One thing never mentioned in these kinds of debates are economy, and the effects of it on all things, especially human development. When we focus on that, all other considerations become invalid, I think.
By focusing on it I mean analysing the very process going on between each human and every other; the competitive process, played in the zero-sum game of controlled scarcity, plotting and scheming how one individual or tribe or another will gain, with little regard to what the other(s) will lose.
Removing the incentive to do that, seems key to realising Utopia is not only possible, and highly desirable, it is absolutely necessary.
The opposite is extinction.
The bubbles you mention, just like all the other bubbles in social media, can just as easily be explained by considering science as something that has been heavily affected by intellectual colonialism. Much time has been spent by intellectuals considering how to be “Successful” in science, rather than considering the actual science. And for sure, the loudest voices, those of the most ambitious, a minority, are the only ones listened to.
Tesla, a mild man, is a good example, in my book.
He wanted to give us free solar power, and communications similar to the internet, a hundred and twenty years ago.
If he had been successful, it would have been the end of scarcity, since free power is interchangeable with free money, thus no longer any case or need for profit, no wars, and all people would have been empowered to pursue whatever science they thought was important, like pre-emptive vaccines, and other advances towards immortality.
Tesla himself, and Einstein, and many other names might be still alive and well, travelling to the stars with us by now.
Instead, we have had two world wars, global pollution, planetary unrest, nuclear weapons, seen and lost human space travel to the moon, supersonic commercial air travel, and even simple commercial air travel.
Will China maintain all of those on its own?
I don’t think so.
Not unless they switch on to free universal power from solar.
