I am also curious about another thing: For me, I identified over my long 31 years of lifetime that was spent mostly behind a computer, that the 3 biggest challenges facing humankind so far are an unhealthy relationship with nature, the lack of a socio-cultural-political milieu that provides a solid guarantee of global peace (just look at with Russia now!), and finally the lack of similar on the ethical development and deployment of technology.
What do you think?
Moreover, given that I am hopefully at a point where I can make the transition from mental health recovery and college to finally a “proper” career and to break free of the shackles of the computer screen, what should I be aiming at if I want to maximize the utility value on all these fronts, and why should I accept that, and why should I accept the evidence, and where can I find countermanding arguments as to those whys?
Regarding the “long term stagnation”—to me this suggests you seem to be thinking of the current epoch of history as showcasing the inevitable. Yet stagnation in this sense was the norm for 200,000+ years of modern Homo sapiens existing on Earth. Hence, there is real question whether this period represents a continued given, a blip, the last hurrah before the end, or perhaps the start of a much more complex trajectory of history—perhaps involving multiple periods of rapid technological flourishing, then periods of stagnation or even decline, in various patterns and ways and not to mention also geographically.
One thing to note about history or culture is that there are no inherent drivers to “greater complexity”—indeed, from an anthropological point of view one can question just what that means. It is, in this regard, much like biological evolution outside the human realm. In both biology and anthropology, there is and should be a strong skepticism toward any claim of a teleology or a linear narrative.
That said, I would still support that there is a distinction between a long term stagnation and extinction even if the former is definitely not something one should rule out—and that’s that in the latter case, there is absolutely no recovery: while it’s possible another intelligent toolmaking species could evolve, looking at the future of geological history which is potentially much more regular, the gradual heating of the Sun suggests that we could potentially be Earth’s only shot. It’s like the difference between life imprisonment, and the death penalty. The former is not fun at all, but there’s a reason there’s so much resistance to the latter, and it’s that key point of irreversibility.