I’m very uncertain about details, and have low confidence in all of these claims we agree about, but I agree with your assessment overall.
I’ve assumed that while speed changes, the technology-tree is fairly unalterable—you need goods metals and similar to make many things through 1800s-level technology, you need large-scale industry to make good metals, etc. But that’s low confidence, and I’d want to think about it more. (This paper looks interesting: http://gamestudies.org/1201/articles/tuur_ghys .)
Regarding political systems, I think that market economies with some level of distributed control, and political systems that allow feedback in somewhat democratic ways are social technologies that we don’t have clear superior alternatives to, despite centuries of thought. I’d argue that Fukuyama was right in “End of History” about the triumph of democracy and capitalism, it’s just that the end state seems to take longer than he assumed.
And finally, yes, the details of how they technologies and social systems play out in terms of cosmopolitan attitudes and the societal goals they reflect are much less clear. In general, I think that humans are far more culturally plastic than people assume, and very different values are possible and compatible with flourishing in the general sense. But (if it were possible to know the answer,) I wouldn’t be too surprised to find out that nearly fixed tech trees + nearly fixed social technology trees mean that cosmopolitan attitudes are a very strong default, rather than an accidental contingent reality.
I think the only point on which my view seem to differ from yours here is that I think I have lower confidence that market-style economies and democracy-style political systems would emerge by default. (But that’s not informed by very much, and I hope to learn more on the topic in future. Relevantly, I haven’t read The End of History.)
I think the following are some inputs informing my lower confidence on that matter. But note that I haven’t looked into any of these points much, and I mean this more as laying out my current thinking than as trying to make a compelling case.
It seems quite plausible that, even if market-style economies and democracy-style political systems are the most effective types of systems given how the world has been for the past centuries, other types of systems might be more effective if the background conditions changed quite a bit.
E.g., perhaps if there was a major disruption, after which most countries had a Soviet style system with industry intact, market economies and democracies wouldn’t perform well against that. Perhaps because of limited ability to trade, or because the Soviet style systems would coordinate to curtail the democracies and market economies.
One thing that makes me less concerned about this is that the “good” systems first began emerging when the rest of the world didn’t have those systems. So clearly it’s not necessary for everywhere to have free markets and democracies in order for that to emerge. But we don’t have precedents for things like a global situation in which most countries are very non-democratic systems and havemodern technology.
Perhaps this could be phrased as the possibility that there are multiple Nash equilibria for the international system, and in the current one it’s best to be fairly democratic and have fairly free markets, but there might be other equilibria where that’s not the case.
I think this and some of my other “inputs” were inspired in part by Beckstead.
Relatedly, it seems possible for a system to achieve something like “singleton” status, such that we no longer have evolution towards the most effective solutions, and the singleton can stay as it is indefinitely even if it’s not very effective.
Perhaps this is analogous to a company attaining monopoly status, creating high barriers to entry, and then getting away with providing poor products at high prices.
The Soviet Union lasted for a while, and it doesn’t seem that its eventual demise was a foregone conclusion. (Again, I should note that I haven’t looked into these points much.)
China seems to have maintained decent growth and avoided substantial democratisation thus far, despite repeated predictions suggesting this would’ve changed by now.
When I was reading 1984, it did feel plausible that such a system could last for a very long time.
Arguably, this could serve as a sketch of the sort of singleton scenario I allude to above.
Though of course we should be wary of the way that a lot of vivid details can make something seem plausible, and of generalisation from fictional evidence.
As I said, I’m uncertain about these points, and I’d be interested to hear people’s thoughts on them.
I disagree somewhat on a few things, but I’m not very strongly skeptical of any of these points. I do have a few points to consider about these issues.
Re: stable long term despotism, you might look into the idea of “hydraulic empires” and their stability. I think that short of having a similar monopoly, short of a global singleton, other systems are unstable enough that they should evolve towards whatever is optimal. However, nuclear weapons, if developed early by one state, could also create a quasi-singularity. And I think the Soviet Union was actually less stable than it appears in retrospect, except for their nuclear monopoly.
I do worry that some aspects of central control would be more effective at creating robust technological growth given clear tech ladders, compared to the way uncontrolled competition works in market economies, since markets are better at the explore side of the explore-exploit spectrum, and dictatorships are arguably better at exploitation. (In more than one sense.)
Re: China, the level of technology is stabilizing their otherwise fragile control of the country. I would be surprised if similar stability is possible longer term without either a hydraulic empire, per above, or similarly invasive advanced technologies—meaning that they would come fairly late. It’s possible faster technology development would make this more likely.
In retrospect, 1984 seems far less worrying than a Brave New World—style anti-utopia. (But it’s unclear that lots of happy people guided centrally is actually as negative as it is portrayed, at least according to some versions of utilitarianism.)
I’m very uncertain about details, and have low confidence in all of these claims we agree about, but I agree with your assessment overall.
I’ve assumed that while speed changes, the technology-tree is fairly unalterable—you need goods metals and similar to make many things through 1800s-level technology, you need large-scale industry to make good metals, etc. But that’s low confidence, and I’d want to think about it more. (This paper looks interesting: http://gamestudies.org/1201/articles/tuur_ghys .)
Regarding political systems, I think that market economies with some level of distributed control, and political systems that allow feedback in somewhat democratic ways are social technologies that we don’t have clear superior alternatives to, despite centuries of thought. I’d argue that Fukuyama was right in “End of History” about the triumph of democracy and capitalism, it’s just that the end state seems to take longer than he assumed.
And finally, yes, the details of how they technologies and social systems play out in terms of cosmopolitan attitudes and the societal goals they reflect are much less clear. In general, I think that humans are far more culturally plastic than people assume, and very different values are possible and compatible with flourishing in the general sense. But (if it were possible to know the answer,) I wouldn’t be too surprised to find out that nearly fixed tech trees + nearly fixed social technology trees mean that cosmopolitan attitudes are a very strong default, rather than an accidental contingent reality.
Interesting perspectives, thanks for sharing.
I think the only point on which my view seem to differ from yours here is that I think I have lower confidence that market-style economies and democracy-style political systems would emerge by default. (But that’s not informed by very much, and I hope to learn more on the topic in future. Relevantly, I haven’t read The End of History.)
I think the following are some inputs informing my lower confidence on that matter. But note that I haven’t looked into any of these points much, and I mean this more as laying out my current thinking than as trying to make a compelling case.
It seems quite plausible that, even if market-style economies and democracy-style political systems are the most effective types of systems given how the world has been for the past centuries, other types of systems might be more effective if the background conditions changed quite a bit.
E.g., perhaps if there was a major disruption, after which most countries had a Soviet style system with industry intact, market economies and democracies wouldn’t perform well against that. Perhaps because of limited ability to trade, or because the Soviet style systems would coordinate to curtail the democracies and market economies.
One thing that makes me less concerned about this is that the “good” systems first began emerging when the rest of the world didn’t have those systems. So clearly it’s not necessary for everywhere to have free markets and democracies in order for that to emerge. But we don’t have precedents for things like a global situation in which most countries are very non-democratic systems and have modern technology.
Perhaps this could be phrased as the possibility that there are multiple Nash equilibria for the international system, and in the current one it’s best to be fairly democratic and have fairly free markets, but there might be other equilibria where that’s not the case.
I think this and some of my other “inputs” were inspired in part by Beckstead.
Relatedly, it seems possible for a system to achieve something like “singleton” status, such that we no longer have evolution towards the most effective solutions, and the singleton can stay as it is indefinitely even if it’s not very effective.
Perhaps this is analogous to a company attaining monopoly status, creating high barriers to entry, and then getting away with providing poor products at high prices.
The Soviet Union lasted for a while, and it doesn’t seem that its eventual demise was a foregone conclusion. (Again, I should note that I haven’t looked into these points much.)
China seems to have maintained decent growth and avoided substantial democratisation thus far, despite repeated predictions suggesting this would’ve changed by now.
When I was reading 1984, it did feel plausible that such a system could last for a very long time.
Arguably, this could serve as a sketch of the sort of singleton scenario I allude to above.
Though of course we should be wary of the way that a lot of vivid details can make something seem plausible, and of generalisation from fictional evidence.
As I said, I’m uncertain about these points, and I’d be interested to hear people’s thoughts on them.
I disagree somewhat on a few things, but I’m not very strongly skeptical of any of these points. I do have a few points to consider about these issues.
Re: stable long term despotism, you might look into the idea of “hydraulic empires” and their stability. I think that short of having a similar monopoly, short of a global singleton, other systems are unstable enough that they should evolve towards whatever is optimal. However, nuclear weapons, if developed early by one state, could also create a quasi-singularity. And I think the Soviet Union was actually less stable than it appears in retrospect, except for their nuclear monopoly.
I do worry that some aspects of central control would be more effective at creating robust technological growth given clear tech ladders, compared to the way uncontrolled competition works in market economies, since markets are better at the explore side of the explore-exploit spectrum, and dictatorships are arguably better at exploitation. (In more than one sense.)
Re: China, the level of technology is stabilizing their otherwise fragile control of the country. I would be surprised if similar stability is possible longer term without either a hydraulic empire, per above, or similarly invasive advanced technologies—meaning that they would come fairly late. It’s possible faster technology development would make this more likely.
In retrospect, 1984 seems far less worrying than a Brave New World—style anti-utopia. (But it’s unclear that lots of happy people guided centrally is actually as negative as it is portrayed, at least according to some versions of utilitarianism.)