The Road to Utopia: A manifesto for reclaiming a humanist future (2020)

(Paraphrasing Sapiens): 1,000 years ago a person living in China had a varied diet, spent time catching food in a forest, was not exposed to industrial pollution, had large amounts of free time and time spent socializing with other humans.<p>Today, a person living in the same spot in China works 6.5 days per week doing the same task all day in an electronics factory, lives in a dorm with other workers and away from family, has no privacy, suffers from massive industrial pollution and noise.<p>Humans are adapted for the hunter gatherer life and this is likely the environment wherein human flourishing can be expected.<p>Each revolution (agricultural, industrial, information) has chipped away at that life more and more until it does not exist.<p>When Jared Diamond said in the 1990s that the agricultural revolution was the worst thing to happen to humans, there was outrage and he was forced to apologize. Now, that thinking is becoming accepted.

I&#x27;m not so sure about that. We live in a golden age compared with, say, how things were in ancient times. Mostly thanks to technology.<p>For example, I&#x27;m sitting in my warm house sipping coffee typing this, lit with electric light, with the stereo playing softly in the background. I&#x27;m trying not to go eat that box of donuts in the kitchen. Maybe I&#x27;ll watch a movie later.<p>I&#x27;m not shivering in a cave drinking water, sitting in the dark, and wondering if I&#x27;ll get lucky and catch a squirrel to eat tomorrow. That is, if I can walk on my broken ankle.

What they&#x27;re saying here:<p>Some tech can be directionally utopian and some not. Various technologies lead us in various paths along the gradient of utility. Some tech is actively dystopian, when put in the context of social psychology. Tech is inherently meaningless - its usage in the real world by real societies defines its effect.<p>Tech&#x27;s overall effect on utopia is based on our collective ability to predict and responsibly use it. That ability may not scale.

10 years ago or so I had a sudden and excruciating pain on my right side (my gallbladder was filled with stones), according to my doc the stuff was pretty serious and what it could be very well a life-threatening situation became a routine operation, I was out in less than 3-4 days. I dont think my experience was exceptional. Reading posts like these make me laugh and laugh and laugh.

The image of a utopia where all disease are stopped in their tracks, where there is enough food and shelter for nearly 50 billion humans and where every nook an cranny is infested with homo sapiens and they live and breed incessantly and whose ideas never die, where most other species become extinct and where nature is confined to artificial habitats makes me smile. Yes we can do it! And yes we will do it if nothing stops us. I&#x27;m glad I won&#x27;t live enough to be part of it.

Undeniably, these are complex and depressing times for many, maybe even most, people.<p>However, I&#x27;m sitting at a desk, two windows into all human knowledge in front of me.<p>You can buy computing hardware at tens of dollars per petaflop per second.<p>Aging is starting to be considered a preventable disease.<p>Humanity is on a path–a tumultuous one, albeit–towards utopia.

<i>Because of this, we should reject any ideology that stresses the primacy of a group at the expense of individuals.</i> <i>Similarly, we should reject any ideology that places a system (such as markets) above individuals.</i><p>Refreshing to read these days when culture wars are mostly waged by collectivists.

I subscribed, but did not receive any email confirmation message :(

running hot water comes pretty close.

Utopia literally means &quot;no place&quot;… read the title &quot;the road to utopia&quot; with that in mind.

&gt; The American West is burning. The Arctic is melting. Populism and authoritarianism are on the rise. Nearly a million people have died from the coronavirus. Economic inequality continues to grow, only accelerated by the pandemic.<p>Compared to what came a couple of generations before, all those &quot;bad&quot; things are either imaginary or not very serious. It&#x27;s ridiculous that people are wringing their hands over them. Of course we&#x27;re going to find something to worry about if there are no actual problems. That sounds like a pretty good state to be in compared to having a world war (killed 10s of millions) or HIV (killed 10s of millions) or the Spanish Flu (killed 10s of millions), or actual communist dictatorships (killed 10&#x27;s of millions).<p>I&#x27;d say technology enabled all that good and we&#x27;re living in a technological utopia which is still getting better and better. There&#x27;s just some strange social effect causing people to blind themselves to the greatest achievement in the history of the Earth.

I don&#x27;t know if the subject matter is just coloring my perception, but this is the first time I&#x27;ve ever felt that a web page design was pretentious.

Utopia the goal, dystopia the result. It&#x27;s a trap.