#84 | People's past pessimism about the future makes me optimistic.
It's easy to forget that we live in the future of the past. Although the present is all we can access — this moment, right now (and here's a new one) — we're simultaneously the past of our future selves and the future of the past.
So, we're either someone's dystopian or utopian future. It's weird to think about, no?
I've got 1984 sitting in front of me—I'm excited to tear into it. Flicking through my highlights from the last time I read it, I'm seeing some stand-out quotes: "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." Orwell was commenting on the fallibility of the truth under the Ministry of Truth. Everything Winston, the protagonist, knows is half-truths or lies. Consequently, his world is shrowded by doublethink (that is "holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them").
When I consider our doublethink today, there are many examples. To pick one, the issue of gun control in America has surfaced again amid tragedy. The doublethink is alarming: It's essential to protect children and others from the government, so relaxed gun controls are necessary. Simultaneously, other people want to ensure that guns don't get into the hands of people who might want to hurt others, such as in Texas's recent school shooting. Americans comprise 4% of the world's population, yet they carry half of all civilian firearms (393m of 857m). The nation's acceptance of doublethink is acute and terrifying, since the proportion of people who believe in stricter gun control laws has dropped from 78% in 1990 to 30% today. I'm unsure whether gun control has become more stringent, but since there have been 200 mass shootings across America this year, there is room to get stricter.
When we think about school shootings, it certainly doesn't feel like we live in a utopian future. Looking ahead, what future contains regular school shootings? A dystopian one, surely. Yet there are things to be highly optimistic about: The number of people in extreme poverty fell by half in the last decade, and we're connected to all human knowledge, which we can access, broadly uncensored, for free.
I hear relatively pessimistic stories when I ask friends about the future. For some inexplicable reason, we like that we’ll be the generation that glimpses the apocalypse. We think the sky will finally fall on our heads. Perhaps, as a generation (like every other), we’re seeking more cosmic significance than a random generation in, say, 1100 AD.
Of course, friends say, we have global warming to deal with, and our efforts to date have been sub-par; then we have overpopulation, which will reach a ceiling as the world becomes better off (and less reproductive). How, with eleven billion of us, will we feed everyone? But, if we manage that, we'll see population collapse, which will mean too many older people without the young to do the heavy lifting—cue suffering. Today, we're seeing this in Japan, and we'll see it in China in fifty years. Oh, finally, because of nuclear proliferation, at some point, something is going to go wrong, and there will be a nuclear war. It might be this year... (And did I forget misaligned AI? Surely that'll drive the nail in).
So, for many, the outlook is bleak. But there is a much more optimistic argument, which I like to hold in mind. In short: people are not evil, even the bad ones. Over time, small good actions will win out no matter how underwhelming they seem today (paper straws, for example, are ridiculous, but we will beat global warming). I was thrilled to stumble across a blog post on the Effective Altruism website, which gives a logical rationale for being optimistic about the future. The author, Ben West, sketches his argument as follows:
Humans are generally not evil, just lazy
Therefore, we should expect there to only be suffering in the future if that suffering enables people to be lazier
The most efficient solutions to problems don't seem like they involve suffering
Therefore, as technology progresses, we will move more towards solutions which don't involve suffering
Furthermore, people are generally willing to exert some (small) amount of effort to reduce suffering
As technology progresses, the amount of effort required to reduce suffering will go down
Therefore, the future will contain less net suffering
Therefore, the future will be good
I agree. With this in mind, the biggest problems that appear to block the road ahead may be as solvable as discovering how to fly (which many said was impossible).
Ultimately, people's historic pessimism about the future makes me optimistic. When we read 1984, or A Brave New World, the future they present is dark. We do not live in that future; we live in a better one. Although Orwell and Huxley may have been right about many things, life is less authoritarian and more prosperous than they anticipated. Of course, the dystopian and utopian future depends on one's vantage point and luck. Nevertheless, if those in the past who were looking ahead were more negative about the future than they needed to be (perhaps to write better books). I, therefore, think our future will be more utopian than any of us dare to imagine.
My week in books
What You Do Is Who You Are by Ben Horrowitz. We've underinvested in the culture at Yokeru, partly because we work remotely and partly because we're a tiny team. Nevertheless, this book forced me to think about how important having a solid culture is to an organisation. I'm inspired to consider it more.
Live well,
Hector