It seems like a really surprising take to me, and I disagree. None of the things listed seem like candidates for actual extinction. Fertility collapse seems approximately impossible to cause extinction given the extremely strong selection effects against it. I don’t see how totalitarianism or illiberalism or mobocracy leads to extinction either.
Maybe the story is that all of these will very likely happen in concert and half human progress very reliably. I would find this quite surprising.
I don’t see how totalitarianism or illiberalism or mobocracy leads to extinction either.
That’s not what Scott says, as I understand it. The 50%+ chance is for “death or Venezuela”.
Most likely we kill ourselves (...) If not, some combination of (...) will impoverish the world and accelerate its decaying institutional quality.
I am just guessing here, but I think the threat model here is authoritarian regimes become more difficult to overthrow in a technologically advanced society. The most powerful technology will all be controlled by the government (the rebels cannot build their nukes while hiding in a forest). Technology makes mass surveillance much easier (heck, just make it illegal to go anywhere without your smartphone, and you can already track literally everyone today). Something like GPT-4 could already censor social networks and report suspicious behavior (if the government controls their equivalent of Facebook, and other social networks are illegal, you have control over most of online communication). An army of drones will be able to suppress any uprising. Shortly, once an authoritarian regime has a sufficiently good technology, it becomes almost impossible to overthrow. On the other hand, democracies occasionally evolve to authoritarianism, so the long-term trend seems one way.
And the next assumption, I guess, is that authoritarianism leads to stagnation or dystopia.
It seems like a really surprising take to me, and I disagree. None of the things listed seem like candidates for actual extinction. Fertility collapse seems approximately impossible to cause extinction given the extremely strong selection effects against it. I don’t see how totalitarianism or illiberalism or mobocracy leads to extinction either.
Maybe the story is that all of these will very likely happen in concert and half human progress very reliably. I would find this quite surprising.
That’s not what Scott says, as I understand it. The 50%+ chance is for “death or Venezuela”.
I am just guessing here, but I think the threat model here is authoritarian regimes become more difficult to overthrow in a technologically advanced society. The most powerful technology will all be controlled by the government (the rebels cannot build their nukes while hiding in a forest). Technology makes mass surveillance much easier (heck, just make it illegal to go anywhere without your smartphone, and you can already track literally everyone today). Something like GPT-4 could already censor social networks and report suspicious behavior (if the government controls their equivalent of Facebook, and other social networks are illegal, you have control over most of online communication). An army of drones will be able to suppress any uprising. Shortly, once an authoritarian regime has a sufficiently good technology, it becomes almost impossible to overthrow. On the other hand, democracies occasionally evolve to authoritarianism, so the long-term trend seems one way.
And the next assumption, I guess, is that authoritarianism leads to stagnation or dystopia.