HACKER Q&A
📣 authorfly

Are you optimistic in a deterministic way?


Without centralizing the AI trend, how do you feel about the future for humans as a species?

Do you feel it's getting better?

In which specific ways do you see it getting better if so, or is the future more nondeterministic, but a trendline, to you?

  👤 gwbrooks Accepted Answer ✓
The future is getting better, broadly and on net, judged by human-centric measures. Because the data is choppy and fractal as you look from x billion people to one individual, it's easy to say things suck and are getting suckier. But overall measures of human flourishing have been improving for hundreds of years. Maybe the trendline eventually reverses, but it hasn't yet.

Is it getting better deterministically or nondeterministically? Both.

We still don't understand all manner of deterministic forces in the universe. However, most improvements in humanity's existence have been and will continue to be driven by human will.