I was just thinking the other how lucky most of us have been to live outside of history for most of our lives. Not all of us, of course. Some people here have seen active service. And others have had some shitty hands dealt to them in other ways.
But I’ve been lucky. Most of us have. I was also thinking, because I was reading a lot of geo-politics, that our luck had probably run out.
In several of my books and many of my talks, I take great care to spell out just how special recent times have been, for most Americans at least. For my entire life, and a bit more, there have been two essential features of the basic landscape: 1. American hegemony over much of the world, and relative physical safety for Americans. 2. An absence of truly radical technological change.
Unless you are very old, old enough to have taken in some of WWII, or were drafted into Korea or Vietnam, probably those features describe your entire life as well.
In other words, virtually all of us have been living in a bubble “outside of history.”
Now, circa 2023, at least one of those assumptions is going to unravel, namely #2. AI represents a truly major, transformational technological advance. Biomedicine might too, but for this post I’ll stick to the AI topic, as I wish to consider existential risk.
#1 might unravel soon as well, depending how Ukraine and Taiwan fare. It is fair to say we don’t know, nonetheless #1 also is under increasing strain. Hardly anyone you know, including yourself, is prepared to live in actual “moving” history. It will panic many of us, disorient the rest of us, and cause great upheavals in our fortunes, both good and bad. In my view the good will considerably outweigh the bad (at least from losing #2, not #1), but I do understand that the absolute quantity of the bad disruptions will be high.
Allow me to reply to both Insomniac and Dave W by shaking my fist and shouting at a passing cloud "You were warned, you damned fools. You were warned!"
I think there's a fallacy here, which is that the average joe will be seriously disrupted. I'm going to go out on a limb despite having had only one coffee so far this morning. Actual societal disruption happens slowly and sporadically, with only maybe one or two exceptions over the past thousand or so years: the black death and the Great War. From a Eurocentric perspective, if you weren't directly affected, you were probably closely related to someone who was.
I think pretty much everything else over the past 100-150 years, eg WWII, Vietnam, the internet, the automobile, either happen somewhere else, to someone else, or kind of gradually- to the point at which we say that they were kind of always there until you look back in wonderment that this thing was once upon a time not there (and I mean that about both the good and the bad in the above).
In way, I suppose I mean that history happens to a minority of people who are either unlucky or deliberate (those who for a reason place themselves in that space, with no pejorative intended). For the rest of us, we read about the events in the newspapers and our lives more or less go on, and I think that's how the world has pretty much always been for us humans.
To put it another way, 65 million years ago a few dinosaurs were seriously in history, but the rest of them probably lived out their lives more or less as normal, until the climate changed enough that it wasn't hospitable for their reproduction.
It reminds me of a question a while back about whether we as humans are still evolving. Of course we are, and it happens so slowly that we can't see it in our lifetimes. We're privy to five, maybe 6 generations over that time so we won't see what advantage a single gene mutation brings.
Stuff happens to us all the time in terms of history. We just don't know it's historical; it's just life. It's the small steps of progress. In IP you need a scintilla of invention to get an application through, so making a minor adaption to an existing product can be enough. After enough time, you can look back and say woah, how different are things, like kids today wondering what the fuck a rotary dial telephone is, or instinctively poking at a computer screen thinking it's responsive to touch.
One bit of future history we should all recognise and are experiencing as it happens, is our fucking up of the planet. I won't see the effects but my grandchildren will. That's how fast it's going to be. Ukraine and Taiwan will be nothing in comparison.
Like Prof. Cowen, I am astounded that my current meat-puppet was born as a healthy, white, male, raised by a loving family steeped in literature and reason in a city that regularly ranks in the world 'Top Ten Livability' ratings, has been able to distance itself from the Hobbesian carnage that has been human history and, on much of the planet, current affairs.
What truly terrifies me are the people like me who, having no grasp of the lessons of history (or drawing spurious lessons from it) simply pretend that it will always be this way and that 'daddy-centric' activities like waging war, protecting history and maintaining those rights and freedoms that have raised us to our current status are anachronisms and that resources are better allocated to (insert People like Greta Whassername, Adam Bandt, Trump, Bob Galloway and the delusional throwbacks like Putin and the Kims are a far greater threat to our way of life than AI.
i've been thinking about this a bit lately. As a genx-er (to put a label on it) i've adapted or been a part of the generation that helped create the recent technological change, but wondering at what point i'll throw my hands up and go "fuck it, i'm too old to learn something new". I was watching my dad trying to use a phone the other day just to scroll through pics and he ended up calling a contact that was 17yrs old (a number from when kid#1 was in the baby/mothers group) and it reminded me of that episode of the simpsons where Homer has to go back to college because he caused a nuclear meltdown in the training truck that wasnt connected to any nuclear power source.
I worry that climate change will be the big overall mass migration event and that these wars are just little side quests that ultimately dont mean much to the bigger picture. Saying that though - its all these (white) countries that have raped the benefit of the last 200 odd years (intentional word use there) that will be able to come out better than others. The US is interesting as a case study - i have a mate located over near detroit and he hangs out with a guy who is a firey and knows all the abandoned areas - the latest one was an abandoned hotel - looked like a 12 story job still with furniture and grand pianos and everything inside (albeit piled in the middle because teenagers had ransacked the place and covered it in graffiti). Weird to think that there are places like that that exist and that was due to the changing economic times in that area. Another one was an old school that had closed down - a massive school too. I find it really fascinating. There was also a story on how japan is suffering a declining birth rate, less than 800,000 people born in 2022. And the regional areas are emptying out with 9000 schools closing down in the last 14 odd years or something.
"live outside of history for most of our lives. Not all of us, of course. Some people here have seen active service..." is this the metrix we use to measure 'outside history'? "and relative physical safety for Americans..." really? This is sounding a lot like People call it a dystopia when the shit that's been happing to minorities forever starts happening to white people.
The outcome of Ukraine and possibly Taiwan each have the real threat of a nuclear exchange. Seems like that might be uncomfortable for ......well the world . I’d like to see some real journalism on Ukraine but even asking for info means you’re spreading Putin propaganda . It’s insane . And as dangerous as I can remember in my 57 yrs
Allow me to reply to both Insomniac and Dave W by shaking my fist and shouting at a passing cloud "You were warned, you damned fools. You were warned!"
I think there's a fallacy here, which is that the average joe will be seriously disrupted. I'm going to go out on a limb despite having had only one coffee so far this morning. Actual societal disruption happens slowly and sporadically, with only maybe one or two exceptions over the past thousand or so years: the black death and the Great War. From a Eurocentric perspective, if you weren't directly affected, you were probably closely related to someone who was.
I think pretty much everything else over the past 100-150 years, eg WWII, Vietnam, the internet, the automobile, either happen somewhere else, to someone else, or kind of gradually- to the point at which we say that they were kind of always there until you look back in wonderment that this thing was once upon a time not there (and I mean that about both the good and the bad in the above).
In way, I suppose I mean that history happens to a minority of people who are either unlucky or deliberate (those who for a reason place themselves in that space, with no pejorative intended). For the rest of us, we read about the events in the newspapers and our lives more or less go on, and I think that's how the world has pretty much always been for us humans.
To put it another way, 65 million years ago a few dinosaurs were seriously in history, but the rest of them probably lived out their lives more or less as normal, until the climate changed enough that it wasn't hospitable for their reproduction.
Anyway, I need coffee.
I'm a bit with Dave W on this one.
It reminds me of a question a while back about whether we as humans are still evolving. Of course we are, and it happens so slowly that we can't see it in our lifetimes. We're privy to five, maybe 6 generations over that time so we won't see what advantage a single gene mutation brings.
Stuff happens to us all the time in terms of history. We just don't know it's historical; it's just life. It's the small steps of progress. In IP you need a scintilla of invention to get an application through, so making a minor adaption to an existing product can be enough. After enough time, you can look back and say woah, how different are things, like kids today wondering what the fuck a rotary dial telephone is, or instinctively poking at a computer screen thinking it's responsive to touch.
One bit of future history we should all recognise and are experiencing as it happens, is our fucking up of the planet. I won't see the effects but my grandchildren will. That's how fast it's going to be. Ukraine and Taiwan will be nothing in comparison.
Like Prof. Cowen, I am astounded that my current meat-puppet was born as a healthy, white, male, raised by a loving family steeped in literature and reason in a city that regularly ranks in the world 'Top Ten Livability' ratings, has been able to distance itself from the Hobbesian carnage that has been human history and, on much of the planet, current affairs.
What truly terrifies me are the people like me who, having no grasp of the lessons of history (or drawing spurious lessons from it) simply pretend that it will always be this way and that 'daddy-centric' activities like waging war, protecting history and maintaining those rights and freedoms that have raised us to our current status are anachronisms and that resources are better allocated to (insert People like Greta Whassername, Adam Bandt, Trump, Bob Galloway and the delusional throwbacks like Putin and the Kims are a far greater threat to our way of life than AI.
i've been thinking about this a bit lately. As a genx-er (to put a label on it) i've adapted or been a part of the generation that helped create the recent technological change, but wondering at what point i'll throw my hands up and go "fuck it, i'm too old to learn something new". I was watching my dad trying to use a phone the other day just to scroll through pics and he ended up calling a contact that was 17yrs old (a number from when kid#1 was in the baby/mothers group) and it reminded me of that episode of the simpsons where Homer has to go back to college because he caused a nuclear meltdown in the training truck that wasnt connected to any nuclear power source.
I worry that climate change will be the big overall mass migration event and that these wars are just little side quests that ultimately dont mean much to the bigger picture. Saying that though - its all these (white) countries that have raped the benefit of the last 200 odd years (intentional word use there) that will be able to come out better than others. The US is interesting as a case study - i have a mate located over near detroit and he hangs out with a guy who is a firey and knows all the abandoned areas - the latest one was an abandoned hotel - looked like a 12 story job still with furniture and grand pianos and everything inside (albeit piled in the middle because teenagers had ransacked the place and covered it in graffiti). Weird to think that there are places like that that exist and that was due to the changing economic times in that area. Another one was an old school that had closed down - a massive school too. I find it really fascinating. There was also a story on how japan is suffering a declining birth rate, less than 800,000 people born in 2022. And the regional areas are emptying out with 9000 schools closing down in the last 14 odd years or something.
"live outside of history for most of our lives. Not all of us, of course. Some people here have seen active service..." is this the metrix we use to measure 'outside history'? "and relative physical safety for Americans..." really? This is sounding a lot like People call it a dystopia when the shit that's been happing to minorities forever starts happening to white people.
The outcome of Ukraine and possibly Taiwan each have the real threat of a nuclear exchange. Seems like that might be uncomfortable for ......well the world . I’d like to see some real journalism on Ukraine but even asking for info means you’re spreading Putin propaganda . It’s insane . And as dangerous as I can remember in my 57 yrs