Nouriel Roubini is . . . not optimistic these days:
What I have called megathreats others have called a “polycrisis” — which the Financial Times recently named its buzzword of the year. For her part, Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, speaks of a “confluence of calamities”. The world economy, she warned last year, is facing “perhaps its biggest test since the second world war”. Similarly, the former US secretary of the Treasury Lawrence H Summers argues that we are facing the most acute economic and financial challenges since the 2008 financial crisis. And in its latest global risks report — released just before elites gathered in Davos this month to discuss “cooperation in a fragmented world” — the World Economic Forum warns of “a unique, uncertain and turbulent decade to come”.
Hmmm. "Buzzword" is pretty much the opposite of "deeply thought out." After all, the 2022 buzzword of the year among the chattering classes was apparently "ussy," which is now being made a suffix for every possible word in the English language.¹
As for the rest, calm down, people. There are always multiple crises floating around, and the ones we're personally facing always seem far more dangerous than the crises of past generations. But this is an illusion, a combination of recency bias and the fact that we know how all the past crises worked out (i.e., we're still alive so how bad could they have been?).
It's always possible that we're entering a new age of annual pandemics or something, but there's no special reason to think so. At the moment, the only two really, really serious crises are climate change and artificial intelligence. And while I'll grant that climate change is a calamity in the waiting, artificial intelligence isn't—at least, it doesn't have to be. If we assume that chess-playing computers don't accidentally destroy us all, the main effect of AI-powered robots will be to do all our work for us—and fix climate change while they're at it. That sounds pretty nice.
Of course, this assumes that the human race can act decently, instead of like the greedy mofos we've been throughout history. After all, taking advantage of AI means little more than fairly distributing the products of all that free labor.
That should be easy, right? All we have to do is act decently! How difficult can that be, you lizard-brained cretins? Every time I think about this, it makes my blood boi—
Ah, right. What was I saying? Oh yes: we just have to overcome our lizard-brained selves and treat other people decently. So it's really a monocrisis, not a polycrisis. But it's a big 'un.
¹As in, say, "That's a hell of a blogussy you have there, Kevin!" Do you think this makes no sense whatsoever? Welcome to the over-40 club.
"Of course, this assumes that the human race can act decently, instead of like the greedy mofos we've been throughout history. After all, taking advantage of AI means little more than fairly distributing the products of all that free labor."
I think I see a logical flaw here. Just who is going to "take advantage" of AI if not the "greedy mofos we've been throughout history"? Are they the ones who will be "fairly distributing the products of all that free labor"?
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Any time I start to feel we are approaching a world crisis I pick up a book or two on WWII to settle my mind. Almost nobody alive today remembers when we had a real world crisis.
why add four extra letters to a word that tell you nothing? yes, i'm a member of the over-40 club in good standing.
Umm, it's not like adding the suffix "-burger" to a word tells you anything.
hmmm, --'-ussy'.
As when 'puss-ussy' means 'full of vagina', presumably.
Agreed.
Artificial Intelligence, --people worry about Skynet, but no one worries about C3PO.
Like +10. And that R2D2 ... what's he saying, anyway? Does anybody know?
Great
After all, the 2022 buzzword of the year among the chattering classes was apparently "ussy,"
Boy oh boy am I out of it. This is the first I'm hearing of this...
I can’t wait until the AI kills all the spam bots. Talk about an arms race! Keep your head down.
At the moment, the only two really, really serious crises are climate change and artificial intelligence.
I think this is about right. The pandemic and the return of inflation has given everything a rather unsettled feeling, but they're both fading (if with stubborn slowness). And so has the specter of a nasty shooting war on the European continent—especially nasty since it very much feels like a proxy war between two nuclear powers. It would really be nice to see that war end. Also, US political instability...
"At the moment, the only two really, really serious crises are climate change and artificial intelligence."
Maybe consider Putin, nukes, expanding European war, Korean peninsula, nukes, Chima Taiwan? And ten billion people on this rock by 2050.
I can either say:
"I lived in a time when there were so many crises they had to invent a new word for it."
Or...
"I lived in a time when people had nothing better to do than make up new words for crises."
Both seem like a punishment.
Roubini dubbed the 2008 financial crisis 'a black swan event.' Turned out it was a garden variety white swan daubed in ink by people like Roubini. His 'polycrisis' will have a similar fate.
Like +10. Yes, garden-variety speculative bubble, inflated by people who knew better, but had no disincentives for doing better.
Sorry, mixed my thoughts; ‘no incentives to do better’
I used to read Roubini way back when, well, when he was free to read. I don’t think he has ever been optimistic. He nailed ‘08 crash well before the actual crash though.
polycrisis?
I guess the French academics of the the 90s killed the appeal of hyper, with terms like hyperpower, so we need a new adjective.
But Kevin, you can avoid the rush and invent your own terms based on SI prefixes!
"The US faces an unparalled exacrisis, but we can rely on our petamilitary and our tera-economy to ensure that our citizenry maintain their gigalives".