From memes to machines

credits: David Deutsch

RATIONAL AND ANTI-RATIONAL MEMES

Meme is an abstract analogue of a gene, simply an idea that tends to get replicated. Anti-rational memes are those ideas that causes themselves to be not criticized and resists error correction. A society dominated by anti-rational memes, like most in human history, is a static society - where change is very slow, no new ideas are created and no innovation happens. A true stagnation occurring because such a society disables the very source of new ideas, namely human creativity. It does so either by channeling the creativity towards ever greater replication of the same anti-rational meme or making it so hard for people to even think of new things in the first place. It suppresses human ingenuity, new ideas, spirit and disables the critical faculties of the holders, just to keep things unchanged and to prevent progress. It does so rightly because change in static societies is harmful, because it is random, and not carefully calibrated and a thoughtful change. This scenario resembles evolution by natural selection where ideas slowly vary each time it replicates (communicated to other humans), and over a long period of time form into some other, good or bad.

On the other hand, rational memes are those that thrive because of criticism. This is because they are true and useful - and only tend to get replicated when other competing ideas loose under the tandem of criticism and critical thought. Newton’s theory can also prevail when critics deem Aristotelian theory or Descartes’ vortex theory wrong. A society dominated by such memes is called a dynamic society. A society which is stable under great change, and create rapid progress. This means it solves problems, at a rapid rate. Such is our civilization, at the current moment at least.

This is a simple quality about our civilization, that can single-handedly guide it towards extinction or open-ended and unbounded progress. The quality of how a society and its established systems and institutions handle criticism, by rejecting and suppressing it or embracing and cherishing it. Every civilisation or species that has come before is either dormant or extinct. Why? Because they did not have the ability to solve problems, at a higher rate than they encountered those problems, and when they did encounter a civilisational-threatening problem, they did not have the knowledge to solve it in time. And the ability to solve such problems starts with people being able to criticize, discuss and plan for such event.

Our society is a dynamic one, but far from a perfect one. There still lurks, in substantial significance, anti-rational memes that govern important parts of our society, for example educational and religious institutions. David Deutsch says:

Even in the West, the Enlightenment today is nowhere near complete. It is relatively advanced in a few, vital areas: the physical sciences and Western political and economic institutions are prime examples. In those areas ideas are now fairly open to criticism and experimentation, and to choice and change. But in many other areas memes are still replicated in the old manner, by means that suppress the recipients’ critical faculties and ignore their preferences.

And we are in a bumpy transition to a more enlightened society, which will be dominated by ever more rational memes. But this is not ensured, far from it. So we need to make sure that the traditions of criticism that our society somewhat cherish, only moves towards ever-greater adoption and not regress, because that will be the end of it all.

The simple idea that “you are not allowed to criticize something” for it is in a perfect state and no improvements can be made on it, is so fundamentally evil. There have been times before like that of Florence or golden islamic age where value of enlightenment glimmered but failed to come to fruition fully. Whatever our society has done till now, and will do from now on has never been done before.

We have, so far, been transformed from the victims (and enforcers) of an eternal status quo into the mainly passive recipients of the benefits of relatively rapid innovation in a bumpy transition period. We now have to accept, and rejoice in bringing about, our next transformation: to active agents of progress in the emerging rational society – and universe.

THE OPTIMISATION FUNCTION

Considering a more dynamic society than what we have today, what should (and will be) its optimizing function be? I think it should be to get as much wealthy, as much technologically capable and knowledgeable as possible, as quickly as possible. Why? Because we do not know what problems we will encounter in the future, and our best choice is to prepare for it, by the way of rapid progress.

And what about the end state? We cannot predict the end state or desired outcome for the distant future because we do not know what knowledge will be created in the future, thus what problems or questions we will have to deal with. The growth of knowledge is unpredictable, thus it does not really make sense to predict what humanity will consider best in 2000 years. Just like how in 19th century people cannot have predicted that civilisation would be wanting to fuse atoms to create energy. But we can, however, guess and speculate what would be the best considering today’s parochial problems.

A interstellar-space faring civilisation living in a post-scarcity world, having more knowledge about nature of reality, and with better questions to ask sounds about right. This goal becomes more urgent with the fact that this maybe civilisation’s last shot at leaving the shackles of this planet, since natural resources are finite and you do not get to fusion from using biomass for energy. It is so interesting that in a game like factorio, this is nothing more than common implicit fact, but when applied to our world, it becomes a question of doubt.

And how do you get there? Large-scale industrialisation. Energy abundance, advanced manufacturing, automation, advanced materials science, harnessing intelligence, better transportation, advanced communication - for how can it be otherwise?

THE INDUSTRIALISATION

A civilization is characterized by its industrial infrastructure. Characterized by our ability to control our environment (which requires knowledge). And the history of our species has, for most part, been one of scarcity and poverty; of “mostly short, poverty stricken, ignorant, and fearful lifetimes.”. The idea behind (large scale) industrialization is one of abundance; for everyone. (Functional) organizations of humans that produce something at scale which allows everyone to have access to it.

Large scale manufacturing → of ammonia and fertilizers made it possible for everyone to afford (cheap) food, of kerosene made it possible for everyone to light their homes in the early 1900s, of steel made it possible for us to build ever large structures and vastly better transportation, of semiconductors made it possible for a middle class person to use the same phone (bicycle for the mind) as the wealthiest person alive, of plastics; of automobiles; of cement; of pharmaceuticals; of electricity, and the list goes on.

Every way of how civilization as a whole becomes more wealthy and more capable is based on the idea of fundamentally having better industrial infrastructure, the ability to produce things of value for so cheap that is becomes abundant.

If aliens were to visit, what blueprint will they judge us through? Perhaps a civilizational blueprint which shows how far we are in our industrial stack, our place in the objective tech tree of the universe (material and social), if perhaps there is such a thing.

Just think what major things you think about while playing factorio? Or what would an alien be interested in, if it were to come to earth to check it out? Or what the countries during WWII thought they should improve?

The ability to produce things given certain raw materials, efficiently, is the backbone of everything. And if rational memes guide us towards the optimisation function of progress, massive industrialisation is the only way forward.