The Stross thread on the history of 1700-2300 smashed his longest thread record. It took till comment #1315 to throw up this nugget.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/09/the-present-in-deep-history.html#comment-1981091
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Americans, by and large, think that they can control history, basically by sheer force of will and gumption, and the one thing I've noticed in this thread is that no one shares this assumption- not even for humanity as a whole. Currently, that's obviously not true, but the one game changer that I see, the one truly significant innovation that could completely dominate history for the next thousand years, if it's possible of course, would be if humanity learned how to plan it's own future. If we could actually set multi-century goals, and meet them. If Psycho-history became real. If the Imperial Planetologist actually knew what he was talking about. If Humanity collectively became an transcendent AI (at least in effect).
Obviously not a capability we currently have. Is there any reason we might move toward it in the next three hundred years? We have advanced significantly in our understanding of complexity, nonlinear dynamic systems, and how the ecosystem, the economy and human behavioral patterns interact with one another. We are starting to do the math. Could we get there? Could we actually design systems today that would have an intended impact say, 200 years down the road?
If not, what's the barrier?
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This got mixed in with thoughts about "The Roman Empire Never Ended" and the differences between pyramid-structured, command and control systems and emergent-behavious hive mind systems. I've been pushing the idea for a while now that the USA likes the first while China is more like the second, using the universal Starbucks vs Chinese takeaway as an example. People nod their heads but it doesn't really lead anywhere. They still expect Chinese Imperialism to be planned in the same way that they're told and they believe that Western Imperialism is planned. Perhaps the truth is that it's all emergent behaviour and the apparent belief in our ability to create specific futures by force of will is just a post-facto rationalisation. This has scary implications for things that are long term and multi-generational like climate change.
As humans we have trouble actually exercising free will. A lot of the time what we call free will looks like the brain fooling itself with post-facto rationalisation for what we did without any conscious direction. Apparently this applies to humans en-masse as well.
It's hard to talk about this stuff without mentioning Godel, Escher, Bach. "What's below the emergent behaviour?" "Oh, its just emergent behaviour, ALL THE WAY DOWN".
- Can we plan for 50 or 500 years and follow through and not just 5 year plans. Let alone qtrly profit targets
- Long Now Foundation
- History of great men vs History of societies
- Sometimes you have to build frameworks for other people to build on. Rather than actually solve all the problems now. eg UN or League of Nations.
- ISTR one or two projects in India to build new temples that aren't expected to finish for a century or two.
- Why are the Chinese building empty cities? Corrupt chaos? Or long term contingency planning.
Thinking about global free will may be a complete red herring and a mistaken analogy. The real question is whether the human race is capable at this stage of consciously acting to plan and execute long term, multi-generational futures. And if we are, what those plans should be.