The ethical issue: Does it scale?

apokrisis

When the wealthy venture capitalist sits down with the bright young tech entrepreneur, the only question is "does it scale?". Is this product or service going to go viral. Can my tiny investment reap exponential rewards?

This is an extreme mindset – one very much of today. It could be opposed to its alternative. Not exponential growth but just an expectation of maintaining the world as it has always existed. A venture only needs to be able to cover its own costs and stay in some steady state equilibrium "forever". A no growth society where profit or surplus is limited to that which maintains the existing fabric of life.

So these are the bounding extremes of a society in terms of growth curves. Exponential or flat. At least this can be our start to a more complex discussion. The question of does it scale actually speaks to the more subtle thing of powerlaw growth. A log/log curve which is in fact the "flat balance" of a pair of exponentials. Things go viral because they pair some form of exponential increase with some form of exponential decrease.

Like in semiconductors and their Moore's law growth. More chip for less price as the industry's "forever" promise. A flat balance of two curves, each causally driving the other. The eternalised doubling and halving created by the "virtuous" circle of being able to fit more logic circuits into less physical space.

Tech ventures hitch their star to this fact. Information is always going to be cheaper in the future. And come up with the business proposition that can scale, the market return is equally infinite. If everyone wants to buy, then unit cost can go to zero as consumer take up becomes unlimited.

So much for the tech parallels. Now for the practical political and moral issues. We do live in the exponentialised world that a powerlaw growth describes. But is it actually balanced as a virtuous win-win circle?

For example, are all our machines and practices set up in a way that can double our surpluses while halving our costs? Are we riding the green tech curve where we can use exponentially more energy consuming devices and services as they are also becoming exponentially more efficient and less energy consuming? Where we can – in Smil's words – harvest the biosphere, our planetary ecosystem, at an exponentially increasing rate because there is also exponentially more biosphere coming down the line to be harvested in the future?

The answer is obvious. Party will be over by 2040. But still, we can pretend we face two scenarios when it comes to the near future. And then get down to how each is a useful test of the more general principle that political or moral ideas – as philosophies which hope to organise societies – must have virality. They must identify some virtuous feedback loop – some ethical algorithm – that is the win-win trajectory of growth, which itself is about a choice of some rate between a no-growth maintenance state and an unbridled exponential and pointed to infinity rate.

So that is the challenge. If you agree that the world is into its new era needing a new ethics, a new politics, then what is the algorithm that scales? What key idea drives the idea into every mind?

We have come out of a certain post-WW2 period of US policed "world peace and prosperity". A mindset built around humanism, democracy, safe seas, free trade and globalised political institutions. But a US dollar sovereignty and light constraints on environmental degradation.

There is now a politics/ethics required as the blueprint either to invest in Model A – the largely business as usual story of the tech world's green hope of exponentialising the shrinking of the global carbon footprint and resource consumption in a way that can sustain an exponentialising of whatever it is we actually value in terms of goods, services and even just libertarian freedoms.

Does Model A have its political algorithm. Is that what Wokeism is? Or is that not the USP as the recent Pax Americana period delivered all the personal autonomy we would ever be energetically and environmentally able to afford, so the algorithm has to be one strong enough to force society onto whatever is its sustainable green tech track?

Then there is the Model B question. It does all does go quite quickly to shit by 2040. What is the meme to be spreading to prepare for a planet that is crashing and burning? How do we brand that as a suitably universalising social response that can be bought across the entire globe as it by then entropically exists?

Is Model B the Mad Max solution, the bug-out survivalist with guns solution, the home garden and community resilience solution? Or does politics/ethics become no longer the grand totalising project of the Enlightenment and break up once again into its many tiny tribal and geographic identities? Do we need to look around to our own small corner of the world and figure out what will emerge as the way our bit of the greater social and economic collapse could play out? A hard conversation, but pragmatically useful to have well in advance.

So this is a thread about writing some slogan that at least seems to capture the old systems wisdom that societies are win-win balances that can at least maintain their own fabric, and from there can start to form higher aspirations of what "growth" would look like in meaningful human terms.

We've had the Biblical golden rule of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. We've had Marx's "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". Ways of organising the world did emerge from these simple algorithms. A basic dialectically-expressed equilbrium equation became a foundational idea infecting many minds.

A philosopher would be someone able to come up with such a seed of universalising growth. A good meme merchant. In a world now in fact moving at the exponentially compounding rate of a "forever" 3 per cent GDP target, what would be a political/ethical idea powerful enough to serve as the central social organisation principle for either Model A or Model B situations?

The answer is hardly expected. Our current reality is just too impossible. But I thought I would lay out the ground for how things work in the real world given @Moliere's recent proddings on the is/ought non-issue and his promotion of Anarcho-Marxism as some kind of brew based on the universalising of "amiability". A politics with as yet no details – no driving algorithm that scales – as far as I can see.

And everyone ought to be putting their own current ethics/politics to the same stern test in terms of how they stack up against either/both Model A and Model B social futures. This isn't a time to be fluffing about. :grin:

Wayfarer

It could be opposed to its alternative. Not exponential growth but just an expectation of maintaining the world as it has always existed. — apokrisis

I wonder if an alternative has ever really been articulated. A few years back I did some cursory reading of books like Prosperity Without Growth and The Value of Nothing, among others. I can see the rationale, but I'm also very dubious of green-left politics. (I went to a solitary Australian Greens party meeting about 15 years ago, which I found depressingly awful.)

But in any case, isn't the root problem the underlying idea of ever-increasing 'economic growth'? And that pretty well defines liberal capitalism. I don't know if anyone outside the sustainability movement really takes it seriously, and, apart from the Greens, who stands for that in politics?

And what are the alternatives? I've never seen Marxism as a credible alternative, considering the disasters of the USSR and the Cultural Revolution. I said about 20 years ago, in a workshop setting, that what the world really needs is an alternative to capitalism that isn't communism. But I don't know if there really is any such thing. (Thomas Piketty, anyone? Haven't read it, myself.)

As is well-known, the emerging middle classes of the developing world simpy can't consume like those in the developed nations - there ain't enough to go around. Beef production, for instance, is massively expensive in terms of environmental and resource costs, and the several billion citizens of emerging countries won't be able to consume beef like the West has. Earth Overshoot Day is moving closer to Jan 1 every year (this year it's 1 August :yikes:)

On the other hand, and maybe belatedly, there is a huge global effort towards decarbonisation. Maybe too little and too late, but it's something. Maybe we need an Al Gore for alternative economics. God knows there are those who are trying, but they don't seem to have much of a profile.

apokrisis

but I'm also very dubious of green-left politics ... ever-increasing 'economic growth' pretty well defines liberal capitalism ... i've never seen Marxism as a credible alternative ... Maybe we need an Al Gore for alternative economics. — Wayfarer

OK. That sketches out the failures of the past. None of which were actually failures as all were ideas that scaled in the sense of grabbing some sizeable audience of believers. Can you identify some common thread in that history. What did they all fail to do?

Liberal capitalism at least gained the balance of power long enough to keep the economic growth growing. It delivered on that, even if its equation had the unsaid part about ever-increasing environmental degradation.

But this is about a slogan for the future.

As a data point, the Aussie 2019 election had its slogans like "A fair go for Australians", "Building our economy, securing our future", "Make Australia great", "The guts to say what you're thinking" and even "Making sure South Australia always comes first." :gasp:

The Greens' had the suitably anodyne: "A future for all of us."

So this can be done. Memes can be constructed in the hope of some ethical/political promise being made at least reasonably clear enough that enough voters would want to hold your party to them. An attitude can catch on. Given voters who want to play.

God knows there are those who are trying, but they don't seem to have much of a profile. — Wayfarer

Yep, the point of this thread is to focus answers to the level of a compelling elevator pitch. Your audience has a very limited tolerance for either philosophical complexity or political vagueness.

You sketched out some past experience, some real world context. Is there really nothing you can put forward as a slogan that works both for yourself in the idealistic sense and could also work for "us all" in a realistic sense?

Wayfarer

↪apokrisis

‘The future you impoverish may be your own’?

One of the catchy titles on John Michael Greer’s site is ‘Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush’.

apokrisis

‘Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush’. — Wayfarer

Comedy plays well. But as moral philosophy, we would soon have the anti-natalists hammering on the door. And as lived experience in the moneyed world, our children aren't having children. They are shifting to lifestyles less consumption-celebrating.

So degrowth has entered the chat. It's ethical and political outlines might be less hazy the more we boomers inquire into it. :smile:

However remember my argument is that the slogan would work in the pragmatic sense of putting folk in mind of some win-win complementary balance. Draw attention to the "other" of their own preference as also needing to be scaled to match.

As in "do unto others", or "to each according".

The future you impoverish may be your own’? — Wayfarer

Better because it focuses attention on to the collective future. Certainly counts as getting somewhere here.

Wayfarer

And as lived experience in the moneyed world, our children aren't having children. — apokrisis

It's said that the current GenX/Y are the first to experience a less affluent lifestyle than their parents. And in my family's case it is true, sadly. Younger son with two kids and another coming are consigned to the brutal rental market due to the cost of real estate here. Maybe the affluent days are on the wane.

But then, what philosopher under-writes a 'no-growth' economic policy? How to incentivize that, when so much of the economy is geared around greater wealth as the sole yardstick of progress?

Lionino

Moore's law, as is the case with almost all these meme "laws" that people learn about from wiki as fun facts, is not a law at all — and never was.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-moores-law-in-action-1971-2019/

apokrisis

↪Lionino

It is a law of economics, not physics, of course. So not so much a law but a business projection startling enough to make folk wake up to what scaling is about.

I had fun briefings on the topic at Intel’s Portland fab in the mid-1980s, as well as other manufacturers. Gene Amdahl for instance had his own law that predicted the demise of mainframes because they wouldn’t scale. IBM was starting to bolt together CPUs and Amdahl reckoned diminishing returns would kick in after six or seven units.

So scaleability was a hot topic at that time. Another example were the military guys making dedicated hardware for the subs and AWACs. It was a rude shock when they realised that Intel microprocessors had just changed their world and put them out of business. Bespoke doesn’t scale and off the shelf does.

Fire Ologist

Make existence great again. MEGA

I’m working on it..

T Clark

This is an extreme mindset – one very much of today. It could be opposed to its alternative. Not exponential growth but just an expectation of maintaining the world as it has always existed. — apokrisis

Thanks for this thread. Reading in through, I thought of my work history, the companies I have worked for. During those 50 years, I worked for a number of employers, including two wonderful companies - a bookseller and an environmental engineering company. They both started out small with charismatic founders and a close-knit group of his co-founders and then grew to medium-sized companies with about 10 branches and maybe 500 employees each. For both, that was around the point where I jointed the company. Skipping ahead - the bookseller expanded it's number of stores rapidly based on it's strong success. It did not manage the change to a larger company well and then crashed and went out of business. The engineering company grew more slowly and carefully. It opened new offices with managers already working for the company or carefully chosen outsiders. The company treated it's employees well and made sure different offices cooperated with each other rather than competed. But the company was built on the understanding that those there from the beginning who contributed to the start-up would be able to cash out at some point. Eventually that lead to involvement of venture capitalists and finally sale to a large, nation-wide engineering firm.

What's my point? I guess it's that somebody (everybody?) believes that you have to grow to survive.

The answer is obvious. Party will be over by 2040. — apokrisis

Great video. If Murphy is right, growth will be over by around 2040 no matter what we do. We'll have to figure out a way to reach a non-exponential equilibrium, which I guess is the point of your OP. So I'm not really sure if it's an ethical issue at all, rather a logistical one. The ethics comes in when we try to decide how to spread the pain around.

I did have a few questions about his presentation. He didn't really talk about possible changes in energy use per capita. Did he make his calculations based on the assumption that use per capita will not change? Also, did he take issues of capacity into account? Did he assume there would be no capacity issues? As Murphy makes clear, his projections are based on no major changes in the most significant demographic and technological factors. That means it doesn't consider possible changes associated with global warming. None of this is intended as criticism.

Just curiosity, on the graph shown at about 8:30, it shows a dramatic drop in food per capita in the coming years. What would cause that and what does it mean? Mass starvation?

that is the win-win trajectory of growth, which itself is about a choice of some rate between a no-growth maintenance state and an unbridled exponential and pointed to infinity rate.

So that is the challenge. If you agree that the world is into its new era needing a new ethics, a new politics, then what is the algorithm that scales? — apokrisis

As you note, if Murphy and the demographers are right, that isn't a real choice at all. No growth is coming whether we like it or not. How will we handle it? I think the political situation here in the US gives us a good idea how at least one large country will handle it - badly.

We have come out of a certain post-WW2 period of US policed "world peace and prosperity". A mindset built around humanism, democracy, safe seas, free trade and globalised political institutions. But a US dollar sovereignty and light constraints on environmental degradation. — apokrisis

Given that the US isn't likely to handle this all that well, isn't continued US hegemony an obstacle to solving the problem rather than a help?

Then there is the Model B question. It does all does go quite quickly to shit by 2040. What is the meme to be spreading to prepare for a planet that is crashing and burning? How do we brand that as a suitably universalising social response that can be bought across the entire globe as it by then entropically exists? — apokrisis

I can't imagine an answer to this question. Has any human group with more than 1,000 people ever done something like that before, especially without new land to expand into. I'm really afraid for my children.

Possible slogans:

Thank god I'll be dead by 2050
Let's all build an underground bunker in Hawaii with Zuckerberg.

That's all I got.

apokrisis

What's my point? I guess it's that somebody (everybody?) believes that you have to grow to survive. — T Clark

You have to grow enough to just to stand still as an organism. So as a going concern, an organism has to earn a margin on its entropifying sufficient to maintain the fabric of its body and then replace itself with reproduction of the next generation of owners. From there, in good times the bacteria can grow exponentially to fill their Petrie dish, or find that they are born into bad times where the dish is full to its brim and drastic degrowth follows.

Tribes who live by foraging learn restraint so as to coexist with their environments. It can be done. But does it scale?

So I'm not really sure if it's an ethical issue at all, rather a logistical one. The ethics comes in when we try to decide how to spread the pain around. — T Clark

The point of the OP is that the philosophically inclined like to preach about ideal societies and what they would look like. A world where technology fixes all problems. A world where we share and share alike. Or whatever.

We now have a crunch coming - scenarios A and B. Unless you think the current global politics has got everything under good control, it is time to be outlining the politics to deal with this imminent future.

And to work, any new political/ethical philosophy will have to scale. It has to appeal because it is plainly a win-win.

Does any such marvel exist?

Just curiosity, on the graph shown at about 8:30, it shows a dramatic drop in food per capita in the coming years. What would cause that and what does it mean? Mass starvation? — T Clark

Murphy is using the latest Limits to Growth data.

Resources can be renewable, like agricultural soils, or nonrenew- able, like the world’s oil resources. Both have their limits. The most obvious limit on food production is land. Millions of acres of cultivated land are being degraded by processes such as soil erosion and salinization, while the cultivated area remains roughly constant. Higher yields have compensated somewhat for this loss, but yields cannot be expected to increase indefinitely.

Per capita grain production peaked in 1985 and has been trending down slowly ever since. Exponential growth has moved the world from land abundance to land scarcity. Within the last 35 years, the limits, especially of areas with the best soils, have been approached.

Another limit to food production is water. In many countries, both developing and developed, current water use is often not sustain- able. In an increasing number of the world’s watersheds, limits have already been reached.

More data…

Feeding 10 billion people sustainably by 2050, then, requires closing three gaps:

A 56 percent food gap between crop calories produced in 2010 and those needed in 2050 under “business as usual” growth;
A 593 million-hectare land gap (an area nearly twice the size of India) between global agricultural land area in 2010 and expected agricultural expansion by 2050; and
An 11-gigaton GHG mitigation gap between expected agricultural emissions in 2050 and the target level needed to hold global warming below 2oC (3.6°F), the level necessary for preventing the worst climate impacts.

https://www.wri.org/insights/how-sustainably-feed-10-billion-people-2050-21-charts

I think the political situation here in the US gives us a good idea how at least one large country will handle it - badly. — T Clark

OK, we are discussing the Model B future. For sure this is the politics and ethics of starvation and resource scrambling. You can see folk consciously or unconsciously sliding into the required mentality when billions are going under around the globe.

The US is in a happyish position geostrategically. It has the demographics, the geography, the resource wealth, to begin closing in on its own corner of the world and letting the rest of the planet crash as it likes. This retreat from being the sponsor of the current global trade world order had already begun under Trump and Biden only made it quieter and more organised.

If you know Africa and Asia are screwed, much of Europe too, then the plan would rationally become get selfish, let the degrowth and decarbonisation happen to 6 billion others, problem solved.

The MAGA solution. It scales. Are its adherents irrational or just very cunning and forward looking. No matter who is next elected president, will the infrastructure investment in that new world order continue to be made? Fracking, internment camps, trade deals to draw Canada and Mexico in tight, wind farms and solar panels, geoengineering to fix the climate over chosen areas.

Given that the US isn't likely to handle this all that well, isn't continued US hegemony an obstacle to solving the problem rather than a help? — T Clark

But which horse is the US backing? Saviour by green tech or battening down the hatches for when it gets rough for everyone else and the job of the navy is to sink the refugee ships?

Rural America may be looking at its big useless cities and quietly making the same hard calculations.

Humans have to organise collectively to survive. That requires politics and ethics. Investments are already being made in terms of Model A and Model B futures. The mindset fostered in the free trade/world peace era is no longer going to be fit for purpose under Model B. And even Model A is a degrowth story as green tech way undelivers on the tech bro hype.

Possible slogans:
Thank god I'll be dead by 2050
Let's all build an underground bunker in Hawaii with Zuckerberg. — T Clark

:razz:

Truly the Boomers slogan, the first.

And if you are building your billionaire bunker somewhere remote, you will need to get onside with the natives. Otherwise we will be coming for you. We know where you live.

A serious point is that if world order breaks down, then every remaining pocket of humanity will need its own politics/ethics suited to its own Mad Max location. Philosophical inventiveness and understanding of rapid morality scaling will be a critical community resource.

This has been demonstrated around the world where what is a natural disaster that tips a low resilience and under resourced community into decades of chaos can be something that instead pushes a wealthy and connected community into a positive step up.

In moral philosophy, we have free choices apparently. Now is a good time to look around and see how things are liable to pan out in your own small corner of the world.

apokrisis

Saviour by green tech or battening down the hatches for when it gets rough for everyone else and the job of the navy is to sink the refugee ships? — apokrisis

What was I even thinking. Ukraine shows that cheap drones would quickly put paid to inbound refugee ships. Citizen militias could crowd fund their own private enterprise solutions. The US Navy wouldn't even have to consider its ethical position on this new mission.

Smart ideas do scale. Moral scruples can also do so in the good times, and be swapped out just as fast when the community mood changes.

Moliere

After graduating with my chemistry degree something that dawned on me was how we already have every scientific bit of technology we need to address climate change. The problem isn't a matter of scientific knowledge, but political ability: At present the social organizations we have to deal with collective problems are unable to come to a global solution to a global problem.

So the answer to does it scale is: No. None of them scale across the globe. That's the problem to be worked upon: How to build ~~social~~ global social organizations that are able to address these major problems without killing each other along the way?
***

Here what are we able to do, though? I'd say all we have the power to do here is share ideas. Creativity is what's needed, and creative thought is fostered by collective trust and friendship. If we want to win and prove that we're the idea-maker then we'll compete and keep to ourselves and make sure we say nothing until we have our name on it and can say "See! I am the creator of this idea!": But that's exactly the problem. To even make a science of the economy we'd have to agree upon a unit, and have access to financial records of private institutions, which we don't. We'd have to have political control over the economy, and political influence in the first place.

The problem with coming up with different scenarios is that it doesn't matter which we choose since the powers that be will do what they do regardless of our reasonings.

This gets back to the reality of doing politics: There's plenty of propaganda to go about (and in fact I think that's a separate but related problem). But what politics is about is about building relationships with one another. The politicians job is to talk because talking is how we build relationships. And to do that you need trust, which in turn is only earned by being trustworthy, forthright, and caring.

But these aren't programs. These are character traits -- that is, ethical virtues.

For the ideas of anarchy and marxism, though, I point to the obvious with Marxism at marxists.org, and the ironically canonical anarchist faq. -- the important part to me here is that these are just ideas that I'm working through and from. I'm not advocating as much as exploring the ideas, because that's what this space is for, though I also want to be honest in saying hey, duh, I'm attracted to these ideas because I see possible solutions in them to the modern world.

And what I like about pairing these ideas is it gives both a critical problem -- the Marxism -- and a different solution than Marxism-Leninism -- organizing along anarchist lines. Further the "anarchy" makes it to where it's not something I'm going to cook up all on my own: I'm going to explore and share and hope we can come up with something that works, because that's all that's ever worked to address collective problems before anyways.

apokrisis

If we want to win and prove that we're the idea-maker then we'll compete and keep to ourselves and make sure we say nothing until we have our name on it and can say "See! I am the creator of this idea!" — Moliere

Yep. So that is what I'm talking about as the tech entrepreneur model. And it became the social entrepreneur model about 20 years ago. It was supposed to be the politics of the Millennial generation.

You start small and dirty and give your idea away. Apps that can do good are set free on the world to see if they will go viral and scale.

Tech makes this form of politics or radicalisation near enough costless enough that there only has to be a micro-return to earn a fortune. But as your venture capital backers also understand, the goal is to lock-in customers to your unique solution and so become the monopoly service. That's when you retire to your billionaire yacht and island.

So politics through the tech entrepreneur route is now a well understood and tested thing. It has done a lot of good but now has also become rather corrupted. The US is full of charitable endeavours that are actually wealth shelters. And yesterday's millennial social entrepreneurs are now today's Tik-Tok influencers.

Moral philosophy or progressive politics has to face these realities as modern hurdles to overcome. You can scale up a good idea to educate and water a village in Africa, or round up the plastic debris floating in the Pacific ocean, but then the wider world may be scaling up something else – like a crushing Woke vs Maga social division.

The problem with coming up with different scenarios is that it doesn't matter which we choose since the powers that be will do what they do regardless of our reasonings. — Moliere

I think you don't understand the power of an organised crowd. Leaders shit their pants if they see an actual mob coming for them. The job is too look tough and appease.

That is why longterm change is killed by short-term electoral preference. Any radical measure gets watered down as soon as it is seen not to fly with the central 5% of swing voters.

what I like about pairing these ideas is it gives both a critical problem -- the Marxism -- and a different solution than Marxism-Leninism -- organizing along anarchist lines. — Moliere

Exactly. A dialectical analysis to discover the oppositions that can then become what the ethical algorithm balances.

So Marx vs Bakunin can be seen in systems terms as networks vs hierarchies, or bottom-up construction vs top-down constraint. The systems solution is to point out that hierarchies are just networks of networks – society as a scalefree realm of interest groups or institutions freely self-organising within a collective cultural and economic frame.

Social democracy would say it has already delivered that. Anarcho-Marxism would be reinventing this wheel in terms of combining some proper definition of a good community life tied to a economy that can deliver over the long-run.

But now we are into the accelerationism of the tech bro world coupled to the stagnation of the neo-liberal bust. So you are talking about 1800s politics that became the best of the 1900s' solutions and now we are well into the arriving crisis of the 2000s.

That is why I prefer to apply systems science to the task. It is the one that includes ecology and the realities of thermodynamics in its kitset of intellectual tools. The "is" to balance the "ought".

Moliere

↪apokrisis

Preference is good in my opinion. Creative people usually have all kinds of preferences, and its in working together I've noticed that interesting things result.

Also, I just like ideas, I don't care when they were made -- I don't even care if the idea is true. Since we don't really know what will work to solve our problems I like to keep an open mind and simply try things out to see where they go. It's not like I really know what I'm talking about anyways (as the scary part of that is: I'm pretty sure no one does. We're strapped to a rocket without knowing where it's going, when it will stop, or how to control it)

Moliere

Also, on Propaganda:

I understand its necessity, but I like to imagine a world without it. In order to do so, though, there'd have to be some agreed upon definition of propaganda which could possibly serve as a basis for law. I mention it as separate because I believe the liberal state is fully capable of combating propaganda. Jason Stanley's How Propaganda Works I read recently that I'd recommend to anyone interested in the topic. (I also read Bernays Propaganda, but I don't recommend it so much because it's basically just propaganda for propaganda)

So in criticizing liberal theory I don't mean to say it's all bad either, and I see possible solutions within the institutions we have.

Moliere

Also, on philosophy: I think of it more of an anti-propaganda. Rather than giving easy answers to difficult questions it raises difficult questions without answers. Rather than attaching emotions to particular actions it questions emotions at every turn (to a point that's a bit much, at times).

So, in a way, teaching philosophy and doing philosophy is an anti-propaganda, and thereby useful, insofar that we think propaganda ought not rule our lives.

apokrisis

It's not like I really know what I'm talking about anyways (as the scary part of that is: I'm pretty sure no one does. We're strapped to a rocket without knowing where it's going, when it will stop, or how to control it) — Moliere

If this is your belief then in what sense are you interested in a real inquiry into solutions? And you should steer well clear of me as all I’ve got nothing but those. :wink:

I believe the liberal state is fully capable of combating propaganda. — Moliere

You mean like the same liberal state that pushes Covid vaccines on you? Or are you meaning you wish for the liberal state that has the balls to squash the conspiracy-mongers?

I’ll return to my OP. Histories best ethical ideas have been fair exchanges that scaled. A society by definition has scale. And scale is always hierarchically organised in some form just to self-stabilise. So your political slogan has to promise the best of both worlds. Enough freedom for enough protection. Enough collectivism for enough individualism. Enough rights for enough responsibility. Enough excitement for enough peace. And so on and so forth in terms of Maslow’s familiar hierarchy of needs.

So just saying you don’t want propaganda isn’t much of a slogan. I can’t see what it is that you do want in terms of some balance that promises a win-win as we ought to want both things in the one social system.

Perhaps something along the lines that anyone should be free to have an opinion and yet everyone ought to be fact-checked?

Also, on philosophy: I think of it more of an anti-propaganda. Rather than giving easy answers to difficult questions it raises difficult questions without answers. Rather than attaching emotions to particular actions it questions emotions at every turn (to a point that's a bit much, at times). — Moliere

Sounds a shit notion of philosophy. Sounds exactly like propaganda run wild in feigning reason so as to spread its irrationalism.

Moliere

If this is your belief then in what sense are you interested in a real inquiry into solutions? And you should steer well clear of me as all I’ve got nothing but those. :wink: — apokrisis

Oh, I like the idea of solving some of these problems, I suppose.

Give me your wisdom, o lord! ;) :D

And so on and so forth in terms of Maslow’s familiar hierarchy of needs. — apokrisis

Why Maslow?

Is it true?

Perhaps something along the line that any should be free to have an opinion and yet everyone ought to be fact-checked? — apokrisis

I'd be on board with that, roughly.

Sounds a shit notion of philosophy. Sounds exactly like propaganda run wild in feigning reason so as to spread its irrationalism. — apokrisis

It may sound that way, but is it that way? What is propaganda?

apokrisis

Why Maslow?

Is it true? — Moliere

It’s the meme that scaled. Maslow founded positive psychology in the 1950s.

During the 1950s and 60s humanistic psychology developed in response to what the pioneers saw as the reductionist, positivist view of the mind as a complex mechanism likened to a machine- a stimulus-response mechanism in behaviorism or an economy of sexual and aggressive drives in psychoanalysis (Mahoney, 1984).

Humanistic psychology championed the holistic study of persons as bio-psycho-social beings. Abraham Maslow first coined the term “positive psychology” in his 1954 book “Motivation and Personality.” He proposed that psychology’s preoccupation with disorder and dysfunction lacked an accurate understanding of human potential (Maslow, 1954).

It may sound that way, but is it that way? What is propaganda? — Moliere

I thought you were going to tell me?

But all communication is propaganda in being a message with a meaning and so coming from a point of view - a message with some intention conveyed from a “me” to a “you”.

Are you wanting to split the world into those messages that are particularly annoying to you and those are matchingly pleasing? Your world needs this new message setting.

Do you see this as a pragmatic job for AI browser settings or a case of “if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee”?

Moliere

But all communication is propaganda in being a message with a meaning and so coming from a point of view - a message with some intention conveyed from a “me” to a “you”.

Are you wanting to split the world into those messages that are particularly annoying to you and those are matchingly pleasing? Your world needs this new message setting.

Do you see this as a pragmatic job for AI browser settings or a case of “if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee”? — apokrisis

I thought you were going to tell me? — apokrisis

I believe I did in defining philosophy as an anti-propaganda, at least. Propaganda is a virus, as you say, but philosophy is an anti-virus in that it inhibits the mechanisms of propagation by asking questions and not giving answers, but rather methods of thinking through things.

apokrisis

I believe I did in defining philosophy as an anti-propaganda, at least. — Moliere

Even dialectics requires more effort than that. Tacking on not to A to arrive at not-A is the shallow approach of other logics perhaps. But it clearly defines nothing and simply begs the question concerning A.

Propaganda is a virus, as you say, but philosophy is an anti-virus in that it inhibits the mechanisms of propagation by asking questions and not giving answers, but rather methods of thinking through things. — Moliere

So now we have a reasonable natural system dichotomy of self and other - the infection vs the immune system.

And sure, the solution normally proposed is to educate a population in critical thinking. Instill the collective rational habit of fact checking. Properly fund and enable unpartisan journalism and other fact checking social institutions.

Implement life as the Enlightenment imagined it? But add planetary limits to human aspirations as part of the political and ethical equation this time around.

Moliere

Implement life as the Enlightenment imagined it? But add planetary limits to human aspirations as part of the political and ethical equation this time around. — apokrisis

Implement life as we imagine it together, which can include some Enlightenment, as a treat :D -- though that'd be the same response to every imaginary of the future. It's not like the imaginary of the Enlightenment is easy to specify, right(and the same for all the other Big Movements)? And it's important to imagine, I believe, though allow others' to do so as well, and share those sorts of things.

apokrisis

It's not like the imaginary of the Enlightenment is easy to specify — Moliere

Some fact checking....

The Enlightenment, a philosophical movement that dominated in Europe during the 18th century, was centered around the idea that reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy, and advocated such ideals as liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.

Enlightenment thinkers wanted to reform society. They celebrated reason not only as the power by which human beings understand the universe but also as the means by which they improve the human condition. The goals of rational humans were considered to be knowledge, freedom, and happiness.

“When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty.”- Montesquieu.

Four themes recur in both European and American Enlightenment texts: modernization, skepticism, reason and liberty.

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that sought to improve society through fact-based reason and inquiry. The Enlightenment brought secular thought to Europe and reshaped the ways people understood issues such as liberty, equality, and individual rights.

The five core values of the Enlightenment were: happiness, reason, nature, progress, and liberty. Using logical thinking and reasoning the philosophers analyzed truth in the world. Given the current state of the world, we should all act more like philosophers in our day-to-day lives.

Enlightenment thinkers applied science and reason to society's problems. They believed that all people were created equal. They also saw education as something that divided people. If education were available to all, they reasoned, then everyone would have a fair chance in life.

We can identify three major 'roots' of the Enlightenment: the humanism of the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and the Protestant Reformation. Together these movements created the conditions in Europe for the Enlightenment to take place.

So in all ways the world I remember growing up in. But then I was lucky with my parents and circumstances. These imaginings were pretty well fully implemented.

But as I say, now it would have to be Enlightenment 2.0, the green reboot as the Model A option. Or the Model B scenario question of how to salvage what's left during the great collapse so as to then start over in a well considered way.

Moliere

↪apokrisis

I like this from your quote:

We can identify three major 'roots' of the Enlightenment: the humanism of the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and the Protestant Reformation. Together these movements created the conditions in Europe for the Enlightenment to take place.

I think it gets along with my speculations

Also gets along with my belief that Kant is the pinnacle of The Enlightenment: both rational and romantic.

Metaphysician Undercover

So that is the challenge. If you agree that the world is into its new era needing a new ethics, a new politics, then what is the algorithm that scales? What key idea drives the idea into every mind? — apokrisis

I think you ought to consider that there are two distinct types of change, change of form (internal change) and change of place (change in external relations). "Growth" is a change of form. If growth is the primary goal, then going places and doing things is neglected as a goal. It may be time to look at change of place as a primary goal over change of form.

T Clark

From there, in good times the bacteria can grow exponentially to fill their Petrie dish, or find that they are born into bad times where the dish is full to its brim and drastic degrowth follows. — apokrisis

As Murphy points out, now it's us in the Petrie dish. It's we.

Tribes who live by foraging learn restraint so as to coexist with their environments. — apokrisis

That requires lots of land to move around. I can only forage in my yard to a limited extent. My neighbors squawk if I try to use their property. That leads to agriculture, civilization. I guess we could all be subsistence farmers.

A world where technology fixes all problems. A world where we share and share alike. Or whatever. — apokrisis

I'm not sure that's possible in a world with population density as great as ours. The possibility, fantasy that technology will be able to solve all our problems is about to get really tested for the first time. No more smokestacks in Missouri sending their acid rain to Massachusetts. This is reinforced by how bad scientists have been in the past predicting the environmental/demographic future. In the 1970s, we were told that over-population would destroy the world. Now we're told that one of the biggest problems will be not enough workers. And we're going to run out of fossil fuels while we keep on finding and developing more. Of course, they've also been predicting that nuclear fusion will be producing power within 20 years at least since I was in school in 1970. This doesn't mean I'm a climate denier, but it is part of the argument deniers use.

And to work, any new political/ethical philosophy will have to scale. — apokrisis

When the wealthy venture capitalist sits down with the bright young tech entrepreneur, the only question is "does it scale?". Is this product or service going to go viral. Can my tiny investment reap exponential rewards?

This is an extreme mindset – one very much of today. It could be opposed to its alternative. Not exponential growth but just an expectation of maintaining the world as it has always existed. A venture only needs to be able to cover its own costs and stay in some steady state equilibrium "forever". A no growth society where profit or surplus is limited to that which maintains the existing fabric of life. — apokrisis

Doesn't the first quote contradict the second? What does "scaling" even mean in this context? Scaling requires room to move. Are we talking about some sort of inward growth rather than outward? Is that what technology does? Aren't we skeptical that technology can solve our problems?

Just curiosity, on the graph shown at about 8:30, it shows a dramatic drop in food per capita in the coming years. What would cause that and what does it mean? Mass starvation?
— T Clark

Murphy is using the latest Limits to Growth data. — apokrisis

The chart I referenced in the video shows a dramatic reduction in per capita food production starting in about 2050. If that means mass starvation, doesn't that significantly change the future population predictions. The ones in the graph assume that current trends roughly follow current conditions.

The US is in a happyish position geostrategically. It has the demographics, the geography, the resource wealth, to begin closing in on its own corner of the world and letting the rest of the planet crash as it likes. This retreat from being the sponsor of the current global trade world order had already begun under Trump and Biden only made it quieter and more organised. — apokrisis

This seems odd to me, given how much of the world sees the US as an unwelcome influence. Do we still think that US lead globalization is the solution we're looking for, or even a good thing in and of itself? Is globalization the scalable solution? I guess in some sense it has to be. One-world government? Continuing the de-Balkanization of the past 150 years. 500 years. 2,500 years.

Truly the Boomers slogan, the first. — apokrisis

I resemble that remark.

But I have three children. I have an interest in what happens in the world after I'm gone. It's looking like I might never have any grand-children and it's also looking like that might not be a bad thing.

Philosophical inventiveness and understanding of rapid morality scaling will be a critical community resource. — apokrisis

I don't really understand what this means, which I guess is the point.

I'll say it again, I'm not arguing against anything you or Murphy are saying. I'm just trying to figure out the scope of the issue.

T Clark

After graduating with my chemistry degree something that dawned on me was how we already have every scientific bit of technology we need to address climate change. The problem isn't a matter of scientific knowledge, but political ability: At present the social organizations we have to deal with collective problems are unable to come to a global solution to a global problem. — Moliere

I've been shocked over the past 20 years or so how much progress has been made in doing what everyone said was impossible - increasing renewable energy production and distribution. Elon Musk and a relatively few entrepreneurs have changed everything. They took a bet on finding a way to make good environmental sense also make good economic sense. Of course technology had to improve in order for it to work, but no one had even really tried before.

I'd say all we have the power to do here is share ideas. Creativity is what's needed, and creative thought is fostered by collective trust and friendship. — Moliere

I don't see how this would work. It's not trust and friendship, it's making doing good economically advantageous. That's the only way I can see.

The problem with coming up with different scenarios is that it doesn't matter which we choose since the powers that be will do what they do regardless of our reasonings. — Moliere

Is this true? The current US administration, Biden, have had a dramatic effect on the direction of technological growth and change by just throwing a few billon, or is it trillion, dollars at it.

And what I like about pairing these ideas is it gives both a critical problem -- the Marxism -- and a different solution than Marxism-Leninism -- organizing along anarchist lines. Further the "anarchy" makes it to where it's not something I'm going to cook up all on my own: I'm going to explore and share and hope we can come up with something that works, because that's all that's ever worked to address collective problems before anyways. — Moliere

Doesn't @apokrisis's scaling require central planning? How can it possibly grow from the anarchist bottom up?

Moliere

I've been shocked over the past 20 years or so how much progress has been made in doing what everyone said was impossible - increasing renewable energy production and distribution. Elon Musk and a relatively few entrepreneurs have changed everything. They took a bet on finding a way to make good environmental sense also make good economic sense. Of course technology had to improve in order for it to work, but no one had even really tried before. — T Clark

I'm afraid I don't share your optimism with respect to the powers that be.

Hottest day on earth ever recorded happened this week.

And I know that in spite of these various positions that we've only increased fossil fuel expenditure: the green tech future sounds nice, but it all runs on coal and oil at bottom.

Though I have optimism towards people's ability to overcome.

I don't see how this would work. It's not trust and friendship, it's making doing good economically advantageous. That's the only way I can see. — T Clark

Upon making "doing good" advantageous, the people seeking advantage will start doing good.

But then when "doing good" changes, because the world always changes, they'll insist that the old "doing good" is the new "doing good"

I think trust and friendship are more powerful than these technocratic motives, though certainly more unreliable for the spreadsheet bean counters.

Is this true? The current US administration, Biden, have had a dramatic effect on the direction of technological growth and change by just throwing a few billon, or is it trillion, dollars at it. — T Clark

Yes. I'm voting for Trump due to my location, regardless of who I vote for. And "reasonings" don't garner votes.

I know who I prefer, and it's not Trump, but I think what I'm saying is true still.

Doesn't apokrisis's scaling require central planning? How can it possibly grow from the anarchist bottom up? — T Clark

There are many examples of anarchist organizations, but the one I like to refer to is https://quaker.org/ -- because they aren't strictly anarchist in the sense of ideology, but they are anarchist in that they utilize consent-building techniques to a point that everyone has to agree to something.

It takes time, it takes commitment to your fellow humans, it takes care: but it doesn't take rules or programs. Central planning is one possible path, but not the only one.

apokrisis

It may be time to look at change of place as a primary goal over change of form. — Metaphysician Undercover

You mean you would sign up for Elon's death trip to Mars? Or do you expect warp drive to exist in 20 years? :smile:

apokrisis

I guess we could all be subsistence farmers. — T Clark

I would say "all" is an over-estimate. And here is where we would need to contrast the tech green promises vs the harsh ecological realities.

A few years ago, the agricultural idea that was believed to scale was "vertical farming". Converting city warehousing into racks of food growing under efficient LED lights and sensor-based watering and fertilising. A hyperlocal solution for urban communities.

But then reality bit. The staff to run these grow houses had to be paid double your immigrant farm worker. Disease ran rife as it doesn't respect the sterile rules of an artificial environment that lacks natural biodiversity.

Meanwhile other more ecologically-savvy agricultural practices – permaculture and regenerative farming – haven't scaled as they too directly challenge the Big Business status quo. But as things crash, they represent the knowledge that would allow the fortunate survivors to begin over from a more sophisticated level. More mouths could be fed in a more sustainable way.

In the 1970s, we were told that over-population would destroy the world. Now we're told that one of the biggest problems will be not enough workers. — T Clark

Both things can be true. All the young might be in Africa. But all starving. And all the old might be in clapped out Europe and Asia, and also starving.

This seems odd to me, given how much of the world sees the US as an unwelcome influence. Do we still think that US lead globalization is the solution we're looking for, or even a good thing in and of itself? Is globalization the scalable solution? I guess in some sense it has to be. One-world government? Continuing the de-Balkanization of the past 150 years. 500 years. 2,500 years. — T Clark

This is the issue. What ought the goal be? The Enlightenment seemed so right in humanistic principle, but became a victim of its own success. It gained the monopoly position in a world that had been socially diverse. An ethical monoculture was successfully produced with the US taking over from the UK as its self-interested standard bearer.

The 1992 Kyoto Protocol marked some kind of high point on this humanist project, and then that got overtaken by neo-liberal exhuberance – the financialisation of everything. The house was wrecked by the teenagers throwing a block party. The GFC saw Big Money bailed out and the resulting debts serviced by poor. Folk had a look around at where things were at and could predict a coming long stagnation and deglobalisation.

And we're going to run out of fossil fuels while we keep on finding and developing more. — T Clark

And then this. The US choose to continue growth at all costs. It had only propped up world trade and Middle East oil deliveries to get the world out of its cycles of European and Asian wars. US was its own well-resourced and well-populated continental market. It did not need world trade itself. It is uniquely blessed in its geostrategic position.

So if globalisation was collapsing, let it. The US began its post-GFC move towards a retreat behind its own walls. Funny money could fund the shale fracking and oil sands revolutions – so long at the environmental consequences could be kept out of the economic calculus. The US caught everyone out by becoming oil self-sufficient again and so really having no need to protect the world's shipping lanes anymore.

Shift the factories back from China and again a win-win for the US. Domestic jobs bonanza and China left to disappear down its own plughole.

A really big game is being played by the US that no-one ever seems to talk about openly. Under Trump, Biden and whoever is allowed to follow them. The idea is that is scaling is it is time to bunker down as a nation. Canada comes along for its resources, Mexico for its cheap labour. Japan, Taiwan and Korea get to pay to stay in the club. The UK and Australia are useful to a point.

Elon Musk and a relatively few entrepreneurs have changed everything. They took a bet on finding a way to make good environmental sense also make good economic sense. — T Clark

Please don't fall for this horseshit. The Tesla was the final nail in the coffin for any Green hope.

Right at the point where tech seemed to be delivering some kind of liveable future – electric bicycles and rideshare apps – we get Musk and his bloated dreams of how the future ought be. More cars. But now even faster on the acceleration and more toxic in their lithium mining and full lifecycle economics.

Doesn't apokrisis's scaling require central planning? — T Clark

No. Scaling is premised on the opposite. If an idea is "so good" then it will grow organically. It will self-organise its world.

But central planning does have to become some sort of guiding function that emerges as part of the deal.

The evolution of a body requires a devolution of its functions into a set of organs. A department of transport, of sanitation, of energy, of decision making. As things scale, they need to get hierarchically complex.

Planning is generally a good idea in life. And a good idea is what you want your society to be implementing over all its scales. The selling point of liberal democracy was that planning was going to one of those activities taking place over all levels – just as the nervous system might have a brain, but also reaches into every corner to allow all parts to contribute to "the plan". Even the gut turns out to be majorly connected to the brain in two-way relation.

The ethical issue: Does it scale?

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