I’ve long said that it is backwards to worry that technology will change faster than society can adapt, because the ability of society adapt is one of the main constraints on how fast we adopt new technologies.
I think people who worry that, "technology will change faster than society can adapt" have something like the following in mind:
There are always ways that people can defect from social good in ways that hurt others and benefit themselves. For instance, theft, identity theft, selling defective products, misleading consumers about science, even political attack ads that undermine beneficial ways of deciding on our leaders.
Society has evolved ways of curbing these harmful behaviors. Sometimes in a top down fashion (law enforcement) and sometimes in a bottom up fashion (community norms about gossip or sexual fidelity). People who worry that technology will change faster than society can adapt really mean that societal corrective forces can't keep up with the social changes technology brings about.
So yes, in one sense, tech like the atomic bomb trivially can't be brought into play faster than society can adapt. If generals and governments stick their heads in the sand and pretend nukes don't exist and refuse to use them nothing changes. But people can start using the atomic bomb without stopping to change the norms of warfare that applied before the development with disastrous consequences.
Given that society is not homogeneous, what prevents a segment of it from adapting more quickly than the general rate? The question would then be whether the segment in question is a large enough market by itself to continue development of the relevant technology.
This seems relevant because the influence of technology on my life isn't chosen chiefly by me, but rather by a series of specialized groups. My life is chiefly the consequences of their decisions.
There are a lot of economic activities that are limited by short term memory. Even things as simple as dealing with locations of files in a directory structure often bump up against memory limits. In a complex technological society, I'd expect that doubling short term memory would give a substantial economic advantage to someone, and this could potentially be exploited as a reproductive advantage (that, admittedly, is much iffier).
I think if we opened our eyes we'd also see that the fundamentals are changing right before them.
People's behavior today is quite different than it was just ten years ago. Today, something like half of the industrialized world spends something like an hour a day looking at their mobile phone. It connects them to all of their friends and to most of the services in the world -- and governs a major fraction if not most of their interactions with people and businesses -- and it's with them all the time. You can talk to it and it talks back. Soon, it will not only give you answers, it will interact with others on your behalf to complete non-trivial organizational tasks for you.
How futuristic does it sound to tell your phone to plan a trip to Barcelona for you and you tell it a date range and price range and it gets it done? That's gonna happen, and I expect most people would shrug and say "yeah that seems likely," and yet consider how amazing it is!
Eventually, I think we will turn a corner were we will want to be more intimately plugged into these devices. How futuristic does it sound to be able to communicate with others telepathically through a device connected to your head? That's quite a bit down the road, but I think when it comes, it will feel like the next natural step in convenience.
"But I don't see any reason to think evolution has already explored all viable psychologies."
"If and when we get to experiment with different psychologies, I expect that we can find better ones (for example, eliminating the many well-known irrationalities of human thinking), better adapted to today's and tomorrow's world."
Being bothered by irrationalities is part of human psychology as well (and it's possible changing that aspect will turn out to be easier/more viable than removing the irrationalities themselves). When we can change our preferences we can also change our ideas of what is "better", so there really is no telling what the end result will be. And if this stuff takes off I expect groups of humans to branch off into what will be practially different species, so the end result won't be the same for all of our descendants.
Everything subject to variation and selection is molded by evolution. There's no "getting around" that; it's a fact of nature.
But I don't see any reason to think evolution has already explored all viable psychologies.
Humans are adapted to life in small tribes. Lots of our current problems stem from traits that were adaptive in that environment, but which are inappropriate to today's "big society" full of millions of strangers.
If and when we get to experiment with different psychologies, I expect that we can find better ones (for example, eliminating the many well-known irrationalities of human thinking), better adapted to today's and tomorrow's world.
This is my own best hope for the future survival of intelligence. I fear we're so poorly adapted to handling the technologies we already have (let alone what we'll have soon), that without such changes we'll self-extinct soon.
In that process of adaptation there will be lots of failures of course. That's how evolution works.
>As long as human psychology is molded by evolution, it will be within the range of psychologies that we've already seen in the living world.
Really? Human short term memory has been described as "the magic number seven, plus or minus two". Expanding that, even by a factor of two, would confer a big evolutionary advantage, but would be outside of the range of psychologies we've already seen.
You write, "it's hard to predict what further changes people fundamentally unlike ourselves may choose".
As long as human psychology is molded by evolution, it will be within the range of psychologies that we've already seen in the living world. Of course, if we devise technology to get around evolution, then future humans could be very different. OTOH, they'd probably be more vulnerable to extinction, since they wouldn't be driven by their own propagation.
Quit true. There can always be change that some subset of the population fails to adapt to. E.g., the introduction of smallpox into the new world. Or within a market context, the introduction of modern transportation (containerization and interstate highways) made it possible for factories to locate in most places in the US rather than just the center cities. This change was avidly embraced, but was in no way "normalized" for the consumption of the big, old cities or their working-class populations (much of it black).
Hmmm, this really is the definition of "disruptive change" as that term is used in biz-speak.
It seems like the crux is "Who are the population whose permission is needed to adopt the change?" The change must be sugar-coated for *that* population.
This article was a wonderful grab-bag of shrewd observations!
You write "the continuation of supply and demand, inequality, big organizations, status seeking".
I can imagine most of those going away, since they've only been around since the invention of agriculture. But our ancestors have been status seeking since before they were human, and our descendants will likely be doing so after.
"I’ve long said that it is backwards to worry that technology will change faster than society can adapt, because the ability of society adapt is one of the main constraints on how fast we adopt new technologies."
It may constrain 99 out of 100 technologies but the one that gets through can still cause a lot of change. Rao already provides the example of obesity and with the possibility of externalization of costs any number of technologies we can't cope with can still be adopted by a minority who benefit from it in the short term. That doesn't mean technology will lead to our extinction but it could very well lead to periodic decimation.
Agreed: once human psychology gets changed all bets are off. And new realities, such as em-societies may interact with existing human psychology in ways that are hard for us to predict.
Future tech won't change everything, but it will change some things.
Supply and demand are not a function of technology; that won't change.
But status seeking is a function of human psychology. If future tech supports changing human genetics, then human psychology can change.
And such changes could lead to a recursive, unpredictable chain of further changes (it's hard to predict what further changes people fundamentally unlike ourselves may choose).
Whether such changes will lead to people who survive and persist over time will be up to evolution. As usual.
I’ve long said that it is backwards to worry that technology will change faster than society can adapt, because the ability of society adapt is one of the main constraints on how fast we adopt new technologies.
Would have expected a link.
Anyway, what does "backwards" mean? The strongest you might justify is that it is (prima facie) improbable that technology will evolve faster than society can adapt. [This gives you little purchase in considering a concrete scenario.]
I think people who worry that, "technology will change faster than society can adapt" have something like the following in mind:
There are always ways that people can defect from social good in ways that hurt others and benefit themselves. For instance, theft, identity theft, selling defective products, misleading consumers about science, even political attack ads that undermine beneficial ways of deciding on our leaders.
Society has evolved ways of curbing these harmful behaviors. Sometimes in a top down fashion (law enforcement) and sometimes in a bottom up fashion (community norms about gossip or sexual fidelity). People who worry that technology will change faster than society can adapt really mean that societal corrective forces can't keep up with the social changes technology brings about.
So yes, in one sense, tech like the atomic bomb trivially can't be brought into play faster than society can adapt. If generals and governments stick their heads in the sand and pretend nukes don't exist and refuse to use them nothing changes. But people can start using the atomic bomb without stopping to change the norms of warfare that applied before the development with disastrous consequences.
Given that society is not homogeneous, what prevents a segment of it from adapting more quickly than the general rate? The question would then be whether the segment in question is a large enough market by itself to continue development of the relevant technology.
This seems relevant because the influence of technology on my life isn't chosen chiefly by me, but rather by a series of specialized groups. My life is chiefly the consequences of their decisions.
There are a lot of economic activities that are limited by short term memory. Even things as simple as dealing with locations of files in a directory structure often bump up against memory limits. In a complex technological society, I'd expect that doubling short term memory would give a substantial economic advantage to someone, and this could potentially be exploited as a reproductive advantage (that, admittedly, is much iffier).
You write, "Expanding that, even by a factor of two, would confer a big evolutionary advantage"
How do we know that?
I think if we opened our eyes we'd also see that the fundamentals are changing right before them.
People's behavior today is quite different than it was just ten years ago. Today, something like half of the industrialized world spends something like an hour a day looking at their mobile phone. It connects them to all of their friends and to most of the services in the world -- and governs a major fraction if not most of their interactions with people and businesses -- and it's with them all the time. You can talk to it and it talks back. Soon, it will not only give you answers, it will interact with others on your behalf to complete non-trivial organizational tasks for you.
How futuristic does it sound to tell your phone to plan a trip to Barcelona for you and you tell it a date range and price range and it gets it done? That's gonna happen, and I expect most people would shrug and say "yeah that seems likely," and yet consider how amazing it is!
Eventually, I think we will turn a corner were we will want to be more intimately plugged into these devices. How futuristic does it sound to be able to communicate with others telepathically through a device connected to your head? That's quite a bit down the road, but I think when it comes, it will feel like the next natural step in convenience.
"But I don't see any reason to think evolution has already explored all viable psychologies."
"If and when we get to experiment with different psychologies, I expect that we can find better ones (for example, eliminating the many well-known irrationalities of human thinking), better adapted to today's and tomorrow's world."
Being bothered by irrationalities is part of human psychology as well (and it's possible changing that aspect will turn out to be easier/more viable than removing the irrationalities themselves). When we can change our preferences we can also change our ideas of what is "better", so there really is no telling what the end result will be. And if this stuff takes off I expect groups of humans to branch off into what will be practially different species, so the end result won't be the same for all of our descendants.
Everything subject to variation and selection is molded by evolution. There's no "getting around" that; it's a fact of nature.
But I don't see any reason to think evolution has already explored all viable psychologies.
Humans are adapted to life in small tribes. Lots of our current problems stem from traits that were adaptive in that environment, but which are inappropriate to today's "big society" full of millions of strangers.
If and when we get to experiment with different psychologies, I expect that we can find better ones (for example, eliminating the many well-known irrationalities of human thinking), better adapted to today's and tomorrow's world.
This is my own best hope for the future survival of intelligence. I fear we're so poorly adapted to handling the technologies we already have (let alone what we'll have soon), that without such changes we'll self-extinct soon.
In that process of adaptation there will be lots of failures of course. That's how evolution works.
>As long as human psychology is molded by evolution, it will be within the range of psychologies that we've already seen in the living world.
Really? Human short term memory has been described as "the magic number seven, plus or minus two". Expanding that, even by a factor of two, would confer a big evolutionary advantage, but would be outside of the range of psychologies we've already seen.
You write, "it's hard to predict what further changes people fundamentally unlike ourselves may choose".
As long as human psychology is molded by evolution, it will be within the range of psychologies that we've already seen in the living world. Of course, if we devise technology to get around evolution, then future humans could be very different. OTOH, they'd probably be more vulnerable to extinction, since they wouldn't be driven by their own propagation.
Quit true. There can always be change that some subset of the population fails to adapt to. E.g., the introduction of smallpox into the new world. Or within a market context, the introduction of modern transportation (containerization and interstate highways) made it possible for factories to locate in most places in the US rather than just the center cities. This change was avidly embraced, but was in no way "normalized" for the consumption of the big, old cities or their working-class populations (much of it black).
Hmmm, this really is the definition of "disruptive change" as that term is used in biz-speak.
It seems like the crux is "Who are the population whose permission is needed to adopt the change?" The change must be sugar-coated for *that* population.
This article was a wonderful grab-bag of shrewd observations!
You write "the continuation of supply and demand, inequality, big organizations, status seeking".
I can imagine most of those going away, since they've only been around since the invention of agriculture. But our ancestors have been status seeking since before they were human, and our descendants will likely be doing so after.
"I’ve long said that it is backwards to worry that technology will change faster than society can adapt, because the ability of society adapt is one of the main constraints on how fast we adopt new technologies."
It may constrain 99 out of 100 technologies but the one that gets through can still cause a lot of change. Rao already provides the example of obesity and with the possibility of externalization of costs any number of technologies we can't cope with can still be adopted by a minority who benefit from it in the short term. That doesn't mean technology will lead to our extinction but it could very well lead to periodic decimation.
Agreed: once human psychology gets changed all bets are off. And new realities, such as em-societies may interact with existing human psychology in ways that are hard for us to predict.
Future tech won't change everything, but it will change some things.
Supply and demand are not a function of technology; that won't change.
But status seeking is a function of human psychology. If future tech supports changing human genetics, then human psychology can change.
And such changes could lead to a recursive, unpredictable chain of further changes (it's hard to predict what further changes people fundamentally unlike ourselves may choose).
Whether such changes will lead to people who survive and persist over time will be up to evolution. As usual.
I’ve long said that it is backwards to worry that technology will change faster than society can adapt, because the ability of society adapt is one of the main constraints on how fast we adopt new technologies.
Would have expected a link.
Anyway, what does "backwards" mean? The strongest you might justify is that it is (prima facie) improbable that technology will evolve faster than society can adapt. [This gives you little purchase in considering a concrete scenario.]