A criticism of my post-scarcity article.

Found, thanks to referring links, an interesting criticism of my post-scarcity article over at Sarah Hoyt's:

"That guy has some things seriously wrong, and is approaching others the wrong way. He may be ultimately right, because his point about boredom and destructiveness is spot-on, but many of his premises are wrong.

1) We know how the pyramids were built, and it did not require high technology.

2) Damascus steel came about by a lucky discovery of raw materials of exactly the right combinations to produce said steel. From what I have heard, we don’t have any samples which have been available for analysis since we gained the technology to analyze them properly to reproduce it.

3) Unlike his examples of Greek Fire and Damascus Steel, modern technologies have detailed explanations of how to reproduce them available. So unless something happens to destroy the libraries, we won’t be able to lose anything but the most recent of technologies.

What I did not see in that analysis was the acknowledgement that the availability of cheap resources to support the basics, plus the energy and technology to build essentially anything you can dream up will free up creative people to soar to heights we can barely imagine now. Plus, while he is correct that a societal infrastructure is needed to counteract the destructive nature of some people, what he didn’t seem to realize was that we WILL have such a thing, but it will simply not be in a form we currently can recognize.

I’m just saying that people will have society, no matter what their everyday personal life is like, and that society will still have ways to either discourage destructive tendencies, or channel them into harmless avenues. This should generally work for 99+% of the people who would get that way."

Well, it's an interesting criticism, and it did get me thinking of angles that I didn't quite consider, yet in others, I do think this fellow is missing the point.

1) We know how the pyramids were built, and it did not require high technology.

Well, yes, we certainly do have theories about how the pyramids were built, some of which are indeed quite plausible. However, as far as I know no one's quite managed to empirically replicate the precision with which the massive stone blocks were built such that a knife can't be stuck between any two of them. Without mortar, I would add. As far as I'm concerned, the technology and engineering precision is lost.

If anyone has any readings in which this was actually achieved, I'd be interested in them.

2) Damascus steel came about by a lucky discovery of raw materials of exactly the right combinations to produce said steel. From what I have heard, we don’t have any samples which have been available for analysis since we gained the technology to analyze them properly to reproduce it.

Taking this assertion to be true, then it doesn't change the fact that Damascus steel is still lost. We can't reproduce it, end of story. In fact, the lucky discovery belies the nature of a lot of technological advancements in the history of mankind: luck, and the people and society who capitalised on such luck. Technological advancement, as I said, isn't a matter of pouring enough resources into something and then getting a result. Resources are needed, yes, and ingenuity and curiosity, and there does need to be societal support for it to take place, but we can pour all the money we want into faster-than-light travel and not get anywhere.

3) Unlike his examples of Greek Fire and Damascus Steel, modern technologies have detailed explanations of how to reproduce them available. So unless something happens to destroy the libraries, we won’t be able to lose anything but the most recent of technologies.

Firstly, I will concede that there is a lot more documentation of our current technologies, and it is saved more widely. That much is apparent. However, one does not necessarily need to destroy the information in order for it to be lost. Let me explain further.

Information about technologies can be restricted as it was in the old days, with intellectual properties and corporations taking place of the old trade secrets and guilds. Certainly the loss of Greek fire and Damascus steel was in part due to the extensively secret nature of their making, with no one allowed to hold the whole of the process. The more highly restricted knowledge is, the more likely it is to be lost.

Secondly, access to said information can be destroyed. Much of what we have today is stored on electronic format, in flash drives and on servers - all it'll take is one good EMP, and anything that isn't destroyed - well, how are you going to extract that information from your shielded flash drive if there are no working computers, nor electricity with which to power your e-reader? Books can be read on their own, a hard drive less so.

Thirdly, the ability to use the technology can be removed. Now, let's assume that you have the blueprints for an internal combustion engine. Can you use it as-is? No, you need a machine shop to mill the parts to specification, you need a vehicle to fit it in, you need fuel...

I think you get my point. As someone who has been trained to be a chemical engineer, I know the theory of large-scale fractional distillation. Can I build a tower on my own and refine some crude? I simply can't afford the capital costs under today's conditions; I know the scientific and engineering principles, but have no way to put them into practice. If you want to split hairs about it, the knowledge isn't lost, but it's not practical and most people will forget things not exactly useful to them in their daily lives that they don't find supremely interesting.

Many technologies today are interlinked. A chemical engineer sizes the tower's height, width and number of plates/packing, a mechanical engineer calculates the stresses it will experience and determines the exact dimensions, mechanics manufacture the plates and tower, and technicians keep it running smoothly. One failure will make the whole chain useless.

Lastly, the ability to comprehend the technology can be lost with increasing societal breakdown. Again, I highlight my Kardashian/antibiotics litmus test. How many people actually know in detail what goes on in their cars? They step on the accelerator and it does the rest by magic, same goes for the brakes. Fewer and fewer people can actually be bothered to learn how to change the oil in their cars - what were once commonplace, mundane tasks which eased people into understanding the world about them have been outsourced to professionals. How many people actually know things about science that aren't fed to them in dumbed-down bite-sized chunks by the mainstream media, that are at best half-truths?

What good is a book to an illiterate barbarian?

The leap from knowledge and technology to increased standards of living is a complex one, when one looks behind the curtain. It's certainly intricate enough to be prone to shocks of all sorts, which then feeds into a feedback cycle; as societal decline accelerates, so does technological decline, which in turn accelerates technological decline...

The libraries don't have to be burned, although that may very well happen. They just have to be locked away, their knowledge made impractical, or the populace made illiterate.

What I did not see in that analysis was the acknowledgement that the availability of cheap resources to support the basics, plus the energy and technology to build essentially anything you can dream up will free up creative people to soar to heights we can barely imagine now.

First off, defining creative people as the natural aristocracy, I would like to reiterate that whatever the actual number of natural aristocrats, it's generally accepted that there are simply too few of us around. This is plainly observable by say, the fraction of lottery winners who don't happen to fritter away all their money within a year or two and remain wealthy for the rest of their lives. In my estimation, no matter how high creative people soar to, the force of the masses will be more than sufficient to tear down whatever achievements they make.

Furthermore, if one wants to make the argument that post-scarcity will free up the creative to reach amazing heights, then it will equally make the maladjusted and psychopathic so much more dangerous, as well. It is easy to destroy, hard to create: if you have ten people in a community, all ten are required to keep it running smoothly, while it just requires one to throw everything into disorder, and this becomes more true with increasing technology available to the individual. A madman with a knife is different from one with a gun is different from one with a suitcase nuke is different from one with a fast-spreading contagion.

One last thing, technological progress is not independent - it is a function of societal attitudes towards technology. Society demands iDon'tgiveashits in place of moon landings - that is what we get. If society demands degeneracy, then technology, or the implementation of, will proceed in a degenerate fashion. Steve Jobs was a brilliant man, and in the later parts of his life possessed enough wealth to be considered effectively post-scarcity, but the innovations spearheaded by him were catered to the masses. Robustness and long-lasting appliances with replaceable parts have been bumped off by planned fallibility, thanks to our consumer culture. To argue that the masses will not have at least an indirect effect on the direction of technological "progress" of the creative is circumspect at best. Even neanderthals sweating in dreams and visions have a desire to be popular, after all.

I’m just saying that people will have society, no matter what their everyday personal life is like, and that society will still have ways to either discourage destructive tendencies, or channel them into harmless avenues. This should generally work for 99+% of the people who would get that way.

We used to have one of these tools. It was called social censure and shaming. Thanks to the wonders of free love and non-judgmentalism, the only crime today is not loving enough, the only allowable reason for being judged is being judgmental.

Has this turned out for the better? No, what was once held in check voluntarily with a desire for conscientious improvement now has to be enforced by the state's jackboots - with all the attendant double standards and abuses. The question is not whether there is a way to discourage destructive tendencies, it's whether a) it's effective or b) it causes more damage than it prevents. A mind-control chip that gives its victim an electric shock when thoughtcrime is committed might damn well be effective for those who are unable to circumvent it, but is such a thing truly desirable? And as pointed out before, with greater technology in the hands of the individual, all it will take is one malcontent to seriously mess it up for everyone else.

...

Of course, I don't claim to have all the answers or be able to foretell the future with perfect accuracy; once again, I am going off current and historical trends to make these predictions. But unless the situation today suddenly and miraculously swings for the better with some unknown factor coming into play, I'm not holding out much hope for the Leftists' vision of infinite progress.

Save Capitalism has his own take on the issue here.