Now it might be highly dependant on my age and life events. It shapes my perception of past, present and future. But I'm really not excited by the future tech sale. All I see is waste.
Well seeing all things are finite, including the universe itself, I'm not really bummed by the fact that eventually consciousness extremely more powerful than humans will exist.
But I feel that like you I think humanity has a really enormous value and beauty -- beauty that hasn't run its course yet and is perhaps partially independent of "raw intelligence".
I have a few human beings in particular that I admire and love so much that I'd be immeasurably bummed out if we were replaced by some kind of hyperintelligent simpleton.
It's still quite far though, I believe. I think humans are not too far from the practical physical limits of complex cognition. But almost surely the day will come that we'll be replaced with something else...
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On a side note, I've been exploring different branches of philosophy to quench existential dread. Lately I've been more and more intrigued by Tegmark's 'Mathematical Universe Hypothesis'. My argument is, it is too absurd for this universe to be everything that will ever be or has been. Why this particular thing and why do we exist at all? The only plausible answers to me are two:
1) Brute fact, just accept and shut up. (Sean Carrol et al's view)
2) Everything that is mathematically possible exists (Max Tegmark et al).
I'm leaning toward believing (2) is more convincing atm. The unresolved problem is if you can define something of a probability distribution on the same of all possible universes that would explain ourselves as "roughly typical". Doesn't look like an insurmountable problem.
How does this relate to existential dread? Basically, we're just this one universe. Others exist (with greater or lower likelihood/numbers ?) with all sorts of things happening, all sorts of beings and variations of humans. It soothes me in a strange way.
Anyway, I guess I think way too much about existential questions, although by now I have some personal resolutions (some more some less satisfying) for most questions I've faced. The cosmological question aforementioned is a quite satisfying answer I've found, but there are even worse ones that still keep me up at night... (please don't ask me what they are unless you are a rationalism masochist like me!)
- most of my deepest happy moments had probably few ties to technology and were mostly a blend of ignorant fueled magic (that is the "few".. I did enjoy video games to death as a kid[1]) and human relationship in plain nature.
- the more tech, the less of the previously mentioned I see. For the social marketing spread, it feels quite individualistic in effect (know more, see more, save more, even sharing more is often twisted into a shallow game of upvote)
therefore I'm not thrilled by tech
[1] I did love tech to bits but growing up this feeling vanished a lot. I also realize the beauty is really subjective. We feel that it's a more valueable thing because it's "hard science" based. chemistry, electronics... But when you peel the layers you realize that a lot of it was mostly socially driven and imagination. I often think that for people that lived in forest long ago, this feeling of beauty was probably here, but projected onto what they had there, plants, animals, gems.
Yea I get what you mean. I'd say you're a humanist, as I believe am I. But I have some counterpoints to offer.
I'd say the big part of your disillusionment is part of being american (in general living in cutthroat capitalism). The entire system is made for you to equate money with happiness; and tech/luxury is often put as the things you actually buy with said money to achieve said happiness.
That's of course complete bullshit. A convenient illusion carefully orchestrated by almost every institution and company directed at you -- every company wants you to consume from them (so they want you to equate their products and your money with happiness), and practically every institution wants you to make more money or give them more money.
In reality, happiness is more or less environmentally unconditional. You could be happy in practically every situations -- I find it likely that past generations which were less wealthy, had less stuff, etc. were not less happy in general, and in particular you can see there are some relatively poor countries near the top of world happiness index list[1], and there are much better explanatory variables than per capita GDP, like wealth inequality (explaining why the US isn't on top) and probably general quality of life like public healthcare and natural parks. And this index probably includes variables biased towards comfort and luxury (part of its definition of "well being"), which I believe don't necessarily make you happier. Happiness is mostly a "good" internal condition, an internal satisfaction. Endearing social relationships, not being stresses about a million things, a positive outlook on life, those sort of things are likely much more powerful than anything you could buy to guarantee happiness (and in general enabling those is very cheap). But the "system" doesn't want you to achieve this, otherwise your economic hyper-productivity is in jeopardy. You're not supposed to reach the carrot, it has to be permanently just outside your reach.
While that may seem like an attack on technology, this argument isn't related to technology at all. Technology is just being exploited as a carrot to make you believe it is the be-all, end-all of happiness, while usually all it can do is alter you external conditions, make you a little more comfortable, make you spend less energy. Nothing causally dictative on happiness. But technology still has value outside cutthroat economic competition.
Technology empowers you to change your internal state of mind. For the economy, this is a spurious, undesired, byproduct: they don't want to risk you steering away from the productivity paradigm. But nonetheless, technology is a tool (or the tool) to enable reasoning, good basic living conditions, and an environment for meaningful social interactions -- basis of a good definition of happiness.
Why is reasoning so important? Reasoning is what, in turn, enables you to change your state of mind reliably, to achieve, or strive to achieve, what is actually "good", to understand what happiness even is, to experience the world and its beauty. Beauty resides inside the observant mind, not in nature, the characteristics of nature (and various human constructs) are merely the subject of observation.
Here I make an assumption that knowing more can indeed show you how to be happy, and not actually just torment you. Since it seems you've face existential questions before, this assumption does seem shaky. But I firmly believe that the solution cannot be simply putting a blind and refusing the truth -- I believe that in the end those ailments are temporary and can be relieved by digging deeper. In the worst case, if in the end after ultimate contemplation, you've absolutely convinced yourself that some things are better not being known and not reasoned about, you can always find ways of passing this to others and attempt to forget. But I don't think this will ever be truly necessary. You can uncover the truths about what makes you really happy, what are the forms of happiness, what are the forms of pleasure, what is a truly "good" form of happiness (e.g. I wouldn't accept happiness from seeing the ruin of others even if instinctive), and how to achieve it.
Another point is that while our life is quite short, modern society enabled by technology enables is to uncover the basic truths about life, the universe and everything. That is inherently valuable in my opinion, it has a particular beauty. We're this puny form of life living in a tiny rock in a massive, possibly infinite, universe, and yet we've discovered the basic tenets of reality. We are not completely blind and oblivious. If life was even shorter, I might agree that one should not preoccupy with those considerations and just bask in hedonism, but I'm glad we have some time to dig deeper and really See.
I have more to say (and my points aren't perfectly articulated here), but I want to keep this reasonably short. I'll gladly continue the discussion later if you're interested.
In conclusion I plead you to see, and take action, that technology can be used contrary to the nihilistic nature of the "system" to really enable our humanity to shine. Let us not over glorify nature because although we are natural, so is this path (it is a form of evolution after all). In this sense we must fight nature to maintain humanity, because I truly believe we have something special going, even though we're not perfect. Care for other human beings, be cared back, and we can prolong this goodness for a long time.
My contribution to this is particion in an art and technology group: http://amudi.com.br/ But ultimately I think the only reliable way to assure this path is through particular forms of government, legislation and regulation (more akin to Swiss or Scandinavian democracies than the US).
[2] You mentioned videogames, one of my fondest memories is playing an internet game, an mmorpg called Tibia. It enabled lots of interaction of all sorts between players, and many beautiful aspects like exploring mysteries, creating stories and adventuring -- and it is very much a product of 21st century technology.
Can't answer fully right now but first I do appreciate and share most of your thinking process, so I am.. very happy about it.
About universal truth, it's true, some knowledge has beauty (some mathematics, some physics etc). But I find there's always religion and false gods no matter how much knowledge has been uncovered by human societies. Societies aren't the individuals, and populations move influenced by what I still would call gods. Technology has become the latest one.
