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Buck's Shortform — LessWrong

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One thing I notice when reading 20th century history is that people in the 1900s-1970s had much higher priors than modern people do that the future might be radically different, in either great or terrible ways. For example: I really feel like the ambient cultural sense among educated Americans is: the future will be kind of like the present, treating it as if something radical will happen is naive. (They sort of say that they think climate change will be apocalyptic, but it feels to me like what they're really imagining is that the world is "enshittified" further, in the same way that it sucks that DoorDash is now expensive, and maybe poor people elsewhere die.) I think this is probably mostly because there's an important sense in which world has been changing more slowly (at least from the perspective of Americans), and the ways in which it's changing feel somehow less real. Someone who was 50 in 1945 had seen the collapse of empires that had lasted centuries, unprecedented wars, the

x Buck's Shortform — LessWrong Buck's Shortform by Buck 18th Aug 2019 AI Alignment Forum 1 min read 383 12 Ω 3 This is a special post for quick takes by Buck . Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page . Rendering 0 / 383 comments, sorted by top scoring (show more) Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 8:04 AM Moderation Log More from Buck View more Curated and popular this week 383 Comments 383 Comment Permalink Buck 8mo 171 53 One thing I notice when reading 20th century history is that people in the 1900s-1970s ha

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