3 ms·
I think just yesterday I saw a post on HN about what people in the past the future (i.e. today) would look like, and how wildly wrong a decent proportion of tho
by seafoamteal 2y ago
I think just yesterday I saw a post on HN about what people in the past the future (i.e. today) would look like, and how wildly wrong a decent proportion of those predictions are. The problem is that we generally tend to extrapolate into the future by taking what we have now and sublimating it to a higher level. Unfortunately, not only is that sometimes difficult, but we also make completely novel discoveries and take unforeseen paths quite often. We need more people with 'muscular' imaginations, as Sloan puts it, to throw out seemingly improbable ideas into the world for others to take inspiration from and build upon.
P.S. Robin Sloan is a wonderful science-fiction and fantasy writer. I was first introduced to him in the excerpts of Cambridge Secondary Checkpoint English exam papers, but only got around to reading his books many years later. I would recommend them to anybody.
- GeoAtreides 2y ago>taking what we have now and sublimating to a higher level That's fine, the Culture is really against sublimating
- Vecr 2y agoGoing by AI theory Banks failed that hard. I suspect he knew that, due to his tricks with language, but that doesn't mean he successfully predicted a plausible future, even in broad strokes. The singularity is called the singularity for a reason, and even when you throw economists at it you tend to get machine civilizations (though, maybe partially squishy and probably made from carbon instead of silicon) expanding at 1/3rd the speed of light. No culture there.
- DanHulton 2y agoI don't think we can confidently say he failed -- the singularity is still just a theory. Being as it hasn't happened, we can't say as to whether the economists or Banks are correct.