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I am not asking you if human progress is speeding along and accelerating. That's an obvious yes. I am asking you: are we speeding into a brick wall? If so, can

• BurningFrog 3y ago
  Nobody has steered humanity's car so far, and it's gone well. I'll give you my favorite answer. You probably won't like it. For reasons I don't claim to know, humanity always expect the world to end. It's in all the religions. Christians has expected the Last Judgment any day now for 2000 years. In this century we don't express that urge in religious term. It manifests in worries that pollution or overpopulation or nuclear war will bring the end of times. I've seen enough of these predictions over the last 50 years to stop worrying too much about the new ones that keep popping up. Of course non of this proves we won't speed into one of these brick walls. None of us knows the future, and that's certainly a possible one.
  • samus 3y ago
    It worked so far because our desire to grow never before threatened to exceed the carrying capacity of the whole planet. Growth is not stopped by people, but by environmental boundaries. So far the cost of failure was never the near-extinction of humanity. When civilizations exceed the carrying capacity of their environment, the results aren't pretty. Civilizational collapse is real. It has happened many times to flourishing cultures and might happen again. Most cultures never recover*. The difference is that previously there was always another culture that was not pulled into the abyss as well and could pick up the leftovers.