Lots of click-baity material here, and plenty to tear apart. I think the best way to understand this essay is like this: it's all received wisdom based on what

Lots of click-baity material here, and plenty to tear apart. I think the best way to understand this essay is like this: it's all received wisdom based on what we've experienced so far. That doesn't make it right or wrong. It just makes it highly speculative. Like to see why? Dial back the calendar a few hundred years. Some bozo named Columbus just got back from a trip. He says there's tons of wealth awaiting us in some far-off, plentiful, perhaps-utopian paradise. Now that we've rewound the clock, you can read through this essay in the same way, substituting the new world for space. It's all the same. My fear for our species is that 1) we get exactly what we want, ie, we create AGI that caters to our every whim, thereby making our entire species superfluous, and 2) if we don't do that, we argue our way out of exploration and adventure and into introspection and conflict. Who knows, maybe we do both. I wish this had been a better essay.