I think this is a case of unilaterists curse being good until it suddenly isn’t. We are entering a phase of technology which is fundamentally different from before. If we embrace unilaterism we need to do it based on an understanding of our current situation, not just past history.
There is some truth there but it is also true that every age has been able to make the same claim.
Is this age really that different? I wonder how big one might suggest the years of discontinuity we might expect compared to some of the big jumps in the past?
What sort of historical tech from previous ages do you have in mind which enables unilateral individual action to have a massive influence?
The only thing I’m thinking of are weapons which allow the assassination of important people. All the assassinations of important people which come immediately to mind are cases where I think I would’ve preferred the important person to stick around.
The author’s agency doesn’t dominate the effects so much, I think, there are many people who have to agree before a piece of writing can do anything. Nothing propagates or gets read without the consent of an audience, to the extent that popular texts often just articulate sentiments that’re already endemic.
Thanks for asking this question; it’s a good question. Let’s take for example things like machine guns. This was an age which, like our age, gave inventors more power to affect the world than ever before. However, if you didn’t invent machine guns, someone else would have, just slightly later. However, we’re now in the situation where inventions can either end the whole game or remove us from this time of perils. It’s not just about the timing of inventions, but our ultimate destiny that is at stake.
Chris, I think we can make a case that throughout history these types of innovations that have the potential for disrupting the existing order are not unusual. Bronze age, iron age, industrial age, discovery of knowledge about herbal/plant usages (both in healing and killing), communication speeds, gunpowder, bow & arrow over sling or just spear/club, navigation over semi-blind wondering.… Even opening up new trade routes, or accepting the presence of strangers, introduces such potentials so some have always fought against that. In general there has always been the fear of innovation and of the unknown that such things bring.
I didn’t really elaborate on the big jumps (thinking here of KatjaGrace’s discontinuity post). I see that as connecting here if we think about how people behave with change. I think people do a pretty good job of taking change in stride when it fits with the existing trend—in other words it’s near trend variations and not discontinuity change. When we’re seeing something that one might characterize as compressing say 50, 100, 500 years of trend progress into a few years people don’t know how to wrap their heads around what that will mean. Fear of the unknown.
So in history, just what types of innovations (probably by some few or even a single promoter) have been those types of jumps in technological progress and did they really produce what we’re saying is the risk now?
I think the answer has to be no, we really have not seen really bad outcomes for humans in general.
So perhaps a related question would be why has that not been the case. Here perhaps we can make the case that it comes back to the the Unilateralist Curse but in a slightly different form. It is where those risks become clear and present that the unilateralist is constrained by society. So rather then wanting to apply the thinking at the start of the innovation the argument applies to the post-innovative state perhaps.
We have a lot of different situations in our times. There are security critical situations where unilaterism isn’t good but many situations in our times don’t fall into that category.
Aye, technology seems to be growing more inclined to have global irreversible effects over time (the use of fossil fuels → nukes (but fortunately never applied) → microplastics (already pervading every ecosystem) → additive manufacturing (a physical build can spread as fast as a piece of data), transgenic organisms might be in there somewhere.), so the unilateralist curse must be warded more strongly as time goes on.
I think this is a case of unilaterists curse being good until it suddenly isn’t. We are entering a phase of technology which is fundamentally different from before. If we embrace unilaterism we need to do it based on an understanding of our current situation, not just past history.
There is some truth there but it is also true that every age has been able to make the same claim.
Is this age really that different? I wonder how big one might suggest the years of discontinuity we might expect compared to some of the big jumps in the past?
What sort of historical tech from previous ages do you have in mind which enables unilateral individual action to have a massive influence?
The only thing I’m thinking of are weapons which allow the assassination of important people. All the assassinations of important people which come immediately to mind are cases where I think I would’ve preferred the important person to stick around.
Machiavelli’s The Prince, and various other texts.
How about the printing press?
The printing press is a tool which lets us coordinate multilateral action differently than we were previously.
The author’s agency doesn’t dominate the effects so much, I think, there are many people who have to agree before a piece of writing can do anything. Nothing propagates or gets read without the consent of an audience, to the extent that popular texts often just articulate sentiments that’re already endemic.
Thanks for asking this question; it’s a good question. Let’s take for example things like machine guns. This was an age which, like our age, gave inventors more power to affect the world than ever before. However, if you didn’t invent machine guns, someone else would have, just slightly later. However, we’re now in the situation where inventions can either end the whole game or remove us from this time of perils. It’s not just about the timing of inventions, but our ultimate destiny that is at stake.
Chris, I think we can make a case that throughout history these types of innovations that have the potential for disrupting the existing order are not unusual. Bronze age, iron age, industrial age, discovery of knowledge about herbal/plant usages (both in healing and killing), communication speeds, gunpowder, bow & arrow over sling or just spear/club, navigation over semi-blind wondering.… Even opening up new trade routes, or accepting the presence of strangers, introduces such potentials so some have always fought against that. In general there has always been the fear of innovation and of the unknown that such things bring.
I didn’t really elaborate on the big jumps (thinking here of KatjaGrace’s discontinuity post). I see that as connecting here if we think about how people behave with change. I think people do a pretty good job of taking change in stride when it fits with the existing trend—in other words it’s near trend variations and not discontinuity change. When we’re seeing something that one might characterize as compressing say 50, 100, 500 years of trend progress into a few years people don’t know how to wrap their heads around what that will mean. Fear of the unknown.
So in history, just what types of innovations (probably by some few or even a single promoter) have been those types of jumps in technological progress and did they really produce what we’re saying is the risk now?
I think the answer has to be no, we really have not seen really bad outcomes for humans in general.
So perhaps a related question would be why has that not been the case. Here perhaps we can make the case that it comes back to the the Unilateralist Curse but in a slightly different form. It is where those risks become clear and present that the unilateralist is constrained by society. So rather then wanting to apply the thinking at the start of the innovation the argument applies to the post-innovative state perhaps.
We have a lot of different situations in our times. There are security critical situations where unilaterism isn’t good but many situations in our times don’t fall into that category.
Aye, technology seems to be growing more inclined to have global irreversible effects over time (the use of fossil fuels → nukes (but fortunately never applied) → microplastics (already pervading every ecosystem) → additive manufacturing (a physical build can spread as fast as a piece of data), transgenic organisms might be in there somewhere.), so the unilateralist curse must be warded more strongly as time goes on.
But does unilateral action tend to increase or inhibit negative and hard to reverse effects?