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[–]AFutureConcern 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

I'm a neoreactionary monarchist. Essentially, I agree with the neoreactionary analysis of power - that we live effectively under a social justice theocracy, and democracy is a complete illusion; it's impossible to give power to the people because power is conserved. Better to have an emperor than a pope with a mass of woke acolytes. I also wholeheartedly agree with the neoreactionary identification of leftism with entropy; leftism is the decay of culture, traditions, institutions and so on over time.

I'd say I'm a parochialist rather than a nationalist, though it's really the same idea at a different scale. I think relations between people are of increasing imporance, from Self > Family > Community > Nation > Race > Species > Life.

I think technology is leading inexorably towards deterritorialization, which is a fancy academic way of saying "GloboHomo". I want to stop this and I think severe restrictions on technology will be needed to do so. Never mind the continued existence of the white race, the human race and even life itself may be subsumed by the technological monster if we don't do something.

[–]Hadza 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

I like to ask this, but how far in the future can you project the existence of your society without tech? While there definitely are reasons to slow down and trod more carefully in regards to it, without it, as cliche as it sounds, you won't survive. The most important question to ask in the future would probably be: "Does it help us survive for longer and how close to our original form does it leave us after we apply it?"

[–]AFutureConcern 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

This is a very good point and it's why a lot of people simply embrace technological change. I don't think that slowing down is possible, though. There is no stable state where technology just stops with smartphones and otherwise things keep on going as they were. You can already see - a shock to the system such as coronavirus causes all sorts of change routed around technology. There is a stable state with more primitive technology.

Would a technological society out-compete a non-technological one? In terms of survival of the species, probably not - the birth rates in developed nations are significantly lower. But the technology replaces the people in such a society, and its resource consumption and production goes way up. So it probably would out-compete it, and eventually subsume it.

For this reason the problem is very difficult to solve. We need global collaboration to stop technological growth, in order to stop global collaboration. I don't know the solution - but a promising one is acceleration; I think a large number of people already feel that something is wrong with what social media is doing to our society. If tech accelerates us into full-blown societal collapse it could spawn a new religious movement to rid us of the technological system.

The problem could turn out to be insoluble. We may be inevitably headed towards technological singularity, which will destroy humanity. But take heart! I don't see any alien civilizations in our skies. Maybe singularity is impossible, and collapse inevitable.

[–]Hadza 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Well, I actually meant projecting civilization's longevity faaar beyond one human's life. By tech extending it I meant stuff like asteroid redirection and either a solar expansion limiter gigastructure or migration somewhere else. Red dwarfs can exist for about 10 trillion years, I don't think it's far-fetched to say that humans can retain their form up until that point, beyond that something else of a lower energy state might be necessary. If humanity can potentially exist for thaaaat long, why should we limit ourselves to what our Sun gives us? That's at the very best about 150 mln years. It's a lot on its own, but compared to what we could live?

Yeah, tech arms race is pretty bad, hard to tell how to prevent it from leading us into oblivion. The tech I'm mentioning is relatively simple though.

[–]AFutureConcern 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Well, I actually meant projecting civilization's longevity faaar beyond one human's life. By tech extending it I meant stuff like asteroid redirection and either a solar expansion limiter gigastructure or migration somewhere else.

I see, I don't know if these things are actually possible without technological explosion.

Yeah, tech arms race is pretty bad, hard to tell how to prevent it from leading us into oblivion. The tech I'm mentioning is relatively simple though

I don't think a "solar expansion limiter gigastructure" is "relatively simple", lol. But maybe there's a possibility of a space-faring technology-lite future, like Frank Herbert's Dune.

[–]Hadza 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Asteroid redirection is 100% possible with current tech, just needs more rockets, some space telescopes and tracking centers, others are TBD.

I don't think a "solar expansion limiter gigastructure" is "relatively simple"

It's simple in a sense that it requires a bunch of large dumb things operating together (mirrors, some kind of heavy magnetic current, etc), it's not complex, see, although gigantic. But then comes orbital stabilization issues and a bunch of maths... well yeah, it's simple at least in a sense it doesn't require some special physics like warp drives or something. In cases like these it's good to distinguish new technology from new engineering, where the latter is iterations on known tech while the former is something completely new.

But maybe there's a possibility of a space-faring technology-lite future

I would say we shooould orient ourselves for space and expect to never find any FTL tech, including communications. Even if colonizing with sub-light speed, it won't take neeeearly as much time as you might think to even colonize the entire galaxy if you go the "self-sufficient colony capable of producing more colonizers" route because of geometric progress.

I see going super-spaceborne as a necessity because of this: we're slowly increasing the potential longevity of our species and civilization thanks to knowledge and gain ever increasing knowledge of our Universe's inner works. If fundamental questions like purpose and reasons of existence can even be answered at all, it will take a lot of pondering for us to get there. A lot of pondering that will definitely NOT happen if we die. And maybe our Universe needs us to answer them, either metaphorically or metaphysically. It took us absolutely incredible luck (it really is amazing, I can try to elaborate if you don't know it already) to even get to the point of being able to answer questions. What was it all for, to just impotently wither in a couple of million years? I personally just can't buy it.

I never was religious, but fairly recently I started to feel a sense of much higher purpose and I just can't allow us to sell ourselves short. I really don't want to be subsumed by AI or snowballing genemodding though, at least not yet, I think through simple eugenics and perennial way of living we could become all that we want to without the threats of extinction spiralling. Maybe we will reach a point where our flesh will be too weak to keep on pondering the ever increasingly complex questions, or the Universe will become so old and barren it will be unable to provide our bodies with the energy they need and we'll need to morph into something else, but until that very distant point, we should do everything in our power to keep our human form. Our genes are selfish for a reason and we should keep it that way until we can definitively answer if we should shed them.