More Everything Forever

 More Everything Forever is Adam Becker's critique of the future as touted by our current batch of billionaires --- Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman. These billionaires frequently tout a future of space travel (colonizing Mars), or uploading into cyberspace (immortality) or any number of exotic fantasies rather than solving the immediate problems here on Earth now: poverty, inequality, and climate change.

The book goes into the billionaires ties to the Effective Altruism movement, which the author is clearly disdainful of, for good reason. The math that the EA movement uses to justify concentrating on AI safety instead of solving immediate problems for humans who are alive today comes in for particular scrutiny.

the fact that they’re primarily worried about existential threats in the first place is the other problem: once a threat has been deemed existential, it’s impossible to outweigh it with any less-than-existential threat in the present day. In determining which threats count as “existential,” much ends up depending on estimations of risk, estimations that—apparently—aren’t informed by the best available science and expert opinions. “MacAskill falls into the trap of being ‘foolishly wise,’” says Watson. “Wise fools [are] those who recognise the limits of their knowledge and therefore are able to take some account of what they don’t know. I think of the opposite as the foolish wise, very clever people whose erudition and wide book-learning lead them however to inadequately account for the ‘unknown unknowns.’”20 Despite these important mistakes at the core of their worldview, Ord, MacAskill, Sandberg, Bostrom, and the rest of those who work at Trajan House aren’t fringe. The building itself is testimony to how influential their views are and how successful their movement has been. It screams of money, from the corporate office furniture to the snack drawers filled with cruelty-free chocolate bars.21 Financial records show a little over $75 million in donations to Effective Ventures in their 2021 fiscal year alone, most of which came from Open Philanthropy (kindle loc 2918)

Bit by bit, the author demolishes the arguments the billionaires use to justify spending massive money on a Mars effort for instance. Even a post-nuclear apocalyptic Earth is likely to be more habitable than Mars, for instance. Unlike Earth, Mars doesn't have an atmosphere or magnetic field, so you get a direct hit of radiation on the surface --- so underground is probably the only place to live. But the soil itself on Mars is poisonous! Mars as a backup location for the human race is basically a fantasy.

  But “when the asteroid hit 66 million years ago it was a nicer day than today on Mars—otherwise no animal life would have survived,” says Peter Brannen, author of The Ends of the World, a survey of mass extinctions on Earth. “So we better learn to live here. This is it.”83 Our existence is proof Brannen is right: despite the horrors of that day, mammals survived, as did birds, fish, and many other vertebrates. No mammal could survive unprotected for more than a few minutes on Mars. “We’ll never trash this place so bad with nukes or climate change that somewhere else is a better option,” Brannen concludes.84 Or, as Martin Rees, cosmologist and Astronomer Royal, puts it: “It’s a dangerous delusion to think that space offers an escape from Earth’s problems. We’ve got to solve these problems here. Coping with climate change may seem daunting, but it’s a doddle compared to terraforming Mars. No place in our solar system offers an environment even as clement as the Antarctic or the top of Everest. There’s no ‘Planet B’ for ordinary risk-averse people.”85 If you knew, right now, that another asteroid was bearing down on Earth like the one that hit sixty-six million years ago, and if you were offered the choice of staying here or going to a base on Mars like the one Musk wants to build, staying here would be the far better bet. Everyone here would probably die, but without supply missions from Earth, everyone on Mars would definitely die. (kindle loc 4392)

Then there all the science fiction ideas that the billionaires go for, such as unlimited growth (and exponential growth if possible) for humanity, the technological singularity, and all these "end-times" type of destiny for the human race come under scrutiny. In every case, the math doesn't make sense.

 This is painfully apparent in the way Jeff Bezos talks about geniuses of the future. He dreams of one thousand Mozarts and one thousand Einsteins among his trillion humans living in space. But he’s neglecting the potential Einsteins and Mozarts that are living and dying in poverty right now. If Bezos really wants a dynamic civilization, he could invest in solving the problems that we actually face. He could tackle the enormous levels of wealth inequality in the world today. He could put all his resources into fighting global warming, which will also have unequal impacts around the world. Instead, he’s going to space—and he thinks that’s the best and most important thing he can do with his money. (kindle loc 4452)

 If growth in humanity’s energy usage were to continue at the same rate past the four-hundred-year mark, in 1,350 years we’d be using all the energy produced by the Sun; 1,100 years after that, we’d be using all the energy produced by all the stars in the Milky Way. And about 1,250 years after that, 3,700 years from right now, we’d be using all the energy produced by all the stars in the observable universe.44 If Bezos believes that ceasing to grow our energy usage must lead to a culture of stagnation, he’d better get used to the idea. Sometime in the next 3,700 years—only about 80 percent of the present age of the Great Pyramid at Giza—humanity must stop growing its energy use. And it’s probably going to happen much sooner than that (kindle loc 570)

Finally, the best argument against the technological salvation via singularity is this:

 Most of the greatest problems facing humanity right now—global warming, massive inequality, the lurking potential for nuclear war—are not driven by resource scarcity or a lack of technology. They’re social problems, requiring social solutions. Increased energy usage, increased technological prowess, or even an increase in the amount of “intelligence” brought to bear on these problems (whatever that might mean) isn’t likely to solve them. These are political problems, problems of persuasion and justice and fairness. Negotiating durable ceasefire agreements isn’t something that AI is likely to help with; sending vast numbers of humans to space won’t end violence in the Middle East; doubling humanity’s energy consumption isn’t going to fix political polarization in the United States or stem the rise of fascism worldwide. If we want a future that puts people first, we need to recognize that there are no panaceas, and likely no utopias either. Nothing is coming to save us. There’s no genie inside a computer that will grant us three wishes. Technology can’t heal the world. We have to do that ourselves. (kindle loc 5187)

Overall, I wish the book was better written. In many places its meandering, and takes a long time to get to the point. But the book is a great antidote to the techno-optimists, and reminds us that just because some smart people get fabulously wealthy doesn't mean that they aren't subject to the same wishful thinking (the author goes into "Engineer's disease") that affects all of us at one point or another.

 concentrated wealth has eroded democracy in the United States and around the world. Peter Thiel has aided that erosion with his support of Trump and other far-right politicians. The antidemocratic ambitions of tech billionaires extend through Sam Altman’s power fantasy of his own ascension to king of the world straight to the permanent galactic fascism of Marc Andreessen. While those specific visions are implausible, the fact that billionaires harbor such dreams is an indication of the risks that we as a society are taking by allowing billionaires to happen. They will keep looking for ways to extend their control over the world unless they are curtailed. Their dreams are dreams of endless capitalism of the most brutal sort, because they know that such a system would allow them to win still more money and power. This is another reason it’s difficult to imagine a future other than the ones they promote: as the saying goes, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. But eventually—and probably sooner rather than later—the present growth-obsessed form of capitalism must come to an end. And it can end without ending the world, as Ursula K. Le Guin reminded us. “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”81 (kindle loc 5241)