Can the Future Do Without Economic Logic?
Flying cars and little green men aside, many science fiction writers have shown an uncanny ability to predict and "foresee" the future. Yet, for all their prophetic accomplishments surrounding the development of future technologies, many fail to grasp the economic laws — the catallactics — that have remained unchanged for thousands of years. Here Isaac Bergman and I write about the economic fallacies in Charles Stross's latest book, Accelerando. As intriguing as the technological wizardry within the story may be, the plot is unfortunately riddled with economic misconceptions and non sequiturs. FULL ARTICLE
Comments (19)
This is a recurring problem that I have faced with nanotech enthusiasts. There is a tendency for them to believe that the nanotechnology will make the laws of economics irrelevant. I have often had to explain that the "post-scarcity" "nano-economy", even if it will come to exist at some distant point in the future, will still follow economics. Such an occurence would perhaps improve productivity drastically and the way that goods and services are bundled and sold ("buy a spaceship and get a lifetime supply of coffee and bagels!"), so that it may appear to someone from our time period as if economics did not exist. The economic laws remain; it's just that the bundles of goodies have changed.
Future "post-scarcity" economics makes for an interesting thought experiment which some will always engage in, but it won't be "post-scarcity". The "scarcity" aspect is just different.
Just a thought.
Just Ken
kgregglv@cox.net
Published: December 8, 2006 12:56 PM
Good article. I would be interested to see an analysis and critique by you of the pseudo-economic sophistry that gets (half-) baked into hollywood movies like Batman Begins and especially the Star Wars saga. What exactly was the beef between the Republic, the 'Rebels', the traders, the Jedi and the Empire? In the end, it was less convincing even than Anakin Skywalker's tortured psychoanalysis.
Best regards
Published: December 8, 2006 3:38 PM
To both authors: Have you come across the writings of Vernor Vinge, another SF author interested in exploring the concept of the singularity? His economics is solidly Austrian (though not by name) and his politics anarcho-capitalist.
Although he does explore the Singularity, his strength (I believe) is that he realizes that we can't possibly have nay idea of what a post-singularity humanity will be like. So he talks about remants of humanity surviving around or near the singularity. Vinge's people are those who've (for the most part) rejected statism and live by trading. In his off-earth novel these traders do come upon societies still plagued by government, but they wisely just trade as much as possible and move on. Fascinating stuff. Check it out when you have a chance.
Published: December 8, 2006 5:52 PM
Actually, the most economically sound vision of post-human future dominated by artificial intelligencies can be found in John C. Wright's "The Golden Age" trilogy.
His style and tempo is not exactly brilliant (and in some places his prose slides down to tedious) but his plot hinges on a remarkable (for a Sci-Fi writer) observation that Adam Smith's comparative advantage principle means that in an age of super-human intelligencies humans are not becoming obsolete - no matter how smarter or faster the AIs are, some tasks are comparatively better performed by humans, meaning that humans can fully participate in the AI-dominated economy - and be much better off because of that!
As an additional bonus he describes libertarian society in which the worst punishment for moral transgressions is ostracism. (In fact, his version is quite Hoppean in its stringent unforgiveness).
Published: December 8, 2006 8:57 PM
Has anyone really looked at most science fiction predicting what the year 2000 would be like and found it so close as to be eerie? I haven't. Most of the works of yesteryears as recently as Star Wars (1977) betrayed the presumption that space flight would be amazingly straightforward and democratised whilst computers would stay large, clunky and very expensive. Reality? Space flight technology has completely stalled whilst computer technology keeps getting better and democratised.
Likewise a century ago, people thought some that Socialism would take over and we'd be living in some Communist Paradise. Reality? Communism is all but dead. Socialism and Trade Unionism are eroding. Global Capitalism overrides national governments attempts to control the flow of capital and resources from their nations. And, of course, Democracy is faltering, either towards collapse, or more likely, towards Dictatorship.
Interestingly, I did read an article where the jobs over the course of the 21st century won't be that much different from, well, now. Thus there will be plenty of jobs for the low-skilled . . .
Published: December 8, 2006 9:26 PM
The "reputation markets" appear to be based on Eric Raymond's explanations of the "hacker" and open source cultures. See http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/homesteading.
Published: December 9, 2006 10:40 AM
To be fair, the "Star Wars" series was set in the past -- "long, long ago" -- not the future. However, yes, it follows many of the conventions of older science fiction in predicting advanced civilizations that appear rather technologically primitive. Yes, they have FTL, intelligent robots, and handheld lasers, but communications and other technology appear like something out of the 1930s. No doubt, though, Lucas was not aiming at depicting a future for humanity and his work should be judge, I believe, on its entertainment value and not whether it yields up a precise view of the future. (To be sure, we're not in a "Star Wars" like civilization now, so maybe they would require big, clunky computers and such.:)
Published: December 9, 2006 5:44 PM
Lucky for us economists are such good fiction writers.
Published: December 9, 2006 8:14 PM
Frankly, while Stross may not have gotten his economics right, it's good to know that sf writers are at least trying to add such complexity to their fiction.
Perhaps this would lead to more thought by their readers of the plausibility or implausibility of such proposed ideas. At least one can hope.
Furthermore, even if material non-scarcity was to somehow come into existence, human time and effort would still be scarce. How would a person who could have most anything he wanted choose to spend his time?
Published: December 10, 2006 11:41 AM
averros wrote:
"[...] observation that Adam Smith's comparative advantage principle means that in an age of super-human intelligencies humans are not becoming obsolete - no matter how smarter or faster the AIs are, some tasks are comparatively better performed by humans, meaning that humans can fully participate in the AI-dominated economy - and be much better off because of that!"
When you have huge intelligence differentials, comparative advantage may not apply. Monkeys, in spite of recognizably having the same general emotions and desires that humans have, for the most part, do not fully participate in the human economy. Why is that?
(If you reply, "Well, they're not people!", I would respond that this just restates "huge intelligence differential").
Published: December 10, 2006 12:24 PM
Monkeys, in spite of recognizably having the same general emotions and desires that humans have, for the most part, do not fully participate in the human economy. Why is that?
Because monkeys do not act purposefully to improve their lives. A person does act purposefully, and logically a super intelligent being would do the same.
Published: December 11, 2006 10:06 AM
"Because monkeys do not act purposefully to improve their lives. A person does act purposefully, and logically a super intelligent being would do the same."
I think you must have some meaning for the phrase "act purposefully to improve their lives" that I don't get. It seems obvious that monkeys do perform activities which they expect to improve their lives, so what did you mean by that?
Published: December 11, 2006 5:24 PM
Monkeys, indeed, do behave purposefully. It is very hard for anyone with any experience observing them to deny that fact. In fact, animals can do logical inferences and even conduct experiments to distingush between correlation and causation, see Aaron P. Blaisedell et al, "Casual Reasoning in Rats", Science vol 311, pp 1020-1022, Feb.17, 2006.
The difference between monkeys (and all other animals) and people is very simple: they do not have stable cultures, and so their behaviour is practically completely determined by their genes.
People, uniquely, can reproduce learned patterns of behaviour and ideas (aka "memes") with high enough fidelity and fecundity to achieve reproduction coefficient of memes in excess of 1. The improvement may be relatively little compared with monkeys (who may have something like 0.99), but the resulting difference is very large - the memes (aka "the culture") dominate human behaviour, while any emergent proto-culture gets extinct in animals (these proto-cultures were observed in several animals - and currently are a hot topic in ethology).
This observation also answers the Randall's counter-argument: the difference between super-human intelligencies and humans is not going to be qualitative but rather quantitative - while the difference between people and animals is stark and qualitative. Animals cannot be subjects in economic exchanges simply because they're not capable of understanding the concept of rights, which is completely cultural phenomenon, having no biological basis (the social fixed action patterns, or social instincts, are rather unsophisticated, stopping at conditional cooperation with punishment for non-cooperators - it is kind of funny to observe that collectivism is nothing more than typical ape behaviour wrapped in verbal smokescreen).
Published: December 11, 2006 8:11 PM
averros writes:
"This observation also answers the Randall's counter-argument: the difference between super-human intelligencies and humans is not going to be qualitative but rather quantitative - while the difference between people and animals is stark and qualitative."
I think your assertion that the difference between super-human intelligences and humans will be merely quantitative is a giant leap of faith. I don't have any specific evidence for or against it, but I think it's worth considering the large differences that could arise even quantatively and extrapolating them in reverse. That is, what use would we have, in our economy, for people who were about as smart as we at the same speed, but who thought a hundred (or more!) times slower? Literally.
Bonus points for an answer that isn't "raw materials". :(
Published: December 12, 2006 6:59 PM
Randall -- of course, there may be something in the future we simply are incapable of understanding.
But saying this is just as big leap of faith. Perhaps, I should qualify my statement to say "to the best of current knowledge there cannot be any qualitative difference between human intelligences and super-human intelligencies rendering humans incapable of having economic relationships with super-humans".
That is, what use would we have, in our economy, for people who were about as smart as we at the same speed, but who thought a hundred (or more!) times slower? Literally.
As long as the slow thinker don't think exactly as the faster variant does (which is highly improbable, given the fact that the space of neural configuration exceeds the number of elementary particles in the Universe by many orders of magnitude), he will be comparatively better at doing some things - meaning there can be mutually beneficial exchange between the two. The Adam Smith's argument is based on ratios of performance, not on absolute values.
In any case, the question whether we will be better off with super-humans around than alone depends on the ethics of these super-humans. If they're libertarians, we will be. If not, we'll go the way of dodos.
Published: December 13, 2006 7:52 PM
Not wanting to be seem rude, but future-looking it a little bit pointless if we're talking about a time period in which we'll long be worm-poop! ;)
Published: December 13, 2006 8:33 PM
Sam, your thoughts reminded me of the famous Keynesian quote regarding the long-term implications of various policy decisions:
"In the long run, we are all dead"
This of course is unwise from any financial planning perspective, and any management team that fails to prepare for technological changes would certainly become worm-poop.
Published: December 18, 2006 3:58 PM
There is a good arguement that the rules of trade start to break down when you are more valuable as raw materials than as a thinking agent/trading partner.
Assume, I can make apples and oranges at the rate of 1000 per second and want to make an equal number of each.
You can grow apples at 1 per month and oranges at 3 per month, but want only apples.
If we don't trade, I can make
1,296,000,000 apples
1,296,000,000 oranges
you grow
1 apple (but could grow 3 oranges)
Assuming we trade, I can sell 2 apples for 3 of your oranges. This gives (after I shift production to keep things equal):
1,296,000,000.5 apples
1,296,000,000.5 oranges
You get
2 apples, which is better than before
I am clearly better off and you end up with 2 apples instead of 1 ... Yay.
However, my third option is to convert you into fertiliser. If this increases my production by more than one part in around 2.5 billion, then I am better off doing that instead of trading.
There is also the cost of the 'fight', but relative to the effort required to make billions of fruits, it is not likely to be major. Also, there is the risk of you winning the fight, but that is likely to be zero.
A second reason not to steal/be violent is that it will make other entities fearful of you. This can result in them being submissive, but if you are in a vast minority, they may attack you to stop you stealing from them.
An AI that steals from a human may be seen by peer AIs as a risk to them. Even a boycot could greatly exceed the minor benefit from converting a human into fertiliser.
This really only works while the two levels of intelligence are close. A person who squashes an ant is not generally seen as a violent person.
One option would be if there was a hierarchy of AI abilities. As long as it was continuous, there would be an incentive to be peaceful. Attacking 'lower' level intelligences, may result in a backlash that gets passed through the levels.
Also, as has been said, humans have achieved a critical level of intelligence/capability.
Published: January 19, 2007 1:07 PM
Economics quantifies human greed. There will always be human greed. So far in human history, greed has been quantified in terms of money or assets. If there ever is a world surplus of physical assets we will find a new way to quantify our greed. Maybe a numerical scale of social standing will be developed.
Published: January 19, 2007 7:19 PM