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I mean, I strongly disagree. I think the most likely path is that the current elite (or the elite of the next generation) will create life extension technology and effectively rule forever, at least under your worldivew.
I'd like to see a humanity that moves forward and values things more than just base reproduction. I'd like to see us value knowledge, and understanding, and frankly love. Even if it contradicts some of the transhumanist futures some other users believe in.
Demographics are not destiny, and never have been. Memes are destiny, and you'd better start acting like that's the case, or you'll be outcompeted.
This is a techno-optimist take. But I don't know that the techno-optimist take is well supported by evidence. The current elites will stay in power until they die in office- living much past 100 is just not attainable even for the elites.
Well yeah current older folks are dead. With the advance of the pace of science I see coming with AI and other advances though, I'm optimistic that anyone younger than say, 45 or 50 today, may be able to live a lot longer than people can right now.
Remember that it used to be almost impossible to survive things that are routine to cure nowadays. Medicine inexorably advances, and if we techno-optimists are right about the potential of AI that advance will be swift indeed.
Remember that maximum human lifespan hasn't really changed in centuries.
Remember that humans couldn't fly for millenia. Remember that space was a celestial sphere thought unbreachable. Remember that sickness was seen as the devil's work.
The march of technology renders these claims pointless. We will solve aging if given enough time, and if we keep on the right track.
Still can't. Humans can only build machines that fly.
Based on pandemic propaganda, it still is, except the Devil is now personified as a Republican instead of a humanoid with horns and tail, or a man of wealth and taste.
This claim is vacuous, though.
There are human-constructed flying objects in all four quadrants of the machine/not-machine//self-powered/human-powered schema.
(Normal aeroplane/helicopter/etc.; pedal-powered aircraft; helium balloon; hang-glider.)
All of those are machines.
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Sure, but they're talking about a technology change.
Before the internal combustion engine, the maximum human travel speed hadn't changed in centuries either.
Not to say that it's likely, but I think you're ignoring the essence of the argument.
The essence of that argument is usually something like "look how much the mean (or median even) lifespan has gone up over the years -- surely people will soon live to be 200". Without this (bad) essence, it's no better than "well we seem to be very smart, surely we will figure out a way to increase the maximum lifespan real soon now" -- which seems pretty unconvincing given that it hasn't budged a bit for hundreds of years.
You can't take the average argument for a position, you have to engage with the argument in play, because it only takes one good argument for something to be right. I can generate several hundred bad arguments for any position you want right now.
Even further, that wasn't the case this time. TheDag explicitly called out a technology change.
Quoting them:
And when talking about what science is coming, they don't talk about past medical advances, but reference AI, presumably some sort of intelligence explosion.
So what technology has increased the maximum lifetime of humans so far? If the answer is "nothing", than why should we think that future technology will do so? Even if we allow rationalist-fever-dream-AIs, they are not gods -- all concrete science so far indicates that maximum human lifespan is really quite a persistent and narrow range.
It hasn't. But technology obviously can fundamentally change human limitations. Before the airplane, what technology had increased the maximum flight distance of humans?
Because there are several examples of biological immortality in nature (just as there are several examples of flight in nature), and we've gotten pretty good at stealing ideas from evolution. We know it's possible for a biological organism to be immortal.
Now, will the first couple thousand people who try such a genetic alteration probably get some weird form of super-cancer? Sure. Probably. But if we're talking of the elite of the elite pursuing their goals, that's not that many bodies. Elites have thrown way more bodies away in pursuit of mere land.
Without running crazy genetic experiments, sure. Do you have an argument for why we will never run those experiments in the future?
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How can you strongly disagree to me saying 'we have no choice but to pick one of these options' and then say 'oh they'll follow the life-extension path', when that's a path I mentioned? Do you have a different path in mind or do you strongly disagree with the premise?
Demographics is destiny. You can't do anything if you don't exist. Numbers are power, though not the only source of power. In geopolitics, there's a struggle between the 1st and 3rd most populous states as to who will rule the system. There's a reason that Iceland and Monaco are not in the running and it's because they're not populous!
Even once we establish life extension, demographics still matter. The most populous states, ceteris paribus, will be still be stronger, have more geniuses, more capital, a bigger internal market, more resources... Exponentially growing populations of immortals can burn through a lot of resources very quickly.
Human values must ultimately be in accordance with the basic structure of the universe. Whatever else we do, we must not be diminishing in number, our civilization must not be unsustainable. When there's a conflict between memes and reality, reality wins. If knowledge, understanding and love are useful (and I think they are) in sustaining our species, then great! But if they or anything else is sabotaging us, then let's discard them before nature forces the issue.
The short answer is that I just get annoyed by the 'demographics is destiny' crowd because, as @self_made_human points out, I don't think that will be true for much longer.
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This seems to assume that humans will be net economic positives in the future, which I think is highly doubtful myself.
I suspect that in a decade or two, the power of a country will correlate far more strongly with the number of data centers and automated factories it possesses rather than the mere number of people living off UBI.
After a certain point, you don't need more people around, though as a person myself I'd rather we stay in charge.
In all likelihood, it's a battle between the US and China as to who'll have more automated factories. Surprisingly, China is ahead of the US in robots per worker (and so hugely ahead overall) despite the US having a head start. China has a more aggressive attitude towards manufacturing and industrial efficiency than the US.
Maybe South Korea is a competitor, they're well ahead in the 'robots per industrial worker' index of everyone except Singapore. But can South Korea secure the input resources needed, given their declining demography? Robots need iron, chemicals, mines, logistics, scale, young people to innovate with them. There's probably a critical mass of market size, brainpower and resources you need before you can develop a world-class robotics industry like China or America. It would surprise me if a small country was able to leapfrog the big powers. Can South Korea supply everything it needs domestically, or even most things? Can they compete in 'let's throw 10 billion at this gigafactory/huge research project'? I don't think so.
I reckon technological advancement and capital development (robots and datacentres) stem from high population + a bunch of other things like organization, IQ, geography and so on.
I think Asia has a distinct advantage here simply because they culturally value education far more than most of normie Americans. We don’t push our kids that hard even compared to European states. We don’t worry too much about grades and achievement, in fact we are often destroying our education system in the name of student’s feelings, or racial disparities. A lot of schools no longer have “gifted” programs to develop potential minds. There are schools no longer pushing to get kids into algebra before high school. If we weren’t attracting our engineers from abroad, we’d be even farther behind because of how bad our K-12 system is compared to Europe let alone Asia.
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I agree, but I also expect automation technologies to diffuse quite fast, such that after a period of time economic progress will depend more on total resources available to a nation (perhaps surface area covered by a nation would a half decent proxy) instead of human-driven progress.
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