[extropy-chat] re: news in perspective

Samantha Atkins sjatkins at mac.com
Fri Sep 2 00:38:11 UTC 2005


On Sep 1, 2005, at 1:53 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 01, 2005 at 01:03:11PM -0700, Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
>
>> This is surely not the point.  There are many severe weaknesses in
>> the US economic situation.  I would give an 80% probability of an
>>
>
> I don't know what's going to happen, but if anything Big Bad happens
> it won't be because of a mere hurricane wreck. It would be but a  
> trigger.

I have a pretty good idea of what is likely but of course I can't say  
how far the repercussions of this particular event will extend.   At  
the least I suspect it will wake people up to several vulnerabilities  
that have been largely ignored for too long.

>
> I'm really recommending Jared Diamond's "Collapse". It's very pop  
> science, and
> there are purportedly much better books, but this doesn't mean it  
> doesn't
> contain applicable meta level diagnostics and algorithms.
>

I read through most of this.  It is a good book but I was  
disappointed by the ending.  His models seem to traditional and  
static to apply without considerable rework in these  accelerating  
times.   I didn't see a lot of room to account for truly disruptive  
technologies.

>
>> economic downturn worse than 1987 in the next year.  I would give 90%
>> odds of an economic downturn of more than Great Depression magnitude
>> before 2010.  This level of economic event can cause very major
>> disruption of all of our plans, dreams and hopes and ruin millions of
>>
>
> I much agree that We're Having Problems, which at best are delaying  
> things
> considerably already. What do we do about it, though? We here, on
> this list? I can't see anything useful beyond personal scope plans.

Yeah.  Personal scope plans and what can be done to keep our dreams  
alive and moving forward even in the face of major crap hitting the  
fan would be good to discuss.   In between the sky is falling and  
forced optimism even unto denial is planning to the degree we can for  
various possible scenarios.  Another very important thing is how we  
personally keep our spirits up and our dreams alive and working  
toward realization regardless of what comes or seems likely to come.

> Being part of a solution catalyst would mean succeeding beyond the  
> wildest
> dreams.
>

Hey, I think there are some pretty wild dreams around here!  But  
yeah, it seems it would take something the size of MNT or perhaps  
successful capture and mining of an asteroid or two to turn some of  
this around.

- samantha



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list