this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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I disliked the books and haven't tried to watch the show.
But I think I disagree that our civilization is no longer capable of solving it's own problems. Rather, I think our civilization is going through one of the crappy parts of common cycles that civilizations go through. Frighteningly, this part usually comes right before really scary crappy parts.
Civilizations aren't static and the patterns don't always happen the same way, but I think we can predict that
Things get really shitty. People pull together for survival and build to a place of stability and prosperity.
The rich and powerful (being short sighted idiots just like the rest of us, but ALSO insulated from and out of touch with reality), start looting society for their own selfish, short term benefit. This destabilizes the institutions and systems creating the stability and prosperity. The population at large doesn't really understand what's happening or why, but they DO know that while they're still relatively comfortable, they're scared and they don't like it. They get more conservative and eventually turn to fascists, strongmen and authoritarians to try to get stability back.
This doesn't work out. It exacerbates the existing problems, makes things even more scary and less stable. Eventually war and rebellion break out.
When the dust settles, things are really shitty. People pull together for survival and build back to a place of stability and prosperity.
These steps aren't exact. They're trends. Lots of things can disrupt them (including famine, plague and barbarian invasions). But in step 1/4, we (humans) are actually REALLY good at collectively solving problems. In step 2 we're TERRIBLE at collectively doing anything. In step 3 we (collectively) are trying to solve all the WRONG problems... then back to step 1/4.
We seem to globally be right at the tail end of step 2. Which SUCKS.
tl:dr; This has all happened before and will surely happen again. Hostile aliens are just a modern take on the "barbarian invasion" disrupter. Beware of strangers bearing gifts.
Theorists and futurologists refer to it as the 'Great Filter' .... a series of challenges that civilizations go up against which determines if they make it past the filter or not.
Our current filters are climate change, nuclear war and artificial intelligence ... will we use nuclear tech or AI to benefit ourselves? Will we work towards dealing with climate change? or will us acting negatively with all this be the cause of our regression ... or destruction?
We have equal capability at this point ... we are just as capable of collectively solving these problems .... or using them to destroy ourselves.
Our collective futures are most definitely in our own hands ... whether or not we use those hands for good or ill is up to us.
AI right now is not a challenge. It's inflated vapourware.
AI isn't a challenge to those who know better, the rest are already building their cults about it: some say it will save us from downfall, others saying it will create the downfall. The sad part is that either group could be right, as it's all a self-fulfilling prophecy and just requires enough people participating in the myth to make it happen.
And I reject the "vapourware" label. Machine Learning has a lot of potential for the future, especially as we break out of standard Von Neumann architecture and experiment with different types of computers/computing. Will it ever do what the consumers currently expect it to do? No. Will it continue to develop and grow into it's own domain of computing? I'd bet on it.