Supervenience Rules- Emergence is the Exception or “Why the World Sucks so Often”- Part One

In these “interesting times”, there appear to be three very different responses to the existential challenges we face (see my recent article “Two Existential Questions for Humanity” for an overview of the multiple interconnected escalating crises we face).

Coping Mechanism One: the world is awful. Humans suck. AI, and other technologies plus climate change, the sixth mass extinction, etc, will probably make things worse. We’re going to run out of the materials needed for renewable energy, and electric vehicles, let alone food and water. World War 3 is coming, and so on.

Discussions about the state of the world too often focus on what is going wrong, rarely mentioning any positive developments, especially given the fear-mongering nature of the world’s media. Think Yuval Harari, Umair Haque, extreme right and left-wingers, and collapsists/end of the worlders/survivalists. There is a large audience for bad news and it is easier and more profitable to scare people than to encourage them to achieve positive change. Having said that, if your house is on fire, calling the fire brigade is a reasonable response.

Coping Mechanism Two: the world is much better. Pushback on the awful world narrative takes it to the other extreme, which is equally damaging. Solely communicating the progress that the world has achieved becomes unhelpful, or even repugnant, when it glosses over the problems that are real today. Think…