An addendum on Hanson’s grabby aliens

Originally published on Language and Philosophy, July 12, 2022

An addendum on Hanson’s grabby aliens:

If we were to assume that all of human futures are determined by those elements of human nature that have persisted through history, we might conclude that we will continue to expand our influence on nature, organize it, harness it etc. This seems to be the assumption Hanson makes in predicting that aliens with advanced technology will be grabby — they will succeed by Darwinian selection over their environment, dominating it, organizing it, harnessing it just as we have in our Darwinian selection here. Darwinian libertarianism is Hanson’s idee fixe which he applies to everything. But as David Deutsch likes to say, not without some (though not entire) justification, we can’t predict the technology of the future. More important, technological advances have been the great game changers in human history. They are changes in our relationship with our environment, and in our selection. Reliance on physical environment, like reliance on slaves, will last only as long as no technology replaces it as fossil fuels and machines have been replacing slavery. Besides, humans, unlike most organisms, do not have as our essential environment something in non human nature. The essential environment of humans is other humans, and that relationship is mediated through language, a symbol system denoting information, not bits of physical nature.

A social species depends on cooperation more than competition. Consider that language is itself a form of cooperation and it is by far a away the most important, pervasively transformative technology we’ve ever acquired, to such an extent that it compensates for shocking downsides among which is our credulousness. For an informationally dependent social species it would be natural for the future technology to develop as informational and representational, not physical hardware. The future is likely to be one of seeking information in symbolic and non symbolic forms and organizing those with efficient means that don’t require disturbing anything at all. It seems pretty easy to predict that the future would be knowing, seeing, understanding, and not doing, moving, destroying or transforming anything but ourselves. Why travel with our burdensome bodies that require replenishment and produce waste, when we can travel through information, — like virtual reality but far more sophisticated and comprehensive. Hardware is just cumbersome, a clumsy start to a universe that began with physics instead of symbols. And lucky too, since without physical things there’d be little to symbolize, no one to symbolize and no one to understand them. 

You can see this move towards information already in the metaverse. Virtual reality already has advantages over physical travel, and we’re only at the beginning of its development. Several months after scoping out the streetview of a city I hadn’t actually visited — observing carefully the bus stops and the people waiting there, the stores and restaurants and the people sitting at the street cafes, the view from the city’s heights, the waterfront scenery — in talking on the phone to a resident there I mistakenly recalled that I’d been there. I could not for the life of me tell whether I’d actually been there or not, the memories were so vivid, normal and memory-lifelike.

That’s the easiest explanation for the Fermi paradox. Aliens will not travel and will generate little effort. Information is lightweight and efficient. We can’t find them because they’re all at home quietly sitting on the couch experiencing information pure. If they want to exercise, if they’re still stuck in bodies, they can bring out their retro tech and ride a bike. 

The new libertarian, overcome by bias

Originally published on Language and Philosophy, July 12, 2022

If Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is the core text that defines libertarianism, then today’s libertarian isn’t libertarian. The argument against government intervention today is as much a defense of possession — property and the unlimited acquisition of property — as it is an argument that markets are more efficient than legislation. And the fiercest argument over legislative meddling is about wealth distribution — appropriating property. Possession again. Opposing taxation has become the central principle of the new libertarian, whether because it is an easy electoral issue, or because Americans have lost trust in their government or become remote from it, or simply fail to understand their government, what it does and gives them or fails to give them and for what reasons, yet they understand the tax bill well enough. Taxation has become the issue to argue against, and freedom, easily embraced by American mythology since America’s childhood and the childhood of Americans, is the stronghold of defense against the IRS.

This defining of libertarianism by what it opposes changes the focus of libertarianism, since the opposition today is not what opposed it when Adam Smith wrote. The role of legislation in wealth redistribution from rich to poor was not his concern. It was government intervention in favor of local commerce, not the poor, that troubled him most. The book is mostly a defense of free trade, not a defense of the rich. He has nothing good to say about the property-rich, and only scathing criticism of their role in the economy. He thinks they produce little, they remove potentially productive labor from the labor force for the sake of having servants who, like the rich themselves, produce little but the personal conveniences of the rich and only the rich, not for the wealth of the nation.

Libertarianism, in other words, has fallen victim to our current cultural polarization in which one side wants the government to intervene in a woman’s own body and choice of pronoun and the books her children may have access to as long as no tax funds are involved, and the wealthy deserve to be defended, defending wealth, deploring wealth redistribution, defending the right to bear arms and deploring the right to personal privacy, defending religion and the death penalty, deploring immigrants and people of color — the whole inconsistent constellation of so-called conservatism, opposed by those who defend wealth redistribution, deplore gun ownership and insist we do something to prevent climate change even though we manifestly can’t (upcoming post on Fool’s Errand Attachment), defend free speech but censor select speech, defend scientific pronouncements from liberal establishments but never criticize them scientifically — the whole inconsistent constellation of current so-called liberalism.

Even the often brilliant and innovative libertarian Robin Hanson falls victim to this polarization. In his pervasive Social Darwinism he deplores encouraging the weak but ignores the weakness of the wealthy. Privilege is conveniently exempted from his Social Darwinism. Privilege weakens as much as struggle strengthens, although it’s worth knowing that competitive struggles will take advantage of any means to win, and the results can be devastating to the society as a whole. It’s easy to forget that the unit of selection is not the individual but the gene or species. A selection for an individual can be destructive to the future of the collective. Monopoly is one such means of success for an individual. Also the use of influence to obtain legislative favors, another observation of Smith’s that greatly troubled him. To prevent such influence would require regulation, but again, today’s libertarian is anti-regulation. They’re just pro-make-money, not at all a Smith interest.

Smith prioritized production, not possession. It’s wealth of nations, not wealth of individuals. Smith objects to gov’t intervention in markets that curtail production. It’s all about the benefits of free trade, especially across borders. What would he have thought about taxing as wealth distribution? He doesn’t say.

In his Age of EM, Hanson warns that the middle classes have a low fertility rate compared with criminals. He describes this with the word “maladaptive” — a term of art in genetics. Reading between the lines in the context of his Darwinism, he’s implying that criminal genes are proliferating and successful genes are not. The enthymeme here is the assumption that becoming middle class is an effect of genes, and criminal behavior is also genetic. I would be surprised if either were true. Using his own social Darwinism, I’d expect the criminal to be smart, risky, fast and aware, the average middle class member more security-seeking, more risk-averse, less aggressive and more dependent on the state, on law, on protection from above. Exceptions will abound, but I’d expect the causes of criminality in a class society would be differences of socio-economic status, upbringing, education, cultural values, and opportunities far more than genes, as if there could be a gene for criminality. And let’s not forget the illegal and legal criminality in the corporate world. 

Hanson is a strange hybrid of fox and hedgehog. He has one theory to explain everything, but he has the great talent of finding surprising details. But they are always consistent with his one narrow idee fixe, social Darwinism.

So he points out that whenever we try to improve ourselves, we choose inequality. This is a bit loaded, since taking it as a Kantian categorical, it just means all boats will rise. But there’s no mention of which kinds of inequalities might be be costly with little benefit compared with inequalities that provide great benefits to all, and few downsides. Nor does he take into account the value of the incentive for the improvement. It matters: do you want doctors who seek wealth or doctors who are genuinely interested in medicine or helping the ailing? Surely these incentives should be on the table for discussion, not merely the fact that we all at some point want to improve regardless how unequal that makes us.

Finally, don’t forget that natural selection does not ensure that any species of the moment will not go extinct. Extinction is very much a part of the process. What might make a species successful in one environment may be disastrous in another. Uncurated ecologies lose species, and weeds will thrive. If our essential necessary environment is each other, then it’s up to us to learn how to live with each other, and that includes dealing with our inequalities. If that means eliminating wealth, well, the Smith of Wealth of Nations would applaud. What’s wrong with the goal of rising to the level of competence but not beyond?

Privilege is the dark secret of the libertarian think tanker. Every libertarian should deplore it, but the think tankers protect it. Privilege, socially supported, is not Darwinian success, any more than a monopoly is a free market efficiency.

I’d like to see an educational program that will separate the elite from the economically privileged. Our current private education system replicates inequalities by syphoning the privileged into positions of power through their elite educations. What we need are educated elites without privilege. 

The narcissism of rights, freedom, equality

Originally published on Language and Philosophy, July 12, 2022

Freedom, equality and individual rights are not three distinct values. They entail one another — can’t have one without the other. That raises the question, is one of them the goal, the others just necessary conditions, or is there an underlying motivation driving the whole package? Here’s one way to think about these:

Equality is a necessary condition for individual freedom. If someone can wield greater power than you, then you can’t be entirely free.

In a world of inequalities, socially enforced individual rights are a necessary condition for individual freedom. The collective — the law — will ensure the equality of rights regardless of any other socio-economic inequalities.

So if we want freedom, say, to own what we want, we’ll have to accept some inequalities, and in our world of inequalities, equal rights will be necessary for freedom, everybody compromising a bit to maintain a fair distribution of as much freedom as possible. Equality, rights, fairness and freedom are a single package. Can’t have one with out the others and in particular, equality and rights are the necessary conditions for freedom, which implies that freedom is the motivation for the whole package. But why do we want freedom?

Jon Haidt’s answer here is that we in the West are narcissists. We want the freedom to pursue consumption and sex and willfulness, and the deal we’ve made with the collective is to respect other consumers of willfulness as long as they don’t interfere with our desires. The whole edifice of liberal democracy, freedom, equality and rights, is just a bargain each of us contracts with the collective so I can do whatever I want regardless of someone else’s sensibilities, as long as I don’t encroach on anyone else’s freedoms. 

He also thinks that this narcissism has turned sick. Our protection of the individual has given us a society of identities without any civic or collective anchor. Identity is all self-aggrandizing showing off. Social media showing off has turned identity toxic. 

Here’s a comic (imagine the drawings)

Jon Haidt: Americans have been so coddled that they can’t function. Social media is killing them. They’re suicidal. We need to help them!

Robin Hanson: “Help them”? You mean coddle them more? You’re overcome with your liberal bias. What we need is not to help them at all. If they kill themselves the next generation will be better selected to their social media destiny.

Haidt: Wait, who’s “we”? And what’s this destiny?

Hanson: We, me, of course. What are you thinking? Why think about someone else, silly liberal? As for destiny, if social media exists, it must be an optimal selection. That’s destiny.

Haidt: So’s extinction.

[Final frame, empty desert landscape.]

Selection does not guarantee against extinction. Whole species go extinct all the time. Besides, not every regulation is limiting. Hanson underestimates human spirit and flexibility. Some regulations encourage growth. Pruning. Art forms. Irrigation. Should I stop? A world of weeds produces — … a lot of stifling weeds and few fruit.