The Singularity

The Grand Singularity and A.I. autonomy
Building the superman
Minus the man

Yes, Minus the Man (from The Quest)

The market could only reward ideas that turned a profit. Nobody stood to profit from clean parks; they were just nicer to live with than dirty parks. But if nobody made the political judgment that clean parks were better, a society organized around profit incentives from production alone would almost automatically end up with dirty parks. The market was not an impartial guide to the beliefs of the public, and some of its verdicts were crazy…. When public goods fell into disorder or neglect, people found them unpleasant and satiated their desires with what the market had to offer…. The economic organization of society was devoted not to maximizing social comfort and harmony but to satisfying the consumer desires created by advertising and production itself. And that in turn was hampering society’s ability to grapple with poverty. 

Kenneth Galbraith, according to Zachary D.Carter in The Price of Peace

Exponential growth inside a finite system leads to collapse.

Richard Powers, The Overstory

For the ancient Greeks and Romans, history revealed no pattern other than the regular growth and decline of civilization—a rhythm not essentially different from those found in the natural world. There was no prospect of indefinite improvement. Judged by the standards of the time, civilization might improve for a while. But eventually the process would stall, then go into reverse. Rooted in the innate defects of the human animal, cycles of this kind could not be overcome. If the gods intervened, the result was only to make the human world even more unpredictable and treacherous.

 Christopher Beha, The Myth of Progress, in the February 21, 2019 New York Review of Books.

Having noted Chinese immobility, they gained a clearer sense of their own motion.  Their appreciation of individual initiative was enhanced as they noted that individuals in China could undertake only what society expected of them.  They grasped more sharply the strength of the human personality in the West by observing that the only recognized human entity in China was the collective.  They took the measure of the role of competition in their own country when they saw that no one in China could escape his assigned place, for to do so would offend against the established hierarchy.  They saw more clearly how important merchants were in Britain by observing how deeply they were scorned in China.  They became aware of their own devotion to the new by discovering the cult of the immutable.  In short, they gained a clearer insight into the fact that individualism, competition, and innovation were the wellsprings of their own wealth and power.

Alain Peyrefitte's observation, on the "failed" Macartney expedition to China 1792-94, in his masterful The Collision of Two Civilisations. 

I still cannot understand why it should be the cause of such universal celebration ... that we have climbed out of the trees.

László Krasznahorkai, The Melancholy of Resistance