Struldbruggery

Thomas Cole, Destruction. From his 1836 series The Course of Empire. New York Historical Society Museum.

. . . [they] would in time become proprietors of the whole nation, and engross the civil power, which, for want of abilities to manage, must end in the ruin of the public.—Swift, Gulliver's Travels (1726)

 “The American experiment will soon turn 250. Is its time running out?” Johan Norberg, Washington Post, October 12, 2025

Artificial General Intelligence,

It's thought, may in time

Reduce the world to paperclips,

And thus exterminate us all.

But our intelligence is both artifical and general,

Computers are only paperclips on stilts,

And as for public ruination . . . why, it’s always been.

Rome fell, a German scholar calculates, for 210 different reasons.

We’ve uncounted more—they come on thick and fast.

The likes of human AGI learn little from the past,

Would be immortal, with eternal youth,

Buy the highs and sell the dips,

Live on Mars, if so it goes—

Nothing like Swift's Struldbruggs' woes,

Who lived for ages, then got confused.

Notes: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/10/12/america-roman-empire-decline-fall/?itid=hp_mv-top-stories_opinions_p001_f011; https://courses.washington.edu/rome250/gallery/ROME%20250/210%20Reasons.htm.