Order Without Orderers
Extropy 7, Spring
1991
Extracted by scan on
September 2, 2009
The Importance of Spontaneous Orders
Transhumanists of
all kinds—Extropians, Venturists, Immoralists—look forward to making some
radical alterations in the human condition. We want to remake ourselves into
something more than mindless nature has generated. This will require some
powerful technologies and will produce enormous social changes. We are
therefore obligated to think about appropriate constraints on the pursuit of
our goals. The purpose of this paper is to argue for the recognition of
spontaneous ordering as just such a constraint.
To understand the
importance of spontaneous orders (SOs) and spontaneous ordering principles
(SOPs) we first need to distinguish them from another kind of order. I will
usually refer to this other type of order as a constructed order or as
an organization. The two types of
order have been called by many names,’ Here are a few:
Spontaneous Organization
Self-generating Construction
Grown (organic) Artificial
Endogenous Exogenous
Kosmos Taxis
Abstract Concrete
Spontaneous orders
are orders designed by no one, though someone may have prepared the ground for
their development. I will provide a number of illustrations of the prevalence
of spontaneous ordering; for now some examples are: The complex biological
forms resulting from genetic variation and selection without any conscious direction;
crystals which form into a pattern without that pattern being specified by the
initial atomic forces the free market economic system; and the development of
language.
Examples of constructed orders are ubiquitous:
Automobiles; the legal structure of a corporation; a painting; a computer
program. Clearly, many orders are mixed to various degrees. For instance the
pattern of activities you engage in over a month is partly the result of your
planning (a constructed order), and partly the result of unpredictable
interactions with other people and events, and unforeseen opportunities. Large
organizations are typically a mixture of the two types of order; a corporation’s
basic legal structure and its goals will be the result of planning by one or a
few people, but many details of operation will emerge over time depending on
multifarious, protean factors.
Since I will be
explaining why spontaneous orders are so valuable and important in shaping our
futurist goals, I should stress here that I am not arguing that SOs are, in a general sense, better than constructed orders. Both types of order have their
place. In writing a paper, we cannot expect our thoughts to spontaneously
self-organize. For the task of paper-writing, planning and deliberate
organization is clearly more appropriate. On the other hand, social systems are
best allowed to spontaneously order, containing within them many smaller
constructed orders.
The Hidden Order
The pervasiveness
and importance of spontaneous orders is poorly appreciated by most people.
There are three reasons for this: First, concrete, constructed orders are
easily perceived because of their relative simplicity. Since constructed orders
are designed and organized by one person or one integrated group of persons,
they are necessarily limited to the degree of complexity comprehensible and
controllable by those minds. This is not true of spontaneous orders.
Spontaneous orders
can achieve any degree of complexity.
SOs that are extremely complex may be difficult to
recognize as orders. For example, we sometimes hear of “the chaos of the market”,
a phrase signifying the speaker’s failure to understand the enormously complex
spontaneous ordering at work in a decentralized, free market economic system.
As this person sees it, there is no order in economic affairs unless they can
see some person or group of persons designing the order, setting a pattern for
the outcome.
Recognizing SOs is
further complicated by the abstractness of almost all such orders. SOs consist of a system of abstract relations between elements
which are themselves defined only by abstract properties. The abstractness of
an order means that the same order can persist even though the particular
elements that comprise it change over time. So long as elements of a certain
kind continue to be related to each other in a certain manner, the order will
persist. A language, for instance, can remain the same language when spoken by
different speakers. The double abstractness of a spontaneous order can be
illustrated by the free market: The order of the market is constituted by the
abstract relations between persons, and the persons themselves, in this
context, must be understood abstractly as agents constituted by sets of
desires, purposes, beliefs and actions.
The abstractness of
SOs makes them particularly difficult for the untutored mind to recognize. You
can’t simply look at an SO and spot
it. You need to apply a theory. Your
theory allows you to examine the objects and events and to cognitively
reconstruct the order by applying explanatory principles. Application of a
theory to the phenomena amounts to filtering data in search of a pattern.
Apart from
complexity and abstractness there is a third, surprising, feature
of spontaneous orders that renders them less obvious than constructed orders.
This is their purposelessness.
Concrete orders are designed for a particular purpose or group of purposes and
so we can recognize them easily due to their specificity and goal-directedness.
The essence of spontaneous orders is their purposelessness. This feature does
not detract from their usefulness in the least. While an SO is not designed and
so has no purpose, it may be capable of sustaining within itself an enormous
variety of purposes. An order that is itself without specifiable purpose may
serve as the framework for purposive action. Again, a clear example is the
market. The market system is not there for any particular reason, yet allows a
limitless number of persons to pursue their goals.
Some spontaneous
orders might have a meta-purpose, though perhaps such orders would be partially
organizations and partially spontaneous. An example might be an artificial
ecosystem set up to evolve new life forms, but where the creators have no idea
what the particular results will be, expecting only that some useful results
will be generated in the ecology. In this case, the ecology has a meta-purpose
which is to generate interesting new life forms, but it does not itself have a
purpose or function in a purposive, directed manner.
If no one designs a
spontaneous order how can it turn out to be ordered? This is a question that
has arisen in economics, biology and cosmology. In each of these and other
fields the details of the answer are different, but they all share something in
common. The common answer lies in recognizing the self-organizing possibilities
of systems that run according to certain well-defined rules or principles. So
long as the elements of the system do or must follow the rules, and the rules
have the necessary structure, then self-organization will occur and complex
orders will be generated. Perhaps the best way to clarify this is to introduce
several cases of SOs. This will also support my earlier assertion that
spontaneous orders are tremendously. pervasive and
extremely important for futurists and Extropian transhumanists.
Examples
Economic Markets: Having already mentioned free markets
several times, and because they are such a clear and generally familiar case, I
will begin here. Whereas a corporatist, fascist, or national socialist economy
(and, to a lesser degree, a mixed-economy) will be deliberately structured,
regulated, and controlled to pursue certain goals—such as world domination,
maximizing the power of the leadership, enforcing certain moral views, etc. —a
market economy has no goal. Of course it may produce certain results such as maximizing output,
enhancing freedom and diversity, and stimulating technological advance.
However, these emergent results are not goals of the system as such.
A fully free market economy
requires certain principles regulating the behavior of the agents within it if
the order is to be preserved. In a market system the regulating principles are private property rights. Fundamentally
there is a right of self-ownership—the right to live, to think as you choose,
to choose your way of life consistent with respecting others’ same right. As
extensions of that fundamental right are all the other property rights.
Maintaining a market order simply requires people to respect each others rights
to life, liberty and property. Where violations of these rights occur such as
theft, assault and fraud, the system primarily requires restitution in order to
restore legitimate claims and to repair the harm done to the rational
expectations of the persons involved in voluntary market activities.
A fully free market
system is often described, in a political context, as “libertarian” because of
the minimal coercion of some persons by others. I also refer to the system as “spontaneous
voluntarism”. This term has the advantage of emphasizing the voluntaristic and
spontaneously ordering characteristics of the system. Tom W. Bell has offered
the term “consent rich”, and we could also refer to this system as “maximally
consensual”. Whether the maintenance of a system of property rights requires
any role for a monopolistic agency of coercion (“the State”) is a question I
will not touch on here. (2)
The careful
definition and maintenance of the structure of private property rights is
essential to the ordering processes of the market. If there is constant
coercive intervention in the economy, widespread legal and/or cultural
disregard for the rights of self-ownership and property, then disorder will
ensue. An enormously complex order such as the market is able to withstand much
disregard for its underlying principles, but if disruption becomes excessive or
invades crucial areas such as the monetary system, chaos begins to dominate.
The effectiveness of
spontaneous orders in facilitating interactions and communication of
information in extremely complex systems is well illustrated by the present
example. In a market order efficient use is made of the particular and special
knowledge possessed by individuals. Effective production and the efficient
satisfaction of consumer wants requires the
coordination of billions of persons and their plans, expectations and
knowledge.
No central planner
could hope to acquire all the information necessary to coordinate all these
actions into an efficient plan. There are many reasons why authoritarian
central control cannot work. The individuals to whom the planner is to give
orders and from whom to gather information may be unwilling to be controlled
and directed from above. Even if they are willing to give the planner all the
information requested they may be unable
to express the situation-specific information they possess. Much of the success
of producers is based on tacit knowledge—knowledge
that cannot be verbalized. It is frequently procedural, not declarative in
nature. Entrepreneurs may have ways of working, of interacting with customers
and fellow workers that they may be consciously unaware of; even if they are
aware of all their procedures they may be unable to express what they do to a
bureaucrat.
Even if these
problems were not insuperable, the central planners would face an impossible
task in coordinating all the information flooding in, no matter how powerful
their data processing capacities. We can see the problems inherent in central
planning by looking at our own economy. Government officials compile economic
statistics such as figures for the money supply, gross national product (GNP),
employment, income, growth rates, and so on. These figures are always revised
after initial publication, often revealing a large error margin. Making central
plans based on such faulty data, data that is continually changing in a dynamic
economy, is inherently problematic. By the time the
data, inaccurate as it is, becomes available, the economy has moved on and the
information is immediately incorrect.
The
decentralized market economy deals with this problem by making it unnecessary
for anyone to know everything about the entire system. Price signals—generated by voluntary
decisions based on private property rights—transmit the relevant information to
those who need to know it. Incommunicable tacit knowledge is reflected in the
market prices of the producer with no need for her to explain to anyone how she
does her job.
The market system
has the further advantage of requiring minimal coercion. Coercion (the threat
or use of physical force) is required only to prevent persons from violating
others’ rights to life, liberty and property. By decentralizing decision-making
and rational planning to individuals and voluntary groupings of individuals,
the market harnesses productive capacities for everyone’s benefit. As Adam
Smith wrote two centuries ago, the market works as if there were an “invisible
hand” ensuring that the actions of individuals produce benefits for all. The
better someone is at supplying others with what they want the more she is
rewarded.
Of course this
requires that the proper principles necessary to the functioning of the
spontaneous order are maintained; this means that self-ownership and private
property rights must be respected both by the legal system and the culture.
External costs (such as polluting activities) should be internalized by the
consistent application of private property rights. The spontaneous ordering
processes embodied in the market then, economize on the use of information and
optimize production from the point of view of the voluntary agents within the
system.
Evolution: Another enlightening paradigm of a spontaneous ordering process is
genetic evolution. Although yet far from completed, scientists have gone a long
way in explaining how organisms and genetic material could have spontaneously
evolved from molecules in the environment. (3) The rules of the system that
allow spontaneous generation of organisms are the principles of physics and the
genetic system in environments falling within certain parameters (temperature,
pressure, availability of elements).
We can now see a
revealing parallel between theists and socialists. Those who believe in a god
who creates the universe, life and consciousness, and those who reject the
market because of its purported chaos, both fail to appreciate the power of
spontaneous ordering principles. Theists don’t understand how vastly complex
phenomena such as the structure of galaxies, life on Earth, and conscious
intelligence could possibly have come about other than as the deliberate design
of some ineffable being. (of course they further
violate the principle of explanatory parsimony in introducing a being whose
complexity must be greater than the original phenomena to be explained.)
Likewise, socialists
and other statists can’t understand how human purposes can be efficiently
pursued without some wise persons designing and controlling a social system.
Put into reverse this confluence of intellectual deficiencies may explain why
such a high proportion of Extropians and transhumanists are both atheists and
free marketeers.
Evolutionary Models: Evolutionary principles have recently been
fruitfully applied in constructing computer models of self-ordering systems.
Examples are strategies such as Tit-For-Tat, cellular automata such as
It did this by
adhering to simple rules embodying the principles of niceness—not attacking first, retaliation—hitting
back when another strategy “defects”, forgiving—not
holding grudges, and clarity—being
simple enough for other strategies to understand. By allowing this simulation
to run through many rounds, an overall pattern of Tit-For-Tat behavior came to
dominate the environment even though this result had not been programmed into
the computer. Similar processes have been evoked to explain cooperative
behavior among animals.
“Artificial life”
(A-Life) is an attempt to create many small “agents” in connectionist computers
and to allow them to evolve useful behavior. It also involves using these small
agents to make tiny robots that can perform functions like walking, exploring,
and cleaning buildings. So far many of the examples of A-Life are both
intriguing and amusing: Rod Brooks, at MIT’s robot lab, built “the Collection
Machine” which travels around the building recognizing and collecting soda
cans. One of his students built a device that tracks your movement around a
room and calibrates the stereo so that you always enjoy the best sound.
A-Life researchers
often work with cellular automata (CA)—grids of cells in computational space.
Each cell is determined to be dead or alive (off or on) by a set of rules that
refer to the neighboring cells. The Game of Life is an example of CA; it
applies a few simple rules and generates complex patterns that were in no way
specified in the original rules. Watching the screen you would first see a few
dots appearing, disappearing and apparently moving around. Over time you would
observe a multiplication of patterns which start to assume characteristic forms—such
as blocks, loaves, beehives, blinkers, glider guns and puffer trains. Again,
nothing in the original rules of the program specifies these patterns. (5)
Physics: (Brevity means that this section may be obscure to most
non-physicists. For those interested, see Polkinghorne,
1984.) In quantum mechanics there are two methods for calculating
probabilities. The traditional method involves solving the Schrödinger equation
to find two wave functions (with one slit open, the other closed in the
two-slit experiment). The square of the moduli
of these wave functions, or probabilities amplitudes, yields actual
probabilities for the state of motion. The alternative method, invented
by Richard Feynman and known as the path
integral or sum over histories
approach directly calculates probability amplitudes without using the Schrödinger
equation.
Feynman’s approach
involves assigning a complex probability amplitude to
each of the vastly many trajectories an electron might take. While in
conventional quantum theory an electron has no trajectory, in the sum over histories
approach it has every trajectory.
Feynman’s
perspective enables us to see how quantum mechanics can correspond with the
neat, regular trajectories of classical, Newtonian physics. In other words, we
can understand how the apparently chaotic behavior at the quantum level
generates macro-level regularity. In the sum over histories approach, there is
an enormous amount of interference between the different paths of the electron,
and these tend to cancel each other out. Essentially, “For really large systems
this will have the consequence that the only paths that contribute
significantly to the final result will be those in a region where the action
changes as slowly as possible, since here the cancellations are minimized.” (Polkinghorne, p. 43) This region follows the path of
stationary action which is just the classical trajectory.
Memetics: Memes are patterns of replicating information, whether in brains or
computers. They include ideas, beliefs, tunes, habits, traditions, morals,
designs, jokes, and fashions. (6). In memetic
evolution, variation is driven by imagination, invention and confusion, and the
rules of the game are the principles of psychology. New and often interesting
memes can be generated without conscious design, in a similar way to the
generation of new somatic types in biological evolution. In the memetic case,
however, it is memes which perish if unsuccessful, not their carriers (with
some ugly exceptions such as kamikaze and Jim Jones memes). The burgeoning
field of evolutionary epistemology attempts to understand scientific progress
in terms of evolutionary and spontaneously ordering processes. Since memetics
is frequently discussed in these pages I will say no more.
Agoric Open Systems: The stunning rate of the computerization of
modern societies is wonderful to be a part of; but as the complexity and
interconnectedness of these systems grows we are increasingly faced with the
problem of how to allocate computational resources: “As programs and
distributed systems grow larger, they are outrunning the capacity of rational
central planning. Coping with complexity seems to depend on decentralization
and on giving computational “objects” property rights in their data and
algorithms. Perhaps it will even come to depend on the use of price information
about resource need and availability that can emerge from competitive bidding
among these objects.” (8)
The computer analogy
for property rights is “object-oriented programming systems” (OOPS). This kind
of programming involves assignment of tasks to computational objects; these
objects are autonomous sections of code whose functions cannot be modified by
other objects. This allows programmers to build a program containing many
objects whose internal workings she need not know.
Decentralized,
spontaneously ordering mechanisms for handling computation are known as agoric open systems. An agoric system “is
defined as a software system using market mechanisms, based on foundations that
provide for the encapsulation and
communication of information access, and resources among objects.”
(9) In this system programs would bid for memory and disk space, paying more
for coveted memory than disk space and paying more at times of peak demand.
Setting up networks
and programs along these spontaneously ordering lines would allow the limitless
growth of comp and interconnectivity. Another advantage would be the promotion
of innovator encapsulation assuring computation property rights and agoric systems conveying
price information, entrepreneurial activity would be simulated just as in a
market economy. Programmers could take existing objects algorithms to produce
new software. They would not need to reinvent the origin code now in the
objects and would not even need to understand it. (10)
Neurocomputation
and Connectionist AI: The last
several issues of this journal have had much to say about artificial neural networks,
connectionism, or parallel distributed process processing (PDP). This approach
to computing contrasts with ?Classical Artificial
Intelligence (Al)” in its vastly greater ability to recognize patterns.
Connectionist models, like agoric systems, are spontaneously ordering
processes. Learning takes place by adjustment of weightings of those components
that have moved the system towards successful recognition. Essentially, by
setting up the network and giving it feedback according to the appropriateness
and successfulness of its output, the network self-organizes its internal
states (its activation vector spaces).
As artificial
networks become ever more complex and brain-like, the problem of coordinating
the components grows. Miller and Drexler suggest that by combining
connectionism and
agoric systems networks could learn to better assign credit to
the components that contribute to success. This is often done with current
connectionist models by using the “back-propagation” algorithm. (11) “As the
system develops, market competition will reward objects which employ more
sophisticated negotiating strategies that better reflect both the value derived
from the various contributors, and what their competitors are offering.” (Miller & Drexler, 1988b, p.172.)
Contelligence and Society of Mind: This leads us into how spontaneous order can
help us to understand consciousness and intelligence, and how to build our own contelligences. (12) Our brains are now understood as
extremely complex and massively interconnected neural networks. The elements
are the neurons and the connections are the axons, dendrites and
neurotransmitter releases from the synapses. The brain is a spontaneous order;
it has no central processing unit. Classical, rule-based Al has failed to make
progress in developing real intelligence because it has a followed a formal
processing model reminiscent of neoclassical economics. Connectionist Al,
although yet only moderately biologically realistic, promises much more
potential for flexible intelligent cognitive behavior. (13)
The brain has been
described as a “society of mind” (14) and bears remarkable parallels to an
economy. Cognition of all kinds—reasoning, believing, emoting—is increasingly
being understood in terms of interactions between more specialized sub-systems,
or “agents”. in order to build real artificial
contelligence we can expect to have duplicate certain features of neural
networks, though we can also expect to surpass nature by eventually creating
faster and more powerful thinkers, perhaps using optical or nanocomputers.
in constructing self-organizing artificial thinkers
agoric principles will be tremendously helpful as a means of coordinating the
cognitive contributions of the many agents constituting a network.
SOs and Transhumanist Goals
Now that we have
seen the pervasive role of spontaneous orders in both limiting and enabling the
extropic processes of creation, organization, and information generation and
distribution, we are ready to look at the means available to us in the pursuit
of Extropian transhumanist respecting the SO principle.
Freedom vs. Technocracy: Laws regulating experimentation with
self-transformative technologies should be abolished. In
Similarly, given the
increasing vital role of electronic communications and soon hypertext in the
spread of diverse information, we require strong legal protection of our
freedoms in these areas. Currently electronic mail does not receive the same
protection as old-style paper mail, and computers and BBSs
are taken without regard for the privacy of those using them. If the State can
pry into our discussions when its agents choose, and can stifle our free
discussions, the results can only be antithetical to progress.
H.G. Wells dreamed
of a scientifically, centrally planned world in which our glorious future would
be assured by efficient control of the scientific experts from the center. In
1991, after decades of failure with central planning Wells’ plans for our
future seem foolish. Just as government is hopeless at centrally planning
industrial policy and investment, so it would be worthless, stifling and
destructive if we were to allow it to control our transhuman development.
In place of
technocracy Extropian individual self-experimentation limited by nothing other
than the purely negative injunction: Don’t interfere with other people’s
pursuit of their path of
development. The only people who can complain about this minimal limitation are the parasites and
the controllers, for only they conceive of personal gain essentially in terms
of restraining and
taking from others. So long as we maintain non-initiation of aggression guided
by private property principles we will benefit each other no matter how we
choose to develop. By taking a variety of paths we will make discoveries that
would otherwise go unnoticed. A spontaneous free social order provides
incentives and means to share those discoveries as my earlier examples
illustrated.
States, Countries and Planetary Exodus.
So long as people on
this planet are divided into nations, freedom should be maximized by minimizing
control of one country by another. Governments are as dreadful at “reforming”
other countries’ governments as they are at controlling their own country and,
for the same reasons.
While the best paths
of political evolution would include the dissolution of the massive power blocs
called nation states, political society on Earth may remain statist.
To the extent that states and countries remain, the goal of any international
institutions (such as the U.N. or the EEC) should be to restrain international
coercion and to promote free trade and free movement.17 This
doesn’t require that individuals cannot try to influence the behavior of
foreign governments. Individuals should be free to do this just as they are now
free to aid a person being mugged. What they may not do is
force individuals with differing ideas to pay for and join in a
collective assault.
Space habitats will
offer an opportunity for unprecedented social experimentation. Interplanetary
and, later, interstellar civilization seem to provide a far superior “framework
for utopia”17 than exists at the bottom of our gravity well. The limited
environment and immovability of the Earth-based societies will be shed. Some
space habitats will attract persons with similar political views, some with
shared eupraxosophies or religions. Others will be communities of persons with
certain preferences in bodily vehicle. And we can expect many combinations of
these possibilities. There will be the equivalent of both rural villages and
Los Angeles.l8
Humans are gradually
emerging from their tribal roots, questioning racism, sexism and other forms of
irrational behavior. We should encourage this trend and prepare the way for new
species branching off from home sapiens. t replace old
prejudices with new f( different from ourselves.
The process of
intercommunication and commerce will maintain a large confluence in the basic
bodily form most people choose to take for the next couple of centuries or so.
Few will want to diverge from an essentially humanoid form if it will alienate
them from more conservative persons, though there will always be trend-setters
and what we might call somatic rebels. Those of us who add enormous
computational power to our brains will most likely want the enhancements to fit
with our humanoid forms. Skulls will be reinforced with nanotech-built
ultra-strong materials, our brains will be supplemented with tiny databases and
add-on processing power, internal organs will be replaced with durable and more
powerful synthetic organs, muscles will be strengthened, and immune systems
will be supercharged with nanite defense systems, but
all these upgrades can be up, accommodated within our present bodily form.
The first major
modifications to our natural bodies will probably consist of synthetic organs,
gene therapy and genetic enhancement, neurochemical fine-tuning and turbocharging, and direct physical interfacing with
computer. Assuming it will be possible, many people
will eventually swap their brains for superior carriers of consciousness (or
will incrementally move their cognitive processes into the new hardware).
Again, hardware allowing, most of these people will ?at
least initially—choose exterior forms resembling homo sapiens. Only in the more
distant future, and first in more distant space habitats, can we expect to see
entirely exotic somatic forms. The mere availability of radically new forms won’t
immediately lead to a rush into them; it will be a gradual process requiring
new cultural forms to develop.
These future
developments are an inevitable continuation of our evolving practices of
self-definition. The nature of primitive unconscious life on Earth was wholly
determined by genetic and environmental factors. When evolution produced humans
with a degree of consciousness and basic culture, self-definition was born. As
their history has progressed, humans have shown an inexorable desire to choose
their appearance, beliefs, lifestyle, and behavior. In the 20th Century we have
even started to modify our personalities and unchosen behavioral patterns
through applied psychology and neurochemical modification (using everything
from alcohol and marijuana to MDMA and lithium.
This practice of
self-definition and self-construction will continue. The possibilities
for self-construction expand as we become ever more conceptually sophisticated
(and so become increasingly aware of the factors forming us) and as our
technological sophistication grows (and so we can act on our improved
self-understanding). The threat of determinism will continually recede as we
gain control over our own bodies, cognition, emotion, appearance and
environment. Not everyone will want to continue in an endless extropic process
of individualization and self-transformation, but this new freedom will be
available for those not willing to stagnate with familiar but limited forms.
New Children and Few Children.
While we are
remaking ourselves we will be remaking the ways we have offspring. In the
nearer future individuals, couples or groups will decide on the genetic
constitution of their child, no doubt eliminating deficiencies and maximizing
the offspring’s mental health, physical capacities, and emotional stability.
Applying spontaneous order principles, we must ensure that the design of a new
transhuman child and the family form itself are left up to the individuals
involved. There should be no authoritarian government control over such
choices.
Continuing the trend in the more developed
countries, we can expect the rate of new children born (or built) to slow. More
attention to each child may be the result, and a slowing of population growth,
which will partly compensate for increasing longevity. Though this planet is
capable of supporting many times as many people as we have now, most may prefer
a more spacious environment. Space migration may not solve this problem—unless
birth rates fall dramatically or until and unless leaving Earth becomes very
much cheaper. Coercive solutions will be proposed: For instance governments
might offer the choice between a right to have a child and a right to (legal)
longevity treatment (or between longevity and Earth for habitation). SO
considerations suggest we should devise property right so as to make
child-creators bear the full social cost of their activity. This could begin by
removing tax-subsidies to education and welfare that encourage large families.
Handling the Blast of Information
The emerging
technology of hypertext promises to enable rapid and efficient access to
rapidly expanding information and to improve memetic evolution (see Nelson
1974, 1981, and Drexler 1986, ch.14). Hypertext allows extremely flexible
cross-referencing of information: you can not only follow references backward
in time as now, but forward to find who
has commented on a piece writing.
Some of the
advantages of hypertext include much shorter lag times for refutations and
rebuttals to appear, thus guiding discussion and research in more productive direction
earlier on, and the ability to search for information across all disciplines—thereby
reducing the current tendency towards academic compartmentalization.
Hypertext embodies
spontaneous ordering principles: There is no central organization; anyone can
post comments and add information, though frivolous postings will be limited
(on the Xanadu system now in testing) by charges and
filtering systems which will be programmable to individual taste. For instance,
in gathering information on a controversial issue, you might have your computer
filter out people with bad reputations, or accept only peer-reviewed material,
or material which has generated supportive comments, and so on. The Xanadu hypertext system propose to
pay every writer for each time their writing is accessed; this will encourage a
productive market in information dispersal.
Another
epistemological process for handling information inspired by SO theory ins “Futures Market in Ideas”
proposed by Robin Hanson (see Hanson 1990, 1990b). The idea is to; evolve a
better fact-finding process capable of generating a well-grounded consensus on
scientific and technical questions. Anyone would be able to bet on
controversial scientific and technical issues and the market odds would be used
as a consensus for policy questions. This would be enormously valuable where
policies and funding depend on projections of technology, such as estimating
when nanotech assemblers or cheaper space launches will be available.
An advantage of
Hanson’s suggestion is that, as in other markets in contingent assets such as
markets in stocks and securities, irresponsible and ignorant betting will be
costly. Financial incentives will promote careful betting, and will serve as a
source of funding for those in the lead of particular research projects. “Arbitragers
would keep the betting markets self-consistent across a wide range of issues,
and hedgers would correct for various common human biases, like overconfidence.”
(Hanson, 1990b, p.3) Idea futures markets integrated with hypertext will allow
vastly more accurate and rapid fact-finding procedures—an essential function in
a future characterized by ever-expanding information.
Longevity, Cooperation and Eupraxosophies.
In Axelrod’s work, cited earlier, far more cooperation emerged
over time in iterated Prisoners’ Dilemmas than in a single interaction. Agents
capable of benefiting or harming one another will become increasingly likely—if
only from self-interested considerations—to cooperate with one another the
longer they expect to deal with each other. Thus one recommendation made by
Axelrod to promote cooperation is to “enlarge the shadow of the future”. This
involves increasing the expected
number of interactions between agents. The shadow of the future will stretch
further in the future.
Computerized
information sources and tracking will make it hard for an uncooperative agent
to avoid detection and damaging publicity. Moving to another community will not
serve to avoid retaliation or compensation for theft, coercion, or fraud when
computer networks and easy communications see to it that anyone can check on
someone’s past history. Perhaps boycotting as a means of retaliation will come
back into favor.
The prospect of
indefinite future interactions between persons will be further strengthened by
increasing longevity, and eventually virtual elimination of unchosen death.
When we become used to planning over centuries and longer, we will think less
of how we can defraud others and get away with it. We will be especially wary
of getting involved in violent conflicts whether personal or inter-governmental.
Violating others’ rights for short-term gains will be seen to be ever more
foolish as we expect to live with the consequences of our action. Similarly,
extended life spans will reinforce the growing concern for the long-term future
of our environments.
Longevity will
encourage open-ended and liberal philosophies. Religions will continue to
slowly decline, being replaced with wide rage of eupraxosophies. (20)
Extropianism is a good example of transhumanist eupraxophy: Its central values
are flexible and open to personal interpretation while still making certain
commitments clear. The Extropian principle of Self-Transformation expresses the
intention to always grow and improve, to expand one’s capacities and
possibilities. It doesn’t specify exactly what means are to be taken to fulfill
that goal. Unlike a religion which lays down particular beliefs and practices
as dogma, Extropianism provides a forum for free discussion of means to promote
the basic values we affirm.
Several transhumanist
philosophies, many compatible with Extropianism, are developing already. (20)
Venturism is an athanophic eupraxophy dedicated to the abolition of involuntary
death through scientific means, and many persons involved or interested in life
extension, cryonics, nanotechnology, advanced computing, as so on, hold many of
the ideas and values embodied in Extropianism and other eupraxosophies. Rather
than the sad history of religious conflict, the future is likely to become an
arena of a co-existing and evolving variety of transhumanist philosophies.
This paper has been
a survey of spontaneous ordering and some of the numerous ways in which it can
be applied. I have shown some ways in which we can expect the shape of the
future to depend on spontaneous orders and the advantages of such
approaches. SO processes are vital to
the actualization of the Extropian principle of Boundless Expansion. If our
knowledge, intelligence, constructive powers, and experiences are to be able to
grow without limit we must ensure that the essential supporting frameworks are
place. Spontaneous ordering is the key to the creation and maintenance of these
frameworks.
NOTES
1 See Hayek, 1973.
2
See
3 See Dawkins, 1989,
1986.
4
Axelrod, 1987.
5 Moravec, 1988,
presents a mind-expanding discussion of advanced A-Life, computer viruses, and
cellular automata.
6 For the original
coinage of “memes” see Dawkins, 1976. Also see Henson & Lucas’s articles in
this journal: “A Memetic Approach to ‘Selling’ Cryonics,’ in EXTROPY#7, and “
This will remind
philosophers of the distinction between teleological and deontological moral
theories. As in the case of moral theories, the spontaneous vs
constructed order distinction is an idealization.
8 Lavoie, Baetjer and William Tulloh, “High
Tech Hayekians.”
9
Miller and Drexler, 1988b.
10 Simon! D. Levy
will cover agoric systems in detail in EXTROPY #8 (vol.3, no.2), Fall 1991.
11 See “Neurocomputing Part 3,” by Simon! D. Levy, in EXTROPY #6
(Summer 1990).
12 use the term “contelligence”
to indicate that intelligence (in the sense of “the ability to perform a range
of tasks”) and consciousness (awareness, especially self-awareness) may not
always go together. As an example, we might say that a society is intelligent
(it can solve problems that no individual can solve) but it is not conscious.
This is a point of controversy in the uploading argument. If posthumans want to
upload the contents of their brains into computers, they will want to be sure
that they will be conscious as well as ultra-intelligent. (See
Moravec, 1988, on uploading.)
13 For an excellent
overview of the connectionist view of mind, see
Churchland, 1989, and my review of his book in EXTROPY #6 (Summer 1990).
14 Marvin Minsky,
1988: The Society of Mind.
15 The FDA’s highly
restrictive policies result in in many thousands of
premature deaths every year. This agency has no compunction about raiding
organizations like Life Extension International, on the basis that the company
is selling “unapproved drugs” (i.e., selling vitamins and offering good information
on their beneficial effects, without the permission of this authoritarian
agency. For an economic analysis of the baneful effects of the FDA see M.
Friedman, 1980.
16 James Bennett has
made similar recommendations in his talk, “After the Nation-State, What?” at
The Albert Jay Nock Forum,
17
See Nozick, 1974, ch.10, “A Framework for Utopia.” A science fictional portrayal of humanity diverging
in only two directions is found in Bruce Sterling’s fascinating Schismatrix,
1985).
18 A worthwhile
long-term project for Extropians intent on enormous longevity might be the
design and construction of the political constitution and physical creation of
a space-based society conducive to Extropian values and maximal progress. The
building of such an “Extropolis” could occupy us for
the next few centuries.
19 See “Futique Neologisms” in this issue for definitions of “eupraxophy”,
athanophy, etc.
20 Extropianism will
continue to evolve in an eventual book.
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