Philosophy Discussion Forums

Fellow Members,

Here's a topic of great interest to me, which I invite you to examine, explore and challenge. I have a lot to say about this, and will do so in reply to your interest, if there is any. For now, as a place to start, I've tried to boil my thesis down in to two concise assertions. Hopefully this will help you quickly decide whether this topic is one that you wish to engage.

ASSERTION #1: As knowledge development accelerates, and the products of that process become ever more powerful, it's inevitable that sooner or later a power will emerge which humans are not mature and/or skilled enough to successfully manage. ("Successfully manage" is defined as avoiding civilization crushing events, such as nuclear war for example.)

ASSERTION #2: If the above is true, then scientific progress is not only dangerous, but largely pointless, given that all the many projects which are successful will be swept away in the civilization crushing event.

If you wish to challenge these assertions, you might begin by making a case that human beings can successfully manage every single power which emerges from the knowledge development process, no matter how large that power is, or how fast it emerges. This is what would be necessary to avoid civilization collapse and defeat the assertions above.

Go for it!

I disagree prima facia with both assertions. However, I agree humans cannot successfully manages all the power we appear to understand. (I think Atreyu made a similar case for which I agree on another post).

ASSERTION #1: I disagree because the creation of power is false power if it is self-defeating (i.e. it was never power if it cannot accomplish that for which we declare it has power).

ASSERTION #2: I cannot agree as written, because I disagree with OP #1. However, I agree science itself is seemingly pointless. For science to have a point, it must enter the realm of philosophy. I do consider the practical application of science to have purpose, but only because there is a form of philosophy builty into the application. The philosophical aspects appear to be where we consider reasoned debate in "science." Science itself appears to be more of a discipline aspiring to examine one thing, less purposeful, more analytic than purposeful.

I do agree the patterned history of the world is marked by patterned dialectical conflict and the world appears ripe for something cataclysmic of a wide scale, but I think there is also a clear pattern of such thoughts being normal from generation to generation, making any actual event near impossible to actually predict.

I agree with assertion #1, but assertion #2 does not follow from it. Because there is something we cannot manage, it does not mean it will destroy us. I think it is safe to say that we cannot manage Jupiter. While we do have to give it respect, we do not have to fear it.

Because we will be the creators of the technology that eventually we will not be able to "manage", we simply need to do our best to put it on a trajectory that is safe.

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Hi James,

JamesOfSeattle wrote:I agree with assertion #1, but assertion #2 does not follow from it. Because there is something we cannot manage, it does not mean it will destroy us.

Let's look at Assertion #1 again,...

As knowledge development accelerates, and the products of that process become ever more powerful

Ever more powerful tools, at an ever faster rate. Doesn't this inevitably lead to something we can't handle at some point in time?

We might successfully manage 99% of the ever more powerful tools, but as the scale of these powers grows it only takes one power running amok to crush civilization. This isn't futuristic speculation as the current situation is that nuclear weapons are capable of crushing modern civilization within an hour, right now, today. All these assertions do is take the current reality as a starting point, and then add "ever more powerful tools at an ever faster rate" to the equation.

Because we will be the creators of the technology that eventually we will not be able to "manage", we simply need to do our best to put it on a trajectory that is safe.

My argument is that doing our best would involve reviewing the heart of the problem, our "more is better" relationship with knowledge, and power. This attitude has served us well for a long time, but is now out of date and in need of updating. Failure to do so will most likely lead to the collapse of civilization, a process which would largely erase most of the knowledge which we were able to manage.

Thus, if only one power of sufficient scale does escape our control, most of the rest of science is a largely pointless effort, as all the great accomplishments will be erased in the civilization collapse.

Why do we not give eight year olds shotguns? Because a single mistake can be catastrophic. As adults we're in the same situation. If we keep giving ourselves ever more powerful tools, sooner or later we'll blow our heads off.

We do not give eight year olds shotguns because shotguns are DESIGNED to blow people's heads off. We do, however, give them something much more powerful: an education.

You say that "[f]ailure to [review the 'more is better' relationship with knowledge] will most likely lead to the collapse of civilization ...". I recognize that it's possible, but I don't see how it is more likely than not. My expectation/hope is that once technology develops past the point of our ability to manage it, it will manage itself.

By the way, my view is heavily influenced by David Deutsch's book: The Beginning of Infinity.

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We do not give eight year olds shotguns because shotguns are DESIGNED to blow people's heads off. We do, however, give them something much more powerful: an education.

Yes, shotguns are designed to create carnage. And we give them to adults, but not to children. Why? Because we reason that the power/judgment relationship is too far out of balance with kids. Too much power, not enough judgment. Very simple common logic, right?

That's all I'm using to make this case, the very same reasoning. There's some limit to how much power adult human beings in their current form can successfully manage. Accelerating knowledge development means that sooner or later we will exceed that limit.

An exception I am happy to grant is that we could possibly use new knowledge to change ourselves so we can handle more power. But in any form we are unlikely to be able to handle unlimited power, so the same basic equation still applies, just at a later date.

You say that "[f]ailure to [review the 'more is better' relationship with knowledge] will most likely lead to the collapse of civilization ...". I recognize that it's possible, but I don't see how it is more likely than not.

Are you arguing that we can successfully manage every single power that might emerge from knowledge development, no matter how large such powers might be, or how fast they may arrive?

I'd be willing to agree we can likely manage many or most coming powers. But that's not good enough.

As the powers grow in scale more of them will have the ability to crush civilization. A failure with any one of such powers is game over, even if we successfully manage all the others. Nuclear weapons are the obvious example, and they are just the beginning of this phenomena of huge powers.

My expectation/hope is that once technology develops past the point of our ability to manage it, it will manage itself.

Every technology will successfully manage itself at all times without fail forever? Remember, when the powers reach a certain scale a failure with just one means the end of all.

By the way, my view is heavily influenced by David Deutsch's book: The Beginning of Infinity.

Ok, tell us about the book then please. What does he have to say about these issues?

Ormond wrote: ASSERTION #1: As knowledge development accelerates, and the products of that process become ever more powerful, it's inevitable that sooner or later a power will emerge which humans are not mature and/or skilled enough to successfully manage. ("Successfully manage" is defined as avoiding civilization crushing events, such as nuclear war for example.)

ASSERTION #2: If the above is true, then scientific progress is not only dangerous, but largely pointless, given that all the many projects which are successful will be swept away in the civilization crushing event.

Claiming scientific progress to be pointless because it will be lost again, comes close to saying life is pointless because it ends. It’s a valid point to make, but I guess not really what you were going for. You also seem to assume that without scientific progress the end of civilization would be avoided, that however is not the case. The sun will give out at some point, and there’s always the possibility of a meteor strike. The only fighting chance we have of avoiding those predestined end times is scientific progress.

Regarding your first assertion; haven’t we already reached that level of power? Nuclear power is strong enough to wipe us out, what difference does it make if it takes 1 nuke or 20. At this point it doesn't matter how powerful it will get beyond that. It is not the power that is dangerous, but the accessibility of it. If everyone could build a nuke with parts from home depot we would have gone off the cliff decades ago.

The level of power however stands in no relation to it’s manageability. Only because a product is more powerful does not mean that it is therefore less manageable.

And just like the level of power will reach a point where any further advancements would have no effect on the likelihood of civilization surviving it’s use, society could reach a point at which no power becomes unmanageable. Therefore I do not see the proclaimed inevitability of an unmanageable power.

At no point in history have humans been mature and skilled enough to control their progress. It's not an ideal situation but it beats living in caves in constant danger of weather, predators, parasites, starvation, thirst, poisoning, having bugs crawl into our orifices as we sleep, etc.

Humanity: Onwards and upwards, blithering into the unknown! Business as usual.

If the above is true, then scientific progress is not only dangerous, but largely pointless.

The scientific progress which has enabled a world which, until recently, has been growing exponentially, to communicate more effectively, to be better fed, in better health than ever before with less absolute poverty. Due in large part to advances in science. If you think that you can stop people asking questions and wanting to know answers, well, good luck with that one. If you think that once knowledge has been attained, it can be controlled then, again, good luck. Knowledge can be dangerous but is also hugely beneficial and you can’t put a genie back in the bottle. If knowledge achieved through scientific progress is largely pointless, then why do we bother with civilization?

As Platonymous has indicated, we may be destroyed regardless. I am with Greta; we may be blithering into the unknown but that is all we can do and we have to try to make the most of it, which is not saying much but is probably the only option, short of creating a society on a model similar to that of North Korea.

Regarding your first assertion; haven’t we already reached that level of power?

Yes, nukes might be called the first existential threat technology. My point is that an accelerating knowledge explosion means more threats of that scale will emerge. Success will depend on successfully managing every one of them, every day, forever.

Nuclear power is strong enough to wipe us out, what difference does it make if it takes 1 nuke or 20.

It would seem having 20 technologies of that scale is indeed a different situation than having just one.

The level of power however stands in no relation to it’s manageability. Only because a product is more powerful does not mean that it is therefore less manageable.

The level of power means there is less room for error. With more modest technology, we can screw up, and then fix it. With "existential threat technology" that option may not be available.

Therefore I do not see the proclaimed inevitability of an unmanageable power.

You are in good company! Everybody argues for the "more is better" status quo because it is a very old and happy story we don't wish to part with. I believe the happy story might possibly be preserved, but not by pushing forward blindly with the status quo. My argument is that we've reached a point where our "more is better" relationship with knowledge needs a review and update. We will either learn this through reasoning, or through pain, more likely the later.

-- Updated February 9th, 2016, 7:10 pm to add the following --

If you think that you can stop people asking questions and wanting to know answers, well, good luck with that one.

I'm inviting readers to ask deep questions about our relationship with knowledge. It's my critics who wish to not conduct that investigation.

I am with Greta; we may be blithering into the unknown but that is all we can do and we have to try to make the most of it,

But that's not all we can do. We're already doing what I'm suggesting right here in this thread, having a conversation about our relationship with knowledge. There's nothing stopping us from having a long, deep, serious investigation in to that relationship. There's nothing stopping us from questioning dogmas that may have been an excellent idea for a long time, until we entered a revolutionary era characterized by a knowledge explosion.

On another forum some scientists said essentially what you said, there's nothing we can do, there's no point in even discussing this etc. And then they proposed spreading out across the galaxy as the solution. They lacked the confidence in their ability to have a conversation, but did have confidence we can migrate across the galaxy. These are not reasoned responses, but emotional ones. Apologies, but such emotions are essentially nothing more grand than intellectual laziness.

Reply to Ormond:

On another forum some scientists said essentially what you said, there's nothing we can do, there's no point in even discussing this etc.

I did not say there's nothing we can do. I said we have to try to make the most of it, which is something completely different. That will, of course, involve discussions. My point was about the difficulty of controlling knowledge and you don't seem to have recognised that.

I think assertion #1 may well be true, but I disagree with assertion #2 for this reason: If a good/interesting thing is destined to end one day that doesn't necessarily mean that the good/interesting thing was pointless.

-- Updated Fri Feb 19, 2016 3:52 pm to add the following --

Apologies to Platonymous who already made this point.

Steve3007 wrote:I think assertion #1 may well be true, but I disagree with assertion #2 for this reason: If a good/interesting thing is destined to end one day that doesn't necessarily mean that the good/interesting thing was pointless.

Ok, that's a fair point. I agree my assertion #2 was too sweeping.

Let's imagine we have a nuclear war 50 years from now. If we cure cure cancer now and save a lot of suffering now, that's not pointless, agreed.

However, basic research in to things like the Higgs Boson, dark matter, black holes etc would probably be pointless, as we wouldn't have time to make use of that information. Or, one could argue however that it still isn't pointless in that it was fun to learn that information, and that life is short, and fun is good.

My argument is that we need a more sophisticated relationship with knowledge than the simplistic formula of "more is better". That was true for a long time, but is now a dangerously outdated paradigm, imho. Yes, I have evidence. Thousands of nuclear missiles poised to erase modern civilization in less than an hour. What better example could there possibly be???

So for instance, just one example, we could end research in to Higgs Boson, and liberate a couple billion dollars to study our relationship with knowledge and how it might be updated to better meet the situation we now find ourselves in.

Let's observe how we are happy to spend a couple billion on research with no known practical benefit, but the idea of spending a nickel on studying our relationship with knowledge (the foundation of the modern world) is considered rather too inconvenient.

I've chatted with real scientists about this, and though they are very intelligent and well educated, they simply don't get this. It's too much of a threat to their "more is better" worldview. They just don't have the vision to see beyond it. Point being, so let's not wait for them to fix this.

Reply to Ormond:

In October 1961, with American and Soviet tanks confronting each other across Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, large numbers of people around the world were expecting nuclear war within the week. They believed this war would have the capacity to destroy civilisation as we know it. I am not exaggerating. Almost exactly a year later, Kennedy and Krushchev were facing off over the impending installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba. In many western countries, schoolchildren were trained as to what to do in the case of a siren warning of nuclear attack. Protective concrete bunkers were built. Governments planned and practised worst-case scenarios.

That was more than fifty years ago. Since then, civilization has been threatened by nuclear attack, nuclear accident, epidemics of influenza and several other viral diseases, the Millenium Bug and sundry other menaces.

However, basic research in to things like the Higgs Boson, dark matter, black holes etc would probably be pointless, as we wouldn't have time to make use of that information.

You could have said the same thing fifty years ago in relation to artificial satellites, antibiotics, prosthetics, the expanding universe, television, quantum theory, computers, the internet, DNA testing, agronomics and a million other scientific programs which, at the time, were in their infancy. Would you have stopped these on the basis that scientists did not know exactly where their research was going? Or would you have been selective? If you were selective, what criteria would you have employed to select? How would you know which programs were most likely to yield beneficial results? I doubt that computers would have been one of them. As late as 1977, Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977, stated, "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."

So for instance, just one example, we could end research in to Higgs Boson, and liberate a couple billion dollars to study our relationship with knowledge and how it might be updated to better meet the situation we now find ourselves in.`

That is your view and you are entitled to it. I suspect, however that your comment would leave thousands of scientists slack-jawed in astonishment at the ignorance of the potential in the discovery.

If you really think that there has been no thought given to our relationship with knowledge then a few minutes’ search on the internet would certainly help you. Richard Feynman, a rather famous physicist, had a few things to say. He certainly did not have all the answers but he did respond to most of the points you have mentioned. The link to a 15-minute commentary by him, entitled, 'The value of science' is attached below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbh_6tQ6nm8

Ormond:

My argument is that we need a more sophisticated relationship with knowledge than the simplistic formula of "more is better".

Let's observe how we are happy to spend a couple billion on research with no known practical benefit, but the idea of spending a nickel on studying our relationship with knowledge (the foundation of the modern world) is considered rather too inconvenient.

I pick out these quotes because I'm interested in what you mean when you contrast the concept of "more" knowledge with the concept of "our relationship with knowledge". What do you mean by that? In what way would we go about spending more than a nickel studying our relationship with knowledge?