Conversation

Null hypothesis on human futures is pretty grim: Brain uploads seem metaphysically ill-posed/not-even-wrong FTL travel, force fields, antigravity, time travel are all most likely impossible. Cryofreezing, extreme longevity (>200y), artificial wombs seem extremely unlikely
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Lots of problem-solving tech just over the horizon but very little horizon-expanding tech. Closest is robots.
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If you limited yourself to extreme realism, hard-scifi would only paint extremely limited futures. Full of problems and gritty solutions but few soaring adventures. Maybe Mars. Deep BCI symbiosis with computers at a stretch. Sublight starships at a real stretch.
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2022: Welcome to the Great Filter, population, us. You’re stuck on this godforsaken planet full of hippies, there’s nothing to do besides solving increasingly onerous problems and retreating to increasingly escaped realities.
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Replying to
Tech critics don’t like solutionism because of legibilizing high modernism, externalities, dehumanizing effects etc. I am fine with all that. I don’t like them because they are horizon-blind.
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Solutions to problems bore me. They’re important but not that interesting. Without a bunch of horizon expanding, mind expanding generative things going on, there’s no real point to solving problems is there.
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A good way to summarize this view… if I magically discovered a cure for cancer tomorrow m, I’d be sort of abstractly happy for people with cancer but not particularly more fulfilled personally or find life more meaningful. Aliens landing though… yay!
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This thread sponsored by an acute lower back ache I’m dealing with today (while on a short road trip). Between spasms the thought that hits me forcefully is: “what’s the point of solving back aches if no prospect of warp drives?”
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