This is the ‘Preferred future’ of the five-scenario model. Some people may call it an utopian scenario. Then perhaps I should quote Roger Scruton here, the British political philosopher, who said: “Utopia is a kind of a scenario planning with the assumption of a positive result”. Muhammed Yunus, the winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, has a very succinct vision of the future in 2050 (so 10 years later by the time of the emergence of the mature Superinteligence). He calls it “A world of three zeros: zero poverty, zero unemployment and zero emissions”. How probable is the achievement of some of these goals by 2040? This depends on the taken assumptions.
Key assumptions for Scenario 5
I have used the italics font to make my comments easier to distinguish from the text describing the scenario.
This is definitely the most positive of all five scenarios, although it is highly unlikely there will be no major stumbling blocks on the way. In any case, this is the scenario that should help us visualize much better the future Human Federation (HF) in 2040. It will also reveal some questions that we will need to answer if we want to make this scenario more probable.
My key assumption is that the EU leadership will have managed to convince the electorate in its member states of the necessity of making a painful transition into the European Federation (EF) with its new Constitution and the institutions as described in the previous sections on this website. This means, that the world would still go around and none of those existential risks I wrote about would materialize. This scenario complements the proposal I have put forward on how the EU could make a transition into the EF, showing the EF and the world might look like in the future. I do not think it would be a good idea to show you the EF just after the 1st January 2030 – the latest hypothetical date of the formation of the European Federation. The period of the first EF Parliament will almost certainly be quite chaotic. That’s why I suggest we imagine we are in July 2040, just after the elections to the first Human Federation Parliament when it will have made a transition from the European Federation.
I have tried to calculate the numbers quoted to be as close as possible to what they might be in 2040 but of course in many instances this will be somewhat off the reality. The important point is to present how various HF Institutions and processes might work when the HF becomes operational and what the world around would look like. When I refer to data or situations before 2020, which serve as a reference, this means these were real events and real data, quite often supported by citations.
So, let me now focus on largely positive outcomes of the EU’s decision to become a federated state. The benefits of the EF, as might be seen from the perspective of an average EF citizen in 2040, are spread across several areas. Let me start with the benefits, about which people rarely think or talk about. The benefit that would probably be the most appreciated, after the most dangerous period that the world would have gone through – the benefit of simply living in peace. That does not mean that in 2040 those dangers would be over. That can never happen. Life at a species level is simply a continuous exposure to risk, one of which could be the end of life of the entire species.
Now click here, to read the first detailed scenario.