So ... what about wildly irresponsible economic speculation? What's your opinion of the idea we'll end up in a "post-scarcity economy", due to widespread automation etc.
As long as we are talking about biologic humans (I don't think anything else is likely, at least for a few centuries), then carrying capacity is most likely in the order of billions: each human requires a certain amount of food, water, clothing, housing, healthcare, etc. The technologies we use to provide these things are already highly efficient, hence their efficiency will probably not grow much, at least not by incremental improvement.
Groundbreaking developments comparable to the invention of agriculture might make a difference, but there doesn't seem to be any obvious candidate for that which we can foresee, hence I wouldn't consider that likely.
In optimistic scenarios, we get an approximately steady state (or slowly growing) economy with high per capita wealth, with high automation relieving many people from the necessity of working long hours, or perhaps even of working at all.
In pessimistic scenarios, Malthusian predictions come true, and we get either steady state economy at subsistence level, or growth-collapse oscillations with permanent destruction of carrying capacity due to resource depletion, climate change, nuclear war, etc. up to the most extreme scenarios of total civilization breakdown or human extinction.
The technologies we use to provide these things are already highly efficient
This is certainly not true for healthcare.
Groundbreaking developments comparable to the invention of agriculture might make a difference, but there doesn't seem to be any obvious candidate for that which we can foresee
I think that making energy really cheap ("too cheap to meter") is foreseeable and that would count as a groundbreaking development.
Background:
On the most recent LessWrong readership survey, I assigned a probability of 0.30 on the cryonics question. I had previously been persuaded to sign up for cryonics by reading the sequences, but this thread and particularly this comment lowered my estimate of the chances of cryonics working considerably. Also relevant from the same thread was ciphergoth's comment:
Based on this, I think there's a substantial chance that there's information out there that would convince me that the folks who dismiss cryonics as pseudoscience are essentially correct, that the right answer to the survey question was epsilon. I've seen what seem like convincing objections to cryonics, and it seems possible that an expanded version of those arguments, with full references and replies to pro-cryonics arguments, would convince me. Or someone could just go to the trouble of showing that a large majority of cryobiologists really do think cryopreserved people are information-theoretically dead.
However, it's not clear to me how well worth my time it is to seek out such information. It seems coming up with decisive information would be hard, especially since e.g. ciphergoth has put a lot of energy into trying to figure out what the experts think about cryonics and come away without a clear answer. And part of the reason I signed up for cryonics in the first place is because it doesn't cost me much: the largest component is the life insurance for funding, only $50 / month.
So I've decided to put a bounty on being persuaded to cancel my cryonics subscription. If no one succeeds in convincing me, it costs me nothing, and if someone does succeed in convincing me the cost is less than the cost of being signed up for cryonics for a year. And yes, I'm aware that providing one-sided financial incentives like this requires me to take the fact that I've done this into account when evaluating anti-cryonics arguments, and apply extra scrutiny to them.
Note that there are several issues that ultimately go in to whether you should sign up for cryonics (the neuroscience / evaluation of current technology, estimate of the probability of a "good" future, various philosophical issues), I anticipate the greatest chance of being persuaded from scientific arguments. In particular, I find questions about personal identity and consciousness of uploads made from preserved brains confusing, but think there are very few people in the world, if any, who are likely to have much chance of getting me un-confused about those issues. The offer is blind to the exact nature of the arguments given, but I mostly foresee being persuaded by the neuroscience arguments.
And of course, I'm happy to listen to people tell me why the anti-cryonics arguments are wrong and I should stay signed up for cryonics. There's just no prize for doing so.