Comment by Satam | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Satam | Hacker News Reader

I think one should look at this as a nudge to think and re-examine our intuitions. The world and its 'order' has changed many times in the past. The leading empires rise and fall every couple of centuries, pandemics and wars devastate the world periodically. That's the pattern. Can we safely assume this time's the exception?

As a fun example, my understanding was that gold has always been the preferred standard for currency. Turns out silver was the far more prevalent standard for almost 5000 years. The switch to gold seems to largely have been caused by Isaac Newton's (yes, that one's) mistake in setting the exchange rate when he was the head of Britain's treasury. How many people don't know this yet exclaim how gold has always been the greatest form of currency?

For this pattern to continue uninterrupted, it seems to me that you’d need to discount the entire technological revolution that’s happened since the early 19th century. That means the internet, nuclear weapons, automobiles, airplanes, international travel, etc. have had no significant effect on the underlying political structure of human society.

That seems like a hugely unlikely thing to me, and it’s probably more likely that we’ll see something very different and unexpected, not a continuation of the pattern.

For one, I would bet more on regions merging into a single loosely connected political entity than on continued divided states battling it out.

Great point. I think that might be in line with the idea if we take it to its full conclusion. Any way it goes, expect change. The meta mistake is assuming the patterns we've seen in the last 10/50/100/1000 years/etc. will continue.

If one looks at the last 10 years, they assume the market only goes up. If one looks only at the last 50 years, one assumes the US will continue to dominate.

I guess then, what is the mistake if we look only at the last 1000 or 10000 years? Maybe assuming the continued dominance of humans?

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