Things will likely be tough for a while but the potential for AI to solve (even trivialize) many problems is also high. We're developing clean energy sources along with other fixes to climate change. It may be a tough transition, but AI could bring us to a quality of life unimaginable before. Even now we live in much more comfort than people even 40 or 50 years ago.

Also society's not going to collapse. There will never be a power vacuum like that, the people pushing the collapse just have a fantasy of it happening because they don't like the way society is now.

Yer gonna learn about Real problems sooner. Bet on that.

>to be clear nothing seems to good

Stop reading reddit and this sub in particular. It's overwhelmingly full of pessimists

This is the best time in history. No, it's not perfect, but the past was a LOT worse. Read some optimistic stuff

I remember old-school scifi. It was all optimistic. Then the trend shifted to post-apocalyptic doom stories. We have been fed this crap for years

> overwhelmingly full of pessimists

Yeah, the people who live in this subreddit actually believe we won't have warp drive. What a shame. /hj

I totally agree. Read about the alcubierre drive. It's freaking awesome.

I’m finding AI to be the best personal work assistant ever. It does the mundane tasks, like writing Policies and SOPs, for me; of course, I input the foundation and details of what these artifacts need to contain and then the AI handles the organization, formatting, grammar, and spelling that tends to take up my time (time that I don’t have). I’m now able to focus on context/content, not method. I’m loving it!

My dad once reported to me that his Grandfather was adamant that the apocalypse was just around the corner too. That's all I ever had to know in order to know not to be a doomsayer. Sure there are some problems on the horizon but things will keep going.

So the economy moves in waves. It is quite cyclical. Ex. It starts at 0 and moves up. If it is a big bull market it will overall be moving up. It might plateau for a little bit, and then move back up. Then it will reach a peak, at this point it will then crash. The markets will then be in a bear market. So for a while everything will be moving down. Eventually it will reach its bottom, before this it can also move like the bull market, and plateau for a while. The markets will never always just go in one direction (either up or down) indefinitely. Unless there are other issues like a corrupt government or uprising, or whatever. And usually these things just bring down the economy. So while yes there are always going to be times of declining markets, there will also be times of inclined markets.

>Stop reading reddit and this sub in particular. It's overwhelmingly full of pessimists

Excellent advice!

>This is the best time in history.

This is the best time in history ... SO FAR.

>No, it's not perfect, but the past was a LOT worse. Read some optimistic stuff

Very true! But you don't even have to read optimistic stuff. Just read neutral stuff, i.e. "just the facts". You'll soon learn that, in most parts of the world, this really is a great time to be alive. It's not perfect anywhere, but in most places, it's WAY better than in the past. And the future looks like it'll be even better.

>Possible collapse:

Humans have survived worse (WW2, The Great Depression, etc.). We are more vulnerable nowadays, as we are more interconnected and our food supply relies heavily on information and electricity. Basically, not worth worrying about. If it happens, you're screwed, but it probably won't happen (outside of a few countries here and there). It's like the possibility of an asteroid hitting. It's best not to think about it.

>Climate change

This will happen (is happening), and the only question is how bad it will be. My guess is that we will avoid the most catastrophic outcome (4+ degrees of warming), but there will still be degradation to the environment, reduced standard of living, and it will negatively impact outdoor activities like hiking, skiing, scuba diving, etc. This video might make you feel better:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw

​

>Economy:

The economy was far worse overall in the 1930s and 1970s, but there are still serious problems. The main problems now include government debt and an affordability crisis for housing. Demographics are also pointing to slower growth globally. Save as much money as you can, and diversify your investments (no more than 5% of your net worth in a single asset).

​

>AI :

I personally don't see super-human AI becoming available in the next 30 years, at least. But specialized AIs that can exceed human capabilities are here now (or they soon will be). At first, AI will mostly be a tool to replace tasks, not jobs. People will become more productive, and jobs will be less tedious. At some point, major job losses may occur, but I think you have at least 10 years to plan for this.

​

>everything seems to be worsening

There are a few worrying trends, and no shortage of problems, but the world is still a better place to live now than at almost any other time in human history. Would you rather worry about a robot taking your job or work in an unsafe factory 6 days a week? That would have been your likely career 100 years ago.

Climate change is getting worse, but air and water pollution are much smaller problems in the rich world than they were in the 1970s. Racism and poverty are also far less impactful than in the past. Don't ignore legitimate problems, but don't focus on despair. That's no way to live.

It will have its problems, but most likely will be more prosperous and less apocalyptic than we imagine.

Collapse: while there might be periods of difficulty, modern life won’t stop and we won’t be going back to the stone age or something.

Climate change: we’ll likely supplement our insufficient social and behavioral interventions with engineering ones once problems become too acute/expensive to ignore (i.e. soon).

Economy: recessions are a normal part of the business cycle. They happen every 10-20 years. We’ll survive, and the deeper the stock market falls, the better deals you will get coming in as a long term investor. Don’t let people talk you into never investing out of fear. You’ll regret it when you get older.

AI: It’s a historic revolution in tools and we’re in for the ride. Even if humanity were to end in favor of AI (Unlikely), AIs would basically be our descendants.

Bottom line: while you should care about these issues, you should not stress about them so much it detracts from living your everyday life.

Your grandfather was some scientist?

You are delusional to think we can "fix" climate change without radically changing Our way of life. Nice copium

If there is a problem wit AGI and it turns against us, it will happen so fast you will barely feel anything. Probably a biological weapon.

If AI is our tool, we will advance to a place of abundance. Which is worth all the risk.

Regarding climate change, AI would get as faster than climate problems. Yet a more automated civilization could also solve the climate problem.

A couple things to remember:

1. bad news sells better than good (we may wish for it to be different, but that's the current reality).
2. News companies are out to make money, so they will push anything that will increase profits (there are limits in place for commercial companies, wither they're in the right places is open for debate)
3. We have more access to information/new than any time in history. The internet enables anyone to have a global audience (and make more profit by having a larger audience), so the pressure to verify and confirm that you have good news is often lost.

All three of these combine to push bad news harder and harder. Which makes it seem alot bleaker than it actually is, since everyone is pushing doom and gloom, and you have to go looking for the good news.

The reality is there's always some bad things going on (and life changing inventions just on the horizon). The only difference is today the bad news is forced in front of you and you can't escape it without completely unplugging (which would mean missing out on current culture)

The odds are that he next generation will fare better than the last, as has been the case since the start of this country, with few exceptions.

You will be liable for whatever errors it makes so enjoy your new job proofreading for a robot

Don’t read or buy into any of the crap you see on Reddit. It’s a cesspool of pessimism. People just come to complain and present doom and gloom in almost every corner. Your best bet is to go about your life without this useless information that’s overtly exaggerated just to get karma/attention. Are certain things bad? Yes. Is this the peak of human civilization since the beginning of humanity? Absolutely fucking yes. We will also keep improving significantly. There hasn’t been an obstacle that humans have failed to overcome since the beginning of our species. I’m confident in our ingenuity to keep going and become better than always. You’re young, look forward to the future but enjoy the present (emphasis on the latter).

Of course! I proof everything. Even my own stuff.

You are worrying about these big picture problems because all of your immediate needs are already met. Don’t spend so much time looking at societal issues when you have figured out how to take care of yourself first.

No, many of his decedent's are/were.

Which is testament to Our scientific Evolution.

>How could the future be for young people?

Because old people die.

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Ironically, his decedents could bring about the actual Nuke apocalypse.

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Whatever seems Ironic on that to you. Full out nuclear war isnt assured - another, 100% civilisationending process ist assured though. And we have a way different understanding about this one than we had back in your Grandpa's days.

I'm Gen X and have been hearing about the doom and gloom, "the sky is falling", no future, etc since I was a teen as well. Lived most of my life in fear believing it all. A host of post apocalyptic films helped reinforce it.

Back then, it was a forgone conclusion that the world was going to end with WWIII and nuclear Armageddon. Inflation was high, and I remember our teachers telling us how much more basic items would cost in the future. Computers were going to take our jobs (this was before PCs). Pollution was out of control. The older generation said we were a bunch of lazy, entitled, spoiled brats and didn't have what it takes. There didn't seem to be much of a future for us. Same story, different era.

Don't let it overwhelm you. Most of it is amplified by the media to sell advertising. Fear sells. Public despair and hand wringing draws viewership. People want to feel like they are "in the know", and cling to the doom and gloom predictions shouting "wake up sheeple"!

It's good to be aware of what's going on, but don't fall into the despair cycle. Lots of people are working on solving the major issues. I think we are all frustrated that thing could change except for a handful of politicians and their corporate sponsors who seem to block all attempts to change it. That battle has been going on as long as I've been alive.

My advice for you is to look for the possibilities and the opportunities. If I could go back to being your age at the dawn of the PC revolution, start of the internet, knowing the Soviet Union was going to collapse, the sky wasn't falling, etc., I would have had a very different life. But I couldn't see through the "clouds of doom."

Just work on yourself and your future, and find a way to make your little corner of the world a little brighter, a little more cheerful. Take care of the environment and help the people around you. Vote for the people who want to create the future you want to live in. Volunteer in your community. Seek out other people like yourself you are working for a change.

Stay positive, and find what Albert Camus called your "invincible summer."

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.And
that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world
pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something
better, pushing right back.” - Albert Camus

Hope this was helpful.

oh no, I mean one of his decedents is in charge of an arsenal that probably could.

Wow. So you got that going for you?

Modern popular music is already cookie cutter as fuck. Putting an AI in control of writing music would be no different than how pop singers sing songs written by other people already.

More accessibility in creating art is not a bad thing, sorry to say.

Scientists have been shouting about the end of the world for over a hundred years, dude. Climate change, malthusian population explosions, all sorts of shit.

Guess how many came true?

My Smoking uncle has been Shouting about how Smoking is not as bad as it is made, how Alcohol helps him relax, all sorts of shit.

Guess how often he has died of cancer yet?

Of course people have been predicting doom forever. Because it’s a well known fact that all species go extinct.

is an undeniable fact that we are overpopulated. Humanity has needed 200,000 years to get from some 10,000 humans to 1 Billion in 1810. Then we needed just 210 years to get from 1 Billion to 8 Billion.

This massive population is consuming too much resources and causing too much pollution. If everyone lived like an American we would need 5 Earths. Even if everyone lived like the average citizen of Indonesia we would still need 1.1 Earths: How many Earths? How many countries? - Earth Overshoot Day (https://www.overshootday.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-do-we-need/)

The problem is that even if we lived like the average Indonesian we would still need to reduce our living standard/consumption even further because world population is still increasing, expected to hit 10 Billion by 2050.

To accomodate 10 Billion people - we would have to reduce our living standard to the level of medieval peasants.

Modern Agriculture in form of the Green Revolution was the only way how we could feed 7-8 Billion people - temporarily. Because the Green Revolution was and is based on cheap fossil fuels. These are running out. On top of having reached peak oil we have also reached peak water and peak farmland and peak artificial fertilizer.

The only way how we could somehow prevent or at least minimize the effects of this is to reduce the population. This in turn would cause less resource consumption, less agriculture, less fossil fuel consumption, less pollution, less everyting.

This is only possible when people accept that we are overpopulated, accept that its not bad pointing that out and accept that there are nonviolent ways to reduce the population. Because if we increase our numbers further - the future will indeed be dire with Billions of people starving and hundreds of millions dying from starvation.

Humanity made a Faustian bargain with fossil fuels to sidestep the resources avalable in finite ecosystems. Where formerly the planet could only sustain two billion people, industrial agriculture was able to expand the population to eight billion, and it continues to feed the global population.

Now we know that fossil fuels are poisoning the biosphere and causing climate change, but if we stop billions will starve. Fossil fuel civilization IS ending though, and we'll soon find ourselves back to relying on local ecosystems to feed many more billions than they ever did before. And this time we'll have to do this without artificial fertilizer or cheap methods of mechanized tillage, irrigation, harvest and global distribution.

No one does anything against the ultra rich and biggest companies who are responsible for 70%+ of pollution.

The switch to a more eco friendly lifestyle is embarrassingly slow in the general population.

We are sprinting towards the point of no return when it comes to climate change.

The Earth can’t even handle the current population getting a decent standard of living RIGHT NOW. It would take 1.1 Earths to give the global population in 2012 (about 7 billion people at the time, it’s over 8 billion now and counting) the same living standard as the average person in China in 2012, accounting for resource consumption, land use, carbon emissions, etc. According to the cofounder of the organization that provided the data for the graphic, this is a SIGNIFICANT UNDERESTIMATE since “there are aspects on which no good data exists that we don't include, so our demand on nature is larger” as he stated in the article.

For context, the average Chinese person made just a bit over $5.50 a day when the infographic was made AFTER adjusting for price differences between countries. That’s about $2000 per year.

The Earth CANNOT handle a population of 8+ billion people living a lifestyle where they make just over $2000/year, adjusted for price differences between countries. This standard of living is FAR below what any housed person in a developed country could endure, nevermind enjoy life in, no matter how hard you try to make it sustainable. There is no way to provide a pleasurable existence for the 8 billion people alive now, never mind the 10 billion or more projected to exist by 2100. It will only get worse as developing countries industrialize and consume more resources per capita as populations boom and resources (many of which are nonrenewable) dwindle, especially with climate change dramatically exacerbating things. The only moral solution is lower birth rates unless you want a global genocide, eternal poverty for most of the planet (as is happening now), or mass famine.

Then there are the horrific effects of climate change and resulting flooding, resource depletion, natural disasters, wars, immigration crises, etc. The climate crisis could displace 1.2 billion people by 2050 and its effects on the environment, water supply, and agriculture are already causing shortages even though we aren’t even close to the expected temperature increase, reaching net-zero emission targets yet (if ever), and the effects of emissions from the past 10 to 20 years hasn’t even kicked in yet.The second article also states that “some experts predict the earth will run out of topsoil within six decades.” If you thought the right wing backlash to the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis or Mexican immigration to the US that gave a global resurgence of the far right was bad, you haven’t seen anything yet. Not to mention, political crises and wars like the Arab Spring and the rise of terrorist organizations were exacerbated by rising food prices and water shortages caused by climate change.

But let’s say this is wrong and the planet can handle 11 billion or more people. Even then, there are still only a finite amount of resources available. As a result, those resources will be diverted away from the people who are already alive to the newborns. Why should everyone else accept reductions in their own quality of life so other people can have children?”

Anything short of the ENTIRE world deciding collectively overnight to abolish capitalism and live completely sustainable lifestyles (aka impossible) isn’t going to change the current situation much. And again, even then, resources are finite.

So the answer question of statement of “it seems like things are getting worse” it’s because it is. Do I think it’ll all fall within my lifetime? Absolutely not. These things are going to take time, but the condition of the Earth is certainly not going to get better. Although in the long run it doesn’t matter much because as much as we kill the Earth, all we’re doing is making it unsustainable for ourselves. The Earth will bounce back after we have obliterated it.

>i want to see a more open perspective and different opinions

My first suggestion would be that if you want a good book on perspective, read "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl. My second suggestion would be to buy into & internalize this idea, as well as spend some time thinking about whether it's really true or not:

• We get to choose our level of happiness in life

This concept will be instantly rejected by some people, but that's simply a cop-out. The reality is that we each get to choose the stories we tell ourselves, which guide how we feel & what behavior we engage in. We live in a world that has 24/7/365 to media FUD, which makes it easy to doom scroll & get disheartened all day, every day, which is a choice that we choose to make as to what to expose ourselves to. This is a good quote to ponder:

• "Your perception becomes your reality"

What you choose to do with your life & what you choose to expose yourself to are going to strongly contribute to how you feel & how you perceive the world, especially if you're like me and are already prone to anxiety & depression. The world isn't really any different than it has been for the past 5,000 years of recorded human history:

• Natural disasters are happening
• Wars & atrocities are happening
• There are diseases, famines, and other major problems in all parts of the world

The difference is that rather than just being an hour of nightly news, it's on everyone's feed ALL the time! So from a high level, it begins with making a conscious choice about what you choose to expose yourself to & what you choose to focus on. The world has always been a difficult place; we can choose to focus on the negative, or, and here's the key change:

• We can choose to focus on making a contribution

More reading: (2-part post)

• https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/q2cu6c/comment/hfkiits/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

We are all free to focus on all of the bad stuff in life & when we get to our deathbeds, look bad and say gee, I spent a lot of time focusing on the negative, living in fear, and not using my talents & effort to contribute positivity to the world. Or we can realize that we're not in charge of the world & that our stewardship is for our little niche in the world, at this time, at this place, and that we get to decide how we both react & act to our specific situations & circumstances in life. If you're open to that idea, read through this thread here:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/hsp/comments/y2jy7p/comment/is4blri/?context=3

If you want to get right down to brass tacks, here's your options for how to play the game of life in a nutshell:

1. You can be a sponge for the negative
2. You can be a force for good

Many people don't want to take responsibility for their personal success & happiness in life and prefer to believe that the world is such a dark & overwhelming place that all they can do is absorb it. If that's the best story they want to tell themselves, well, it's a free country! We can let anxiety & garbage beliefs rule our life if we want to, but it doesn't have to be that way!

part 1/2

part 2/2

I previously worked in the career field. Despite all of the negative (and also fun reading!) at places like r/antiwork, there's never been a better time to get into the workforce:

• More than 12,000 different types of jobs are available. In Colonial America, agriculture was the primary job for 90% of the population.
• There are over 11 million job openings available right now.
• We have access to virtually all of the information available on earth through the Internet. Google, TikTok, Youtube, Pinterest, etc. contain more information than any one person could ever learn in their lifetime!

As George Carlin said, "Ya gotta wanna!" If a person is absolutely determined to be unhappy & to buy into the fact that because the world can be a dark place and therefore they MUST be unhappy too, then that's their choice! You have a narrow track ahead of you in life:

• You're only alive for a few decades
• You're only going to interact with a finite number of people during that time
• What ship do you want to sail throughout your course in life? Misery & defeat? Or happiness & contribution? The seas are going to be rough either way, but that doesn't mean we have to allow ourselves to sink! As the saying goes, "Ships don't sink because of the water around them; ships sink because of the water that gets in them."

What we choose to focus on & what attitude we choose to adopt determines a large part of our happiness & progress in life. No one gets to dictate our level of happiness other than ourselves. No one can force us to adopt a positive or negative attitude or outlook on life. WE get to choose, even if it's a reactive attitude that happens by default!

>AI : im not against it but is changing fields and things that shouldn't be changed like art , now the ai is making art and literature my biggest fear is regarding to music is the most beautiful art that could exist , i can't imagine a future where the music is made by an ai , for the jobs i still very neutral, the population seems to be decreasing so it could help us to control the problems that this could make but it needs legislation faster as possible to avoid the abuse of this systems against people by the wealthiest one's

I work in computers; let me put your fears to rest: AI is a tool. Yes, it will replace jobs, but there's a magic thing that happens every single time a new tool is introduced: hyper-fractionalization!

Cars replaced horses & now we have an endless sea of car dealerships, gas stations, and repair shops. Computers replaced typewriters. Photoshop & digital photography changed the photography game. Human creativity & contribution isn't going to be replaced by AI but rather supplemented by AI. More people are going to have more power to do quality work thanks to the audio, video, writing, editing, and other tools that are quickly becoming available!

>So my fear's are more a possible collapse or a dystopia, i want to have hope for a better future, but everything seems to be worsening

Yes and no. It's both getting better AND getting more difficult at the same time! More challenges present more opportunities for figuring out creative solutions, whether it's for COVID vaccines or reconfiguring the food chain to handle supply & distribution issues to keep food on the shelves or for reducing human casualties in the war efforts through the use of drones or any number of situations in play & solutions being created!

Did you know that despite having more than 8 billion people in the world, we actually, today, right now, produce enough food for 10 BILLION people? Our biggest issue isn't supply, it's distribution! We have absolutely incredible amounts of resources available, but we're still lagging behind in so many ways:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZoKfap4g4w

imo, our job as individuals who want to make an ongoing, positive contribution to the world is to cultivate grit:

• https://youtu.be/H14bBuluwB8

The world has never been a better place, thanks to advancements in education, knowledge, shipping, medicine, technology, etc., but it's also never been a more difficult place. We get to choose how we navigate the sea of life. We're free to focus on the negative, but given the tremendous opportunities at our feet, that seems like a colossal waste of opportunity for anyone who is willing to venture out of the FUD mindset that modern society tries to impose on us on a daily basis!

Social media is designed to keep you glued to your screen, and unfortunately social media companies figured out the best way to keep people engaged is to make them mad or scared or both. Social media is not real life.

Outside of some borderline cases like if you're from Ukraine or Iran or Afghanistan, economically you are better off than at any point in history. Climate change is a problem but finally people are admitting it's real and stepping up to the plate. Even oil and gas companies are getting into renewables and governments all over the world are subsidizing research on how we can help minimize climate change and also minimize the impacts of it.

As for AI, I create ai models for my job. People are wildly overblowing how powerful they are. They're very good at pattern recognition, but a level of ai that will come anywhere close to rivaling humans is centuries off imo, not years or decades. It's worth noting that most of what you said could have been said at any point in human history. I actually think you're missing something that's even a bigger deal than everything you put here, and that's potential nuclear war. Russia using one in desperation, Iran getting one and using it because they're a theocracy that is willing to die for an eternity in heaven, it just doesn't look great.

But for all of history, these things have been predicted. And for all of history, none of it happened. Maybe this time it's different, but probably not. Also even if it is, what do you gain by worrying about it? Unless you have a solution to any of those problems that no one else has thought of, you're only going to get depressed by thinking about that. Spend time enjoying your own life, finding meaning in your own life by creating connections with friends, family, and community, and only worry about things you have the power to change.

There's a lot of difficult stuff on the internet. It's a weird feeling to turn it off. Like you're going to have some serious FOMO. But if you are strong enough to choose... It's actually very easy to focus on positive things in your environment or change your environment. When you try to take on the world's problems by yourself, it becomes like being stuck in mud.

That being said, pursue a passion that gives you a sense of ethical responsibility. If that can be done in fields that help the world get better, we will all love you for it. But you will never be as good at what you're doing without a serious obligation or passion. So in that regard, please sleep on this until there is no doubt it's what you want. We don't half assed people working on these issues, for obvious reasons.

There is still a lot of good around you. Have some hope, and move forward.

Anecdotes about your drunk uncle have no relevance to this discussion.

This sub is mostly full of pessimists (myself included).

But a lot of the problems the mass media hypes about have actual solutions. It's just that nobody wants to implement said solutions.

I second this. Raise and educate, and worry about getting your teen past this first finish line while staying clear of the worst possibilities such as drunk drivers or major health worries. I'll piss enough time away on Reddit for both of us.

so if you believe the death cult known as Christianity we are always in the " end times " this is the worst the world ever has been.... but time after time they are not right and blindly pull the calendar back to the next vague interpretation of when it will be. aka live your life, prepare for problems ,be happy when they don't happen. ultimately humanity is obsessed with its end. none of us know when it will happen it doesn't matter it will be the end. live learn love and prosper*)

If you stare into the abyss long enough it's all you'll see. You have to live your life and adapt to what it throws at you. Worrying about large scale trends that you have no control over will make you miserable. Do what you can to make the world better and accept that that's all you can do.

I grew up with the USSR about to nuke us, crack babies, AIDS and the biggest threat to America, Sister Soulja. Somehow life goes on.

Doomers are toxic. A life plagued by a doom mindset isn't going to be a good life lived.

>but coming back to primitive society's and watch everything fall apart in my lifetime is something that i don't wanna live to see

Even in the worst collapse, we will never become primitive again. The world will shrink, but all the tools and tech will still exist. How we use it will change, especially for things like the internet. Some of the fragile stuff will go away, but it won't all be gone.

>is getting worse and worse there are a lot of things we can do about it and maybe we can stop it or at least make it less bad , but powerful people aren't doing anything for it is so sad that i can't be sure if i have future due the greed of these people, i still have some hope regarding to this and even if we can't do anything i want to put my life and efforts in this field

This is a common misconception. Climate change, while serious, is not getting worse, nor are people doing nothing. There has been huge progress since I was your age. There is research going into fighting desertification, carbon capture can do incredible things, nuclear power can give a clean power grid as soon as we want it. And even if all this, and the other tools in development fail, the worst case scenarios are NOT doomsday. The world is not over. It might get harder, but not apocalypticaly.

>is getting worse but is hard to know if this is a collapse of all the system of just another recession, but is quite clear that we can't carry on this way and things need to be changed

This one you have to be careful with. We can't carry one what way? The economy is vast and complicated, and we do absolutely need to fix things about it. But there are a lot of ways to change it. Additionally, some decline is always necessary, unavoidable even. In my opinion, many of our problems have come from attempting to avoid the unavoidable. That makes things worse.

I can't say much comforting about AI. I do agree it's dangerous, especially when combined with dystopia. You're only 2 years older than my son. I promise you this, I am doing everything I can to leave a better world for both of you, and I am hopeful. I have a long life a head of me. And as long as there are children, there is a future. There is hope. Learn, grow, remember that everybody is as real and dynamic as you are. Even if things get harder, life is what you make of it. We don't have it better than anybody before us, just more comfortable.

Hope this helps, and I apologize for getting rambly there at the end.

Look around at the price of things, even if the war ended tomorrow, they most likely will never go back down, this is the new normal because of greed and need for record profits year after year. Also wages aren't going up, in fact the government which should be looking out for the worker is trying to artifically keep wages low.

Go look at Lake Mead, Lake Powell, or the Great Salt Lake. They know all these lakes are collapsing and going empty, and Great Salt Lake will make a disaster zone when it does. Who is stepping in to stop this? The answer is no one, because profits won't allow it.

People will try to make it out that technology will save us, but save who exactly? The rich want to exploit you for every cent they can then throw you away without you even having healthcare, and if they could they would ruin Social Security tomorrow. They know the system is headed for collapse, so they tried to take it over before it offically did. Oops that failed, so they say "sorry" and wait for you to go back to sleep so they can try again. They will try again.

For what is is worth, I am not an expert in much but I am an expert in a couple of areas frequently brought up in this sub and.... much of what people discuss here is simply not the reality.

Societal collapse in the modern sense is something akin to the breakup of the USSR, or the Balkanization of Yugoslavia. Yes these are big history writing events, but Humanity is not going back to the dark ages.

Yes the economic outlook for someone in the US at least who is ~25 today is objectively worse after accounting for inflation then it was for someone who turned 25 say 40 years ago. However what is not commonly brought up is that someone who turns 25 tomorrow still has a longer life expectancy and higher standards of living than someone who turned 25 40 years ago.

AI is not what people think AI is. A good analog for AI would be the Industrial Revolution. Things that used to be extremely expensive and could only be made by Artisans suddenly became very cheap and available because mass production brought down costs. AI is going to do the same thing but going to do it instead for things that are today created on computers by white collar workers. Things like graphic design, simple software, scheduling meetings, writing help documentation, etc. etc. We are so far from a general AI that can replace a human wholesale that it is really not even worth thinking about.

The world has always been mired by war, famine, corruption, etc. but with the printing press, then radio, then television, then cable, then the internet and social media the level of awareness the average person has to intimate details of these events is absolutely unprecendented. Unfortunately, humanity has absolutely no plan in place for how to coach your generation for how to handle the effect this has on your psyche and it is unfortunately going to be up to you to learn discernment of when to shift your focus of attention inward, locally, or globally.

I expect your future will be full of a lot of new and unprecedented things. Unprecedented access to AI for problem-solving, breakthroughs in medicine and understanding of the human genome, jobs we still can't fathom because we don't know how mass deployment of AI will shift society, new styles of music and cultural changes. It will also be different than the past because of climate change, but different doesn't necessarily mean worse. You will probably not be dining on wild sushi every weekend, but you might have access to normalized lab-grown meat or if shortages are well-managed you might even enjoy better health than my grandparents who destroyed their health with all the processed foods that got popularized in the '50s.

When I was young we had physical globes with lines drawn over countries that no longer exist and people had a sense computers would change everything, but people spend time predicting the big stuff like pandemics, famine, and war but most moments of our lives are touched by the little stuff. No one ever predicts kpop, tiktok dances, global memes. In the '90s there was a common belief the future would be utopic and it did not pan out that way. Similarly, I don't think AI will solve everything for a utopic future, but that doesn't make dystopia inevitable either. The aging people of reddit feel a sense of loss because we remember how things were and as you age it is harder to look forward because your physical body will never be as great as it was in your teens and 20s, but no matter how much fun I had in 1997 your best years are likely ahead of you.

No matter how challenging things get, for as long as our species survives we will always be resilient and create joy as well.

Look around. Is everything terrible? No. Doomscrolling is a sickness. If you had never been online in your life would you be fretting about everything? Probably not.

The present is the best time to be alive by many orders of magnitude and it is likely to get better. The big picture stuff has little effect on peoples day to day lives. The advancement of technology is what is really impactful at improving our quality of living amd that is only excellerating. As for climate change, renewable just recently surpassed fossil fuels for effeciency. Now that this line has been crossed the snowball effects of capitalism will take over and extremely rapid progress will be made in the next 20 years. We still need increased efforts by the government to buy back energy for carbon capture though. This will be the hard part because the benefits are long term and largely invisible.

Dude get into gardening and permaculture design. It'll help you feel some control over how things turn out. Also, you'll develop useful skills if what you're worried about actually happens.

You're definitely right there's a big risk of some really awful stuff happening. Try not to let it consume you and build resilience in your local community. Don't live your life online.

The truth is that over time generally things keep getting better and better. People are always thinking it's getting worse, but that's just not true. You'll be fine.

The fact is that no one KNOWS what will happen. Everyone is guessing or making theories. Which means they are using their imagination to do so (in addition to facts and data of course.)

So why not use you imagination to think of ways the world could be BETTER, and potentially avoid collapse? Then think about what stands in the way of those things happening. Is there anything you can do to help bring about your more positive imaginative view of the future?

Encourage your child to think this way.

1. you are living in the best economic conditions the world has ever seen.

2. we are nowhere near some imaginary total collapse.

3. the AI threat is real, prepare for that, but also realize it is kind of the new thing to talk about, and while important, is extremely low on the threat scale of actual world problems.

4. you need to turn off all of the negative media you are clearly consuming and get to work making the planet a better place.

5. true peace and happiness can be found by focusing on others.

I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as it seems. Might be some hard times ahead, but we'll come out stronger and better than ever. It's important to see the silver lining in all these things.

Climate change could lead to an end to the exploitation of our ecosystem, encourage global cooperation, and bring about a civilization that's much more harmonious with nature than ever before.

AI could become our greatest allie, help us create medicine and gene editing like never before, and elevate humanity to a new level. Instead of seeing them as competition we can look at them like new friends. We shouldn't see AI as empty mechanical tools that the tech companies want us to see them as, but instead consider that what we're doing with AI is creating new life, giving birth to a new race of beings.

Economic collapse can lead to a new and much more mature and fair way of handling resources. It could lead to a much more equal world, with more cooperation, and a greater sense of purpose for everyone. A world where people aren't treated like a commodity, and the meaning of our lives are supposed to be work and material accumulation. New and deeper philosophy will take it's place, something that will inspire us far more than gold and fame ever could.

When things are changing its always a little chaotic, but generally we come out of it better and stronger, reaching new heights we might not even have imagined possible. So while I don't discount that our problems are massive, I'm still optimistic and believe these changes are for the best. A great deal of good can come from all this, so don't give up, keep dreaming, and always look on the bright side.

As a millennial with 3 kids, I endorse this message.

One human only has so much time and influence. Make the most of your life. Work to make the world a better place, in your self, in your home, in your community.

People have lived through all that you mention and much much much worse. Humans keep living and thriving despite all the tragedy. Don’t get stuck on anything ever, keep moving forward. You do make a difference.

Your response is very thoughtful, and I appreciate it greatly.

I previously believed we were heading for economic, biological, demographic, or nuclear collapse. But after reading your informative comment filled with relevant data points I changed my mind

Possible collapse: If your concern is that you don't want to live to see society regress to a primitive state - don't worry, you won't. We have 8 billion (and growing) people who depend on modern, often just-in-time supply chains for life. In a collapse, with those supply chains gone and people with guns wanting to eat most people will die, not live to see how it plays out (and that's not even addressing whatever causes the collpase in the first place).

Climate change: It's not the greed of powerful people that is the main driver of climate change - having billions in a bank account (or actually as a number that reflects nothing more than ownership of large percentages of the businesses that produce the goods and services we all use), doesn't mean one burns a ton of fossil fuels or farts out a lot of methane. In reality, it's consumption, and the massive fossil fuel use that enables our current many order of magnitude higher level of consumption per person, plus the multiple orders of magnitude larger world population than in the past that drives climate change.

Also climate change is being addressed. Quickly enough to save most non-livestock major mammals? No. Quickly enough to prevent 100s of millions of currently poor people from dying and being forced into refugee status? No. But quickly enough to allow most kids in comparatively well-off countries to live basically normal lives plus a house-destroying disaster or two? Yes. The quicker the better though - every delay costs everyone.

Economy: No, temporary shocks like COVID and the Russian war on Ukraine aside, the economy is not getting worse - whatever you or your friends/family may feel like. The economy is humming along quite nicely, actually.

AI: Your first worry about AI - because it's already happening now - is how manipulated you and everyone else will be (and in fact already is) by AI that is trained to engage you in order to sell you shit. As it turns out, the best way to engage people is to make them angry, anxious, sad, vengeful, etc., and to engage them in conspiracy theories and lies. This is also increasingly used to define your politics for you (and for everyone). The worst of it is that AI is turning you (and everyone) into the worst version of yourself - and addicting you to rage, fear, conspiracy theory, etc. for the primary goal of just selling you on more shit (i.e. the same consumption that drives climate change).

Your second worry about AI should be how it will replace a ton of jobs including in fields like art that most of us really wish would remain human, and that replacement will cause massive social disruption.

Your third concern is that you are young enough that you might live until the development of AGI, and then that will probably be the end for humanity.

collapse of economic and political systems in the west (USA specifically) isn’t something I fear. Knowledge and humans don’t vanish overnight. This country specifically and historically has endured a lot of turmoil under worse living conditions.

Climate change is an issue, but climate change is also an issue that wont effect the globe evenly.

Honestly, I think it all comes back around to our economic model being antiquated for the current technological boom that is seemingly on the horizon, and that creates much of the anxiety we feel towards things like automation and AI. The road to liberating humans from being coerced into passionless labor by automating our mode of production will definitely be a net positive for our species, just as domesticating plants were 12000 years ago. The road to get there will be difficult, but humanity moves forward.

Dont live your life in fear of the unknown. Use this time to aspire to a quality education and be skillful in the many aspects surrounding human life.

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Super Stonk sub has the answers you seek. And much more.

You need to take a longer view of history. Is life better now than 20 years ago, what about 50 years ago? We are actually living through the most prosperous time in the entirety of human history. If you live in a developed country, you've got access to things that king's would dream about a few hundred years ago.

All this doom and gloom is just clickbait.

First and foremost, stop reading stuff that tells you that you are doomed and there is no hope. That stuff is not there to give you a realistic understanding of the world. It's there to make you paralyzed and perpetually clicking on things while exerting no actual effort toward any kind of positive change in the real world.

I'm not exaggerating. Doom-bait is engineered by marketing firms and algorithms to give you all the thoughts you just wrote out, and to do nothing about any of it. That's not a metaphor or hyperbole. They literally sit around and figure out how to achieve this effect, because it makes you more profitable to them.

There is even a term for this in the social media biz, although I forget what it's called. Induced amotivation or something?

So first things first, if you're drinking poison, first thing you do is stop drinking the poison. You don't need to answer the question, "well but how is this poison going to get drunk if I don't drink it?" or "how will I find other poison to drink if I stop drinking this poison?"

You are allowed to just stop!

Next, you are already interested in energy and climate change, there is a huge amount of work to do there. And there is a huge amount of work already going on. Who near you is working on renewable energy? Maybe you can volunteer to help them with what they do. Whether it is political organizing or literally setting up solar panels, anything you learn and any experience you gain will be helpful. Maybe there are other defossilization efforts you can be a part of. You do not need to build by yourself a huge space mirror 1000km wide that saves humanity or whatever. You will at least need a university degree first, in order to do that!

For now you can start smaller.

Big changes are possible. They happen. The thing is, they usually involve the work of many thousands and hundreds of thousands of regular people all acting toward a common goal. Eventually you get treaties and people in expensive suits signing things and shaking hands and so on but those moments are built on top of the foundation laid by regular people each doing small work over time.

So you can start by being one of those people, in your own small way. It all counts.

(And don't forget to stop drinking the poison.)

It will suck and they'll live under a corrupt authoritarian government puppeting a democracy and be slaves to the corporations the government partnered with and its too late to do anything about it.

Glhf.

There has always been someone predicting the end of the world since there have been people. For example:

The Cold War- ~1947-1991. The major concern was nuclear war followed by nuclear winter. Virtually everyone was predicted to die. As an elementary student in the 1960s we had regular "Duck and Cover" drills. Hell, I grew up in the '60s and '70s in upstate NY, 20 miles from a major US Air Force SAC base, a major target. We didn't really focus on this all that much, we weren't all cowering in fear, we just lived life. Looking back, that should have been some seriously scary shit!

In the 1970s there were all sorts of predictions, pollution will krill us all, an Ice Age was coming, etc.

Y2K was supposed to be a major problem in 2000. Planes would crash, Wall Street would crash, power would go out, nuclear reactors would melt down, etc. What a major fizzle that turned out to be!

The current "Climate Change" scare started out as "Global Warming", the name got changed when the global warming wasn't happening as fast as it was predicted. Guess what? Climate changes!! Take a look at Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", the documentary that essentially started the whole Global Warming craze, The predictions were much less than accurate.

I could write pages about failed doomsday predictions but there's really no point, there will always be someone predicting the end of the world. Always!!!

Economy? There have been great times and there have been bad times. It is extremely doubtful that you'll see a total collapse. There could be a market crash, it's happened before but at your age, it'll have little effect. Me, at 61 years old would be pissed since I'd lose a lot of my retirement money in my 401K but it still wouldn't be the end of the world for me.

AI? AI has a long way to go before it will ever go mainstream, if ever. Yeah, the current versions can do some amazing things but most of them are very specialized and cannot do the things humans can do as well as humans do. Yep, they will take some jobs from us, you don't really need a human doing repetitive job on some assembly line. Humans are still king and always will be at creative endeavors.

You could go the Prepper route if you're unable to let go of your fears but it could get expensive.

There's always going to be something to worry about in the future if you focus on it. Life your life in the here and now, don't live your life in fear. Plan for the future for sure but plan for a normal life.

There are a lot of things that may or will happen that you cannot do anything about. Focusing on these things will cause you to be depressed, and will keep you that way as long as this is your preoccupation.

The good news is that as you are 15 years old, you gave a lot of great choices you can make that could easily help put you yin a highly satisfying and rewarding future.

Such as getting your education. You said you would like to work in the area of climate change. You might want to consider engineering. It is math intensive, but understanding how things are created, you might invent a better way of doing something that significantly reduces the carbon footprint.

Art produced by AI

This is not a bad thing at all. Not understanding what art is can be terrible, especially for people who produce abstract pieces of work and call it art. Abstract work is not art at all, but the opposite of art. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Under no circumstances should you start having children before you are ready to have them, especially financially. This means if you don’t abstain from heterosexual sex, at a minimum use the best contraception possible. Best yet would be to abstain from having sex altogether until you are married, but even then, make sure you are ready to have children.

Ultimately, your future is subject to the choices YOU make. Wise choices today will result in a rewarding future tomorrow. However bad choices may curse your life for years into the future, and for some people the rest of their lives.

So your future for the most part is up to you and the choices you make, and the actions you take to shape and create it. Do not be just a passenger in life, where you just react to what comes to you. Be proactive. Research your options for a career. Identify your resources to get there. Set your career goals. Devise a plan on how to get there, and execute on your plan.

For the most part, you will make your future what it is, based on the choices you make for your future. You, and no one else is responsible for your future. Keep that in mind.

Hindsight and Monday morning quarter backing is always great, isn’t it? Had most of us known beforehand what we realized later, all of our lives would be different and presumably better. The key is to educate yourself today, for the best guidance into tomorrow.

the environment will get better if we think positive thoughts! Dont mind the extinction event.

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I think that's his point! Some people are suggesting OP practically ignores all the dire projections. He's saying that just because we've survived as a species so far doesn't mean one of these real problems could have unprecedented results. Sure, his uncle is still alive. But he's very lucky. Smoking is, in fact, bad for you and kills millions of people.

He's basically illustrating "survivor bias".

The world has been ending and getting worse and worse since the dawn of humans and their ability to make such pronouncements. We certainly have our problems, but if there is one thing humanity has going for it is that it is adaptable and especially good at using its oversized brain to adapt to new situations.

And if you need something else, jus think about how wonderful it is to be able to drink water and not have to worry if it has been contaminated by human waste from upstream.

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Im just waiting for the Mad Max Water Wars of the 2030's.

My goodness reading your post brought up a song from my past "eve of destruction by Barry McGuiere". LOL. I actually have a teenager myself and I am optimistic rather than a cynic. Someone once said bad news sells faster than good. It is easier to believe negative things than positive. Here are some things you might want to keep in mind

climate change: yeah humans did not help it and it is a thing. Plenty of scient to back it up but it is not like it has not happened before. It is natural and humans were able to weather the storm as cavemen I am sure we can handle the coming weather patterns. Humans by our very nature are resilient and we are versatile enough to see it coming and try to do something about it. It will be up to our children's generation to design and develop ways to live more in tune with nature instead of like a pack of locusts on a cornfield enhancements we are meeting our future demands by turning deserts into farmland, pulling water out of the sky vice the aqueducts and looking for new ways to apply supplychain problems around the world. Death: cancer will be cured in our lifetime (take a look at the work they are doing in Health Nannites and the cyberborg Cell, amazing). As a veteran we now know that if people get to a medic in the first few minutes their chances of staying alive go up dramatically. We are always on the Eve of destruction, people are people we fight, love and hate in equal measures but Dont let the fear guide you but rather look at it from what is possible not with certainty. Speaking as someone who has been in combat probably more times than I can count and seeing Death in all its myriad forms I can still come out optimistic for the next generation. Fear of tomorrow never did anyone any good. If we allowed fear of collapse we would have never left the caves.

Possible Collapse: Wars happen. Myself I am a veteran and there was not one time in the last 20 years that I did not go down range. There is not much we can do about this but look at it like the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. We had a pandemic (COVID), humans responded to meet the threat, and though everything is not all the way back to normal we learned and we got better so the next time it happens we will be more equipped to handle it. Famine we live in a society where everything is at our fingertips and with the new scientific enhancements we are meeting our future demands by turning deserts into farmland, pulling water out of the sky vice the aqueducts, and looking for new ways to apply supply-chain problems around the world. Death: cancer will be cured in our lifetime (take a look at the work they are doing in Health Nannites and the cyber borg Cell, amazing). As a veteran, we now know that if people get to a medic in the first few minutes their chances of staying alive go up dramatically. We are always on the Eve of destruction, people are people we fight, love and hate in equal measures but Dont let fear guide you but rather look at it from what is possible not with certainty. Speaking as someone who has been in combat probably more times than I can count and seeing Death in all its myriad forms I can still come out optimistic for the next generation. Fear of tomorrow never did anyone any good. If we allowed fear of collapse we would have never left the caves.

Economy: it goes up and down that is the way it works. Are things as cheap as they once were nope but I make way more money than my father he made more money than his father. We help out kids and train them for a brighter future focusing them on skills that they will. need to survive and thrive which in turn will help with the economy. Things that will shape our future in the next 10 years Cold Fusion will become more available and with easier access to energy worldwide that will help shape greener living and the economy as we will spend less on Fossil fuels. Fusion will also allow us to break the speed to mars and moon exploration and colonization which they are already working on so now the stars will become in reach which opens up more opportunities for the world economy.

AI: You can look at AI as good and bad but take a look for yourself. I personally have incorporated ChatGPT into my daily life and remember it is a learning tool first, Skynet it is not. AI will happen people tend to focus on the negative results of AI but thinking ahead some of what they are using it for is robotic Hospice workers to help out in homes for our elderly (look at Japan), AI that assists our doctors to break out of the what is known and look at our illnesses from more than limited single doctor experience which will increase the benefits of our health, Automate daily tasks and help us save money (look at the example of chatGPT and traffic court). AI is here and it is not going anywhere but we can leverage it for good or bad just how we look at it. In our generation computers were calculators and now everyone has a smart phone that runs our life. Our children grew up learning on Youtube where we had school books. Our children are learning faster than we ever could which makes them able to be more resilient and able to deal with the new challenges in this new age of Technology

My old Ranger instructor once told me "If you cant change it, don't bitch about it. The only thing you can change is how you handle it, good, bad or ugly but it never helped anyone coming from a place of fear but always come at a problem from a place of strength and confidence." My personal motto is "there are no problems only solutions waiting to be found." I have instilled that in my daughter from a early age and now she is looking at the future in a optimistic way. So all this is me trying to tell you that our children have a world of exploration in front of them where technology will be there hand and hand with them. In their life time cancer will be a thing of the past, we will reach the stars and we will better able to live in tune with our environment vice against it.

You missed the extinction of most non domesticated animals. Forget a world without bees and polar bears. I watched David Attenborough's A Life on Our Planet, walked outside and puked. The Sixth Extinction won't help either.

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Except one person saying something irrational about medical science isn't an argument against scientists pushing flawed calculations that end up not coming true.

Hence why, rather than addressing the scientific flaws that produced the false predictions, he starts making up excuses about the anecdotal experience of his uncle.

It's not a scientific argument at all. It's an excuse to not have one.

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As far as collapse is concerned, I recommend the podcast Breaking Down: Collapse. It's a really interesting level-headed one that explains with nuance the possibilities of there being collapse. Chances are if there are one it won't be a big singular event but an accumulation of many things drawn out over decades. They are very data driven as far as what they look at. I recommend starting from episode 1 to get eased into the topic.

It's funny how people think AI becoming very disruptive is far off. Just think about where technology was 25 years ago and now. If anything, AI will become quite disruptive in the workplace in about 20 years and probably lead to massive work displacement mostly into things that require human interaction. It's not that those jobs AI will handle will completely disappear, but the amount of people needed to do them will be reduced.

the only thing we know for sure about teh future is it will be different, this is relatively new in history, used to be generations would live and die without much change.

to best prepare the youth for the future teach them to think critically and be adaptable

You said his anecdote wasn't relevant. He never claimed it was a scientific argument. His anecdote demonstrates survivor bias which is 100% relevant to the discussion. You were just too obtuse to recognize it.

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Your comment made me want to kill myself even more than I already did. And no, I'm not joking or being edgy.

At the end of the day, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

Though politically incorrect - I'm optimistic about climate change and I feel we're going in the right direction.

We're having breakthroughs in nuclear fusion, and small nuclear reactors.

We're decarbonizing with cleaner sources of electricity and using electricity instead of fossil fuels.

The cost of carbon capture technology is decreasing with time.

AI is becoming more advanced to the point that it's not just able to design art - it's able to aid development. It's possible AI itself could soon accelerate engineering for all of the above.

I think we will have a future where we will have to at least briefly rely on genetic engineering to restore ecosystems. Plants naturally take carbon from the air, and use it to grow.

If a plant is engineered for example that could grow in a barren ecological wasteland - it could capture carbon and clean the air, while the roots could also help break down toxins in the earth.

We're discovering bacteria that can decompose some plastics. Maybe a genetic boost could let this bacteria destroy ocean plastic.

AI will eventually be strong enough to analyze genomes and figure out how to bow to patch up weaknesses.

Economies are a complex subject. In my opinion we're in a pre-recession period.

During the pandemic - companies jacked up the pricing of everything. For a while their profits grew.

Eventually things can become so expensive, people don't want to buy it anymore. Now all of a sudden these companies have extra product they can't sell it, and they have to drop the price to get rid of it.

This leads to lower profits and shrinkage/receding. This is starting to happen now with technology. AMD's Ryzen 7000 and Nvidia's RTX 40 were very expensive at launch.

As a result both products had very few sales and this was a punch in the gut to both companies and they had to slash their prices. Now AMD is cutting manufacturing as they know it won't be profitable.

Both companies will be forced to make cheaper products which people will actually buy.

Ultimately the recession is a good thing. The prices went crazy high for things from computer parts to cars to houses.

When the recession happens the prices will fall which means all of these will become more affordable.

This benefits people like you and me while it will hurt the people who tried to exploit by jacking up the prices.

Ultimately it's a big correction.

The way I see it - the rich and big corporations have a lot of power and influence. I grew up with gangster rap and independent West Coast rap. Today record labels are big corporations that dictate everything about music.

Technology dictated modern music. Albums could not be longer than a vinyl record, cassette tape, or CD. Ideally you'd have at least a few songs on one.

There's a reason why we have 3 hour concerts, but not 3 hour songs.

Find art is often something that serves the rich and wealthy.

It's also possible AI could make it easier for regular humans to express ourselves musically or artistically.

You might have a beautiful idea in your mind, but you don't know how to draw it. AI might help bring that vision into art you can share with the world.

Of course many people will disagree with my, but they have a right to. Everyone gets to form their own opinions, these are just mine.

Do you want to talk about it?

Well, to me, your comments basically boil down to "Just stop feeling bad" which is terrible, unhelpful advice.

Ah! Well, allow me to clarify, in that case! "Just stop feeling bad" is, of course, terrible & unhelpful advice, for sure! As mentioned in my first post, I'm someone who struggles with both anxiety & depression as well, so I know where you're coming from!

Over the years, as I dove into why that was the case (if we're designed to feel good, why do some of us NOT feel so good so often?) & how to change my situation, I came to realize that my depression wasn't actually monolithic! Eventually, I ended up grouping depression into 3 separate levels:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/qc9d77/comment/hhembh8/?context=3

I also discovered that we were designed to feel 3 very specific ways:

1. Happy for no reason, just sitting there doing nothing
2. Like there is a motor of energy inside of us, pushing us along all day
3. Instantly awake when we wake up in the morning

This was NOT my experience growing up! I typically felt either apathetic or bad, low-energy, and tired all the time. It's hard to feel good when you don't feel good, simple as that!

And it's oddly really hard for certain people not to try to flippantly solve severe mood disorders such as depression an anxiety by simply telling people suffering from those conditions to "just stop feeling bad", for some reason!

Over time, I ran into two books that changed my perspective on my situation. The first book was called "Attitude is Everything" by Jeff Keller, which talked about how he learned about how much attitude controlled his life & his happiness.

The second was "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl. In a nutshell, he got stuck in a Nazi death camp during the Holocaust, where his family & friends all died, and he was next on the chopping block.

Essentially, he had an epiphany that, despite his horrible circumstances, he didn't have to mope about it! He didn't have to let it control his attitude! It didn't change his outward situation one bit, nor did it relieve the stress of the reality of the situation, but it helped him to be able to cope!

So in situations like what you & I deal with, two have two separate situations on our plate:

1. External: The world is a difficult place. A wonderful place, but also a difficult place!
2. Internal: We have an internal struggle, one that doesn't just magically go away simply by deciding to just stop feeling that way. There are complex trauma responses, physiological situations including various neurotransmitters & hormones like serotonin & dopamine being off-balance, and other deeply-rooted issues that don't disappear merely by wishful thinking!

This relationship gets pretty complicated because they are intertwined! When you don't feel good & you see all of the bad news out there, it's really hard to feel like the world isn't falling apart, which in turn feeds those feelings of doom we get from not having enough energy to feel good! Then our brain starts to buy into nonsense beliefs, such as:

• The world is a terrible place & everything is going downhill
• The world always has been a terrible place, so what's the point?
• There's no hope for things ever getting better
• There's no hope for feeling good consistently, so it cannot be achieved

In reality, our brain does a really great job of lying to us! And eventually, once we've felt bad enough for long enough, we start to believe those lies! So now we have 2 questions to deal with:

1. How do we get ourselves into a better frame of mind?
2. If "we get to choose our level of happiness in life", how do we do that when we don't feel good all the time?

For me, I struggled with negative feelings for the majority of my life. Last year, I was able to get my core health issues diagnosed & treated, and for the first time in my life, actually started feeling GOOD consistently! Again, it's pretty hard to feel good when you DON'T feel good, and if you don't have your body supporting your mood to the point where you just magically feel good for no reason, then that's REALLY difficult to deal with on a daily basis!

I spent a lot time wondering why people were motivated to do ANYTHING, because I was like a dead battery most of the time, or worse, it felt like there was an anchor constantly pulling me down! Then people will say exactly what you said..."just stop feeling bad!" or "man up!" or "what do you have to complain about? You live in America etc. etc. etc."

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I later learned about "comparative suffering" & realized that just because our specific trials in life aren't "as bad" as other people have it, doesn't mean that they're not valid or still difficult for us! Your experience is valid, your journey is valid, and struggles are both VERY real AND valid!

As far as dealing with negative internal situations goes, we basically have 3 options:

1. Eliminate the issue
2. Manage the issue
3. Endure the issue

Some things can be fixed through things like therapy or surgery. Other things can be managed through things like medication. And some things we simply haven't figured out yet, so we just have to deal with them! Eventually, I came across Carol Dweck's "mindset" theory, which says that in any given situation, people have one of two mindsets:

1. A "fixed" mindset, which says "I can't, and here's why"
2. A "growth" mindset, which says "I can, and I will be persistent until I find a way to deal with it!"

I came to realize that happiness is more than simply feeling good all the time & that a lot of it boiled down to my personal willingness to take responsibility for my own happiness. In practice:

• I can't control everything that happens to me
• I also don't get to choose all of the consequences that happen to me
• I do get control over SOME things

But what it really boils down to is this:

• Being willing to manage my consequences (even when I wasn't the one who created them, I'm still STUCK with them!)

This becomes especially difficult when dealing with negative internal feelings such as panic attacks, anxiety, depression, etc. because those things don't just magically get better by willing them to change, nor does everyone respond to "easy treatments" such as going to bed earlier, eating better, or exercising.

Which is something that people who say things like "Just stop feeling bad!" are absolutely CLUELESS about! Some people literally struggle with things like treatment-resistant depression, which makes living a happy life VERY difficult!

As I evolved my perception over time, I came to realize those two options I discussed earlier:

1. I could be a sponge for the negative, which is literally a blackhole due to the amount of negativity that exists
2. I could choose to bypass that (not easy!) & be a force for good, which sometimes meant just literally hanging in there on those days when I was so crashed that I couldn't even get out of bed!

Which ultimately led me to make this choice:

• I could focus on making a contribution

Again, sometimes that contribution was solely to me, myself, and I, on those days when I couldn't even muster the energy to get into the shower & get my day started! Which ultimately boils down to a choice in attitude:

• Given the fact that the world is both an incredibly & an awful place,
• Given the fact that I personal struggle with apathy & depression, to the tune of severe clinical depression,
• Do I want to allow those situations & those feelings to control my attitude & my behavior? Because it is the EASIEST thing in the world to cave to inaction & negativity!

The reality is:

1. No one can come into my life to define happiness for me
2. Even if they did, I'd simply reject it because it wasn't MY idea!
3. Likewise, no one can come into my life to put in the daily effort into working to achieve & maintain happiness, despite whatever obstacles I'm currently facing!

The reality is, sometimes we just feel awful, and sometimes it's for a REALLY long time, and sometimes it's completely immersive, and sometimes it feels like it's going to be this bad forever! So the question is: what are we willing to do about it?

For me, for a long time, it was mostly inaction, moping, and just feeling like a pinata getting beat up all the time. Eventually, when I couldn't figure out how to make things better, I hit that fork in the road: was I going to continue to allow how I felt to dictate my behavior, or was I going to step up & push to do things when I could to try a little harder for a better life, even when it wasn't perfect, or consistent, or easy?

And that's not something you can simply "force" on anyone, just like how you can't say "just stop feeling bad!" & magically expect people to do a 180-degree turn in their life & magically feel better, haha! People have to reach that decision point internally & decide that they want more than their present circumstances have to offer.

But until that happens, there's no pressure in the whole universe that can force people to change their minds about whether or not they want to adopt full, personal responsibility for managing the consequences that they individually have to deal with in life. And again, it's the easiest thing to buy into, because our brains are so persuasive & those negative emotions can be so immersive!

So no, my comments are not intended to tell people to "Just stop feeling bad". They're meant to widen our tunnel vision to see that there's more out there for us as individuals, that we're not as stuck as our brain wants us to believe! A big part of the reason we feel so down & out is because of this:

• Our brain is not designed to make us happy, our brain is designed to keep us alive

Therefore, when our energy is low, it acts like a turtle withdrawing into its shell, cutting off our positive emotions & our energy to get stuff done & ENJOY getting stuff done! It doesn't care about what happens to us after that, it cares about protecting our minds & bodies from blowing a fuse by trying to use up more fuel than we have in our tanks!

Anyway, I'm sorry to hear that you're going through a struggle. Your struggle is valid & it's NOT easy to deal with! I hope you're able to find some relief!

I read everything you wrote and I appreciate the thought out response. I don't really know what to say in response unfortunately. I've just been having a really hard time seeing any positivity for a really long time. I'm sorry if I was rude or mean in my original comment.

No worries man, I've been there too, it doesn't last forever but it sure feels like it does! Feel free to DM me anytime you want to talk!