I see it as a race between Idiocracy and the Singularity. Will AI become sufficiently functional to keep things going before people become sufficiently dysfunctional as to cause a collapse?
I think this would have to be established to be true first. Yes people born into poor families generally go to worse schools and perform worse, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have lower intellectual capability. It’s certainly comforting for some people to believe that.
I grew up in a single-parent family, on a council estate, and went to one of the worst-performing schools in the whole UK. But I also spent one month going to one of the very best private-schools (I was in the running for a scholarship place, and I didn’t get it). I can’t begin to describe the differences between the educational environments.
(And FTR I don’t blame the teachers. Other factors are far more important, and there are a number of vicious and virtuous circles at play).
Anyway 25 years is a very short time in the context of this alledged problem.
Anyway 25 years is a very short time in the context of this alledged problem.
Yeah you might be right about that, but I think we are going to have a similar problem when Gen Z is the majority of the workforce. My kids tell me about 40% of their fellow students are complete social recluses who won’t respond to anything anyone says, except to possibly make animal noises or grunts. There were a couple kids like that when I was in school, but nowhere near 40%, more like 1%.
Another problem we will run into shortly is a shortage of the raw materials to make batteries. These laws about making all new vehicles EV’s by 2030 are never going to work, not in that timeframe. 2050 maybe, and that’s assuming we continue to find more sources of lihium/nickel/cobalt.
Another problem coming up, possibly longer term than 25 years, is declining fertility in men. No one is quite sure of the root cause here, but some decent guesses include constant exposure to plastics, or possibly beef hormones in our meat and dairy.
Pandemic kids. How emotionally screwed up will they be as adults?
Why would you think that will screw up kids?
Many missed out on two of the most formative years in peer socialization. If I had to stay home for two years of adolescence, I would have come out a completely different person and probably not for the better.
No more so than the almost 2 million homeschooled kids. Plus they have the internet to stay current. That along with text and Facetime, not sure that will have that big of an impact. Kids are pretty resilient.
Nor all the generation that lived with smallpox and high infant mortality and wars and… I mean, it does screw people up, but it’s also a pretty normal human condition.
But most homeschoolers still have the opportunity to socialize with their peer group. Those who aren’t allowed that are often screwed up and may even be considered victims of child abuse.
If indeed this is an actual problem. The jury is still out, sorta.
Prof. Allan Pacey, Professor of Andrology, University of Sheffield:
Whilst an apparent 52.4% decline in sperm counts may sound a lot, but from the data provided in this paper it represents an average change from ‘normal’ (99 million sperm per ml) to ‘normal’ (47 million sperm per ml). As such, I would urge journalists and editors to treat this study with caution as the debate has not yet been resolved and there is clearly much work still to be done
Prof. Richard Sharpe, Honorary Professor, MRC Centre for Reproductive Health, University of Edinburgh:
What is not so widely appreciated is that the coincidence of this change in men with delay in couples trying for a baby until the female partner is in her 30’s (when her fertility is declining progressively), creates a double whammy for couple fertility in modern Western societies.
As usual, it’s complicated (I’m linking to all quotes at the end of the post).
This issue has surfaced since at least the 90’s and there’s been speculation about different causes. For almost all this time, many, maybe a majority (?) of researchers dismissed the claim of increasing male infertility.
Prof. Allan Pacey again:
I have never truly been convinced that the purported decline in sperm counts is anything more than a laboratory artefact and I have written as much in my 2013 article “Are sperm counts declining? Or did we just change our spectacles?” (See Are sperm counts declining? Or did we just change our spectacles? - PMC)
However, a meta-study published in 2017 did indicate that male infertility is increasing. I’m linking to a site that has collected comments from some specialists in the field. The latest study seems to indicate that something is indeed going on, but again, one more time, Alan Pacey:
Ideally, we would have funded large prospective epidemiological studies of healthy males 25 years ago and this would by now have given us a clear answer one way or the other. Unfortunately, it seems as though we might have to wait another 25 years before we might get to know the real answer
Maybe we should convert all our debt to cryptcurrency? Then it would be worth almost nothing!
That would be a grave mistake.
With a few basic precautions in place, we could go back to using hydrogen for balloons.
And so has the interest on the debt as a fraction of GDP been growing, shrinking, or staying basically steady over the years?
OK, so if most jobs can be done by machines, wouldn’t that be a very good thing?
If (for instance) 80% of the work being done now can be automated, then shouldn’t we reach a point where we all be able to work 20% as much as we do now and still live as well?
Seriously, the only reason this should be regarded as a problem is our weird way of looking at things, that a ‘job’ will continue to be defined as at least 40 hours per week, so the number of jobs and employed persons will shrink, and if you don’t have a job, you’ll be destitute.
If we as a society can’t adapt to what should be a life of leisure for all, we deserve whatever messed-up sort of society we become.
More likely, we would work a little less than we do now, and the gross national product would be at least several times higher than it is now.
So I agree with you on automation not being a problem (except for the short to medium term worker displacement ), but maybe for different reasons.
Most likely the 0.1% rich will buy the robots, reap 99.9+% of the rewards, and turn everyone else into denizens of squatters’ camps on the outskirts of walled cities.
When you personally have no capital or land and your labor is economically valueless, you’ll be a beggar unless somebody else decides to support you. Everything we know about human nature, and especially the human nature of the kind of people who end up as the 0.1%, is that they’ll see no reason to do that supporting. So beg you will.
Well, if this is the situation in 2048, you can look back on this thread and realize you were a true prophet.
I’m having a hard time seeing why early automation coincided with city walls falling into decay, while this new round will result in their revival. Or is this a metaphor?
What about offensive military operations becoming more likely because of attacking troops all sitting safely behind computer screens thousands of miles away?
I had been hoping war would be less likely because when one child families come to predominate, parents will insist their children be safe. But the Russo-Ukrainian War, fought between countries with unusually low fertility, is putting that hope in severe doubt.
Humanity only has one rock to live on, Unfortunately, Homo Sapiens have been a warring species since before there was written word. And it continues today. If we don’t find common ground between nations, we can never solve the many issues in the posts above.
Right now, it’s us vs them.
Many people hate the thought of “One World Order” but we need to have some parts of it for our long term survival on this planet.
-As for the Billionaires that think they can escape the eventual collapse of society in their spaceships; -I say f-em. They might have made a difference for humanity with their money and influence but chose to invest in a way out.