John Naisbitt, author of the '80s bestseller Megatrends, died a couple of weeks ago. This got me thinking about the big underlying ideas that animate a lot of my views, so I figured I should stop for a bit and write them down. Those of you who are regular readers will recognize most of them since they pop up frequently, but there are a few that have mostly stayed in the background. Here they are:
- US politics will stay toxic as long as Fox News is around. Rupert Murdoch has discovered that spreading fear and outrage is the most reliable way of making money, so that's what he does. It's all but impossible to sustain a traditional political system when half the population is scared senseless of the other half, and that will remain the case until Fox New is somehow reined in.
- Don't worry so much about China. China is now, and will remain, our biggest rival on the geopolitical stage. They will cause us plenty of trouble. At the same time, they have lots of problems that aren't always obvious. Their GDP per capita is still a small fraction of ours. They are coming up on the middle-income trap at the same time that their population is aging. And most importantly, they are a paranoid autocracy that will never fully embrace market capitalism. This is their Achilles' heel, and it's the reason that the United States will stay ahead of them more or less forever.
- Black students need to graduate from high school reading at a 12th grade level. This will not "solve" racism. However, it will prove impossible to make very much progress on reducing racism until Black kids are performing at the same level as white kids.
- Geoengineering is our future. I am not in favor of geoengineering. Nobody with a room temperature IQ is in favor of geoengineering. Nevertheless, the world has shown no willingness to take the collective action needed to address climate change, and it's unlikely that a fabulous new invention will do the job either. Around 2040 or so this will become obvious and the only alternative will be some sort of geoengineering. So we'll do it. This means that we should be studying every possible form of geoengineering now so that if we end up doing it, at least we have some idea of what we're getting ourselves into.
- The United States is the best placed country in the world right now. For all our faults, the US is by far the country best positioned to be successful over the next few decades. We have the best higher education system in the world. We have strong demographics. We valorize innovation, entrepreneurship, and competition. We are dedicated to market capitalism. Immigrants understand this instinctively, which is why the US remains by far the preferred destination for people around the world who would like to move.
- We are entering a biotech golden age. I know, I know: we've been entering a biotech golden age for the past four decades. But after years of prologue, I think we really are finally on the verge of huge change. Cheap genome sequencing, CRISPR, and mRNA vaccines are harbingers of the near future.
- Islamic terrorism will disappear within a decade. Explanation here.
- Artificial intelligence is coming. Don't be fooled by all the crap that's laughingly billed as "AI" by overenthusiastic marketing departments right now. These things are all toys. Real AI is still about 20 years away, but when it comes it will be the biggest breakpoint ever in human history. It will bring about change so massive and so extensive that it's nearly impossible to predict what the world will look like 40 or 50 years from now. I wish I could be around to see it!
"Real AI" is always 20 years away. Has been since 1965. It is rather like trying to catch up with the Moon by driving faster down the freeway.
AI boosters by and large have no idea what the actual problems are. People who actually work in AI generally predict 35-40 years.
came here to say this..
It's the only disagreement I have with this list - thank you Kevin..
The #1 is really the number 1 thing we need to solve, would speed up progress in so many other areas.
AI, twenty years away for the last sixty years.. it was twenty years away when I was working on 'expert systems' in the 80s. Only later did I learn the history of AI predictions,
https://intelligence.org/files/PredictingAI.pdf
should have said, major disagreement.. of course there are quibbles but the broad outlines of the rest seem to me sound.
BTW, these are not so much underlying ideas as they are specific views.
Kevin's 100% correct about China. Their demographics are really bad, as in, Italy or Japan bad. It's extremely unlikely the PRC will have a faster than (world) average growing economy by the end of the current decade. And then China's share of world output will begin to shrink. However, we shouldn't gloss over the fact than top CCP leadership is well aware of this trend, which is why they might be tempted to make a move on Taiwan sooner rather than later. So, yes, China isn't nearly as formidable (especially when we look at the longer term geopolitical outlook) as the neo-McCarthyites claim, but there's no guarantee the Chinese won't do something rash and stupid.
I think Kevin's too optimistic with respect to the US, I have to say. But I sure hope I'm wrong and he's right.
China though doesn't need to be driven by debt. The U.S. simply can't survive without it. The U.S. needs government planning and regulations on capital markets to refocus on industrial production and space. It will crowd out many annoying restaurants for real economy and materials independence by mining the solar system.
I guess preferencing boy children over girl children was a bad idea.
Sure was.
"We valorize innovation, entrepreneurship, and competition."
I think we may tend to take this for granted, but it really does seem to set us apart to some extent. And, in may ways, it is indeed an advantage.
"We have the best higher education system in the world."
and one of the worse lower education systems in the first world.
"We have strong demographics. We valorize innovation, entrepreneurship, and competition" or rather, we pretend to valorize these things while strongly choking them back in practice, but the flimflam is good enough to fool the immigrants
"We are dedicated to market capitalism. "
Really? because we dont actually have that, we have a series of interlocking oligopolies strongly entrenched and determined to stay that way
That is because the business class is out of gas. Free market capitalism simply can't work without something like the industrial revolution.
Sorry, but calling somebody a anti-immigration racist based on Chinese demo is lolz. His problem is not realizing China has a ton of workers, period. It doesn't matter if it drops of not. Just replaced 1.4 billion people and a steady rate is frankly, not good. They need population reduction.
2nd, capitalism is a debt based ponzi scheme that basically died in 1929 after the industrial revolution had long ended. Basically it's Bernie Lomax with the government trying to prop it up and putting sun glasses on its head to hide its really dead. Let's also be clear, outside the 1879-2000 period, when the industrial revolution and then government regulation of assets created a high living standard, capitalism struggled before. Food shortages, famine were common. Malnutrition a fact of life. Since 2000 structural growth has slowed and it's taking huge debt to run the machine. That is why a real socialist would call a glibertarian on their con and plea plea liquidate the economy. The social order would break down quickly. Capitalism exposed for what it is. While the 10 year old white son shows his exposed ribs from famine, thanks to the rich property owners.
I see a white civil war coming next. Black Sun vs the Cross. Angry negros will have bigger problems than their tendency to get shot by cops while resisting arrest.
LOL
Where's the "Block Button", Kevin?
He/she gets more gibberish-y by the post.
"We are entering a biotech golden age."
"I wish I could be around to see it."
Here's hoping, Kevin.
US politics will stay toxic as long as Fox News is around.
And it will get worse.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/lachlan-murdoch-is-even-more-of-a-right-wing-ultra-than-his-old-man?ref=author
"I guess it was always too much to hope that the blight on humanity that is Fox News would suddenly reform itself when its architect, Rupert Murdoch, departs this Earth.
That kind of magical thinking was based on the idea that the next generation of Murdochs would be more enlightened—enlightened enough to know the malignant effects of Fox News and enlightened enough to see those effects as a long-term liability to the business rather than a core asset.
Well, the next generation is now clarified in the form of one person, Lachlan Murdoch, and we can forget about enlightened. Lachlan is Rupert Redux, a young-ish man in full genetic regression."