A downloaded personality named Venator has been incorporated into the cybercosm but reactivated so that he can perform a specific task in a robot body. Before his robotic re-embodiement, Venator converses with an aspect of the central intelligence which informs him that:
"Our great peace lies once more under threat." (p. 34)
The entire narrative leaves us in no doubt that this peace is a carefully maintained, managed, even manipulated, passivity. There is a general misconception, here encouraged by Anderson, that "peace" means nothing but passivity. Do we have to choose between violence and passivity? There are more than two options. It is the task of sf to consider every option and we can read utopias as well as dystopias. We need to end and transcend conflict and violence so that society can become more interactive, dynamic and creative, not so that it can be held indefinitely in a static equilibrium.
The cybercosm congratulates itself that:
"Little active hostility to the order of things remains on Earth, and it is ideational or emotional - ill informed, ill organized where it is organized at all, devoid of any significant resources." (p. 35)
That is a death knell. Why should the cybercosm maintain an "order of things"? Everyone, especially those who are hostile, should be given every opportunity to understand and express themselves and to shape their own order of things, both individually and collectively. That is possible. That is what society can aim at. AI is welcome to help - certainly not to obstruct.
34 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I have only "expletives deleted" for that kind of "great peace."
Nor do I believe it is possible to have a "dynamic and creative" society unless we are willing to accept the strong likelihood of conflicts, including conflicts leading to violence.
Of course any entity which has moral agency, and is thus not a mindless computer program, will have an agenda, such as maintaining an "order of things." And will thus be capable of lying, plotting, scheming, having violence be done, etc. "Pure Intellects" will be no better than those with organic brains.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
There will be no need for conflict when there are no longer any conflicts of material interests:
no employer-employee distinction;
no companies competing in a market place;
no weapons production;
no armed nation-states;
a culture of individual and social development;
freedom of spiritual belief and practice;
full control of solar energy;
a population that values all this and will not give it up.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Impossible, because any kind of organization, large or small, public or private, requires distinctions between those in authority and those who are not simply to advance the goals of the organization.
Impossible, because you cannot have a dynamic economy without competition. It's ambition and competition which drives technological advances.
Impossible, because human beings are innately prone to being competitive, which can take violent forms. Anything can be used as a weapon.
Impossible, because we humans are naturally and properly inclined to be tribalist. And that will take the form of nations using violence to either defend themselves or conquer territory.
Individual and cultural development can be good things--as long as we have no illusions about ourselves.
Freedom of religion is good, but many don't agree if that means unhindered freedom of religion to those not of their faith.
Over and over, I have pointed out it will take decades for a space based solar power system to be practical. The only realistic alternative to fossil fuels before then is nuclear power.
The human race will never unanimously agree on whatever list of allegedly good things is proposed. There's always going to be some who object to and oppose many items on such a list. Un to and including violent opposition. IWHBD.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But there does not have to be an economic relationship between someone who owns a company and others to whom he pays a wage or salary.
We will have to have a dynamic economy when technological abundance makes economic competition redundant. It is not just ambition and competition that drive technological advances. Also, curiosity and creativity. When technology produces abundance, technological advances will no longer be necessary for economic purposes but will still serve scientific discovery.
Absurd. People can be competitive, e.g., in sport, without this becoming violent. Anything can be used as a weapon but often is not and there are many social conditions in which people never think of attacking each other with weapons. The idea that we are innately prone to grab the nearest object and hit someone with it is laughable.
Absurd. Tribalism does not have to be expressed through nations using violence to conquer or defend. That does not have to be always with us.
Individual and cultural development CAN be good? I should think so.
I know some now disagree with freedom of religion but I am saying that we CAN have that freedom in future.
I am talking about the further future when I refer to solar energy - over and over.
ALLEGEDLY good things?
The human race need not unanimously agree. A majority suffices. A violent minority can be defeated and will not exist in different conditions in future when entire generations have grown up in better conditions. It Does Not Have To Be What Human Beings Do.
And, finally, have we not said all this before?
Paul.
Paul: what belongs to everybody belongs to nobody. And nobody takes care of it, unless kept to it by terror.
In Lancaster, a guy started pulling branches off a tree growing by the canal. Two women pointed out to him that that tree was not growing wild. It had been planted by the City Council for everyone's benefit. He stopped pulling branches off it.
Paul: because he'd be punished if he didn't. That's probably not what he -said-, but it's demonstrable that he would be punished if reported.
But I was replying to the point that nobody takes care of what belongs to everybody.
Venator means 'hunter' in Latin. I expect that is a meaningful name.
Yes. That is made explicit.
Kaor, Paul!
You cannot even have an economy without many different kinds of "economic relationships": investors lending funds to entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs hiring people for many different kinds of jobs, customers buying the goods and services of the businesses set up by these entrepreneurs, etc.
You need competition and ambition to spur technological advances. Curiosity and creativity are what sometimes make such efforts succeed. The "abundance" you hope for is not likely to last long if competition is banned.
Disagree, peace is possible only as the State, with its monopoly of violence, exist to keep the peace and punish criminals and the violent. I don't believe in your "conditions," and neither did Anderson.
Violence will continue to exist because all of us can and often will be violent. And that includes the institutionalized violence of nations.
It's also a demonstrable fact that not all individual and cultural developments are beneficial. Now and in the future.
I remain skeptical about universal freedom of religion. E.g., every single Islamic dominated nation I looked up imposes burdensome and irksome restrictions on the religious freedom of non-Muslims. Including even the two mildest, Jordan and Malaysia. Not just as a matter of law, but often even more harshly at the social level of ordinary everyday life. I don't see that changing as long as most Muslim take seriously all the teachings of Mohammed.
It's futile to talk about solar energy in a fairly distant future if nothing is done about the necessary intermediate steps, such as nuclear power.
Yes, ALLEGEDLY good things. Every crank or crackpot (Like me! Laughs) scribbling pamphlets, every politician or political party's manifesto, program, list of proposals, etc., will have items many will vehemently disagree with.
Deciding matters by majority votes works only as long as everyone agrees to abide by it. It is a fact that has not worked when an impassioned minority refused to accept defeat. Nor do I believe "future conditions" will abolish the innate human propensity to argue, debate, quarrel, and take recourse to violence when a minority feels itself mortally threatened, for whatever reason.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Investors will exist only as long as there is a profit-seeking economy. You cannot think outside that box.
But what is the point of this? These are all points that I either have replied to before or that you should know by now I can make some reply to. That is not to say that my replies are necessarily right of course but just that this exchange goes on forever repetitively so what is the point of it? You seem to be compelled to keep making the same points repeatedly although knowing that they will not be agreed with. We have to stop this somehow.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Because free enterprise works, which is all that should matter, rationally thinking. Socialism never has, which is all that should matter, rationally.
Ad astra! Sean
Free enterprise will be redundant when wealth is abundant. I have explained the meaning of "socialism" before. There is nothing new here.
Paul: "abundance" is a relative term, not an absolute one. We live in a universe of abundance by the standards of our great-grandparents, but ambition and accumulation haven't slowed down.
I get it that "abundance" is relative at least up to a point but a sufficiently large quantitative change becomes a qualitative one. I mean not a society much like ours except that every individual has a higher income. I mean means of production that produce way more than anyone needs and that are controlled collectively, not privately, and for the good of all, not for the competitive accumulation of even more wealth by tiny minorities. A different economic system, social set-up and mindset. And I mean doing this, not just talking about it while really doing something else.
When we discuss these kinds of things, what each person means by what is being said changes during the course of a discussion so that I wind up by being informed that I support the systems of Stalin or Mao. it is very difficult to stay on the point.
Kaor, Paul!
I don't believe in the kind of economy you hypothesize because it remains my belief that abundance cannot even last if there is no scope for competition and ambition, no outlet for those who want to achieve real things with real gains.
And this insistence on such an economy being "collectively controlled" for the alleged benefit of all is an impossibility, because it still boils down to hoping some giant committee of the whole will somehow be able to make all the millions and billions of decisions that goes into deciding what goods and services are to be made, in what quantity, and at what cost. I don't believe this at all it always ends with politicians and bureaucrats clumsily and incompetently trying to run an economy from the top down.
Free enterprise is so much simpler and vastly more efficient. There's demand for goods and services, entrepreneurs of all kinds, large and small, find ways of satisfying these demands, supplying customers and clients with what they want at agreed on prices. And no need to do so by political means.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We can control technology that produces abundance. Everyone can achieve real things with real gains, just not on your economic model anymore - where some profit from the work of others.
Fully participative democracy and public accountability will not be a giant committee but everyone having a say in their work and how it relates to that of others. Bottom up, not top down. You don't believe it. I do.
Free enterprise will be redundant when wealth is abundant. Market economics will have served a purpose and will have made itself redundant. Decision-making will be social, not political in the sense of bureaucratic.
You see our current individual psychologies and social interactions as remaining unchanged exactly as they are now into an indefinite future. Whatever else happens, that will not.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree with your view of "profit." People will not invest in new ideas and tech if there is no hope of them profiting.
Nor do I believe in that impossible "Fully participative democracy and public accountability" because it won't work. A farmer may listen to hired hands or experts in the agricultural scientists on what crops are best grown, but only he can and should make the decision--experience showing whether his decisions were wise. And so on for all other forms of the providing of goods and services.
I don't believe you, what you said about free enterprise becoming redundant when wealth is abundant. Both because I believe free enterprise will continue being necessary in order to create/maintain wealth and because what is more likely to happen are costs and prices getting lower. "Decison-making will be social, not political in the sense of bureaucratic," is in my view, an impossibility because I believe it inevitably means politicians and bureaucrats trying to run things from the top down.
Exactly, I don't believe human psychology is going to change--which means our basic socio-political institutions are not going to change. If human beings changed so drastically in their innate nature they would no longer even be human. I have no wish or desire for that at all, and Anderson did not believe in the likelihood/desirability of such ideas.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: well, if the means of production are controlled collectively, they'll be inadequate, with long lines outside stores and shoddy substandard goods and not enough of them.
That's been the result of collective ownership (except of a small, voluntaristic scale) every single time it's been tried.
Why should inefficiency produce abundance? It's a contradiction in terms.
What produces abundance is competition for profit.
Sean,
Investment by groups or individuals will not be required when technology produces far more than everyone needs and when that wealth is held in common and distributed equally. Nor will there be "hired hands."
Asked to imagine a qualitatively different society, you continue to imagine familiar society. Agricultural experts will serve the whole of society. Everyone will be fed and healthily. No one will starve or be undernourished as often now.
Money will be redundant. There will be no costs and prices in the present sense. Economic competition will be redundant, therefore free enterprise will be redundant.
Collective decision-making in a culture where people have become used to it and where they are able to use advanced information and communication technology (at present used only for advertising and propaganda) will not inevitably result in top-down politicians and bureaucrats. You do not seem to understand that society can and does change.
Psychology changes with circumstances, not vice versa. I will be suspicious of strangers if I have been generally badly treated, not otherwise. I knew white people who said that black immigrants had "a chip on their shoulder." Of course they did! They had experienced so much racism.
When sociopolitical institutions change, individual perceptions, expectations and motivations change accordingly. "Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis." Of course people living in a radically changed, fulfilling and peaceful society will still be human: happier and more fulfilled human beings. What else would they be? You have no wish or desire for any of that? I disagree with you and Anderson. Why do we keep saying this?
Paul.
Advanced technology will not produce shoddy substandard goods. High tech distribution will not result in long lines. Why should it be inefficient? We have not had this kind of society yet but we do need to think about how to use the technology that at present is not being used for social ends and is destroying the environment.
Paul: yes, advanced technology -will- produce substandard goods and long lines; it did in the USSR, after all.
They could produce good tanks and nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles... and everything ordinary people consumed was shoddy.
Except the vegetables collective farmers grew on their own plots and took to cities to sell.
Humans need -motivation- to produce good stuff. Wishing everyone well isn't enough.
But the USSR is in no way a model of what the whole of humanity can build with even more advanced tech in future. If they could build good tanks, nuclear weapons and missiles, then we can build good everything else, everything needed to enhance life instead of destroying it. And this is the best motivation.
Paul: we can build good everything else, but we need -motivation- to do so. Love of humanity ain't enough.
And the USSR was only one example. Every other socialist state had the same problems.
We have motivation. People demonstrate in large numbers for causes affecting millions.
The word, "socialism," has at least two meanings. Very soon after the Russian Revolution, and certainly under Stalin, the USSR became not "socialist," in the sense that many of us would support, but "state capitalist." This means that a state bureaucracy performed the same economic role as a group of individual capitalists, intensely exploiting Russian workers in order to compete militarily against the Western powers. Internal exploitation and external competition are the two key features of capitalist economic relations. Neither the USSR nor any of those other "socialist" states had democratic workers' control of production for need, not profit.
Kaor, Paul!
No, "collective" ownership and production of all goods and services will not result in abundance and prosperity. All we have ever seen from such efforts are long lines outside shops and shoddy goods. The only exceptions, in all socialist regimes, were the grudging concessions sometimes made to farmers, who would take the produce from private plots to sell in the towns.
Stirling is correct, only competition produces abundance. Which was Anderson's view as well.
Nor do I believe in your impossible collective decision making and the hopes you place in advanced technology.
Your definition of socialism is incorrect. What matters are definitions that fits the facts of what actually happened. Every single socialist regime has been an autocratic, top down, bureaucratic state producing long lines and shoddy goods. The Communists were not free enterprisers producing goods and services people wanted. The only high-quality goods produced by socialism were military products, commissioned by the regime as acts of State. A more accurate term is State Socialism.
All you are doing is offering hopes and speculations. No facts, no proofs.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
No.
Production of abundance should be followed by collective ownership and distribution. Otherwise, vast wealth will continue to be hoarded by conflicting minorities, meaning continued poverty for social majorities and continued conflicts that can destroy us all.
We have not seen that situation or such efforts made yet. I have replied repeatedly about different meanings of the word, "socialist."
Advanced technology can produce abundance and can be socially controlled.
I know you do not believe this!
My definition of socialism is correct. It is what many of us who call ourselves socialists mean by it. What actually happened was that Russia became state capitalist with bureaucrats exploiting workers in order to compete militarily against Western powers. That was not democratic workers' control of production for social need. If you keep insisting that the word, "socialism," only applies and can only be applied to what some of us analyze as state capitalism, then this becomes just an empty dispute about the use of that one word. I agree with "Communism" in some uses of that word but not in others. To use such a historically loaded word, like "socialism" or "Communism," as if it had only one universally acknowledged meaning that did not need to be discussed or clarified is absurd.
"Every single socialist regime..." You should know by now that some of us argue and can give reasons why these were not socialist regimes. But, if I did accept the application of the word, "socialist," to them, then I would have to coin a new term for the different kind of kind of regime that I do support! This is terminological emptiness.
Of course the Russian Communists were not free enterprisers! They became brutal bureaucratic dictators - and thus parted company with the original meaning of "Communism."
A more accurate term is state capitalism.
Sean, you seem to forget what has been said. I have replied repeatedly that I SPECULATE about possible futures and HOPE that we can build one of those futures. I offer facts about what has happened and is happening and therefore about what can happen (change will continue and CAN be directed in a good direction instead of a bad one) but I cannot, and should not be asked to, give facts or proofs about what WILL happen because no one knows that.
All of this word for word repetition is extremely time-consuming. Do we have to keep at it? I have not had time to add any posts to the blog so far today.
Paul.
Too many "kind of."
Paul: altruism is temporary, and usually seasoned with hatred.
Well, I don't agree with "...usually seasoned with hatred"!
There is indeed a very bad side of humanity and I used to emphasize in my thoughts about things. But now I think that life is a bit more dialectical (interactive, developmental). There is a bad side because there is a potentially good side. The higher we are, the lower we can fall. A demon is a fallen angel - in a theology that I now cite only metaphorically. An evil man can wreak much more harm than a wild animal but that is only because the man is also capable of much more good.
What we regard as a "utopian" society seems very improbable (not, in my opinion, impossible) at present but probabilities change. And we do not know what will happen but there are a lot of good outcomes that we can aim for.
...used to emphasize it in my thoughts...
Kaor, Paul!
Noted, we have opposing definitions of "socialism." I believe my definition fits the observable facts of actual history/life. You disagree, for reasons I don't agree are correct.
Noted, I disagree about "collective ownership" and "hoarding." I believe your understanding of economics to be wrong.
No, "state capitalism" was coined as part of the attempt to avoid "State Socialism." You disagree.
I think what Stirling meant by "altruism is temporary, and usually seasoned with hatred" is that while all the ideological tyrant monsters we have been plagued with since the French Revolution talked grandly about how altruistic their ideas were, they had no hesitation being brutally cruel and fanatically genocidal. Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and all their lesser imitators talked loudly about how they loved "The People" and meant nothing but good for them, they were also killing people by the millions in their Terrors, gulags, purges, concentration camps, killing fields, etc., etc.
Stirling will correct me if I misunderstood him.
Ad astra! Sean
I am not going to go through it all again.
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