Reflections On History

Since I have been posting about AI in Poul Anderson's Genesis, here is more of the same discussion on the Science Fiction blog.

Genesis is a future history that seriously reflects back on historical periods and processes. (Similarly, Olaf Stapledon followed his future history, Last And First Men, with the companion volume, Last Men In London, in which a time traveling Last Man from Neptune summarizes and reflects on past Terrestrial history.)

In Genesis, Laurinda Ashcroft demonstrates the unpredictability of history by citing many instances of historical upsets from the Neolithic Revolution, the Pharaohs and the Persian Empire all the way down to the Cold War, the environmental crisis and the fragmentation of societies by global communications:

"And she gave them history to show it was unforeseeable." (Genesis, p. 50)

Laurinda comments that, when superstitions from astrology to witchcraft coexisted with science and technology, the superstitions were overcome neither by reason nor by the major faiths but by the lesser uncompromising sects which then also lost their dominance. Which sects?

The devastated Earth is rehabilitated by new technologies and economic incentives. This sounds like what happens in Anderson's major future history, the History of Technic Civilization.

The Solar AI, Gaia, emulates historical periods in order to understand historical processes although she must continually make changes:

"...as events turned incompatible with what was in the chronicles and the archaeology." (p. 155)

Therefore, in her emulation of eighteenth century Earth:

domestic servants are underpaid, undernourished and under-respected;
American colonists keep slaves and will rebel;
a corrupt monarchy oppresses France;
a terrible revolution will lead to twenty five years of war.

Thus, she causes a repetition of all that suffering for the sake of knowledge. I think that this is morally unacceptable. She says, "'I do no wrong.'" (p. 136) I disagree. The black magician in James Blish's Black Easter agrees to release all the major demons from Hell because he wants to learn from what they will do. Thus, he also causes suffering for the sake of knowledge.

Brannock and Laurinda learn by dining with emulations of James Cook, Henry Fielding and Erasmus Darwin, i.e., with AI processes that falsely believe themselves to be these historical figures. In Lichfield, I visted Erasmus Darwin's house.