Norm links to this millenarian lament by Bryan Appleyard. Norm is agnostic on the claims, leaning a bit towards the skeptical but open to the general idea.

I think that Norm should cheer up a bit since Appleyard is merely confused. He is one of many that have a vision problem, they have their future-scopes wrong way round and so things in the distance aren't magnified and more visible as if they were nearer, they are reduced and less visible as if they were farther away. See dnE ehT ... toN for a discussion of this intellectual defect from a couple of winters ago. The core argument of that old post applies here too and is worth repeating.

Crichton blames Frank Drake for fathering this recent line of opportunistic science poseurs because of his Ozma project and the false but exciting signal from space he detected and the subsequent organization of the SETI conference. His original sin was the Drake equation.

N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL

A nonsense equation since none of the terms of the equation could even in theory be determined. It was all subjective bias reminiscent of arcane Medieval religious debates of the ineffable.

The Appleyard piece is filled with nonsense equations. They have the form of reasoned argument but not the content. For example:

The first big problem is our insane addiction to oil. It powers everything we do and determines how we live. But, on the most optimistic projections, there are only 30 to 40 years of oil left. One pessimistic projection, from Sweden's Uppsala University, is that world reserves are massively overstated and the oil will start to run out in 10 years. That makes it virtually inconceivable that there will be kerosene-powered planes or petroleum-powered cars for much longer. . .

People generally assume that we will find our way round this using hydrogen, nuclear, wave or wind power. In reality, none of these technologies are being developed anything like quickly enough to take over from oil. The great nations just aren't throwing enough money at the problem. Instead, they are preparing to fight for the last drops of oil. China has recently started making diplomatic overtures to Saudi Arabia, wanting to break America's grip on that nation's 262 billion barrel reserve.

There are many other sources of oil besides pools of it easily pumped from the ground. It can be made from coal for example which is well supplied. This is merely one of several options that make Appleyard's hysterical fears about "oil addiction" meaningless. It is the first of the undefinable terms in his nonsense equation.

A more interesting one is his use of Jonathan Huebner's dearth of innovation thesis.

After some elaborate mathematics, he came to a conclusion that raised serious questions about our continued ability to sustain progress. What he found was that the rate of innovation peaked in 1873 and has been declining ever since. In fact, our current rate of innovation — which Huebner puts at seven important technological developments per billion people per year — is about the same as it was in 1600. By 2024 it will have slumped to the same level as it was in the Dark Ages, the period between the end of the Roman empire and the start of the Middle Ages.

The calculations are based on innovations per person, so if we could keep growing the human population we could, in theory, keep up the absolute rate of innovation. But in practice, to do that, we'd have to swamp the world with billions more people almost at once. That being neither possible nor desirable, it seems we'll just have to accept that progress, at least on the scientific and technological front, is slowing very rapidly indeed.

Innovations per person isn't a meaningful or useful measure of anything. We don't hoard innovations. In fact, the better and faster communications of our increasingly open world provide an effective rate of innovation as experienced by people that is fast and accelerating, so much so that change is worrisome to another sect of worry warts.

But Appleyard's true thesis is that none of it matters since humans are irredeemably bad, incapable of progress. All material progress does is allow humans to be nasty more effectively. He quotes depressed scholars to make his point.

Modernity does not make us better, it just makes us more effective. We may have anaesthetic dentistry, but we also have nuclear weapons. We may or may not continue to innovate. It doesn't matter, because innovation will only enable us to do more of what humans do. In this view, all progress will be matched by regress. In our present condition, this can happen in two ways. Either human conflict will produce a new ethical decline, as it did in Germany and Russia, or our very commitment to growth will turn against us.

On the ethical front, Gray's most potent contemporary example is torture. For years we thought the developed world had banished torture for ever or that, if it occasionally happened here, it was an error or oversight, a crime to be punished at once. Not being torturers was a primary indicator of our civilised, progressive condition. But now suicide terrorism has posed a terrible question. If we have a prisoner who knows where a suitcase nuclear weapon is planted and refuses to talk, do we not have the right to torture him into revealing the information? Many now reluctantly admit that we would.

Some may have thought that the developed world had banished torture but they were merely averting their eyes and making excuses for "their bastards". It is common in all communist countries for example, but also practiced in western states "off the record". What we are really seeing now is that improved information systems are making it ever harder to do anything off the record, meaning that sensitive subjects are debated openly rather than behind official closed doors. If you think about it for a minute this is progress. The illusions of the gullible may be shattered by the discussion of things that they imagined didn't happen, but the reality of the wise moves closer to a desirable future when that which was hidden is revealed and debated, the undiscussable is discussed.

Progress, therefore, is faltering but, on aggregate, it moves in the right direction. Hitler was defeated and judicial torture may, in time, defeat terrorism. We just have to accept that three steps forward also involves two steps back. The point is to keep the faith.

But what if it is just faith? What if the very "fact" of progress is ultimately self-destructive? There are many ways in which this might turn out to be true. First, the human population is continuing to rise exponentially. It is currently approaching 6.5 billion, in 1900 it was 1.65 billion, in 1800 it was around a billion, in 1500 it was 500m. The figures show that economic and technological progress is loading the planet with billions more people. By keeping humans alive longer and by feeding them better, progress is continually pushing population levels.

Another nonsense term in Appleyard's nonsense equation. He fails to consider fertility rate, which has fallen below replacement level in most developed countries and is falling rapidly in developing countries. People may not be dieing as fast as in the past, but they aren't being born as fast either. Graph those curves and the lines cross. It's not that there are no population problems - 3 billion more people is a big problem - but that he misses the interesting bits such as the effect of demographic change as populations age. People live longer and there are fewer children.

With population comes pollution. The overwhelming scientific consensus is that global warming caused by human activity is happening. According to some estimates, we will pass the point of no return within a decade. Weather systems will change, huge flooding will occur, and human civilisation if not existence will be at risk. This can be avoided if the US and China cut their carbon-dioxide emissions by 50% at once.

Another nonsense term. Scientific consensus is meaningless. You don't vote to determine scientific truth, you provide evidence and test hypotheses. Consensus literally has no meaning in science, that's merely a political idea since mobs rule when they get the opportunity.

And what about India, Indonesia and S. America not to mention the aggregate presence of the rest of the world. Don't they have emissions and aren't they growing? Why single out the US and China except to make a sly political dig? How much of the "consensus" is agreement with the political subtext rather than scientific knowledge?

. . . antibiotic drugs are currently failing through overuse. No new generation of medicines is likely to be available to replace them in the near future. People may soon be dying again from sore throats and minor cuts. The massive longevity increase in the 20th century may soon begin to reverse itself.

How is Appleyard so certain that drugs are failing and no replacements are likely? How does one reconcile claims to reasoned argument when the argument is that "People may soon be dying again from sore throats and minor cuts."

Joel Mokyr's response to all this is that our open-knowledge societies will enable these problems to be solved. John Gray replies: "This is faith, not science."

Gray continues with his muddled pseudo-reasoning which unfailing selects the most depressed reading of unknowable futures. Science does not predict futures. There are disciplines that study probabilities and that can quantify change when assumptions hold true. But assumptions are assumptions, a form of faith if you wish to discredit them as Gray certainly does, and scientists are fully aware of the challenges to assumptions up to and including the "black swan", the random event that changes things greatly and is by definition unpredictable. You can anticipate a black swan, you can take steps to defend yourself or profit from new opportunity, but you can't predict it.

The evidence is mounting that our two sunny centuries of growth and wealth may end in a new Dark Age in which ignorance will replace knowledge, war will replace peace, sickness will replace health and famine will replace obesity. You don't think so? It's always happened in the past. What makes us so different? Nothing, I'm afraid.

The evidence isn't mounting. It is only by choosing to look at only some of the evidence, and choosing the interpretation that supports his biases, that Appleyard is able to draw his unreasonable conclusions. In the end he has nothing but his faith that history repeats and his longing for disaster that will one day be satisfied as it always has been in the past.

But the opposite answer isn't the only alternative. Just as there is no reason to have faith in an inevitable decline to a "new Dark Age in which ignorance will replace knowledge" there is also no reason to have faith in an inevitable progress to singularity and an age of Spiritual Machines or other post-human techno-civilization. These poles do not exhaust the realm of possibility. It's more useful to drop the linear thinking, the whole one step after the next on a path metaphor. The idea that we progressed in the past is a view, a way of connecting the dots and assigning a direction vector to incidents.

I think those who are grinding the best new lenses for future-scopes are those who see things in non-linear ways, who see multi-level interconnected cycles of growth and decay that simply defy linear views, where the path forward looks to the linear thinker like going backwards since he doesn't understand the system. Perhaps the easier way for the inflexible mind to understand this is to think of the drunkard's walk view of progress. It's not simplistic linear progress or regress, but it still has a sense of direction, punctuated progress as we lurch from point to point caroming now and again off a wall and occasionally falling flat on our faces. It's a slightly more useful view and still satisfies the need for a dark view of things. Or, if you are not the depressed sort, try seeing it as a toddler's walk. The results are similar but there is an expectation that the toddler will improve given time and opportunity.

The important bit is to understand that we are not in control and that control is neither possible nor desirable. I think that's the real burr in the blankets of the depressed backwards future-scopers. Control is their deepest need, their heart's desire, and it is increasingly obvious that it's a silly idea. Progress to them meant ever increasing control. The article mentions institutions - large corporations or large institutions — the EU, the World Bank — which are all about control, but it's an impossible and undesirable fantasy.

The desire for control and the illusion of progress are based on values. Some argue that progress has happened since their values have been advanced while others with different values claim precisely the opposite. Values are the intoxicant that makes the drunkard stagger. They are founded on nothing at all yet they have the power to cloud vision and diminish balance. An inevitable result of the growing scale and speed of communication is that we are forced to confront the fact that people have different incommensurable values. No matter what control fantasy you are entertaining it is based on values and an assumption that your's, or something very like them, will triumph and that one day all humans will think much like you do now. Wrong.

This is progress in the sense of improved knowledge. It is becoming ever more difficult for any sect holding any set of values to imagine a uniform world in which some set of values is held by all, allowing institutions and control to be imposed on all. The best they can come up with is a very sparse set of protocols for relations among wildly disparate groups that sometimes reduce conflict below the level of open war, and that's not satisfying for those dreaming of world control. Worse, diversity may increase in future rather than decrease. Our growing technological acumen may allow humans to hack themselves and even become multiple species. Certainly some are dreaming of the day when this becomes possible, and in a sense their dreams already have moved them further away from common humanity.

It isn't control, values, institutions or any of the old fashioned, small scale, single tribe measures of progress that are useful for this time. We need a more sophisticated and mature view of society. It can be hard for old-timers to make their intellectual peace with the inherent diversity, instability and uncontrollability of society. It may help to reevaluate the past, to understand that this isn't a new reality so much as a better understanding of how things have always been. It's just that it is now harder to maintain the old illusions since we have better communications. We see more and see it faster which allows us to recognize patterns that have always been and forces us to see patterns that we once chose to ignore or thought we could alter.

Update:

In The Wealth of Generations: Capitalism and the Belief in the Future Johan Norberg speaks on related topics. [via Biopolitical]

Belief in the future is perhaps the most important value for a free society. It is what makes so many interested in getting an education, or investing in a project, or even being nice to their neighbours. If we think that nothing can improve or if we think that the world is coming to an end, we don’t work hard for a better and more civilised future. And we will all be miserable.

Enlightenment philosophers created the belief in the future in the 17 th and 18 th centuries, by letting us know that our rational faculties can understand the world, and that with freedom we can improve it. . .

Since those days, mankind has made unprecedented progress, but astonishingly most of us don’t see that, because of ancient mental mechanisms that were developed in much more dangerous days, when one man’s gain was often another man’s loss. . .

Norberg goes on to excoriate Socialism and Marxism for their relentlessly pessimistic, zero-sum theory views of society that were false when formulated and have grown ever more obviously false over time.

According to the trends of mankind until then, it would take 2 000 years to double the average income. In the mid-19th century, the British did it in 30 years. When Marx died in 1883, the average Englishman was three times richer than he was when Marx was born in 1818. . .

Ok, said Marx’s evil apprentice Lenin. We might have been wrong about that. But the working class in the West could only become richer because they are bribed by the capitalists. Someone else would have to pay the price for that bribe – the poor countries. Lenin meant that imperialism was the next natural step of capitalism, whereby poor countries had to give up their work and resources to feed the West.

The problem with this argument is that all continents became wealthier, albeit at different speeds. Sure, the average Western European or American is 19 times richer than in 1820, but a Latin American is 9 times richer, an Asian 6 times richer, and an African about 3 times richer. So from whom was the wealth stolen? The only way to save this zero-sum theory would be to find the wreckage of some incredibly advanced spacecraft that we emptied 200 years ago. But not even that would save the theory. Because we would still have to explain from whom the aliens had stolen their resources.

Few still are confused about this though many still carry water for beliefs held in dogmatic fashion that they have never bothered to examine and understand. But there are some that found wiggle room.

Heilbroner did not make peace with capitalism. Zero-sum mentalities don’t die easily. Someone has would have to pay for this success, right? Right. Heilbroner said that he was still opposed to capitalism, but now because it would result in heavy cost to the environment. After having been opposed to capitalism because it would create waste, inefficiency and poverty a socialist could now be opposed to capitalism because it was too efficient and created too much wealth, because that would destroy nature.

The article proceeds with quite a lot of happy talk that is open to criticism, but still it does a good job of dissecting the gloomy views of pessimists and is of value for that alone if nothing else. Besides, it has several deft turns of phrase I intend to pilfer.

» New and Improved Nonsense! from Isaac Schrödinger
Muck and Mystery:He [Bryan Appleyard] is one of many that have a vision problem, they have their future-scopes wrong way...[read more]
Tracked: October 16, 2005 04:16 PM