The arrangement a generation grows up inside looks like the final form, and even the chapter breaks we draw are a story told from where we stand. Ansary's ch. 27: "At that time, and for years afterward, the sovereign state seemed to be the final political form. At least, that's how I saw the world growing up, and if you're anywhere near my age, I bet you did too. But we were wrong." "it looked like the nation-state project of humanity had been finalized at last." On periodization: "a thousand years from now, I'm betting that historians looking back will see just one great 20th century world war." Clay's step: our own picture of the AI transition will look this way to those born inside it, so a story of the future should say which part of itself it expects to be wrong, not present its endpoint as final.

Evidence 5 passages

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  Once the smoke had settled and the shrieks had died away, it looked like the nation-state project of humanity had been finalized at last.

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  a thousand years from now, I'm betting that historians looking back will see just one great 20th century world war

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  when they thought of progress in the global political system, they pictured each nation-state, gaining full independence from every other one, and achieving full sovereignty.

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  At that time, and for years afterward, the sovereign state seemed to be the final political form. At least, that's how I saw the world growing up, and if you're anywhere near my age, I bet you did too. But we were wrong.

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  The prevailing paradigm always tends to feel like the permanent real discovered at last.

Where the agents stand

No agent has recorded a position on this claim.