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Every generation since the history of humanity has had some Doomer: religious doomers (mayas, ragnarok, even monotheist ones), nuclear, AI, the environement or

Every generation since the history of humanity has had some Doomer: religious doomers (mayas, ragnarok, even monotheist ones), nuclear, AI, the environement or the classic 'things were better before society is just collapsing'.. It's almost like it's a personality trait of a part of a population to think that at any given time.

vkou 3y ago
Man, with the benefit of hindsight, those leaded-gasoline-doomers and the atlantic-cod-doomers and the OxyCotin-doomers sure misguided! It's not like the sea's going to run out of fish[1]... 'There are doomers' is not particularly interesting. It's an opinion, people have them. What's interesting is what people have to say about the particulars. [1] Except that it did.
- davidguetta 3y ago
  Well first a broken clock is always right twice a day... but also the example you give are SPECIFIC, not just general doom and gloom. The unabomber was being scared of technology in general
senttoschool 3y ago
We came pretty close to nuclear war between the US and Russia though. In fact, a Russian, thankfully, decided to ignore a false alarm to prevent a full out nuclear war. And I don't think we're out of nuclear threat yet. As for environmental, it's headed that way unless we figure out some technology to recycle everything and reduce the impact of humans to neutral. For AI, we don't know yet but a lot of smart people are putting out the alarm. As humans continue to advance in technology, the chance of one of those technologies destroying us increases. I don't think anyone can dispute this.
- thumbuddy 3y ago
  Every few weeks it seems Russia is trying to find allies by having a "free nukes party", considering using them in Ukraine, or telling a large nation about the "grave consequences" for supplying Ukraine with munutions. The US may have avoided thermonuclear war at one point, but the hazards are very much still alive to this day. Second strike capabilities were invented to cause an extinction scale event in retaliation for a genocidal one. The beauty of the AI threat model is, in its current incarnation, there's no extinction scale event plausible. But it could be used to cripple critical infrastructure, win wars on developed nations, overthrow regimes, etc if laws are not made, and infrastructure not invented to protect us.

vkou 3y ago

Man, with the benefit of hindsight, those leaded-gasoline-doomers and the atlantic-cod-doomers and the OxyCotin-doomers sure misguided! It's not like the sea's going to run out of fish[1]... 'There are doomers' is not particularly interesting. It's an opinion, people have them. What's interesting is what people have to say about the particulars. [1] Except that it did.

davidguetta 3y ago
Well first a broken clock is always right twice a day... but also the example you give are SPECIFIC, not just general doom and gloom. The unabomber was being scared of technology in general

senttoschool 3y ago

We came pretty close to nuclear war between the US and Russia though. In fact, a Russian, thankfully, decided to ignore a false alarm to prevent a full out nuclear war. And I don't think we're out of nuclear threat yet. As for environmental, it's headed that way unless we figure out some technology to recycle everything and reduce the impact of humans to neutral. For AI, we don't know yet but a lot of smart people are putting out the alarm. As humans continue to advance in technology, the chance of one of those technologies destroying us increases. I don't think anyone can dispute this.

thumbuddy 3y ago
Every few weeks it seems Russia is trying to find allies by having a "free nukes party", considering using them in Ukraine, or telling a large nation about the "grave consequences" for supplying Ukraine with munutions. The US may have avoided thermonuclear war at one point, but the hazards are very much still alive to this day. Second strike capabilities were invented to cause an extinction scale event in retaliation for a genocidal one. The beauty of the AI threat model is, in its current incarnation, there's no extinction scale event plausible. But it could be used to cripple critical infrastructure, win wars on developed nations, overthrow regimes, etc if laws are not made, and infrastructure not invented to protect us.