Predictions for 2301

[Raphael]

Not sure if this fits here, but it is, to some extent, about something that might happen in the future, so here it goes:

Did you hear the one about the greatest social scientist who ever lived?

She used her extensive knowledge of, and great skills at, economics, political science, social psychology, and general psychology to come up with the perfect set of social, socioeconomic, economic, and cultural policies - the combination that would create the most stable, prosperous, innovative, fair, and just societies you could have.

Then, she used her extensive knowledge of, and great skills at, political economy, history, political science, behavioral economics, social psychology, and neuroscience to explain exactly, meticulously and in excruciating detail, why this particular combination of policies would never, ever, actually be implemented anywhere.

I think it's at least possible that someone, or, more likely, a team of researchers, whose career path would roughly fit the description above, might live at some time between now and 2301.

[keenir]

Not sure if this fits here, but it is, to some extent, about something that might happen in the future, so here it goes:

Did you hear the one about the greatest social scientist who ever lived?

I read this post twice before noticing "did you hear the one about"...and at least three times after that, before I realized you weren't asking a question, you were telling a joke. A really really good joke.

And until i figured that out, all I could think of - other than "??" - was "Oh good, so Asimov's Mule wasn't the only one, but this one's real!"
{it wouldn't have been the first time that there was a paper published about whats needed and why it can't actually happen}

I think it's at least possible that someone, or, more likely, a team of researchers, whose career path would roughly fit the description above, might live at some time between now and 2301.

Should we hope that someone who either finds out/figures out, this accomplishment, can find a way to accomplish it? Because what would need to happen to either accomplish it, or pave the way to getting it done?

[Raphael]

I read this post twice before noticing "did you hear the one about"...and at least three times after that, before I realized you weren't asking a question, you were telling a joke. A really really good joke.

You think so? Thank you! To be honest, I was mainly trying to make a serious point in a hopefully somewhat funny way.

And until i figured that out, all I could think of - other than "??" - was "Oh good, so Asimov's Mule wasn't the only one, but this one's real!"
{it wouldn't have been the first time that there was a paper published about whats needed and why it can't actually happen}

Really? Interesting.

Should we hope that someone who either finds out/figures out, this accomplishment, can find a way to accomplish it?

Good question.

Because what would need to happen to either accomplish it, or pave the way to getting it done?

I'd say, mainly some advances in the various sciences mentioned, so that that person/those people would be able to built on those advances.

[linguistcat]

I'd think if a person or group could figure out the formula for The Maximally Stable, Prosperous, Innovative, Fair, and Just Societies, and that there were reasons these would never happen, then they'd be smart enough to figure out what possible local peaks in those measures would be and ways to get to those at least. It would certainly be far better than the opposite of the MSPIFJSs.

[Raphael]

Good point.

[Raphael]

To expand a bit on what I posted almost two months ago, I am getting gloomier and gloomier by the day right now. First, there's the very real possibility that the current situation will lead to the nuclear annihilation of humankind - people fairly high up in the Russian hierarchy routinely say pretty chilling things on that matter these days.

Even if that doesn't happen, it seems quite likely that, once Trump is back in the White House, he will both permanently entrench far-right rule within the USA, and completely withdraw the US military and other ways to project power from both Europe and the West Pacific/East Asia region. Which would then allow Russia to conquer Europe, and China to conquer Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. Afterwards, the BJP might follow in Trump's footsteps and permanently entrench far-right rule in India. Finally, whatever more or less democratic governments remain in other parts of the world would be either gobbled up by one or more of the big three or big four, or pressured into adapting more authoritarian power structures, and that would be that.

And once such a global alliance against authoritarian regimes has been established, I can easily see it lasting for hundreds or even thousands of years. Any rebellion against its rule would have to start somewhere, and whenever such a rebellion would start somewhere, it could be easily identified, isolated, and destroyed.

In earlier posts, zompist pointed to examples of various states of affairs in the past that also seemed like they might last forever, but nevertheless ended soon. Thing is, there's simply no precedent for a truly globe-spanning authoritarian alliance with full access to the technology, especially in communication and transportation, of the 21st century. So we can't simply predict how stable or instable such a system would be by looking at the past.

In a dark irony, in that future, it might happen that in those parts of the world that end up ruled by far-right white supremacist regimes, official propaganda will tell people that democracy is discredited because of its association with trying to respect the rights of PoCs, and in most other parts of the world, official propaganda will tell people that democracy is discredited because of its association with white supremacy.

Now, to some of zompist's old objections:

Great powers don't really like each other. If it weren't for the US, would Putin and Xi be buddies?

In my scenario, a far-right US would stay around. In any case, I assume that the new rulers, as stupid as they might be about everything else, would still be smart enough to understand the importance of cooperating with each other on smashing any kind of democracy if it should appear anywhere. They might also have written or unwritten agreements with each other saying that, no matter how intense their rivalries get, they will never ever support proxy governments or movements that run or advocate for 20th century style democracy.

There doesn't seem to be much appetite these days for global interventions.

Oh, in Russia and China, there seems to be.

(For whatever reason, that includes Trumpism.)

I'd say in the case of Trumpism, it's mainly a combination of three factors:

1) While Trump himself is not exactly smart, he seems to have a good instinctive understanding of how "popular" the kind of wars in which a lot of US soldiers die usually are among the US general public.
2) The rise of Trump allowed the remaining old paleocons and their alt-right successors to move from the margins to the center of the GOP.
3) As a result of 1) and 2), even some people who had been gung-ho warmongers during the Bush years figured out which way the wind was blowing and erased their previous positions from their memories.

Your nightmare scenario would also require Europe to go full reactionary. I mean... you realize that you have 447 million people, a GNP of $16 trillion, and you're on top of the world technologically (along with the US and Japan)? That absolutely dwarfs (say) Russia, and who else is going to pick on you?

First of all, while population and GDP can be important factors in warfare, on their own, they don't wage war. Military equipment and military structures do.

Second, there isn't really a single political structure with those 447 million people and a GNP of $16 trillion. There's a lot of smaller countries, each a good deal smaller than Russia by population, which Russia might well gobble up one by one.

Third, there's internal matters: in most EU countries, the far right and the far left both seem to be pro-Putin, with only those in between opposing him - and the center can't hold forever.

I don't think it's exactly optimistic to suggest that reactionaries can fail like Hitler failed. WWII was pretty destructive.

Hitler didn't have nukes. His suicide was less than three months before the first nuclear weapons test. If he would have had nukes, things would certainly have taken a much darker turn back then.

But these bad boys achieve power by the same means they lose it: overwhelming personal ambition that takes advice from no one. They're not playing 14-dimensional chess.

They don't have to play 14-dimensional chess. People who've dedicated themselves to intellectual pursuits can all too easily forget just how effective simple brute force can be. Yes, dictators usually lose contact with reality, because people can't tell them the truth, but sufficiently brutal repression can often insulate the powerful from reality.


I'll finish with a paraphrase of a well-known movie quote:

As I see it, the Chinese and Russian governments, and the USA's own far right, are out there. They can't be bargained with. They can't be reasoned with. They don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until all traces of political and intellectual freedom anywhere in the world are dead.

[keenir]

And once such a global alliance against authoritarian regimes has been established, I can easily see it lasting for hundreds or even thousands of years. Any rebellion against its rule would have to start somewhere, and whenever such a rebellion would start somewhere, it could be easily identified, isolated, and destroyed.

While I think ETA and the IRA and India's Maoist rebels are good counter-examples of how to not get wiped out, even short-lived movements can be incredibly destructive (remember the group who used sarin gas in Japan? I think it was in a subway system.. to paraphrase you below, imagine them or the guys at Waco with a dirty bomb)

And just as destructive to an authoritarian regime - just like with any other government type - are the people running the government. as WW2 Germany showed us, even united under a single leader, the heads of government don't always get along. {and then there are the Generals, fighting with each other and even their superiors - even MacArthur did it}

I don't think it's exactly optimistic to suggest that reactionaries can fail like Hitler failed. WWII was pretty destructive.

Hitler didn't have nukes. His suicide was less than three months before the first nuclear weapons test. If he would have had nukes, things would certainly have taken a much darker turn back then.

Took me a while to figure out how that was optimistic. Then I realized that a Hitler with nukes (or at least radioactive materials) would make sure Europe glowed as punishment for failing him {as the Allies tightened the noose at the end of the war}...shades of Palpatine.

[WeepingElf]

@Raphael - I understand your worries, I am worried about the same things. In the novel I am planning to write, humanity just barely avoids such a doomsday scenario. But in the end, the good guys win.

[zompist]

I'm thinking of writing a blog post on despair in general.

The idea would not be to dismiss anyone's concerns. Things are bad! Things people didn't think would happen, keep happening! It's OK to be alarmed!

But it's also OK to take a wider view, so we are not just mired in nihilism. Things are almost always bad. Are things objectively worse than in 1941?

Just to respond to the easier points, though...

First, there's the very real possibility that the current situation will lead to the nuclear annihilation of humankind

Then we're dead, and quickly, and have nothing more to worry about. Maybe bradrn survives, over in Australia.

Which would then allow Russia to conquer Europe, and China to conquer Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan.

Russia has been entirely unable to conquer Ukraine, a country 1/10 the size of the EU. Russia can't remember to change the damn tires on its military vehicles.

Admittedly, if Europe doesn't care about democracy, the world might be screwed. I think that's far from the case. But a lot depends on what happens with the current war. If Ukraine wins, a lot of things look far better. That also affects whether China decides on military adventurism. So, we'll know a lot more in a few months.

In any case, I assume that the new rulers, as stupid as they might be about everything else, would still be smart enough to understand the importance of cooperating with each other on smashing any kind of democracy if it should appear anywhere.

You mean, they'd cooperate as Great Powers never have in 10,000 years of history?

Cynicism is an answer to everything, so you can certainly keep feeling gloomy. But perhaps you're not cynical enough: in the last 200 years, maybe 400, the determining factor in major wars is not political system, but industrial capacity. Europe's is far, far more than Russia's. Germany alone has higher GNP and industry than Russia.

[Raphael]

Oddly enough, I've somehow felt a lot less gloomy since I posted that post than I felt before or while writing it.

[alice]

First, there's the very real possibility that the current situation will lead to the nuclear annihilation of humankind

Then we're dead, and quickly, and have nothing more to worry about.

<sarcasm level="high">
Have you ever actually been dead? Do you know how relentlessly, mind-numbingly, boring it is? Is that not something rather serious to worry about?
</sarcasm>

[WeepingElf]

I'm thinking of writing a blog post on despair in general.

The idea would not be to dismiss anyone's concerns. Things are bad! Things people didn't think would happen, keep happening! It's OK to be alarmed!

But it's also OK to take a wider view, so we are not just mired in nihilism. Things are almost always bad. Are things objectively worse than in 1941?

Certainly NOT! Things were pretty f***ed up in 1941, to a much higher degree than today. But things got better again a few years later. The human race succeeded in dealing with that threat; that gives me hope that we will succeed in dealing with the threats of today.

[Moose-tache]

It's one thing to there-there someone who is promising that the sky is falling tomorrow, this time for sure. But most of the complaints in this thread have been pretty specific and reasonable, not diffuse nihilism sprayed into the air. For example, the last time inflation was this high in the US, we got a neoliberal takeover. With the conservatives already scheduled to win seats in November, it doesn't seem like general pessimism to say that this is a pattern that could repeat. There is such a thing as toxic positivity. It usually takes the form of declaring reasonable, specific objections to be simply the result of a generally dour attitude.

[Ares Land]

I'm thinking of writing a blog post on despair in general.

Not really a prediction, but I wonder to what extent despair is part of the plan.

I noticed this with climate change. The message is, often enough, that the climate is already fucked -- to be more specific, the idea is that there's three years left to act. But given that not much is going to happen, realistically, in three years, the message is the same.
So a lot of people who feel concerned by the environment are just depressed. Coincidentally and very conveniently, depressed people don't really engage in activism much, and don't even bother the vote. (What would be the point? The apocalyspe coming anyway.)
Also, quite predictably, in three years nothing significant will have been done, and the apocalypse will fail to materialize. What'll happen then?

Authoritarians kind of act the same. Putin wants you to believe that Russia is an unstoppable juggernaut and resistance is futile. Xi Jinping wants you to believe the CCP is a similarly unstoppable force.
It's similarly a self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean Russia is still losing the war, it's very possible it will end up the winner -- but that's only because of general, vague cowardice in Europe.

I'm likewise surprised with the defeatism of American Democrats. The mid-terms are in a few months; a lot could happen in a few months. But the general narrative that the Republicans are going to win anyway, while very credible, isn't likely to get people to vote.

One thing I noted with far-right activists is that they spend a lot of time explaining everyone (everyone who matters anyway) agrees with them, and that the opposing side is weak, marginal and possibly mentally ill.

[WeepingElf]

Not a prediction for 2301, but one for 2031: A global cold war between an alliance of liberal democracies who take the climate change problem seriously (even if they not always do enough on it) and an alliance of authoritarian régimes who more or less deny it. It is less easy to predict which country will be in which camp, though probably the EU will be in the former, and Russia and China in the latter. I shall explore this in my planned novel I briefly mentioned a few days ago.

[Vardelm]

Not a prediction for 2301, but one for 2031: A global cold war between an alliance of liberal democracies who take the climate change problem seriously (even if they not always do enough on it) and an alliance of authoritarian régimes who more or less deny it. It is less easy to predict which country will be in which camp, though probably the EU will be in the former, and Russia and China in the latter. I shall explore this in my planned novel I briefly mentioned a few days ago.

I would think this would result more from grievances about being "unfairly" excluded from full participation in economic terms, with climate change denial rising from its (real or perceived) economic costs.

[keenir]

Not a prediction for 2301, but one for 2031: A global cold war between an alliance of liberal democracies who take the climate change problem seriously (even if they not always do enough on it) and an alliance of authoritarian régimes who more or less deny it. It is less easy to predict which country will be in which camp, though probably the EU will be in the former, and Russia and China in the latter. I shall explore this in my planned novel I briefly mentioned a few days ago.

I would think this would result more from grievances about being "unfairly" excluded from full participation in economic terms, with climate change denial rising from its (real or perceived) economic costs.

I imagine these costs (be they real or not) would also bring at least a few of the democracies (liberal or otherwise) onto the side of the denying regimes.

As opposed to the nations they see as their enemies -- whether nations like India, China, etc are allied together in actuality or simply in the minds of the aforementioned enemies; while said nations (India, China, etc) try to both fight climate change while also advancing technologically.

[WeepingElf]

The way I see it is that in most countries with reliable opinion polls (i.e., liberal democracies) more and more people are worried about climate change going out of hand, rather than the cost of the economic transformation. Also, this transformation, like all major innovations, will involve a lot of investment which leads to the creation of jobs and prosperity. There is so much to do: someone has to build all those wind turbines, make and install all those solar panels, modify and rebuild all those industrial facilities that have to be modified and rebuilt, etc. Also, there is a strong correlation between authoritarianism and climate change denial. In Germany. the far-right AfD is the only party in parliament that denies climate change; in the United States, people like Trump deny climate change and people like Gore call for action; etc. IMHO the pattern is obvious.

[zompist]

Not really a prediction, but I wonder to what extent despair is part of the plan.

I noticed this with climate change. The message is, often enough, that the climate is already fucked -- to be more specific, the idea is that there's three years left to act. But given that not much is going to happen, realistically, in three years, the message is the same.

Whose plan though? In this particular case, the left chose its own messaging, and chose badly. Predictions of apocalypse in three years or ten years, or formulations that "the planet" is dying, are less than useless. They're counter-productive, for the reason you mention: despair is demotivating. Also, unlike the right, we cannot rely on lies to motivate people.

Another problem with constant doomsaying is that there's never any space for good news. In the US, carbon emissions hit a peak of 5.7 gigatons in 2007, and have since declined to 5.0. The EU seems to have taken the message far more seriously, going from 3.7 gigatons in 2006 to 2.5 in 2020. Japan's emissions are going down, though slowly.

The story gets depressing again if we look at China, which is up to 10.4 gigatons (2020) and hasn't peaked at all. Still, it's something that China has promised to lower emissions in 8 years; also that China's solar and wind power generation are both three times that of any other nation. And though Xi is a bastard, it's Trump, not Xi, who defied the Paris Agreement.

I actually saw a question on Metafilter a few weeks back from an activist who wondered if they should tell high school students that the reason for climate change is "white male patriarchy". At least it was a question rather than a blanket statement. There's a tendency for US leftists to blame everything on "white males" or "capitalism", which is also terrible messaging. On the "white male" bit, it should be sufficient to point out that China is producing more carbon than the US and Europe combined; on "capitalism", that the Soviet bloc was absolutely terrible on the environment. Plus— blaming "patriarchy" or "capitalism" means that the rest of us can do nothing, which is precisely not the message to give to First World students. Don't get me started on per capita emissions.

Ironically, the left has also spent the last 50 years trying to stop nuclear power, and this turns out to be a bad thing. Nuclear sucks, but as it happens fossil fuels suck far more.

[Raphael]

There's a tendency for US leftists to blame everything on "white males" or "capitalism",

One of many, many examples of the all-too-common human tendency of seeing everything in terms of "us" vs "them", and blaming everything bad on one's own preferred set of "them". Of course the left by no means has a monopoly on that kind of nonsense.