Contrast Asimov's and Pournelle's sketchily described extra-solar planets with the details that Anderson provides about Hermes, Avalon, Dennitza, Aeneas etc.
For further discussion of this issue, see also:
Aldiss, Amis, Anderson, Asimov, Lewis
The question currently in my mind is not whether exo-planets have life but whether they have multi-cellular organisms.
See:
The Improbability Of Complex Organisms
The discussion is good even if not all the works discussed are.
Starward.
33 comments:
I *did* rather like the backstory on Sparta. It was found in a condition similar to late Precambrian or early Paleozoic Earth, with photosynthesizing life in the sea giving it breathable air but little to no land life. So humans settling it introduced land life from earth to spread so it fairly quickly became a pleasant place to live.
Kaor, Paul!
I do see your point, but I don't think all of the colonized planets seen in the CoDominium timeline were that sketchily described. Jim beat me to making similar comments about the planet Sparta, in greater detail. It's reasonable to speculate some planets will need some terraforming to be habitable.
Humans being what we are, and assuming FTL, empire building will be one of the things humans will be doing. Albeit different names could be used: federation, confederation, or even "league." And I recall characters in the CoCo stories grappling with the question of what political forms would work best. Another detail thoroughly discussed by Pournelle in his "Building..." article.
Ad astra! Sean
CoCo?
Kaor, Paul!
Oops, I meant "CoDo"! Drat!
Ad astra! Sean
The Co-Dominium is an alternate history -- Jerry didn't anticipate the collapse of Communism in the late 80's.
I did, sorta-kinda. I did note that there was a collapse of legitimacy in the USSR during the 1980's -- things like regional chiefs holding gladitorial games and feeding their political opponents to wolves while they and their cronies watched (that really happened, btw.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
It did seem reasonable for Pournelle to speculate in the early 1970's that the US/USSR might hold their noses and agree to an alliance, setting up the Co-Dominium. No one in, say 1972, expected the USSR to begin collapsing by 1989.
No one should mourn the USSR, given its horrible and bloody history, starting with the atrocities of Lenin. The corruption, brutality, and total lack of principle in the Soviet regime made it easy for regional satraps to govern in such garishly brutal ways. For all its faults I can't recall in Tsarist Russia a single governor or viceroy behaving like that!
Ad astra! Sean
ISTR some people in the late 1970s and 1980s thinking that the USSR was due to collapse but I don't think any of them expected it to happen as soon as it did.
Kaor, Jim!
I wish that I could recall reading of speculations like this, but I don't. I might have seen suggestions that the sheer futility and ineffectuality of Marxism-Leninism would bring down the USSR, but that's about it.
Ad astra! Sean
Even the most oppressive government needs -some- legitimacy; or the agents of coercion will look out strictly for themselves, rather than for the systrem.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, and for a long time the Soviet regime tried to use Marxism-Leninism as a means of desperately claiming legitimacy. But it didn't work, too much horror and brutality had been done because of Marxist-Leninism for that to be convincing. In the end so few took Marxism seriously that regional satraps went grotesquely crazy as you described. And a discredited, hollowed out Soviet regime collapsed in 1991.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
You can continue to refute Marxism to your own satisfaction although never to everyone else's. Marx was right that, if abundant wealth is not held in common, then competition and accumulation will continue to cause poverty and wars and to destroy the environment. The Soviet Union was a travesty of Marxism just as the Inquisition and the burning of heretics were of Christianity. It is not necessary to cling to outmoded scientific theories.
These issues are straightforward but are endlessly complicated by defenders of the current economic system which generates vast profits for a small minority who have the resources to persuade others to defend the continued accumulation of vast wealth alongside extreme poverty with all the consequent evils like wars and the scapegoating of those minorities who do not wield power.
We can repeat this argument indefinitely or leave it for a while although no doubt to return to it later.
Paul.
Paul: people still believe in religions, though there's no evidence for any of them. Ditto Marxism. It stokes eschatological hopes of a future utopia. I don't believe in utopias. Dystopias, yeah, but not utopias.
Marxism does:
account for social change through class conflict;
explain profit, exploitation, property, alienation, ideology and economic cycles;
clarify instead of mystifying in the way that mainstream economics does;
draw attention to genuine common material interests that can unite many diverse individuals and groups, overcoming their social prejudices;
provide a way of resisting and counteracting the officially encouraged and divisive xenophobia;
point out how resources can be deployed for, instead of against, human interests (we do not NEED instruments of genocide...);
recognize that religious beliefs are deeply rooted fantastic reflections of actual relationships and therefore should not be dismissed as if they were mere superficial mistakes.
Beyond that, yes, reality transcends any intellectual construct. Theory is grey; life is green.
Class conflict leads either to a new level of social organization or to "...the common ruin of the contending classes." The "utopia" is not guaranteed and a lot of effort is required to bring it about.
Kaor, Paul!
The brute facts of real history have shown what a bloody failure Marxism has been. All attempts at socialism have resulted in nothing but top-down bureaucratic dictatorships run by incompetent politicians. Its obsolete "economics"and politics have never worked.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
The brute facts of real history show that there has only been one revolution so far led by Marxists and that that was defeated by Russian backwardness and isolation. The Bolsheviks knew that they could not succeed without solidarity and support from working classes in advanced industrial countries like Germany.
"Socialism" means EITHER a working class, the majority in society, taking collective democratic control of production and reorganizing it for need, not profit, OR top-down bureaucrats and incompetent politicians trying to manage a mixed economy while calling that "socialism." It suits your argument to use the word, "socialism," only in the latter sense but the brute facts of real history are otherwise. (You have no monopoly of "brutality" or "reality"!)
We have said all this before word for word. I have TRIED to avoid being drawn into repeating it yet again. Can we somehow manage to give it a rest at least for a while?
Paul.
Paul: no amount of effort will produce a utopia, due to the inherent (genetic) nature of human beings.
Kaor, Paul!
Incorrect. Lenin never cared about the welfare of the people--they were just raw-material to be remolded into the impossible fantasy of a new Soviet Man. All he cared about was seizing and staying in power, and he was ruthless in the means for doing so, killing millions of Russians during and after the Civil War.
Empty theories about socialism are not enough, what matters is what actually happens every time that catastrophic notion has been tried: a bureaucratic one-party dictatorship run from the top down by incompetent or brutal politicians in the USSR, its post WW II satellites, Mao's China, Castroite Cuba, etc. I did not mean the muddled mess seen in welfare state nations like the UK, US, Norway, etc.
You cannot have a "working class, the majority in society, taking collective democratic control of production" without that inevitably being shown to what actually happen: a one-party bureaucratic dictatorship with politicians at the top incompetently trying to run an economy from the top down.
No amount of effort, as Stirling said, will bring about an ideal society, because human beings are not Utopians.
Ad astra! Sean
Mr Stirling,
I write "utopia" in inverted commas.
Sean,
Incorrect. (I do not agree with that way of expressing disagreement but I echo your language.)
We are talking about a political party, not just an individual, and, having read Lenin, Trotsky and some of their successors, I disagree with you about their aims.
Theories about how to change society are not "empty." You use dismissive language instead of discussing ideas and alternatives. That "catastrophic notion" has not been tried many times. Mao and Castro did not lead the working class in taking control of production. The USSR did not lead such a project in its post WW II satellites. Those "muddled messes" are inevitable when the main purpose of a national economy remains competition for profit.
You CAN have a working class taking control. That has started to happen several times but has been knocked back, in Russia where the civil war and wars of intervention physically destroyed the small industrial working class and in Sudan where the military started a civil war. Both sides kill people in a civil war.
Yes, a lot of effort can make the world a better place than it is now. Who said anything about "ideal" or "Utopian"?
Again, we have said every word of this before. Why the repetition?
Any ideas, beliefs and opinions - certainly including mine - are approximations to the truth and we should be able to learn and increase our understanding of the external world by comparing opposed ideas. Instead, you insist that your opinions on these matters are undisputable facts about the "real world." (We both live in the same world but perceive it differently.) You think that you can utterly annihilate opposed ideas. You cannot. That attitude is a barrier to even beginning a discussion.
If you identify completely with one set of ideas and beliefs, then your defence of those ideas and beliefs is motivated by your biological instinct for self-preservation which makes it impossible for you even to consider that any other ideas might have any validity. I think that this explains why we have not a discussion but a confrontation which, if it merely repeats itself, should surely be halted?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Apologies if the anger and disgust I have for Marxism made me too sharp. But that's how I will always regard it.
I don't care what Lenin and Trotsky wrote before the Monster and his cronies seized power from the Russian Provisional Gov't in 1917. That was just propaganda to help make it easier for these criminals to grab power.
I have discussed alternatives to what I firmly believe are unworkable ideas: the limited State, in no matter what form, and free enterprise economics. They have both been shown to work, over and over, when given a fair chance. Socialism, by contrast, has never worked.
What makes welfare state policies such a "muddled mess" is because the more the State, any State, tries to "take care" of people the more incompetent and bureaucratic it becomes. And welfare states need the profits created by free enterprise to even try dispensing welfare.
What on Earth is a "working class"? There are many different kinds of "workers" A lawyer, physician, engineer, farmer, retail clerk, etc., are also "workers," not just factory "workers. They are not going to agree with all "workers" on everything. Many, many will not even be socialists and in fact be unrelentingly hostile to such notions.
Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, et al, all claimed to exactly that, leading the "working class in taking control of production." It can't be done without these "workers" also becoming politicians and somehow trying to decide how much wheat to grow, cattle to slaughter, shoes and clothing to make, and on and on and on. And without the data provided by demand, supply, and profit, that inevitably means trying to clumsily and ineptly get the needed information thru a bureaucracy. Socialism always ends in a one-party despotism.
I regard socialism as Utopian/"ideal" because I believe it be futile and unworkable. It's not enough to compare/contrast opposing ideas, they should also be vindicated or not by hard, real-world evidence. I believe the evidence of the past century and more shows socialism cannot work. I don't need any "biological instinct for self-preservation" for that.
When it comes to economics and political philosophy I go to the works of Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, Edmund Burke, John Adams, Alexis de Tocqueville, etc.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I have replied to nearly all of this before and will not go through it all again. We still just repeat ourselves. Of course all workers are not factory workers. Who said they were? This is a frequent red herring. Workers, whatever and wherever their work, are united by the need to earn a wage or salary to stay alive. They have common interests.
In the blink of a cosmic eye, human society has advanced from primitive hunting and gathering through several intermediate stages to the present competitive high tech global economy. It will now freeze and not go through any further fundamental changes ever again? Nonsense. Science fiction readers know better than that. Our economy is dynamic and changing itself all the time. Our technology can produce so much that competition becomes redundant but of course the present powers that be do not want this. They prefer an arms trade - very profitable at present.
I cannot predict that society will change in the way that I want it to but I do confidently predict that it will continue to change fundamentally, for good or ill. If sf does not teach that, then it is worthless.
Democratic systems, information technology and rapid transportation can easily enable us to distribute first the most basic necessities, then a lot more.
The past century proves nothing about the untapped potential of an indefinite future. (But we have said all this before.)
Paul.
Sean,
Regarding Lenin and the Bolsheviks, please read or reread an email thread that I recently re-forwarded to you. All that I insist on at this stage is that there are intelligent, informed people who want a freer society, not a one-party dictatorship, and who have very different perspectives on these issues. There is a need for discussion as opposed to prejudged condemnation.
Paul.
Sean and Paul:
I don't think either of you are correct about socialism.
Trying to centrally plan the entire economy of a large country has worked *poorly*, but there are some activities that seem best done by government. Eg: transportation infrastructure is inherently if not monopolistic, it is at least an oligopoly and in practice some sort of oversight is needed to limit the abuses of that monopoly. Similarly, but for not quite the same reasons, financing medical care seems to be best done by government. Compare the US to other fairly prosperous countries.
Also relevant is this 1926 essay JBS Haldane, in which he discusses the difficulties of scaling living things to much larger or smaller sizes and then at the end notes the similar problems when scaling human institutions up or down.
https://www.phys.ufl.edu/courses/phy3221/spring10/HaldaneRightSize.pdf
Final Paragraph
"To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size. The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern. I do not suppose that Henry Ford would find much difficulty in running Andorra or Luxembourg on a socialistic basis. He has already more men on his pay-roll than their population. It is conceivable that a syndicate of Fords, if we could find them, would make Belgium Ltd or Denmark Inc. pay their way. But while nationalization of certain industries is an obvious possibility in the largest of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized British Empire or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping a hedge."
Jim,
Thank you for a third perspective which we have badly lacked.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul and Jim!
Paul: No, "workers" do not all or always have "common interests." I've also gotten the strong impression from many leftists that only certain classes of people are considered "workers."
You don't seem to understand, it's precisely because of the innate human drive to be ambitious, competitive, to better their lot in life, which has enabled the human race to technologically and, sometimes, socially advance. Abolishing competition in economics, as socialists wish for, will lead to that "freezing" you rightly decry. Technological advances and prosperity is possible only because of free enterprise.
Your comment about the arms trade is absurd. It exists because human beings and their nations are competitive, an innate part of all humans.
I confidently predict human beings are not going to change. They are going to continue being flawed, imperfect, prone to strife, etc. That protean enemy, the old Adam, all of us have, can only be managed, not eliminated.
I've read that email about Lenin, and I disagree with it. Just an attempt to whitewash the crimes of Lenin and his cronies. I deny Russia was as backward as that email claimed it was. The enormous economical and industrial advances made during the reigns of Alexander III and Nicholas II disproves that. Also, the drastic reforms made by Peter Stolypin in agriculture and landowning was transforming Russia by 1914. That email also totally ignored how the Constitution of 1906 and the new State Duma was starting to politically transform Russia.
As for those armies of intervention, it's a pity Pres. Wilson or the UK PM, Lloyd George, did not use them to hunt down and destroy Lenin and his Bolsheviks. Anyone else would have been better than them!
Jim: Actually, I partly agree. Some things are best handled by the State, such as the building of roads, bridges, dams, police forces, fire departments, public health, etc.
Financing of medical care is more complicated. Having the State manage it might work in countries with a fairly small population like Canada (about 27,000,000?). But I don't believe it can work in a nation like the United States, with its vast population (about 335,000,000). That would require a huge bureaucracy, with all the usual frustrations: incompetence, slowness, corruption, fraud, etc. Best to leave as much as that to the private sector as possible.
We agree at least a bit on being skeptical about socialism. I had to laugh at the idea of somersaulting elephants or hippos trying to jump a hedge!
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
One more point: that other leftist did not disprove Lenin's role in the Volga Famine, ignoring the specific facts and figures cited by Stirling.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Then you have got the wrong impression from many leftists. It is in the common interest of all workers to end the present system.
Ambition and competition on the one hand and bettering our life on the other hand are not the same thing. The latter need not be competitive. I do understand people but we disagree about them.
I have replied before that free enterprise HAS produced technology which can now or at least soon produce abundance which will make economic competition no longer necessary but as redundant as cannibalism and slavery which once seemed inevitable. Why do we keep repeating this? I do not want this exchange to continue indefinitely. You do, apparently.
My comment about the arms trade is good sense. Arms do not exist because we are innately competitive. That is an excuse to justify a destructive system which we can set about changing.
Confidently predict that people are not going to change? Homo sapiens is differentiated as a species by the fact that its pre-human ancestors changed their environment with hands and brains and changed themselves into rational, linguistic beings in the process. There is nothing unchanging anywhere in this universe, certainly not in us. We have not Fallen from Paradise but risen from animality and CAN, not necessarily WILL, rise further but I have said this repeatedly.
Of course you disagree about Lenin! That will continue. If it is thought that we are trying to get agreement just by sending one email, then that is a complete misunderstanding. But can you acknowledge that you in turn are disagreed with and that some contrary views are intelligent and informed and cannot be summarily and contemptuously dismissed?
As for those armies of intervention, I would have opposed them if I had been there. Military attacks to change a regime, causing death and destruction for the local population...
I cannot understand this repetition of points that have been replied to. You cannot expect sudden agreement. I don't. So what is the point?
Paul.
To your one more point: that other leftist would be perfectly capable of continuing this discussion indefinitely. If you want to prove that this disagreement continues indefinitely, then that, if nothing else, has been proved.
Kaor, Paul!
Again, no, it's in the interest of all "workers" to advance their interests as best they can in whatever system they happen to live in. And the one that has worked best for human beings is where property is privately held and protected by the State. That has never been the case with socialism because it boils down to bungling politicians trying to run things from the top down.
Ambition and competition are necessary for continued innovation. And a desire to gain wealth is a big motivator for that. Continued wealth and abundance will only be possible because ambition/competition are SPURS for continued innovation. A socialist regime which tries to abolish them will become more and more stagnant, hidebound, resistant to change. Which is exactly what happened with the USSR and all other Marxist regimes.
Disagree, what you said about the arms trade. We would not even have such a thing if human beings were not ambitious, competitive, bellicose.
You sent me that email about Lenin from that other leftist. I did not respond then because we are never going to agree about that bad man. Then you asked me about it in this blog, this combox, leading me to think you wanted me to comment, which I did.
Why persist in defending Lenin? Over and over many historians have described his crimes, his cruelty, his fanaticism. Examples being the founding of the first Soviet secret police (the Cheka), the permanent reign of terror, his founding of the gulags, his role in the Volga Famine, etc., etc. People who stubbornly ignore all this are refusing to face unpalatable facts, not being intelligent.
Lenin's illegal seizure of power led directly to the Civil War. He is responsible for all those millions of deaths. A foreign intervention which led to a more tolerable regime which was not totalitarian a la Lenin's regime would be preferable.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Again, yes.
Can there be any point to this? It goes on forever. You surely cannot think that we are suddenly going to agree?
It is in the interests of all workers to build a better system with cooperation for need instead of competition for profit.
What has worked best in the past is not what will work best in the future with the technological production of abundance and the redundancy of private property except in a few small personal items which is a different matter from owning the land on which other people live, the houses in which they dwell and the workplaces in which they work.
Ingenuity and creativity, not ambition and competition, are necessary for continued innovation.
A socialist regime that liberates the potential of every individual will not become stagnant, hidebound or resistant to change. The USSR ceased to be Marxist and became state capitalist, exploiting workers in order to accumulate bureaucratically controlled wealth in order to compete militarily against Western powers. Economic exploitation and competition are defining characteristics of capitalism, not of a system based on democratic control and production for need.
Human beings are not ambitious, competitive and bellicose. People in Iran and the US do not want to kill each other except when their governments stir them up to it.
Of course we disagree about the arms trade and about much else but do you in fact believe that each of us is trying to say something that the other WILL agree with? You seem to keep arguing on the basis of this complete misunderstanding and this will continue forever, arriving nowhere.
That other leftist is called Tony. We can cite different accounts of post-revolutionary Russia but, if it were incontrovertibly proved that Lenin in particular was simply and straighforwardly a "bad man," then I would just have to acknowledge that I had learned something new about Lenin, not that I was mistaken in my beliefs about how society needs to be changed for the better.
I do not persist in defending Lenin. We are discussing a political party, a philosophy, the state of the world, not just one individual. Read Trotsky's HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION and REVOLUTION BETRAYED and Cliff's STATE CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA. People who disagree with you do not stubbornly ignore anything. They disagree with you. Tony replied about the Volga famine. That does not mean that he is right and you are wrong, just that there is a disagreement. People who disagree with you do not fail in intelligence.
Lenin did not illegally seize power. Soviets (workers' councils) with Bolshevik majorities did what the Bolsheviks had said needed to be done and what workers expected of them, ended the dual power, ended Russian involvement in the war and passed and implemented socially progressive legislation: communal kitchens, womens' liberation etc, later reversed by Stalin and his fellow bureaucrats. One man is not responsible for millions of deaths. Foreign interventions are always illegitimate and now also, at least nominally, illegal. The purpose of the interventions was not to create a more tolerable regime but to prevent revolution from spreading.
I try to reply to every point in order to show that this can be done, not in any belief that what I say will suddenly be agreed with! Of course it will not. So what is the point of this?
I asked you at least to acknowledge that an email had shown a different perspective but you think that, whatever Bolsheviks said, they were lying!
I know that you can reply to all of this and that I can counter-reply. I might just stop sometime...
Paul.
I judge ideological systems by their consequences when in power. Lenin starved 5 million people to death; Stalin did far worse, but then he was in power for longer.
By comparison, the late Romanov's were pussycats, and Russia was undergoing its Industrial Revolution by the 1870's and would have segued into democracy without WW1 intervening. That screwed things up... as it did all over the world.
Kaor, Paul!
It's no use, I don't believe your arguments. Nor do I care beans about the propaganda of Lenin/Trotsky. Or the false definition of socialism you insist on believing. The mere fact there was a civil war proves millions of Russians did not agree with Lenin's coup.
Stirling's comments above, as well as my own remarks on the same points, refutes your belief. In fact, I read somewhere of how Molotov, one of Lenin's cronies, said he would have been far worse than Stalin if Ilyich had lived longer!
Instead of Lenin's stuff read all three volumes of Solzhenitsyn's THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But I am not trying to convince you of my arguments, only to demonstrate that there are in fact alternative arguments. There is a profound misunderstanding here. If we are each trying to convince the other, then the exchange will indeed continue indefinitely and fruitlessly. My overall views have changed completely but over a life time and as a result of a lot of experience, learning and reflection, never as a result of one argument with one person on one occasion! We know, or should know, that it just does not work like that.
I do not insist on believing a false definition! An offensive way of putting it! I know for a fact (for once) that the word, "socialism," has been and still is used in different ways and that it is necessary to clarify and differentiate these different meanings instead of just using the word without explanation as if it had one single simple indisputable significance.
You do not refute my beliefs. You disagree with them.
You have read somewhere...
I have read GULAG. I do not need to be told that Russia became very repressive. I have acknowledged and offered an explanation for that.
"Instead of reading Lenin's stuff..." I suggested Trotsky's and Cliff's stuff.
Don't read Lenin? Surely an obscurantist view.
A former Communist Party member told me that some of his former comrades would not even read Trotsky's REVOLUTION BETRAYED because it was too threatening. Let's not get into saying, "Read THIS but don't read THAT." None of us can read everything but we do need to know what is relevant.
Finally and forever, can't we just DISCUSS things...?
Paul.
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