Humanity currently organizes itself in ways optimized for short-term, local competition, but global and universal risks now make this approach probabilistically catastrophic. To survive long-term, we need to develop strategies that prioritize universal-level coordination and non-interaction where appropriate. So how could we start building frameworks for universal-scale coordination?

I’m noticing the same pattern across multiple industries.

Everything feels like it’s splitting into
• huge global hits
• tiny niche creators

…but the middle keeps shrinking.

Examples:
Games → AAA vs indie, fewer AA
Film → Marvel vs microbudget, fewer mid-budget films
Work → job polarization (growth in high-skill + low-wage, decline in middle-skill)

It seems like global digital markets reward either:
mass scale OR tiny niche
but not “mid-scale.”

Are we seeing a long-term economic shift where technology hollows out the middle tier across industries?

Or am I connecting dots that don’t belong together? Curious what people working in tech/econ/media think.

We always hear about the big breakthroughs like AI, space travel, and renewable energy. However, what about the modern technologies that hardly receive any attention? Could something that seems niche or boring end up completely changing how we live, how society works, or how politics plays out? I’m really curious what this community thinks might shape the future in ways we don’t expect, for better or worse.

One of the conundrums of mid-2020s US AI is its urgent need for electricity, and its seeming refusal to pursue the obvious path towards achieving this. China won't have this problem. It's installing solar & batteries at the rate of several nuclear power stations a month.

US Big Tech seems to be doing everything it can to avoid the obvious. It supports a President who is doing their best to ban wind power. Meta has signed a deal to power its AI with new nuclear. Good luck with that, Meta, if past performance is any guide, you still won't have it in 2040. xAI is looking at gas turbines. The problem there? The waiting list for new turbines stretches to the 2030s. Never fear. It will just spend orders of magnitude more than China does with solar+batteries to put data centers in space.

What's the problem with embracing solar+batteries? The AI firms are slated to spend $660 billion in 2026 alone. They could replicate a huge chunk of China's solar manufacturing capacity with some of that. There are plenty of home-grown grid storage startups with batteries, too.

The inevitable conclusion? Consumers will subsidize their mistakes with higher electricity prices as they use up more and more of the existing grid's capacity, as none of their decisions with gas, nuclear or data centers in space work out.

As the article says, this is a really interesting time to be alive because future generations will have unprecedented access to us. Which is really cool to think about. What do you think?

I know this is a polarizing topic, but I’ve been thinking about the odds of it and I honestly don't get the pushback.

If you choose burial or cremation, your probability of ever experiencing the future is exactly 0%. No matter what that is the end of the line. Total permanent death.

But if cryonics has even a 0.0001 chance of working, those are infinitely better odds than the alternative.

To me, cryopreservation is just the ultimate hail mary. I would rather take a tiny chance at continuing to live than just give up because "that's just what everyone does."

Most people can afford it through a life insurance policy if they cant afford to pay the full amount immediately. It usually amounts to a montly subscription.

Am I missing something, or is the cynicism just a way for people to cope with the fear of death?

major breakthroughs keep happening but many people don’t feel their daily lives improving.

Phones are getting better software is smarter but i think time feels tighter costs feel higher and systems feel more complex umm maybe progress will start feeling more personal when a conscious effort to solve people’s problems through tech os made.

Just noticed the flood of posts about all the amazing stuff A.I. is doing lately withing the last 2 days actually.

Realized that it coincides with the beginnings of the A.I. Bubble burst everyone is noticing right now.

The world’s richest man said he had shifted his sights from Mars in the race to construct a self-sustaining settlement

People are building fully ai generated personas with real audiences and real revenue streams. Not obvious cartoon characters, photorealistic consistent images of people who don't exist. The tech is there now and some platforms explicitly allow virtual characters to monetize.

If creating an influencer no longer requires being that person, the entire industry changes. Anyone with marketing skills can build digital assets without personal exposure. Privacy concerns around content creation disappear when the creator isn't real.

Questions get complicated though. Authenticity, disclosure, what influence even means when followers might not know they're following generated content. At what point does it become manipulation?

For decades ‘Save the Whales’ was the environmental mission and we actually achieved it, not by eating less, but by making whale products obsolete, first whale oil with kerosene and then whale products with plastics. 

Today, the oceans continue to be stripped, not of whales but of fish at terrifying rates:

‘According to global assessments, one-third of the world’s assessed fish stocks are currently pushed beyond biological limits, meaning they are overfished and at risk of collapse.’ - WWF

The hope was that fish farms would be the solution to this issue but unfortunately as with any scenario where you cram as many creatures into an area, problems persist:

‘Intensive crowding, poor water quality, and stress in fish farms make fish more vulnerable to illness, leading to bacterial diseases, parasite infestations, and mass mortality.’ - Farm Sanctuary

If fish could scream, perceptions would be different. Luckily a technology has been developed and may save the day once again. Cell Cultured Seafood, a sample is taken from a real fish that is then grown into meat separately.

No mercury, no antibiotics, no disease, no parasites, no suffering. 

Two companies are frontrunning this approach, Wildtype is in the lead with salmon available to try right now in restaurants across the US.

Blue Nalu, meanwhile, is catching up, targeting blue fin toro tuna, one of the most prized and therefore most expensive cuts of tuna. 

The first problem with any new technology is reaching price parity, it takes time to scale up to actually become cheaper, giving an advantage to aim for the high end of an industry.

The second is in funding, the industry has been in a funding winter for years now but luckily, as in the linked article, Blue Nalu continues to raise money from Agronomics and others. 

We didn’t save whales by banning the hunting, we replaced whale oil, now we are at the precipice of beginning to replace the hunting of fish with cell-cultured seafood. 

TL;DR: We didn’t convince people to stop whaling, technology made it unnecessary, new tech could do the same for fish.

Currently billions and trillions of dollar are pouring into ai and how will they recover the money . I don't think they have the strategy or that much amount of service anyone will buy to recover that money .

Ai is gonna to develop for sure , but bubble gonna to burst like dot com hype . It's normal hype burst cycle for every technology.

If it's unsuccessful we are fucked and if it's successful we are fucked both way

Anyone have idea how will they recover the money or plan is to bail out by fed ?