A note on this post: This is the initial draft of a longer post I started writing approximately 2 years ago. I thought I’d post it as is with minimal editing. I spent some time playing around with mathematical models that resulted in pretty visuals (see image below) of self-propagating systems competing under different conditions, but unfortunately, I lost the files :(
Introduction
Our world is populated by systems that aim to survive and expand without regard for the long-term consequences of their actions. Does this spell doom for life on Earth, or is there a way out?
In this article, I aim to study the above question using the theory of self-propagating systems developed by Ted Kaczynski (in Chapter 2 of his book “Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How”). I’ll outline the theory and its consequences, critique Kaczynski’s unpopular solution, and look at how an additional assumption in his theory obscures a more optimistic solution that falls out of his own theory.
Summary of Self-propagating Systems Theory
We start with a couple of definitions (copied from here).
- A self-propagating system (or self-prop system for short) is a system that tends to promote its own survival and propagation. A system may propagate itself in either or both of two ways: The system may indefinitely increase its own size and/or power, or it may give rise to new systems that possess some of its own attributes.
- The world-system is used to mean all things that exist on Earth, together with the functional relations among them.
Self-propagating system is a broad notion that encompasses humans, animals, nation-states, and corporations.
Competition is inevitable when several self-propagating systems exist in a shared environment with limited resources. The survivors of the competition are those systems that focus on short-term advantages rather than the long-term consequences of their actions. Note that one way to gain an advantage in the short-term is to over-adapt to the current conditions of the environment.
As enough time passes, the operations of the most powerful self-propagating systems will span the entire world-system (e.g., multinational corporations on Earth). The actions of these global self-propagating systems at this level will begin to change the conditions of their environment (i.e., a climate crisis).
Having become dependent on the environment’s conditions, this change will cause these global self-propagating systems to collapse, causing chaos and instability and potentially rendering the environment inhospitable to life/self-propagating systems ever again (e.g., sufficiently high temperatures on Earth could prevent proteins from forming).
I’d like to highlight that Kaczynski’s ideas and arguments are very well-developed and well worth reading in full.
Revolution? What’s that going to do?!
Kaczynski radically proposes that to avoid the impending catastrophe, we must rebel against and destroy the technological system that supports the existence of powerful global self-propagating systems (he argues that without (communication) technology global self-propagating systems would collapse into smaller systems).
In his book, he outlines a well-thought-out strategy for implementing a successful revolution. However, nowhere (AFAICT) has he specified what happens after the revolution.
Suppose it is possible to take down the technological system; will the post-revolution state be better than the current state?
A critique of this proposal seems to be built into Kaczynski’s own theory of self-propagating systems! Suppose the post-revolution world contains self-propagating systems (such as humans, which is what Kaczynski himself wants). In that case, the logic of the theory implies that we will again eventually end up with global self-propagating systems competing for power in the short-term, which will lead to the destruction of the planet. The theory itself implies that the only solution to this is the elimination of all life on Earth! Otherwise, an anti-tech revolution would just cause a lot of chaos and suffering in the short term, and we would only end up where we are now.
Solution: Space Expansion for Relieving Pressure
As we have seen, Kaczynski’s solution to his own theory seems to just delay the inevitable destruction of life on Earth. However, I claim that his own theory allows for a way out – the way advocated by futurists: space expansion.
Kaczynski defines the world-system to be all things that exist on Earth , together with the functional relations among them. While the rest of the theory is abstract and general – fixing the scale of the world-system causes a distortion in the theory.
In Kaczynksyi’s theory, when self-prop systems become the size of the world-system, their actions begin to deform their environment. However, we note that if the world-system can be expanded then this pressure is eased.
Note: Perhaps one can think of the world-system as a closed system in which stability is maintained at “low energy levels” – the system can manage internal perturbations. When the energy within the system increases, the system might undergo systematic stress or a breakdown. However, if the system is expanded, the high energy can be dissipated into a larger space, reducing the pressure.
Consider what would have happened if boats were not an accessible technology. Then self-prop systems would be limited to the scale of islands and, according to Kaczynski’s theory, would cause ecological collapse. The reason why we avoided this fate is because boats were invented and hence allowed self-prop systems to expand onto other landmasses. Put another way, self-prop systems became small again relative to their maximum geographic space (reminds me of renormalization in Physics).
Conclusion
To avoid catastrophic outcomes from global self-prop systems, we present two solutions:
- The solution advocated by Kaczynski: to decrease the size of the largest self-prop systems by sabotaging communication networks and short-range transportation (to decrease the energy within the system).
- The solution advocated by “space expansionists”: to increase the size of the world-system by improving long-range transportation and communication technology (to expand the system and dissipate energy).
As we have seen, Solution 1 causes chaos and suffering in the short-term and is just staving off the inevitable as self-prop systems will continue to exist and grow.
Therefore, space expansion seems like the natural way to go (if feasible).