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Not American, and I won't speak to America.
As for Germany though, and the world in general, I'm a "go down swinging"-Doomer. My country is doomed by terminal cultural decline, political idiocy, economic sclerosis, technological ignorance, social atomization and demographic freefall. We're big enough and wealthy enough to muddle on for a long while yet, but there seems to be no reason to expect a reversal of trends.
As for the world in general, I strongly suspect that the age of humanity as we knew it is slowly drawing to a close.
And I don't necessarily mean AI, although that will of ocurse be a factor. LLMs are powerful enough to replace humans in certain niches, sure, but AI as a whole still has a way to go before before it can outcompete us in general. It will, though. Sooner or later. Whether the protagonists of tomorrow's history will be AIs untethered from discrete physical bodies, or robots, or human bodies with AIs living in their heads, who knows. But in the long enough run, human bodies will just be a waste of resources. A little closer to now, we'll see more and more niches taken over by machines and AIs. At first the steam engines came for the hammering, but I was not a John Henry, so I didn't speak up. Then the robot arms came for the assembly lines, but I wasn't a stereotypical blue-collar worker so I didn't speak up. Then the LLMs came for the professional bullshitters, but they still have enough regulations in place to keep their sinecures for a while yet. One day they'll come for the last of us. Maybe some few humans will be rich and powerful even then, commanding legions of AIs and whatever human serfs please them. But one day the universe will take a good look at "humanity", notice that the humans don't actually have a role to play in there, and simplify the equation by removing us. Transhumanism to the rescue, some say - empower humans through technology to outcompete inhuman AIs. But why keep the human in there, I ask? What do we have to offer?
And alright, let's skip the AI topic. Let's pretend they don't exist. Science-fiction does it all the time. Recognizably human protagonists, personally choosing to do things, leading recognizably human lives in which they choose what to do with their lives, whom to associate with, experiment with different lifestyles, engage in adventure and romance, excel in their chosen fields, found families, believe in higher concepts, live with purpose, just like their ancesorts did five thousand years ago, true human lives for true humans.
As if.
Aside: Information technology is rotting our brains. Maybe we'll develop countermeasures (Totalitarian regulation? Social engineering? Neurological modification?) and keep the digital crack in check. If not, then natural selection will cull the susceptible. Alright, problem solved either way. This one was easy. Now let's get to the meat.
Human population continues to grow. There's a lot of us. We're not living in villages and small communities anymore (well I do, but let's not pretend that this is the norm). The growth of states seems to have been checked for the time being by the current international order, but sooner or later there will be pressure to unify further - and if that cannot happen, then states will slowly be superseded by some new order that does not respect borders as they are. Many claim that is is already happening, but in my view it's a slow process. Bigger polities with disproportionately bigger populations, atomized and globalized, welcome to the cyberpunk future in which human lives are individually just not very valuable. Will this future be the turbo-capitalist dystopia in which humans are simply commodities, flitting about from place to place, working 80-hour weeks just to keep from drowning in debt, completely dehumanized and disassociated from each other by a lack of time and the fluidity of the labor market and enjoying a standard of living that's just barely above being a rat in a box, on a good day? Or will it be a hyperregulated totalitarian nightmare in which you are born and bred and raised for the task that society requires of you, you work 80 hours a week because any less and you're an asocial parasite, you're dehumanized and disassociated from other humans because of a lack of time and the rigidity of centrally planned social organization, and you enjoy a standard of living that's just barely above being a rat in a box, on a good day? At least humans are still around, and not governed by AI overlords - but rather by market dynamics or some buerocracy. Either way, it's an inhuman superorganism that humans are little more than cells of. We will live like this. We will breed and engineer and select and adapt ourselves to live like this. At present we are halfway between the feral hogs frolicking in the woods that we were and the domesticated pigs born and butchered in an assembly line that we are destined to be. Pray that the future does not replaces us with synthetic meat.
Human life will change. It will either change by becoming completely obsolete, or will (either as a transitional period before total obsolescence or as a terminal state) change by becoming increasingly optimized towards producing value while demanding a minimum of resources. If you think otherwise, please tell me why. Historically we've gone the other way, right? Humans are more free, more individually wealthy and comfortable than ever. Why should the future be the opposite? Why in the world should we have reached peak human flourishing already?
Because in my view, either information technology or social technology are becoming ever-more suitable for the instrumentalization of humans by superorganisms, be they markets or buerocracies or AIs. Historically human agency was a key component in human value, but as we coalesce into and are subsumed by larger entities, individual human capabilities become increasingly inadequate to navigate the world. I'm no scientist, no futurist, nor even very smart like many mottizens. I can't do a good job of pinpointing why I think this. Please disagree with me. Tell me I'm wrong.
Anyways, what can a reasonable approximation of a real human being like myself do when the future looks like that? Becoming one of the beautiful elite who rules over the unwashed commoditized masses seems exceedingly unlikely. Becoming a transhuman god like some here (you know who you are) expect to be seems laughably unlikely because, as said, that god doesn't need a human component. When the future looks like a nightmare either way, the best I can do to meet it is to just carry on and say bring it. We'll cross those bridges when we get there. It's not like any ending other than death and oblivion were ever in the books, for anyone, be they man or machine or godlike superorganism or the universe itself. Consolation prize: In the end, we're all equally gone.
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