One of the oddities of our age is that there are two apocalyptic sensibilities that have captured two almost completely distinct groups of the scientifically literate not least among the youth: one can be found among those concerned with the effects of global warming produced by human (technological) activity. Scientifically literate apocalypticism is what concerns me in this post. The other can be found by people concerned about and often working in the development of artificial intelligence above all among those shaped by ideas derived from the philosophers associated with Long-termism. I used ‘sensibilities’ in the first sentence because when you try to look more closely at the wide diversity of views within each of the two ‘doomerist’ groups, one finds much heterogeneity in expectations (and the risks/scenarios attached to them). I find the lack of genuine interaction among these two groups very peculiar, but why this is so I will set aside.
I suspect the relative absence of overlap among the two doomerist orientations has allowed the environmental orientation to have become coded Left-centrist, and the other coded Right-Libertarian in many societies. But I don’t think that’s fully solidified, and it’s not my interest today. Of course, many environmentalists tend to treat the growth of datacenters as contributors to the problem they are focusing on.
Scientifically literate apocalypticism is not wholly unprecedented. First, at one point, in living memory of some among us, there was a similar sensibility about the role of nuclear technology, especially atomic weapons, including among many of the people involved in research and development of adjoining technologies. In fact, there existed military/political strategies, based on then cutting-edge formal modeling (and computing), that required from participants in super-power conflict that one credibly aimed at mutual destruction. It is not unlikely one can find more examples among those who were allowed to be aware of the development of weaponized pathogens during the cold war. That is to say, once post Baconian science (and adjoining technologies) progressed sufficiently to conceive of or build weapons of truly mass destruction at limited cost, such apocalyptic sensibilities are to be expected given only minimal assumptions about human nature as we find it.