Professor Steve Fuller’s essay ‘Ninety-degree Revolution’ was the first attempt at trying to make sense of Upwing vs Downwing instincts on the broader society & he did so primarily from an Upwinger perspective, which he did an excellent job of outlining.
His take was that the ‘Communitarian Left’ (i.e. Socialists, Commies, etc.) found common cause with the Libertarian Right (i.e. Anarchists, Constitutionalists, Libertarians, etc.) were in the Upwing camp. In contrast, the Eco-left/Anarcho-Left found a common cause with the Religious Right & were both in the Downwing Camp. While correct, there is another dimension of analysis he missed in said essay:
One way to extend the concepts of ‘Black Sky Upwingers vs Green Earth Downwingers’ even further would be to factor in another variable, namely Time, & ask the question, ‘What sort of Time does humanity have overall?’ Here, you can answer in two ways:
If you answer ‘Not so much,’ you’re in the camp of the Ephemeralists, which take the following forms:
1. Ephemeral Upwingers: Pirates, Warlords, Raiders, etc. Humanity is only briefly here, so we can expand, take risks, conquer, etc., as needed. These men already exist in the Twilight of Industrial society, taking action on the frontier with increasing confidence.
2. Ephemeral Downwingers: Survivalists & Preppers. Humanity is only briefly here, so we should defend what we have (e.g., friends, family, etc.) during that Time. These men have existed for a long Time across the American heartland & other parts of the world.
If you answer ’Quite a bit,’ you’re in the camp of ‘Deep Time,’ which takes the following two forms:
1. Deep Time Upwingers: Technophiles & Cornucopians. Fusion, AI, Space Travel, infinite expansion & posthumans who *want* to extend Faustian Civilization several millions of years into the future. The sort of ‘elite’ & whatnot you outlined very well in this essay, Pater! 😉😘
2. Deep Time Downwinger: Arcadians & Wizards. ‘We will be here for several millions of years… so we should get used to it.’ History is not something ‘we make,’ but rather, it happens & people need to adapt & be resilient as required, given changing circumstances.
Ephemerals vs Deep Timers is a very relevant secondary axis because, ideologically, one’s expectations for Time impacts them profoundly:
If, for example, you believe that Robots, AI, Fusion, etc, will be here ‘any moment now,’ you will not be changing how you live.
Similarly, if you believe that Climate Change, an Asteroid, etc, will kill humanity ‘any moment now,’ you will likewise not change how you live.
Preppers & Survivalists will isolate themselves, awaiting the DOOM.
Meanwhile, Tech bros will await the ‘commercialization of *insert cool tech here*’ & await the ‘Techno-rapture.’
Dr Simon Michaux (whose work I follow closely) has argued that ‘the Vikings’ (i.e. the Ephemeral Upwingers) are too amoral &/or immoral to be relevant, while the Tech bros are ardent followers of the religion of Progress in all of its varieties. Thus, his verdict is to take the Arcadian/Wizard Deep-Time Downwinger approach & marry it to the Ephemeral Downwinger approach championed by the Survivalists & Preppers.
This is a brilliant addition, and I think that the synthesis, the “Roman” view might be “You personally don’t have forever in this world, so make the most of it. But remember that you have a duty to your children. They will build upon your foundations…and have to deal with the consequences of your failures.”
OK, now for some implementation details. How do we have a system which allows new tech while ensuring that the technology serves humanity vs. humanity serving sterile metrics like GDP?
Step one is to replace Keynesian Economics with something the Austrian School folks would approve of. Our Ponzi Scheme economy *requires* endless growth. It is forced; not natural. A good economy should slow down once people have "enough." Without maturity transformation, such an economy could be pleasant, one where people have time to enjoy their stuff.
Note also have the Keynesian paradigm is all about putting "unemployed resources" to use. Well, the big advantage of the assembly line is that it keeps the expensive specialized tools in use. For a craftsman to do satisfying work, to go from rawish materials to finished product, the crafsman needs a wide variety of tools, most of which spend most of their time idle. The Keynesian solution is incredibly anti-populist.
You implement experimental regions. For example, on a tiny scale, the towns where they activated universal basic income and found it helps a lot if it's a homogenous peaceful population in the Netherlands or somewhere. I think in the US it bombed for obvious regions when they tested it.
In the business world there's a theoretical model where you found a small company, separate from you so it must stand on its own feet but staffed by your renegades and brilliant pioneers, whose purpose is to eat your parent company. It would be as if Sony with the Walkman founded Apple with the ipod which would quietly eat the parent and so on. It's worked like once or twice because businesses have discovered that old growth makes new growth impossible so usually an outsider does it then kills you.
So, in theory, you could have a series of test states whose purpose is to see what policies are super great and then have them overtake the rest of the system over time. Of course a single baby boomer generation would end the experiment with rampant selfishness but hey that's life.
The business world thing would happen a lot more if the price of capital wasn't so brutal for startups. Big corporations can grow to bloated extremes because they get to use pre tax money (retained earnings) for growth. Once a corporation has a profitable line, they have in essence a unlimited IRA deduction for growth.
Startups have to go around grovelling to find someone to risk their post-tax money.
You had me chomping at the bit wanting to scream "progress for what!?" -- until near the end.
Creating Frankenstein technology just because we can is not a good idea. Hollywood has been saying this using the mad scientist trope going way back.
A spacefaring civilization is just a continuation of human spreading across the Earth. Colonizing other planets and remaining human is an option. Not so sure about genertic engineering and AI.
Notice the original "Star Trek." The most repeated theme was the importance of remaining human. Robots were from dead civilizations. Attempts at extending human lifespan were disastrous. Virtual worlds were a fatal dead end. Genetically enhanced humans caused terrible wars in the 1990s.
Jack Vance was even more explicit with this theme in his most excellent "Demon Princes" series. If any of ye haven't read this series, go get it. I have reread it multiple times just to enjoy the world and the language.
Regarding populism, I would say that the defining characteristic that separates populism from other forms of economic egalitarianism is the desire for the freedom to DO -- without being overly managed from above. The Luddites were independent weavers working from home who were put out of business by centralized looms.
To the extent that technology centralizes, technology is anti populist.
But new technology does not always centralize. The electric motor enabled small scale production. You didn't need to be at a hydropower location or connected to a giant steel mill. Gasoline and diesel engines, along with some higher tech controls can be used to make small scale sawmills.
CNC machine tools and additive manufacturing allows much smaller runs for building metal and plastic parts.
The Smart Grid and electric vehicle mandates are make the masses dependent. They are anti-populist. Solar power with batteries, on the other hand, can enable people to get off the Grid. Very populist.
Battery technology and solar more generally can require sourcing raw materials from suppliers thousands of miles away, which requires global trade networks and maritime security that have to be enforced by a military hegemon, so I'm not sure that's necessarily 'populist'.
I don't entirely blame the reactionary right for being skeptical of biotech, but the genetically neutral human society doesn't exist and we can't ban deleterious mutations, which means that eugenics of some form or another is inevitable over long enough timescales. Colonising other planets is also likely to introduce rather distinctive selection pressures to whatever human populations settle on Mars or spin up O'Neil Cylinders or delve below the ice-sheets of Europa, which might result in them looking very different a few thousand years from now. It's hard to imagine they won't be tempted to use genetic engineering to expedite that process, if it means higher survival rates for their children.
Agreed about planets and selection pressure and the temptation to modify humans. Ben Bova wrote a trilogy on the subject.
As for battery materials, populism doesn't require the elimination of distant commerce. It does require buffers and competition. For example, needing propane for a backup generator is different from being dependent on the grid. There is both competition between delivery services and you can buffer up months in advance.
Farmers routinely stock gasoline and/or diesel fuel for their machinery. They have independence as long as their tanks are reasonably full.
Compare that to electricity with smart metering. You are continuously dependent on the electric company AND the electric company gets to monitor your levels of activity.
Natural selection is inevitable over a long enough timeline. Large scale eugenics remains a managerial pipe dream.
You're far more likely to get transhumanist divergence out of a tech-optimist approach, which is not necessarily eugenic in that it doesn't conform to some imposed or consensus standard of "good". I'd argue dysgenic, especially when we start seeing the horrors that interbreeding between synthetic germ lines inevitably yields.
But. I am not optimistic about the prospects of biotech so I'm not too worried about that personally. Gattaca is ten years away and always will be.
I'm pretty sure I had a very similar discussion on this topic recently and I don't want to go in circles, so I'll try to keep this (relatively) brief: public resistance to eugenics is essentially a conflict between human ego/stupidity and the laws of physics, and I expect physics to prevail. Whether that happens through biotech interventions, religious or cultural mores regarding marriage and sexuality, the free market or public subsidies, or is voluntary or involuntary, conscious or unconscious, is something I am agnostic about.
My definition of 'eugenics' is broad. In the worst-case scenario, the collapse of industrial civilisation and reversion to malthusian population pressures and survival-of-the-fittest would do the job, though this is the least pleasant possible implementation.
You're right that the definition of fitness is somewhat context-specific, insofar as diverse environmental niches can demand different standards of adaptation, but there is no such thing as natural selection in an artificial environment, and we are a species that has been creating its own environment since at least the neolithic. Entropy adapts to nothing. There is no strictly 'natural' option here, and there hasn't been for a very long time.
(I could be cute and say that if, in future, synthetic human germlines went on to develop teratogenic abnormalities this will be 'not eugenics' by definition, although I guess one can always make the "no TRUE communist would X" argument. I'll just say there isn't much indication of it in reprotech thus far, insofar as major genetic defects usually get weeded out pretty early by abortion or embryo selection, which have been standard adjuncts to IVF treatments for several decades now. Religious conservatives can make principled objections to this approach, but obviously the anti-eugenic left don't have a leg to stand on.)
Well, if your definition of "eugenics" is broad enough it eventually becomes "natural selection".
You absolutely can have natural selection in artificial environments, whether they're petri dishes, cities, transcontinental sailing ships, or welfare states. We are experiencing, *right now*, adaptation to this constructed environment both in wild and domestic animals and in humans, which would be called dysgenic by a eugenicist, but in fact is just natural adaptation to an emerging niche. Nature has no value structure at all. It only prefers greco-roman polymaths if greco-roman polymaths produce the most successful offspring.
In humans we have two notably divergent strategies which are reinforcing very specific phenotypes: on the one hand social climbers who minimize offspring and defer childbirth with technological assistance leading to an explosion of aneurotypical antisocials, and on the other hand welfare maximizers catering to a reward function based on the number offspring they're able to produce and the number of disabilities they're able to display or emulate. If you don't think this is selection and adaptation, look closer.
But niches vary in longevity and nature doesn't care *at all* about general fitness or intra-generational adaptability. Ask pandas what they're going to do when the bamboo runs out.
> You absolutely can have natural selection in artificial environments...
I'm not interested in playing word games here. I think this violates the general understanding of 'natural selection'- by this definition selective crop/animal breeding would also be 'natural'- but whatever. I'm perfectly aware that modernity is broadly dysgenic for all the reasons you have outlined.
My point is that selection pressures driven by human agency acting upon humanity itself are totally inevitable, and the onus is on you to demonstrate that not understanding what we're doing is somehow going to improve the outcome.
> by this definition selective crop/animal breeding would also be 'natural'
No. No conscious effort is being made to produce autistic tech barons, disabled welfare queens, ship rats, or coyote-dog hybrids. Nobody set out to do this and nobody is preserving the status quo with the intention of exacerbating it.
To be very clear about the definitions I'm using here so we're not playing word-games:
Natural selection is an emergent process shaped by ecological niches, whether constructed by human, animal or other organic activity, or by non-organic processes, or whatever else. Environmental change -> energy gradient change -> new selective pressures and optimization strategies -> natural selection happens.
Eugenics is a large-scale attempt to direct the development of traits in humans, using selective breeding, genetic engineering, social engineering and other technological tools, according to some particular set of human values, often in defiance of natural selective pressures. Not unlike we have done in agriculture, except of course the human environment is less bounded than a monocropped field or a CAFO.
Two main points I'm making:
1) There is no particular objectively good trait or gene; to say this trait is good and that is bad is a value judgement. E.g. Sickle cell anemia is great when it lets you survive malaria. Muted immune response is great for spacefaring cyborgs who spend their lives in sterile microgravity. Eugenics implies making value judgements that look beyond fitness and toward desirability for aesthetic or goal-oriented reasons, and I'm not opposed in principle, but:
2) I am skeptical about eugenics ever being implementable. I am not a member of the line go up cult; I don't think sci fi dreams are inevitable given enough time and ingenuity and I don't think that it's a given that all things occurring in nature are comprehensible let alone engineerable in real life (maybe they are and maybe they aren't, but this is a faith-based belief that I don't share). I think genetic engineering on a large scale without significant, maybe deadly maladaptrive drawbacks, is unlikely rather than inevitable. And technocratic breeding programs and other social engineering schemes are a ridiculous pipe dream.
Example: If we were *trying* to create a bunch of disabled welfare queens because we thought that would be really keen, and built the programs that produce them with that intent, then that would have been a great eugenic success. Instead they partly represent the failure of earlier eugenic schemes. I expect this sort of hubristic failure to continue indefinitely.
Leading to the conclusion: eugenics is not going to happen (at least, not successfully), and natural selection will prevail.
A truly excellent analysis. You have put into words ideas and philosophical positions that I've always had but only knew instinctively. I'm sure that others who read this will feel the same way. To gain traction I believe you will need two things: 1) An Aenean Code of Morality or Conduct to bridge the gap between philosophy and action, and 2) a concretized evil, without which the Code of Conduct becomes weaksause. I've mentioned this before, but with every successful philosophy or religion that has been taken up by the masses, there is always an abbreviated version of the core ideals, pro and con, that plays well. Marketing - Trump did it with "Make America Great Again". This phrase encompasses the movement's ideas - as seen by each of its coalition members. Of course, Aeneanism, the New Upwing ascendency, and the Physiocratic Platform are all in their incubation phase, but it's exciting to watch these new movements being born.
I agree, concretized evil, I.e., the ability to recognize it when you see it, is a key success factor which is sorely missing today. Many are addicted to comfort and unable to see evil.
But evil only has meaning as a counter to the idea of "good" [which is perhaps not yet so naively advanced as to say "holy"]. We have biblical discussions of Original Sin as a primative way of expressing our mutual and parallel evolved characteristics of 1) logic and intelligence, played against 2) our emotions and instinctual reactions. Both (and perhaps others?) are/were necessary for our survival from early hominids (hominins?).
Each in their way adds and detracts from our ideas of good and evil.
Predators are not evil for killing their prey to eat. Grazing prey animals are not evil for eating that defenseless grass or brush. Both sources provide a refined source of proteins and other biochemicals that short circuit the need to fabricate them from scratch from available chemistry. The situation does get muddier for chimps, with one group attacking and killing individuals from another group, but is that evil or instinct to advance their localized survivability? Somehow we humans recognize a theory of mind and of reciprocity that does not restrain us totally from killing our fellows (who are also at the top of the predator hierarchy), but does cause us to minimize or restrict our predation agains our "in group" members to some degree.
What about this as your base for the "Aenean Code of Morality or Conduct"? Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
This allows room for growth, advancement, and progress, yet limits action to that which benefits humanity and does not tolerate selfish ambitions in any way.
I have suggested elsewhere that the "neighbor as yourself" criteria is still asking too much of us, while the "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is within the bounds of reasonable and decently expected (reciprocal) behavior.
Too squishy. Your interpretation is only one of many that can be made. What if I hate myself? What exactly does "love" mean, and what would it demand of us?
What it means, in my opinion, is that I treat my neighbor in the same manner as I would like to be treated by my neighbor. I want to live at peace with him so I will not do anything which would cause him to hate me. I do not want my neighbor to be aggressive toward me, so I will not be aggressive toward him. It is proactive, not reactive. It begins with me.
"Give and you shall receive" also fits into this neatly. In the manner which I "give" to my neighbor, I will receive from him and, due to human nature, the receiving will be magnified to some extent--for good or for evil. Eventually, the "love" (whatever that might be) I show my neighbor (whoever that might be) will come back to me.
"Love does no wrong to its neighbor." -- Romans 13:10
If, IF, this is true, then it is impossible to love your neighbor unless you love yourself. If you hate yourself, then you will hate your neighbor. You cannot love him because you do not know the meaning of love nor how to show it.
People who hate themselves do not last nor succeed in the long run. Hating yourself (and everyone around you) is a dead end and produces no lasting legacy nor benefit to society.
All of that may be true, but it's a personal decision and spiritual journey, not a way to order a society. Loving or not loving your neighbor is motive, but in the real world we must deal with actions. Only God can look into another man's heart.
I'm not trying to look into another man's heart. I only know what is in my own and what I need to do to correct that.
How would you order society? As far as I can see, there is only one way for society to be "ordered"--certain persons do the "ordering" and everyone else obeys. Why is this system better than what I have proposed, in which God does the ordering and everyone else obeys?
And there's the rub. Which moral scheme can be grafted onto MAGA without being rejected by the host? From which holy text do its tenets originate? Can anyone name a historical example of a political movement which has successfully applied a moral framework on an ex post basis?
MAGA 2.0 certainly has strong Christian Zionist representation and in the figure of its spiritual advisor; Paula White, we can also detect a rich vein of 'prosperity theology' (pun intended). The current moral underpinnings of this administration can be summed up by two words; "moral hazard". I fear this may in fact be the limit on the movement's driving philosophy; a televangelist get rich quick scheme for all involved. Maybe I am being disingenuous, but I can't square the Aenean spirit with meme coins.
Islam - but the political and moral framework most likely developed simultaneously. For better or worse, Christianity has always adapted to the zeitgeist. It will most likely adapt to an Aenean zeitgeist as well. However, morals and religion is where the pristine purity of ideology meets the grimy reality of the human condition.
The Upwing and Downwing divide is in fact the progressive vs conservative divide going by the original meanings of those terms. How the terms progressive and conservative drifted from their original meanings would itself make an interesting study.
It's almost like we're facing the potential for an existentially-threatening runaway arms race that has to be resolved through the state's monopoly on force.
On quibble: Bill Gates is not a Downswinger. He is investing in nuclear power. His vaccination programs in Africa are an attempt to switch Africa from r to k strategy. He is not trying to kill off people with the vaccines. He's trying to get the birthrate down by convincing parents that most of their children will survive.
Yeah, I think Gates gets way too much a bad rap, personally. Various afroid wingnuts want to accuse him of trying to implement eugenic population control when (A) that's a good thing, actually, and (B) he's doing it by the mildest and most humane methods possible.
We Downwingers will not forsake our optimistic brothers. When your scrambled dna causes immune system collapse and absorbing too much hard radiation sends the hyper cancer coursing through your organs, we will be there to apply some dilaudid and the pillow.
In theory, I am an Upwinger, in practice, Downwing.
Put another way, collectively, I believe in the vast, unlimited potential of humanity, yet individually, I am concerned with my own issues which I seek to overcome in my own way. I have no problem with others forging ahead at full speed, but they need to leave me alone to progress at my own pace. Likewise, those who wish to slam on the brakes can do so with my blessing, but they must not impede my movement at all.
I am individual. I am also part of community. Making these two work together for the good of everyone is the conundrum which drives the future.
I feel you on this. In Ahnaf's terms, I am an Ephemeral Downwinger and Deep Upwinger. I believe that we're doomed and also that we will conquer the stars.
There are definitely Westerners who incorporate both sentiments... the OG American Pragmatist school comes to mind (a la their focus on both Nature & Technology).
I will quibble with your definition: it’s impossible to transcend nature because everything we do is part of nature. Whether it’s the elephants tearing up the trees or the human race launching space ships it’s still natural forces
Prof Fuller’s notion of the Upwinger vs Downwinger concept is Great from the Upwinger Point of View... however actual Downwingers are of two camps:
1) "These Technology people are breaching Limits at their peril.'
2) "These Technology people will simply die off soon."
I'm in #2. Ditto for John Michael Greer & others.
"We will REACH THE STARS!".... that crowd of people will fail even if they had access to all the resources on the Earth's Crust, given that the Human Body cannot withstand anything 'up there.' & this is before we look at the irrelevance of fantasy techs like Fusion, AI, etc.
We know this because we have extensive data for astronauts who go up to the International Space Station & suffer irreparable damage to their musculature & whatnot.
People will launch rockets for a while... then several decades & centuries later they will live in Shanty towns & Slums, & some will still believe that 'anyday now we will go back to the Moon.' All of that is simply Destiny/Fate occurring in a 'Natural way.'
I’m not familiar with Green’s work. Invoking Druidism and freemasonry to make the argument for technological limitations seems a little weird, but he seems pretty intelligent. I think we can continue to make technological improvements a la fission and perhaps even terraform deserts here on Earth. Going to Mars to do that is just batshit crazy. It would never happen. And if the human race survives until the death of our solar system, what good will a Mars colony do? You would have to be outside of our solar system!
He does not make Occultic arguments to point to said limits.
He uses basic things such as White’s Law to do so.
Fission plateaued ages ago. Specifically, it plateaued sometime in the late 90s to early 2000s. There are only about 400+ Nuclear reactors worldwide & this number changes by about 1-2 per annum.
Overall, nuclear power is a thin sliver that only generates electricity, which is only a tiny fragment of global energy consumption. It has been stagnant to declining in even that category due to the Economic unviability of the whole thing.
20-21 TW of energy... that's what humans produce every *hour on Earth, & some 80%+ of it is thanks to fossil fuels.
There will be no 'terraforming.' Sorry, but that’s a pipe dream once you start calculating basic energy requirements for such a feat.
There might still be merit in exploring and mining the asteroids and planets with robots.
Perhaps put an even better telescope than Webb on one of them to continue to explore the cosmos for our intectual pleasure?
Having some sort of stations on the moon also seems relatively doable, but certainly is not equivalent to more than a biodome environment here on earth.
If we are in the shanty towns and slum stage, we are probably only a few hundred million in population by then.
The energy requirements for getting a robot to an asteroid and mining the stuff you need… when you compete against someone down here on 🌍 who simply digs a “big hole”…
Sure, but we still refer to 'natural and artificial' as referring to things that occur with and without human/sapient intervention, although the distinction gets blurry when humans have never survived without tool use.
There’s 3 fundamental contradictions with the current leftist “downwing” movement:
1. Mass immigration from 3rd world countries
2. Support of transhuman values like transgenderism
3. Obsession with drugs and the medical industry, “following the science”
I don’t think it’s possible for a viable downwing movement to ever emerge. A legitimate movement must have a real elite, but the downwing elite are merely self-interested and seek to prevent others from rising to their level.
Westerners worship infinite growth, which requires population growth, which means mass migration once you get contractions in natural increase from sagging fertility rates.
As for 'transgenderism' & 'follow the science' ... Downwingers who are religious (like myself) simply reject such things as they go against Allah Most High's Commands.
If we are being honest about 'the chessboard'... the majority of the world's peoples would be classified as 'Downwing' with maybe a small fraction of Westerners being 'Upwing.'
Only in the Faustian West (& perhaps in some technophile circles in the East) do you have this notion that 'technology can solve all of mankind's problems.'
tl;dr - Just by raw Demography alone, coupled with understanding peoples' worldviews from the bird's eye view: The majority of peoples (elite, proles, etc) are Downwing.
The whole Upwing transhumanist Utopian vision is a manifestation of the death throes of the Enlightenment project. A West 'emancipated' even from its religious & moral foundations is left with progress for progress' sake. Now we are to be emancipated from our very humanity! What we are experiencing is the advanced stages of an epistemological crisis of monumental proportions. Science is fast degenerating into Scientism - a fundamentalist belief system which cannot be questioned. The zealots of this replacement faith exhort us to "trust the science" (or else) and so inadvertently further destroy our trust in the false god.
Not so long ago scientific and technological progress in the West was guided by Christian values for the benefit of Man. For me, the completeness of the value inversion was embodied by a speech at the WEF by Yuval Harari - the one where he said the technological future will be so bright that 90% of us will not be required.. The West is finished and it'll get even more nutty from here.
If I am understanding your comment correctly, you might find this essay of some (supporting?) interest? I found it only 2 days ago:
https://aeon.co/essays/investigating-the-roots-of-the-natural-supernatural-dichotomy The birth of naturalism. The modern era is often seen as the triumph of science over supernaturalism. But what really happened is far more interesting. [2/4/25] In the end I found it underwhelming for me, but you may still find it appealing. It is also kind of long so perhaps only deserves a skimming?
Here’s Why Some People Are More Religious Than Others
Tanya Basu @mstanyabasu 9/22/15 This essay is fairly short. First sentence:
"It may have little to do with education; psychologists now believe that religiosity is linked to whether you solve problems intuitively or deliberatively."
I found some personal sympathy with this, but also saw that it neglects to consider our evolved pyschology that requires both intuitive and deliberative aspects of our mentality to aid our survival from hominid time frames.
The paradox of the downwing movement is that to have any chance of success it needs to be global, but any global institutions are themselves perceived as "upwing" by the downwing populists. The history of the 19th century shows what happens to downwing societies when upwing societies show up, but due to normalcy bias downwing populists have a hard time internalizing this fact.
Interesting, even though full of fallacious premises.
First, the left vs. right divide is an idiotic non-existent dichotomy, which, the way it is generally understood, encompasses many actual dichotomies, some, if not all or most, of which will always be inherently present in human society, such as individualism (right) vs. collectivism (left).
As to the Philosophy of Expansion, that's the ultimate expression of phantasmagoria arising from the Carbon Pulse, i.e. the discovery and use of hydrocarbons in the past few centuries, which has allowed humans to achieve unprecedented technological advancement and succumb to the notion that technological progress is the raison d'etre, essence of life, and the best fucking thing after sliced bread on top of that.
Texts like this one are highly educational because they demonstrate just how far some people have become detached from nature and their own selves, because humans, surprise, surprise, are part of nature. To begin with, the implicit transhumanism or transnaturalism, the idea that human can re-engineer himself into something better than himself is batshit crazy. It's not that people can't improve, but not through external means - that has to be done internally. External means, i.e. technologies, will only atrophy human abilities. That path, of course, few want to undertake - especially not the expansionists, because it requires more effort than inventing some shit that provides a quick fix.
Anyways, while solving the individualist vs. collectivist dichotomy is an impossible task, solving the implicit clash between expansionists and traditionalists should be relatively easy. Let all of us non-fucked-up backward naturalists chip in and help the expansionists build a giant fucking rocket and blast their asses out there into space, which they can thereafter explore for ever and ever. How's that for a deal?
Pater's essay is great, I would not view it as harshly as you do.
Re: Your last paragraph... Grandmaster of DOOM, John Michael Greer has the same sentiment a la 'just let them do their thing & let them fail since they wish to so badly.'
I, for one, have no problem with people wasting all their finite resources to 'go to Mars' & thereby giving up Europe, North America, etc to people who actually work with their hands & don't just fantasize about nonsense all day.
Ok cool, you get the super cold, barren rock with no Biosphere, no protection from the Giant Nuclear Radiator at the centre of the Solar System...
And we get the Planet with a livable Climate, able to support various Niches for Humans & which has the ability to sustain non-Human Life in various ways?
lol - while a bit harsh man, your closing line was fun.
“Fallacious premises“ seems a little overwrought to me. I sensed it too though.
Regardless, I had not heard of the up wing down wing concepts before. And I read a good deal of truth within this essay. Incomplete, yes, but good luck being complete at the level of abstraction and complexity that he’s writing about.
My take on the essay is, fucking awesome. Imperfect, incomplete of course how could it not be? Very thankful to read it though.
It sure is admirable and appreciated that the guy is looking at reality through a different lens. Especially, but not only, in view of how idiotically the non-existent left/right dichotomy is generally used and how people lump so much incongruous stuff together under these two non-definable all-encompassing opposites.
However, this essay takes some premises for granted, such as the notion that progress is inherently a positive phenomenon, and that progress equals technological progress. This touches on the progressive/conservative dichotomy (one that is also idiotically projected into the left/right divide), but without examining what progress is and why it is a good/bad thing.
In other words, I'd like this analysis to go a few levels deeper and examine what drives people to be expansionist/traditionalist.
But as you say, texts like this are awesome, food for thought.
I would venture to say that most clear-thinking people understand that technological progress is not inherently positive. However, it's undeniable that technological progress brings power: financial power, military power, power over nature, and power over people. History shows that societies that do not pursue technological progress usually become dominated by those who do. The big challenge is finding the best way for technological societies to control and moderate this power. I believe that this can only be done through a very high standard of ethics with harsh social punishments for transgressions, but I don't think that this is amenable to universal political enfranchisement.
There is a middle ground, and it is actually the stance of most traditional Catholics.
Technology is good. It has a purpose and a good use. However, there are many evil uses and we must be always wary of those.
The world is good and meant to be stewarded. However, there are many ill uses of the world and it's creatures, all of whom are a reflection of a perfection of God, and should be treated as such in balance with the fact that they are here to serve us, and that a single human soul is worth more than all of the created universe.
The world is our home, the moon is a sacred place, literally used in scripture as an image of the Mother of God, Mary. It should not be defaced, as it is a thing of beauty that inspires many and belongs to the whole world, in the same way we hold stewardship over the Earth.
There is nothing inherently against the majority of what is in this essay for most traditionalist minded peoples. However, the manner, morals, and purpose to which the techbros put their visions at directly conflict with the metaphysical views of what the traditionalist people have for what the common good and the Good Life are, and thus those things become evil for what they will be used for - their telos.
To build a society good for humans, you have to have the correct view of what is good for humans.
The climate questions is not a question of upwingers wanting to geoengineer the climate reverse or downwingers wanting to save us by changing the societal structure to Neo-feudalism for the greater good - it is a question of anthropocentric climate or not? Clearly the climate changes over time naturally - that is the default behavior - but the question is "do we contribute to it, to any meaningful degree?". If it does change we will just have to adapt to it regardless of the elites (Just say that a super volcano errupts and we have another 1816 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer - it will be hell but we will go through it regardless).
Geoengineering can create clouds and seed them with rain (thats a matter of public record). I have heard about other technology , that sounds dodgy if its true. Either way - pursuing this strategy is to go against truth, as there is no valid confirmation of the cause - its like performing some weather ritual with no correlation to the long term weather. Going against truth always ends in ruin.
Neo-feudalism on the other hand, will never be accepted. people have tasted a normal life and they will not accept less than this. If they use covid as the template - they cant go much further, the push back was too much.
Even if this is true, the utter contradiction between means and ends among the Downwingers makes their side non-viable and their solutions patently insane. For there to be moral tension, the Downwingers need to have a serious project - and they don’t.
Infinite immigration of peoples who are terrible at delayed gratification is just the most obvious example of self-contradiction.
As with most of your "Aenean Age" posts, I have complicated thoughts about this one. (And whatever happened to the "Elendilic Civilization?" Didn't you write a whole essay about how that was a better name?)
I am of course sympathetic to your attempt to find a balance between the techno-optimist, "we can do anything we want" attitude, and the pessimistic attitude of "we are in an age of limits and we need to stop trying to innovate and just learn to live within nature's limits."
It's ironic, because the people like John Michael Greer and Ahnaf ibn Qais, who claim to center their whole worldview on limits, are actually ignoring a very important limit: the limit to mankind's knowledge. If you take that limit seriously, then you have to admit that our present understanding of the physical and life sciences is far from complete, and therefore it is difficult to predict what technologies and resources will and won't be in use in the future, and it is unwise to stop innovating. (This for instance is one of my criticisms of JMG's futurology: although he gets some big things right - I believe in the "deindustrial future" idea enough to have written a bunch of deindustrial stories in New Maps - his confidence that no renewable energy techs that weren't economically viable when he came of age c. 1980 will ever be viable, even if scientists and engineers keep working on them for hundreds of years, is wildly chronocentric. It assigns a specialness to the 1980s that the 1980s don't deserve, and in any case there are plenty of examples of historic technologies, like wooden sailing ships or steam engines, taking hundreds or thousands of years to reach their mature form.)
I find it difficult to place myself within either your "Upwinger" or "Downwinger" categories. I am a Downwinger in the sense that I'm pessimistic about a lot of the ideas that drive the Upwing/Downwing split, but at the same time I generally see little or no need to try and enforce my ideas through political action. For instance, I'm against regulating or banning AI research since I think the chances of it developing anything close to human intelligence are negligibly small. I think that climate change is a serious problem, but I'm opposed to most US climate legislation since I think that it does little except harass domestic oil, gas, and coal producers in order to make rich liberals feel good, without curtailing those rich liberals' access to the imported fuels that make their own lifestyles possible. I don't expect that Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos will be able to build self-sustaining space colonies (since the logistics of mining and manufacturing stuff in space are awful) but I also don't think there's any need to force them to stop trying, and I would be happy if Elon Musk managed to send a few scientific expeditions to Mars to study the planet and figure out if it has microbial life. (My guess is that it does, in warm aquifers several miles under the surface, the last remnants of a once-great ocean that exchanged bacteria with Earth and Venus through meteor bombardments early in the planets' history).
Really the only technologies that I want to see the government crack down on are the things on the more unethical end of the biotech field. So for instance, I don't worry about designer babies outperforming and supplanting naturally conceived ones like in the movie Gattaca (since the factors people want to "design" for - like intelligence and height and health - are highly polygenic, and the gene interactions are poorly understood, and the kinds of people who use ARTs have a fertility rate well below replacement to begin with). But I'm opposed on ethical grounds to IVF and anything else that involves creating lots of embryos and then killing the surplus. Also, I think that funding gain-of-function was a huge mistake. And while I'm not against paralytics experimenting with brain chips to control prosthetics, I think that most of the techs people use that manipulate neurology and brain function have on balance been really really bad, from lobotomies and giving toddlers morphine for teething pains, all the way down to the present situation with about 20% of Americans on some psych drug or another. And I think that it's especially nasty to put millions of children on ADHD medications in order to suppress behaviors that are only considered a mental disorder because they interfere with ideas that children should (1) sit still for eight hours a day with minimal fidgeting, squirming, or talking out of turn and (2) learn new skills at the exact same rate as a class of thirty or so other children born in the same calendar year.
I've written before about the ADHD controversy multiple times, on account of the plain seriousness of the damage that stimulant drugs like Ritalin and Adderall do to children (i.e. by suppressing growth, and creating anomalies of brain chemistry that never occur in undrugged children whether they've been diagnosed with ADHD or not.) https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/the-can-we-and-the-should-we-of-science
So, all told, I'm not sure where I fit in on the Upwing/Downwing axis. I don't share the Upwingers' optimism about limitless continued progress or Man-the-Conqueror-of-Nature, but I also don't think the Downwingers are justified in their lack of curiosity about new techs, their confidence that the techs they approve of are the only ones that will matter in the end, and their desire to be nature's enforcer and get in the way of other people's innovations. (If it's really a natural limit we're dealing with, then nature doesn't need an enforcer!) After all, nobody in the Middle Ages could have predicted that their descendants in the 20th century would figure out how to make flying machines, but NOT how to transmute base metals into gold. On what grounds can we claim the ability to predict what techs will be in use in the 25th or 30th century? (JMG's predictions that solar PV would always be a useless boondoggle are an excellent example of how this mindset fails, even on much shorter timescales.)
I guess that, all things considered, I would have to call myself a moderately libertarian moderate Downwinger. A moderate Downwinger, since even though I think that a Dark Age is coming and that most of the techno-utopian fantasies will fail, I also think there are plenty of techs that still have lots of room for improvement, and that the only way to find out which ones they are is to keep an open mind, and be curious and supportive of innovation. And a moderate libertarian, since I think that nature's limits generally have no need of human enforcers, and that even in a scarcity economy markets are the best way to distribute resources, but I also think that a handful of techs are nasty enough that they ought to be banned, like gain-of-function research and psychotropic drugs for unruly schoolchildren.
White's Law states that "culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased, or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of putting the energy to work is increased"
When The Grandmaster says 'Renewables will never be viable' he has that in mind.
Solar Panels, Wind Turbines, etc are net Negative given the fact that the metals, plastics, concrete, etc & their transport require Complex Value Chains & the usage of Fossil Fuels en masse. So they are *unviable* in the sense that you cannot use them to support 8+ billion people on the planet to live a certain quality of lifestyle.
Of the 8 billion people on the planet, 5 billion are in the workforce. An additional 500 billion worth of 'human bodies' are added in by Fossil Fuels. When the Carbon Pulse winds down, that will disappear gradually & it will mean that all future technologies will have to make do with that shortfall of 500 billion bodies.
Will people in the future be using Wind, Solar, etc? Sure!
But it will be in the low-tech & supplementary sense.
Not in the sense that (say) technophiles think a la 'Giant Solar sails on a Spaceship' which then sails off toward Alpha Centauri... that's not gonna be happening.
Not a solution for all energy requirements, but suitable (eventually?) for many heat and most electrical energy users. Will be be limited by materials (uranium maybe; thorium probably not?)? Still, enough to bring 9 B folks up to a 1950's or later standard of living? With medical advances beyond that (right to life; EMTALA, etc.?).
I certainly grant the major role of energy (mostly fossil; later nuclear) in promoting progress, as Michael Magoon defines it. But he also brings out that we needed major agricultural advances, trading networks, and the benefits of commercial cities (a la Italian city states in the 1200's up to the Netherlands in the 1600's?).
Thus there is a lot of human psychology in the abstract elements of social interactions: monetary and fiscal policies, banking, law and contracts and judiciary, technical standards and building codes, accounting standards, and a wide variety of social norms and preferences. AKA a massive increase in the levels of trust among groups - something we have not evolved to except as rational large brained animals. And then only for our "in group" until we came to understand the benefits of win-win agreements.
Cultural evolutions can happen within hours to decades, while the corresponding changes in our brains will take millenia (unless genetics gets even more sophisticated?)
There are 419 Nuclear Reactors worldwide, with a total Electrical Capacity of 378.1 GW. This number is growing per annum at 1-2+ Reactors (once you factor in Plant shutdowns, new construction, etc). This is the 'base case.'
Primarily, these guys are used to generate electricity, which is a small fragment of global energy consumption, which is 180,000+ TWh.
tl;dr - Nuclear is irrelevant. This is especially so when you graph it & discover that it only amounts to a few percentage points for said Global Energy Consumption number, 80%+ of which is Fossil Fuels.
Yes, you can do cool stuff with it (I don't deny that), but it does not have the scale, scope, reliability, infrastructure & fungibility of Fossil Fuels, & never will.
You do not need to know 'everything' to figure out the general trajectory of things. Epistemology is a subject area where *the particulars* are less important than the actual... 'prescriptive power' of knowledge, writ large.
What I mean by this is that even if people had *knowledge* about some amazing new tech, they would be limited by other factors.
While I cannot deductively rule out things like 'an Amazing working Fusion reactor,' I can make an Inductive Case. & at that point, if your critique is 'Well, this inductive case doesn't exhaust the fact that we simply Dont Know what is possible:'
My response is simply 'That doesn't matter.' Because Human Knowledge *as such* is not the limiting factor for New Construction, Buildings, etc.
> So for instance, I don't worry about designer babies outperforming and supplanting naturally conceived ones like in the movie Gattaca (since the factors people want to "design" for - like intelligence and height and health - are highly polygenic, and the gene interactions are poorly understood, and the kinds of people who use ARTs have a fertility rate well below replacement to begin with).
“a higher vision that resolves the tension between the two by recognizing that both impulses are necessary. It is the basis for a civilization with the daring to reach for the stars and the wisdom to find its way back to earth.”
Professor Steve Fuller’s essay ‘Ninety-degree Revolution’ was the first attempt at trying to make sense of Upwing vs Downwing instincts on the broader society & he did so primarily from an Upwinger perspective, which he did an excellent job of outlining.
His take was that the ‘Communitarian Left’ (i.e. Socialists, Commies, etc.) found common cause with the Libertarian Right (i.e. Anarchists, Constitutionalists, Libertarians, etc.) were in the Upwing camp. In contrast, the Eco-left/Anarcho-Left found a common cause with the Religious Right & were both in the Downwing Camp. While correct, there is another dimension of analysis he missed in said essay:
One way to extend the concepts of ‘Black Sky Upwingers vs Green Earth Downwingers’ even further would be to factor in another variable, namely Time, & ask the question, ‘What sort of Time does humanity have overall?’ Here, you can answer in two ways:
If you answer ‘Not so much,’ you’re in the camp of the Ephemeralists, which take the following forms:
1. Ephemeral Upwingers: Pirates, Warlords, Raiders, etc. Humanity is only briefly here, so we can expand, take risks, conquer, etc., as needed. These men already exist in the Twilight of Industrial society, taking action on the frontier with increasing confidence.
2. Ephemeral Downwingers: Survivalists & Preppers. Humanity is only briefly here, so we should defend what we have (e.g., friends, family, etc.) during that Time. These men have existed for a long Time across the American heartland & other parts of the world.
If you answer ’Quite a bit,’ you’re in the camp of ‘Deep Time,’ which takes the following two forms:
1. Deep Time Upwingers: Technophiles & Cornucopians. Fusion, AI, Space Travel, infinite expansion & posthumans who *want* to extend Faustian Civilization several millions of years into the future. The sort of ‘elite’ & whatnot you outlined very well in this essay, Pater! 😉😘
2. Deep Time Downwinger: Arcadians & Wizards. ‘We will be here for several millions of years… so we should get used to it.’ History is not something ‘we make,’ but rather, it happens & people need to adapt & be resilient as required, given changing circumstances.
Ephemerals vs Deep Timers is a very relevant secondary axis because, ideologically, one’s expectations for Time impacts them profoundly:
If, for example, you believe that Robots, AI, Fusion, etc, will be here ‘any moment now,’ you will not be changing how you live.
Similarly, if you believe that Climate Change, an Asteroid, etc, will kill humanity ‘any moment now,’ you will likewise not change how you live.
Preppers & Survivalists will isolate themselves, awaiting the DOOM.
Meanwhile, Tech bros will await the ‘commercialization of *insert cool tech here*’ & await the ‘Techno-rapture.’
Dr Simon Michaux (whose work I follow closely) has argued that ‘the Vikings’ (i.e. the Ephemeral Upwingers) are too amoral &/or immoral to be relevant, while the Tech bros are ardent followers of the religion of Progress in all of its varieties. Thus, his verdict is to take the Arcadian/Wizard Deep-Time Downwinger approach & marry it to the Ephemeral Downwinger approach championed by the Survivalists & Preppers.
Anyhow, to conclude:
Excellent Essay Pater! 😊
This is a brilliant addition, and I think that the synthesis, the “Roman” view might be “You personally don’t have forever in this world, so make the most of it. But remember that you have a duty to your children. They will build upon your foundations…and have to deal with the consequences of your failures.”
OK, now for some implementation details. How do we have a system which allows new tech while ensuring that the technology serves humanity vs. humanity serving sterile metrics like GDP?
Step one is to replace Keynesian Economics with something the Austrian School folks would approve of. Our Ponzi Scheme economy *requires* endless growth. It is forced; not natural. A good economy should slow down once people have "enough." Without maturity transformation, such an economy could be pleasant, one where people have time to enjoy their stuff.
Note also have the Keynesian paradigm is all about putting "unemployed resources" to use. Well, the big advantage of the assembly line is that it keeps the expensive specialized tools in use. For a craftsman to do satisfying work, to go from rawish materials to finished product, the crafsman needs a wide variety of tools, most of which spend most of their time idle. The Keynesian solution is incredibly anti-populist.
The second reform is to move from price based taxes to old fashioned excises. The former demands that all sectors of the economy automate equally. The latter is far more neutral to changes in technology. https://rulesforreactionaries.substack.com/p/santa-claus-vs-the-cost-disease
You implement experimental regions. For example, on a tiny scale, the towns where they activated universal basic income and found it helps a lot if it's a homogenous peaceful population in the Netherlands or somewhere. I think in the US it bombed for obvious regions when they tested it.
In the business world there's a theoretical model where you found a small company, separate from you so it must stand on its own feet but staffed by your renegades and brilliant pioneers, whose purpose is to eat your parent company. It would be as if Sony with the Walkman founded Apple with the ipod which would quietly eat the parent and so on. It's worked like once or twice because businesses have discovered that old growth makes new growth impossible so usually an outsider does it then kills you.
So, in theory, you could have a series of test states whose purpose is to see what policies are super great and then have them overtake the rest of the system over time. Of course a single baby boomer generation would end the experiment with rampant selfishness but hey that's life.
The business world thing would happen a lot more if the price of capital wasn't so brutal for startups. Big corporations can grow to bloated extremes because they get to use pre tax money (retained earnings) for growth. Once a corporation has a profitable line, they have in essence a unlimited IRA deduction for growth.
Startups have to go around grovelling to find someone to risk their post-tax money.
You had me chomping at the bit wanting to scream "progress for what!?" -- until near the end.
Creating Frankenstein technology just because we can is not a good idea. Hollywood has been saying this using the mad scientist trope going way back.
A spacefaring civilization is just a continuation of human spreading across the Earth. Colonizing other planets and remaining human is an option. Not so sure about genertic engineering and AI.
Notice the original "Star Trek." The most repeated theme was the importance of remaining human. Robots were from dead civilizations. Attempts at extending human lifespan were disastrous. Virtual worlds were a fatal dead end. Genetically enhanced humans caused terrible wars in the 1990s.
Jack Vance was even more explicit with this theme in his most excellent "Demon Princes" series. If any of ye haven't read this series, go get it. I have reread it multiple times just to enjoy the world and the language.
Regarding populism, I would say that the defining characteristic that separates populism from other forms of economic egalitarianism is the desire for the freedom to DO -- without being overly managed from above. The Luddites were independent weavers working from home who were put out of business by centralized looms.
To the extent that technology centralizes, technology is anti populist.
But new technology does not always centralize. The electric motor enabled small scale production. You didn't need to be at a hydropower location or connected to a giant steel mill. Gasoline and diesel engines, along with some higher tech controls can be used to make small scale sawmills.
CNC machine tools and additive manufacturing allows much smaller runs for building metal and plastic parts.
The Smart Grid and electric vehicle mandates are make the masses dependent. They are anti-populist. Solar power with batteries, on the other hand, can enable people to get off the Grid. Very populist.
Battery technology and solar more generally can require sourcing raw materials from suppliers thousands of miles away, which requires global trade networks and maritime security that have to be enforced by a military hegemon, so I'm not sure that's necessarily 'populist'.
I don't entirely blame the reactionary right for being skeptical of biotech, but the genetically neutral human society doesn't exist and we can't ban deleterious mutations, which means that eugenics of some form or another is inevitable over long enough timescales. Colonising other planets is also likely to introduce rather distinctive selection pressures to whatever human populations settle on Mars or spin up O'Neil Cylinders or delve below the ice-sheets of Europa, which might result in them looking very different a few thousand years from now. It's hard to imagine they won't be tempted to use genetic engineering to expedite that process, if it means higher survival rates for their children.
Agreed about planets and selection pressure and the temptation to modify humans. Ben Bova wrote a trilogy on the subject.
As for battery materials, populism doesn't require the elimination of distant commerce. It does require buffers and competition. For example, needing propane for a backup generator is different from being dependent on the grid. There is both competition between delivery services and you can buffer up months in advance.
Farmers routinely stock gasoline and/or diesel fuel for their machinery. They have independence as long as their tanks are reasonably full.
Compare that to electricity with smart metering. You are continuously dependent on the electric company AND the electric company gets to monitor your levels of activity.
Natural selection is inevitable over a long enough timeline. Large scale eugenics remains a managerial pipe dream.
You're far more likely to get transhumanist divergence out of a tech-optimist approach, which is not necessarily eugenic in that it doesn't conform to some imposed or consensus standard of "good". I'd argue dysgenic, especially when we start seeing the horrors that interbreeding between synthetic germ lines inevitably yields.
But. I am not optimistic about the prospects of biotech so I'm not too worried about that personally. Gattaca is ten years away and always will be.
I'm pretty sure I had a very similar discussion on this topic recently and I don't want to go in circles, so I'll try to keep this (relatively) brief: public resistance to eugenics is essentially a conflict between human ego/stupidity and the laws of physics, and I expect physics to prevail. Whether that happens through biotech interventions, religious or cultural mores regarding marriage and sexuality, the free market or public subsidies, or is voluntary or involuntary, conscious or unconscious, is something I am agnostic about.
My definition of 'eugenics' is broad. In the worst-case scenario, the collapse of industrial civilisation and reversion to malthusian population pressures and survival-of-the-fittest would do the job, though this is the least pleasant possible implementation.
You're right that the definition of fitness is somewhat context-specific, insofar as diverse environmental niches can demand different standards of adaptation, but there is no such thing as natural selection in an artificial environment, and we are a species that has been creating its own environment since at least the neolithic. Entropy adapts to nothing. There is no strictly 'natural' option here, and there hasn't been for a very long time.
(I could be cute and say that if, in future, synthetic human germlines went on to develop teratogenic abnormalities this will be 'not eugenics' by definition, although I guess one can always make the "no TRUE communist would X" argument. I'll just say there isn't much indication of it in reprotech thus far, insofar as major genetic defects usually get weeded out pretty early by abortion or embryo selection, which have been standard adjuncts to IVF treatments for several decades now. Religious conservatives can make principled objections to this approach, but obviously the anti-eugenic left don't have a leg to stand on.)
Well, if your definition of "eugenics" is broad enough it eventually becomes "natural selection".
You absolutely can have natural selection in artificial environments, whether they're petri dishes, cities, transcontinental sailing ships, or welfare states. We are experiencing, *right now*, adaptation to this constructed environment both in wild and domestic animals and in humans, which would be called dysgenic by a eugenicist, but in fact is just natural adaptation to an emerging niche. Nature has no value structure at all. It only prefers greco-roman polymaths if greco-roman polymaths produce the most successful offspring.
In humans we have two notably divergent strategies which are reinforcing very specific phenotypes: on the one hand social climbers who minimize offspring and defer childbirth with technological assistance leading to an explosion of aneurotypical antisocials, and on the other hand welfare maximizers catering to a reward function based on the number offspring they're able to produce and the number of disabilities they're able to display or emulate. If you don't think this is selection and adaptation, look closer.
But niches vary in longevity and nature doesn't care *at all* about general fitness or intra-generational adaptability. Ask pandas what they're going to do when the bamboo runs out.
> You absolutely can have natural selection in artificial environments...
I'm not interested in playing word games here. I think this violates the general understanding of 'natural selection'- by this definition selective crop/animal breeding would also be 'natural'- but whatever. I'm perfectly aware that modernity is broadly dysgenic for all the reasons you have outlined.
My point is that selection pressures driven by human agency acting upon humanity itself are totally inevitable, and the onus is on you to demonstrate that not understanding what we're doing is somehow going to improve the outcome.
> by this definition selective crop/animal breeding would also be 'natural'
No. No conscious effort is being made to produce autistic tech barons, disabled welfare queens, ship rats, or coyote-dog hybrids. Nobody set out to do this and nobody is preserving the status quo with the intention of exacerbating it.
To be very clear about the definitions I'm using here so we're not playing word-games:
Natural selection is an emergent process shaped by ecological niches, whether constructed by human, animal or other organic activity, or by non-organic processes, or whatever else. Environmental change -> energy gradient change -> new selective pressures and optimization strategies -> natural selection happens.
Eugenics is a large-scale attempt to direct the development of traits in humans, using selective breeding, genetic engineering, social engineering and other technological tools, according to some particular set of human values, often in defiance of natural selective pressures. Not unlike we have done in agriculture, except of course the human environment is less bounded than a monocropped field or a CAFO.
Two main points I'm making:
1) There is no particular objectively good trait or gene; to say this trait is good and that is bad is a value judgement. E.g. Sickle cell anemia is great when it lets you survive malaria. Muted immune response is great for spacefaring cyborgs who spend their lives in sterile microgravity. Eugenics implies making value judgements that look beyond fitness and toward desirability for aesthetic or goal-oriented reasons, and I'm not opposed in principle, but:
2) I am skeptical about eugenics ever being implementable. I am not a member of the line go up cult; I don't think sci fi dreams are inevitable given enough time and ingenuity and I don't think that it's a given that all things occurring in nature are comprehensible let alone engineerable in real life (maybe they are and maybe they aren't, but this is a faith-based belief that I don't share). I think genetic engineering on a large scale without significant, maybe deadly maladaptrive drawbacks, is unlikely rather than inevitable. And technocratic breeding programs and other social engineering schemes are a ridiculous pipe dream.
Example: If we were *trying* to create a bunch of disabled welfare queens because we thought that would be really keen, and built the programs that produce them with that intent, then that would have been a great eugenic success. Instead they partly represent the failure of earlier eugenic schemes. I expect this sort of hubristic failure to continue indefinitely.
Leading to the conclusion: eugenics is not going to happen (at least, not successfully), and natural selection will prevail.
A truly excellent analysis. You have put into words ideas and philosophical positions that I've always had but only knew instinctively. I'm sure that others who read this will feel the same way. To gain traction I believe you will need two things: 1) An Aenean Code of Morality or Conduct to bridge the gap between philosophy and action, and 2) a concretized evil, without which the Code of Conduct becomes weaksause. I've mentioned this before, but with every successful philosophy or religion that has been taken up by the masses, there is always an abbreviated version of the core ideals, pro and con, that plays well. Marketing - Trump did it with "Make America Great Again". This phrase encompasses the movement's ideas - as seen by each of its coalition members. Of course, Aeneanism, the New Upwing ascendency, and the Physiocratic Platform are all in their incubation phase, but it's exciting to watch these new movements being born.
I agree, concretized evil, I.e., the ability to recognize it when you see it, is a key success factor which is sorely missing today. Many are addicted to comfort and unable to see evil.
But evil only has meaning as a counter to the idea of "good" [which is perhaps not yet so naively advanced as to say "holy"]. We have biblical discussions of Original Sin as a primative way of expressing our mutual and parallel evolved characteristics of 1) logic and intelligence, played against 2) our emotions and instinctual reactions. Both (and perhaps others?) are/were necessary for our survival from early hominids (hominins?).
Each in their way adds and detracts from our ideas of good and evil.
Predators are not evil for killing their prey to eat. Grazing prey animals are not evil for eating that defenseless grass or brush. Both sources provide a refined source of proteins and other biochemicals that short circuit the need to fabricate them from scratch from available chemistry. The situation does get muddier for chimps, with one group attacking and killing individuals from another group, but is that evil or instinct to advance their localized survivability? Somehow we humans recognize a theory of mind and of reciprocity that does not restrain us totally from killing our fellows (who are also at the top of the predator hierarchy), but does cause us to minimize or restrict our predation agains our "in group" members to some degree.
What about this as your base for the "Aenean Code of Morality or Conduct"? Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
This allows room for growth, advancement, and progress, yet limits action to that which benefits humanity and does not tolerate selfish ambitions in any way.
I have suggested elsewhere that the "neighbor as yourself" criteria is still asking too much of us, while the "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is within the bounds of reasonable and decently expected (reciprocal) behavior.
Yes, reciprocity is the behavior that is needed most today.
"Love your neighbor as you love yourself."
Too squishy. Your interpretation is only one of many that can be made. What if I hate myself? What exactly does "love" mean, and what would it demand of us?
What it means, in my opinion, is that I treat my neighbor in the same manner as I would like to be treated by my neighbor. I want to live at peace with him so I will not do anything which would cause him to hate me. I do not want my neighbor to be aggressive toward me, so I will not be aggressive toward him. It is proactive, not reactive. It begins with me.
"Give and you shall receive" also fits into this neatly. In the manner which I "give" to my neighbor, I will receive from him and, due to human nature, the receiving will be magnified to some extent--for good or for evil. Eventually, the "love" (whatever that might be) I show my neighbor (whoever that might be) will come back to me.
"Love does no wrong to its neighbor." -- Romans 13:10
If, IF, this is true, then it is impossible to love your neighbor unless you love yourself. If you hate yourself, then you will hate your neighbor. You cannot love him because you do not know the meaning of love nor how to show it.
People who hate themselves do not last nor succeed in the long run. Hating yourself (and everyone around you) is a dead end and produces no lasting legacy nor benefit to society.
All of that may be true, but it's a personal decision and spiritual journey, not a way to order a society. Loving or not loving your neighbor is motive, but in the real world we must deal with actions. Only God can look into another man's heart.
I'm not trying to look into another man's heart. I only know what is in my own and what I need to do to correct that.
How would you order society? As far as I can see, there is only one way for society to be "ordered"--certain persons do the "ordering" and everyone else obeys. Why is this system better than what I have proposed, in which God does the ordering and everyone else obeys?
Agreed, but who chooses the people doing the ordering, and what do we expect of them?
And there's the rub. Which moral scheme can be grafted onto MAGA without being rejected by the host? From which holy text do its tenets originate? Can anyone name a historical example of a political movement which has successfully applied a moral framework on an ex post basis?
MAGA 2.0 certainly has strong Christian Zionist representation and in the figure of its spiritual advisor; Paula White, we can also detect a rich vein of 'prosperity theology' (pun intended). The current moral underpinnings of this administration can be summed up by two words; "moral hazard". I fear this may in fact be the limit on the movement's driving philosophy; a televangelist get rich quick scheme for all involved. Maybe I am being disingenuous, but I can't square the Aenean spirit with meme coins.
An in depth exposé on Mrs White-Cain is here, for those interested: https://odysee.com/@Blackpilled:b/pwhiteho:e
Islam - but the political and moral framework most likely developed simultaneously. For better or worse, Christianity has always adapted to the zeitgeist. It will most likely adapt to an Aenean zeitgeist as well. However, morals and religion is where the pristine purity of ideology meets the grimy reality of the human condition.
The Upwing and Downwing divide is in fact the progressive vs conservative divide going by the original meanings of those terms. How the terms progressive and conservative drifted from their original meanings would itself make an interesting study.
I don't think the Vance/Musk stance of accelerating AI research is likely to achieve 'protection from disruption', personally.
Isn't it disrupt or be disrupted?
It's almost like we're facing the potential for an existentially-threatening runaway arms race that has to be resolved through the state's monopoly on force.
On quibble: Bill Gates is not a Downswinger. He is investing in nuclear power. His vaccination programs in Africa are an attempt to switch Africa from r to k strategy. He is not trying to kill off people with the vaccines. He's trying to get the birthrate down by convincing parents that most of their children will survive.
Yeah, I think Gates gets way too much a bad rap, personally. Various afroid wingnuts want to accuse him of trying to implement eugenic population control when (A) that's a good thing, actually, and (B) he's doing it by the mildest and most humane methods possible.
We Downwingers will not forsake our optimistic brothers. When your scrambled dna causes immune system collapse and absorbing too much hard radiation sends the hyper cancer coursing through your organs, we will be there to apply some dilaudid and the pillow.
Best response in this thread. 10/10
😂
I mean you’re not wrong 😆
In theory, I am an Upwinger, in practice, Downwing.
Put another way, collectively, I believe in the vast, unlimited potential of humanity, yet individually, I am concerned with my own issues which I seek to overcome in my own way. I have no problem with others forging ahead at full speed, but they need to leave me alone to progress at my own pace. Likewise, those who wish to slam on the brakes can do so with my blessing, but they must not impede my movement at all.
I am individual. I am also part of community. Making these two work together for the good of everyone is the conundrum which drives the future.
I feel you on this. In Ahnaf's terms, I am an Ephemeral Downwinger and Deep Upwinger. I believe that we're doomed and also that we will conquer the stars.
The two are mutually exclusive Pater 😘 😉
There are definitely Westerners who incorporate both sentiments... the OG American Pragmatist school comes to mind (a la their focus on both Nature & Technology).
I will quibble with your definition: it’s impossible to transcend nature because everything we do is part of nature. Whether it’s the elephants tearing up the trees or the human race launching space ships it’s still natural forces
Bingo.
Prof Fuller’s notion of the Upwinger vs Downwinger concept is Great from the Upwinger Point of View... however actual Downwingers are of two camps:
1) "These Technology people are breaching Limits at their peril.'
2) "These Technology people will simply die off soon."
I'm in #2. Ditto for John Michael Greer & others.
"We will REACH THE STARS!".... that crowd of people will fail even if they had access to all the resources on the Earth's Crust, given that the Human Body cannot withstand anything 'up there.' & this is before we look at the irrelevance of fantasy techs like Fusion, AI, etc.
We know this because we have extensive data for astronauts who go up to the International Space Station & suffer irreparable damage to their musculature & whatnot.
People will launch rockets for a while... then several decades & centuries later they will live in Shanty towns & Slums, & some will still believe that 'anyday now we will go back to the Moon.' All of that is simply Destiny/Fate occurring in a 'Natural way.'
I’m not familiar with Green’s work. Invoking Druidism and freemasonry to make the argument for technological limitations seems a little weird, but he seems pretty intelligent. I think we can continue to make technological improvements a la fission and perhaps even terraform deserts here on Earth. Going to Mars to do that is just batshit crazy. It would never happen. And if the human race survives until the death of our solar system, what good will a Mars colony do? You would have to be outside of our solar system!
He does not make Occultic arguments to point to said limits.
He uses basic things such as White’s Law to do so.
Fission plateaued ages ago. Specifically, it plateaued sometime in the late 90s to early 2000s. There are only about 400+ Nuclear reactors worldwide & this number changes by about 1-2 per annum.
Overall, nuclear power is a thin sliver that only generates electricity, which is only a tiny fragment of global energy consumption. It has been stagnant to declining in even that category due to the Economic unviability of the whole thing.
20-21 TW of energy... that's what humans produce every *hour on Earth, & some 80%+ of it is thanks to fossil fuels.
There will be no 'terraforming.' Sorry, but that’s a pipe dream once you start calculating basic energy requirements for such a feat.
There might still be merit in exploring and mining the asteroids and planets with robots.
Perhaps put an even better telescope than Webb on one of them to continue to explore the cosmos for our intectual pleasure?
Having some sort of stations on the moon also seems relatively doable, but certainly is not equivalent to more than a biodome environment here on earth.
If we are in the shanty towns and slum stage, we are probably only a few hundred million in population by then.
Sorry, but those are pipe dreams.
The energy requirements for getting a robot to an asteroid and mining the stuff you need… when you compete against someone down here on 🌍 who simply digs a “big hole”…
You basically get a big dud. These things are not economically viable. Relevant: https://youtu.be/BEuFNzEVncg?si=-zi-EHMjopRvtmwi
Sure, but we still refer to 'natural and artificial' as referring to things that occur with and without human/sapient intervention, although the distinction gets blurry when humans have never survived without tool use.
There’s 3 fundamental contradictions with the current leftist “downwing” movement:
1. Mass immigration from 3rd world countries
2. Support of transhuman values like transgenderism
3. Obsession with drugs and the medical industry, “following the science”
I don’t think it’s possible for a viable downwing movement to ever emerge. A legitimate movement must have a real elite, but the downwing elite are merely self-interested and seek to prevent others from rising to their level.
Westerners worship infinite growth, which requires population growth, which means mass migration once you get contractions in natural increase from sagging fertility rates.
As for 'transgenderism' & 'follow the science' ... Downwingers who are religious (like myself) simply reject such things as they go against Allah Most High's Commands.
If we are being honest about 'the chessboard'... the majority of the world's peoples would be classified as 'Downwing' with maybe a small fraction of Westerners being 'Upwing.'
Only in the Faustian West (& perhaps in some technophile circles in the East) do you have this notion that 'technology can solve all of mankind's problems.'
tl;dr - Just by raw Demography alone, coupled with understanding peoples' worldviews from the bird's eye view: The majority of peoples (elite, proles, etc) are Downwing.
The whole Upwing transhumanist Utopian vision is a manifestation of the death throes of the Enlightenment project. A West 'emancipated' even from its religious & moral foundations is left with progress for progress' sake. Now we are to be emancipated from our very humanity! What we are experiencing is the advanced stages of an epistemological crisis of monumental proportions. Science is fast degenerating into Scientism - a fundamentalist belief system which cannot be questioned. The zealots of this replacement faith exhort us to "trust the science" (or else) and so inadvertently further destroy our trust in the false god.
Not so long ago scientific and technological progress in the West was guided by Christian values for the benefit of Man. For me, the completeness of the value inversion was embodied by a speech at the WEF by Yuval Harari - the one where he said the technological future will be so bright that 90% of us will not be required.. The West is finished and it'll get even more nutty from here.
If I am understanding your comment correctly, you might find this essay of some (supporting?) interest? I found it only 2 days ago:
https://aeon.co/essays/investigating-the-roots-of-the-natural-supernatural-dichotomy The birth of naturalism. The modern era is often seen as the triumph of science over supernaturalism. But what really happened is far more interesting. [2/4/25] In the end I found it underwhelming for me, but you may still find it appealing. It is also kind of long so perhaps only deserves a skimming?
Also possibly this item from 2015:
http://time.com/4038407/religion-intuition-deliberation/
Here’s Why Some People Are More Religious Than Others
Tanya Basu @mstanyabasu 9/22/15 This essay is fairly short. First sentence:
"It may have little to do with education; psychologists now believe that religiosity is linked to whether you solve problems intuitively or deliberatively."
I found some personal sympathy with this, but also saw that it neglects to consider our evolved pyschology that requires both intuitive and deliberative aspects of our mentality to aid our survival from hominid time frames.
Many thanks, the first article was extremely interesting.
The paradox of the downwing movement is that to have any chance of success it needs to be global, but any global institutions are themselves perceived as "upwing" by the downwing populists. The history of the 19th century shows what happens to downwing societies when upwing societies show up, but due to normalcy bias downwing populists have a hard time internalizing this fact.
Interesting, even though full of fallacious premises.
First, the left vs. right divide is an idiotic non-existent dichotomy, which, the way it is generally understood, encompasses many actual dichotomies, some, if not all or most, of which will always be inherently present in human society, such as individualism (right) vs. collectivism (left).
As to the Philosophy of Expansion, that's the ultimate expression of phantasmagoria arising from the Carbon Pulse, i.e. the discovery and use of hydrocarbons in the past few centuries, which has allowed humans to achieve unprecedented technological advancement and succumb to the notion that technological progress is the raison d'etre, essence of life, and the best fucking thing after sliced bread on top of that.
Texts like this one are highly educational because they demonstrate just how far some people have become detached from nature and their own selves, because humans, surprise, surprise, are part of nature. To begin with, the implicit transhumanism or transnaturalism, the idea that human can re-engineer himself into something better than himself is batshit crazy. It's not that people can't improve, but not through external means - that has to be done internally. External means, i.e. technologies, will only atrophy human abilities. That path, of course, few want to undertake - especially not the expansionists, because it requires more effort than inventing some shit that provides a quick fix.
Anyways, while solving the individualist vs. collectivist dichotomy is an impossible task, solving the implicit clash between expansionists and traditionalists should be relatively easy. Let all of us non-fucked-up backward naturalists chip in and help the expansionists build a giant fucking rocket and blast their asses out there into space, which they can thereafter explore for ever and ever. How's that for a deal?
Pater's essay is great, I would not view it as harshly as you do.
Re: Your last paragraph... Grandmaster of DOOM, John Michael Greer has the same sentiment a la 'just let them do their thing & let them fail since they wish to so badly.'
I, for one, have no problem with people wasting all their finite resources to 'go to Mars' & thereby giving up Europe, North America, etc to people who actually work with their hands & don't just fantasize about nonsense all day.
Ok cool, you get the super cold, barren rock with no Biosphere, no protection from the Giant Nuclear Radiator at the centre of the Solar System...
And we get the Planet with a livable Climate, able to support various Niches for Humans & which has the ability to sustain non-Human Life in various ways?
Sweet Deal!
See below.
lol - while a bit harsh man, your closing line was fun.
“Fallacious premises“ seems a little overwrought to me. I sensed it too though.
Regardless, I had not heard of the up wing down wing concepts before. And I read a good deal of truth within this essay. Incomplete, yes, but good luck being complete at the level of abstraction and complexity that he’s writing about.
My take on the essay is, fucking awesome. Imperfect, incomplete of course how could it not be? Very thankful to read it though.
Totally agree!
It sure is admirable and appreciated that the guy is looking at reality through a different lens. Especially, but not only, in view of how idiotically the non-existent left/right dichotomy is generally used and how people lump so much incongruous stuff together under these two non-definable all-encompassing opposites.
However, this essay takes some premises for granted, such as the notion that progress is inherently a positive phenomenon, and that progress equals technological progress. This touches on the progressive/conservative dichotomy (one that is also idiotically projected into the left/right divide), but without examining what progress is and why it is a good/bad thing.
In other words, I'd like this analysis to go a few levels deeper and examine what drives people to be expansionist/traditionalist.
But as you say, texts like this are awesome, food for thought.
I would venture to say that most clear-thinking people understand that technological progress is not inherently positive. However, it's undeniable that technological progress brings power: financial power, military power, power over nature, and power over people. History shows that societies that do not pursue technological progress usually become dominated by those who do. The big challenge is finding the best way for technological societies to control and moderate this power. I believe that this can only be done through a very high standard of ethics with harsh social punishments for transgressions, but I don't think that this is amenable to universal political enfranchisement.
"In other words, I'd like this analysis to go a few levels deeper and examine what drives people to be expansionist/traditionalist."
OK, I'm waiting to see what you can come up with.
There is a middle ground, and it is actually the stance of most traditional Catholics.
Technology is good. It has a purpose and a good use. However, there are many evil uses and we must be always wary of those.
The world is good and meant to be stewarded. However, there are many ill uses of the world and it's creatures, all of whom are a reflection of a perfection of God, and should be treated as such in balance with the fact that they are here to serve us, and that a single human soul is worth more than all of the created universe.
The world is our home, the moon is a sacred place, literally used in scripture as an image of the Mother of God, Mary. It should not be defaced, as it is a thing of beauty that inspires many and belongs to the whole world, in the same way we hold stewardship over the Earth.
There is nothing inherently against the majority of what is in this essay for most traditionalist minded peoples. However, the manner, morals, and purpose to which the techbros put their visions at directly conflict with the metaphysical views of what the traditionalist people have for what the common good and the Good Life are, and thus those things become evil for what they will be used for - their telos.
To build a society good for humans, you have to have the correct view of what is good for humans.
> There is a middle ground, and it is actually the stance of most traditional Catholics.
Too bad they suck at actually implementing them in practice.
> Technology is good. It has a purpose and a good use. However, there are many evil uses and we must be always wary of those.
The problem is how to tell the good from the evil uses apart ahead of time and how to enforce the prohibition on evil uses.
Random thoughts:
The climate questions is not a question of upwingers wanting to geoengineer the climate reverse or downwingers wanting to save us by changing the societal structure to Neo-feudalism for the greater good - it is a question of anthropocentric climate or not? Clearly the climate changes over time naturally - that is the default behavior - but the question is "do we contribute to it, to any meaningful degree?". If it does change we will just have to adapt to it regardless of the elites (Just say that a super volcano errupts and we have another 1816 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer - it will be hell but we will go through it regardless).
Geoengineering can create clouds and seed them with rain (thats a matter of public record). I have heard about other technology , that sounds dodgy if its true. Either way - pursuing this strategy is to go against truth, as there is no valid confirmation of the cause - its like performing some weather ritual with no correlation to the long term weather. Going against truth always ends in ruin.
Neo-feudalism on the other hand, will never be accepted. people have tasted a normal life and they will not accept less than this. If they use covid as the template - they cant go much further, the push back was too much.
Even if this is true, the utter contradiction between means and ends among the Downwingers makes their side non-viable and their solutions patently insane. For there to be moral tension, the Downwingers need to have a serious project - and they don’t.
Infinite immigration of peoples who are terrible at delayed gratification is just the most obvious example of self-contradiction.
As with most of your "Aenean Age" posts, I have complicated thoughts about this one. (And whatever happened to the "Elendilic Civilization?" Didn't you write a whole essay about how that was a better name?)
I am of course sympathetic to your attempt to find a balance between the techno-optimist, "we can do anything we want" attitude, and the pessimistic attitude of "we are in an age of limits and we need to stop trying to innovate and just learn to live within nature's limits."
It's ironic, because the people like John Michael Greer and Ahnaf ibn Qais, who claim to center their whole worldview on limits, are actually ignoring a very important limit: the limit to mankind's knowledge. If you take that limit seriously, then you have to admit that our present understanding of the physical and life sciences is far from complete, and therefore it is difficult to predict what technologies and resources will and won't be in use in the future, and it is unwise to stop innovating. (This for instance is one of my criticisms of JMG's futurology: although he gets some big things right - I believe in the "deindustrial future" idea enough to have written a bunch of deindustrial stories in New Maps - his confidence that no renewable energy techs that weren't economically viable when he came of age c. 1980 will ever be viable, even if scientists and engineers keep working on them for hundreds of years, is wildly chronocentric. It assigns a specialness to the 1980s that the 1980s don't deserve, and in any case there are plenty of examples of historic technologies, like wooden sailing ships or steam engines, taking hundreds or thousands of years to reach their mature form.)
I find it difficult to place myself within either your "Upwinger" or "Downwinger" categories. I am a Downwinger in the sense that I'm pessimistic about a lot of the ideas that drive the Upwing/Downwing split, but at the same time I generally see little or no need to try and enforce my ideas through political action. For instance, I'm against regulating or banning AI research since I think the chances of it developing anything close to human intelligence are negligibly small. I think that climate change is a serious problem, but I'm opposed to most US climate legislation since I think that it does little except harass domestic oil, gas, and coal producers in order to make rich liberals feel good, without curtailing those rich liberals' access to the imported fuels that make their own lifestyles possible. I don't expect that Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos will be able to build self-sustaining space colonies (since the logistics of mining and manufacturing stuff in space are awful) but I also don't think there's any need to force them to stop trying, and I would be happy if Elon Musk managed to send a few scientific expeditions to Mars to study the planet and figure out if it has microbial life. (My guess is that it does, in warm aquifers several miles under the surface, the last remnants of a once-great ocean that exchanged bacteria with Earth and Venus through meteor bombardments early in the planets' history).
Really the only technologies that I want to see the government crack down on are the things on the more unethical end of the biotech field. So for instance, I don't worry about designer babies outperforming and supplanting naturally conceived ones like in the movie Gattaca (since the factors people want to "design" for - like intelligence and height and health - are highly polygenic, and the gene interactions are poorly understood, and the kinds of people who use ARTs have a fertility rate well below replacement to begin with). But I'm opposed on ethical grounds to IVF and anything else that involves creating lots of embryos and then killing the surplus. Also, I think that funding gain-of-function was a huge mistake. And while I'm not against paralytics experimenting with brain chips to control prosthetics, I think that most of the techs people use that manipulate neurology and brain function have on balance been really really bad, from lobotomies and giving toddlers morphine for teething pains, all the way down to the present situation with about 20% of Americans on some psych drug or another. And I think that it's especially nasty to put millions of children on ADHD medications in order to suppress behaviors that are only considered a mental disorder because they interfere with ideas that children should (1) sit still for eight hours a day with minimal fidgeting, squirming, or talking out of turn and (2) learn new skills at the exact same rate as a class of thirty or so other children born in the same calendar year.
I've written before about the ADHD controversy multiple times, on account of the plain seriousness of the damage that stimulant drugs like Ritalin and Adderall do to children (i.e. by suppressing growth, and creating anomalies of brain chemistry that never occur in undrugged children whether they've been diagnosed with ADHD or not.) https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/the-can-we-and-the-should-we-of-science
So, all told, I'm not sure where I fit in on the Upwing/Downwing axis. I don't share the Upwingers' optimism about limitless continued progress or Man-the-Conqueror-of-Nature, but I also don't think the Downwingers are justified in their lack of curiosity about new techs, their confidence that the techs they approve of are the only ones that will matter in the end, and their desire to be nature's enforcer and get in the way of other people's innovations. (If it's really a natural limit we're dealing with, then nature doesn't need an enforcer!) After all, nobody in the Middle Ages could have predicted that their descendants in the 20th century would figure out how to make flying machines, but NOT how to transmute base metals into gold. On what grounds can we claim the ability to predict what techs will be in use in the 25th or 30th century? (JMG's predictions that solar PV would always be a useless boondoggle are an excellent example of how this mindset fails, even on much shorter timescales.)
I guess that, all things considered, I would have to call myself a moderately libertarian moderate Downwinger. A moderate Downwinger, since even though I think that a Dark Age is coming and that most of the techno-utopian fantasies will fail, I also think there are plenty of techs that still have lots of room for improvement, and that the only way to find out which ones they are is to keep an open mind, and be curious and supportive of innovation. And a moderate libertarian, since I think that nature's limits generally have no need of human enforcers, and that even in a scarcity economy markets are the best way to distribute resources, but I also think that a handful of techs are nasty enough that they ought to be banned, like gain-of-function research and psychotropic drugs for unruly schoolchildren.
Re: Renewable Energy-
White's Law states that "culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased, or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of putting the energy to work is increased"
When The Grandmaster says 'Renewables will never be viable' he has that in mind.
Solar Panels, Wind Turbines, etc are net Negative given the fact that the metals, plastics, concrete, etc & their transport require Complex Value Chains & the usage of Fossil Fuels en masse. So they are *unviable* in the sense that you cannot use them to support 8+ billion people on the planet to live a certain quality of lifestyle.
Of the 8 billion people on the planet, 5 billion are in the workforce. An additional 500 billion worth of 'human bodies' are added in by Fossil Fuels. When the Carbon Pulse winds down, that will disappear gradually & it will mean that all future technologies will have to make do with that shortfall of 500 billion bodies.
Will people in the future be using Wind, Solar, etc? Sure!
But it will be in the low-tech & supplementary sense.
Not in the sense that (say) technophiles think a la 'Giant Solar sails on a Spaceship' which then sails off toward Alpha Centauri... that's not gonna be happening.
Where does nuclear power fit in this schema?
Not a solution for all energy requirements, but suitable (eventually?) for many heat and most electrical energy users. Will be be limited by materials (uranium maybe; thorium probably not?)? Still, enough to bring 9 B folks up to a 1950's or later standard of living? With medical advances beyond that (right to life; EMTALA, etc.?).
I certainly grant the major role of energy (mostly fossil; later nuclear) in promoting progress, as Michael Magoon defines it. But he also brings out that we needed major agricultural advances, trading networks, and the benefits of commercial cities (a la Italian city states in the 1200's up to the Netherlands in the 1600's?).
Thus there is a lot of human psychology in the abstract elements of social interactions: monetary and fiscal policies, banking, law and contracts and judiciary, technical standards and building codes, accounting standards, and a wide variety of social norms and preferences. AKA a massive increase in the levels of trust among groups - something we have not evolved to except as rational large brained animals. And then only for our "in group" until we came to understand the benefits of win-win agreements.
Cultural evolutions can happen within hours to decades, while the corresponding changes in our brains will take millenia (unless genetics gets even more sophisticated?)
I'll use some numbers to emphasize the point.
There are 419 Nuclear Reactors worldwide, with a total Electrical Capacity of 378.1 GW. This number is growing per annum at 1-2+ Reactors (once you factor in Plant shutdowns, new construction, etc). This is the 'base case.'
Primarily, these guys are used to generate electricity, which is a small fragment of global energy consumption, which is 180,000+ TWh.
tl;dr - Nuclear is irrelevant. This is especially so when you graph it & discover that it only amounts to a few percentage points for said Global Energy Consumption number, 80%+ of which is Fossil Fuels.
Yes, you can do cool stuff with it (I don't deny that), but it does not have the scale, scope, reliability, infrastructure & fungibility of Fossil Fuels, & never will.
You do not need to know 'everything' to figure out the general trajectory of things. Epistemology is a subject area where *the particulars* are less important than the actual... 'prescriptive power' of knowledge, writ large.
What I mean by this is that even if people had *knowledge* about some amazing new tech, they would be limited by other factors.
While I cannot deductively rule out things like 'an Amazing working Fusion reactor,' I can make an Inductive Case. & at that point, if your critique is 'Well, this inductive case doesn't exhaust the fact that we simply Dont Know what is possible:'
My response is simply 'That doesn't matter.' Because Human Knowledge *as such* is not the limiting factor for New Construction, Buildings, etc.
> So for instance, I don't worry about designer babies outperforming and supplanting naturally conceived ones like in the movie Gattaca (since the factors people want to "design" for - like intelligence and height and health - are highly polygenic, and the gene interactions are poorly understood, and the kinds of people who use ARTs have a fertility rate well below replacement to begin with).
I worry about mass-produced vat grown bugmen.
“a higher vision that resolves the tension between the two by recognizing that both impulses are necessary. It is the basis for a civilization with the daring to reach for the stars and the wisdom to find its way back to earth.”
Yep. Thanks for the essay.