5 ms·

"We're only just at the beginning of our civilisation's development. We, the AI, and/or the AI we'll be connected to will be able to recreate and terraform, to

"We're only just at the beginning of our civilisation's development. We, the AI, and/or the AI we'll be connected to will be able to recreate and terraform, to bio-engineer species, environments and food however we want." That seems wildly optimistic given current trends. What makes you think we'll make it that far, given that we(1), so far, have only managed to continually make things worse over time? 1-And by "we" I actually just mean the oligarchs who profit from environmental destruction...individuals have only marginal agency in this story. But, we keep letting them do it, for some reason.

chr1 7y ago
Oligarchs don't go around cutting forests for fun, they profit from "environmental destruction" because other people need it to live and are ready to give their money in exchange for its results and receive money for performing it. Communist countries do as much damage as capitalist ones, and even hunter-gatherers did a huge amount of damage, so you are looking for solution at a wrong place. Which of current trends do you think justify your pessimistic outlook? We are not in a particularly bad state compared to hundred years ago, and recently we didn't cause more extinctions than we caused as hunter-gatherers. With genetic editing we are working to create much more efficient crops, in some places we learned how to use technology to drastically reduce use of pesticides, area, and water in agriculture (see Netherlands and Israel), gene drives that would eliminate main pest species are going to allow us to further reduce usage of pesticides, and we are learning to grow fish and algae in the ocean instead of simply exploiting wild populations. We are even working on restoring long dead species like mammoths, so i'd say there is every reason to be optimistic about the future.

5 ms·

"We're only just at the beginning of our civilisation's development. We, the AI, and/or the AI we'll be connected to will be able to recreate and terraform, to

by SwellJoe 7y ago

chr1 7y ago
Oligarchs don't go around cutting forests for fun, they profit from "environmental destruction" because other people need it to live and are ready to give their money in exchange for its results and receive money for performing it. Communist countries do as much damage as capitalist ones, and even hunter-gatherers did a huge amount of damage, so you are looking for solution at a wrong place. Which of current trends do you think justify your pessimistic outlook? We are not in a particularly bad state compared to hundred years ago, and recently we didn't cause more extinctions than we caused as hunter-gatherers. With genetic editing we are working to create much more efficient crops, in some places we learned how to use technology to drastically reduce use of pesticides, area, and water in agriculture (see Netherlands and Israel), gene drives that would eliminate main pest species are going to allow us to further reduce usage of pesticides, and we are learning to grow fish and algae in the ocean instead of simply exploiting wild populations. We are even working on restoring long dead species like mammoths, so i'd say there is every reason to be optimistic about the future.