Musings Report #6 01-29-12 First Principles of Futurism
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights, and thank you for supporting the site.
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After 5 weeks away from my desk, I finally got around to some much-needed digital housekeeping on the Musings database, adding and deleting members. I want to thank everyone who renewed their subscription or "re-upped" via a donation in 2012, and I want to welcome new readers to the Musings Report.
As noted above, the Musings are based on my current research and thinking--my notebooks, paper and digital--and as such they reflect the basic goal of my work: to identify the first principles of a situation/problem, and then follow those principles in a series of transparent steps to a conclusion .
I do this not to persuade anyone, but to pose this question: "Does this series of ideas make sense?" You are of course free to disagree about the first principles and every step of the way to the conclusion. That process is what clarifies our thinking.
What are the First Principles that will influence the future?
Thanks to correspondent Toby B., who kindly sent me a trove of history books, I have been reading detailed accounts of the Pacific War (World War II), and thanks to correspondent Murat B., who kindly sent me a small, carefully selected library of economic and finance books, I have also been reading unconventional thinkers and historians such as Baudrillard and Arrighi.
Engaging the future seems much like a night sea battle with relatively primitive technological tools. Radar can spot targets, but are they enemy or ally? In the fog of war, combatants are making educated guesses based on imperfect information and communciation, and on previous experience in combat. Those without experience are more prone to the primary error of ignoring First Principles.
In war, these include maintaining communication between commanders, concentrating one's forces and maintaining control over them, exploiting any technological advantage one has over the enemy, and so on.
The deadliest foe in war is not a weapon, it is complacency, aided by a falsely placed confidence.
Perhaps the same can be said of peering into the future. The vast majority of Americans, and indeed, humanity at large, imagines 2022, ten years hence (if they think about 2022 at all) as simply another iteration of the present. In other words, everything will remain pretty much the same.
While we can safely predict human nature will be unchanged in a mere decade--people will still be falling in love, taking care of children and the elderly, preparing meals, etc.--the material, financial and cultural contexts will be radically different.
How can we say this with any confidence? By starting with First principles and following them through without resorting to leaps of faith or logic.
For example, it is difficult to create goods and services in the real world. There is nothing easy about creating real things and services. It is, however, remarkably easy to create money by either printing paper or borrowing it into existence. From this we can posit that there is unlikely to be a shortage of fiat money since it is so easy to produce. The shortages are much more likely in actual materials, which have inherent limits of availability and cost.
Correspondent Kathy K. recently made this observation in an email:
"This is like a micro-fractal example of what is happening in our society at large: dishonest and self-serving people extending and pretending, and complicity keeps it going."
This insight made me think: what if fractals are also behavioral? We are used to thinking of fractals as features of Nature, for example, the way a coastline has a ragged appearance from 100 feet, 1,000 feet and 10,000 feet in altitude.
Are behavioral/social fractals a First Principle? I would say yes. Consider this example: If the individuals in a family unit are all healthy, thrifty, honest, caring and responsible, then how could that family be dysfunctional, spendthrift, venal and dishonest? It is not possible to aggregate individuals into a family unit and not have the family exhibit the self-same characteristics. This is the essence of fractals.
If we aggregate healthy, thrifty, honest, caring and responsible families into a community, how can that community not share these same characteristics? And if we aggregate these communities into a nation, how can that nation not exhibit these same characteristics?
If this is so, then how do we explain the U.S., which is made up of mostly honest people, yet which is visibly corrupt at the top reaches of its financial and political Elites? What else can you call a nation that enables financial looting, robosigning, protected cartels, etc. etc. anything but corrupt?
Americans like to think of their nation as uncorrupt, but this is based not on the realities of the upper layer of our society and economy, but on the daily-life lack of corruption that plagues nations such as China and India. Sadly, corrosive, ubiquitous corruption is "normal life" for the majority of humans.
So while we are blessed to have modest levels of daily-life corruption--in places like China and India, if you need intensive medical care, you better have enough money to "gift" the doctors, nurses, etc., or you won't get care--we must face up to the reality that our financial-political sphere is utterly and deeply corrupt in all the ways that actually count. Claiming otherwise is self-serving illusion or rationalization.
That's where complicity comes into play. We don't want to admit the Status Quo is corrupt and unsustainable because we're still hoping it will work for us when the need arises.
The point of following this First Principle of Social Fractals is that you cannot have a corrupted nation unless the smaller fractals are also either corrupt or complicit.
This leads to a second First Principle: that corruption can only cease if the smaller fractals, all the way down to individuals, are willing to bear the cost of refusing to participate in and support corruption.
A third First Principle also suggests itself: the notion that "all we need to do is tweak the rules governing taxation and finance, and all our problems will be solved" is false. There is necessarily a social/cultural component in rule-making, enforcement, compliance and complicity.
There are plentiful rules against corruption in deeply, pervasively corrupt societies. But they are ignored out of complicity and convenience. After all, if you want your kid to get into dental school, there is no other way but to pay the bribe. The sacrifice of refusing corruption is simply too steep. So the system corrupts its "users" by making the cost of abandoning the system far higher than any potential gain.
We can thus conclude that if the U.S. is to right itself, it will require deep, pervasive cultural changes, not just another agency of bureaucrats anxious to become a fiefdom issuing another 10,000 pages of regulations that change nothing of importance.
I don't think this is widely underestood, which is why it's terribly exciting to be living through this era of "unexpected" transformation. The Status Quo is unsustainable, and this is obvious if we simply follow First Principles. What will replace it is intrinsically unknown, but it will be based on the Social Fractals, all the way down to individuals' behaviors and actions.
From Left Field
How
America made its children crazy (By Spengler)(via May S.)--a very important exploration of the role of technology in attention-deficit disorder and the failure of American education.
Max Keiser is backing a fascinating decentralization of the film industry called "
pirate my film", a crowd-sourcing site for aggregating funding/investing and distribution of films and documentaries based on the "copyright commons" idea. Even if this doesn't work on a large scale, the concept is intriguing.
What happens to muscle as we age/become sendentary: I am not so sure about these slides, as I have seen other research that suggests muscle cells and tissues undergo subtle changes due to age. In other words, 74-year old muscle does not look identical to 40 year old muscle.
Nonetheless, exercise, self-awareness and eating real food in moderate portions remain the "miracle cures" so many seek....
Secrecy Shrouds ‘Super PAC’ Funds in Latest Filings: "Some checks came from sources obscured from public view, like a $250,000 contribution to a super PAC backing Mr. Romney from a company with a post office box for a headquarters and no known employees."
Maoxian's note: DON'T BE NAIVE ABOUT THE EXTENT OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION IN THE N'UNITED STATES.
China to Limit Mortgage Loans for Foreign Home Buyers to Stem Investments: "China will limit mortgage loans for home purchases by foreigners to stem overseas investment in its property market as part of efforts to cool prices." Hmm, what will this do to demand and prices? Command economies that never let markets discover price and risk always over-correct, and always too late to be useful. Central Planning agencies like the Fed are looking at their instrument panels instead of the horizon and the ground.... same is obviously true of China's Central Planning agencies.
In Atlanta,
Housing Woes Reflect Nation’s Pain: A sprawling Southern metropolis, Atlanta has become one of the biggest laggards in the economic recovery. In November, prices of single-family homes were down close to 12 percent compared with a year earlier. (via Joel M.)
Thanks for reading--
charles
