u/The_ZombyWoof

I've been thinking about the recent news about how Artificial intelligence could kill the entire human species. At least, according to people in the artificial intelligence industry.

And I started to think about how many times have I heard news like this? As Gen Xers, how often in our lifetimes, have we stood right at the at the precipice of disaster? How often were we just a short time, or one single event, away from total annihilation?

How many times since the 1960s have we been told civilization/the planet was headed for catastrophe?

Here's my short list:

Nuclear war/Mutually Assured Destruction: A U.S.–Soviet nuclear war would kill hundreds of millions or billions and destroy civilization. See also "Nuclear Winter".

Pesticide/ecological collapse: read Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring

Population explosion and famine: read The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich

Oil depletion: Remember when conventional petroleum production would peak sometime around the year 2000, followed by increasingly severe shortages? (See: Mad Max 2)

Ozone destruction: CFCs were destroying stratospheric ozone, raising fears of enormous increases in ultraviolet radiation, cancers and ecological damage (Note: I think we actually fixed this, didn't we?)

Resource/ecological collapse: Anyone remember acid rain? (See: Blade Runner, that was how Los Angeles was supposed to end up looking)

Y2K: PLANES WERE SUPPOSED TO FALL OUT OF THE SKY! ELEVATORS WOULD COME CRASHING DOWN TO THE FIRST FLOOR OF EVERY BUILDING!

Rainforest destruction: I think this might still be a thing?

Pandemics: No, I'm not saying Covid was a hoax, don't put that evil on me, Ricky Bobby. However, there were definitely some histrionic voices screaming that this, or Ebola, or some mutation of an existing virus, would definitely take us out (See: 28 Days Later)

and now......Artificial intelligence. And here we are. Again.

Anyway, what did I forget? What other global catastrophy was supposed to happen in our lifetime?

Do you have any specific go to websites for shopping for film cameras, lenses, and other analog related equipment, that are not Ebay?

I'm a big fan of KEH, and I see the used sections on the B&H and Adorama sometimes have cool stuff.

Last year I finally deleted Facebook. While my mental health has improved dramatically, I am missing Facebook Marketplace. Especially because it seems hardly anyone posts on Craigslist anymore.

So, then, why do I just keep hitting repeat on "Shelter From The Storm"?

Someone once told me, "If seeing is believing, trust is cheap." I think about that a lot.

If someone in authority actually did come out with full disclosure, what kind of process or recourse could we, the general public, have to investigate for ourselves?

If someone comes out and actually declares, "There is no God, humans have been genetically engineered by an alien species and this is a prison planet", well, what would we say to that?

This is an important question right now, obviously, but at the time of real disclosure, however that manifests, how can we possibly separate truth from manipulation?