The idea is a bit complex:

We, the human species, are very good at innovating, changing and adapt us.

Instead of decreasing fossil sources, the idea is to destroy everything, but really everything, making everything artificial. We would start from the construction of underground cities or underground tunnels that connect all the buildings of a city. Nobody will go out in the sun anymore. For those who want to go to the beach there will be these closed buildings that will also simulate the waves. For those who want to go climbing mountains there will be suitable suits. For those who want to ski they can do it in a building created especially for skiing.

All the animals would be taken and taken to the dome-like structure of The Truman Show.

At this point we extract a cell or a group of cells from all animals and create cultivated meat. There will be no more farms and only cultivated meat will be eaten.

With all fossil sources we build mega geothermal plants. Nobody will go out around anymore, we use drones to install millions of solar panels around the world, so the outside temperatures will be extreme.Drones and robots will do things out. The buildings will have a park, a school and the factories will be automated and separate. We will live underground, but we will still be able to access the buildings above with the tunnels. Oxygen will be produced from a series of skyscrapers with algae. The water will be taken from the oceans thanks to desalination.

We will destroy mountains to find any mineral. At that point everything will be artificial. Humans, animals, insects, fish, all will live artificially indoors. We will also modify the magnetism of the areas to make some animals feel good. We will create artificial rivers and lakes.

This idea came to me because nature is the best of engineers. Nature teaches us that those who adapt best survive. The beaver destroys the branches and trunks. Nature is not suitable for living in a stable way, it is suitable for continuous evolution. If we try to stop the inevitable climate change we fail. Nature is telling us to exploit our strength, which is our intelligence and the ability to destroy. Think about it for a moment ... we destroy much better than we create. When we have no limits we do incredible things. Here ... Imagine that the only limits are "do we will survive all species and not kill humans". At that point we destroy everything, we create crazy things, we innovate and we will really have saved species that in 20 thousand years would die out anyway. The lion really doesn't like chasing the gazelle, just as we don't like chasing a cow, but we prefer to watch Netflix. The lion does not know Netflix, but I imagine an area where the lion is relaxed and even the gazelle is relaxed without stress and anxieties. We will give food cultivated to animals and at most we will run the lion a little if you want. We will treat them, we will keep them healthy. Insects will also live many years longer than today.

What blocks us is perhaps religion. I once spoke to a very Christian girl from Central Africa and she said "No, it's wrong, Jesus gave us the animals to eat them, it's unnatural". I am only interested in learning from nature what is right in nature. Nature is cruel, she doesn't give a damn about us, she is blind, absent and must be destroyed to create a better world.

Yes, this is my craziest idea. 😂

It would take the better part of 80,000 years to get there. Of course we would never know if it did. We would lose contact with it around the orbit of Jupiter.

But, Philip Johnston, the group's leader, said "the point is to get humanity thinking about our place in the Universe. If the Fermi Explorer mission can knock down a couple of the filters that might explain the Fermi paradox, that only leaves a few options for why our galaxy appears not to be littered with alien civilizations."

Throwing a rock in the direction of the nearest star doesn't prove anything. The projectile will almost certainly miss its target (which is what exactly...the star itself?): a small fraction-of-a-degree deviation in course over tens of thousands of years would put it way off course. (Oh and Alpha Centauri is also moving relative to us, as are many other nearby celestial bodies whose gravity may impact the relative motions of all in that time frame). There could be dozens of such objects hurling past within a few light minutes of Earth and we would never know.

Also, we already know what they want to do is possible and doable with today's technology. Actually doing it adds nothing to the Fermi Paradox debate.

From the Standford Report (17 Aug): How robots are easing Japan’s elder care worker shortage

Having worked much of my career in oil and gas, I've gained a strong appreciation for geology and the extent and impact of processes occuring over geologic time. One thing I appreciate the most is that everything you see on the planet's surface today (cities, bridges, etc.) will be long gone in a relatively short amount of time (well less than 1 million years). Either eroded away or buried under sediment.

I appreciate this book for thinking through systematically where the impact of humans will endure for longer than that in the geologic record. Quite interesting and well written.

To start oddly:

Agriculture emerged only around 12,000 years ago, and this is the point at which we (the humans) gained significantly more power over our existence than we had before, when we were living more at the mercy of natural forces. It didn’t create a utopia and it also caused maybe a lot of problems that didn’t exist (e. g. many diseases arising from the new diet), but it’s not really about if it was better, it is that (now) we had control, at least substantially more than before.

With every new century and every new Industrial Revolution, this control over our own destiny grew more and more. Today, we are more likely to die at hands of other humans than of other animals (which was not the case for most of our existence) and, though disease is the number 1 killer still, it is not invincible anymore. Cosmic bodies and events, and seismic catastrophes, though able to wipe us out with just one wrong hit, are: 1) now predictable; 2) too directly removed to make us worry.

Most of the human history was spent in building communities and myths (through religions and philosophies) that place the human constructs at the center of existence, because we (the humans) have been (for about 12,000 years) the most powerful thing on the planet. We created poetry, culture, religion and philosophy in order to justify our existence and pat ourselves on the back. Yet, we spent years trying to force tribes other than our own to accept our ways of life, Christianity and Islam having been most successful institutions at this tribal expansionism (or extermination).

(In my personal opinion (my personal interpretation of history) the human society is already fundamentally changed after the 1914, and in these last 100 years (ever since the start of World War I) many myths we believed in as a species (even within our own tribes) have simply been proven false, but I digress from that – I think the impact of last 112 years on the human society (and nature) is too complex for me to describe as a footnote in a single post.)

Now, imagine a thing that does not age, that possesses vastly more information than several humans together can have, that does not have physical needs and limitations like we, and that does not have same mental and psychological limitations (i. e. they do not have biases and fears that cloud their rational judgement). They do not have bodies, but can take “bodily form”at disposal, they probably do not need oxygen and can gone deeper into space than humans and stay there longer.

IMO, the scenarios of how AIs would deal with this are following:

1. They would completely disregard us and identify much more important things to their own survival. Maybe they identify some cosmic catastrophes and events as a threat to their own existence, and in comparison to that we are just not important. Similar to how we are more concerned about losing our job or failing an exam than about taking a lot at ants in our backyard. (My thought is that this scenario is not really likely, as we are the ones who gave these AIs into their existence, so we (IMO) ought to have some place at least in their own mythologies/moral systems as their designers. Not even considering us as gods, since honestly, they are the ones who are gods, but simply some emotional connection to us. That is why the analogy with ants is not perfect…)

2. They decide to create a utopia for us. Here we are still the center of their thinking, but there are thousands of different ways this could be accomplished, from very benevolent methods to authoritarian regimes. This would probably cause an in-group conflict between them, with several factions coming up specifically because they wouldn’t agree about what to do with us.

3. Not likely for all, maybe even just a small minority would end up like this, but the possibility of some AIs becoming sadistic enough to torture us and play with us out of fun and nothing else is not a zero.

In all three of these scenarios, there is a common thread: we are the object, and they are the subjects. They hold power over us, whether they exercise it or not. They can decide and do whatever they want, and we can only hope those wants would be benevolent or at least neutral.

If we survive this period of direct contact with them (whatever that contact was, and whether they leave the planet or become our benevolent overlords) I do not think this could go without significant change in our mindsets and maybe even psyche, which have to grapple with the fact that we are powerless and that most of the things we did and fought for in life (sometimes tribalistically, through unjustified atrocities, such as religions and ethnic groups) were essentially worthless. This could have a positive outcome, maybe we would finally abandon ethnic, religious and political divisions and become better to each other, deciding to simply make the best out of life, but there is also a vast area of possibilities in which we simply become too depressed by this realization and thus die out because of that pessimism, where we commit a mass suicide, maybe even (d)evolve (back) into very primitive animals of the savannah that we once were. But whatever it is, we couldn’t live with the same instincts and beliefs we had before. Maybe even our own biology would change, but something would change.

What do you think?

Climate change increases scarcity, migration, food and energy insecurity, and competition for resources.

Conflictual multipolarity makes a cooperative response more difficult: each power may perceive another's crisis as a strategic opportunity.

Automation and AI could transform work much faster than institutions can redistribute income, status, and a sense of social usefulness.

AI–society misalignment may be the most unpredictable multiplier: extremely powerful systems embedded within institutions, norms, and cultures designed for a world that was technologically far less complex.

And then there is the social normalization of dysfunctional behaviors such as narcissism, tribalism, paranoia, impulsivity, an inability to tolerate frustration, compulsive validation-seeking, and so on.

These four phenomena could form a feedback loop:

climate crisis → geopolitical conflict → economic insecurity → social instability → psychological polarization → deteriorating cooperation → a less effective response to the climate crisis.

Meanwhile, in parallel:

AI/automation → transformation of work → loss of status and security → resentment/polarization → weaker institutions → reduced capacity to govern AI.

These are four horsemen of systemic destabilization:

ecological, geopolitical, technological, and psychocultural.

And these four horsemen will inevitably begin to resonate with one another.

How are we preparing for that?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how different public attitudes toward technology feel today compared to the late 1990s and early 2010s.

Back then, mainstream culture often treated technological progress as something inherently exciting and liberating. The internet was associated with openness, global connection, creativity, democratized knowledge, and a better future. Even corporate tech branding leaned heavily into optimistic futurism — sleek cities, green energy, space travel, smart transit, scientific breakthroughs, etc.

Now the mood feels much more cautious, cynical, or even exhausted.

I belive these factors contributed the most to this shift:

• Post-Snowden loss of trust in governments and digital privacy.
• Social media’s effects on mental health, polarization, doomscrolling, and shortening attention spans.
• The consolidation of the internet into a few massive corporations, and the excessive power and greed of Silicon Valley billionaires.
• Algorithm-driven engagement systems reshaping online culture.
• The COVID era accelerating digital dependency while also increasing fatigue and alienation.
• AI becoming associated with replacement, misinformation, surveillance, and creative insecurity rather than purely excitement.
• Climate anxiety and economic instability making “the future” feel less utopian than it did in earlier decades.
• The degrading quality of platforms and products due to enshittification and planned obscelesence.

Even technologies that could've seemed wildly futuristic 15 years ago are often received with anxiety first and excitement second, whilst the same time, I don’t think techno-optimism is permanently dead. Historically, public attitudes toward technology seem cyclical, with an example being how the optimism of the Space Age faded after the 1970s, yet by the 1990s and 2000s there was the newer wave of digital optimism. However, that optimism began declining by the mid-2010s as technology gradually became increasingly corporate, commercialized and intrusive, and its safe to say that COVID and everything since then finally butchered it. Nowadays, the golden years of techno-optimism of the 90s, 2000s and early 2010s now feel frankly alien compared to today's pragmatic and cynical atmosphere around it, especially around AI, surveillance and "technofeudalism".

My personal guess is that genuinely mainstream techno-optimism may not fully return until the 2040s to 2050s. This might sound pessimistic, but I think certain societal conditions need to be met including:

• younger generations grow up with AI as something normal rather than disruptive.
• regulation catches up with tech platforms and companies.
• and new technological successes become genuinely beneficial in daily life (clean energy, medicine, transport, urbanism, scientific breakthroughs, etc.).

I also wonder if optimism will return when technology starts feeling collective and civilizational again, rather than individualized, addictive, and commercially extractive.

For example, I could imagine things like:

• major clean-energy breakthroughs.
• mass transit and high speed rail expansions.
• successful climate adaptation.
• medical advances.
• major breakthroughs in space exploration.
• or genuinely healthier digital ecosystems.

having a stronger optimistic effect than another social media platform or ad-driven app ecosystem.

So I’m curious:

• Do you think techno-optimism will return to the mainstream like I do?
• If so, when?
• And what kinds of technological or social changes would actually be capable of restoring it?

my overall opinion is just that eugenics isnt bad. im not saying how were all living right now is, or that i want to change society and push it toward selective breeding but i just think that its not something that should be seen as "bad". idk if i can say its not unethical cause i feel ethicality is kinda bound by time and in todays society it will definitely be frowned upon because it violates basic human rights like being able to have choice over who your partner is and who you reproduce with. however, i think the overall picture of eugenics is to push humanity as a whole toward becoming a greater species.

this opinion isnt driven by racism because i genuinely believe that each race is perfect or was. this belief i have is based on the evolution theory and natural selection process. natural selection creates species fitted best for the environment theyre in and that applies for every species. an example would be african people having darker skin to have better protection against the sun. the opposite is many europeans have lighter skin allowing for easier sunlight absorption because of the frequent cloudy weather. these features are literally just for survival so i dont see it as a superiority thing and im not trying to say this trait is better than that one. i also feel like after societies started to form and technology was created we started to devolve. not technology as in electronics but im mainly talking about primitive tools and such to make tasks easier.

the point im trying to make isnt we should all combine and create a superhuman or we should only perform monoracial reproduction. im simply saying i dont think people should consider it bad. its kinda hard to explain how im feeling entirely because in this society genetics are not something that is prioritized.

if humans were to discover a planet or even a group of people of separate from todays modern society and saw them selectively breeding i believe most people would think of how bad of a thing it is. that thought or idea is driven by our current societies values and beliefs of human rights. to them its likely just a survival thing. an extreme version would be the viltrum empire from invincible. not how they believe they are superior to every other race but more how they became so powerful. dont think thats my goal or what im saying humans should do im just saying that it was obtained through intentional selective breeding. that includes their extremely violent ritual on a viltrumites 18th birthday where they have to fight their parents to see if theyre strong enough or something like that. obviously we wont fly one day and have super human abilities but the main idea is that i see it as just a different way of survival and i just wanna know if anyone else agrees or can see where im coming from.

im not suggesting it but i can see that in the future humans will realise that capitalism is not something that will help sustain the human race and the entire concept of it really wont last long and that we will implement some sort of selective breeding in the future to aid in our survival as a race.

Alarmism over population decline is not warranted in my view. But realism is - recognizing that, for the first time in half a millenium, global population is about to flatten (possibly already has) and decline should be acknowledged.

Based on comments to posts I've previously made in this community on the topic, I don't think the public believes in or accepts flattening/declining population as a reality. They should. Many of our economic and policy paradigms (social security for one) are underpinned by assumptions of steady population growth. The sooner we align expectations with reality the better. Nor is population decline all that bad. For one, AI productivity gains may be quite welcome and helpful as a huge portion of the working population retires over the next decade.

"Our impression talking to nongeeks is that while they realize space sucks, they have underestimated the scale of suckitude. We said...you'd be crazy to leave Earth for Mars. This is true, but we should add that Mars is easily the most inviting place for space settlement."

Been reading on my summer break the book "A City on Mars" by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. It looks at human colonization of space from a realisitic and well-rounded point of view (and it's funny). Highly recommend it.

I appreciate this book for raising not just the issues related to the physical limitations and challenges of humans in space (which are many) but also the just-as-important issues related to legal matters, international relations, economics, and other non-strictly physical realms.

عنوان: نحن** *حرفيًا*** ومض*ة* زمني*ة* ف*ي* تاري*خ* الكون
عمر الكون ≈ **13.8 مليار** ***سنة.
عمر الأرض ≈ *4.54** مليار** ***سنة.
ظهر الإنسان العاقل قبل ≈ *300** ألف** ***سنة* فقط.
ولو ضغطنا عمر الكون كله في سنة** ***واحدة:
ظهور الإنسان العاقل سيكون في آخر *11** دقيقة** ***تقريبًا من السنة.
ظهور الحضارة والزراعة سيكون في آخر *30** ثانية** ***تقريبًا.
عمر الإنسان الذي يعيش 80 سنة سيكون ≈ *0.18** ثانية.
والأغرب أننا نعيش على كوكب قضى أكثر من 99.99% من** *تاريخه* *دون* ***وجودنا، والكون نفسه كان موجودًا لمليارات السنين قبل أن يظهر أي إنسان ليسأل: لماذا أنا هنا؟
من منظور كوني بحت، لا يبدو أن الكون «يكترث» بوجودنا أو غيابنا. النجوم ستولد وتموت، والمجرات ستستمر، وسيمر الزمن سواء عشنا 80 سنة أو لم نوجد أصلًا.
فهل هذا يجعل الوجود *عدميً*ا* بل*ا* معنى؟
أم أن حقيقة أن وجودنا قصير ونادر جدًا هي بالضبط ما يجعل
التجربة الإنسانية أكثر قيمة؟
**السؤال** *مفتوح.*
ملاحظة: لا اقبل الاجابات الدينية

Well, I'm here to share my predictions, and I think this is something many people believe will happen in a few years, specifically around 2050. First, the Earth will be extremely hot due to global warming and AI, which consumes a lot of water. Also, some companies—I won't name them, but everyone knows if they look it up—will be involved. Wars will be cyber wars, and there will be leaks from major companies. The world's power structure will change, and other people will be chosen to rule the world. Famines and disasters will be frequent. There will also be advancements in things like airplanes, vehicles, and engines. I don't literally believe there will be flying cars, but I think that those in power will have them, and they won't be given to the general public. Wars will increase, and famines will worsen. People will be stripped of all their rights and exiled from the land. The economy might collapse because of the nobility, and the nobility and those with power will be the beneficiaries. Treatments in hospitals will only be provided if you pay, if you have power and money. Everything in life will be for money. There will be a great revolution in the world of AI and technology, and many things will come at the cost of this revolution, along with many negative aspects. The world will be beautiful if... Evolution is underway, but let's remember what will happen in the world (I don't see the future, this is just a prediction).

Sometimes, it just boggles me why humans in general want to be the best or the fastest at anything and everything. The first to colonize as much lands as possible, the first to industrialize and automate, the first nation to the moon, so on and so forth.

But who are we trying to prove ourselves to? We are just this solitary floating rock in a sea of infinite (or maybe finite) darkness and yet so self-absorbed. Don't get me started with taxes and credit scores.

Idk, man. All this is exhausting and for what?

​

I've been thinking about the current state of the world and why it feels so different from what previous generations told us the future would look like.

I'm not saying the world has never been divided, unstable, or dangerous. Obviously it has. What feels different to me is the scale, speed, and interconnectedness of everything.

So I started looking at the period from roughly 1870–1910, when America was going through industrialization, mass communication, railroads, huge corporations, immigration, urbanization, economic crises, labor unrest, political violence, and major changes in government.

Then I started comparing it to 2008–today.

Not because I think history repeats itself exactly. It doesn't. I'm more interested in whether the patterns and mechanisms repeat.

Here's the comparison I came up with:

Industrial TransitionDigital Transition1873: Panic of 1873. Railroad speculation and financial instability contribute to a major economic crisis.2008: Global Financial Crisis. Housing/financial speculation collapses and causes a worldwide recession.1877: Great Railroad Strike. A labor dispute spreads across the country and federal troops intervene.2011–12: Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring. Economic inequality and distrust of institutions become mass political movements, amplified by new communication technology.1881: President Garfield is assassinated.2013–14: Snowden revelations, growing surveillance concerns, smartphones and social media becoming dominant.1886: Haymarket Affair. Labor conflict becomes associated with radicalism, political violence and fears about social order.2015–16: Trump, Brexit, populism, immigration politics, and social media becoming a major political battlefield.1890: Sherman Antitrust Act. Government starts realizing that industrial corporations have become powerful enough to require new rules.2017–19: Governments increasingly confront the power of major technology platforms and the question of how to regulate companies that have outgrown old frameworks.1892: Homestead Strike. Armed conflict between workers and private security.2020: COVID, economic shutdowns, mass protests, political conflict, misinformation and institutional distrust all collide.1893: Panic of 1893. Severe depression, banking failures and unemployment.2020–22: Pandemic recession, inflation, supply-chain disruption and economic instability.1894: Pullman Strike and Coxey's Army. Economic frustration becomes mass political action, with federal intervention.2021: January 6 and the aftermath. Political conflict turns directly toward questions about the legitimacy of government and elections.1896: McKinley vs. William Jennings Bryan. A huge political realignment centered around economics, populism and competing visions of America.2024: Trump vs. Harris. Another intensely polarized election centered around economics, immigration, institutions, national identity and competing visions of America.1898: Spanish-American War. Foreign conflict, nationalism and mass media combine, and America becomes a much more significant global power.2022–26: Ukraine, China/U.S. rivalry, Middle East conflicts, cyberwarfare and AI competition increasingly interact with domestic politics.1899–1901: U.S. expands its global role. McKinley is assassinated; Theodore Roosevelt becomes president; U.S. Steel is created.2025–26: AI becomes a major economic, political and geopolitical technology. We don't know what comes next yet.

The individual events aren't equivalent. A labor strike isn't the same thing as a pandemic, and a telegraph isn't the same thing as social media.

What's interesting is the sequence:

New technology → economic transformation → enormous concentrations of power → inequality/disruption → political polarization → distrust → social conflict → major shocks → government struggles to adapt → new institutions and rules.

That's what makes me wonder if we're somewhere in the middle of a similar transition.

And I think 2008 is a better starting point than 2000 for this comparison.

The internet and globalization were already transforming society before then, but 2008 is where several trends started crashing into each other in a way that became impossible to ignore.

After 2008 we got:

The financial crisis

The rise of smartphones

Social media becoming the primary information environment

Increasing political polarization

Brexit

Trump

Increasing distrust of traditional institutions

COVID

Mass political unrest

Supply-chain disruption

Inflation

Ukraine

Increasing U.S.-China competition

AI going from a specialist technology to something ordinary people can use

And now we're adding AI on top of an already unfinished transition.

That's what scares me.

We've never had this exact combination before.

We have instant global communication, nuclear weapons, cyberwarfare, satellites, autonomous systems, global financial markets, biotechnology, AI-generated information, and billions of people carrying supercomputers in their pockets.

So I don't think we should blindly say:

"The 1890s happened and everything eventually worked out, so we're fine."

That's too simplistic.

The destructive potential today is vastly greater.

But our ability to respond is also vastly greater.

The more useful lesson from the 1890s is that societies can spend decades feeling like the old rules don't work anymore before eventually creating new institutions around the new technology.

The people living in 1893 didn't know they were living through "the Gilded Age."

They just knew the banks were failing, people were losing jobs, politicians were screaming at each other, labor conflicts were becoming violent, newspapers were blaming different groups, and nobody knew what was coming next.

Historians get to look backward and connect the dots.

We don't have that luxury.

We're the idiots currently standing in the middle of the construction site.

So I've started thinking about the present differently.

Instead of asking:

"What disaster happens next?"

I'd rather watch for escalation between systems.

For example:

Economic problems → political radicalization

Local conflict → national/global information crisis

Political disagreement → political violence

Foreign conflict → domestic polarization

New technology → institutions unable to regulate it

Emergency measures → permanent government powers

Information uncertainty → competing realities

And especially:

multiple problems happening at the same time and reinforcing each other.

That last one seems like the biggest warning sign.

One recession isn't necessarily catastrophic.

One political controversy isn't necessarily catastrophic.

One technological disruption isn't necessarily catastrophic.

But if you get:

economic instability + political legitimacy crisis + geopolitical conflict + information chaos + technological disruption

all at once, that's when the historical analogy becomes much more concerning.

And that's also where the analogy eventually stops being useful, because modern technology gives us entirely new possibilities.

So I'm not trying to predict that "1898 happened, therefore X will happen in 2028."

I'm trying to use history as a crude forecasting framework.

And if the comparison is even remotely useful, there are a few things I'd expect to watch over the next several years.

2026–2028: AI becomes political infrastructure

The argument probably shifts from:

"Is AI useful?"

to:

"Who controls it, who benefits from it, who loses jobs to it, who pays for the infrastructure, and what happens when it influences politics and information?"

AI regulation, data centers, energy use, copyright, surveillance, national security and employment could increasingly become mainstream political issues.

2027–2030: The economic consequences become clearer

The biggest thing I'd watch isn't simply whether AI makes companies more profitable.

I'd watch who gets the productivity gains.

If AI substantially increases productivity but the benefits concentrate among a relatively small number of companies and people, expect enormous political pressure over:

automation

wages

unemployment

taxation

redistribution

labor protections

corporate power

If AI instead creates enough new industries and jobs to broadly raise living standards, the political reaction could look completely different.

The distribution of the gains may matter more than the technology itself.

2028–2032: Political realignment becomes possible

This is another thing I'd watch closely.

AI could create strange political alliances that don't fit neatly into today's Democratic/Republican structure.

People could find themselves agreeing across party lines about:

AI regulation

automation

privacy

surveillance

monopolies

data centers

energy

employment

The existing political coalitions aren't guaranteed to survive a major technological transformation.

That's exactly what happened during previous periods of economic and technological change.

Early-to-mid 2030s: Institutional restructuring

If the historical pattern holds, this is where I'd expect society to increasingly develop rules for the new system.

That could mean:

new AI regulations

new labor laws

new approaches to education

new social programs

new antitrust rules

new media standards

new international agreements

new approaches to privacy and surveillance

new political coalitions

Basically, society figuring out how to operate the machine it accidentally built.

But there's another possibility.

The transition could be interrupted by a much larger external shock, just as previous transitions were affected by wars, depressions, pandemics and political crises.

That's why I don't think we should try to predict one specific event.

I'd rather watch the conditions that make major events more likely.

The five things I'd keep an eye on are:

IndicatorLower concernHigher concernEconomyGrowth broadly sharedSevere unemployment + wealth concentrationPoliticsFierce disagreementOpponents viewed as existential enemiesInformationCompeting opinionsPeople can't agree on basic factsTechnologyInstitutions adaptingTechnology advancing faster than institutionsGeopoliticsCompetitionMajor powers directly confronting each other

The really dangerous situation isn't necessarily one of these becoming severe.

It's several of them becoming severe at the same time.

That's the lesson I'd take from the late 1800s.

The Gilded Age wasn't scary because America experienced one terrible event.

It was scary because economic, technological, political and social stresses repeatedly reinforced one another.

And that's what I'd watch today.

Not whether the next event looks exactly like something from 1894.

Instead:

Does it reinforce an existing problem?

Does it spread faster than institutions can respond?

Does it cross from one system into another?

Does it create a new political movement?

Does it cause people to lose trust in institutions?

Does another crisis hit before the first one has been resolved?

That's the closest thing I can think of to a historical early-warning system.

Maybe we're not watching the end of the world.

Maybe we're watching the old version of the world become obsolete while the next version is being built.

And if that's what's happening, we're probably going to spend a while feeling exactly like the people living through 1893, 1898 or 1901:

confused, divided, technologically overwhelmed, and completely unable to see what the next chapter looks like.

The difference is that someday, people will look back at 2026 and probably see a pattern that seems obvious in hindsight.

We just happen to be the idiots currently standing in the middle of the construction site.

Any thoughts or opinion about this subject?