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...

view entire post

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

view post as summary

show all replies (1 not shown)

hide replies

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...

view entire post

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.

view post as summary

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...

view entire post

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

view post as summary

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...

view entire post

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

view post as summary

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...

view entire post

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

view post as summary

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...

view entire post

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

view post as summary

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...

view entire post

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

view post as summary