The Next 10 Years: A Deep Sense of Foreboding

[Eric the Green]

(12-02-2016, 06:43 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Here's an experiment everyone can do at home. Google "the next ten years."

The most interesting outcome of the experiment is what the search does not return. There are very few pessimistic reports or other writings when this search is done. Instead, there will be the mother of all AI booms. robots will diagnose your illnesses (ah, what a boon for medical care cost cutting), cancer will be cured, everyone will join Thomas L. Friedman's "plugged in world" and become a member of "the electronic herd," all the cars, small trucks, SUVs and semis will self drive making the roads safer than the rails or even safer than flying, there will be a zillion new millionaires made from the private space industry, and so on. Nary a prognostication of disaster.

You know what they say when the herd are all "jumping into the market" so to speak. In this case, the market is optimism and linear thinking. Meanwhile, all the blind pilots, flying through the clouds of harsh reality, are en route to the inevitable sudden mid air collision with destiny.

I thoroughly agree. 

I think there is an optimistic scenario, but it 1) has nothing to do with all these silly gismos and 2) depends on us waking up from our current political nightmare, which is anything but certain at this point.

Still, from the cosmic perspective, I'll probably stick to my prediction of a huge Democratic congressional victory in 2022 and a Democratic president elected in 2024-- with very heavy consequences; both for reform, revolution and bloody resistance to same, with the outcome decided pretty quickly by 2028. Secessions are also quite possible in these years; the cyclic return of the Civil War.

And internationally, the irresponsibility of a Trump administration will only lead to war, but probably down the road a few years, and with American involvement coming down in those same 4 years after 2024. It will be quite a climax to this 4T.

That's what it looks like to me now, just reading the signs; but it depends on how things go, of course.

If Middle America continues on its downward spiral into irretrievable prejudice and ignorance, then it has the power to sink America permanently into banana republic status. This means that the scenario brower mentions of attack on the USA by foreign powers against a fascistic America on the loose worldwide, is quite likely. It will be the exact reverse of Trump's promise, and perhaps the end of the United States of America.

I know Mr. X that you also predict nuclear holocaust, but I will not go that far.

America may be going stupid, but the rest of the world may not be.