# Why do futurists care about the culture war?

I think it doesn't make sense why some futurists (e.g. Elon Musk, Peter Thiel) care so much about the culture war. After the singularity, a lot of the conflicts should disappear.

*   Transsexuals: should we change the body's gender to fit the mind or change the mind's gender to fit the body? After the singularity we'll have the technology to make sure minds and bodies have the same gender to begin with.
*   Illegal immigrants: after the singularity everyone can join their own society and won't need to immigrate to richer places for better living standards.
*   Gun rights: we'll have the technology to prevent guns from killing people. There are many ways to do this, but the most intriguing way would be to make backup copies of people.
*   Police brutality: similar to gun rights, if there isn't the fear of death, even the most pro-police people will agree on greatly reducing brutality.
*   Abortion: should fetuses be killed or should women be forced to carry pregnancies they don't want? After the singularity we'll have technologies to cheaply avoid both morally uncertain choices (again there are multiple possibilities).
*   Drug use: after the singularity we can make drugs no longer addictive but still feel good. Many activities today are like that.
*   Affirmative action: after the singularity anyone can attend any university they wish, and all jobs will become voluntary since ASI can work better than humans. We won't need affirmative action to counterbalance unconscious racial discrimination because we'll have the technology to delete unconscious racial discrimination. We won't need affirmative action to counterbalance intergenerational damage because we'll have the technology to fix its effects.
*   Wealth distribution: there will be countless orders of magnitude more wealth than needed. Even the equivalent of food stamps after the singularity will provide a higher quality of life than a million dollar salary today.
    *   Healthcare: healthcare after the singularity designed by ASI will make today's healthcare look like caveman healthcare.
    *   Wealth might still have subjective meaning, it will still feel important. But the future fight over wealth redistribution will be like the present fight over bicycle lanes. Bicycle lanes feels important and people have strong opinions, but nobody is taking up arms over this issue. If you search for "Bicycle Liberation Front," you'll only find a few photo blogs and no terrorist group with that name.
*   Land distribution:
    *   Similar to wealth distribution.
    *   People of different ethnicities/nationalities, e.g. Israeli and Palestinian, can live on the same piece of land without seeing the other as a security threat. See the point on gun rights above.

This all assumes that the singularity goes well, and we don't get taken over by a misaligned ASI (or possibly a human who deliberately makes others suffer). The logical thing to do should be to make sure the singularity go well rather than fighting the culture war.

Unfortunately, few people are making this logical choice.

A lot of people deeply care about the culture wars because they don't believe the singularity is coming soon. Yet a lot of people who do believe it is coming soon still seem just as invested (e.g. Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and others on the left wing).

Why?

~~Edit: haha this has been downvoted somehow. I really don't know if the answer is obvious (but people gave 3 different answers), or if the answer is unimportant, or if I made too many unrealistic claims in the question.~~

Edit: Question 2: **why can't we decide the culture wars after the singularity**, when everyone might become more civilized and have more time to think? Do the people who want to fight the culture war now believe that, whoever controls the singularity will be so extremely closed-minded that they will prevent even themselves from changing their minds or hearing arguments from the other side? Hence the culture wars will be frozen the moment the singularity happens?

*   I guess even if they aren't that closed-minded, it still matters *which people* end up controlling the singularity. But surely, fighting to make sure the right people end up in control has to look slightly different than fighting the culture war like a normal culture war participant.