How does it compare to The Peripheral? I quit that book about a third of the way through because I had literally next to no idea what was going on in the text.
I love William Gibson but it rubs me the wrong way a bit that he (or the author) so casually attributes the apocalypse to flying (among other things) and then, without irony goes on to say that he’s been visiting London for several decades.... I’m assuming by plane, from Vancouver.
Acknowledging a truth does not make you duty-bound to address the problem. Indeed, even though I know that a traffic accident is one of the most likely ways that my children will die, and even though I adore my children, I still drive them around almost every day.
But it does make someone a hypocrite and maybe not someone you want to spend time listening to. In your example, it would be more relevant if you were a public figure who talked about the dangers of car driving wrt kids...
Hypocrites aren’t wrong; they’re just hypocrites. We need to detach our ego from this debate if we ever want to find a solution, and just so that of others.
If someone says, “Here is a wrong thing,” that’s just an acknowledgement that the thing is wrong, but there is no hypocrisy.
If they say “Here is a wrong thing and anyone who does it sucks,” then it is the definition of hypocrisy if they do it themselves.
The smugness is an implicit moral judgment, and the moral judgment has to create a duty to act, or else it’s not a moral judgment (maybe? I’m not a philosopher...)
I'm sure you can list dozens of things you do personally, which you know are damaging to the world, but you continue to do them. It's not hypocritical to acknowledge our own bad habits. If you're alive, you're actively harming the world.
Whether it’s hypocritical depends on the judgment attached to the acknowledgement. I agree that it’s not necessarily hypocritical, but I find most articles that mention the apocalypse have something of a judgmental angle to them.
> If you're alive, you're actively harming the world.
Not universally true. There are plenty of people who are improving the world. I know of several who live rather selfless lives and could well be described as environmental warriors.
Such lack of 'consistency' may be judged pertinent when it comes to evaluate the messenger (I bet that nearly all of us may not benefit from it!), however it isn't when it comes to evaluate his assertion.
I think there’s a distinction to be made between a tu quoque fallacy and something like an economists “revealed preferences,” the way people act gives you information about How they feel about the truth of an assertion.
In the article he says if the jackpot is happening, it’s been happening for the last hundred years, and I agree with that, but I don’t think it’s happening (in the sense that I assign a very, very low probability to 80% of humans dying). I do think climate change is a very serious problem and have adjusted my behavior accordingly, but if I thought 80% of humans were going to die, I would adjust my behavior a lot more, and if William Gibson doesn’t adjust his behavior a lot more, then I think it’s plausible to assign a higher probably to him being a fool or him not actually believing the jackpot will happen. The latter seems more likely.
And I understand that from a logical perspective, what I believe about William Gibson has no bearing on whether the jackpot will happen, but it seems like the best way to judge the likelihood of something like that is to evaluate the statements and actions of lots of smart people.
Adjusting your behavior implies more than 'effectively believing'. It also implies that you feel concerned by the threat (some, even believing there is a real threat, just cannot change their habits, or don't care because they are old/lonely/egoistic/...).
It also implies that you think that adjusting your behavior will have a non-neglectable impact (one may doubt so, and even doubt that it may create an example for others to follow...).
Smart people are able to learn and to solve problems, and it helps when it comes to predicting the future, but does being smart always 'sufficiently helps' when it comes to predicting? Is there a single case of society able to alleviate some catastrophic total slow-moving failure, thanks to a consensus among smart people? There are, for sure, numerous cases of such failures not only neglected but often dynamized by the elites (the 'Collapse' book authored by J. Diamond seems pertinent).
We may also try to define who is smart (chose a topic, write a list of 'smart people' names, show it to friends in order to verify if they agree with you, or want to eject some names and add others you don't want in). If everyone can only add names the resulting list will contain 'smart people' rarely agreeing (and act the same way), controversy is the rule and consensus the exception. It may mean that most of us judge that 'smart people' are people they agree with. Nothing new here...
Moreover various assertions now considered false were consensual among the very tip of 'smart people' (the few ones considered smart by most) for a fair amount of centuries.
In my opinion in our huge societies everything moves too quickly, and there are too many interactions, for even the smartest to really understand, bar to predict anything. Given this perspective hoping that an unique and central government will solve anything seems grotesque, those chiefs will simply resume the "let's feign to understand, and avoid attempting any potentially decisive action" game already running and the resulting centralization (=> bureaucracy) will only create new challenges.
I think it's a good antidote. A lot of people tend to lie to themselves to keep a virtuous self image. And it happens externally too - convenient lies are common in societies.
> Agency focuses on an alternate present in which Britain did not vote to leave the EU and the US did not elect Donald Trump as its 45th president. But this is no Remainer fantasy: an unspecified conflict in the Syrian city of Qamishli has brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
Reminds me of Ken MacLeod's The Execution Channel, which goes out of its way to mention that Gore was elected president- and an alternate 9/11 that hits Boston and Philadelphia leads to the War on Terror anyway. Though written in 2006 or so, it felt particularly prescient a peace later despite being pre-smartphones and social media- it capture an increasingly paranoid world choked full of state-sponsored internet disinfo, influential conspiracy theory bloggers, climate change refugees. Despite the weird ending and not the best plot, the world-building and general tone manages to have resonance nearly fifteen years later.
I've read all of Gibson's books, but I found Agency hard to finish.
The book has two parallel story-lines, and very short chapters which makes it a very disjointed read.
The characters were also very flat. For the last quarter of the book, the main character's dialog is almost all short questions and other characters explaining things to her. e.g.
I agree except after Pattern Recognition (2003) was to me the change.
But Pattern Recognition was amazing at the time, but now a lot of the stuff in it is normal. Like Influencers in it was a really novel idea at the time, now considered everyday.
I waited ages after Spook Country (2007) to try and read it, so perhaps it was to late.
Internet changed it all. What he was amazing at, now gets just served up to everyone. The future is still un-evenly distributed, but viewing it is evenly distributed.
That was actually kind of the point of the "Blue Ant" trilogy ("Pattern Recognition" and its sequels). It was supposed to be set when it was written, not the future. It was a type of requiem for cyberpunk because we are living in the cyberpunk universe. With "The Peripheral/Agency" he is returning to actual science fiction but of a type that is very different from cyberpunk.
Assuming that his fans on the other side of political spectrum somehow don't understand the message is very naive – you don't have to agree with the author, or even interpret the work in the same way to enjoy it. After the work is finished, author's intent – who was supposed to be the villain, what was supposed to be the moral of the story – matters not.
And, well, his thoughts about theoretical "UN with teeth" is such a textbook example of Utopiah fallacy, I'm amazed he's actually saying something like this with a straight face.
The funny thing about ends of the world is they're all so politically correct. What if an apocalypse is caused by something we're taught to believe is good? Some examples:
Maybe social welfare and international aid are selectively breeding a race of humans who are unable to sustain their own lives without support of the superior but relatively shrinking productive class?
What if repeated famines were the cause of the high intelligence we have today? We stopped famines. Maybe the pressure to outsmart each other has gone too.
What if Islam continues to spread? It's a kind of mind-virus filled with techniques to keep its hosts infected (don't ask difficult questions about God, kill people who stop believing, etc.) and to spread (kill or tax people who don't believe, and when you might have killed someone in war, allow them to live if they convert to Islam). Everyone being infected might be OK if it was benign, but it's also anti-science (Predicting future outcomes is usurping the power of God who's the one who decides what will happen). This is perhaps what already happened due to Christianity in the dark ages. Took 1000 years to recover from that end of the world.
Maybe modern medicine is breeding a race of unhealthy people who depend on it for survival. Maybe we're in an arms race of humans needing ever-better medicine and medicine having to treat ever-more difficult diseases.
How can you defend against a politically incorrect end of the world? The obvious direct course of action is forbidden, which means even mentioning the possibility of those being problems is forbidden socially, which means it might blindside us. We might even welcome it coming. I can imagine future degraded people laughing at their silly ancestors wanting technology and healthcare instead of fighting enemies with their fists like a natural real man. They might ostracize tinkerers who try to build useful things instead of participating in the tribal rituals and fighting.
31 comments
[ 10.5 ms ] story [ 257 ms ] threadIf they say “Here is a wrong thing and anyone who does it sucks,” then it is the definition of hypocrisy if they do it themselves.
The smugness is an implicit moral judgment, and the moral judgment has to create a duty to act, or else it’s not a moral judgment (maybe? I’m not a philosopher...)
Not universally true. There are plenty of people who are improving the world. I know of several who live rather selfless lives and could well be described as environmental warriors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
In the article he says if the jackpot is happening, it’s been happening for the last hundred years, and I agree with that, but I don’t think it’s happening (in the sense that I assign a very, very low probability to 80% of humans dying). I do think climate change is a very serious problem and have adjusted my behavior accordingly, but if I thought 80% of humans were going to die, I would adjust my behavior a lot more, and if William Gibson doesn’t adjust his behavior a lot more, then I think it’s plausible to assign a higher probably to him being a fool or him not actually believing the jackpot will happen. The latter seems more likely.
And I understand that from a logical perspective, what I believe about William Gibson has no bearing on whether the jackpot will happen, but it seems like the best way to judge the likelihood of something like that is to evaluate the statements and actions of lots of smart people.
It also implies that you think that adjusting your behavior will have a non-neglectable impact (one may doubt so, and even doubt that it may create an example for others to follow...).
Smart people are able to learn and to solve problems, and it helps when it comes to predicting the future, but does being smart always 'sufficiently helps' when it comes to predicting? Is there a single case of society able to alleviate some catastrophic total slow-moving failure, thanks to a consensus among smart people? There are, for sure, numerous cases of such failures not only neglected but often dynamized by the elites (the 'Collapse' book authored by J. Diamond seems pertinent).
We may also try to define who is smart (chose a topic, write a list of 'smart people' names, show it to friends in order to verify if they agree with you, or want to eject some names and add others you don't want in). If everyone can only add names the resulting list will contain 'smart people' rarely agreeing (and act the same way), controversy is the rule and consensus the exception. It may mean that most of us judge that 'smart people' are people they agree with. Nothing new here...
Moreover various assertions now considered false were consensual among the very tip of 'smart people' (the few ones considered smart by most) for a fair amount of centuries.
In my opinion in our huge societies everything moves too quickly, and there are too many interactions, for even the smartest to really understand, bar to predict anything. Given this perspective hoping that an unique and central government will solve anything seems grotesque, those chiefs will simply resume the "let's feign to understand, and avoid attempting any potentially decisive action" game already running and the resulting centralization (=> bureaucracy) will only create new challenges.
"Slaves don't feel pain like we do"
Reminds me of Ken MacLeod's The Execution Channel, which goes out of its way to mention that Gore was elected president- and an alternate 9/11 that hits Boston and Philadelphia leads to the War on Terror anyway. Though written in 2006 or so, it felt particularly prescient a peace later despite being pre-smartphones and social media- it capture an increasingly paranoid world choked full of state-sponsored internet disinfo, influential conspiracy theory bloggers, climate change refugees. Despite the weird ending and not the best plot, the world-building and general tone manages to have resonance nearly fifteen years later.
The book has two parallel story-lines, and very short chapters which makes it a very disjointed read.
The characters were also very flat. For the last quarter of the book, the main character's dialog is almost all short questions and other characters explaining things to her. e.g.
<paragraph explanation> "why's that?" <paragraph explanation> "oh really?" <paragraph explanation> etc.
But Pattern Recognition was amazing at the time, but now a lot of the stuff in it is normal. Like Influencers in it was a really novel idea at the time, now considered everyday.
I waited ages after Spook Country (2007) to try and read it, so perhaps it was to late.
Internet changed it all. What he was amazing at, now gets just served up to everyone. The future is still un-evenly distributed, but viewing it is evenly distributed.
And, well, his thoughts about theoretical "UN with teeth" is such a textbook example of Utopiah fallacy, I'm amazed he's actually saying something like this with a straight face.
Maybe social welfare and international aid are selectively breeding a race of humans who are unable to sustain their own lives without support of the superior but relatively shrinking productive class?
What if repeated famines were the cause of the high intelligence we have today? We stopped famines. Maybe the pressure to outsmart each other has gone too.
What if Islam continues to spread? It's a kind of mind-virus filled with techniques to keep its hosts infected (don't ask difficult questions about God, kill people who stop believing, etc.) and to spread (kill or tax people who don't believe, and when you might have killed someone in war, allow them to live if they convert to Islam). Everyone being infected might be OK if it was benign, but it's also anti-science (Predicting future outcomes is usurping the power of God who's the one who decides what will happen). This is perhaps what already happened due to Christianity in the dark ages. Took 1000 years to recover from that end of the world.
Maybe modern medicine is breeding a race of unhealthy people who depend on it for survival. Maybe we're in an arms race of humans needing ever-better medicine and medicine having to treat ever-more difficult diseases.
How can you defend against a politically incorrect end of the world? The obvious direct course of action is forbidden, which means even mentioning the possibility of those being problems is forbidden socially, which means it might blindside us. We might even welcome it coming. I can imagine future degraded people laughing at their silly ancestors wanting technology and healthcare instead of fighting enemies with their fists like a natural real man. They might ostracize tinkerers who try to build useful things instead of participating in the tribal rituals and fighting.