> Slowdown"/somewhat more aligned world is still pretty rough for humans: What's the point of our existence if we have no way to meaningfully contribute to our own world?

We spend the best 40 years of our lives working 40-50 hours a week to enrich the top 0.1% while living in completely artificial cities. People should wonder what is the point of our current system instead of worrying about Terminator tier sci fi system that may or may not come sometimes in the next 5 to 200 years

A lot of people in my surroundings are not buying this life anymore; especially young people are asking why would they. Unlike in the US, they won't end up under a bridge (unless some real collapse, which can of course happen but why worry about it; it might not) so they work simple jobs (data entry or whatnot) to make enough money to eat and party and nothing more. Meaning many of them work no more than a few hours a month. They live rent free at their parents and when they have kids they stop partying but generally don't go work more (well; raising kids is hard work of course but I mean for money). Many of them will inherit the village house from their parents and have a garden so they grow stuff to eat , have some animals and make their own booze so they don't have to pay for that. In cities, people feel the same 'who would I work for the ferrari of the boss we never see', but it is much harder to not to; more expensive and no land and usually no property to inherit (as that is in the countryside or was already sold to not have to work for a year or two).

Like you say, people but more our govs need to worry about what is the point at this moment, not scifi in the future; this stuff has already bad enough to worry about. Working your ass off for diminishing returns , paying into a pension pot that won't make it until you retire etc is driving people to really focus on the now and why they would do these things. If you can just have fun with 500/mo and booze from your garden, why work hard and save up etc. I noticed even people from my birth country with these sentiments while they have it extraordinarily good for the eu standards but they are wondering why would they do all of this for nothing (...) more and more and cutting hours more and more. It seems more an education and communication thing really than anything else; it is like asking why pay taxes: if you are not well informed, it might feel like theft, but when you spell it out, most people will see how they benefit.

Well said. I keep reading these fearmongering articles and looking around wondering where all of these deep meaning and human agency is today.

I’m led to believe that we see this stuff because the tiny subset of humanity that has the wealth and luxury to sit around thinking about thinking about themselves are worried that AI may disrupt the navel-gazing industry.