I really like Accelerando, too. But it sounds a bit too reasonable; business as usual, with neither Heaven nor Hell.
The human mind accepts better living conditions as self evident really fast and forgets all previous situations. We lack historical insight -- from the viewpoint of two-three centuries ago, we probably live in a good approximation of Heaven.
-- There is no widespread hunger. (Locally, one year in seven had a bad harvest and lots of people died with many children getting brain damage).
-- The child mortality is much less than 20-30%. Enough said.
-- We have antibiotics. We know about cleanliness for operations/childbirth -- and can stop pain during them.
-- We are rich and most everyone can have education, music/art access and only work 8 hours a day.
-- Social equality. Just 160-170 years ago in my country, it became illegal to beat your employees...
-- Modern dental care.
-- Etc.
Even in most of the world's under developed countries, they have it much better than we had just ten generations ago.
Edit: I'm not arguing against "weird". I am arguing that utopia and/or dystopia is more likely than we would guess naively.
Edit 2: To nitpick and give a reference to my last claim (that was irrelevant for my point):
I've seen data for up to 30% children dead before 5 years of age in Scandinavia for poor farmers (that is, most everyone), around 200-250 years ago.
From the reference: "In 2007, there were 37 countries in which at least 10% of children under five died, down from 41 in 2006. All were in Africa, except for Afghanistan."
The human mind accepts better living conditions as self evident really fast and forgets all previous situations. We lack historical insight -- from the viewpoint of two-three centuries ago, we probably live in a good approximation of Heaven.
-- There is no widespread hunger. (Locally, one year in seven had a bad harvest and lots of people died with many children getting brain damage).
-- The child mortality is much less than 20-30%. Enough said.
-- We have antibiotics. We know about cleanliness for operations/childbirth -- and can stop pain during them.
-- We are rich and most everyone can have education, music/art access and only work 8 hours a day.
-- Social equality. Just 160-170 years ago in my country, it became illegal to beat your employees...
-- Modern dental care.
-- Etc.
Even in most of the world's under developed countries, they have it much better than we had just ten generations ago.
Edit: I'm not arguing against "weird". I am arguing that utopia and/or dystopia is more likely than we would guess naively.
Edit 2: To nitpick and give a reference to my last claim (that was irrelevant for my point):
I've seen data for up to 30% children dead before 5 years of age in Scandinavia for poor farmers (that is, most everyone), around 200-250 years ago.
From the reference: "In 2007, there were 37 countries in which at least 10% of children under five died, down from 41 in 2006. All were in Africa, except for Afghanistan."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_mortality#Highest_rates_i...