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Yunlunuae OP wrote

I don't wish to force -anything- on you, nor do I think the current paradigm for technological growth as focus on profit motive is a particularly sustainable or desirable path, especially considering just how much advancement is actually stifled by patent law and the monopolists who wish to earn higher profits at the cost of lives (for example the entire pharmaceutical industry). You are correct in the growing inability to 'opt-out' of modern society, this is pretty much my exact critique in fact. I just wish to opt out in an entirely different direction, technologically speaking, than you. Preferably I would leave the stratosphere far behind and inhabit with several others a space faring vessel, I believe we both know the current authoritarian strain in our respective societies has a vested interest in preventing either of our goals which seem to stem from a similar desire, freedom from unwanted constraints to our individual desires.

Comfort without knowledge is the problem, not comfort as a concept. We can be comfortable at any given moment with or without technology, but I imagine you mean in a long term rather than momentary sense. I think, perhaps, the more apt term there would be complacency. Complacency is a problem for my ideal as well, it is something that says ideas can be owned because changing this rigid social construct is too difficult in comparison to living well enough off. Complacency in the face of authoritarian constructs is what leads to the degradation of each individual's autonomy.

I would posit that while personal, individual knowledge of living through physical hardships is harder to come by, collective knowledge on the subject through information mediums is actually at the highest point it has ever been. We lead increasingly interconnected lives and this is not something I am opposed to, the underlying current of authoritarianism is what I am opposed to. This is why things like free software movements and the general sphere of decentralized structures greatly interest me, I wish to build the possible futures, the utter destruction of the present maligns everything at the cost of what good has come of it and with a likely repeat of the same path somewhere down the line.

As for how long lived our species will be, this really depends on if we escape the gravity well in a meaningful and permanent manner. Any number of things could spell our doom, from self inflicted to extrasolar, that's not a prediction I'm willing to take with such a limited set of data. I actually know how to make much of the technology I use, how to program it is another matter entirely I'm still a bit wibbly in that understanding, the largest problem there is how damnably difficult it actually is to make modern processors. The electromagnetism involved requires very, very precise machining, The other reason for other pieces of technology being somewhat difficult to replicate largely lie in the plague on human ingenuity that is patent law which does actually lead into power being concentrated on the creator... this is usually not the case, the authority that exists behind the creator is often the beneficiary of that labor and not the creator themselves.

I don't believe in utopia, nothing will ever be perfect. I believe in getting to the root of all things and attempting to maximize individual autonomy. Complete self-reliance might be something to aim for but that is a very distant future, I would rather create interdependent networks in the near term. Ones that can provide mutual aid and look to route around authority like the disease that it is.

I would posit, as counter to an imagined future where I've got elevated abilities due to morphological freedom, that in a more primitive world you would certainly be more powerful than someone with less muscle mass or who suffered genetic defects or had slightly less lung capacity or worse sight and if you were to assert yourself those individuals would now abide you. The key there is attempting to -force- someone into something they otherwise would not wish to do, this is also the case in the imagined future.

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