“What Is Something That Is Highly Likely To Happen In The Next 10 Years That Everyone Is Completely Ignoring?” (67 Answers)

The complete [end of] trust in anything we see or hear online.

Everyone is talking about AI taking jobs, but no one is preparing for the fact that within 5 to 10 years, video and audio generation will be so flawless, cheap, and instant that you won't be able to trust anything.

Phone scams will use a perfect replica of your mom’s voice asking for money. Political campaigns will feature high-definition, completely fake footage of candidates doing terrible things released hours before an election. We are moving into an era where "seeing is believing" is officially non-existing, and society is absolutely not psychologically or legally prepared for that level of epistemic chaos.

The concentration of wealth. Never, in the entire history of the world, have so few controlled so much. And it's getting worse every day.

Large areas of the planet will run out of water and the water wars will begin.

ChickenMarsala4500:

Water scarcity is already a problem in a lot of places, and we've mostly been ignoring it. It is going to get worse.

In ten years we will probably lose ALL the kelp on the west coast of North America. Right now the kelp is only 5% of baseline, but nobody recognizes the problem because it is underwater. The ocean keeps getting hotter, too.

In America, lots and lots of people are going to hit retirement age but be unable to retire. When they physically can't work anymore, and can't afford rent and insurance, we'll have a massive problem on our hands.

The absolute collapse of white collar jobs sectors, which will lead to an exodus to blue collar sectors, depressing wages there as well. 


It's going to be a new AI-caused Great Depression, but worse, because the only way out is a transition to a post-jobs economy. And no government in the world knows how to do that. It's unprecedented.  Plus they won't understand they need to until years of suffering force the issue.

Antibiotic resistant bacteria will become a major global health crisis.

Probably some kind of modern day Great Depression.

onlyontuesdays77:

Between US debt, the collapsing populations of major manufacturing powers like China, and scarcity of non-renewable resources, there is a good possibility of this in the next decade and it's an inevitability by 2050.

Loss of entry level jobs...that's what's scary. If you fall on hard times you can pick up extra work but it'll get harder.

Video evidence being unable to be used in court.

In like less than a year you’re going to start hearing about famine because nitrogen fertilizer largely passes to Asia via the straits of Hormuz. Less fertilizer in Asia means more crop failures, more famines, less food. Food prices rise in Asia they rise everywhere.

Use of AI will create depression levels of unemployment because we have no plan.

Social Security is going to be massively cut if not entirely obliterated. Congress has cumulatively ~~stolen~~ ‘borrowed’ about 3 TRILLION dollars from the account and played an intra-governmental treasury bond shell game with the repayment plan and (ahem) *redeeming* the bonds when it needs to pay benefits.

In the US in about 2032-2033 we’re going to see almost 100m people get to take a bite out of the sandwich our elected representatives have made for us.

A massive cardiovascular health crisis from all the people chugging energy drinks.

World War III.

The crazy thing is we might be on the cusp already or in the starting phases. Remember no one involved in WWI and II knew in the beginning it was a World War right away.

Massive slowing in scientific research, then a resurgence. Or a major shift in where the majority of scientific research is conducted.

People seriously underestimate how much the US government supported science, and now that's been severely hampered. NCBI and a lot of other resources are globally used by scientists, and a lot of conversation science is in the US. The administration has cut a lot of funding to everything from cancer treatments to a gigantic women's health study.

The European Union has strong scientific support, but not quite the same infrastructure the US has built up. The political environment also makes it questionable how much support there is to build it up.

China is hungry for scientific and technological knowledge, so it may gobble up researchers.

People are going to start fighting against the concentration of capital in very few hands.

People may be able to regrow missing teeth.

The eldercare crisis.

Boomers are going to start hitting their mid-80s over the next decade. That's roughly when the odds of needing significant daily assistance start spiking.

The problem is that there aren't enough caregivers and a lot of families can't afford the care that's available. The pay is [low] so home health workers are already in short supply, nursing homes can cost six figures a year, and Medicare doesn't cover long-term custodial care.

Over the next 10 years, millions of Millennials and Gen-Xers are going to find themselves choosing between becoming caregivers, quitting their jobs, or watching their and their parents' savings disappear.

As we continue to deprioritise doing anything about education in the US, our political division is going to get worse, not better.

Other countries have, as a class all to itself, education on spotting, recognising, and dealing with propaganda. It doesn’t work as well there, because everyone is looking out for it. In the US, we roll our eyes at the suggestion and continue pretending that the news can largely be trusted. Be that via mainstream media, or social media, or outlets on twitter. We all do it. We all see the headline and if it’s from what we consider a “good” source, we figure it’s probably mostly true.

Meanwhile we have spent so long lambasting mainstream media, and cutting their budgets, they are effectively useless now. They are either MASSIVELY one sided, or so terrified of not being neutral that they can’t report on facts. And it doesn’t matter anyway because the budgets have all been cut so far that there is no actually investigation happening anymore anyway. The network news broadcasts these days are 5 min of “top stories” whereby they read press releases to us, followed by 15 min of whatever is trending on r/videos that day.

We are getting dumber and less informed by the minute, and we are all ignoring it. We are falling farther and farther into camps and just blaming all of the world’s ills on the other side.