Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

agaperion t1_jed4zu1 wrote

It depends what kind of conversation you want to have. If you want to talk about what's possible then I believe all that great stuff is on the table. If you want to talk about what's likely or what it just so happens to seem is going to happen from where we stand right now then I admit that things often appear pretty bleak. But then again, we've got to be mindful of our negativity biases and availability biases and the limitations of human attention and imagination. In learning about history, I've noticed that fearing it's the end of the world is a common occurrence for nearly every human generation. The current one's no more or less millenarianist than any of the others. Here's a bit of light reading on that, if you like.

3

dja_ra OP t1_jed5i2q wrote

It's true that Europe's most fruitful years happened after the black death. I did post this because I have been in a r/collapse type funk and find myself irritated at all the "AI is going to bring Utopia" type posts.

1

agaperion t1_jed840r wrote

If you've ever read Intuition Pumps And Other Tools For Thinking by Daniel Dennett then you may recall his idea of the Surely Alarm. Basically, when somebody speaks the word surely, they're usually implicitly asking you to grant them an assumption on which the rest of their argument rests. I've extended this notion to a number of other concepts for which I've set other mental alarms and the word utopia is one of them. When I encounter it, there's a little voice in the back of my mind reminding me that the word means "no place" - i.e. it doesn't exist.

Achieving a perfect society is impossible and it's foolish to think of perfection as anything other than an ideal. Just as with personal growth, so too is social progress a perpetual process. There's no final solution. No finish line. There will always be room for improvement. That's why we've evolved practices like reformism and incrementalism, as opposed to radicalism or revolutionism. Because real progress - meaningful, lasting progress - happens gradually. A discovery here. An innovation there. A social program there. And all these things compound and interact to create new discoveries and innovations and reforms. Over and over until, eventually, we take a step back and notice how much better off things are. Like going to the gym every day but not noticing the progress for weeks or months at a time.

Frankly, you'll do yourself a favor staying away from cynics and doomers like the people who hang out in places like r/collapse. Run with the dogs and you're gonna get fleas. Take control of your information diet. Be selective about the things you put in your head and the mental habits you cultivate. In the motorcycle world, there's a saying that you go where you look. If you fixate on the pothole or swerving car then you're going to ride into it and crash. Focus on the route you want to ride.

9