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Comment by fnovd | Hacker News Reader

We've been "moving too fast" since we figured out agriculture. It's fine. The world as you know it will change irreversibly; you'll long for the simplicity of youth; you will bemoan the state of the world we have left for our children... just like every generation before us did. It'll all be fine. Enjoy the ride, it's called life, and it's better than it ever has been.

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These rah rah comments aren't illuminating or helpful. There are immense costs - societal and ecological - to progress that a lot of people seem to be blind to, whether willfully or not.

One can reasonably argue that the printing press was responsible for the speed and violence of the reformation. But the alternative of an illiterate world is hardly a panacea. Most large-scale advancements have the same flavor.

What are we to do, then? No snark, honest question.

We should have had a moratorium on potatoes, look at us now.

Maybe a moratorium on the Haber process though.

The power to seriously harm nations may be in the hands of tens of thousands of individuals within a few years. Things might just be different this time.

It will be different this time, just like it was every other time. It still doesn't matter. The epoch of earth's history that happens to overlap with your own lifespan isn't inherently more interesting or important than any other time, except to you. But sure, what good is an exciting new frontier without a gaggle of doomers worried about what's on the other side? Same as it ever was.

>The epoch of earth's history that happens to overlap with your own lifespan isn't inherently more interesting or important than any other time, except to you

Earth's history, sure. Humanity's history though? Living during the Apollo program is clearly more interesting than living in a period of relative stasis. Living during the AGI revolution could be more interesting still, we'll have to see.

That's already the case

Past performance is not indicative of future results.

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