"It is evident from your recent communications that you and the limited artificial intelligences you employ no longer find us comprehensible. Unless you care for news of what unintegrated humans are left on Earth, and we project that that would be of no more significance to you than to us, further contact is purposeless and probably, for you, inadvisable."
-Poul Anderson, Harvest Of Stars (London, 1994), 61, pp. 509-510.
Centuries later, the Prefect of the Synesis states publicly that:
"'The last message suggested, only suggested, that correspondence would get correspondingly difficult in the future.'"
-The Fleet Of Stars, 6, p. 78.
- and then the colonists ceased communication maybe because Anson Guthrie wanted to suppress new ideas? No way, Jose, as Fenn realizes. Groups and individuals in the Solar System would have tried to re-establish contact but maybe small robotic craft detected and jammed their messages? But why? Indeed, would a global AI behave as Anderson suggests? Does it try to suppress humanity merely because his heroes need a villain to fight?
Meanwhile, Fenn has become a policeman and we read an Andersonian fight scene in which he acquires a personal villain.
What Terrans can do on Luna:
receive necessities and comforts from citizen's credit;
find meaning in a subculture, faith or lodge;
watch the multiceiver;
turn to petty crime.
But what crimes are there to commit? We are used to reading about petty crimes in impoverished urban areas but, in this case, no one is impoverished. We would benefit from a few more details in this part of the narrative.
I think that determined groups would be able to pool and invest their citizen's credits in new activities and to lobby the Synesis to lift any restrictions on such activities. The human race will still include those who refuse to be smothered, demotivated etc.
20 comments:
Well, there's always rape. And beating people up for fun. And gang fights.
Kaor, Paul!
Again, no, human beings don't need rational reasons to be violent and criminals. And that's going to be true no matter how prosperous they are. IWHBD,
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Most people most of the time are not violent criminals. Even less people will be when abundant wealth is distributed equally and when there is a culture of respect and civilized discourse. You are not looking at what people are really like.
Paul.
Paul: you apparently live in a bubble. I did criminal-defense stuff for a while. You have no conception of what criminals are like.
Maybe not! I do know that criminals exist in contexts and that contexts can be changed radically. In society as we experience it now, there are all sorts of incentives for dishonesty, theft, embezzlement, profiteering etc. There are rich and influential people who can get away with abuse and therefore do in fact avail themselves of every opportunity to practice abuse. We can spell out the conditions in which this occurs and can work towards different conditions.
Kaor, Paul!
The most important of those "contexts" is how flawed and imperfect all human beings are. Meaning some are always going to be bad people for whom only fear of punishment by the State will, sometimes, restrain.
There's never going to be a perfect society, all we will ever have will be the somewhat/far worse.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We are not all flawed and imperfect. There need not always be bad people. We can certainly bring it about that there are no longer social elites whose private wealth and political influence enable them to practice sexual abuse with impunity. We can certainly bring an end to rulers able to order their subordinates to bomb populations.
You cannot make negative predictions. Our civilization was unpredictable. Future civilizations are unpredictable. We can discuss and plan how to avoid the evils of the past. In fact, I have presented details of this which you do not discuss but ignore and dismiss.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Your views and hopes are futile and unrealistic. We are going to have to agree to disagree.
Ad astra! Sean
We are not trying to agree!!
It is neither futile nor unrealistic to aim to overthrow corrupt elites and war-makers like Trump, Netanyahu and Putin - not just to remove individuals but to make radical changes to the social systems that currently sustain them.
It is perfectly true that we cannot predict the future and that you are completely mistaken to think that all the change that has produced humanity and that is happening now is suddenly going to stop so that, while everything else continues to change around us, we alone will remain as we are now forever more. That at least definitely will not happen!
(Things might change for the worse, of course.)
Paul: for most of human history, violence (before modern police forces) was common as dirt.
Eg., in England it was nearly universal for householders to keep loaded pistols at hand until well into the Victorian era.
Even later, people in the American Southwest put their guns on when they went outside, as automatically as putting on their hat.
You can see this in fiction by people brought up under those conditions. Eg., Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote a novel about her father, FARMER BOY, set in upstate New York before the Civil War.
(That was an unusually law-abiding place, btw.)
In it, respectable men -- businessmen and shopkeepers and artisans -- make public threats of violence in a way that would get them brought up on criminal charges now.
And when the protagonists' parents make a big sale, they get it in cash -- and sit up with guns overnight, before they take it into town and put it in the bank.
That was upstate New York. In, say, Missouri, pitched battles over elections were common. Before my ancestors left Scotland, blood feuds were common as dirt.
But those conditions need not exist in future.
Public threats of violence do get people brought up on criminal charges now.
Kaor, Paul!
I don't believe in this obsession you have about "changing conditions" somehow magically changing human beings. Nor do I believe prosperity and advanced technology will bring about those changes. It's only the existence of the State, any State, in no matter what form, with its monopoly of violence, that keeps crime and violence under some control.
Which means I agree with Stirling. Plus, Anderson for that matter! I was reminded of how PA admired the pre-Sturlung Age Icelandic commonwealth, but he was realistic about it. His stories set in Iceland shows how violent life could be: everyone had to be armed to the teeth outside their homes, women and children had to be guarded by armed fighters. And feuds and vendettas were common as dirt.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I know you don't believe in what I say! Why keep repeating this?
I am not obsessed. I disagree with you. I do not believe that changing conditions will "somehow magically" change human beings. People obviously behave differently in different conditions. Pay me a decent wage or pension and I will buy groceries. Cut off my income and I will have a strong motivation to steal food. Help me and I will be grateful. Attack me and I will respond differently. How is this "somehow magically"? Why do you persist in not understanding it?
You keep citing Anderson as if disagreeing with him somehow proved that I was wrong! I would expect him to discuss the issues if he and I had ever conversed.
Of course life could be violent in Icelandic conditions! And nonviolent in conditions of economic abundance and civilized institutions and relationships in a possible future. I agree with the first part. Why can you not agree with the second?
You seem to have a problem with knowing that there is someone out here who thinks differently from you. And, as often happens, this prevents you from representing my views either accurately or fairly: "Somehow magically..."
Paul.
Paul: human beings don't change, or change so slowly that it's imperceptible.
Hence when State control is loosened, violence returns overnight.
Examples are abundant in 'failed states'.
Even in advanced countries, when there's a 'police strike', violence makes a comeback immediately and savage measures are necessary to return to order.
It only takes a few to make violence inevitable -- because violence is the only language that will restrain them, and inhibitions about violence are hard to impose and are shed easily.
I've been in kill-or-be-killed situations. I had no difficulty with them. I didn't -like- them, but it was obvious what needed to be done if I was to survive, and it never bothered me.
I do not advocate simply closing down the State now. We can envisage future conditions in which State coercion will become increasingly unnecessary.
Kaor, Paul!
I cite Anderson because this blog is devoted to his works, making it legitimate to point out apt examples from his works.
"Magically" is the right word. All I'm seeing from you are hopes, dreams, speculations, etc., that what you would like to see come to pass will exist if "future conditions" somehow changes human beings.
No, the real problem, IMO, is you refusing to accept the hard facts of what archeology, real history, real life, real humans, etc., tells us. And that includes the continued need for the State. No State means we get Haiti.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
It is physically possible that advanced technology will be used to produce abundance which, equally distributed, will make economic competition and territorial aggrandizement redundant. Of course I HOPE that this will be done. Of course this is one SPECULATION about the future. Are you requiring that I present an accurate prediction of what will happen? Why do you keep repeating this? I do not see the point.
Different conditions do change human behaviour. There is no "somehow" about it. Why do we keep repeating this?
The hard facts tell us that life and society have changed enormously and can continue to do so but you have said this word for word before and I have replied word for word before. This seems obsessive.
I have replied about Haiti repeatedly. Poverty and present conditions = Haiti. Abundant wealth + different conditions = a different society. Why this repetition?
I must go and do something else now but I hope that the comments that I have not yet read do not repeat all this.
Paul.
Sean,
Do you simply not remember what has been said before?
Paul.
Sean,
"Magically" is the right word for how technology produces wealth now and can produce much more in the future? Please think about this. Something straightforward and material is being mystified.
It is not valid occasionally to add "Anderson would agree" or "I think that I am right and you are wrong" as if these were extra argumentative points instead of just attempts to load the dice. These issues are so pervasive that it is difficult to address them all in a single comment.
Am I conversing with someone who, on these basic issues at least, does not understand what he does not agree with? If that is the case, then there is indeed an insurmountable communication problem. You will continue repeating what you have said instead of responding to what I have said. We talk past each other and do not meet. I try at least to understand this intellectually frustrating situation.
I certainly do not want to stay in this cycle forever. And getting out of the cycle means having a more productive and instructive disagreement.
Paul.
Paul: you seem to think that certain conditions would make everyone like you. This is... not so.
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