Doomer Optimism

Society can remain in decline longer than you can remain rational

It is common in a Christian and post-Christian society to pray for the Eschaton - the end times, only because we think this would bring relief from the current pain.

“You think we will see collapse? Ha! that is very optimistic. The decline can continue for much longer than you think.” Curtis Yarvin told me. “If you want to see a picture of the future to which we are on track, look at the third world,” he continued - “Venezuela just keeps getting worse, Haiti just keeps getting worse. Where is the collapse?”

This criticism was made against the argument that Balaji Srinivasan was making - that we’re going to see a collapse of the dollar within our lifetimes. This could be true, as Balaji has been right in other stuff other people thought it was impossible to happen.

But this “logical fallacy” or “religious thinking” that Curtis points out is interesting to think about - “Doomer Optimism”. You are incentivized to think the end is near because, on the other side, there is heaven.

On the other hand, you have “Optimist Doomerism”. This can be seen in the people around “e/acc”. We should accelerate! Even if we go extinct, the predecessor AIs will carry on the torch of civilization.

Both of these seem to have holes in reasoning, mainly driven by incentives. the Dommer Optimist thinks that after the collapse of the dollar, his Bitcoin is going to pump and become the world's reserve currency. On the other hand, people who work in AI fall for Optimist Dommerism - they think that with accelerated advanced AI development, they’ll become rich while their tools help millions of people - and in the slim chance that AI destroys humanity then that’s okay - since we would be replaced by superior beings.

Now, keep in mind that my startup is in the AI field and that I’m a Bitcoiner. Balaji might be right about the collapse of the dollar, and AI might replace us at the top of the pyramid. But Curtis might have an interesting point by pointing out this hole in that type of thinking.