The good news is that gives us about a century, and if we don't break the world economy today with our attempts at premature optimization, our technological cap

The good news is that gives us about a century, and if we don't break the world economy today with our attempts at premature optimization, our technological capabilities then will be unimaginably greater than they are now. Roughly one century ago - around the year 1900 - cities of the world had a huge problem - horses. The problem of hauling away the horse manure and dead horses was a bigger and bigger job and throwing more horses at the problem was not doing the trick. The cities smelled and bred disease and there was just nowhere to put the stuff. The situation was unsustainable. People drew line charts with hockey sticks. There were conferences where people gnashed their teeth and wrung their hands over how horrible it was - and getting worse - and how would we ever survive? Then the problem went away. Not because the professional worriers came up with a solution, but because technology changed. That will happen this time too. The one thing we can be ABSOLUTELY SURE of is that our biggest problem a century from now will be something ELSE, probably something we haven't even encountered as an issue yet. It is an amazing luxury that we can afford to worry about such trivial matters. I think there must be a "conservation of worry" law - as the world gets safer, as fewer people are starving or dying of dysentery or whatever, we still need to worry the same amount, so we find new things to worry about - no matter how arcane and obscure they have to be - and invest them with undue importance.