William Gibson on the apocalypse: “it’s been happening for at least 100 years”
newstatesman.com
newstatesman.com
If they say “Here is a wrong thing and anyone who does it sucks,” then it is the definition of hypocrisy if they do it themselves.
The smugness is an implicit moral judgment, and the moral judgment has to create a duty to act, or else it’s not a moral judgment (maybe? I’m not a philosopher...)
Not universally true. There are plenty of people who are improving the world. I know of several who live rather selfless lives and could well be described as environmental warriors.
In the article he says if the jackpot is happening, it’s been happening for the last hundred years, and I agree with that, but I don’t think it’s happening (in the sense that I assign a very, very low probability to 80% of humans dying). I do think climate change is a very serious problem and have adjusted my behavior accordingly, but if I thought 80% of humans were going to die, I would adjust my behavior a lot more, and if William Gibson doesn’t adjust his behavior a lot more, then I think it’s plausible to assign a higher probably to him being a fool or him not actually believing the jackpot will happen. The latter seems more likely.
And I understand that from a logical perspective, what I believe about William Gibson has no bearing on whether the jackpot will happen, but it seems like the best way to judge the likelihood of something like that is to evaluate the statements and actions of lots of smart people.
It also implies that you think that adjusting your behavior will have a non-neglectable impact (one may doubt so, and even doubt that it may create an example for others to follow...).
Smart people are able to learn and to solve problems, and it helps when it comes to predicting the future, but does being smart always 'sufficiently helps' when it comes to predicting? Is there a single case of society able to alleviate some catastrophic total slow-moving failure, thanks to a consensus among smart people? There are, for sure, numerous cases of such failures not only neglected but often dynamized by the elites (the 'Collapse' book authored by J. Diamond seems pertinent).
We may also try to define who is smart (chose a topic, write a list of 'smart people' names, show it to friends in order to verify if they agree with you, or want to eject some names and add others you don't want in). If everyone can only add names the resulting list will contain 'smart people' rarely agreeing (and act the same way), controversy is the rule and consensus the exception. It may mean that most of us judge that 'smart people' are people they agree with. Nothing new here...
Moreover various assertions now considered false were consensual among the very tip of 'smart people' (the few ones considered smart by most) for a fair amount of centuries.
In my opinion in our huge societies everything moves too quickly, and there are too many interactions, for even the smartest to really understand, bar to predict anything. Given this perspective hoping that an unique and central government will solve anything seems grotesque, those chiefs will simply resume the "let's feign to understand, and avoid attempting any potentially decisive action" game already running and the resulting centralization (=> bureaucracy) will only create new challenges.
"Slaves don't feel pain like we do"
The book has two parallel story-lines, and very short chapters which makes it a very disjointed read.
The characters were also very flat. For the last quarter of the book, the main character's dialog is almost all short questions and other characters explaining things to her. e.g.
<paragraph explanation> "why's that?" <paragraph explanation> "oh really?" <paragraph explanation> etc.
But Pattern Recognition was amazing at the time, but now a lot of the stuff in it is normal. Like Influencers in it was a really novel idea at the time, now considered everyday.
I waited ages after Spook Country (2007) to try and read it, so perhaps it was to late.
Internet changed it all. What he was amazing at, now gets just served up to everyone. The future is still un-evenly distributed, but viewing it is evenly distributed.
Reminds me of Ken MacLeod's The Execution Channel, which goes out of its way to mention that Gore was elected president- and an alternate 9/11 that hits Boston and Philadelphia leads to the War on Terror anyway. Though written in 2006 or so, it felt particularly prescient a peace later despite being pre-smartphones and social media- it capture an increasingly paranoid world choked full of state-sponsored internet disinfo, influential conspiracy theory bloggers, climate change refugees. Despite the weird ending and not the best plot, the world-building and general tone manages to have resonance nearly fifteen years later.
And, well, his thoughts about theoretical "UN with teeth" is such a textbook example of Utopiah fallacy, I'm amazed he's actually saying something like this with a straight face.
Maybe social welfare and international aid are selectively breeding a race of humans who are unable to sustain their own lives without support of the superior but relatively shrinking productive class?
What if repeated famines were the cause of the high intelligence we have today? We stopped famines. Maybe the pressure to outsmart each other has gone too.
What if Islam continues to spread? It's a kind of mind-virus filled with techniques to keep its hosts infected (don't ask difficult questions about God, kill people who stop believing, etc.) and to spread (kill or tax people who don't believe, and when you might have killed someone in war, allow them to live if they convert to Islam). Everyone being infected might be OK if it was benign, but it's also anti-science (Predicting future outcomes is usurping the power of God who's the one who decides what will happen). This is perhaps what already happened due to Christianity in the dark ages. Took 1000 years to recover from that end of the world.
Maybe modern medicine is breeding a race of unhealthy people who depend on it for survival. Maybe we're in an arms race of humans needing ever-better medicine and medicine having to treat ever-more difficult diseases.
How can you defend against a politically incorrect end of the world? The obvious direct course of action is forbidden, which means even mentioning the possibility of those being problems is forbidden socially, which means it might blindside us. We might even welcome it coming. I can imagine future degraded people laughing at their silly ancestors wanting technology and healthcare instead of fighting enemies with their fists like a natural real man. They might ostracize tinkerers who try to build useful things instead of participating in the tribal rituals and fighting.