4 ms·

This is a good analysis. It would be great to see a more in-depth write up of this. I hope you complete that. My current theory of the moment that I just came

This is a good analysis. It would be great to see a more in-depth write up of this. I hope you complete that. My current theory of the moment that I just came up with on this thread so I should probably think it through more but I mean, if we just want to make our goal lots of children again being born, and all we need to do is have some largish, global disaster wipes out a significant portion of the population, but not too much to Dent the exponential dynamics of having billions of people already and then just like after every big die off, there’ll be a baby boom. (Also, let me just add that children of men is a fantastic film.) Plus, it would help if cultures become more celebratory and enthusiastic about relationships in general, rather than sort of pessimistic or, risk focused as it seems they are now. Also, if humans develop some spacefaring technology, we could make a campaign to create babies, encourage people to do so and incentivize them because we need people to go out and colonize our local area in space.

mjburgess 4y ago
All great so-called "prescient" people are, in my view, just those attentive to features of their contemporary environment that they regard as long-term. Today, we can see the re-emergence of national boundaries, with: Brexit, the Russian invasion, and protectionist competition between the US and China. The syrian mass migration to Europe was indirectly a climate event: the precipitating conditions of the civil war was mass crop failure. This also, in many ways, caused brexit. So we have clear "climate -> migration -> national-borders" events today. We have clear great power politics today. What else? Well consider declining birth rates in the west require more immigrants, but at the same time, anti-immigrant sentiment rises. Why can no leader tell their people the truth? Why can't they say, "we're all too old to support our own populations"? I don't know. But the lack of that question posed to the public is conspicious and alarming. In the UK case, the leader of the centre-left opposition is even so deranged to suggest that our national health service shortages (100,000 positions!) should be filled by more training of our own population. This is economically and politically incoherent; and I'm quite sure he knows this. This is economically and politically unsustainable: the driver towards anti-immigrant sentiment and national boundaries *HAS* to collide severely with the need for young immigrants and the "almost-here" health crisis of the west agining population. Either the future is one in which political leaders and western populations can reconsile themselves to their dependence on young immigrants, accept relatively mass migrations, and adapt their political cultures to cope. That is the "EU will work, eventually" view. OR, we take the Brexit-Russia lesson, and say the west will find a national-militaristic solution to the problem. At the moment, we're already a decade past needing to explain to western publics that immigration is not only economically beneficial, but necessary. We havent done so. At the same time, we've done the opposite. I'd suppose then that, knowing only what we know now, the "Russian trajectory" is the more likely one. The EU nations build armies, the US plays economic empire, China plays wargames in asia all the while our need for mass immigration plays out. Where does that lead? The best guess I can make is: empires. Along the "Russian-line" of future history, nations are still a deeply inefficient economic unit, but increasingly "politically efficient" at regulating national identities. With that tension, arises the need to bundle nations into empires. I think the Russian invasion of Ukraine has delayed this future a couple decades; but I only see a reversal towards the liberal alternative if new liberal institutions emerge. China-India-Russia need an "EU", and likewise, so does Europe. On that timeline, we get liberal supra-states able to negotiate migrations, transitions to aging nations, etc. But as the EU requried WW2, probably that liberal future (if ever realised) will require a comparable war. Perhaps an "asian civil war" in the manner that WW2 was a european civil war. Liberalism (in the sense of rights-based institutions) is just what happens when no amount of people dying will resolve conflict, so nations are forced to give up. It was a product of intra-Christian warfare; and possibly the likely state of the early 22nd century. Assuming Asia has the "civil war", which seems somewhat probable.
- graderjs 4y ago
  > All great so-called "prescient" people are, in my view, just those attentive to features of their contemporary environment that they regard as long-term. Well surely not all but most-certainly some. Difference between seeing and knowing; difference between predictions and previsions. Certainly I think being attentive and being able to see patterns is part of both sets of skills, which don't have to be exclusive. Thanks for fleshing out your (what I assume to be) predictions and insights a bit more. Makes sense. On that, my reaction is: I want that to be a take that can be dismissed as being pessimistic, rather than real. But I think if we look at human history, the pessimistic take is real: it's the hope that we actually better than we seem to be that's unrealistic. It's got me thinking: where should I go to avoid the coming wars? Another note is, I think the quality of your insights deserves a better presentation: the way you write it up here is a bit rough. I think if you edited it and presented it better it would really do it justice. As for myself and this topic, I really haven't regarded it much (I think I prefer not to think about such possibilities), and I suppose that's why I'm interested to see takes by people who care to.

mjburgess 4y ago

All great so-called "prescient" people are, in my view, just those attentive to features of their contemporary environment that they regard as long-term. Today, we can see the re-emergence of national boundaries, with: Brexit, the Russian invasion, and protectionist competition between the US and China. The syrian mass migration to Europe was indirectly a climate event: the precipitating conditions of the civil war was mass crop failure. This also, in many ways, caused brexit. So we have clear "climate -> migration -> national-borders" events today. We have clear great power politics today. What else? Well consider declining birth rates in the west require more immigrants, but at the same time, anti-immigrant sentiment rises. Why can no leader tell their people the truth? Why can't they say, "we're all too old to support our own populations"? I don't know. But the lack of that question posed to the public is conspicious and alarming. In the UK case, the leader of the centre-left opposition is even so deranged to suggest that our national health service shortages (100,000 positions!) should be filled by more training of our own population. This is economically and politically incoherent; and I'm quite sure he knows this. This is economically and politically unsustainable: the driver towards anti-immigrant sentiment and national boundaries *HAS* to collide severely with the need for young immigrants and the "almost-here" health crisis of the west agining population. Either the future is one in which political leaders and western populations can reconsile themselves to their dependence on young immigrants, accept relatively mass migrations, and adapt their political cultures to cope. That is the "EU will work, eventually" view. OR, we take the Brexit-Russia lesson, and say the west will find a national-militaristic solution to the problem. At the moment, we're already a decade past needing to explain to western publics that immigration is not only economically beneficial, but necessary. We havent done so. At the same time, we've done the opposite. I'd suppose then that, knowing only what we know now, the "Russian trajectory" is the more likely one. The EU nations build armies, the US plays economic empire, China plays wargames in asia all the while our need for mass immigration plays out. Where does that lead? The best guess I can make is: empires. Along the "Russian-line" of future history, nations are still a deeply inefficient economic unit, but increasingly "politically efficient" at regulating national identities. With that tension, arises the need to bundle nations into empires. I think the Russian invasion of Ukraine has delayed this future a couple decades; but I only see a reversal towards the liberal alternative if new liberal institutions emerge. China-India-Russia need an "EU", and likewise, so does Europe. On that timeline, we get liberal supra-states able to negotiate migrations, transitions to aging nations, etc. But as the EU requried WW2, probably that liberal future (if ever realised) will require a comparable war. Perhaps an "asian civil war" in the manner that WW2 was a european civil war. Liberalism (in the sense of rights-based institutions) is just what happens when no amount of people dying will resolve conflict, so nations are forced to give up. It was a product of intra-Christian warfare; and possibly the likely state of the early 22nd century. Assuming Asia has the "civil war", which seems somewhat probable.

graderjs 4y ago
> All great so-called "prescient" people are, in my view, just those attentive to features of their contemporary environment that they regard as long-term. Well surely not all but most-certainly some. Difference between seeing and knowing; difference between predictions and previsions. Certainly I think being attentive and being able to see patterns is part of both sets of skills, which don't have to be exclusive. Thanks for fleshing out your (what I assume to be) predictions and insights a bit more. Makes sense. On that, my reaction is: I want that to be a take that can be dismissed as being pessimistic, rather than real. But I think if we look at human history, the pessimistic take is real: it's the hope that we actually better than we seem to be that's unrealistic. It's got me thinking: where should I go to avoid the coming wars? Another note is, I think the quality of your insights deserves a better presentation: the way you write it up here is a bit rough. I think if you edited it and presented it better it would really do it justice. As for myself and this topic, I really haven't regarded it much (I think I prefer not to think about such possibilities), and I suppose that's why I'm interested to see takes by people who care to.