m8, none of those things are guaranteed. I mean, the establishment that we thought was supposed to be so invincible couldn’t even keep a reality TV star from becoming the President of the United States. Solar panels are still getting cheaper just as we need them to, CPU development is probably slowing and with it AI will take longer to eat all the jobs, basic income is gaining more support, and people are becoming at least somewhat more environmentally conscious, especially the new generations.
Yes, it could all become a cyberpunk dystopia, but there’s also a reasonable chance of a golden age if we manage to make it through the time window as a civilization.
None of that will stop the dysgenics, the hedonic treadmill, the pro-life attitudes, the loss of privacy, the shitiness of the discourse, or the overpopulation. Also, it’s improvement in AI, not computing powers, that will take our jerbs. And even then it’s not about the jerbs so much as the feeling that you’re capable of doing SOME difficult task that a robot can’t. Plus the fact that you can’t reasonably defend yourself from robots with even slightly above-human intelligence.
There’s little reason to worry about the dysgenics for now, since by the time they actually start biting with real teeth, genetic engineering will be cheap enough to reverse the effect. The pro-life attitudes will also die off in time - by necessity when life extension arrives - and there will still be privacy in virtual reality. Population growth is still cratering and I think with higher average intelligence the political will for some restrictions will emerge when life extension does. The big reason people don’t support it right now is the literal Nazis and the previous racists in various countries.
