There's an oddly related video here. [1] It's an interview between two doctors and YouTubers, both named Mike. One is a practicing medical doctor, the other has a doctorate in sports science and provides generally provides excellent nutrition, lifting, and other advice related to body building. The reason it's relevant is because the medical doctor in that video also expresses similar views to the video from this article, yet the sports science Mike expresses radically different views. And his views are ones that even crop up on this site on occasion, so I expect it's a sort of bubble that you or I may not have even really been aware of.
They get into a topic about half way through on the future. Lifting Mike thinks that by the early 2030s medical science will have made breakthroughs such that basically every disease will be cured, people will be approaching living forever, and so on. This is paired alongside a general blind faith in all things tech - that the LLMs we have today will be imminently super-geniuses surpassing human intelligence with scales of exponential growth on the orders of magnitude, every other year, and so on.
Medical Mike is far more bearish on the future (and the present), though like a good host he doesn't really try to go to war with his guest, so much as just picking his brain and seeing how he responds to basic counter-points. And lifting Mike's responses are mostly to say "that's a very valid point" and then completely ignore them. In my opinion the singularity types are starting to gradually coalesce into something like a secular religion, because I don't think he really believes what he's saying, but he wants to believe it - because the thought of dying sucks.
And this video (from this topic) is yet another medical doctor speaking about the questionable path we're currently on and how not only are we not making this exponential progress many seem to want to believe we are, but that the motivations involved in a lot of things like medicine today are quite broken. This isn't going to be responded to well with people who have the faith that in a decade or two we're all going to be living forever.
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Okay, cripes this post ended up wayyyy longer than expected. But I also want to add that once you know about this sort of divide, it's almost enlightening to read threads like this [2] (currently on the front page: "Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it") and watch how the views shape people's responses. There's [fortunately] no real signaling or whatever, but just people having extremely different views on what has happened in the past and present, and even more so about what will happen in the future.
I watched the video you mentioned and got a similar feeling realizing Lifting Mike is a techo-utopian. I probably was also one once upon a time; it seems like something that would come rather naturally to someone who was an atheist growing up in the 90's (when I do think there was a legit techno-optimistic atmosphere that isn't just my sense of nostalgia) - perhaps we all need something to fill the god-shaped hole in us.
But if you start doing some straight-line projections, things simply do not look so rosy. I see a similar situation at play with climate change; we are faced with an existential crisis and many respond that "technology will save us" in a way that feels interchangeable with "god will save us".
I think everybody should be endlessly optimistic when they're younger - that innocence is the gift of youth. But at the same time I find it odd for somebody to hold such values later in life, because life experience teaches you otherwise in endless ways. My issue was nanotech - perhaps you're also familiar with names like K Eric Drexler et al? Nanotech was going to fix absolutely everything, cure all diseases, turn radioactive waste into arbitrary materials, and basically reshape humanity in every positive way imaginable. Except none of it came to pass, at all. Heh, or yeah the 90s view of what the internet would become.
In general find I the simulation hypothesis a much more desirable replacement for religion. It lacks the various logical flaws or assumptions or singularity types, has a pretty sound basis in reality, and also keeps the extrinsic 'better-be-good' factors of religion, given that the simulation could be for any reason - entertainment, education, or even something like rehabilitation or training. And I think that extrinsic pressure is generally good after seeing what societies without any sort of guiding light seem to trend towards - pseudo-nihilism paired with hedonism is not a path to a fulfilling existence, or perhaps even a sustainable civilization.
They get into a topic about half way through on the future. Lifting Mike thinks that by the early 2030s medical science will have made breakthroughs such that basically every disease will be cured, people will be approaching living forever, and so on. This is paired alongside a general blind faith in all things tech - that the LLMs we have today will be imminently super-geniuses surpassing human intelligence with scales of exponential growth on the orders of magnitude, every other year, and so on.
Medical Mike is far more bearish on the future (and the present), though like a good host he doesn't really try to go to war with his guest, so much as just picking his brain and seeing how he responds to basic counter-points. And lifting Mike's responses are mostly to say "that's a very valid point" and then completely ignore them. In my opinion the singularity types are starting to gradually coalesce into something like a secular religion, because I don't think he really believes what he's saying, but he wants to believe it - because the thought of dying sucks.
And this video (from this topic) is yet another medical doctor speaking about the questionable path we're currently on and how not only are we not making this exponential progress many seem to want to believe we are, but that the motivations involved in a lot of things like medicine today are quite broken. This isn't going to be responded to well with people who have the faith that in a decade or two we're all going to be living forever.
----------
Okay, cripes this post ended up wayyyy longer than expected. But I also want to add that once you know about this sort of divide, it's almost enlightening to read threads like this [2] (currently on the front page: "Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it") and watch how the views shape people's responses. There's [fortunately] no real signaling or whatever, but just people having extremely different views on what has happened in the past and present, and even more so about what will happen in the future.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrzF-rhJtOs
[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40931636