The ( really radical ) Radical Centrist Future E : Wow ! Terrific paper about futurism. Really thoughtful and thought-out. No idea how you found it --maybe you will share your secret-- but it represents Futures ( as the field is also known ) at its very best. Lots for me to think about and, as lessons slowly sink in, to incorporate into my own worldview. However, my paradigm, which has been in my craw for a good number of years, works really well, and is very well suited to incorporate new ideas like those in the article ( author ? ) you provided. Here are the basic assumptions, viz, conclusions arrived at, sometimes via flashes of insight, or "revelation," cie vous plait, sometimes by painful trial and error : ---------------------------------------------------- It was 1975 and I was listening to Isaac Asimov give a lecture broadcast on radio. To paraphrase, "when you think about it, given the enormous head start that other civilizations must have, thousands of years ahead of us, or hundreds of thousands of years, conceivably millions of years, why aren't they here ? Answer : they ARE here but for their own reasons, perhaps like anthropologists who stay in the shadows while studying primitive tribes in New Guinea from a distance in order to keep their studies objective or so as not to introduce outside factors into tribal life, choose not to let us know." Corollary : They are letting us know they are here via a variety of clues which they introduce in all manner of ways, just enough to pry open our minds but not enough for us to be sure, at least not yet, about the reality they represent. Their technology is partly a matter of what seems to us to be ESP but which in actuality is Nth generation "mind reading" electronics, perhaps along the lines which could be expected if "psychic" systems now in development in computer labs had plenty of time to mature. You know, systems that allow a paraplegic to control a robot device via thoughts, SRI's experiments with "thinking caps" which enable a wearer to communicate with a computer via thoughts alone, Delgado's studies, and so forth. Thus, the ideas of ETs can be communicated to us with no knowledge on our part but to the effect that selected individuals receive these hot new ideas and pass them along, further advancing the preparations which must be made , by us, prior to full contact in the future. Hence, in other words, the rise of a new mythology of extreme usefulness in this area, science fiction. By my theory, while most sci-fi is garbage, much of the best is prompted by ETs using humans as messengers. Keep in mind that the ETs are here, they observe us in innumerable ways, and seek to advance an agenda which we can only guess at. ------------------------------------------ Satan is very real but only somewhat resembles the Biblical view of this creature. Seems to me the Biblical view is the best available but it still is far off the mark, mainly because it uses metaphors derived from a long gone era of history. That is, just as there is positive evolution which moves us all along a path to better things, and just as we are guided by the Holy Spirit, also very real, likewise there is a negative force that is also global and which has designs that are unhealthy, destructive for us, in a word, evil. Religion captures the idea very well, but it also has physical manifestation and in ways is more like Harlan Ellison's science-fiction in character ( I Have No Mouth but Must Scream, for a model of this ). Hence, while the future is predictable in theory, there is negativity always in play and hence al kinds of bad things happen ( acts of Satan, not the horribly misnamed acts of God ) and we must allow for these contingencies. No matter what, in other words, an invisible force always throws a monkey wrench into the works. -------------------------------------------------- The only viable way to look at the future is by systems thinking. This presents problems because comprehensive systems are just that, like an undergraduate curriculum in a college or university. You've got to be on top of a great variety of subjects to make good use of a systems approach. We will always fall short but if we do the best we can, progress can be made. That is, a strictly technological forecasting model is inadequate, so is a strictly humanities model, or a strictly social science model, economics model, or anything else. ------------------------------------------------------------- Another kind of singularity is in process besides what I take it the article is talking about. Science is heading for a series of paradigm shifts which, when they start happening, will be utterly transformative. Social science / psychology lags behind but is in the ballgame, so these disciplines should be factored in. But we are heading for dramatic life extension, dramatic reduction in effects of debilitating diseases, dramatic increases in computational power, and all sorts of other things ( composite materials with amazing properties, vastly improved understanding of ecosystems, giant leaps in neuroscience, nanotechnology advances which have enormous potential, etc, etc ). So, we had better make ourselves prepared for what will amount to a science-fiction reality. Think it was Clarke who once said that if a great genius like Isaac Newton could be brought back to life in the modern world he might well think that reality was defined by the properties of magic. So it will be for us, with the near approach of the Singularity. When will this happen ? You tell me, but in the 21st century, some time, seems a sure bet. --------------------------------------- The entire global religious paradigm is due for a major overhaul, think of the Reformation ^ 3 --cubed. Few people over 50 understand this, most simply have too much invested in their old paradigms to possibly have the necessary consciousness, Few people under 25 don't understand this, at least at some level. But for starters, religion will --seems really obvious to me-- become as topical and important as Communism was in the Cold War or Nazism in the WWII years. For government and the media and all too often education, to short shrift religion is incredibly stupid and myopic. That is, people without serious grounding in what may be called religious knowledge ( not devotionalism, which is a different animal ) are the last of the dinosaurs. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's Left and major parts of the political Right will be utterly discredited in the near term future. Same --but worse-- for Anarchism. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Homosexuality will be seen for the kind of dysfunctional psychopathology it really is. The entire homosexual cause and its political base of support will collapse. This will spell professional doom for entire classes of people in the near term future and will cause huge problems for, to use a few examples, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, several Justices of the Supreme Court, just about the whole Obama WH, Steve Jobs, every elected official in San Francisco, and so forth. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The whole anti-evolution cause will similarly collapse as completely untenable. This will cause major embarrassment for, well, you can fill in the blanks... --------------------------------------------------------- All of the above will be expedited by the rise of a new discipline / field of study, concerned with error. That is, why do we make mistakes, what goes on in our minds when we screw up ? What are all the factors ? What can we do to become self-correcting ? Etc, etc. This is extremely important once you start thinking about all of the implications. We are error-making machines, to look at the human condition one way, and if we can learn how to overcome this problem, well, everything changes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is more, but this outlines some of the major elements of the worldview. Billy ( aka Wilhelm of Avesland of the planet Altruria currently visiting Earth for an extended research project ) ====================================================== message dated 8/17/2011 2:01:35 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
Brilliant insight into the promise and peril of futurism. What's your paradigm? E I am the Very Model of a Singularitarian _http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/08/i-am-the-very-model-of- a-singu.html_ (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/08/i-am-the-very-model-of-a-singu.html) ____________________________________ I suggested in an earlier post that foresight is not so much about prediction as it’s about _designing against surprise_ (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/07/beyond-prediction.html) . Key to this is the exploration of multiple futures, which is why scenario-based foresight is so commonly practiced. Scenarios are rarely developed in isolation, but are usually created in decks(generally of four, when one uses the common 2X2 matrix method of generating them). These are then intended as snapshots taken in different points of a complex space of possibilities. The opposite of scenarios is the default future, which is what everybody assumes is going to happen. If life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans, the real future is what happens to you after you’ve planned for the default future. A classic example of what you get when you plan for the default future is the Maginot Line. In a 1998 article in the journal Futures, “Futures Beyond Dystopia,” Richard Slaughter critiques science fiction’s default futures. He accuses SF of oscillating between naive techno-optimism and equally naive apocalypticism. Late 20th century SF lacks the necessary spectrum of intermediate scenarios, according to Slaughter, which may explain its decreasing hold on the public imagination. What we are left with is two default futures, and no societal capacity to plan for a third. This is an idea worth serious contemplation by those of us who write the stuff. Sometimes, too, our scenarios grow so elaborate that they become more than scenarios—they’re complete paradigms. They become default modes of thinking, and come with associated cultures, champions and institutions. At this point, presenting alternatives becomes increasingly difficult; one must present, not just new scenarios, but an entirely new paradigm to complement the reigning one. May people, particularly in the foresight community, believe that a shift from scenario to paradigm is what’s happened to the idea of the Technological Singularity. It’s become the new default future—no longer the shocking, thought-provoking alternative to an orthodoxy, but the very orthodoxy itself. Against this, it’s no longer sufficient to simply present different scenarios. We need an alternative paradigm (or two, or six). I’ve been working on some. If the Singularity is our new Maginot Line, what’s the future equivalent of a line of panzers running right over it? Since scenarios are often productively built around oppositions, I’ll suggest an opposite worldview to the Singularity—one that makes opposite assumptions. The Singularity emerges from the idea that a steady and geometric increase in computing power will result in superhuman intelligence emerging rapidly and drawing with it a geometric increase in industrial and technological progress and scientific understanding; and that this sudden explosion of change is by definition unimaginable to beings of lesser intelligence, such as humans. Hence, the singularity, that place that we mere mortals cannot go. We await the Kwisatz Haderach of AI to lead us through it. The Singularity is actually an intermeshing set of beliefs about technology, intelligence, and about what drives technological, economic and social change. It’s a self-supporting system of ideas, which is what makes it a paradigm and not merely a scenario. And, as I said, paradigms are not to be simply denied or affirmed. (Even the primary champions of the Singularity are not true believers: if you’d like to see Vernor Vinge, Charlie, Aleister Reynolds and me dismantle its mythological structure, _watch this video_ (http://www.kschroeder.com/weblog/video-of-the-boskone-singularity-panel) .) However since it’s just one vision of the future, it is wise to have others. One that I have been working on is something I call the Rewilding. The Rewilding isn’t so much a scenario as it’s an alternative package of assumptions. For instance, the name: the original meaning of the word ‘wild’ was ‘self-willed.’ So, this is a set of ideas about a world that is self-willed, rather than willed by agencies (i.e. intelligences whether mortal, artificial, or divine). I gave a little introductory talk about it at OSCON a couple of years ago, and you can find that _here_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb7pkohj6wE) . The deep logic of the Singularity is that intelligence (or, for many people, consciousness) has a magical transformative power; the even deeper mythos under that notion is the idea of agency—that the dew on the morning grass must be painted there by fairies; that the regular orbits of the planets must be ordained by God; or that the design we see in Nature is the result of a Designer. In its most refined, philosophical form, the Singularity imagines the creation by Man of a semi-divine Designer that renders a transcendent and unknowable future. The Rewilding is a vision of radical removal of agency from the world: the flowers bedew themselves, nobody ordered the motion of the planets, not even the mysterious agency known as Scientific Law; evolution is design without a designer, computing is thought without a thinker, and there is no mathematical reality separate from the physical world. In the Rewilding, civilization advances by systematically blurring or even erasing the border between the artificial and the natural; the more efficient an artificial system is, the more it resembles (or even is) a natural one. That is, our surroundings becomes increasingly wild (self-willed) rather than having to be willed by us. Agency, so long marching forward, begins to retreat. The deep logic of this radically Copernican view is that intelligence (agency) is not a magically transformative power that stands outside nature and ordains how it should move; as I’ve suggested since my 2002 novel _Permanence_ (http://www.kschroeder.com/my-books/permanence) , intelligence is no more than what we mean when we say, ‘look, that thing is acting intelligently. ’ The more you try to pin down what intelligence is, the more elusive it becomes, and this is because, as Brian Cantwell Smith has argued _in great detail_ (http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=8167) , there is no actual difference between computing and other forms of activity. To put it another way, agency is an illusion. Mind is always embodied, and everything that we think is transcendent, is actually part of some embodied and evolved strategy. Most importantly, the Rewilding is a critique of the notion that intelligence and computation are equivalent. These ideas are intended to mesh together and reinforce one another in the same way that the notions of geometric growth, the evidence of Moore’s Law, and computing theory reinforce one another in the paradigm of the Singularity. For instance, to get to the Rewilding, a good SF writer (or futurist) need only posit that the following are true: * _Radical embodied cognitive science,_ (http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11991) and the Extended Mind theories of Clarke et al.; * Science itself is an instance of _distributed cognition_ (http://files.meetup.com/410989/DistributedCognition.pdf) in which physical measuring instruments participate in the actual activity of thinking about the natural world; * The account of mathematics that precludes the possibility of a separate mathematical reality, as described in _Where Mathematics Comes From;_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Mathematics_Comes_From) * _Ecological design_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_design) (i.e. methods such as biomimicry and systems-thinking solutions such as ecosystem services) becomes the preferred development paradigm for our civilization; * Brian Cantwell Smith’s vast theoretical argument that computing is not an activity distinct enough to warrant its own theory; * My revision of Clarke’s Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Nature; * _Universal Selection Theory’s_ (http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/g-cziko/wm/) implication that all problem-solving strategies ultimately reduce to variations on natural selection. What all of these lines of thought add up to is the assertion that no amount of intelligence can act as the primary driver of change in our world. As I’ve proposed in my forthcoming novel Ashes of Candesce, consciousness is the passenger, and values are the driver; and values are ultimately determined by our physical form. Of course, all of these ideas could be wrong; it’s not my job to determine that. The point of this exercise is to bring together a coherent set of theories and perspectives that together constitute a broad-enough worldview to make a good second paradigm for the future—one worthy of being placed next to the Singularity in our planning toolkit. This second perspective allows us to avoid the complacency of the ‘default future’ and start triangulating on the future. There’s no reason to stop here. Ideally, I’d like to see a whole spectrum of paradigmatic scenarios of the future. The more we have, the better our advance planning for what will inevitably turn out to be a new world of surprises. ____________________________________ (via _Instapaper_ (http://www.instapaper.com/) ) Sent from my iPhone -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: _http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism_ (http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism) Radical Centrism website and blog: _http://RadicalCentrism.org_ (http://radicalcentrism.org/) -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
