Written: August 31, 2020 | Released: May 21, 2021
There are many paths by which, in our lifetimes, the world could end up looking very different than it does today. Below I’ve outlined just a few of the many possibilities, each in ~280 characters or less. Note that they are not mutually exclusive.
Path A: China could end up as the world’s sole superpower. Not only is its GDP growing faster than the U.S. (~double the rate), but it seems to be suffering less institutional decay, seems better at thinking long-term, and seems better at achieving internal goal alignment.
Path B: China could fall into chaos, leaving the U.S. the only superpower. The main way I could see this occurring is if China’s economic growth takes a dive (e.g., a big recession) and people were only willing to accept the current state of government because wealth was growing quickly.
Path C: Automation replaces jobs faster than it ever has before (due to self-driving cars, automated store checkout, AI assistants, etc.). Wages plummet across many industries, and unemployment skyrockets. Wealth inequality explodes, possibly resulting in universal basic income (UBI) or civil unrest.
Path D: One group builds superintelligent AI well before others and gains more power than anyone has ever had in history. They use it to make a trillion dollars, control politics, influence world populations, invent new tech and science, etc. A techno dictatorship of sorts.
Path E: One group builds superintelligent AI and fails to control it. While the AI is attempting to carry out one of their queries, it ends civilization and perhaps our species as well. This feels a lot more plausible after you spend a few hours thinking about how to prevent it.
Path F: Virtual reality (VR) becomes ubiquitous. People realize that VR is more enjoyable than real life (plus, it can be made highly addictive, like social media but more immersive). Civilization splits into those who have VR (and spend almost all waking hours in it) and those who don’t.
Path G: Brain-computer interfaces take off and are able to greatly augment human intelligence (e.g., by vastly enhancing our working memory, processing speed, long-term memory, knowledge, etc.). A massive gap in power emerges between those that have access to them and those who don’t.
Path H: Some group purposely creates a virus far worse than COVID (e.g., with an even longer incubation period, higher infectiousness, higher mutation rate, and much higher mortality), hundreds of millions or billions die, and a pandemic lifestyle becomes permanent.
Path I: Tensions mount between two nuclear powers. A nuke is accidentally launched, or a detector reads a false alarm of an imminent strike, or a preemptive attack occurs out of fear of the other side’s preemptive attack. Retaliation occurs. The whole world is engulfed in a nuclear war.
Path J: Humanity figures out how to use tech and education to become wiser, create abundance, solve collective action problems, fix our institutions, improve science. The culture shifts to truth-seeking, nuance, evidence, risk reduction, probabilistic thinking, long-term thinking, clarifying our values, and productive collaboration / positive-sum interactions between groups with different values. Humanity avoids catastrophe and thrives for millions of years.
It’s probably not (yet) too late to choose which paths we take.
I think you may have missed another scenario where genetic informatics reaches the singularity of being able to modify people to their greatest potential which results in three races: the powerful (traits that benefit one’s self) , the kind (traits that benefit others), and the rest of the people who have not been modified. but I have no idea what sort of world that leaves us in.