What We Owe The Future: Difference between revisions
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| Line 11: | Line 11: | ||
[[William MacAskill]] is undoubtedly intelligent, widely-read — perhaps ''too'' widely-read — and he applies his polymathic range to ''What We Owe The Future'' with some panache. | [[William MacAskill]] is undoubtedly intelligent, widely-read — perhaps ''too'' widely-read — and he applies his polymathic range to ''What We Owe The Future'' with some panache. | ||
So it took me a while to put my finger on what was so irritating about his book. | So it took me a while to put my finger on what was so irritating about his book. To be sure, there’s a glibness about it: it is jammed full of the sophomore thought experiments (“imagine you had to live the life of every sentient being on the planet” kind of thing) that give [[philosophy]] undergraduates a bad name. | ||
Indeed, MacAskill, a thirty-something ethics lecturer who has divided his time between Oxford and Cambridge universities, is barely out of undergraduate [[philosophy]] class himself. | Indeed, MacAskill, a thirty-something ethics lecturer who has divided his adult time on Earth so far between Oxford and Cambridge universities, is barely out of undergraduate [[philosophy]] class himself. That is, for most of us, an unlikely source of cosmic advice. | ||
You sense it would do him a world of good to put the books down | You sense it would do him a world of good to put the books down and get some education from the school of life: pulling pints, waiting tables or labouring. | ||
===Of lived and not-yet-lived experience=== | ===Of lived and not-yet-lived experience=== | ||
Per the [[entropy|second law of thermodynamics]] but ''pace'' Pink Floyd | Per the [[entropy|second law of thermodynamics]] — but ''pace'' Pink Floyd — there is but ''one'' possible past, ''one'' possible now, and an infinite array of possible futures stretching out into an unknown black void. Some short, some long, some dystopian, some enlightened. Some cut off by apocalypse, some fading gently into warm [[Entropy|entropic]] soup. | ||
William MacAskill’s | William MacAskill’s premise is this: barring near-term cataclysm, there are so many more people in our future than in the present, that our duty of care to this horde of sacred unborn swamps any concern for the here and now. We must do what we can to avoid that cataclysm, and vouchsafe the future’s — well — ''future''. | ||
We are, thus, minding the shop not just for our children and grandchildren, but for generations unconceived — in every sense of the word — millennia hence. ''Thousands'' of millennia hence. | |||
What is our duty, though? What are their expectations? MacAskill uses what financiers might call “linear interpolation” to deduce, from what has already happened in the world, a theory about what will happen, and what we should therefore do to accommodate this as-yet-unimagined throng. But the gating question he glosses over is this: how do we even know who these putative beings will be, let alone what their interests are, let alone which of them is worth protecting? | Perhaps to talk us down from our grandiosity, MacAskill spends some time remarking on our contingency — that ''we'' happen to be the ones here to talk about it is basically a fluke — but neglects to appreciate that this contingency does not now stop. | ||
It is as if MacAskill has got this perfectly backward. He talks about 2 as if we are at some single crossroads; a single determining fork in the history of the planet. But countless determining forks happen every day, everywhere. Most of them are entirely beyond our control. Some future is assured. What it is is literally impossible to know. | |||
What is our duty, though? What are their expectations? | |||
=== Expected value theory does not help === | |||
MacAskill uses probability theory and what financiers might call “linear interpolation” to deduce, from what has already happened in the world, a theory about what will happen, and what we should therefore do to accommodate this as-yet-unimagined throng. This is madness. | |||
[[Probabilities]] are suitable for closed, bounded systems with a ''complete'' set of ''known'' outcomes. The probability of rolling a six is ⅙ because a die has six equal sides, is equally likely to land on any side, and must land on one, and no other outcome is possible. We can only calculate this expected value because of these dramatically constrained outcome.+ | |||
''This is not how most things in life work''. Probabilities work for [[finite game]]s. ''The future is in no sense a finite game''. It is unbounded, ambiguous, incomplete, the range of possible outcomes are not known and may as well be infinite. ''You can't calculate probabilities about it''. {{Author|Gerd Gigerenzer}} would say it is a situation of ''uncertainty'', not ''risk''. ''Expectation theory is worthless.'' | |||
=== [[Expected value theory]] and [[complex systems]] === | |||
It is not at all clear what anyone can do to influence the unknowably distant future — a meteor could wipe us out any time — but in any case [[expected value]] probability calculations won’t help. Nor does MacAskill say ''why'' we organisms who are here ''now'' should give a flying hoot for the race of pan-dimensional hyperbeings we will have evolved into — or been eaten by — countless millennia into the future. | |||
Presumably our duty isn’t a function of simple lineage — that feels ''un''altruistic — but is a generally derived obligation to whatever living thing is, for the time being, here? | |||
This demolishes MacAskill’s foundational premise — applied “expectation theory” is how he draws his conclusions about the plight of the [[Morlock]]s of our future — and is enough to trash the book’s thesis ''in toto''. | |||
But the gating question he glosses over is this: how do we even know who these putative beings will be, let alone what their interests are, let alone which of them is worth protecting? | |||
=== An infinity of possibilities === | === An infinity of possibilities === | ||
| Line 51: | Line 71: | ||
We should sacrifice you lot — birds in the hand — for our far-distant descendants — birds in a bush who may or may not be there in a million years. | We should sacrifice you lot — birds in the hand — for our far-distant descendants — birds in a bush who may or may not be there in a million years. | ||
Thanks — but no thanks. | Thanks — but no thanks. | ||
===Why stop with humans?=== | ===Why stop with humans?=== | ||
Does this self-sacrifice for the hereafter also apply to non-sapient beasts, fish and fowls, too? Bushes and trees? Invaders from Mars? If not, why not? | Does this self-sacrifice for the hereafter also apply to non-sapient beasts, fish and fowls, too? Bushes and trees? Invaders from Mars? If not, why not? | ||
Revision as of 09:56, 2 December 2022
|
They flutter behind you, your possible pasts:
Some bright-eyed and crazy,
Some frightened and lost.
A warning to anyone still in command
Of their possible future
To take care.
- —Roger Waters, Your Possible Pasts
On getting out more
William MacAskill is undoubtedly intelligent, widely-read — perhaps too widely-read — and he applies his polymathic range to What We Owe The Future with some panache.
So it took me a while to put my finger on what was so irritating about his book. To be sure, there’s a glibness about it: it is jammed full of the sophomore thought experiments (“imagine you had to live the life of every sentient being on the planet” kind of thing) that give philosophy undergraduates a bad name.
Indeed, MacAskill, a thirty-something ethics lecturer who has divided his adult time on Earth so far between Oxford and Cambridge universities, is barely out of undergraduate philosophy class himself. That is, for most of us, an unlikely source of cosmic advice.
You sense it would do him a world of good to put the books down and get some education from the school of life: pulling pints, waiting tables or labouring.
Of lived and not-yet-lived experience
Per the second law of thermodynamics — but pace Pink Floyd — there is but one possible past, one possible now, and an infinite array of possible futures stretching out into an unknown black void. Some short, some long, some dystopian, some enlightened. Some cut off by apocalypse, some fading gently into warm entropic soup.
William MacAskill’s premise is this: barring near-term cataclysm, there are so many more people in our future than in the present, that our duty of care to this horde of sacred unborn swamps any concern for the here and now. We must do what we can to avoid that cataclysm, and vouchsafe the future’s — well — future.
We are, thus, minding the shop not just for our children and grandchildren, but for generations unconceived — in every sense of the word — millennia hence. Thousands of millennia hence.
Perhaps to talk us down from our grandiosity, MacAskill spends some time remarking on our contingency — that we happen to be the ones here to talk about it is basically a fluke — but neglects to appreciate that this contingency does not now stop.
It is as if MacAskill has got this perfectly backward. He talks about 2 as if we are at some single crossroads; a single determining fork in the history of the planet. But countless determining forks happen every day, everywhere. Most of them are entirely beyond our control. Some future is assured. What it is is literally impossible to know.
What is our duty, though? What are their expectations?
Expected value theory does not help
MacAskill uses probability theory and what financiers might call “linear interpolation” to deduce, from what has already happened in the world, a theory about what will happen, and what we should therefore do to accommodate this as-yet-unimagined throng. This is madness.
Probabilities are suitable for closed, bounded systems with a complete set of known outcomes. The probability of rolling a six is ⅙ because a die has six equal sides, is equally likely to land on any side, and must land on one, and no other outcome is possible. We can only calculate this expected value because of these dramatically constrained outcome.+
This is not how most things in life work. Probabilities work for finite games. The future is in no sense a finite game. It is unbounded, ambiguous, incomplete, the range of possible outcomes are not known and may as well be infinite. You can't calculate probabilities about it. Gerd Gigerenzer would say it is a situation of uncertainty, not risk. Expectation theory is worthless.
Expected value theory and complex systems
It is not at all clear what anyone can do to influence the unknowably distant future — a meteor could wipe us out any time — but in any case expected value probability calculations won’t help. Nor does MacAskill say why we organisms who are here now should give a flying hoot for the race of pan-dimensional hyperbeings we will have evolved into — or been eaten by — countless millennia into the future.
Presumably our duty isn’t a function of simple lineage — that feels unaltruistic — but is a generally derived obligation to whatever living thing is, for the time being, here?
This demolishes MacAskill’s foundational premise — applied “expectation theory” is how he draws his conclusions about the plight of the Morlocks of our future — and is enough to trash the book’s thesis in toto.
But the gating question he glosses over is this: how do we even know who these putative beings will be, let alone what their interests are, let alone which of them is worth protecting?
An infinity of possibilities
We can manufacture plausible stories about whence we came easily enough: that’s what scientists and historians do, though they have a hard time agreeing with each other. Where we are going, on the other hand, is a different matter. We don’t have the first clue. Evolution makes no predictions. Alternative possibilities branch every which way. The forward possibilities of a game as simple as chess become incalculable, even with ENIAC, within five moves. Organic life is quite a lot more complicated than that.
So, over a generation or two we some dim prospect of anticipating who our progeny might be and what they might want. Darwin’s dangerous algorithm wires us, naturally, to do this.
But over millions of years — “the average lifespan of a mammalian species,” MacAskill informs us — the gargantuan volume of chaotic interactions between the trillions of co-evolving organisms, mechanisms, systems and algorithms that comprise our hypercomplex ecosystem, mean literally anything could happen. There are squillions of possible futures. Each has its own unique set of putative inheritors. Don’t we owe them all a duty? Doesn’t action to promote the interests of one branch consign infinitely more to oblivion?
Who are we to play with such cosmic dice? With what criteria? By reference to whose morality? An uncomfortable regression through storeys of turtles and elephants beckons. This is just the sort of thing ethics professors like, of course.
For if the grand total of unborn interests down the pathway time’s arrow eventually takes drowns out the assembled present, then those interests, in turn, are drowned out by the collected interests of those down the literally infinite number of possible pathways time’s arrow doesn’t end up taking. Who are we to judge?
Causality may or may not be true, but still forward progress is non-linear. There is no “if-this-then-that” over five years, let alone fifty, let alone a million. Each of these gazillion branching pathways is a possible future. Only one can come true. We don’t, and can’t, know which one it will be.
And here is the rub: Amazonian butterflies causing typhoons in Manila: anything and everything we do infinitesimally and ineffably alters the calculus, re-routing evolutionary design forks and making this outcome or that more likely. Decisions that prefer one outcome surely disfavour an infinity of others.
If you take causal regularities for granted then all you need to be wise in hindsight is enough data. In this story, the causal chain behind us is unbroken back to where records begin — the probability of an event happening when it has already happened is one hundred percent; never mind that we’ve had to be quite imaginative in reconstructing it.
We don’t know.
Don’t all these possible futures deserve equal consideration? If yes, then anything we do will benefit some future, so there is nothing to see here. If no, how do we arbitrate between our possible futures, if not by reference to our own values? In that case is this really “altruism” or just motivated selfish behaviour?
Brainboxes to the rescue
But ultimately it is MacAskill’s sub-Harari, wiser-than-thou, top-down moral counselling that grates: humanity needs to solve the problems of the future centrally; this requires brainy people from the academy, like MacAskill, to do it. And though the solution might be at the great expense of all you mouth-breathing oxygen wasters out there, it is for the future’s good.
We should sacrifice you lot — birds in the hand — for our far-distant descendants — birds in a bush who may or may not be there in a million years.
Thanks — but no thanks.
Why stop with humans?
Does this self-sacrifice for the hereafter also apply to non-sapient beasts, fish and fowls, too? Bushes and trees? Invaders from Mars? If not, why not?
If present homo sapiens really is such a hopelessly venal case, who is to say it can redeem itself millennia into the future? What makes Macaskill think future us deserves that chance that present us is blowing so badly? Perhaps it would be better off for everyone else — especially said saintly beasts, fish fowls, bushes and trees — if we just winked out now?
The FTX connection
MacAskill’s loopy Futurism appeals to the silicon valley demi-god types who have a weakness for Wagnerian psychodrama and glib a priori sci fi futurism.
Elon Musk is a fan. So, to MacAskill’s chagrin, is deluded crypto fantasist Sam Bankman-Fried. He seems to have “altruistically” given away a large portion of his investors’ money to the cause. I wonder what the expected value of that outcome was. You perhaps shouldn’t judge a book by the company it keeps on bookshelves, but still.
See the Long Now Foundation
If you want sensible and thoughtful writing about the planet and its long term future, try Stewart Brand and Brian Eno and the good folk of the Long Now Foundation. Give this hokum the swerve.