Thread by @sama

Techno-optimism is the only good solution to our current problems.

Unfortunately, somehow expressing optimism about the future has become a radical act.

Take climate change. Some people seem to prefer shaming others into doing as little as possible and not having kids, instead of pushing for technological breakthroughs that can deliver limitless, cheap, clean energy.

But most people want “more and better”, not “less and worse”, and technological progress is how they get it.

We should demand technological progress, and the funding and talent it requires, and relegate austerity and pessimism to the depressing corners they deserve.

(The “degrowth” mindset is also incredibly entitled—it’s not fair to tell other cultures they can’t use the same amount of resources we used to get where we are.)

A frequent argument against investing in progress is that it’s better to use the money to improve people’s lives today than to gamble on breakthroughs.

We should do both things, of course, but we can’t accept techno-optimism getting thrown out, and right now it’s on defense.

This is where understanding exponential growth is important. It’s obviously better to save a million lives in the future than one life today, but without really appreciating the power of compound growth, it’s hard to reason about the likelihood of such a tradeoff.

We can build AGI. We can colonize space. We can get fusion to work and solar to mass scale. We can cure all human disease. We can build new realities.

We are only a few breakthroughs away from abundance at a scale that is difficult to imagine.

These things won’t be easy to achieve, and they’ll be even harder to deliver at mass scale. They will not automatically solve society’s problems—along with the technology, we also need to figure out the policies to push the effects in the most positive directions.

Technological progress is not sufficient, but it is absolutely necessary. More and better!