Ask HN: What to Expect in 2030s? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What to Expect in 2030s?

16 pointsalexander200215 comments

I grew up in the war on terror era , covid era and now ai boom. Is this normal to see such big trends/events or maybe the world was always facing rapid changes

Musk is on his way to become the first trillionaire with questionable stock market manipulations. USA has a pedo president and AI boom is on the premise of many people losing jobs suddenly. Inflation and anti-immigrant sentiment on the rise.

People low attention span to bad things are so common place as if wars are not a big deal.

I am 24 and I just feel overwhelmed as someone from third world country.

Maybe it was always like this?

I would like some opinions on the state of the world.

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I think there will be a renewed interest in offline, analog life, and simple things like noticeboards with flyers at the supermarket to find services and people, in-person events, in-person job applications and interviews, and single-use devices like ipods, dumbphones, maybe radio and tv.

As AI "improves", people will realize that everything "online" is likely to be either fake, manipulated, centrally controlled, a scam, and generally garbage.

I think we are moving again in a very fast era. Velocity or efficiency is again more important than sipping your coffee and taking breaks. This is probably going to be a lot harder for Europe than other parts of the globe because other parts are more or less geared up already.

The other thing I can see is the greenlights that AI products will get in the next decade. AI already shows a lot of potentials and legislation already turns a blind eye about potential copyright issues. I believe every player in the theatre is going to slum dunk on this and give green light all the way.

My reasoning is built on 1) The Pax Americana is rotting away as the core is rotting away -> 2) Local dukes are going to try to grab whatever they wanted to grab but could not because Pax Americana had a hand on them (I use a feudal model because it is more accurate) -> 3) We will see more competition, which pushes all states to increase efficiency including the US -> 4) Since AI has the potential to 10x productivity, no one dares to say no to it.

Good luck and have fun! I’m very pessimistic about the next 50 years so I’m very biased.

> use a feudal model because it is more accurate

This is _entirely_ too accurate. The land grabs of today are mostly for eyeballs on ads (even though the old fashioned pointy-end-of-sword land grabbing seems to be back in fashion). Our "lords" are forced into survival mode, and mobilize their peasant militias on social media to spread their gospel. Maybe I'm stretching the metaphor too thin, but to me, it seems like we're at the crossroads between the imminent end of serfdom and the french revolution. The people are hungry and pretty pissed.

> I’m very pessimistic about the next 50 years so I’m very biased.

You're not alone. That's called awareness, and comes with experience. I hope things will get better, but the fruits of technology are not evenly distributed.

Its always been like this, I think some of it is perspective. When you reach your early twenties you are likely exiting a childhood and schooling bubble where your focus has been friends, family and school. Once you emerge from that and start interacting with the workforce you become more attuned to things going on locally/globally where before it wasn't really a concern. Probably more so for your generation because of the internet and social media the speed of information sharing is much faster and more readily available.

My opinion on how things could progress in 5-10 years is it depends on how much the average people push back. It could be pushing back on AI data centers, loss of freedoms, CEO pay ratios, etc. The intensity of the push back could impact events.

The rate of change in overall scenario has risen atleast 10% since 1680 never in the the history did we move so fast as a race when engines and watches were invented and early industrial revolution started. Before that we as a species lived relatively sedimentary lives in the world.

Each industry created a new way to do same things, things moved faster and more faster. And now we are at the inertial momentum that is accelerating so fast in overall turn of events in the world that all this happening was faster than world war 1's duration

You are not the first generation to live through rapid change.

My grandfather grew up on a farm with no electricity. Horse and cart, kerosene lamps. He fought in WWI, saw aeroplanes, automobiles, electricity, radio, the great depression, a few more big wars, rockets, atomic bombs, antibiotics, TV, the Moon landings, the sexual revolution, jet airliners, and computers, all in one lifetime.

I think the changes I've lived through are pretty big, but compared to people of my grandfather's era they aren't. Not even close.

Covid seems like a big deal, but compared to the 1918 flu pandemic, or to life before antibiotics, it's a blip. War on Terror? How about the Russian Revolution, the Spanish or Chinese Civil Wars, or the Holocaust? The 20th Century was a bloodbath.

Yes, things are pretty shitty right now. The people in power are corrupt and do illegal shit. Same as it ever was. Inflation and anti-immigrant sentiment? Same. When I left school in the '80s inflation was almost three times higher than now, and interest rates were 4 times higher. I was friends with Greek and Italian kids whose parents emigrated after WW2, and kids who fled Vietnam on boats, and they copped a lot of racist shit.

A while back on HN someone commented that his was the first generation to face a high likelihood of large part of the Earth becoming uninhabitable. I replied that no, my generation grew up thinking we'd all die in a nuclear war or the subsequent nuclear winter.

Anyway, all this is making feel like a ranty old man, and I'm not even old yet. The world has always been going to shit. It lurches from crisis to crisis, but never quite falls apart completely, and sometimes good things happen.

It is normal to feel this way. We are adapting since inception. We should not fear this AI Boom TBH. The same people who opposed Cars during the Horse Era were driving around Ferrari's. We should make the most of AI as long as it brings value to Humanity.

I dont have any problems with AI since i dont know much about AI to comment. My problem is with the stockholders of AI companies who are investing in hopes that AI will replace majority of the workforce. Again,I dont have a problem with that either due to my lack of knowledge. My problem is the premise that people/billionsairs are investing to make people useless essentially and make themselves richer

and then run as fast as dinosaurs did when that comet hit earth when everything goes haywire

We've been through many big changes across history and we are still here, but this is the first time where human intelligence is really getting replaced in most areas! So the prospect is not great!

At 24 this feeling is nearly universal across generations. Every cohort encounters the scale of the world right around that age and finds it staggering.

If I may suggest some books for you that can help you get answers on some of these themes:

"Was it always like this"?

A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman. About 14th-century Europe: plague, schism, war, economic collapse, social breakdown. Tuchman wrote it partly to show her own generation that calamitous centuries are a recurring feature.

"Meaning"

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Written by a Holocaust survivor. The core insight is that meaning is something you construct, not something the world owes you. Can land hard if you are feeling crushed by macro forces.

More climate disasters, more wars (water's war), more refugees.

i will be farmer.

Humans are terrible at predictions.

Close thread.

Except death. And taxes.

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