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billtowson1982 t1_ja76gf1 wrote

Possible collapse: If your concern is that you don't want to live to see society regress to a primitive state - don't worry, you won't. We have 8 billion (and growing) people who depend on modern, often just-in-time supply chains for life. In a collapse, with those supply chains gone and people with guns wanting to eat most people will die, not live to see how it plays out (and that's not even addressing whatever causes the collpase in the first place).

Climate change: It's not the greed of powerful people that is the main driver of climate change - having billions in a bank account (or actually as a number that reflects nothing more than ownership of large percentages of the businesses that produce the goods and services we all use), doesn't mean one burns a ton of fossil fuels or farts out a lot of methane. In reality, it's consumption, and the massive fossil fuel use that enables our current many order of magnitude higher level of consumption per person, plus the multiple orders of magnitude larger world population than in the past that drives climate change.

Also climate change is being addressed. Quickly enough to save most non-livestock major mammals? No. Quickly enough to prevent 100s of millions of currently poor people from dying and being forced into refugee status? No. But quickly enough to allow most kids in comparatively well-off countries to live basically normal lives plus a house-destroying disaster or two? Yes. The quicker the better though - every delay costs everyone.

Economy: No, temporary shocks like COVID and the Russian war on Ukraine aside, the economy is not getting worse - whatever you or your friends/family may feel like. The economy is humming along quite nicely, actually.

AI: Your first worry about AI - because it's already happening now - is how manipulated you and everyone else will be (and in fact already is) by AI that is trained to engage you in order to sell you shit. As it turns out, the best way to engage people is to make them angry, anxious, sad, vengeful, etc., and to engage them in conspiracy theories and lies. This is also increasingly used to define your politics for you (and for everyone). The worst of it is that AI is turning you (and everyone) into the worst version of yourself - and addicting you to rage, fear, conspiracy theory, etc. for the primary goal of just selling you on more shit (i.e. the same consumption that drives climate change).

Your second worry about AI should be how it will replace a ton of jobs including in fields like art that most of us really wish would remain human, and that replacement will cause massive social disruption.

Your third concern is that you are young enough that you might live until the development of AGI, and then that will probably be the end for humanity.

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