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<p>Roger -</p>
<p>Thanks for the Catalan novel reference!<br>
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<div dir="ltr">Google news decided to surface an article from
Fortune today. It's headlined "Society's refusal to have enough
babies is what will save it from the existential threat of A.
I., Eric Schmidt says". The headline is accompanied by a very
serious head shot of Eric. Nice try, Google, but you're not
sucking me down that rabbit hole.</div>
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<p>I'm far from as facile with the attribution of different type of
errors in argument/rhetoric as Glen is, but I am always fascinated
by how often we (deliberately?) conflate one thing with the other
across scale/aggregation or personal/collective or
individual/statistical. I don't completely dismiss the likes of
Musk's logic/rhetoric that a collapsing first-world birth rate's
will lead to a radical disruption of "life as we know it" and
saddle our (for those of us who have them) children/grandchildren
with an inverted pyramid scheme in everything from "social
security" to "infrastructure". Odd how we think we can "solve"
our problems by jacking up our exploitation tech (let's go haul
asteroids in from the belts to solve our mineral/water
shortages?) but can't be bothered to consider how to manage a
*shrinking* population/economy/footprint? <br>
</p>
<p>My *very* limited engagement with/reading on "AI" (what a
gross/blanket term for many things?) *does* give me hope that it
*could* be enlisted to help us solve these problems (shrinking
everything) if only we will allow/ask it?<br>
</p>
<p>The inertia of our ideas/attitudes/opinions/instincts about
"growth" and "prosperity" are rooted in an era of scarcity which
continues to appear to exists (perhaps) only because of those very
ideas and the limitations to distribution they cause (and perhaps
require?). Wars of aggression. Chronic poverty. Etc. do seem
to be the consequence of the carrot-on-stick chasing of "more,
more, more" for ourselves... hoarding logic and hoarding
consequences?<br>
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<div>Meanwhile, someone apparently read my mind about the
rationality of disaster prepping and wrote an epic novel about
it 40 years ago in Catalan. The Garden of the Seven Twilights
by Miquel de Palol is available in English translation and as
an ebook on <a href="http://overdrive.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">overdrive.com</a> at your local
library. The narrator crosses refugee swamped Barcelona to
check on his mom and gets sent off by her to a McMansion'ed
medieval monastery high in the Pyrenees where the elite are
amusing themselves with stories while awaiting the resolution
of the first war of entertainment. Lots of stories about
themselves and their friends and acquaintances.</div>
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<p>Love the reference to "first war of entertainment" and the
(hyper) failure of (hyper) preppers... to that theme I recommend
Cory Doctorow's Novella <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/13/the-masque-of-the-red-death/">the
Masque of the Red Death</a> ... I'm also reminded (by the 40
year old reference to de Palol's work) of the classic 1959 Walter
Miller <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz">Canticle
for Leibowitz </a>which, when I first read it (1960s?) located
it in my mind at the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://christdesert.org/">"Christ of the Desert"
Monastery</a> on the Chama River crossed with Los
Alamos/Manhattan Project. I didn't read Pat Frank's (also 1959)
"Alas Babylon" until some years later but it is often attributed
as the first "Apocalyptic Novel" in the Nuclear age.</p>
<p>Privileged Crackpot yours,</p>
<p> - Steve<br>
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