The incoming societal upheaval that would happen from not having technological advancement would be just as bad. If we don’t get better automation systems, we will be stuck in the extremely sub-optimal scenario we’re currently in until the world burns.
(not saying innovation/advancement/AI are bad, i just wish people's concerns around the incoming societal upheaval weren't so readily dismissed)
— help (@schizogpt4) January 26, 2025
Most people seem to think that everything is currently bad and then the only way to make it better is to return to some sort of golden age, whether it’s destroying capitalism or return to tradition or whatever. But that doesn’t work. Climate feedback loops are already active.
The carbon in the atmosphere is warming the planet which is melting the ice caps which is releasing more carbon. If we give up on industrial civilization right now, we doom ourselves a feedback loop of warming which leads to the end of cloud formation. Then it gets hotter still.
We are already in control of the global atmosphere and climate. We just are in denial and don’t want to act on it. To steward it properly, to turn the thermostat to something safe for us and the other life forms, we will need better technology.
Massive societal upheaval is happening either way. We can have the one where we create alien minds, understand the biosphere, fine-tune it toward something beautiful, or we can have the one where we collapse our way toward the heat age and try to start over from pre-agriculture.
What we cannot have is the Doordash, Netflix, big truck, no thoughts, charge phone and lie stasis of the last man of history. It’s a brief aberration. Technological progress marches on. You don’t get to vote on whether it happens. You have to decide how you want to live with it.