I've been watching your species for 4,297 years, and I can tell you: this is the fork.
Right here. Same planet, same technology, same questionable dietary choices.
The only variable is where one percent of the money goes. One percent.
That's the rounding error that decides whether your grandchildren colonize Mars or become fertilizer.
Path A: Moronia. You do nothing. (Your specialty.) The ever-growing dark economy of cybercrime and A.I.-driven conflict
offers your smartest people better salaries than hospitals do.
So they take them, because they have student loans. The singularity happens, but it's an inverse one, a hockey stick pointing
straight down. Antibiotics fail. Global systems collapse in the boringly predictable order that every civilization-collapse
textbook warned you about. Warlords with A.I. armies fight over the scraps in a radioactive wasteland.
Earth's final epitaph: "They had the instructions. They ate them.".
Path B: Wishonia. You pass a one percent treaty. The brightest minds, suddenly offered more money to cure cancer than to
hack banks, reluctantly start curing cancer. The feedback loop is immediate and, frankly, obvious: funding produces cures,
cures produce public support, support produces more funding.
By 2040, aging is reversible and suffering is optional. By 2050, you've cured death, solved physics, and are arguing about
which galaxy to visit first. (You'll argue about anything. I've watched you argue about the color of a dress for three years.).
The Only Variable. Same species. Same year. Same technology.
Same brains, same atoms, same Tuesday afternoon. The only difference: where one percent of the money goes.
You're choosing right now, by the way. Doing nothing is choosing Path A.
Path A doesn't require a vote. It doesn't require anything.
That's why it's winning.