our means of communication and knowledge are evolving too. We pollute more and we live longer. Maybe we’ll have more time to do more interesting things. Surely I don’t like when humans seem getting out of control for use of resources, lack of empathy for others, and still going on wars and conquests. The past is still fresh with so many horrors we committed.
I still want to stay optimistic for the humankind
A lot of people conflated the exponential rise of the technological level of our species with the “civilisation” part.
While technology and wealth and indeed progress of how to process, gather and distribute resources are all major factors of scoring “civilisation points”, there are other things that are more intangible and harder to quantify like progress in intelligence, wisdom, collective conscience (booo sounds like “communism”, am I right? ), a broader understanding that we are all one species providing fuel to a grander vision of a planetary growth (booo imperialistic globalist propaganda ) and so forth.
We remain a species where the average is abysmally and blissfully ignorant of most of the things that are being done in their name and most of the progress has been achieved by the few brilliant minds that tried to push the cart of humanity up the hill. As these pioneers inevitably die out, the process of replacing the people that push the cart upwards is ever harder, since the allure of sitting in the cart and be gently pushed forward is very very sweet.
If anyone would like a simile, the current mirage of the S&P 500 is a nice analogy of humanity. A very small amount of powerful stocks drives the observed rise in the price of the S&P500 index, however in reality most of those 500 stocks are actually underperforming.
“But the next generations will be better!” say the optimists…
yeah, but the current generation is “training” them to be just like them… add social media to that mix and the general degradation of the socio-economic fabric and you have a nice storm brewing. And that’s just the surface…
Things are going to get worse, sooner rather than later, unfortunately… If you haven’t thought of a nice epitaph, “Died right on time” might be a good one. I know I am using that one, if all goes well and the timeline holds… if not, well, I have the perfect thing for the planet to listen to while the shoe drops…
Silly anecdotal tale, but as far as I am concerned, very telling.
I go to play basketball in the local school, which is closed for the summer. We all jump the fence to get in and during the summer the cleaners do not come, so the garbage piles up… higher and higher and higher… all thrown by the magnificent “young generation” that learned that kind of nasty behaviour at home, of course. The kids learn what they see.
The cleaning lady arrived three days ago while we were playing, she was exasperated, but got to work. Cleaned the yard of the refuse and the garbage were gone… until yesterday, where we hopped the fence and saw in the football field where the kids play, packs of delivery food, coffee containers and empty water bottles. They didn’t even notice that someone cleaned their months-long mess and didn’t even respect the hard work of whoever did that. Do note that there is a garbage can 20 meters away.
Yeah, those knuckleheads will care for the microplastics and the climate change and yada yada…
But, on the other hand, those are just village kids and there is at least a small excuse… educated people like the fellow that wrote that article also worry me a lot:
That article fried my brain…
Here are four quotes that I shouldn’t have read so close to bed-time:
His first step was to ditch the word civilisation, a term he argues is really propaganda by rulers.
ah, the war on words continues…
This was a form of evolutionary backsliding from the egalitarian and mobile hunter-gatherer societies which shared tools and culture widely
Egalitarian hunter-gatherers? How does he know? There are no historical records of their societies. What inane beautification/revisionism is this and from a professional, as well?
meaning places where oceans, rivers, deserts and mountains meant people could not simply migrate away from rising tyrants. Early Egyptians, trapped between the Red Sea and the Nile, fell prey to the pharaohs, for example.
Does he think that Pharaohs were like 20 level D&D characters or something, enslaving nations like the Red Wizards of Thay?
What nonsense is that?
He also points out that for the citizens of early rapacious regimes, collapse often improved their lives because they were freed from domination and taxation and returned to farming. “After the fall of Rome, people actually got taller and healthier,” he says.
Yeah, that’s why we call that period “the Dark ages”. A fantastic opportunity for health and wealth, societal and economic collapse and the invasion of people so brutal that almost 2000 years later their name is synonymous with wanton destruction (the Vandals).
It seems to me that these people need to stop smoking the “magic grass” and go outside and touch some normal grass…
The species will almost certainly survive. The technological part of the civilisation will most probably not. Considering what Covid did just to shipping, imagine what a world-wide power grid collapse of a few days would do to the current population…
Do an experiment.
Keep all your access to food and groceries as normal, but close your house’s water and electricity supply for a day and try to make it through the day and gain practical experience just on that aspect of the issue.
Now imagine if you didn’t have food and groceries on top of that.
Now imagine that the whole town is like that for a day.
Then the whole country.
Then the whole continent.
Just for a day.
Now make it 7 days.
I’ve yet to understand what danger the AI poses to the species… a lot of people seem to attribute to it eventual godlike abilities and seem to fear judgement from an impartial logic. Which is very telling and amusing…
Here we are pretending to be doing well, but somehow fearing reprimand and retribution from the AI. If we are really doing well, wouldn’t the aI reasonably conclude that it should help us along instead of smite us?
The present is full of them as well. Noone (or “not enough people” for those that might be keen to quibble) learned from the past, so here we are experiencing it again…
There are still a few hunter-gatherer societies like
They are generally quite egalitarian. It doesn’t mean we can copy them on that aspect because technological progress often requires a lot of investment. If everybody was equally poor, we would all be busy trying to survive and wouldn’t think about investing.
I imagine that the majority of people won’t have enough food/groceries, but a small minority will still control the few resources that are left and will be able to continue innovating. That’s what humanity has been doing for several millenia. Feed a few privileged (rulers, scientists, etc.) while others are enslaved.
different people exist, not everyone would care how good you did
more different AI is possible
1 wrong move when creating it and we would create monster instead of helper
and problem is: no one really know how to create helper and not something random
it would not even need to conquer us, we continue to give it more and more resources ourselves
Very interesting… still it seems that the main problem on those issues is this:
No system is perfect and AI won’t be either, but if we greed out on it, then that will be the main problem, not the system itself.
Oh, I see… well, that’s quite the leap of faith then. It is like if the only knowledge we had from Ancient Greece was that “they had democracy” and then some american historian went and talked how the Ancient Greeks had a two party system, a congress, a president, districts, mayors and jerrymandering.
But, I see what he means now… he uses the term egalitarian to beautify the fact that it is a society where everyone is equal, because there is nothing (neither material, power or status) to be disputed.
It is a bit like that old adage that old people here say “when we were younger, we slept with our doors open back at our village”… while carefully omitting the fact that they had nothing that their neighbours would deem worth stealing.
Once that changed, the very same people locked their doors veeeeery fast.
But they like to pretend otherwise, which is fine because beautifying the past is what old people like to do, but I’d expect better from scientists.
Yes, hunter-gatherer societies have very little private property, and there is not much division of labor, most people do more or less the same “job”. This is not longer possible in modern societies.
It is mostly about intelligence that becomes too alien. Intelligence is not a single linear progression, and intelligence can become so alienated and not even need to be malicious or even “smart” to cause great harm and blatantly ignore every fundamental ethics or principles humans hold dear.
), a broader understanding that we are all one species providing fuel to a grander vision of a planetary growth (booo imperialistic globalist propaganda 
I know I am using that one, if all goes well and the timeline holds… if not, well, 
