Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Time's Arrow



This blog has, for the most part, been confined in both space and time. In space to the Solar System, which we can reach without extraordinary difficulty (including extraordinary travel times), at least for a fairly generous definition of 'extraordinary.' In time to the Plausible Midfuture, a historical era I have not really tried to pin down.

Mainly I think of it as starting on the far side of current planning horizons, and extending to ... well, whenever is far enough into the future that our own era has faded off into the distant past. More or less, the era 2050-2300 might do well enough, though - especially at the far end - mere chronology is not really the point.

From a technological perspective, you might think of the midfuture this way: On the near edge, it is beyond what we are now specifically planning or building for. A fairly simple and robust concept, I think (so long as you don't examine it too closely).

At the far edge?If the Industrial Revolution continues at broadly the pace it has so far, 200 years takes us about as far into the future as the first successful steamboat lies in the past. The economic level will be about ten times higher than ours. If technological progress keeps chugging along past that point the world will become increasingly hard for us to understand or even recognize. It may not be transhumanist or a Singularity, but it will be strange.

On the other hand, if technology reaches the limits of the feasible, the world will become strange in a different way, deeply unlike the world we have experienced for the last two centuries. It will be a world in which not much changes, in terms of human capabilities, in the course of a generation or even a lifetime. And it will be a world in which the economic pie (though perhaps large by our standards) is no longer growing significantly. The argument about how to divide it up will therefore be much more fraught.

Such are the reasons, broadly, for confining most discussion here to the Plausible Midfuture.

But of course the future will - we hope! - not come suddenly to an end in 2250 or 2300, or any such date. Only on one occasion have I looked much further into the future, 40,000 years to be exact. (On one other patriotic occasion I glanced toward the 'Murrican future of 2700. But that is still only a slightly generous midfuture.)


The more distant future was brought to mind by (first-time!) commenter John G. He rescued last post's comment thread from a contemporary political argument (these never seem to change any minds) by bringing up a really long time scale. In five billion years or so the Sun will leave the main sequence and become a red giant, incinerating the Earth. Unless we go into space our descendents will presumably be incinerated along with it.

As an immediate argument for pushing along the space program I think this fails an urgency test. We have plenty of time! But in larger perspective ... well, it raises the question of larger perspectives.

Imagining 40,000 years of future history is a challenge. Imagining five billion years of it is staggering.

But one fundamental question emerges almost right at the beginning: What are the limits of the possible? My own general assumption has been that they are vast, and that it could take us a very long time to approach them. Science and technology have - so far - tended to advance by saltation, AKA leaps. This was the premise behind T S Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which bears the burden of having contributed 'paradigm change' to the vocabulary of business jive.

By this argument, the scientific and industrial revolutions might well peter out in another century or two, reaching equilibria at which further progress is so difficult that it more or less stalls. All the locally low-hanging fruit will have been picked. At some later date, gradually accumulated knowledge and skills could trigger another era of revolutionary advances. But we have no real way to guesstimate how many centuries or millennia the intervening period of stability may last.

This is how I would approach a future history, for the sake of keeping the spires & togas era of godlike powers safely in the remote future.

There are, however, two alternative possibilities - or maybe three. One - the most familiar - is the Singularity argument. Scientific and technical progress will not just continue, or even accelerate: It will explode, catapulting us - or our replacements - into an unimaginably remote future in the course of a few decades.

A second alternate possibility is that progress will continue at roughly the rate it has since Watt's steam engine: A tenfold increase in technical capabilities and economic level, give or take, for each 200 years. By Singularity standards this is tediously sluggish. But it means a millionfold increase by the year 3200. In cosmic perspective this is indistinguishable from a Singularity.

A third alternate possibility is that, in fact, we are reaching the limits of both knowledge and progress. Yes, the computer industry has given us smartphones and Google, but cars and airplanes have changed little in overall configuration and performance since midcentury. Once you learn how to do things, you become pretty good at them pretty quickly. And after that point it is mostly just refinement.

As a loose analogy, the Age of Exploration lasted only a few centuries, and ended when there was not much left on Earth to explore. A world map of 1500 has mostly blank space or pure guesswork. A world map of 1600 looks kinda sorta familiar, and by 1800 - when the Industrial Revolution was just taking off - the world map had been mostly filled in.

There is still plenty of universe to explore, but our instruments for doing so may be broadly limited to the sorts of technologies I've projected in the Plausible Midfuture. Getting into space against the pull of Earth's gravity may be just inherently very difficult. Once you get there, speeds of dozens or even hundreds of km/s are pretty readily attainable. Speeds reaching an appreciable fraction of c are problematic, and FTL is a tower of wishful thinking erected atop a grain of physics speculation.

Or not.

Discuss:






The post title is swiped from a Clarke story, though I don't really recall the story itself, and only when I googled did I learn that it is also the title of a Martin Amis novel and a Trek: TNG episode.


The image, from a poster site, shows pharaoh Rameses III hunting with a bow.

209 comments:

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Stevo Darkly said...

Can I help with the discussion of libertarianism? Since you're talking about me, too.

I don't comment here often, but I visit almost daily and read almost every post and comment. I really don't like to discuss politics here, but I think some misunderstandings need to be cleared up.

My bonafides: I've self-identified as libertarian since my early twenties (which were nearly 30 years ago). Since 2004 I've been a member of a fairly tight-knit online group of self-identified libertarians from across the country, and in the years since then I've traveled around and met the majority of them in person as well, in addition to conversing with them online nearly every day. A couple (not many) of my "real life everyday" friends are libertarians as well.

Although I am not a member of the big-L Libertarian Party, I have attended a Libertarian Party convention (2010, St. Louis). It mostly served to reinforce my distaste for party politics and how greasy they can be, in the LP as much as in the major parties. But my point is, I think I'm pretty well acquainted with actual, real-life libertarians.

And I wish I could say that most libertarians are just short of pure anarchists -- because I myself am a member of the anarchist extreme fringe, at least in my ideals. But this is very much a minority-within-a-minority position. That is to say, even most of my fellow libertarians think I am unrealistic and eccentric. The vast majority of self-identified libertarians are minarchists, who believe in a working government, "as small as we can safely make it," but one that performs at least some essential functions, which they believe cannot be provided privately. Military defense, police and courts for sure. Plus the provision of various "public goods" that they believe can be most effectively provided by government.

As for what exactly the "plus other essential government-provided public goods" consist of, it's a fair-sized gray area and the devil is in the details. This provides a lot of things to debate about, and libertarians loooove to debate each other.

But as for "libertarian = anarchist," no. No, no. Not according to my experience or my reading. In support of this, the libertarian magazine Liberty conducted some polls of its readership, and even though Liberty magazine was pretty anarchist-friendly, with lots of pro-anarchist articles and editorials, at least 70% of the magazine's readers identified as minarchists, not anarchists.

As for the Reform Party and the Tea Party ... Remember that libertarianism is all about limiting the size of government and its powers. You can be a libertarian and hold some conservative social views; what makes you libertarian is whether you believe the government should take a role in enforcing those rules in society.

The Reform Party and Tea Party espouse some small-government libertarian ideals, but they don't seem terribly consistent. Ross Perot struck me as very much an authoritarian, top-down guy. As for the Tea Party, they didn't seem to get too alarmed about the growing size of government until a Democrat got elected president. G.W. Bush was no libertarian prize.

By the way, before identifying as a libertarian, I was pretty much a Reaganite Republican Cold Warrior, and I can sympathize with a lot of what Tony says about economics and history. But Reagan's rhetoric helped set me on the road to libertarianism. (He did, after all, speak in favor of smaller government, and once said, "I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.") There are still libertarian-leaning Republicans, although they seem to be an endangered species.

On the other hand, most (at least 3/4ths) of my current libertarian friends started out on the left-liberal side, and a few continue to have sympathies there. FWIW.

I hope that helps. Even if it exposes me as a political idiot in the eyes of most of you. (But I'm rather used to that.)

Anonymous said...

Well, since this discussion has devolved into politics, I'll throw in my 2 cents; seeing problems and advocating solutions to them based on your ideals is what we all should do; that we all don't have the same solutions to those problems simply means that we are individuals; learning to respect and understand other's point-of-view and that they will most likely have differnt opinions from you are also ideals; we all should strive toward our ideals, even if we never reach them (actually, it's a good bet that we never will reach them...). I once worked for a man who told me that I didn't like my favorite beer, and that he would explain to me why I didn't like it; I walked away from him without hearing him out because I thought he was an idiot (not very charitable, but he pissed me off); I don't believe telling people that how they identify themselves is wrong and you'll tell them why, just isn't very helpful; how about we talk about something else, like should we build refueling bases on Luna or use an asteroid instead?

Ferrell

Stevo Darkly said...

I think Ferrell speaks much wisdom here.

(I only exerted myself in the political discussion because I thought it badly needed another data point.)

Thucydides said...

I'll finish this digression into politics by simply saying the degree of commonality probably depends more from how far away you are looking at things.

Objectivists and Libertarians bitterly disagree, even though a person from Canada's Liberal Party really could not identify the differences between their stated platforms (a little test I did once).

Likewise, although various Christian churches might consider other Christians as being non believers, a Jihadist would lump them all as infidels...

I fall into the minarchist position of libertarian thought, and probably have a wider view of what sorts of "public" goods and services can be more effectively provided by government than most libertarians, so Stevo, I'm just the guy looking at you from across the room WRT how libertarian we are, but to Tony and others looking at libertarians, we are still in the same room.

Ferrell, politics is important and will stick it's head into these discussions since it it defined (in organizational theory) as being a means of allocating limited resources. Space warships or lunar colonies all require setting aside resources of some sort or another (even in a post scarcity future it will take time and attention to organize all the resources you need, time and attention that other people will also want from you for their projects...)

Anonymous said...

Thucydides said:"Ferrell, politics is important and will stick it's head into these discussions since it it defined (in organizational theory) as being a means of allocating limited resources. Space warships or lunar colonies all require setting aside resources of some sort or another (even in a post scarcity future it will take time and attention to organize all the resources you need, time and attention that other people will also want from you for their projects...)"

I know that; however, I was trying to defuse a potenually nasty argument, and get us talking about another topic.

Ferrell

Rick said...

I feel no need to stick my oar into an argument over what constitutes 'real' libertarianism.

Thucydides said...

I feel no need to stick my oar into an argument over what constitutes 'real' libertarianism.

You want to see arguments? Try following various NDP (New Democratic Party) blogs and websites an see how difficult it is to parse "real" socialism!

It really is a matter of perspective...

jollyreaper said...

I think that anyone who prizes doctrinal purity over a rational appreciation of reality is an ideologue rather than a pragmatist. Pragmatists I can deal with. They can acknowledge personal biases and compromise when it makes sense rather than being obstinate in the face of stark reality or selling out at the drop of a hat.

Tony said...

jollyreaper:

"I think that anyone who prizes doctrinal purity over a rational appreciation of reality is an ideologue rather than a pragmatist. Pragmatists I can deal with. They can acknowledge personal biases and compromise when it makes sense rather than being obstinate in the face of stark reality or selling out at the drop of a hat."

If I only had a dollar for every ideologue I've ever met who thinks he's a pragmatist...

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