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Very little to no evidence that continuously increasing intelligence will maintain the status quo indefinitely, on a scale of at least thousands of years. The o
by richardw 3y ago
Very little to no evidence that continuously increasing intelligence will maintain the status quo indefinitely, on a scale of at least thousands of years. The odds of us not either populating the galaxy or utterly owning ourselves are vanishingly small. What is the middle ground that you think is likely, and what things have to happen for that to be true? Why is it more likely than one of the extremes?
It's so interesting that our intuitions are vastly different on this. You and I both just can't believe that our default case isn't obvious.
I personally think "recency bias" is to blame for the "we'll muddle through" case. Life is great and the weather is fine, and there are no asteroids or globally impacting volcanoes, and we haven't had a civilisational collapse in a good while, and nukes didn't kill us, so the current state is pretty locked in indefinitely, despite massive technological change that we have zero chance of predicting the outcomes of.
That's an unstable equilibrium at best. We take over the galaxy or die trying.
- palata 3y agoWell we are pretty capable of predicting, right now, that our civilization is very likely to collapse in the next few decades because we can't seem to address the climate/biodiversity problems (which are consequences of the abundance of fossil fuels that will end soon). > We take over the galaxy or die trying. Let's first survive on Earth, shall we?
- pfdietz 3y agoHow does loss of biodiversity cause civilization to collapse in the next few decades?
- palata 3y agoDon't worry, the energy and climate problems can each independently cause civilization to collapse in the next few decades ;-). But if you don't understand how we need biodiversity to survive, I guess try to eat ChatGPT or Starship.
- pfdietz 3y agoAh, I didn't think you had a justification for the claim. Empty hot air.
- bamboozled 3y agoLet's try not to find out?
- Qem 3y agoLoss of keystone species[1]. Say, if bees went extinct, our agriculture would come crashing. We still rely on other organisms for a lot of important, sometimes poorly understood until too late[2] functions that sustain our civilization. [1]. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_species https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_species [2]. https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/BFI_WP_2022-165.pdf https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/BFI_WP_2...
- pfdietz 3y agoIf bees went extinct, it would affect none of the essential crops we grow. Grains are wind pollinated, not insect pollinated. More generally, I'm sure extinctions would wreak havoc on wild ecosystems. But we grow food by explicitly destroying wild ecosystems, replacing them with monocultures. Crops seem to grow just fine anyway.
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoI think it's a bit telling/alarming that you seem to be "okay" with monocultures and mass extinctions because we don't seem to be affected (at the moment).
- pfdietz 3y agoThis discussion is about the claim it causes civilization to collapse, not whether I'm okay with it. But hey, thanks for steering this in an ad hominem direction.
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoEveryone else: "Maybe killing off the majority of the species in an ecosystem will have Bad Consequences." You: "Looks like bullshit to me." (<- your words~) Unimpressive.
- pfdietz 3y ago