"Evolve or Die" is pretty much the gist of Scott Alexander's Meditations on Moloch, but I don't think it's quite that simple. If it were truly necessary to squeeze out any advantage by any means necessary, civilization would look rather different, more cyberpunkish, with much more genetic engineering and cybernetics than we see, and far more frequent technodisasters. He Jiankui would not have been tossed in jail.
Though of course, a chaotic and dynamic society like that probably would be counter to oligarchic interests, as it would upend the entire context that allows them to be so powerful.
I like the thinking here but I am unsure about the historical accuracy here. Gunpowder can't properly be called a triumph of chemistry...the inventors stumbled upon the explosive properties when trying to make a medicinal recipe in 9th century China and no one had a theoretical understanding of oxidation and atomic theory for close to a millennia after. Furthermore, I see very little difference between the transition from alchemy to chemistry and say astrology to astronomy. Alchemy and astrology contained real knowledge about the behavior of materials and celestial bodies respectively. The progression towards a science wasn't marked by weaponization but rather, systemization enabling researchers to make useful predictions and invent technologies of value.
The legacy media has managed to survive quite some time after the development of the internet... but I think we all see which way the trends are going, don't we? New sciences and ways of doing things seldom immediately destroy the entrenched paradigm; rather they render it irrelevant. Gradually the practitioners of the old paradigm lose all their status and respect and end up being relegated to practicing their profession on in carnivals and seedy strip malls.
I suspect that the lingering power of the prestige media is related to their prestige status, that they fulfill a role not unlike unto that fulfilled by Renaissance courtiers.
I really appreciate and like this comment, thanks for posting it! I hope HumbleRando will reply as I would love to hear his thoughts on it. HumbleRando, big thanks to you too for your just excellent insights for us. I am way looking forward to your "nexts"!
I don't want to get too caught up in the details, since history is huge and unverified so it's usually unproductive to argue about the fine points. What I want to focus on is the broader concept, which is that if multiple opposing faction are using the same fake pseudoscience recommended by the "expert consensus" of their time (in this example, alchemy) then they are on roughly the same playing field, but the instant one side gets an advantage in the form of REAL science (in this example, chemistry) that is easy to weaponize (as gunpowder was) then any faction that is operating on the basis of the previous fake pseudoscientific paradigm will very quickly get wiped out unless they upgrade to the new scientific paradigm fast. In that regard, the weaponization of science is an evolutionary catalyst.
I touch more on this comparison between science and pseudoscience in my later post "Trust the Experts," if you're interested in reading that.
"Evolve or Die" is pretty much the gist of Scott Alexander's Meditations on Moloch, but I don't think it's quite that simple. If it were truly necessary to squeeze out any advantage by any means necessary, civilization would look rather different, more cyberpunkish, with much more genetic engineering and cybernetics than we see, and far more frequent technodisasters. He Jiankui would not have been tossed in jail.
Though of course, a chaotic and dynamic society like that probably would be counter to oligarchic interests, as it would upend the entire context that allows them to be so powerful.
I agree.
I like the thinking here but I am unsure about the historical accuracy here. Gunpowder can't properly be called a triumph of chemistry...the inventors stumbled upon the explosive properties when trying to make a medicinal recipe in 9th century China and no one had a theoretical understanding of oxidation and atomic theory for close to a millennia after. Furthermore, I see very little difference between the transition from alchemy to chemistry and say astrology to astronomy. Alchemy and astrology contained real knowledge about the behavior of materials and celestial bodies respectively. The progression towards a science wasn't marked by weaponization but rather, systemization enabling researchers to make useful predictions and invent technologies of value.
IIRC, alchemy survived for some time after the invention and practical development of gunpowder.
Isaac Newton, fer instance, spent a lot of time trying to turn base metals into gold.
The legacy media has managed to survive quite some time after the development of the internet... but I think we all see which way the trends are going, don't we? New sciences and ways of doing things seldom immediately destroy the entrenched paradigm; rather they render it irrelevant. Gradually the practitioners of the old paradigm lose all their status and respect and end up being relegated to practicing their profession on in carnivals and seedy strip malls.
I suspect that the lingering power of the prestige media is related to their prestige status, that they fulfill a role not unlike unto that fulfilled by Renaissance courtiers.
I really appreciate and like this comment, thanks for posting it! I hope HumbleRando will reply as I would love to hear his thoughts on it. HumbleRando, big thanks to you too for your just excellent insights for us. I am way looking forward to your "nexts"!
Thank you! It took me a little while, but I replied. :-)
I don't want to get too caught up in the details, since history is huge and unverified so it's usually unproductive to argue about the fine points. What I want to focus on is the broader concept, which is that if multiple opposing faction are using the same fake pseudoscience recommended by the "expert consensus" of their time (in this example, alchemy) then they are on roughly the same playing field, but the instant one side gets an advantage in the form of REAL science (in this example, chemistry) that is easy to weaponize (as gunpowder was) then any faction that is operating on the basis of the previous fake pseudoscientific paradigm will very quickly get wiped out unless they upgrade to the new scientific paradigm fast. In that regard, the weaponization of science is an evolutionary catalyst.
I touch more on this comparison between science and pseudoscience in my later post "Trust the Experts," if you're interested in reading that.