Captain Chang to Lieutenant-Commander Hunyadi:
"'Read your history, Citizen Hunyadi. Read your history. No empire which tolerated rebellion ever endured long thereafter.'" (pp. 116-117)
It is good advice to read history but it is also necessary to interpret it. How many empires that suppressed rebellions deserved to endure? Chang has his answer to that. He continues:
"'and we are the wall between humanity and Merseian-'" (p. 117)
He is interrupted by the outbreak of hostilities. His point, of course, is that there are only two alternatives: us and our enemies who are worse. Let's find more alternatives.
Of course, some people who urge us to read our history or to do our research have found what no one else has ever found. A conspiracy theorist informed me that, above the White Pope in Rome, there is a Black Pope and above him a Grey Pope. When I questioned this, he was content to tell me to do my research. So I did. I googled and found names and photographs of men who were alleged to be these two extra Popes. Is that it? Have I done my research? Do I now know that there is a Black and a Grey Pope? Well, no. But how did the conspiracy theorist know? He is dead now, unfortunately.
I should not be linking this guy to Captain Chang. They are in completely different categories. But the advice to "Read your history..." can be just a lazy way of saying, "I have read something and believe it and so should you."
14 comments:
All of which reminded me of this:
"Why the people who are the most likely to suggest that you “do your own research” are also the least likely to do their own research"
https://youarenotsosmart.com/2024/08/05/yanss-293-why-the-people-who-are-the-most-likely-to-suggest-that-you-do-your-own-research-are-also-the-least-likely-to-do-their-own-research/
Kaor, Paul!
Captain Chang had something like this in mind: "We [the Empire] are the wall between Merseia and the barbarians." You keeping talking about "alternatives" but there are never going to be perfect socio-political setups.
I'm reading Stirling's TO TURN THE TIDE, and Arthur Vandenberg has been making remarks Chang would agree with. However harsh and brutal was the Roman Empire of AD 165 was, it was far better than what the barbarians would do once the Marcomannic wars began: wanton destruction destruction, massacre, gang rape, torture for fun, etc.
Also, Arthur/Artorius told the other time stranded Americans that the innovations they were starting to introduce would cause in society and politics that would make the Empire far less harsh. And the Terran Empire was no where as brutal as the Romans could be.
Utopian unrealism needs to be dismissed!
Ad astra! Sean
We can and must move forward.
Kaor, Paul!
And I don't believe the human race will "move forward" in the ways you want mankind to do. Not too terribly bad is the most we can expect or hope for.
Ad astra! Sean
And I do believe that it is possible.
Kaor, Paul!
And you are wrong, dangerously wrong, because of how imperfect, flawed, quarrelsome, and prone to violence humans are.
Ad astra! Sean
I am right. I have replied to the flawed, quarrelsome stuff over and over. My arguments are not fully responded to.
Kaor, Paul!
I have responded to your arguments. I simply don't believe in your unrealistic hopes.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
You have not responded to some of the details of what I have argued. How can there be free enterprise when there is technological production of such abundance that everyone can have equal access to a common store and there is no longer any need to use money to regulate who gets what and no way in which individuals or groups can amass sums of money as if it was an independent form of wealth? How can there be anything unchanging in us when we exist as human beings because our ancestors changed their environments with hands and brains and changed themselves into human beings in the process? Does an inner drive cause people living in affluent middle class neighbourhoods to lynch their neighbours, with whom they had until then been perfectly friendly, and burn down their houses for no empirically discernible reason? Would "an irresistible inner urge" be an acceptable defence against a murder charge? The human race would certainly be in a very bad condition if things like this happened regularly.
You say nothing new. Repetition is pointless. I do not usually express myself by saying, "I am right," but I was replying to: "You are wrong." This is not the usual way to conduct disagreements.
It is impossible to make some definitive statement that decisively brings a disagreement to a conclusion. Anything that is said can be replied to and this results in a lot of repetition. When nothing new is being said, we need a break at least. And, if every time we return to it, we say exactly the same things as before, then we need more than a break.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
First, we have not reached that kind of technological advances creating a superabundance of the ordinary material goods of life. You are assuming that is going to happen, not proving that it will. Second, you are still going to need the basic principles of free enterprise economics, demand and supply, simply to manufacture those goods.
And what on Earth is a "common store"? Farmers, manufacturers, tradesmen, etc., will demand compensation for what they produce/offer. What need for a "common store" when farmers can sell their produce to grain mills or slaughter houses, who in turn will pass it on to the next step, being paid, of course.
"Common store" makes no sense when examined. How and who is going to manage it? How will resources and the goods made from them be allocated if not by demand and supply?
And we cannot and will not agree about human beings. Your hope is that some kind of super advanced technology will some how change them from what they actually are. I don't buy it and my view remains that of Anderson in Chapter 6 of GENESIS, showing Tahalla as an advanced, peaceful, and prosperous society, with the Old Adam or Ancient Ape still rearing up.
You are assuming what you hope for will happen, with no evidence, and that is not good enough.
People who think as you do should prove their claims. I suggest that a few thousand of them should pool their money, find and buy a suitable island, and set up a new society organized the way you prefer, and prove the practicality of your hopes.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
More repetition. I am not assuming what will happen. I am arguing that something is possible. I have said this. You are not engaging with what I am in fact saying.
How and who is going to manage it? Us. Society. Democracy. Using AI technology.
AI will not need supply and demand to produce what people decide they need. There will not be farmers or tradesmen. You fail to imagine a different kind of economy and society.
I do not think that technology will change us. I think that we can change our social interactions and thus also change our individual psychologies. Proper use of technology will obviously help.
Having evolved to our present highly advanced state, why should we now stop changing and remain frozen forevermore just as we are now? That is the one thing that definitely will not happen.
We are talking about solving urgent global problems and using natural and technological resources for the common good, not setting up a sociological experiment on an island.
I really cannot understand the strength of your hostility to all this. We disagree, for sure, but I see no point in coming back to go over it again and again. I am in no position to do any great harm in the world. Many of those whom I criticize are doing very great harm now.
Paul.
Sean,
Do you have a problem with the fact that you are disagreed with on important issues? This is surely unavoidable.
You seem to want to bring a disagreement to an end with a single definitive statement. That is not going to happen. We can, of course, continue to repeat ourselves indefinitely...
I keep trying to say things that will help us to stand back from this exchange and reflect on it but we keep falling back into it.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But your insistence on that "possibility" seems to come close to becoming an assumption.
And we don't have actual, true AI. What is carelessly called AI today is still only software and hardware which can only do what it's programmed to do. I am skeptical that true AI of the kind Anderson speculated about in the HARVEST OF STARS books will happen.
I "fail" to imagine a "different" kind society because I don't believe human beings will change in the ways possibly hoped for. How and why should they? I believe I speak from a realistic POV about humans.
I don't believe humans will change because the drives, urges, propensities that makes us what we are innate parts of us and can and will often be expressed in ways we might not like in unpredictable ways.
And that is why I don't believe those global problems will be managed in any unified way. Because people can and will disagree about those problems, the "common good" and what should be done or not done. Unless some Napoleon type conquers the world!
Free enterprise is democratic, it works by responding to the signals given by markets of all kind in the production and distribution of goods and services. Far more efficiently than anything decided on by "democratic" politicians and bureaucrats. Because that is the only alternative to free enterprise, a collectivist, top down, state run economy--a thing which has never worked well.
You are going to need farms for producing foods of all kinds. And factories for producing all kinds of goods. And tradesmen and merchants.
I am sorry if I seemed hostile, that was not my intention or wish. I am hostile to failed ideas like any kind of socialism, which has never worked.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
It is not an assumption.
By "AI," I mean only advanced computers.
How and why should people change? They can change their way of living. I have spelled this out. It is realistic to point out that our ancestors changed themselves into human beings by cooperatively changing their environments and that we have changed society from hunting and gathering to slave-owning to feudal to mercantile to industrial and are continuing to change it and must now make further major changes or risk extinction or self-destruction.
The drive to violence will not be activated if there is no cause for violence. People often live peacefully and this can be extended until any need for coercion becomes redundant. Can, not necessarily will.
I have no belief about what will happen. I advocate what I think can and should happen.
Markets are not democratic but chaotic. Free enterprise will be redundant when so much is produced that there is no longer any need for a class who buy from producers and sell to consumers. Society will decide what is to be produced and will have no need for bureaucrats. There will be no need for a state when there is no longer any need to protect property from theft or one territory from attack by another.
Of course we are going to need agricultural production! I meant that there will no longer be individuals owning farms and selling food in market places or supermarkets. We will need factories! But not tradesmen or merchants.
I meant your entrenched hostility to a set of ideas, not personal hostility. Socialism has hardly ever been tried. I have given my response on what happened to the Commune and in Russia. Bureaucrats calling themselves socialism are not socialists any more than people persecuting others because of religious differences are religious in any positive sense.
Why does all this matter enough to be repeated so often? I certainly did not expect to go through it all again when I published the above post.
Paul.
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