A General Preface

We live in complicated and somewhat perilous times. I hate to be alarmist but the reality is that we are quickly approaching several points from which there just isn’t a practical return. Some of these things are existential threats to the species. Some only risk collapsing the nation into chaos. A few have weird side effects like trapping us permanently in a pre-industrial revolution world that might be ok, but would kill a staggering number of people along the way. There’s also endless variations on dystopia just around the corner if we aren’t careful.

I want to say that because there are a few ways to read a lot of what I’m going to talk about and I want to be clear on my intentions. The future is not certain and at the end of the day it’s going to be people that decide it. We are some of those people. This is, in no small way, on us. We have to get this right.

So I’m going to advocate for prudence, intention, and no small degree of caution. I’m not advocating for dithering and freezing, but we also need to take a step back and really think about what we’re doing, because what we do next will have consequences and striding blindly through those decisions is just as bad as doing nothing. This is not to extol some kind of “Both Sides^tm” nonsense, but is to say that the problems we’re dealing with are complicated and that if you truly think the answer starts with “Can’t we just” and fits on a bumper sticker you’re almost certainly wrong and you should think about it some more.