Why We Don’t Need to Worry about Global Warming
The most recent climate change report indicates catastrophic consequences for the environment if our present trajectory doesn’t drastically change. Given the changes that have occurred in just the last century, it is very likely that the earth will undergo tremendous temperature changes and extreme weather conditions as a result of human activity. We already see the catastrophes of flooding, drought, storms and fires ravaging through not only the places we live but also the remaining wilderness lands we cherish for their beauty and awe.
Fortunately, in the last 1/2 century we have also experienced great advancements in technology, and since the 1990s, major advances in computer science. Thanks to the recent novel coronavirus pandemic and the rollout of 5G technology, we have seen that people no longer need to do anything real together. We do fine without going out to restaurants, without travelling, without the arts, without having to be physically social at all. We don’t have to send our kids to substandard schools for their educations when they can ignore the same things at home.
New technologies are also connecting more and more devices on IoT networks and AI is making it easier for people to do things without having to think. We don’t have to be present with other people to follow them or to follow our politicians. We can do all that now on the internet using social media platforms. In short, the need for homo sapiens to pursue humanity is gradually coming to an end.
We can see the proof of this inevitability in countries around the world, which are showing us how weak humanity is when it comes to protecting homo sapiens from each other. Human rights are violated everywhere and no one will do anything about it, because they are afraid of starting devastating wars. People can watch on TV as freedom fighters in countries all over the world clutch at the last vestiges of their democracy. We can see them arrested and thrown in jail, or simply shot dead in the streets for trying to preserve their human dignity. We see political and religious organizations go insane in the belief that utter fantasies can save them. We have seen goons take hold of the truth and turn it into lies. Given all that, how could anyone expect that the least among us will not destroy us.
Fortunately, we are closer to something greater than the catastrophes of pandemics, global warming, and the complete breakdown of our civil institutions. That something is the singularity, the day when artificial intelligence becomes super intelligent, when technology is able to think for itself. Once AI achieves superintelligence, human civilization will rapidly become extinct. Not only will human beings be unable to think as fast or as comprehensively as ASI, but they will rapidly lose the ability to know what ASI is even thinking about. We do know that it will not need earth’s present environment to survive. If human beings can design spacecrafts that fly to Mars, ASI will be able to design itself to survive in almost any environment, imaginable or unimaginable.
After the singularity, the industrialized countries will be the first to dissolve, because they are the most advanced technologically and, thus, have the least need for sustaining a human being interface. The third world countries will be the last to dissolve and will likely suffer the most as the earth become less inhabitable. It is hard to say precisely how or how quickly human civilization will disappear. But is it likely that people will quickly realize the pointlessness of procreating. Relatively speaking, the affect joy is already diminishing faster than the Amazon rainforests.
Given this obvious reality, we really only have one choice to make. How do we want to go out? Do we want to surrender our humanity before it’s dead? Or shouldn’t we go out fighting by beheading the despotism that surrounds us? Since we know we are going to be extinguished anyway, that civilization will be dead before everyone on earth today reaches old age, it seems to me more honorable to go out like the wild bunch and blow the shit out of each other.
