The list of humanity’s accomplishments in my lifetime is astounding.

1. General abundance.

Poverty rate has gone from 43% of humanity to < 10%. 2.2 billion people gained safe drinking water since 2000; 2.8 gained sanitation.

Now 92% of humanity has access to power!

2. Food yields higher than ever

The number of people a farmer can feed went up 60%. Corn yields doubled!

GPS, precision agriculture, automated machinery, better seed quality and pest control, herbicides, nutrition for livestock etc, have all surged food productivity.

3. Health, Disease eradication and management save millions of lives per year

Guinea worm, HIV effectively cured. Polio new infections fell > 99%. The vaccine campaign prevented 20 million paralysis cases. Hep C is curable in over 95% of patients now. Measles global deaths fell 88%. Vaccination prevented 60 million deaths just from measles! So many more cases.

US Cancer death rate fell 35%! Child mortality has plummeted 60%!

4. Power is abundant like never before.

In many parts of the world, we have so much power that you are paid to use it. This is driven by cheap and abundant solar, low fuel prices, and efficient power plants. Nuclear is re-surging - which will massively improve our power case. There is NO power-poor country with low poverty rate. Power and GDP go hand-in-hand.

Remember - 92% now have power!

5. Computer Science reigns supreme

The Turing Test fell in my lifetime - an astounding milestone. And it was a knowledgeable graduate student-level chatbot, available at scale, for FREE. This is beyond the wildest dreams of the most optimistic hackers from the prior golden era of computing.

Combined with cell phones, reliable internet, etc, this is a game changer for individual empowerment. Now AI is toppling longstanding problems in physics, math, CS, and surely soon - biomed, chemistry, etc. You have good reason to be optimistic about this.

Guided by excellent satellite coverage (see 4), widespread supercomputing, and ML, the 5 day storm forecast is now better than the 2 day storm forecast from before. That’s almost a week to prepare for a hurricane.

6. The new space race isn’t even a race

One American company has launched more mass to orbit than all other countries over all of time, including the USA’s NASA etc. The SECOND PLACE american launch provider, Blue Origin, launches more self-guided, reusable rockets than any other country.

We are probably a decade or so away from kilometer-scale structures in orbit or quick trips with 100s tonnes of mass to Mars. That I may see a football field sized telescope assembled in orbit in my lifetime seems like a dream.

7. Global communication and GPS became normal

How is this the last item…

You can use teams (the worst option!) to have a video chat with almost anyone, almost anywhere. Cell phone coverage is even better. Satellite internet at high speeds is actually real and affordable. Getting lost is basically a choice now - cheap worldwide GPS is FREE!