What We Owe The Future: Difference between revisions

But this is absurd. Literally countless determining forks happen every day, everywhere. Most of them are entirely beyond our control. ''Some'' future is assured. What it is, and who will enjoy it, is literally impossible to know. This [[uncertainty]] is a profoundly important engine of our non-zero-sum existence.  

[[Probabilities]] are suitable for closed, bounded systems with a ''complete'' set of ''known'' outcomes. The probability when rolling dice is ⅙ because a die has six equal sides, is equally likely to land on any side, must land on one, and no other outcome is possible. This is an artificial, tight, closed system. We can only calculate an expected value ''because'' of this artificially constrained outcome. Probabilities only work for such [[finite game]]s. ''Almost nothing in every day life works like that''.<ref>Ironically, not even dice: even a carefully machined die will not have exactly even sides and may fall off the table, or land crookedly, or fracture on landing!</ref> The future is [[Finite and Infinite Games|infinite]]: unbounded, ambiguous, incomplete, the range of possible outcomes are not known. ''You can’t calculate probabilities about it''.

It is a situation of ''[[doubt]]'', not ''risk''. Here, expectation theory is ''worthless''.

This is a ''good thing.''

MacAskill came to his thesis courtesy of the thought experiment mentioned above: imagine living the life of every being that has inhabited the planet from [[Mitochondrial Eve]] up to the present day. The exercise is meant to illustrate our own personal contingency and microscopic insignificance in the Grand Scheme. There are a paltry eight billion of us; ten times that have gone before and a thousand times that are — if we don’t bugger everything up — yet to come.  

The human condition: despite our mortal insignificance we are here, they are not. We lowly ants are disproportionately empowered to determine the future.

The idea chimes for a moment and then falls apart. For this is to see our ''present'' existence as no more than the task of cranking the ''right'' handle on the cosmic machine, to vouchsafe a calculable outcome for someone else. We are but set builders, moving quietly about a dark theatre. As long as we do as bidden, on time, all will be well and performers will shine. Our role is barely worth a mention in the final credits.  

But we are not Sisyphus. We have our own [[lived experience]]s to think about. It does not follow, ''[[a priori]]'' that we are bound to practise forbearance for the sake of generations unimagined.  

This idea of iteration should give a clue. the future is not dependent on a single collective decision a generation makes now, but upon an impossibly complex array of microdecisions made by individuals and groups, every moment throughout space-time. This is as misconceived as is [[Richard Dawkins]]’ idea that a fielder does, or even ''could'', functionally calculate differential equations to catch a ball.  

The thought experiment betrays is an unflinchingly deterministic world-view: the universe is a clockwork machine to be set and configured. Take readings, perform calculations, twiddle dials, progress to the designated place, hold out your hand at the appointed time and the ball will drop into it.

We don’t image Professor Dawkins was much good at [[cricket]]. Set in opposition to the [[heuristic]], [[iterative]], provisional mode of behaving that characterises any evolving organism in an ecosystem. Here it is in a nutshell, the great distinction between [[reductionism]] and [[pragmatism]].

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. But where we are ''going'' is a different matter. We don’t have the first clue. [[Evolution by natural selection|Evolution]] makes no predictions. Alternative possibilities branch every which way. Over a generation or two we have some dim prospect of anticipating who our progeny might be and what they might want. [[Darwin’s Dangerous Idea|Darwin’s dangerous algorithm]] wires us, naturally, to do this.

But over millions of years — “the average lifespan of a mammalian species” we are confidently told — the sheer volume of chaotic interactions between the 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. How do we know to whom we owe a duty? How on earth would we frame it? 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? 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?

And [[There’s the rub|here is the rub]]: Amazonian [[Butterfly effect|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 [[Causation|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.

But ultimately it is MacAskill’s sub-[[Yuval Noah Harari|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.

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]]===