so instead of heeding a potential warning we scoff and move on? Which is the more rational and logical path to take when it’s the insiders telling us to watch out… your perspective isn’t that farfetched, but which side is to “be believed”. Imagine a “doomsday” comes and they say we tried warning you. Hard for the common person to know what to do. Do we escalate this and push for oversight or do we ignore it and hope they’re liars?
It actually doesn't matter. Today, when profit clashes with "what's actually best for the world" only one of those wins. The game seems to have become let the future bring whatever problems it brings and we'll try to borrow our way to address it then. Kick the many cans down the road to make an extra buck today.
A.I. is just another variant of the same. Quite a while ago, we had what was an astronomical front row seat to seeing a comet collision with Jupiter. The devastation for Jupiter was dramatic and it would be been a potential extinction event if it had hit Earth instead.
Hang in there for less than the 2-minute mark to hear the quantity of atom bombs equivalency and then think about how many Hiroshimas are on planet Earth today. There was enormous talk about planetary defense and putting things into space to shift the paths of NEOs to try to shield against a collision... until attention was lost to the
next thing.
A.I. could certainly kill its creator. Covid (or similar) could still mutate into something that kills 95% of the population instead of only up to about 5%. Recent solar activity that brought the auroras as far south as Florida could deliver an extinction blow. Yosemite caldera could unleash a Super Volcano eruption to likely destroy towards ALL of the U.S. and put much of the world in an Ice Age again. Gamma Ray Burst. Nuclear War. Rogue Black Hole. Rouge Planet throwing earth out of orbit. Invasion of a superior species. Food chain collapse. Chain reaction global warming. Etc. There's
LOTS of them... without even sliding into the pure conspiracy ones.
Some of those can actually be addressed if we can find the will and then keep it focused on fixing the problem. But there's the real problem: focus & persistence to deal with "it." Is there a reason for anyone to be homeless in a world that can mass produce anything for relatively cheap? Is there a reason for anyone to be hungry in a world where we can produce far more food than what can be consumed? Do people have to die of diseases that existing medicines can cure just because they don't have the money to pay for the medicine? Etc.
The most pressing need of humanity's long-term survival is to get viable colonies off of the SINGLE planet on which ALL of us live. Even a viable colony on one other world/station would significantly increase the chance that none of the many extinction catalysts could take all of humanity out. What's holding that up? We don't want to allocate the money to it. Instead, we'd rather fight wars, put our head in the sand about big problems, even deny events unfolding right before our eyes, etc.
Does that read futility? It probably does. But pick a cause, any cause. If the cause clashes with profiteering, it's probably not going to go anywhere. The actual remedies will need things to be so dire that the money-making side of it makes little-to-no-sense. Think of the scene in Titanic where rich-guy Cal is expecting wealth to save himself "we had a deal" met with "your money can't save you anymore" (only about 15 seconds into this)...
There's where remedies have their best chance... probably too late and beyond any money solution offering some advantage... the point where something other than money gains higher priority. You might recall that Cal still makes it off and survives but how: he appealed to the
humanity of the situation by pretending to be the crying child's only parent. In some extinction events we face, neither money nor an appeal of humanity will make any difference. Most of the scenarios need a
unified &
global effort to have any real chance of being addressed. Yet most of us can't even get along with our immediate neighbors in our own neighborhoods... squabbling over political nonsense, religion, geography, philosophy, misconceptions, prejudices, etc.
Make much of the population care about something more than profit and that will probably be something that gets addressed... or it will be too late and the ship will sink (with probably no lifeboats or Carpathia at all). The usual reaction: we gloss over, perhaps run to denial (often fueled by watching too much of 1+ propaganda network messaging) even if it conflicts with basic common sense,
hope "it" won't be catastrophic and go chase our own next buck or three.