Technological Revealations of Anthropic Destinations

“You’re an interesting species. An interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares”

says the alien intelligence in Carl Sagan’s Contact. I resonate with this sentiment. My motivation is to try and contribute towards addressing the predicament of modern humans:

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom”- Isaac Asimov

This post is a part of “popularization” requirement for my master’s degree in socio-ecological economics and policy / WU Vienna. Full text is available here.

My quest is this: What are the possible strategies and adaptations for sustainable and emancipatory technologies?

Since I am a bit of a space buff and Elon Musk can’t stop tweeting about it + space tech is ramping up: I use space technologies as a case study.

“Take flight to where there is a free view over the whole […] even if this view is still not a clear one” —

Ludwig Wittgenstein

I use meta-theoretical frameworks of the following glorious schools of thoughts:

1. Evolutionary Sciences:

Evolution Is the Greatest Show on Earth

Evolution is a wonderful feature of all complex dynamic systems. I love how Timothy Ferris talks about it here:

start from timestamp ~ 7m50s

Note of caution though, evolution is amoral… and as Scottish philosopher David Hume warned, no “ought from is” please!

2. Critical Realism:

It is essentially a common-sense scientific mindset, especially suited for social studies…basic point is, we should try and discern underlying structures and mechanisms(‘the actual’) that enable event (‘the empirical’) to envision counter-factuals

These meta-theories plus a fusion of existing theories of technologies (neutrality, determinism, autonomy, social construction) take me to build a framework of “Naturalistic Evolutionary Constructivism”

I then jump into the love of wisdom (Philosophia in Greek):

In engineering school, we were taught that technology is “applied science”. German philosopher Martin Heidegger argued that this instrumental definition of technologies is misleading and ends up becoming rather dangerous for our “being”. More holistically, technology is an activity in which we harness natural phenomena and invent something that comes into existence as an embodiment of human actions and ultimately, the underlying motivations.

Technology comes to presence in the realm where revealing and un-concealment takes place, where alētheia, truth, happens” (Heidegger, 1954, p. 13).

as Sasha Grujicic paraphrased it “the application of technology reveals truths about our values” source: check out this super-cool conversation / debate.

This critique does not amount to techno-cynicism: “not the absurd wish to revive what is past, but rather the sober realisation,” stresses Heidegger (1954, p. 22). Heidegger also acknowledges the empirical effectiveness of modern technology’s harnessing of scientific insights, but he warns against the “deceptive illusion” that “modern technology is applied physical science” (1954, p. 23).

Here’s the thing, modern tech is incredible but also quite “challenging” [die herausfordern in German]. It renders the entire material world, including human beings as a resource, subject to exploitation for industrial production. Heidegger uses the term “destining of revealing” to reflect this disposition and warns that it “thrusts humans into the danger of the surrendering their free essence” as instrumental means to technological ends. “Meanwhile man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth”(Heidegger, 1954, p. 27). He seems to be presciently describing, our present predicament of being confronted with technologically permeated multiple psychological, social, and ecological crises in the epoch we name after ourselves, Anthropocene.

Nature of modern technology is characteristically different from more ancient “techne” (Greek word for craftsmanship or art):

In addition to the availability of fossil based palaeolithic energy subsidies, the advent of the scientific method was exigent for technological transformation expressed in the industrial revolution. In this sense, a reductionist and mechanistic premise that seeks to isolate cause and effect has profoundly shaped how we intuit, imagine, design, and create technologies as solutions to the specific needs or problems rather than considering more systemic perspectives.

“Everything is an instrument. If you ask what it is an instrument to, the answer will be that it is an instrument for the making of instruments, which will in turn make still more powerful instruments, and so on ad infinitum” — Bertrand Russell (i love him. cool grandpa figure)

Evolutionary institutional economists have also identified “exploitation of nature” as “feedback phenomenon for exploiting ourselves” — Scholz-Wäckerle

We are already playing out a soft version of “instrumental conversion” / (a soft version of paper clip maximizer AI apocalypse) (check out Bret Weinstein).

Heidegger and others are pointing to the ontological condition: technological understanding of being, rather than the evils of specific technologies. I call this the ideology of techno-reductionism. It entails reducing complex social and ecological challenges to primarily technological solutions that complement short term profit motives. And this ain’t idle theorising. Here’s one real-world illustration of techno-reductionism:

• humans must innovate our way out of the ecological crises without hindering economic growth (Reduction level 1),
• which is typically reduced to the problem of tackling climate change. Complex Systems perspective (i.e. biophysical dynamics of earth systems and multi-dimensional anthropic influences on these systems) is a secondary consideration (Reduction level 2).
• Resource consumption constraints are ignored. Solutions are narrowed down to reducing greenhouse gas, specifically CO2 emissions. (Reduction level 3)

The green growth story puts huge demands on the raw materials required and humans are about to embark on strip-mining the seabed (described as the beginnings of one of the biggest anthropic transformations on the surface of the planet).

History's Largest Mining Operation Is About to Begin

It is evident that techno-reductionism is intrinsically linked with the perpetual growth paradigm: under the reign of perpetual growth paradigm, technology becomes “profit machine” (credits to my cool supervisor for this metaphor). We end up losing control if we don’t maintain a critical attitude towards tech. Also, here’s the weird thing that happens:

Some of this stems from human greed (accentuated by industrial capitalism) but part of it is also due to the fact that “the universe is messy. It is nonlinear, turbulent, and dynamic. It self-organizes and evolves” (meadows). almost every new tech ends up creating a need for more tech to manage the previous tech

I go through the evolution of technologies for better understanding of the underlying dynamics

this is where we started: from circa 3.4 million years ago (earliest tool-making)…

Primordial Cumulative Evolutionary Dynamics

gradually, with neolithic revolution (agricultural settlements) we ended up with this:

co-evolution of culture and tech

and then, in modernity, there was an explosion! enabled by:

1. the modern scientific method that helped to harness natural phenomena
2. catalytic fossil-based energy subsidies
3. modern technological evolution is combinatorial. The substrate of available tech creates a positive feedback loop

human creativity is the origin of technologies but they are subject to ideological appropriation by social structures. this is what has happened via “innovation systems” of the perpetual growth paradigm

modern innovation systems (build this up from The Nature of Technology by W. Brian Arthur… pretty fucking awesome read)

another important point, modern tech is inherently value-laden:

for example, this is g(l)orious

BBC Radio Drama, Copenhagen | Heisenberg’s ethical uncertainties

To explore, is human and space exploration is exploration at its peak, humanity at its best

I read this somewhere when I was a child and I stand by this sentiment (despite Bayesian updates to my priors)

this is also the reason, so-called new space race is so troubling. here’s part of my poster from a conference last year, outlining how this space race is an extension of the perpetual growth paradigm and represents perilous entrenchments of unsustainable terrestrial inequalities

Mr. Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin has asserted that since “we are running out of resources on planet earth, it is incumbent to expand in the outer space to ensure we continue growing our energy consumption”

Mr. Musk, founder of SpaceX has infected and propagated similar confusion. SpaceX has initiated development to “mass produce” one “Starship” spacecraft per week, capable of large-scale transport of crew and resources to the Mars.

Inside Elon Musk's plan to build one Starship a week-and settle Mars

He has advocated urgency of “mars-colonization” and eventual terraforming of Mars as “plan B” to save humanity from existential risks

I call this Space-induced Temporal Dis-orientation (STD) : the tendency to harbour and spread fallacies related to urgency and efficacy of space “colonization”. It might be worth further research in psychology to avert it becoming more systemic cultural memetic that entrenches techno-reductionism and impedes necessary action on much more urgent environmental challenges. As McLeish wrote in his New York Times Earthrise inspired article, “we prefer to ignore the evidence. In our daily lives, we are all flat earthers”

As an astro-nut, I would personally favour a substantial increase in space exploration budgets focussed on collaborative science missions (e.g. probes to accessible sub-surface liquid oceans of Saturn’s Moon, Enceladus and Jupiter’s Moon Europa that might harbour life.) but these planetary resource allocation decisions should not be left to the personal preferences or business interests of the billionaires amidst ecological collapse. (@techno_cynics: Austerity might be better applied in many other domains i.e. military spending and conspicuous consumption such as yachts and cosmetics)

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function [RESPONSIBLY].” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

Case study strengthens the hypothesis:

1. technological evolution is combinatorial: possibilities multiply with an increasing number of technologies
2. human culture is the opposite…. with more complexity, requisite adaptation slows down due to “interlocking complementarities”.
3. as a result ideology of techno-reductionism, perpetual growth paradigm, and non-linear tech change have usurped evolutionary dynamics

so for example, as long as influential but rogue and irresponsible actors like the US refuse to deal with the realities of climate change, other nation-states cant really move the needle too much.

We end up with increasing lag between tech and our social operating systems. practical upshot: increasing tech-induced existential risks

“Systems modelers say that we change paradigms by building a model of the system, which takes us outside the system and forces us to see it whole. I say that because my own paradigms have been changed that way” — Donella Meadows (2008, p. 164)

I make the following representation of the status quo / why the hell things remain shitty and what can be the possible alternatives:

As seen on the left, I have applied critical realism to discern underlying mechanisms and structures behind technological applications.

Social structures are considered key vectors that appropriate, incentivise, and channel creative expressions, including the evolution of technologies. The hegemony of industrial capitalism imposes exploitative and competitive biases on the applications of technology. Consequently, an application of technology ultimately tends to reinforce hegemonic structures even though it initially may appear to do the opposite.

The internet becomes web 2.0, rigged with cognitive / surveillance capitalism. Entrepreneurs become indistinguishable from capitalists. Elon Musk used to be a cool guy, interested in helping to improve collective human prospects and he still no doubt genuinely thinks he is doing just that:

but he has taken the “red pill” (prescribed implicit support for political force in the US that has waged climate war against rest of the planet)

It is crucial to discern that humans are not fundamentally flawed. Modern humans ended up in their current predicament due to multiple short-term attractors. Folks, as whacky as it sounds, I reckon we need nothing less than “cultural paradigm shift” marked by “collective coherent networked intelligence” that favours cooperation over competition, qualitative development over quantitative growth. We need to integrate traditional + modern + post-modern wisdoms / worldviews. I refer to these amazing contributions for this part:

• Donella Meadows (her systems wisdom),
• Elanor Ostrom (her polycentric governance approach),
• Jacqueline McGlade (her emphasis on integrating traditional worldviews)

Humans are remarkable for their radical flexibility in response to novelty. As Heidegger concludes in his Question Concerning Technology( p. 34):

“where danger is, grows
the saving power also”.

“The saving power lets humans see and enter into the highest dignity of their essence. This dignity lies in keeping watch over the un-concealment […And we] become the one who listen and hear, and not the ones who are simply constrained to obey” (Heidegger, 1954, p. 25).

This is a rather complex navigational challenge (see: Fermi paradox, the great filters, and this:

Kairos V2.0

In the technological realm, this is how I represent this shift (informed by the advent of complex evolutionary sciences)

Technologies can be sustainable and emancipatory only if they are complemented by a cultural paradigm shift. Our primary problems + solutions are cultural, not technological.

I elaborate on all this and if you are interested in more, check out my thesis. (or more specifically, chapter 4: Synthesis) email: pratik.p.patil@gmail.com

Academic Abstract:

This transdisciplinary synthesis applies complex evolutionary systems perspectives to analyse technological trajectories and critical realist framework for conceptualising normative appropriation of technologies.

Following questions are addressed:

1) What factors contribute to the evolution of technologies?

2) As a case study, what are the current trajectories of space
technologies?

3) What are the possible strategies and adaptations for sustainable and
emancipatory technologies?

4) As an example, what would be the satisficing trajectories of space technologies?

Evolutionary, complex systematic, historical, and philosophical perspectives beget a deeper understanding of how modern technologies have been reduced to the GDP growth machines by multiple short-term attractors. The remarkable effectiveness of the modern scientific methods combined with industrial capitalist hegemonies lead us to declare an era of ‘Anthropocene’ and we have become techno-reductionists: anthropic means to technological ends, playing out a soft version of the instrumental convergence (‘paper clip maximiser AI apocalypse’). I focus on the recent phenomenon of privatization and commercialization of the outer space domain as an instance and extension of this trajectory.

The evolutionary niche of homo sapiens is identified as:

(A) co-evolution of physical technologies and culture (social technologies);

(B) extensive flexibility in response to novelty (cultural paradigm shifts).

Anthropic niche (A) is being usurped by techno-reductionism and a perpetual growth paradigm at the expense of the collective commons. Case study of space technologies elaborates this hypothesis and identifies ‘Space-induced Temporal Disorientation’ (STD) syndrome among entrepreneurs professing to ensure human survival. Sociocultural evolution and institutional frameworks are lagging behind non-linear technological change in the multiple domains. This necessitates a cultural paradigm shift in our social operating systems (anthropic niche B) as a primary response.

This shift would be augmented by the mindset of ‘Techno-realism’:

I.) internalization of systemic complexity science perspectives marked by epistemic humility in our scientific methods and technological designs

II.) appropriation of value-laden techno-structures to promote: co-operation over competition; exploration over exploitation; qualitative entrepreneurial development over quantitative capitalist growth.

Humans need to harness ‘better angels of our nature’ from the evolutionary toolbox that is extraordinarily extensive and flexible. Space technologies in addition to their enabling functions (including limited internet connectivity via shared infrastructure) can be useful to foster ‘overview effect’: the big picture perspectives and paradigm shifts needed for regenerative futures.

Earthrise (captured by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders on Christmas eve 1968) Image Credits: NASA

PS: Please don’t screw it up, humans. So long and thanks for all the fish!