Debate: Will the Future be Abundant? Peter Diamandis vs. Peter Zeihan 

Agree. However it's sad this needs to be said.

Absolutely agree, civil debates where people can disagree and discuss without screaming and sluring at each other need to be more common.

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😂

I definitely agree with Peter on this topic.

😂😂😂

are you insane?! peter totally lost!

Right?! I got an extra twenty years and you think I'm gonna spend it working?

@@dandabear118 To be fair, the 20 years thing, it won't be you and won't be me. But some generation in the future, cost of living, taxation, inflation among other things is gonna make it such that people who have an extra 20 years spend them working as well. The way I see it, our lives are split into 4 parts, the 1st we spend educating ourselves, 2nd we work basic entry level jobs, 3rd we get established and promoted to a good position in our workplace, 4th we retire. Extra 20 years just means 5 more years of studying as everyone gets PhDs or more, 10 more years of work and 5 more years of retirement before we kick the bucket.

50’s is the new 40’s! Working from home alone will easily add another decade to my work life. Running a business on vacation is much easier with the connected world

I did not hear that. What he means that there should be no societal or legislated exclusion of those who can, want to or need to economically continue and contribute...of sound mind and general reasonable health notwithstanding.

lol. funny comment. I will defend peter D. its not like everyone will do that but the best of the best will and if that is a million brilliant people working on important issues that could make a big difference. my dad is 80 and cannot stop working. he is afraid if he stops working he will die, but he is working on more fun projects and not so hard as he used to.

😅 LOL!! Yeah, it's easy to see Peter D is staring at the clouds and imagining the future while Peter Z is seeing the water recede and a larger wave in the distance, as he heads to his 5th floor hotel room.

3 to 4 weeks? More like 5 minutes.

Good comments. PD is not in the real world. He's been in AI too long!...LOL

Peter D. is a twit. Whole thing depends on women and NO discussion of making their lives better. In Peter D's world pregnant and in the kitchen is his attitude. Saudi and Riyadh...great place to start Charlie.

It is as if these guys have distilled into money. The scaffolding is changed. Again, get the test tubes out.

Chips? What are chips? By then we won't need chips. Everything will be soooooooo futuristic! (The words of someone who knows nothing about technology). To take it to an extreme, such a person might say "Well, alien disclosure by the government is imminent, and I am sure the aliens can provide us with lots of chips." I would respond "I am talking about computer chips, not potato chips".

@@willchristie2650 but potato chips > computer chips!!!

First we get chips that can make the chips, then we get chips that will make the chips that makes the chips. Then eventually theres going to only be chips making chips that make chips for chips to make more chips that needs more chips to make chips for the chips that needs chips to make chips. We don't need humans, they're not chips that would make the chips that consume the chips made by chips.

Oh the crunchy goodness!!! I love chips! The saltier the better.

@@therearenoshortcuts9868 Most people on the planet know and care more about potato chips ,than computer chips.

10/10 I might only add that what Peter Zeihan is saying is actually happening. He gained prominence when correctly predicting Ukr-Rus war

Good summation. Peter D is voicing a very common mindset that "technology will save us". This point of view often comes from those who have very little understanding of technology development. Thier arguments are based on faith of something they do not understand.

@@robertbraden4454 Yes, the Alter of Technology which so many now worship upon...it literally is magical thinking and it would take something magical to pull us out of the hole we've dug ourselves into. These people ignore the reality of physics.

i agree. zeihan at least has info to back up his conclusions, whereas diamandis sounds almost like a faith-based lecturer. it makes me feel like zeihan understands his area of expertise well enough to be credible, whereas diamandis seems to not understand the underlying causes for prosperity and innovation, and therefore also what causes deprivation and stagnation.

Agree. Diamandis fails to grasp that inequality has indeed been growing for a long time. You can find people live in extraordinary wealth and abundance right now while some people live in near stone age conditions (people in the Amazon for example). Most people barely get by. The discrepancy has never been bigger in human history. All it takes is one look at San Francisco where you have 20 something year old billionaires step over homeless peoples poop. They can't, or perhaps don't want to solve even an open defecation issue in their own city. Hardly evidence for an abundant world. I find it hard to believe that they care about anything but themselves and their wallets...

Sorry you found her attempt to control the debate so personally insulting. I thought she did a wonderful job.

@@willchristie2650 I find her perfectly charming. I took no personal insult. There is no evidence of having been insulted. If two people clearly communicate their views for 5 minutes and a moderator inserts her interpretation for another almost 4 minutes, then I’ve spent nearly as much time listening to the summary as that which is being summarized. That. Is. A. Waste. Of. Time. Redundant and muddling, not insulting.

@@philipcullin983 I found her charming but I tend to agree with your assessment on the structure of debate here.

Ha! Totally agree, her summaries of what we just heard moments before were so essential (j/k). Good grief. As Princess Diana once put it, this marriage was a bit crowded!

And then another 10% taken up by her complaining about how little time they have after wasting it all

As an an engineer that works as a cloud architect and has been utilizing AI/ML tools for 15 years, I can state with a high degree of confidence that Peter D is naive on the technology front and is only looking at the past and his assessment of technology to form his opinion of the future. Demographics are undefeated over time, so while I’d prefer to believe Peter D, I just don’t see it.

@@SignalCorps1 My career was in systems engineering and design, along with basic coding. The average person has no idea how much it takes to create a working computer system/network. Of course, I did not have AI, but I bet it still is hard work. What I always found laughable (without being an elitist) was how the federal government would tell displaced coal miners that they could be retrained to be software engineers. Excuse me? Why not just tell coal miners they can all be trained to be brain surgeons or nuclear physicists! The cluelessness of the government about what it takes to be a software engineer (a logical mind with a strong mathmatical ability, much less a basic understanding of advanced algebra) always insulted me. I did talk to one bureaucrat who actually said "What's the big deal? If I can use Microsoft Office, then anyone can". This government employee thought that a software engineer's job was equivalent to using MSWord or Excel. I pulled up my laptop and showed her a page of C++ code, asking if she could do this. She changed the subject. How many coal miners have transitioned into a software engineering title? (Not to knock coal miners, but an extremely different skill set is required). People are not interchangeable circuit boards that can just be plugged into any job or situation.

​@SignalCore1 Yes, I think the challenges are going to be upon us well before the solutions. Many people of the world will not be around to see an abundant future.

​@SignalCore1I second that, with 30 yrs the industry. AI is not capable of delivering what Peter D. is promising.

Yea but Zeihan is completely wrong on other stuff and way to pessimistic

@@lionelmessisburner7393 Wrong on what? He called half this crap back in 2014.

@@lionelmessisburner7393 he predicted Ukraine 10 years ago

@@lionelmessisburner7393 Your comment is as devoid of detail of Peter D’s. Peter Z isn’t always correct, but he is right a lot. Peter Z’s in-depth knowledge and the details which he provides is why he’s right a lot, but is also the source of his detractors when he gets some of the details wrong.

@@firefly9838 that’s one thing. Lmk where I said he is wrong ab every single thing he’s ever said. He also has been saying China will collapse in the next 5 years for like 10 years. And many other things he says have truth to them but then he completely goes overboard on it.

Will probably continue to skirt the line between high tech dystopia and utopia. Dystopia is just the easiest to picture, since there's so many movies/shows acting as a warning of "what NOT to do" rather than the seemingly unrealistic level of optimism most feel is needed to depict a high tech utopia. Anything that isn't perfect tending to be called a dystopia doesn't help, either.

The few will live incredible but unfulfilled lives, the many will live in poor desolation, without access to most of the technologies. But they'll be fine, because they'll be distracted and heavily medicated.

Demographics are undefeated over time. There is nothing to fast track a demographic decline. We can’t create 40 year olds. It takes exactly 40 years today just like it did thousands of years ago.

zeihan is an absolute juggernaut genius who loves supporting an illegitimate authoritarian old folks home patient destroying the country at a pace never before seen, over thebest presiden in modern history, because he reminded him of his bullies in school...

utopia is a trap @@Vaeldarg

Indeed, he's energy blind to the hilt. He'd do well to listen to Hagens, etc, but you and I both know he'll dismiss such concerns with more energy blind extrapolations of the present.

Peter D has a "trickle down" mindset which has been proven to be utter horseshit. The ultra-wealthy have only ever wanted any abundance for themselves.

True. But oil was considered as poison for agricultural efforts just 200 years ago. What defines a resource is our use of it. Until we find a use for something, it isn't a resource, it is waste. What if someone creates a carbon-based super battery in the next decade? And/or fusion energy? I'm not saying that there aren't problems and that our human project for civilization can't collapse, it certainly can, but exercises of futurology are always hard to manage.

One thing I agree thou - just looking at trends can be misleading. If you are at the ascending part of the curve, you may be tempted to believe that it will continue on that path forever, without realizing that a curve has the ups, but those are followed by the downs. Just looking at trends could lead us to a wrong assumption that life expectancy would increase to 300 years in a few decades, for instance.

Yup, energy and materials blindness, encapsulated.

The future for the next 20 years at least is weaponry and lots of it.

He used a great example of a logical fallacy, namely a false equivalency to Zeihan's argument about current manifestations of destabilization = an asteroid could come down and exterminate us.

@@LRRPFco52 that's not a false equivalency; its called the turkey argument as i was taught to know it. "consider the turkey, he concludes the farmer is his friend because he brings him food everyday.....until the farmer comes outside with an axe the day before thanksgiving"

I'm an engineer (aerospace) and part of Peter D's problem is that he has ZERO understanding of *INFRASTRUCTURE,* and there is nothing strange about this as I see it all the time with non-engineering people and in particular ECONOMISTS and FUTURISTS. This is the main reason we don't yet have a Moon base. Its not that we can't get there and back its that we don't have the technologies to do the basic infrastructure - power, water, oxygen,.... They make these idiotic assumptions that there is an unlimited supply of stuff and that we will not run out of anything. Sadly the simple reality is that we live on a finite world. David Suzuki tried explaining this to people back in the 1990s and *NOBODY LISTENED.* Here's an example. Right now there's a giant push to switch all the cars, trucks, busses,.... to Electric Vehicles (EVs). At the moment the Tesla S requires 63kg of Lithium for its battery. At the moment there are 1.5 Billion cars and 500 million trucks (source: Wikipedia) Putting aside all the other raw materials we'd need to re-build 1.5 Billion cars and just look at the batteries. Just those 1.5 Billion cars would need 94.5 Million tons of Lithium for the batteries. According to the US Geological Survey there's 21 million tons in reserves and by some other estimates maybe 26 million tons. So if we dig up every last known gram of lithium and stuff it into car batteries we maybe get 1/3rd of the way there if we start using smaller batteries in smaller vehicles. This is where people like Pere D infuriate engineers. They just expect us to magically solve these problems without any consideration of what it might take. He got damn lucky with the X-Prize in that 1 competitor was able to make something that worked. *BUT* that took a billionaire (Microsoft's Paul Allen) with enough spare money to spend twice as much ($20M) as the prize was worth ($10M). *Also look how many years its taken using the same basic technology to go from the experimental space plane that won the X-Prize to a commercial operation.* When you are not the engineer having to solve the problem its very easy to make the bold claims.

@@tonywilson4713 Excellent comments. I have worked as an ML Engineer for people like Peter D on multiple occasions. The reason 90% of AI projects fail is because people like him do not know what they are doing. Like Peterbot, they create solutions looking for a problem. They sell the hype. Its fun and games until customers start noticing the hallucinations, training artifacts, and many other problems. The real danger of AI is not robot overlords, but of a crypto style wholesale collapse of multiple systems, products, companies using models that just don't work statistically because they were not built properly. ps; Zeihan is also overly bullish on Shale technology. I have worked for several energy companies and even been on fracking rigs. Some of the wells are played out, a lot will cost too much to produce, and there is tons more litigation in that area now.

@@tonywilson4713 I am an engineer too and work as a cloud architect with extensive utilization of AI/ML tools. On the AI/ML front, ChatGPT has created ton of hype in the media which has filtered down to the public, but I’ve been using AI/ML for about 15 years. The leap forward isn’t nearly as fast or dramatic as most people think. This didn’t pop up a year ago. It’s been a sustained effort for over 20 years. Peter D is completely in the dark on this point.

Totally agree!!

Agreed, but i would also say that this i a normal human fear, and everyone would want to avoid degradation and death as long a possible. And with how the demographics look for the next decades, this might become the political/industrial/money focus for a while...

AI can make decisions and take action to reduce the need for nutrients or calories.....

Gotta close some gaps between AI and real work though. One thing Peter Zeihan mentioned was AI with a robot and camera could be used to identify individual plants health and spray less fertilizer on healthy plants and spray more on plants that need some help. Zeihan suggested this would maintain or increase yields with the same or less total fertilizer, by changing from a field or crop policy to an individual plant policy enabled by AI. Theoretically an experienced farmer could do it with their own eyes but it would be very tedious unprofitable work. AI just supressed the cost.

Good point. My guess is that the distribution of the gains in profits, from increases in productivity, has experienced an exponential rate of diminishing returns for workers.

I disagree with Peter Zeihan on plenty of things, but I think that describing him as "extreme" is at best lazy thinking. Peter takes the lesson from history that human progress rarely happens quickly and without bumps along the way. I don't think that's an extreme viewpoint. His observations about China aren't extreme either through the long lense of history having repeated unification and breakup again and again. Western civilization itself has been going through a cultural suicide which again has been seen before historically. Even the best positioned countries are going to see serious obstacles to overcome before they can once again turn their collective attention back to the rest of the world.

@@Seastallion Considering what channels that have been showing the REAL face of China have shown, what's happening there is actually a lot WORSE than what he was saying when it came to there. Running out of food via corruption and environmental collapse (most of their ground water and air is polluted), failing banks (including their "shadow banks"), massive death tolls from natural disasters simply covered up...would prob give Peter Z a heart attack if knew.

How exactly do you force someone with an army of terminators to share his wealth with you?

Sorry... but the key to solve this debate is a single question which unfortunately wasn't made: -- what is the ultimate cause for technical innovation and constant technological advancement so leading to abundance as a deterministic general outcome? Human curiosity and ingenuity? Certain mode of social production? Geography? Demographics? War? Human genetics? There are more comments I would introduce about the history of technology and its relation with abundance but that's ok. Brasil Reply to a comment of @stevefitt9537 Hmmm Apparently they are at the same side at the frontline because both believe that technical innovation is the causal root to reduce scarcity in the long term along history. But you should read Zeihan in his subtext. Peter Diamandis considers technology as an atemporal or asynchronous deux ex machina. Zeihan however doesn't commit this error. If timing is important to any preparedness in History (as it in fact) hence time is all important because it is the key to equate the surge of technology. But what would be the chain of elements pertaining to the historical time that are key to generate technical innovations from the outside of the human tech creative cycle itself? The technical advancement is the consequence not the cause. Howsover it is clear that the cause of technology is not technology itself -- technology is not autopoietic. Therefore the ultimate cause of abundance cannot be technology by itself. So when Zeihan emphasizes the timing he is deeply right and in fact he is confronting the other dude in ontological terms. Zeihan and Diamandis are truly different in their approaches. And Zeihan wins. Brasil

Well said!

China is the largest car market in the world and they are at 40% of new cars being EV. they sell twice as many cars as the US. also they added 200 GW of solar last year. the US in its entire history has about 180 GW. EV's are growing rapidly all over the world and US is laggard. energy storage keeps doubling or tripling every year. solar, wind, and energy storage are dominating new generation.

He's a salesman, not a designer. It's obvious from the lack of details.

@@careyfreeman5056Both ot them are.

@@careyfreeman5056 I assume you’re referring to Peter D. If so, I agree. I am an engineer and work as a cloud architect with extensive utilization of AI/ML tools. On the AI/ML front, ChatGPT has created ton of hype in the media which has filtered down to the public, but I’ve been using AI/ML for about 15 years. The leap forward isn’t nearly as fast or dramatic as many people think. This didn’t pop up a year ago. It’s been a sustained effort for over 20 years. Peter D is completely in the dark on this point and just assumes AI = improved efficiencies for the foreseeable future with no understanding how to get from here to there. His lack of details are no match for Peter Z’s in-depth understanding.

@@SignalCorps1 In the dark or just pimping his Venture Capital firm (Gee, I wonder why he was in Dubai)? Either way, he's all about selling, selling, selling. I should know, I'm in sales. Oh, and that AI thing at the end? That was embarrassing and kind of proves your point. Just regurgitated everything he had already said, but never even begins to address anything specific about the debate. Great post. Thanks for the info.

No, Peter D is a client who thinks a software development team can whip up a miraculous system to save humanity within a month for the least amount of effort and money provided. Peter Z is the head of the software development team, trying to get the client to see reality.

People are starving to hear people talk like this, we are going to de better because of people like this. Congress is a disgrace….

I have faith in 95% of humanity. The problem is that the Machiavellian psychopathic types rise to power and force the good people into submission.

slip me a few bucks and ill agree with you

It’s not getting worse, it’s just getting harder to hide so we see it more.

@@cmrdek Or maybe both.

someone needs to invent an AI that hunts corruption LOL

Yes, cornucopian energy blindness is a mental disorder.

LOL. The naive fascination with Mars reminds me of how folks in a warm climate romanticize snow. Mars is that misconception x1000

With vertical farming we're not close to the limits.

But I really hope these guys are both right, Nate's view of the future is depressing, hippy communes of poor people forever.

@@tristan7216 I can't imagine the kind of person who'd want Diamandis to be wrong, or for Nate to be right. I don't like Zeihan's prognostication (though I like the guy himself), but at least he's pretty cheery about America & allies.

​@tristan7216 You missed his closing statement, where he said that he put his faith in capitalism, not governments.

I like your own argument: "BlOcKcHaIN iS bAd aNd aNyOnE wHo diSaGrEes wItH Me is WroNg aBoUt eVeryThiNg". Very sophisticated view, says a lot about the average anti-blockchain clown.

@@briscocreighton3376 Nate? Or one of the Peters?

lol. an absolute juggernaut genius who loves supporting an illegitimate authoritarian old folks home patient destroying the country at a pace never before seen, over thebest presiden in modern history, because he reminded him of his bullies in school...

Agreed. Peter D. reads science fiction books. Peter Z. reads history books.

the rest of the world is taking huge leaps in standard of living. meanwhile its going down in the USA.

@@kurtlowder3276 not that they report but China is in serious trouble…UK is buggered …lots of Europe is in recession….Most of Africa and South America want to move to the northern hemisphere….but yeh….going with the Tucker type drivel kid that USA is finished is cool with me….lol

Peter Z talks out of his B. Oh look the population is going down it means everything is going down.... If his thesis is correct then China and India should be the best economies in the world and countries like Israel should be basket cases.

Yes. You just described Peter D's CV. There are adult technology developers who work to bring real products to the market, and "visionaries" that are constantly shifting from one project to the other.....and constantly seeking funding for these "opportunities".

Why would you not eat lab grown meat if I may ask?

@@nosreve I don't eat anything made in a factory. That includes any/all packaged food, drinks and lab-grown meat.

He SPECIFICALLY made a point to say which data he based his points on and how to access it in his opening statements, and you conclude that he lacks data.......... Well done....

@@2CSST2I was referring to the content Peter D sends specifically newsletters and LinkedIn posts. Peter D doesn’t reference data in his content. If you could read, you would clearly see that is what I wrote. I unfollowed him because of it.

Meh, I preferred Peter actually

@@funkydinosaurno way PETER delivered valiant points and delivered them eloquently

Fascism is also becoming fashionable again to populations who want simple answers to complex problems. If democracy cannot clear the streets of the homeless, addicted and mentally deranged, then a police state will do so, as an example at the base level. And no one will worry what happened to them all, while wondering what's that dark smoke from in the distance?

It seems they are taking different sides of Asimov's story. Peter D. is first Foundation and Peter Z is second Foundation. First has the tools and the Second has the strategy to harness the political will.

Me too. Some of the books even twice. 😉

No thanks, Marty. We don't always have to recreate the totalitarian systems of the past just because thats the extent of your mental capacity. I bet people in Iran or North Korea would agree that we, perhaps, do not in fact need total control over "free" speech. If I have to put up with a bit of spam and some undereducated ill adjusted teenagers insulting my mom, I gladly will do so to retain an open world where anyone can say anything they want, Marty. The world isn't your personal safe space. I don't tell you what to do, but you don't tell me either OK? It's a fair deal...

On a global scale too. With the most productive high iq countries birth rates shrinking while the opposite happens in the least productive parts of the world

You want to be careful with that Eugenics stuff. There always comes a time when the folks in charge decide that YOU are the problem that needs to be culled from the genepool. And of course, no one can predict genius. Period. Geniuses are born to boring "normies" all the time. Pretty much every single genius born had less brilliant parents. So since you can't tell which normie or even dumb person will spawn the next Hawking or Einstein, how is someone supposed to be choosing who can live and breed since Victorian times to now? Can you name any non-European-White people who have changed the world for the better? I can think of dozens and dozens off the top of my head. They'd all be dead if we allowed eugenics programs run by Europeans since Victorian times. And moving to the future, if your Dutton get taken seriously, SOMEONE is going to have to decide who to sterilize moving forwards. I'll grant he's a "kind" eugenicist and doesn't want the gas ovens to kill them off, he just won't let them breed. So how exactly will he choose? What are the criteria? No, there is no moral path to allowing eugenics. There isn't a scientific one either since you can't predict random genetic combinations in every human baby. Eugenics is ALWAYS a cure that is worse than the disease. And that doesn't even touch on the ridiculous assertion that the average IQ of humanity is lower today than in the past. The fact that SOMEONE has built the world that lets Dutton post his ideas on RU-vid is proof that his basic premise as you explain it is wrong.

Yeah I don't know how tech enables entrepreneurship, it's plainly a consolidating force. Unless you count Uber drivers as entrepreneurs, which the speaker might lol

Bingo 1-2 billion is basically our natural limit, and we could actually live in a world of abundance where we're not over burdening the planets ability to regenerate itself. A key factor is also that this can be done cheaply and with low complexity, meaning you avoid tragedies. Couple this with longer lifespans and the expansion of peak productivity by another 20 years, making it a 40 year plateau, and a lot of things in our industrial society start to make sense. Innovation will largely be AI led anyways, so the argument for more human minds is feeble. It would also let us live in far more optimal places without overcrowding, meaning 2 billion people could meaningfully contribute. Right now we're sitting on about 1.5 "golden" lives

It's all common-sense numbers. Man either gets with the numbers or he goes down. It's that simple! Thanks for your comments. @@HeavyMetalorRockfan9

They are at odds because we have idea generation overproduction with cost prohibitive ways to actualize those ideas so they remain ideas. We may get better at coming up with innovative breakthroughs, but unless it has super low capital costs, it's too large of a risk to incur, so they won't be pursued or developed further. This is the same reason that variable wing geometry planes have never become mainstream, and why Boeing keeps iterating on a plane design from the 1950s when there would clearly be over double digit gains on the efficiency of a ground up new plane - the risk is too large and it financially doesn't make sense. Just look at what happened to the giant Airbus planes that only Qatari airways uses now. You can democratize idea generation, but generating ideas is fundamentally worthless. The ability to get something into the hands of people that actually makes something cheaper for them is the only thing that matters

@@HeavyMetalorRockfan9 We have "idea generation overproduction" of impractical ideas. I learned aircraft design in college from the designer of the MD-80, which he called "what God intended an aircraft to look like." When I brought up the blended-wing-body designs you're referring to, he pointed out two critical deficiencies: 1) It would complicate aircraft production and maintenance, since instead of just banging out a few more cylinder pieces for an extended fuselage, each and every panel has to be bespoke, like the old Space Shuttle's tiles. When the folks who proposed blended-wing-body designs presented them at my school, I asked what the manufacturers had to say about their presentation. They literally answered "the manufacturing guys don't really give us any feedback, we wish they would." Not sure they would end up too pleased, though. 2) The main objection to blended-wing-body comes from the Safety folks, though. There are times when you want to evacuate an aircraft very, very rapidly. If you have a 3-and-3 design, or even a 3-6-3 design, you just put more emergency exits to make sure people aren't too far from their exits and you don't have a people-to-exit ratio that's too high. Blended-wing-body gives you a region in the middle of the plane, that you just can't evacuate fast enough. .... And THAT is the problem with no one doing manufacturing. The "idea guys" get totally unmoored from reality, which is why their ideas remain ideas.