Everything Is Amazing
We're doomed but it's getting better
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There’s a war going.
Inflation is high.
Climate change is melting the ice caps.
It seems wherever we turn there’s evidence that the World is getting worse and that we’re on the brink of destruction.
Perception shapes your reality and when you see the World like this your view will only be strengthened.
Reality is messy. The opposite of this worldview is also true.
The World is more peaceful now than at any other time in human history.
People today live better than every king in the past.
Renewable power generation is on the rise.
We’ve always been doomed
As I see it the Earth was always on a path of destruction.
Even if humans didn’t exist. The sun would wipe out all life on Earth in about a billion years. If an asteroid didn’t finish the job first.
If that didn’t happen a supernova explosion from a neighboring star would wipe us out.
And the inevitable end of the Universe, long after the last stars have burned out, cold stellar remnants known as black dwarfs will explode in a supernovae, providing the final fireworks of all time.
You see things have never been rosy.
Chaos and Order. Destruction and Creation are part of the same system.
When you start to see the World this way, that we’ve always been doomed but it’s getting better.
It gives you a way out from the pessimism that’s so common, especially around the risk of new technology.
When people talk about how AI could destroy us. You just tell them how we’ve always been on a path of destruction and an advanced intelligence could just help us escape this fate.
When they say nuclear power is dangerous, you say living is dangerous (100% fatality rate). But nuclear power could help end climate change.
The World as we know it is but a moment of order which has provided the catalyst for beautiful complexity to form.
My favorite fractal is the Mandelbrot set which is the cover of this article. It’s a visual representation of stability.
Inside the black is stable outside is unstable. You can clearly see which region has the largest area.
Order and Chaos come together.
The Big Bang (literally an explosion) led to atoms, led to stars, led to planets, led to life, which led to you—reading this right now.
The most complex structure we know of is the human brain. You would not exist without the preceding lower levels of order.
You’re the dark area in the Mandelbrot set.
But eventually, all stable systems tend to drift back into chaos—planets change, stars explode, and people die.
Even Mars once had oceans—possibly life. Now it’s a barren desert.
Order and Chaos.
Destruction has always been the faith of the Earth.
We were all born from chaos at the beginning of the Universe and are destined to return to that state of disorder.
But humans are curious things.
Consciousness lets us interact with our environment and intelligence gives us the ability to shape it.
We can create order and push back the hands of entropy. You do this every time you put something in the fridge.
We’re experts at creating stable complexity.
Think about your smartphone and the different parts gathered from all over the Earth it needs to work. Most of which had to be dug from the ground, then refined, and designed so you can read this.
If transforming dirt to a smartphone isn’t creating order—nothing is.
Unlike 99.999999….% of the Universe, we’re not simple deterministic piles of atoms.
Humans are special because we can create order in the Universe
What does this mean?
It means Mars can have oceans and life again.
It means we can cure aging and death.
It means we can end poverty everywhere.
It means we can make reality as close to Utopia as we imagine.
The World has gotten better so far not due to luck but by a concentrated human will to make it better.
You can create order in your reality.
Clean your room, make something—anything, appreciate the order behind things…your smartphone, trees, people…e.t.c.
Realize that everything around you was created from an explosion a long time ago.
We’ve always been doomed—but it’s getting better.
P.S Watch this video to learn about the fascinating Mandelbrot Set : )
P.P.S. This article is inspired largely by David Deutsch. Listen to his TED talk about the universal significance of humanity.