And climate change, you know.
EDIT: also on HN front page, fully autonomous killer drones are being mass-produced.
“I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to science,” Stewart said. “Science has, in many ways, helped ease the suffering of this pandemic, which was more than likely caused by science.” (1)
I disagree with regard to climate change though because that externality has so far been a net positive for humanity and we can solve the downside. Yes, technology enabled us to dig up and burn buried carbon at scale sufficient to alter the climate, but that's what lifted billions out of poverty and eliminated starvation in much of the world. We'll solve the negative externality with renewable energy, clean nuclear energy, carbon capture, improved manufacturing efficiency and materials, etc.
1) https://news.yahoo.com/jon-stewart-endorses-lab-leak-1305162...
The possible outcomes of a a runaway population living on a planet with a runaway climate are likely harder to predict than a simpler and smaller system.
I certainly do hope we can solve our problems with technology, but it will take concerted effort and unified attention to do so.
This is absolutely not true. There's zero evidence of a lab leak.
Given that we're unlikely (or unwilling) to put technological genies back in the bottle, what else can we hope for?
Sure, but even with the "remedy" we still had 600k deaths in the US and 3.8M globally. Not to mention the other problems caused by technology that are don't have a remedy yet, aka Climate crisis. I do agree with the comment above that we can't technology our way out of the climate crisis.
Humans do stuff, using technology. Some of it good, some of it is bad.
So it's really up to us, humans, to save the world. Or destroy it.
There are plenty of ways in which we can technology our way out, even if we accept your premises (which, to be clear, I don’t but I’m willing to play ball).
Indeed, our only option – save for some type of genocidal movement – is to technology ourselves out of the climate crisis.
1. Engineer trees that store more carbon in denser and long lasting root systems
2. Create drone systems to plant and maintain tons more trees
3. Improve energy capture technology to reduce our net new greenhouse gases
4. Create more efficient motors for the same reason as above
5. Create new recycling technologies so we can reuse more of the stuff we already have without mining more
6. Speaking of raw material acquisition, we can mine asteroids instead of our own planet
7. Transition more activities online to reduce the need for physical travel for more things
8. Hell, move more business to the internet to reduce the environmental footprint of office space
Literally this list can go on and on. Technology is the only thing that fundamentally improves the trajectory of human society.