Book Review: 2/5 Impact On Me (Book By William MacAskill)
Read more about the book here
I liked the book's thought experiment about a person waking up every 50 years to see the changes in the world. The book makes a case that we might currently be in a period of stagnation regarding quality-of-life improvements. Learning about different pathogen outbreaks from labs and the book’s take on the latest technologies was interesting.
However, I do not like books that try to predict the future. Humans aren’t good at making accurate predictions. The book mainly focuses on extrapolating trends related to climate change, artificial general intelligence, and how civilization might collapse, or populations might be eradicated. It suggests different ways humanity could face challenges or even extinction.
At the same time, I'm a techno-optimist. I like Yuval Harari's Sapiens and Homo Deus books. I like A Short History of Nearly Everything about the past.
Since this book tries to predict the future (and one that I disagree with), I rate the book's impact on my perspective 2 out of 5.
I agree more with Nassim Taleb's ideas that making reliable predictions is difficult.