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It can be pretty scary to think about the future.
Especially because it seems like there is so much turmoil in the world right now.
But what are the problems that we’re ignoring right now that are going to be BIG problems in 20 years?
Here’s what folks had to say about this on AskReddit.
Unsustainable.
“I love the desert. It’s a beautiful landscape and it’s hot; two things I value.
I’m also a civil engineer, so I’ll never mover there, even though I want to. We simply do not have the infrastructure to sustain big cities and farms out there (looking at you, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and most of California).
We could do it, but our leaders lack the political spine to do it. I get why people are moving out there, but it’s not going to last, and it’s not going to be pretty once the problems start.”
That’s scary.
“Deep fakes.
It might become good enough that it will be hard to check quickly if a video is real or fake.”
Sucks.
“Our generation is NOT going to get to retire.
My country spends more than half of all social welfare funding on paying out the govt pension.
here’s no way that’s still going to be a thing by the time i hit ‘retirement’ age (which is about to get raised again.)”
Interesting.
“Environmental scientist here, this is just based off of what I’m hearing about from my colleagues and seeing in my own work.
Harmful algal blooms. First off, toxic blue-green algae does better in warmer water. There’s also concern about marine algae invading freshwater lakes due to the increase in salinity that can result from droughts. On the flip side, floods can also cause HABs because nutrient runoff tends to increase during heavy rainfall events.
Invasive plants. I’ve worked on prairie restoration projects in the past and one of our major problems was woody invasives like Callery pear (aka Bradford), tree of heaven, and bush honeysuckle. I’ve seen old field sites follow a successional pattern from bare soil to 100% invasive shrub thickets that outcompete any natives due to their early leaf-out and allelopathy. The last time I went to a park in my hometown the entire understory was honeysuckle and winter creeper.
Decreasing ranges for many species
Mesophication. Lesser known but still important – basically our forests in the eastern US used to be oak dominated and fire dependent, but they’re now in a positive feedback loop of mesophytic species becoming more prevalent and changing the environment to better suit their own offspring. My concern here is mainly the impact on wildlife that eat mast from species like oaks and hickories who will now be in forests dominated by maples and sweet gums.
Top soil loss.”
Will it backfire?
“Giving toddlers and young children unlimited screen time.
Medical professionals have been warning about this for years.”
Bad news ahead.
“The use of plastics.
Hopefully we figure it out sooner than 20 years though.”
Time to fix it.
“This is mostly American, but our ageing infrastructure.
I’m just waiting for the year where each week a dam will break, a bridge will break, or some important infrastructure will collapse, hundreds will d**, and we will continue to b**ch and fight over if it’s a democrat of republican fault when it’s all of us being greedy f**ks and not willing to update our f**king infrastructure.”
No more middle class.
“Growing wealth inequality.
The middle class is d**ng out and soon normal people can’t afford to buy houses, for example.
We’ll own nothing and work ourselves to d**th just to afford the essentials.”
Sad.
“Teacher shortage.
Maybe if they were paid more than 30k a year people would actually be more willing to do it!”
Pretty bad.
“The Lack of Accountability epidemic.
So many parents raise their kids nowadays without teaching accountability and responsibility.
It’s already affecting us somewhat.”
I sure hope not.
“I work for the post office in the US. They’ve been trying to privatize the post office for a long time now.
Amazon will own the Post Office, and they will be the ones with all your your private documents, letters, etc. Also, shipping rates in the US will skyrocket.”
Think about it.
“Not just Deep Fakes.
Over the past few months to a year, we’ve seen that modern AI is capable not only of near-perfect replication and imposition of a person’s face, but also a person’s voice, a person’s writing style, an art style, music, interests…
There’s a very genuine concern that some people don’t seem to be paying attention to, of how we’ll be able to tell if ANY information is genuine within 10-20 years. If you can fabricate near anything to near imperceptible standards, then how do you form a basis for objective truth anymore?? And going from there, how do you maintain a society based on truths and ethics???”
What do you think?
Sound off in the comments and let us know.
Thanks, amigos!
