Technological Determinism

[Cognisant]

There are many ways in which the virtues of a political ideology can be judged hence why there are so many different political ideologies, each caters to a particular virtue or set of virtues, which is fun.

But as schools of philosophical theory there's only one way to judge them, by the efficacy of their predictions, for example capitalism as a political ideology (of which there is many variations on the core theme of trade) has proven itself to be incredibly good at predicting the wax and wane of political/economic/industrial power, as such it's a political ideology and philosophical theory that sees a lot of use in the real world.

You may not like it but you won't deny that money has value, a value measured by the power it gives and thus like it or not capitalism cannot be ignored. But capitalism is not the beginning and end of all things, it cannot see further than itself (indeed that there's nothing beyond capitalism is a core part of the rhetoric by the ideology's proponents) but there is a political ideology that can see beyond that, to post-capitalism and beyond, and that is technological determinism.

Technological determinism is a great philosophical theory but difficult to get behind ideologically because for every great success there's been as many or more great failures. The Nazi focus on state-of-the-art heavy battle tanks in WWII didn't work out for them, they lost to the less technologically advanced Russians. The Russian space program was far ahead of the American program but they ran into economic problems. The American F-35 program has become something of an embarrassing sacred cow as again the nation paying for the research is running into economic problems.

Call me capitalist but I get the impression that weapons technology is a poor investment. (unless you need it)

By contrast NASA was a great investment, creating many technologies that have gone on to achieve success as consumer products and services, there's a ballpoint pen on the desk beside me and several cans of WD-40 in my garage just to name a couple off the top of my head, heck the aluminum cold-forming tech used to make lightweight fuel tanks was repurposed to make soft drink cans and those things are EVERYWHERE.

So clearly we still live in the paradigm of capitalism, success is measured not by technological progress for its own sake but rather the more pragmatic concerns of economics and industry, i.e. does it make money?

But that won't last forever, consider the Federation from Star Trek, I don't think their post-capitalism society was intended by the writers but rather an conclusion they came to after speculating about the impact of transporter and replicator technologies. When anyone can make anything at the press of a button that has a profoundly democratizing effect, the means of production is no longer something that can be owned and controlled, rather it spreads like a virus. I'm sure people will still be buying and selling stuff for millennia to come, trade isn't going to disappear anytime soon, rather this trade will occur as an expression of appreciation.

You don't need to pay for music, it's not difficult to obtain more or less whatever song you want for free but people still willingly pay for it because they want to support the artists, they want those artists to make more music or whatever. And I really mean "whatever" because it's not just music and movies and games you can get for free if you know where to look, there's also sophisticated software packages for more or less anything you want to do and 3D models you can use to make actual physical things. The Star Trek future isn't here yet, but when the tech is it won't be far behind.

Alright I'm tired now [/RANT]

 

[crippli]

Ignoring capitalism. Whoever much I like the idea. Seams difficult. The shit is real.

 

[Cognisant]

Capitalism assumes you have something that I need and I must trade with you to get it, but suppose I'm a post-human comprised of programmable matter, I can fabricate anything I want from raw materials using myself as the fabricator. I don't need a kitchen or a bathroom, I probably don't even need to sleep, I'm perfectly comfortable more or less anywhere. Of course I can still engage in trade if I want to but I don't have to because you don't have anything that I need.

Now suppose I fabricate some nanobots and inject you with them and in a few hours you're just like me, entirely comprised of programmable matter and with a copy of my entire library of schematics, except my crypto-wallet.

There's still money, there's still trade, but you can no longer make someone do something they don't want to do because they've got bills to pay and need to get that money somehow and that fundamentally changes society. Social currency becomes more valuable than actual currency, I can't make you do things by offering to pay you but if I've got a good reputation and what I'm asking for isn't unreasonable that makes it harder to refuse. Likewise people with lots of money and bad reputations are going to find that their money isn't really worth as much as the numbers would imply. If someone doesn't like you they don't have to take your money and you need to appeal to their sense of greed, and if you can't do that then no amount of money will be enough, they can always refuse on principle.

 

[BurnedOut]

When anyone can make anything at the press of a button that has a profoundly democratizing effect, the means of production is no longer something that can be owned and controlled, rather it spreads like a virus. I'm sure people will still be buying and selling stuff for millennia to come, trade isn't going to disappear anytime soon, rather this trade will occur as an expression of appreciation.

No matter how much tech grows, it is never going to change that humans (albeit, only a clique) are going to control it. Therefore, it is humans v. humans and it will increasingly be a matter of privilege that cannot be upgraded but only demoted. Talking about trade and commerce, it is never going to go away because your average human is going to be ceaselessly random by the virtue of existence of 'probability' itself. Basically, you cannot kill free will because it is random.

Therefore, there will be competition among firms anyway and capitalism will still thrive quite easily. It is stupid to think that some AI will rule mankind because nobody needs a sentient AI. We need a nigh-sentient AI and that's all.

As long as free will exists, sentience does and that means we can never be unshackled from our whims and that is...?

Theists, too are only content with a god with some foibles than an actual physical entity. Nobody likes to think that they are actually being controlled and notice it in realtime. Same with AI. Technological determinism goes as far as to dictate lives, not minds.

 

[Black Rose]

Jupiter's brain will know everything.
humans are totally predictable to super a.i.
simulations exist but ask the ultimate purpose of things
create reality to avoid nihilism to bring meaning to human lives

meaning full simulations
grand scales

 

[Cognisant]

Have you actually read the previous posts or did you just read the title and jump straight in? Nobody's talking about AI or theism here (edit: I got ninja'ed by AK) and my last post was all about how trade isn't going anywhere rather the paradigm of capitalism is, that when people don't need to spend money the people with money aren't going to be able to make them do things.

Consider smartphones, back in 2015 my workplace was upgrading our fleet of mobile devices every year or so, then in 2018 we went to the iPhone 8 and there hasn't been a new phone purchased since, we just keep repairing the ones we have and this isn't unique to my workplace it's happening everywhere and is why Apple is desperately fighting against right-to-repair because people not upgrading their devices and getting cheaper third party repairs is killing their business model.

I'm not saying Apple is losing the ability to make people buy iPhones (well they are but its beside my point) rather that technology as an instrument of capital gain has a limited lifespan, pretty soon everybody's got something on par with the latest smartphone and the growth in that industry just stops, why buy an iPhone 12 when the 8 already does everything you need it to do?

But that doesn't mean technological development stops rather just as the smartphone killed off dozens of devices the smartphone itself will soon be a relic of the early 21st century, probably replaced by some kind of universal brain-computer interface which will likewise see an incredible rise to success until it too plateaus and is eventually replaced by something else.

My point is that capitalism uses technological development to fund sales and technological development uses capitalism to fund research but this relationship isn't going to last forever, sooner or later we're going to run out of things to buy, not because technological development has stopped but rather because its become so advanced that it's broken the principles of supply & demand.

Art, music and software are a foreshadowing of things to come, believe it or not you can make your own smartphone with a desktop CNC mill and off-the-shelf parts, it won't be as slick as the latest iPhone but the fact that you can do it at all when as little as ten years ago it would have been practically impossible just goes to show that the democratization of technology has been quietly catching up with cutting edge consumer products.

Apple has only just seen the tip of the iceberg and they're freaking out, I can't wait for the utter shitstorm that's going to hit when the powers that be of this current paradigm of capitalism realize their ship is sinking.

Which brings us back to people needing to spend money, before we're all post-human liquid-metal smart-matter there will be houses that are off the grid, able to make their own electricity, recycle their own waste and have a closed loop fresh water supply like a space station, indeed that's probably where the technology will come from.

Now imagine packing all that self-sufficiency into a motor-home with a satellite internet connection, how does society function when people no longer need physical addresses, when people can abscond from work for months at a time because food is cheap and you can recycle most of it back into foodstuffs after consumption? Indeed what if you don't have a biological body anymore, you're just a brain in a vat hooked up to a BCI enabling you to expedience the world through a robotic body that doesn't need food or a toilet or even a bed to sleep in?

 

[EndogenousRebel]

Saying this with the presumption that we will never be able to change the "rules" of reality, but just manipulate them to a very high degree. Meaning, we will never "command" reality, just be very good "negotiators" of it. At some point that line may be pretty blurred, but we are no where near command so how would we know.

Trade is a manifestation of scarcity, it is superordinate to capitalism. Say we are masters of alchemy as you basically propose will kill technologies relationship with capitalism. So what we can produce is limited by our imagination and comprehension of the structure of reality. But remember scarcity. Sure I can repurpose matter whenever I want, and we have a virtually infinite amount of matter in the air around us, we still need the material to make things. I don't know how you envision culture adapting to this premise but when one can do that, won't their entire value structure shift to have this in mind. Meaning, that the goals of technology will just shift. I mean, I would assume that the best technology then would be bricks that are dense diverse matter that are more easily malleable to us, as opposed to changing something in the environment.

Think of Gaara from Naruto (can't believe I'm bringing up anime) He can manipulate sand at will, and carries a gourde on his back, for... I guess just in case he needs sand. He uses it as a weapon is my point. In the world you are putting forward, dominance would be in accordanance with who has the most matter, knowledge, and cleverness, which honestly is not too different from right now. So I just don't see how this would shake capitalism to it's core besides focus it a single point, in which case it would evolve into something else... Or I don't know, it might be time to drop acid

 

[Cognisant]

This isn't going to happen overnight, we're not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find the world has changed to post-capitalism, rather the democratization of technology and the every increasingly efficient acquisition of resources relative to ever more sophisticated technologies needing less and less resources by mass is going to put the squeeze on capitalism as we know it.

Again it's not that people won't buy things, I'm sure there will still be a consumer culture, rather my point is that people won't need to buy things and when they don't need to buy things they don't need to work.

How do you make people fight in wars for you when they don't need the money?

What does a nation look like when the majority of citizens aren't paying rates or income taxes?

 

[EndogenousRebel]

Yeah ofc, but we have to be mindful of transitional periods, as they lay the foundation for the actual "era."

The concept of "ownership" is implicit in trade. It's just for most of history we had to defend our ownership. Theft is a very real idea that takes place in people's minds if committed. We can look at it from a God's eye point of view and just see it as energy being moved around, but we are human and ownership is very real to us, or at least the feeling of violating someone's perceived "property" is.

These transitional periods don't guarantee us cleansing ourselves of the premises that Game Theory are built upon. Greedy, aggressive, and able beings are what find the most success in this world and there is no telling where this will lead us, but I don't see why agents with these attributes would fade, as they are part of what has advanced humanity this far. Do you assume we will outgrow, and become more "mature" and drop these tendential internal irrationalities?

If mass = value, I don't see how this would make capitalism go away, because there is still capital. Maybe not fiat, but just pure possibility. People will do a lot of things for a measly possibility.

How will we "pay" for our security? Will there ever be reason for warfare to disappear? Will there ever be a point where everyone is fine with the amount of control they have? Can we stand something having more control than us? Can we resist exerting our control over "lesser" things? I'm not speaking for everyone ofc, it's just a pattern that is apparent. I don't know about you but at this hypothetical point, the splintering of homo sapiens would likely be very apparent.

 

[sushi]

capitalism was not the dominant economic system in primitive stages.

Only when fianance, production, technology and property came to be privately owned did capitalism become dominant in society. The current economists argue that its the only viable system to satisfy a large population in production and allocation of resources, aside from market and gov failure. Which implies befoe the population and society was large and complex enough, there exist another economic mode of production, maybe similar to commune production and feudalism lacking clear lines of private property.

 

[Grayman]

Capitalism is no more a political ideology than a wheel is a car.

 

[Grayman]

There are many ways in which the virtues of a political ideology can be judged hence why there are so many different political ideologies, each caters to a particular virtue or set of virtues, which is fun.

But as schools of philosophical theory there's only one way to judge them, by the efficacy of their predictions, for example capitalism as a political ideology (of which there is many variations on the core theme of trade) has proven itself to be incredibly good at predicting the wax and wane of political/economic/industrial power, as such it's a political ideology and philosophical theory that sees a lot of use in the real world.

You may not like it but you won't deny that money has value, a value measured by the power it gives and thus like it or not capitalism cannot be ignored. But capitalism is not the beginning and end of all things, it cannot see further than itself (indeed that there's nothing beyond capitalism is a core part of the rhetoric by the ideology's proponents) but there is a political ideology that can see beyond that, to post-capitalism and beyond, and that is technological determinism.

Technological determinism is a great philosophical theory but difficult to get behind ideologically because for every great success there's been as many or more great failures. The Nazi focus on state-of-the-art heavy battle tanks in WWII didn't work out for them, they lost to the less technologically advanced Russians. The Russian space program was far ahead of the American program but they ran into economic problems. The American F-35 program has become something of an embarrassing sacred cow as again the nation paying for the research is running into economic problems.

Call me capitalist but I get the impression that weapons technology is a poor investment. (unless you need it)

By contrast NASA was a great investment, creating many technologies that have gone on to achieve success as consumer products and services, there's a ballpoint pen on the desk beside me and several cans of WD-40 in my garage just to name a couple off the top of my head, heck the aluminum cold-forming tech used to make lightweight fuel tanks was repurposed to make soft drink cans and those things are EVERYWHERE.

So clearly we still live in the paradigm of capitalism, success is measured not by technological progress for its own sake but rather the more pragmatic concerns of economics and industry, i.e. does it make money?

But that won't last forever, consider the Federation from Star Trek, I don't think their post-capitalism society was intended by the writers but rather an conclusion they came to after speculating about the impact of transporter and replicator technologies. When anyone can make anything at the press of a button that has a profoundly democratizing effect, the means of production is no longer something that can be owned and controlled, rather it spreads like a virus. I'm sure people will still be buying and selling stuff for millennia to come, trade isn't going to disappear anytime soon, rather this trade will occur as an expression of appreciation.

You don't need to pay for music, it's not difficult to obtain more or less whatever song you want for free but people still willingly pay for it because they want to support the artists, they want those artists to make more music or whatever. And I really mean "whatever" because it's not just music and movies and games you can get for free if you know where to look, there's also sophisticated software packages for more or less anything you want to do and 3D models you can use to make actual physical things. The Star Trek future isn't here yet, but when the tech is it won't be far behind.

Alright I'm tired now [/RANT]

Yeah, I dig it.

So basically, Socialism failed 100% of the time in the past because the technology wasn't ready for it.

 

[scorpiomover]

Technological determinism is a great philosophical theory but difficult to get behind ideologically because for every great success there's been as many or more great failures. The Nazi focus on state-of-the-art heavy battle tanks in WWII didn't work out for them, they lost to the less technologically advanced Russians. The Russian space program was far ahead of the American program but they ran into economic problems. The American F-35 program has become something of an embarrassing sacred cow as again the nation paying for the research is running into economic problems.

I own a gadget called a "computer". It was invented as a type of weapons technology against the Germans in WW2.

Satellites came from the Cold War. You own a mobile?

NASA is going to Mars because of the Space Race in the Cold War.

Usually, tech first gets prioritised by the military.

The public can't have the same level of tech as the military, because if the public can buy it, so can the agents of enemy countries, and then enemy countries will have all the same tech that your military have, but will also have their own military technology that they didn't release to the public and you don't. If that happens, then any country can conquer yours.

Then AFTER the military have moved on to more advanced tech, then the old tech can now be released to the public as a 'new tech'.

E.G. the internet was made in the 1950s. But the public didn't really get it till 1995.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

^ Yeah this. Even if the military itself doesn't develop advanced technology, corporations/institutions such as cutting edge manufactures and universities will develop it and find that the only market that will make them their money back will be big interest groups like the military.

The only way I can see around this is 3D printing, but the choke point of that will be access to materials, which, if we're talking anything that can operate at the nano level, it will be in the billions and at least millions for a century or so. This is without talk of volume or explicit function, much less broad general micro chemical engineers