I disagree with the presumption that they were rational in being optimistic, primarily because while there is real progress in history (only if we count humans.), I don’t agree with the implication that we should expect an optimistic bright future. I would argue that technological x-risk has wiped out all expected value from the future, especially under a longtermist view, assuming the future is positive thus x-risk reduction is our main priority. If the expected value of the future is negative, then moral-circle expansion is the most important thing to do
Or just making society wealthier overall (aka maximizing economic growth) so can enjoy these last few hundred years more. Nonetheless, I don’t share your pessimism.
I disagree with the implication that the population bomb didn’t happen, ergo the sterilization was wrong. This is a classic case of hindsight bias, and there was no mitigation against this bias. More exhaustively, you need to make the claim that the population bomb can’t happen or was likely not to happen in order for your argument to go through
But my point is precisely that we couldn’t have known in advance what those solutions looked like in advance because knowledge growth is unpredictable. But given the fact that we do end up solving many of these seemingly devastating problems, we should update in favor of a vague optimism about our future capabilities to deal with problems. I give the example of peak oil worries later in this post:
In the 70s, it was a common belief among the relevant technical experts that we would hit peak oil by the 90s. They could not have anticipated the new technologies that made more oil reserves accessible to us. If there was a longtermist research institute within the government at that time, it would have recommended that we stock up on foreign oil, and the end result of this would have been unaffordable transportation and heating for the poorest people on the planet.
Thanks for the comment.
Or just making society wealthier overall (aka maximizing economic growth) so can enjoy these last few hundred years more. Nonetheless, I don’t share your pessimism.
But my point is precisely that we couldn’t have known in advance what those solutions looked like in advance because knowledge growth is unpredictable. But given the fact that we do end up solving many of these seemingly devastating problems, we should update in favor of a vague optimism about our future capabilities to deal with problems. I give the example of peak oil worries later in this post: