CATEGORY:
How Should Humanity Steer the Future? Essay Contest (2014)
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The Cartography of the Future: Recovering Utopia for the 21st Century by Rick Searle
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Author Rick Searle wrote on Apr. 21, 2014 @ 15:22 GMT
Essay AbstractThroughout human history the idea of Utopia has served as a means of expanding the moral imagination and served as a prototype for how societies might be organized to better conform to human values. In the 19th century Utopia became tied the new reality of technological progress and the deterministic philosophy that surrounded it, which had the ultimate consequence of discrediting the Utopian ideal. Progressive technological determinism continues to be influential, but has lately come under increasing scrutiny, its historical horizon and the continued relationship between technological and social progress called into question. This change in our perception of technology might provide the conditions for a recovery of the Utopian ideal, which would also mean a restoration of our lost sense of freedom over the future.
Author BioRick Searle is an Affiliate Scholar with the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology and co-editor, co-author of the book Rethinking Machine Ethics in the Age of Ubiquitous Technology (IGI Global Press, 2015). He writes for the blog: Utopia or Dystopia: Where Past Meets Future http://utopiaordystopia.com/
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Walter Putnam wrote on Apr. 21, 2014 @ 21:26 GMT
Hear, hear! Well put, Rick. Steering straight, toward an ideal, reduces the risk of running off the road. Even if we never get to that perfect world we're less likely to drive into a ditch. And even if we hit a signpost along the way, or the car breaks down, it's good to know we still have that destination.
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Author Rick Searle replied on Apr. 22, 2014 @ 01:42 GMT
Thanks Walter,
It does seem to me that we have an atrophied idea of the future compared with the past not to mention a widespread cynicism regarding what types of societies we are capable of. My hope is that we can rethink this, and in rethinking help to change it as well.
Best of luck on your own essay, which I hope to read tonight-
Rick Searle
Georgina Woodward wrote on Apr. 21, 2014 @ 23:29 GMT
Hi Rick,
I particularly liked the points that different people may have different Utopian ideals, and now having to decide what it means to be human. I can see conflict between those who see Utopia as a return to a natural way of living causing minimal harm to the environment and those who envision a technological future which may include trans-humanism and AI. Each might think the other Utopia misguided and inferior to their own. Perhaps there will be different Utopias for different societies rather than a single Global Utopian vision. I like the history of Utopian ideals and that you have emphasized the importance of believing that we can influence the future rather than it being fully determined. We have the wheel but will we hesitate too long trying to choose our Utopian destination/s?
A really well written essay, Good luck Georgina
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Author Rick Searle replied on Apr. 22, 2014 @ 01:47 GMT
Hi Georgina,
I definitely would like to see multiple forms of modernity, though, as you point out in your own essay we still have global problems we will need to face together.
“We have the wheel but will we hesitate too long trying to choose our Utopian destination/s?”
I hope not, but the clock is certainly ticking.
Best of luck!
Rick
James Lee Hoover wrote on Apr. 21, 2014 @ 23:52 GMT
Rick,
The theme of utopia is hopeful and honest, especially basing it on such prospects of the past. As you suggest, it is alien in our current world. Even the social measures of technology you mention like longevity, child mortality and income are more measures of success and affluence compared to other countries than they are technological progress.We can all agree that someone must shape it to fit values of survival and common good. That is my perception as well. The imagination of Utopia is certainly an inspiration for achieving a better world which includes a viable survival.
Jim
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Author Rick Searle replied on Apr. 22, 2014 @ 02:17 GMT
Thanks Jim,
Glad to see from your essay that you look to history as well...
Best of luck!
Rick Searle
James Lee Hoover replied on May. 27, 2014 @ 00:21 GMT
Rick,
Time grows short, so I am revisiting essay I've reviewed to make sure I've rated them. I find that I rated yours on 4/21.
Glad to see your essay is doing well.
Jim
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Member Dean Rickles wrote on Apr. 22, 2014 @ 02:19 GMT
Hi Rick,
I find some similarities between our positions, and you've convinced me (together with Sabine Hossenfelder) that I should take a look a Smolin's new book - I was avoiding it because I think he misunderstands what the block versus flow of time pictures imply vis-a-vis free will and fatalism. However, your concluding statement is very close to various themes in my essay:
"The future is neither completely ours to shape nor something we are subject to without room for maneuver. For, continuing to think that our world cannot be made to better conform to our ideals is one of the surest ways to insure that what lies in our future is the farthest thing from Utopia. And so, if I were to answer the question that inspired this essay “how should humanity steer the future” directly, I would say that the question has no definitive and final answer but begins with the rediscovery that it is us with our hands behind the wheel."
I concur.
Best,
Dean
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Author Rick Searle replied on Apr. 26, 2014 @ 02:57 GMT
Dean,
Would love to know what your physicist's eye makes of the essay "The future is the past" by Roger Schlafly. It's like the anti-Time Reborn.
Rick
Wilhelmus de Wilde de Wilde wrote on Apr. 22, 2014 @ 14:38 GMT
Hi Rick,
I think that steering the future is as difficult as steering the past, there are so many coincidences that influence the future (see
my essay : "STEERING THE FUTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS") that it is even impossible to predict our second generation. It is not only the influence of for now unknown (unborn) individuals, that blur the future but also the difference of view of our participating individuals here and now.
So "Utopia" can only be a subjective ideal, that is why so many religions are existing all with their own interpretation of a future "kingdom of heaven" , the subjective ideas are coupled and became rules to be lived in.
It is in my opinion the overall "mentality" that has to change from egoistic short term profit ideas to a long term non-profit sharing our potentiality mentality. The average age of a human being is just 80 yers and that also influences his actions when they are influencing his wellnes during this time, if we would age longer then we would perhaps have more attention for a future that is longer away as those 80 years...
I hope that you will find some time to read and leave a comment on my thread (link is above) and eventually give it a rating that is in acoordance with your personal valuation.
Good luck and best regards
Wilhelmus
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Author Rick Searle replied on Apr. 23, 2014 @ 18:44 GMT
Wilhelmus,
I have read your essay and tend to leave a more extensive comment there, the long and short of which is I have my doubts as to if quantum fields,the nature of consciousness or theories of the multi-verse are as important as more mundane goal setting at least in terms of the near-term future.
Where I think you and I are in solid engagement is that deterministic ideas of the future that follow only one path are not only socially dangerous but scientifically inaccurate as well.
Best of luck on your essay!
Anselm Smidt wrote on Apr. 22, 2014 @ 15:26 GMT
Ihre Nieve sind gefährlich und - dangrus
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Author Rick Searle replied on Apr. 22, 2014 @ 15:57 GMT
Anselm,
I understand from a German perspective I might seem so, but please offer something to make you case.
John Brodix Merryman wrote on Apr. 23, 2014 @ 00:26 GMT
Rick,
It is an observant and well thought out perspective, but I think the issues which need to be dealt with are more a matter of process, than objectives. We first really need to figure out what we are doing, before considering where we might be going.
One point I keep making in various conversations on the FQXI forums, as well as prior contests is that we experience time as a...
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Rick,
It is an observant and well thought out perspective, but I think the issues which need to be dealt with are more a matter of process, than objectives. We first really need to figure out what we are doing, before considering where we might be going.
One point I keep making in various conversations on the FQXI forums, as well as
prior contests is that we experience time as a sequence of events and so think of it as the present moving along a vector from past to future, which physics distills to measures of duration, but the underlaying reality is of the changing configuration that turns future into past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the world turns, not that there is some extradimensional flow from yesterday to tomorrow. So while the past has certainly been determined, the future remains probabilistic, because the input into any particular event only coalesces with its occurrence. We affect our world as it affects us. It is just the opportunities for greatest change are in times of maximum chaos. The punctuations of the equilibrium.
A more specific problem with the concept of utopia goes to the heart of our current philosophic and religious assumptions, in that the universal state of the absolute is basis, not apex. It is the essence from which we rise, not an ideal from which we fell. The nature of complex systems is that the more complex they are, the more inherently unstable they are. Just look at the periodic table. So as we build out these social systems, they exhibit a wave pattern of compounding and then collapsing complexity. Nature incorporates this by having individuals be born and die, which the DNA slowing evolving as the stable state.
In my own
entry I focus on our treatment of money as a form of commodity, rather than the contract it is, as the most resolvable source of our inability to exist in a stable form of society. A currency is a promise by a community to its members and its value is entirely dependent on the health of that community, not how many such notes are in circulation, so when we sacrifice inter-communal relations and other resources in order to create and collect these notes, it is counter-productive.
Regards,
John Merryman
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Author Rick Searle replied on Apr. 23, 2014 @ 04:05 GMT
John,
Thank you for taking the time to read my essay and for your thought provoking comments. I am actually a great fan of Joesph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies which I've written about here:
http://utopiaordystopia.com/2013/03/10/immortal-jellyfi
sh-and-the-collapse-of-civilization/
We are actually largely in agreement.
In my post I was really trying as the title suggests re-conceptualize the idea of Utopia. It's not that I think Utopia will solve our problems, I just think reviving it as a practice might be helpful. It might help us in the form of actual experiments that would give us examples of how societies might be differently organized- one of the vulnerabilities of our current global industrial society being its lack of diversity.Some of this lack of diversity might be traced to versions of determinism at least that's the way I interpret thinkers like Kevin Kelly.
As an intellectual practice Utopia might remind us what societies are actually for, which is to act as a vehicle through which we can actualize our full humanity.
Reading and voting on your essay is the first thing on my agenda tomorrow. I want to give it all the time (and wakefulness) it deserves.
Best of luck!
Rick Searle
John Brodix Merryman replied on Apr. 23, 2014 @ 17:07 GMT
Rick,
The only reason I take issue is that utopia is a social idealization and I find there is a dangerous tendency to conflate ideals with absolutes. If we can first understand that what gives rise to form is context, so when we start distilling away and generally sterilizing the messy aspects, we don't want loose sight of the reasons for the forms in the first place. Otherwise there becomes that overpowering pull to the center, as the elementary fabric is weakened.
So yes, we very much need our goals, desires and standards, but also a sense of proportion and balance have to be part of the mix as well.
Looking at the way the world is going today, that sense of proportionality and equilibrium seems to be lost, as the various factions express their deep desires and apply standards they themselves might not uphold.
Regards,
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Michael Allan wrote on Apr. 23, 2014 @ 02:53 GMT
Hello Rick, May I offer a short appraisal of your essay, a little on the critical side? I would ask you to
reciprocate. - Mike
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Author Rick Searle replied on Apr. 23, 2014 @ 04:08 GMT
Sure, Mike. Freely state whatever you think. I am here to learn. And I am eager to read, comment and vote on yours once I have the proper sleep.
Rick
Michael Allan replied on Apr. 24, 2014 @ 10:25 GMT
Thanks Rick, when you have time.
At the end of your essay, you imply that you haven't so much answered the question as agreed with its premise; as though to say, "Yes indeed, let us steer the future." But I disagree. I've long thought that utopianism could be (and has been) employed as an actual means of steering; so that any general description of utopian thought, including an historical one such as yours, is indeed a description of "how to steer". I came to this conclusion while reading Howard P. Segal's (1985)
Technological Utopianism in American Culture. Segal looks at the present value, the "contemporary usefulness" of utopian thought, particularly of a category he labels "serious utopian visions", those which "play a vital role as vehicles of social criticism and, sometimes, of actual social change." (p. 155) Such a vision "functions properly not as a literal blueprint for the future but as a take-off point for reconsidering and possibly altering existing society." This surprisingly practical (almost mechanical) view implies the possibility of deliberately grabbing hold of utopian literature, etc., and continually, consciously manipulating it for the steering mechanism it "properly" is. It's an image that's stuck with me ever since.
So I think your essay is completely on topic insofar as I'm concerned, and definitely interesting, too. My main complaint is that I wanted to learn more about the specific device you suggest at the end (p. 8), based on small-scale experimentation in utopian communities. How would the steering effect of that be conveyed "piecemeal" from the successful community to the larger society? What aspects of the society (and the future) could be steered in this way? Has this been attempted before?
Mike
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Author Rick Searle replied on Apr. 24, 2014 @ 22:04 GMT
Thanks Mike for your very thought provoking question.
Length constraints prevented me from fully fleshing the concept out, but I also want the idea to be as opened ended as possible- Utopia as a kind of Swiss Army Knife.
Here's just one way it might work:
One of the benefits of Utopia is also one of its greatest weaknesses- it gives you a sort of Tabla Rosa by which you can redesign society at will. This is dangerous in the larger society because you have to level the existing order to start afresh, which is why I think Utopias should be used as a "proof of concept" with which you can tweak the overall society.
Imagine being able to design an energy system, employment system, justice system
all from "scratch" without legacy distortions and institutional interests based on the best knowledge we have? People would be given real life examples of what a society would look like if we, just as examples, built modern communities with almost zero carbon footprint, went to a 35 hour work week, replaced most incarceration with community imprisonment and re-conciliatory justice, broke down walls between subjects such as art and science during elementary education.
We could then argue around these real world examples rather than our respective ideologies- is this the type of world we want.
That's just one version of how a revived concept of Utopia might work. There are many many others.
Off to read your essay. Please give me a grade if you have not done so already.
Best of luck!
Rick Searle
Michael Allan replied on May. 21, 2014 @ 21:01 GMT
Thanks for explaining, Rick. This is just a note to say I'll be rating your essay (along with the others on my
review list) some time between now and May 30. I still hope you'll be able to review mine. All the best, and bye for now, - Mike
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Conrad Dale Johnson wrote on Apr. 23, 2014 @ 14:23 GMT
Rick --
Excellent essay, and I'm much in tune with your way of thinking. The last sections of my own essay on
communications technology develop the same thought, that as "technology is moving intimately closer to our humanity... we really do have choices regarding how this particular phase of technological evolution will unfold, in a way we have not before."
Your argument about technological determinism makes sense, though of course it's one aspect of a bigger picture. Part of the reason utopian thinking died out is that by setting up a vision of how things should be in contrast with how they actually are, it implies that we can just switch over from the wrong way of doing things to the right one. That seemed sensible in the 18th century, but didn't fit as well with the 19th-century realization that our history goes back a long, long way, and passed through many evolutionary stages. That also gave us the longer-term, progressive view of our future that made utopianism seem shallow and naive.
Yet you're completely right about the importance of a "cartography of the future" in the utopian spirit. We badly need to develop new pictures of what it looks like when we've got it right. This is something I didn't attempt in my essay -- under present conditions I find it hard to envision hopeful scenarios. But some of the contest entries, including yours, are making me want to try.
I'll have to check out some of your footnotes. It's very encouraging to think that "many are asking fundamental questions not so much about what it means to be human as
what we want being human to mean..."
Thanks -- Conrad
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Joe Fisher wrote on Apr. 23, 2014 @ 19:35 GMT
Dear Mr. Searle,
A nice change of pace. I found your essay a joy to read, and not as outrageously oversimplified as one would tend to think.
Regards,
Joe Fisher
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Author Rick Searle replied on Apr. 23, 2014 @ 19:45 GMT
Thanks, Joe. I'm a utopian with a lower case u.
I intend to read and vote on your essay tonight. Please grade my essay if you haven't done so already.
Best of luck!
Rick
George Gantz wrote on Apr. 24, 2014 @ 03:05 GMT
Rick -
Great essay, thanks. In my essay,
The Tip of the Spear, I only make an oblique reference to the way technology has shaped our human imagination for the worse (by promoting determinism, commercialism) - you have tackled this issue head-on. Bravo.
However, are we not looking in the rear view mirror? Determinism as a world view was promoted by Newtonian science and 19th/20th century technological enthusiasm. But the convergence of scientific theory and technological advance is now split. For the past century, fundamental science has grappled with an increasingly opaque and obscure landscape - relativity, quantum mechanics, complexity, and arcane specialization. These are existentially unsettling and seem to have led to an erosion of confidence and optimism in the scientific enterprise - just look at the climate change debates, or the new creationism for that matter.
I would also say (Kurzweil to the contrary notwithstanding) that most humans are not particularly comfortable with all that the digital etc. world has brought with it. While technology, productivity and standard of living may have climbed, so has the sense of alienation and stress. That incessant beeping!
I worry that we have yet to see the full impact of 20th century science and 21st century technology on the human imagination. It is playing out as we write. I hope that out of the ashes of 20th century determinism and progressivism we will see a new, positive, shared moral framework arise, rather than greater discord.
Best - George
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Author Rick Searle replied on Apr. 24, 2014 @ 20:59 GMT
That's a great question, George.
I think you're right on two fronts- science grew out of determinism along time ago, and the public in general is certainly far more cynical of the promises of technology than in the middle of the last century.
Still, the people I continue to see adhering to a version of determinism are pretty powerful- they own and run some of the richest companies in the world, and/or adhere and promote an ideology that is currently rooted in Silicon Valley.
Here are some links to just a few of the posts I have written on the subject:
http://utopiaordystopia.com/2011/12/29/what-humanity
-wants/
http://utopiaordystopia.com/2013/05/09/reflections-on
-abundance/
http://utopiaordystopia.com/2013/08/13/the-terrif
ying-banality-of-humanity-2-0/
http://utopiaordystopia.com/20
13/09/14/betting-against-the-transhumanist-wager/
http://utop
iaordystopia.com/2013/12/14/dont-be-evil/
http://utopiaordyst
opia.com/2014/03/02/cracks-in-the-cult-of-radical-transparen
cy/
I intend to read the Tip of the Spear tonight. Please give me your grade if you haven't done so already.
Best of luck,
Rick Searle
Member Tejinder Pal Singh wrote on Apr. 24, 2014 @ 16:36 GMT
Dear Rick,
It was a pleasure reading your scholarly essay. If I understood you right, you advocate moving away from technological determinism, and towards a new exploration for a Utopia. I am very interested in knowing what practical steps you have in mind with regard to moving in this new direction.
My best regards,
Tejinder
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Author Rick Searle wrote on Apr. 24, 2014 @ 20:41 GMT
Thank you very much for the question, Tejinder.
I had to cut a good bit of my original text to meet the length requirements, so below I'll paste some of my thoughts from there which I hope will answer your question.
Please let me know what you think, and if you have not graded my essay already, please do so.
All the best,
Rick...
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Thank you very much for the question, Tejinder.
I had to cut a good bit of my original text to meet the length requirements, so below I'll paste some of my thoughts from there which I hope will answer your question.
Please let me know what you think, and if you have not graded my essay already, please do so.
All the best,
Rick Searle
______________________
The major problems the world faces over the next century are not hard to identify. How do we support and continue to spread generalized human prosperity in light of their overwhelming pressures on the biosphere? How do we respond to climate change that is already guaranteed to take place over the next few centuries despite what we do today? How do we make our society more equitable and democratic? How do we respond to unprecedented demographic changes? What kind of society can we build around the rise of increasingly intelligent machines? How do we use our increasing powers over the workings of life being granted to us by the biological sciences?
We need more political, socio-economic and environmental innovation if we are to find ways to confront these problems. Our political institutions are in some cases centuries old, the structures of our socio-economic life not much younger, and the ways we relate to our physical environment legacy practices stretching in some case deep into our history.
It isn’t the case either that we are bereft of possible solutions that range from the statist to the anarchist, the bio-conservative to the transhumanist. Still, the application of these solutions faces the high wall of human inertia, better the devil that you know, as the saying goes. As Laplace knew, public caution when it comes to radical change has a great deal of wisdom in it. We don’t what solutions will work and what they will look like in the real world, or if the cure will end up being worse than the disease. Indeed, the very non-deterministic, non-linear nature of human affairs ensures that we cannot know the answers to these questions beforehand.
What we need is ways to test our ideas and examples of solutions that people can actually see and visit, to move to if they so chose, and best of all, apply what has been shown to work in their own society. Small scale utopian experiments can radically innovate while the larger society can use these innovations to engage in what Popper called “piecemeal social engineering”.
Thus, we need a real research and development budget for innovation beyond the merely technological and scientific. Social innovation as a major solution for the world’s problems gets almost no notice because it is vastly overshadowed by much faster technological innovation. Yet, as noted, most of our social problems are at root problems of political and economic organization as much as they are technological in nature.
BREAK
In some ways we already have such broad experimentation as a consequence of our fractured political world. American states in its federal system are famously thought of as “laboratories”. Mayors are among the most innovative figures in the US at least. (Barber) Countries with similar histories, cultures and ecologies that at some point diverged such as North Korea and South Korea offer running experiments contrasting alternative political and economic systems (Romer). Some cities have been developed precisely so as to be experiments in green technologies (Dubai). Religion and culture can be considered long running experiments in cultural evolution whose very longevity shows they helping human beings to successfully navigate their way in the world. (Wired for Culture)
All this knowledge, along with sector specific innovation in areas such as policing, public health, education etc needs to be better collected and made available for policy makers and citizens, but we also need more radical experiments. There are many possible examples: small, self-sufficient cities in ecologically extreme habitats such as deserts, or arctic zones, communities with radically different forms of governance, economy, and relationship to technology and the natural world. For those who wish to secure the future of democracy, what is especially needed are ways to bring democratic governance into the hands of citizens. (NAAM) At the moment popular technology is better at helping overthrow governments rather than democratically govern them. (Naam Atlantic).
Almost all of these experiments will fail. Yet their failure is almost the point. Small scale utopian experiments would give us a place to tap into the energetic idealism of youth and would provide a school of politics and policy better than even the most sophisticated computer simulation. We might create a much wiser generation of politicians if we gave them the opportunity to crash a whole (if very small) society by their mistakes rather than just corrode our much more weighty and resilient society where the consequences of bad judgement and short-sighted corruption are handed off to future administrations and even generations not yet born. Future politicians and policy makers would have be honed by a kind of evolutionary process to in some sense resemble Burke’s political classes whose wisdom was shaped by history and party politics. His charge against French revolutionary utopians being that they lacked the sort of political wisdom that only came through experience.
Even the suggestion that a small effort at social experimentation would be publicly funded in itself seems utopian in the pejorative sense of the word in today’s age of austerity when governments have trouble even investing in eminently more practical social goods. I have no answer to this charge than to say that even where something looks utopian it is our responsibility to put our efforts behind it as long as we find it the smart and good thing to do.
A modest step that might be a necessary prelude to any broad ranging support for any real world Utopian experiments might lie encouraging the use of Utopia as an organizing concept in secondary and postsecondary institutions of learning. In secondary education the concept of Utopia combined with the use of increasingly sophisticated simulation and gaming tools might be used being to revive in the young a sense of the holistic and independent nature of their societies, a commitment to the general good of the community, and above all a sense of the future that can be shaped by human agency, and which we are thus ultimately responsible for.
At the university level Utopia might also be used as a way to bridge the increasingly specialized nature of our society. All Utopias are to some degree architectonic and aim at being holistic with everything meant to fit together just so. A truly architectonic society is an illusion, but the fact that communication between different segments of society might be said to be weak, and that specialists spend most of their time interacting with specialist in their same field, means that our view of society is more kaleidoscopic than the reality. As just one example, one needs to get education, the economy, mental health, and law enforcement right all at the same time, for all interact with one another and have feedback effects. Utopia as a concept can get these various specialists, or budding specialist in the form of undergraduate and graduate students, in the in the same room preferably not only in interdisciplinary exercises at the university level, but in real communities as well.
So what we need is a return to the Utopian tradition, but one that is also in many ways new. This reconceptualized utopianism would be supremely conscious of its epistemological limits, and less centered on technological solutions as the cure-all for social ills. A new utopianism aware of itself and its limitations might be a way of breaking free of the unconscious utopianism that surrounds us- ideologies which claim to have uncovered the direction of history and simplify reality in order to subject it to their narrow interpretations of the world. It might show us new ways of living in the world, novel approaches which we will increasingly need in light of looming demographic, technological and economic change.
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Lawrence B Crowell wrote on Apr. 25, 2014 @ 01:56 GMT
Dear Rick,
Your essay is interesting. I attach below this paragraph my reply to your comment on my blog page. I generally wait a bit before scoring many essays to see how they fit in with each other. I tend to copy the cover page and enter potential scores before doing the actual entry.
The intellectual attraction of utopias is pretty low these days. Utopia = no place, is a sort...
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Dear Rick,
Your essay is interesting. I attach below this paragraph my reply to your comment on my blog page. I generally wait a bit before scoring many essays to see how they fit in with each other. I tend to copy the cover page and enter potential scores before doing the actual entry.
The intellectual attraction of utopias is pretty low these days. Utopia = no place, is a sort of fiction meant to advance an ideology or agenda. Recent history has sort of rubbished up the attraction of utopias.
The irony of these things is the reason they fail is that once they are applied the application of them changes human behavior in ways not predicted by the system. This is what happens with economy theories, the application of the economic theory changes behavior in ways not predicted by theory.
We humans have been very good at exploiting our environment. Our ability to figure out problems, learn, and communicate this information has permitted us exploit our world in new and more complete ways. As a result we have increasingly taken our selves off the fitness landscape. It probably began when Homo erectus took themselves off the menu by throwing rocks at leopards and using fire at night to keep them away. This has lead to the current age where there are over 7 billion humans and we exploit our world in ways no other animal ever has, such as petroleum, uranium, metal ores, and … . With a population of 7 billion and total mass of around 400 million tons no animal with comparable size and dietary requirements in the natural history of this planet has come even close.
In the environmental debate it is interesting to ponder the idea that the conservatives are in a certain perspective right. The continual expansion of human power, our increased use of resources and the wasteful damage done to the environment has been the human program from almost the start of our species. They are right in the sense that we have always managed to press on this way. For most of our natural and recorded history the exploitation and demolition of the world has been very slow and comparatively small. Now of course the problem is that as this trend is exponential it appears there is a prospect that this will lead to finis Homo sapiens. To rein in our growth and exploitation of the world is out of character with our species. On the other hand failure to do so means we will inevitably reach certain limits. If nothing else our world is becoming bewilderingly complex and we may at some point be no longer to manage this growth in scale and complexity.
Largely political leaders do not exist to solve problems. We sometimes call political leaders “problem solvers,” and this is really only true from a certain perspective. Political leaders largely serve to protect or expand the wealth and power of those in the most elite positions. If you are in that exclusive class then in one sense political leaders are “problem solvers” if they permit you to keep business as usual or to increase your share of the pie. The idea that power structures of any sort, whether government/political, or business/corporate and we might as well include military and religious, exist to actually solve problems in the world is a bit of a delusion. We tend to focus on the rather exceptional occasions where there is leadership that does actually solve problems, where the normalcy is really a banal form of management that greases various palms.
So the future will doubtless prove to be interesting if nothing else. The odds frankly do not look in our favor, and between dystopia and utopia I would tend to say the former looks more likely. It really should not be looked upon as something that horrible. In 50 million years the Earth will be doing just fine, but we wont be there. The world will no more cry for the loss of our species than it does now over the loss of Tyrannosaurus rex.
LC
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Author Rick Searle wrote on Apr. 25, 2014 @ 12:08 GMT
Lawrence,
"Largely political leaders do not exist to solve problems. We sometimes call political leaders “problem solvers,” and this is really only true from a certain perspective."
Well, yes and no. It it very often the case that solving one problem leads to another down the road, sometimes even bigger. But politics certainly does solve problems- think of the US after the Clean Air Act than before or before child labor laws, regulation on food production the list goes on and on.
I suppose one could think this was futile, but it is futile in the same way cleaning your house is futile. That it just gets a mess again is just part of reality- but it's better than living in filth.
"It really should not be looked upon as something that horrible. In 50 million years the Earth will be doing just fine, but we wont be there. The world will no more cry for the loss of our species than it does now over the loss of Tyrannosaurus rex."
I agree that other life on earth- in the short term- would be better off without us and do not agree with other essayists in this contest who seem to think humanity has some cosmic role to play. Yet, for any human being the end of our species should be seen as a tragedy whether we will personally experience it or not.
As for Utopia, it has indeed be rubbished by history, but I think we have thrown something valuable into the garbage pile which I am trying to pull out, clean off, and fix its broken parts.
All the best,
Rick Searle
KoGuan Leo wrote on Apr. 26, 2014 @ 08:37 GMT
Rick, wonderful indeed. I read it three times in three different occasions to understand your ideas more fully. We definitely share the idea that we need to define our common destiny clearly, so that most mankind would agree and work together to realize this common dream. As you wrote: "We need something like the idea of Utopia for this shaping. We need it as both a prototype and moral template...
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Rick, wonderful indeed. I read it three times in three different occasions to understand your ideas more fully. We definitely share the idea that we need to define our common destiny clearly, so that most mankind would agree and work together to realize this common dream. As you wrote: "We need something like the idea of Utopia for this shaping. We need it as both a prototype and moral template where many of the problems we currently face are resolved." I also agree and believe that we do not have a privilege to exist than any other living beings that has ever swam, walked and flown on Earth. So far perhaps, only 1% might survive since our ancestor single cell evolved here. More likely than not as our ancestor evolved from the single cell to multicellular and to ape kind and then to mankind, and then to a new kind more likely than not our own creation that we would interbreed, infuse our DNA and biological parts and of course our memory so that we can live longer and even would have a shot to be immortal physically here and now. Likewise we are different from our own immediate predecessor ape-kinds, we will evolve into many species and sub-species. Whatever that would be, without an agreed roadmap of the future, we shall certainly lost into infinite possibilities and potential, most of them are bad for us. That is why I am working on Xuan Yuan Anti-entropic Operating System 2.0 that leads us safely to the brave common future of Xuan Yuan's Da Tong in which we joyfully share together by joining in the hip so to speak our common prosperity and well being. From each to each according to his/her dreams and aspirations and each has free-education, free health care and free minimum material wealth like a small house and $1 million or more in his/her bank account.
KQID's Giving first taking later principle demands me to give your outstanding essay its highest score possible in this contest. I will also post this comment in my blog. Good luck and congratulation for your important essay.
Regards,
Leo KoGuan
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Luca Valeri wrote on Apr. 27, 2014 @ 00:41 GMT
Rick
As promised I'd like to share some thoughts on you nice nostalgic essay.
I like Utopia and we need Utopia. Utopia shall be crazy and propose some vague values like Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité from the french revolution that we still don't understand what they mean. Seen from today the french revolution was far away from realizing these values. Utopia shall serve us...
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Rick
As promised I'd like to share some thoughts on you nice nostalgic essay.
I like Utopia and we need Utopia. Utopia shall be crazy and propose some vague values like Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité from the french revolution that we still don't understand what they mean. Seen from today the french revolution was far away from realizing these values. Utopia shall serve us telescope to see our present and as compass to give us the direction where to navigate.
This was a far I could understand it Adornos critic to Poppers "piecemeal social engineering" in the positivist dispute. Using the language and logic of the present Poppers telescope could not see very far. The Utopian telescope in contrast might see the present much clearer and the future much nearer.
Contrary to what I say in my
essay I like to think, that the past is not "stubbornly outside of our control" as you state it. This might be so as far as we only talk about things that have a clear physical meaning. Our past and our future is only about the events that happened and will happen. It is also also about its meaning we give. This hopefully will change when we will have reached Utopia.
Although over a hundred years ago quantum mechanics introduced indeterminism in to our physical world I think you are right insisting to call the physical world view deterministic, although that might not be accurate. Quantum mechanics makes it possible to build atomic bombs and to control them (technically, not socially). As I state in my
essay physics is the most general language that can make prediction from the given knowledge. No wonder all other sciences (especially economics) wants to emulate it.
Last but not least I want to cite Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker who says that it is a moral necessity not know exactly the future otherwise we would not make any effort to reach Utopia.
Hope you liked my comment
Luca
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Author Rick Searle replied on Apr. 27, 2014 @ 15:40 GMT
Luca,
If I understand this, I love it, and is one angle my essay lacked:
"Our past and our future is only about the events that happened and will happen. It is also also about its meaning we give. "
In some ways, the meaning of the past is constantly changing in light of the outcomes expressed in the present. Reaching for a utopian outcome is,in a way,
an attempt to bring the stream of the past to its best possible outcome, though, we never quite get there and it is always outside our reach- there is more future in front of us.
Rick
Luca Valeri replied on Apr. 27, 2014 @ 16:13 GMT
Rick,
A "not" has been lost in the passage. Actually I should have writen: "Our past and our future is
not only about the
events that happened and will happen. It is also also about its meaning we give."
It was very late at night.
Luca
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Thomas Howard Ray wrote on Apr. 28, 2014 @ 17:59 GMT
Rick,
Because I am huge fan of Karl Popper, I'd like to first suggest that what he left out of
The Open Society and its Enemies you might find rehabilitated in
The Povery of Historicism. Popper's view of science is unwavering in its dedication to the correspondence theory of truth (Tarski), so you might find that your idea of reconstructing the past, with the advantage of new knowledge in the present, quite compatible with Popper's criteria for a scientifically sound and falsifiable theory. Though the correspondence is not causal, as in Marxist dialectical materialism, it is entirely objective, i.e., metaphysically real.
That being said, though I have sought to be true to critical rationalism (Popper's name for his philosophy), I am much more the
rational idealist, which puts me closer to your philosophy than his, even in spite of myself. In fact, I am pleasantly suprised to see a number of idealistic proposals in this year's essay contest (Bee Hossenfelder comes quickly to mind), because academics in general tend to eschew idealism, as you noted.
There's so much worthwhile in your piece that it may well be the most important essay this year.
Best,
Tom
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Author Rick Searle replied on Apr. 29, 2014 @ 01:52 GMT
Tom,
Thank you for your kind words, but the competition here is pretty steep, especially including your excellent essay. And thanks for turning my attention to
The Povery of Historicism- it's now on my reading list.
Best of luck,
Rick
Thomas Howard Ray replied on Apr. 29, 2014 @ 12:24 GMT
Author Rick Searle replied on Apr. 30, 2014 @ 01:22 GMT
Thanks much, Tom, for the Jarvie essay.
Vladimir F. Tamari wrote on Apr. 29, 2014 @ 07:51 GMT
Rick
There are so many essays I have not read this year it was the happy thoughts of your namesake Ronald Searle, that made me choose your essay! He was a brilliant cartoonist and illustrator most famous for his hilarious distopian vision of a post-war English girl's school gone haywire. He taught himself drawing at a Japanese prisoner of war camp, and his drawings in Punch influenced my early decision to become an artist myself. In your essay you take us, children of the war- torn 20th. c. on a smooth intellectual ride to a glimmering mirage of a Peaceful Kingdom, of a New Jerusalem or a Shangri-La obscured by the range of scary problems threatening our future on this Earth. You have not mentioned the Heaven of Christian and Muslim teaching as a sort of Utopia giving humanity hope. I once heard the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish speak of a clean white space within each person untouched by conflict or hate. Perhaps finding that individually and (here we go again!) collectively, should be the first place to look for a Utopia in this amazing world of ours.
Have a look at the faux Utopia I created for Einstein in my essay.
With best wishes
Vladimir
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F Earle Fox wrote on Apr. 30, 2014 @ 00:31 GMT
Dear Rick,
You have written a very helpful clarification of “utopia vs. dystopia”, and of how it has changed over time. Utopia as a constant way of looking for a better future is a good idea, so long as we remain flexible for new ideas.
My stance is on the Biblical worldview, where (one might say) Utopia is also looking for us, indeed initiates the search for us who have fallen out of relationship with God. The Biblical view puts a solid objectivity to the matter, because Utopia is already there, ready and functioning, as given by the two Great Commandments as given by Jesus (Matthew 22), to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love one another just like we love ourselves. Hard to improve on that goal, I think – because the Biblical understanding of “love” is doing good for others, not pampering them, but real objective good, as a parent might do for a child. We are thus to love ourselves in that same way.
That being the case, the search for Utopia is the search for how to find and cooperate with God. Much simplified by God’s having already reached out to us – as per Biblical history.
Many will respond, “OK, but the Biblical worldview and God is now passe, disproven, or made irrelevant by modern science.” to which I respond, “Not so, science was invented in the late Middle Ages by Christians, not by secular folks, as I indicate in my essay ‘How Shall We Then Live?’” Science would never have happened if the Hebrews had not given us a world at home in time and space and particularity, and if the Christians had not then combined that worldview with the Greek talent for logical thinking.
The best to you, Earle
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Author Rick Searle wrote on Apr. 30, 2014 @ 02:39 GMT
Vladimir,
Oh, I am familiar with the work of Ronald Searle. It's difficult to live up to the last name, I have him and the philosopher John Searle. I just hope I share some of the same good genes.
Had I had more space, I certainly would have included something on both Christian and Jewish apocalyptic traditions originating as resistance literature. My orginal version had a long section on the Islamic utopian- Al Farabi- but alas I had to cut it.
I will probably past what follows as a comment under your own very insightful and amusing essay. Ah, if only Einstein had been the first president of Israel!
I have had a long standing interest in a group of Jewish thinkers including him,
Judah Magnes and Hannah Arendt who wanted a Jewish homeland but also a bi-national state to be shared between both Jews and Arabs.
On the other issue Einstein was most worried about- nuclear war- don't you think he would be pleased with how things have turned out so far? There is very little risk for the foreseeable future of a global nuclear war.No world war has been fought since and none appears on the horizon as far out as the middle of the century.
Best of luck,
Rick Searle
Vladimir F. Tamari replied on May. 2, 2014 @ 11:09 GMT
Rick,
Sorry to inflict Ronald on you again (I now think I have mentioned him to you in a comment in years past - old fogeism at work here).
I liked your comment above which you also put on my page, and I replied as follows:
"Dear Rick
Yes Einstein was a brave and independent thinker and spoke his mind frankly in quotable quotes. He was too gentle a soul to have been able to rein in the aggressive elements in the Zionist movement like Begin, responsible for the massacres and bombings that colored the conflict in the 1940's and stamped Israel's actions ever since.
I wish I could share your optimism about nuclear war - so many of those bombs have been made, and the situation (in N and S Korea for example) can degenerate quickly, but yes I do agree with you that the Cold War passed without a nuclear incident, and that is to be thankful for.
Best of luck to us !!"
Vladimir
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Author Rick Searle replied on May. 2, 2014 @ 15:43 GMT
Vladimir,
It's hard to keep track of comments, and I will put this after my own essay as well as you have done.You're probably right that Einstein would not have been able to reign in aggressive Zionists, but sadly, we were not able to find out.
I also agree that there continues to be a risk of nuclear conflict, but however deadly such conflict might be they do not, as the MAD of the Cold War did, threaten us with the extinction of all life on earth. Our biggest task is to make sure this risk does not reappear sometime this century- given events like that going on in Ukraine right now- the prospects do not look particularly good.
All the best,
Rick
Robert de Neufville wrote on May. 3, 2014 @ 02:06 GMT
Great work, Rick. Well-written and well-argued. I completely agree—I am a Platonist at heart—that we have to consider what the ideal might be so we can aim for it. And I agree we need more social experimentation. It was just that kind of experimentation in the free cities of Europe that produced modern democracy and capitalism. Of course I also think—it sounds like you are with me on this—that Burke was right that we have to be judicious when set out to design and build society from first principles. In any case, when the GCRI needs writing I will certainly mention your name to Seth and Grant. Good luck in the contest. You deserve to do well!
Robert
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Author Rick Searle replied on May. 3, 2014 @ 13:15 GMT
Thanks, Robert. I really value your praise, and you managed completely (and succinctly) capture my meaning. All the best both here and especially with the GCRI- our children’s future is riding on it.
Ajay Bhatla wrote on May. 8, 2014 @ 05:21 GMT
Rick,
If I understood the message of your essay it is:
- that there is no single future of humanity
- that there are many futures i.e. utopias
- that individual people define their individual utopias
- that what's necessary to reach a particular utopia is in the hands of the person reaching for it
If I got it, then we are in complete agreement on how to steer humanity's future. My essay (
here) makes the case for individuals reaching their own definition of a future, through their own personal efforts. And society can help everyone by making science something each person can tinker and play with.
Hope I got the gist of your message.
Let me know if you and I are as much in sync as I think we are.
- Ajay
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Author Rick Searle wrote on May. 8, 2014 @ 21:57 GMT
Hi Ajay,
I think both individuals and communities define what the ideal society is and can strive towards it. For the individual, some notion of Utopia can serve as a moral template through which they can judge their own society and serve as a guide to their actions within it.
Many of our priorities, however, need a society in which they can be manifest- Utopia (or an ideal future) can serve as a useful tool there as well.Lastly,I really like the idea of utopian communities as experiments where some set of social problems is resolved. They almost always fail but tend to be trailblazers and teach us valuable lessons.
I liked your essay a lot. I am a big supporter of citizen science. I don't think you mentioned crowd sourcing efforts such as FOLDING AT HOME or even better, in that they better involve individuals crowd sourcing efforts that have individuals scan through astronomical data and the like. I feel that given mobile technology the horizon of citizen science is endless > everything from monitoring and pooling data on local ecosystems to allowing people in the developing world to tap into the scientific knowledge of more technologically developed countries. Mobile could even be used to bring highly localized knowledge in the developing world e.g. medicinal plants, new species, ecosystem health with scientist all over the world.
All the best on your noble effort to bring science to the global public.
Rick
Ajay Bhatla replied on May. 11, 2014 @ 05:10 GMT
Rick,
Thank you for being a big supporter of science in the hands of consumers.
I did not mention crowd sourcing as its objective is to put a challenge to a crowd and choose a solution from the many the crowd puts forward.
My approach is very different from crowd sourcing. I believe that no sourcing is required for the goal is not for a crowd to help me with my challenge, but the goal is to get each citizen able to solve their own individual challenge.
I concur on your assessment that mobile technology is too important to ignore and its single biggest benefit will be to get knowledge to, literally, everyone to choose and use.
I'll post this comment on your essay also.
- Ajay
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Jens C. Niemeyer wrote on May. 11, 2014 @ 14:47 GMT
Rick,
I only now got a chance to read your essay, and I am very glad I did. Very well written, and definitely thought-provoking. From a very pragmatic perspective, simply debating the different notions of Utopia is already useful for helping human societies find their bearings (even if we may never know if we reached it), so this theme fits very well into this competition. Good luck!
Jens
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Author Rick Searle replied on May. 13, 2014 @ 17:30 GMT
Hi Jens,
Yes, it's hard to keep up with all the essays. Thank you very much for the compliment. You know how much I liked your essay which readers can find here:
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2061
Best of luck in the contest, and we should definitely keep in touch.
Rick
Mohammed M. Khalil wrote on May. 12, 2014 @ 20:01 GMT
Hi Rick,
Great essay! It is well argued, and beautifully written. I agree with you; technology has great impact on humanity's future, and through science and technology we can reach Utopia, or get close. This is in agreement with my essay:
Improving Science for a Better Future , I'd be glad to take your opinion.
Good luck in the contest, and best regards,
Mohammed
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Author Rick Searle wrote on May. 14, 2014 @ 02:10 GMT
Hi Mohammed,
I'll post this at under your essay as well...
Fantastic essay! I may turn a quote of yours "...nature is a whole that recognizes no disciplinary boundaries" into a poster and put it on my wall.
Totally agree with your point: "..in 2013 the US spent only $2 billion on clean energy R&D, compared with $72 billion on defense R&D"- this is obscene. We Americans really don't know what real "defense" spending in the 21st century should mean, which is dealing with the man made and human threats to global society.
Love that you brought up the MIT Media lab. I originally had them in my own essay, but had to cut that section do to length requirements.
One group I wish you might have mentioned were ethicists.I think it's important to get them into the design process when it comes to new technology.
Not to stereotype, but I've read a bit about the golden age of science in the Islamic world, thinkers such as Al- Farabi, Ibn al-Haytham and Ibn Sīnā who set
the stage for the scientific revolution in the West. Bringing this science back to that area would be the greatest benefit to both the Islamic world and larger humanity.
Best of luck in the contest!
Rick
Peter Jackson wrote on May. 21, 2014 @ 19:23 GMT
Rick,
I found your argument interesting, well considered and balanced. I'll take the odd point to task if I may but first I particularly comment.
"..no social version of determinism is more important than technological determinism... "Getting the question of technological evolution right will likely mean getting the future right." "...simply letting the evolution of technology...
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Rick,
I found your argument interesting, well considered and balanced. I'll take the odd point to task if I may but first I particularly comment.
"..no social version of determinism is more important than technological determinism... "Getting the question of technological evolution right will likely mean getting the future right." "...simply letting the evolution of technology continue without our shaping it to better answer our challenges and fit our values is no longer viable." and particularly;
"...we really do have choices regarding how this particular phase of technological evolution will unfold in a way we have not before. It is not the mind-blowing technological powers we continue to produce that count so much as whether we use them to create and support the kind of societies we want."
I feel we've been rather wandering blindly for some time, neither understanding nature nor where we're heading. I hope I understand your philosophy as in agreement with mine; perhaps condensed to;
1. We must always identify our next goal ('utopia?) first,
then identify how to achieve it.
2. We
can and must make what we wish from discoveries including from serendipity.
I agree with Kurzweil. As a successful yacht racing helm I know the wind and elements are always fickle, but the same few always end up leading. The rest simply refuse to recognise how. However I'm not sure about your; "...doubts as to if quantum fields, the nature of consciousness or theories of the multi-verse are as important as more mundane goal setting at least in terms of the near-term future."
True perhaps I feel for those with small ambition, or as a first step, and I do agree most current science in those areas
is fruitless. However the statement may allow the view that advancement in our fundamental understanding of nature is trivial compared to, necessary I agree, more trivial goal setting.
Uniquely I've found that's not the case, so perhaps read my own essay before deciding. I used the method to identify the greatest possible advancement, the 'holy grail' of physics, 'unification', and also a solution; the 'fissure' being classically deriving QM, so swapping weirdness for comprehensibility. It's far too BIG a leap for those steeped in doctrine to see yet (I estimated 2020 in my 2011 essay) but there it sits on the horizon.
Your intelligent essay was a joy to read and I think should be a scored highly. I await your comments on mine (also a touch lyrical) and the above with interest.
Best of luck.
Peter
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Author Rick Searle replied on May. 28, 2014 @ 02:31 GMT
Peter,
Thanks for you generous comments regarding my essay. I have read, greatly enjoyed and scored your piece. Alas, it seems difficult to move someone's aggregate score I was hoping to get you the attention of proper physicists, unlike myself, you deserve.
If I understand your project, you are trying to find a way to return physics to the way it was understood before quantum weirdness appeared Einstein's "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."
I would align that with my own essay in this way: human beings desire not only that the world be physically comprehensible but that it be morally comprehensible as well. We used to articulate this desire for comprehensibility through Utopian thought, that is, we used Utopia to both imagine what features a
morally comprehensible world would have or as a kind of contrast to the ways our own society failed to match our desire for comprehensibility. I'd like to see a revival of the tradition minus its former hubris and other flaws.
I wish you best of luck here and in getting your ideas across to the rest of the physics community. If you have not already done so your grading of my essay would be greatly appreciated.
Rick Searle
Peter Jackson wrote on May. 28, 2014 @ 12:40 GMT
Rick,
I'm delighted I was able to positively affect your score. I like your description, but in a nutshell I'd say man can't really have a "sense of freedom" over the future all the time we believe we're incapable of rationalising how nature works.
I show we are. The only problem then seems to be the embedded belief that we aren't! Thanks for your support of my work in trying to overcome that.
Best wishes
Peter
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Author Rick Searle replied on May. 28, 2014 @ 17:52 GMT
Peter,
Much, much appreciated.
Again all the best in the contest and your endeavors.
Rick
Don Limuti wrote on Jun. 2, 2014 @ 21:09 GMT
Hi Rick,
Thoughtful essay on utopia.
Your comment at the end: "I would say that How to Steer the Future has no definitive and final answer but begins with the rediscovery that it is us with our hands behind the wheel."
I would add "and with high aims for humanity".
Don Limuti
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Author Rick Searle replied on Jun. 3, 2014 @ 00:29 GMT
Thanks Don, I enjoyed your essay as well.
Anonymous wrote on Jun. 3, 2014 @ 20:31 GMT
Dear Rick,
Great philosophical essay! Remarkable conclusion and deep concepts:«No human society will ever truly be a Utopia, but, as Oscar Wilde knew, the Utopian imagination has continually expanded our moral horizon. Recovering it might help restore our sense of being creatures embedded in time where our agency is directed in the present towards a future whose shape in not yet determined. The future is neither completely ours to shape nor something we are subject to without room for maneuver. For, continuing to think that our world cannot be made to better conform to our ideals is one of the surest ways to insure that what lies in our future is the farthest thing from Utopia. And so, if I were to answer the question that inspired this essay "how should humanity steer the future" directly, I would say that the question has no definitive and final answer but begins with the rediscovery that it is us with our hands behind the wheel." My high rating. We need a Great Dream and Great Common Cause to save Peace, Nature and Humanity. Great Dream always go alond with
Freedom without fear,
Hope,
Love,
Justice. New Generation says:
We start the path. In the concept
u-
topia deep ontological meaning "turn to topos». Here is a very deep philosophy and cartography. Humanity needs turning consciousness. I'm starting to read your site... Please see on the journey Protogeometer and some u-
topian ideas.
Sincerely,
Vladimir
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Tommaso Bolognesi wrote on Jun. 5, 2014 @ 14:16 GMT
Dear Rick,
interesting ideas, exposed quite brilliantly. I found that in most passages you appear more concerned about illustrating concepts or opinions from various people, from the past or the present, than to express directly your position about the question at hand - manifesting an interest and talent especially for analysis. But your own message, one of recovering a new form of...
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Dear Rick,
interesting ideas, exposed quite brilliantly. I found that in most passages you appear more concerned about illustrating concepts or opinions from various people, from the past or the present, than to express directly your position about the question at hand - manifesting an interest and talent especially for analysis. But your own message, one of recovering a new form of utopia by trying to steer technology, is eventually delivered, and sounds attractive (although, as usual, the devil is in the details . . .).
One observation. You contrast determinism (taken in very broad sense) with the openness of the future. I tend to believe that there`s no necessary conflict between the two concepts (and the research I`ve been doing in the last few years is based on this assumption). In particular, a deterministic (algorithmic) behaviour at the ultimate discrete fabric of the physical universe does not prevent creativity to pop up at upper levels of emergence, as now widely demonstrated and accepted.
But your dealing with determinism mostly relates to a different level - that of technology. You observe that a deterministic view at the progress of technology has somehow reduced our faith in the possibility to steer it, and that we should rather change this attitude because there is no guarantee that `un-steered` progress will lead us to a good place. I agree that the power we have to effectively steer this progress - one with aspects that remind us of darwinian evolution - is limited.
What I find harder to accept is the view (Billings`?) that the current exponential technological growth be a peak, a historical exception. The physical universe expands at an accelerated rate, and it would be . . . a disappointing waste of space if this process were not accompanied by a growth in the complexity of its contents, somewhere. Currently, and from our point of observation, maximum complexity is achieved by the phenomenon of life, humanity, our brains, and our technology. This is where we should expect further growth. Of course, given the openness of our future, we are in the realm of pure speculations. But if
openness also means
creativity, there is room for optimism. I found reasons for optimism, in this respect, in the surprisingly prophetic visions by Teilhard de Chardin, as partly discussed in my essay. (Last hours for rating: if interested, please take a look at it.)
Best regards
Tommaso
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Author Rick Searle replied on Jun. 6, 2014 @ 02:14 GMT
Tommaso,
Thank you for your comment. In answer to:
"What I find harder to accept is the view (Billings`?) that the current exponential technological growth be a peak, a historical exception. The physical universe expands at an accelerated rate, and it would be . . . a disappointing waste of space if this process were not accompanied by a growth in the complexity of its contents, somewhere."
I find Billing's argument at the very least very interesting. Given that we are the only technological civilization we know of we simply have nothing but our own experience on which to base any of our extrapolations. What intrigues me about his argument is just how high the energy requirements become within short time frames if we merely want to continue on the growth path we have been on since the industrial revolution. There are multiple and perhaps equally probable scenarios one of which is that we simply plateau as or plateau for a very extended period having run into hard ceilings in the form of energy and environmental constraints.
I really enjoyed your essay, and have given you my vote. You paint a very attractive picture, but I myself do not think the universe follows any necessary telos, its emergent properties - life, sentience etc more lucky miracles than a sign of an unfolding higher purpose. Or perhaps I would say that the universe is simply prolific and cares not whether its prolific beings come in a form that possesses technology such as ourselves or not. We should therefore not write our particularity into the fabric of its future but work to ensure we have a place there.
Best of luck in the contest, and in all your endeavors!
Rick
Tommaso Bolognesi replied on Jun. 6, 2014 @ 16:41 GMT
Hi Rick,
thanks for the clarifications. I suspect that, while some plateau period may indeed happen, based on energy availability/demand, it will appear vanishingly small when we look at the grand evolution picture. I do not believe in a `telos` driving this evolution either; in spite of what Teilhard de Chardin suggest - that the evolution is pulled from above - I believe that the creativity of the computational universe is fueled, strictly speaking, only from below, although this does not exclude the `illusion` that some final purpose is at work.
Ciao
Tommaso
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Cristinel Stoica wrote on Jun. 7, 2014 @ 03:29 GMT
Hi Rick,
I liked very much your essay, which went in a realistic manner through various utopian ideas, presented good parts without ignoring bad sides, and proposes an utopian mean to steer the technological progress. Your essay is well written, well documented, and it is clear that you gave serious thoughts to the ideas you presented. Good luck!
Best regards,
Cristi
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Author Rick Searle replied on Jun. 7, 2014 @ 13:01 GMT
Thanks, Cristi
I enjoyed your essay as well. Glad to see you made it into the top rankings.
Wilhelmus de Wilde de Wilde wrote on Jun. 13, 2014 @ 15:33 GMT
dear Rick,
Congratulations with you high community score and admittance to the finalists pool.
I hope however that the discussions won't just end so I have the pleasure to sent you
a link to my contribution : "STEERING THE FUTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS" and hope for your comment(s) on my thread.
Good luck with the "final judgement" and
best regards
Wilhelmus
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Author Rick Searle wrote on Jun. 13, 2014 @ 16:20 GMT
Hello Wihelmus,
Agreed that the conversation should continue. Responded under your post.
Rick
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