Perspective chauvinism
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The JC’s very own coinages ™
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Perspective chauvinism
/pəˈspɛktɪv ˈʃəʊvɪnɪzm/ (n.)
Our own coinage for the fallacy of judging obsolete tricks, technologies or ideologies by contemporary standards — evaluation criteria that, Q.E.D., weren’t relevant when the old technologies or ideas were in fashion.
You know how, when you are being dumped, the dumper tells you (accurately, but disingenuously all the same), “it’s not you; it’s me”? Perspective chauvinism is the opposite of that. A perspective chauvinist says,“you know what? It is you.”
Judged by such our own arbitrary standards, outmoded technologies will, the older they get, necessarily seem more and more primitive and useless: the history of design will seem to lead inexorably to right here, right now. This in turn will create the impression, not easily dispelled, that human progress has been slow, steady, relentless march towards a perfect Platonic ideal, and any imperfection in our current locale is simply a reflection that, however far we have come, we are not there yet. We are but hobbits, on the way to Mt. Doom.
This does prompt questions, though. And doesn’t it seem a bit goal oriented? What are we going to to when we get there?
But this is not the lesson of evolution. The environment changes dynamically and capriciously, and by survival of the fittest, the prevailing community adapts to it. We are part of the environment, and as we change, so does the environment, and fitness criteria shift. But not in any particular direction. Evolution develops away from an unfit present state, not towards an ideal future one.
So it isn’t that we are progressing ever more quickly towards something, but the place whence we have come falls exponentially further away. We, and our technology, meander like a perpetually deflating balloon through design-space. Our rate of progress doesn’t change; our discarded technologies simply seem more and more irrelevant through time.
The singularity is based on perspective chauvinism. That we are arcing exponentially upward towards something, as the adjacent possibilities explode around us[1] presumes that civilisation is, presently, as close to “the singularity”, whatever that is — truth, nirvana, apocalypse? Who knows? — as it has ever been.
But, seeing as we don’t know what or where that end state is (if we did, we would already be there, Q.E.D.), nor therefore can we know how close we are to it, nor whether we are going in the right direction.
A better hypothesis, thanks to Occam’s razor therefore: there is no end-goal. We are just humans, being.
Come to think of it, the current vogue for grandiose political apology, today, for the cultural transgressions of 17th century explorers is a form of perspective chauvinism, too.