Thanks so much for sharing this. I often suspect that our anxieties about some future extinction of humanity (eg Foom, climate change, demographics) are really a form of psychological displacement of our mourning the ongoing "abolition of man". As CS Lewis prophecied, turning the lens of science inward on humanity itself and on those things which made humanity unique (the use of reason and the capacity for creativity) has caused us to believe that, objectively speaking, nothing matters. Nick Bostrom described a weird and terrifying future world:
> We could imagine, as an extreme case, a technologically highly advanced society, containing many complex structures, some of them far more intricate and intelligent than anything that exists on the planet today – a society which nevertheless lacks any type of being that is conscious or whose welfare has moral significance. In a sense, this would be an uninhabited society. It would be a society of economic miracles and technological awesomeness, with nobody there to benefit. A Disneyland with no children.
We are often tempted to believe that we are already living in such a world.
Thanks so much for sharing this. I often suspect that our anxieties about some future extinction of humanity (eg Foom, climate change, demographics) are really a form of psychological displacement of our mourning the ongoing "abolition of man". As CS Lewis prophecied, turning the lens of science inward on humanity itself and on those things which made humanity unique (the use of reason and the capacity for creativity) has caused us to believe that, objectively speaking, nothing matters. Nick Bostrom described a weird and terrifying future world:
> We could imagine, as an extreme case, a technologically highly advanced society, containing many complex structures, some of them far more intricate and intelligent than anything that exists on the planet today – a society which nevertheless lacks any type of being that is conscious or whose welfare has moral significance. In a sense, this would be an uninhabited society. It would be a society of economic miracles and technological awesomeness, with nobody there to benefit. A Disneyland with no children.
We are often tempted to believe that we are already living in such a world.