What I’d do would be to spend that lead time to build up a very large stock of FTL recreational and transport vessels and masses of droids, and then release them to the galaxy at large, freely. If that also requires automated gas mines or crystal farms or whatever the resource chokepoints are, we set those up while we have the lead too. And in parallel, we set up a peacekeeping fleet, and we make it clear that the only condition of getting our stuff is not militarizing it. And if anyone does, we come down on them like a cubic parsec of bricks pour encourager les autres.
Curiously, most of the stories about the Culture are concerned with this dilemma. The Culture seem to use a special population of highly competitive near-sociopaths such as Zakalwe and Jernau Gurgeh who are capable of dealing with sociopathic cultures and beating them at their own games. There is a place for sociopaths in this altruistic utopia, and their work is much appreciated.
The Culture is post-scarcity, but I wouldn’t call it altruistic overall, and internally quite a lot of the Minds and humans we see as POV characters are quite selfish, and seem motivated as much by duty/loyalty as altruism. Culture concern for the rest of the Galaxy seems a mix of some altruism, a heaping load of self-defensiveness and a generous handful of smug superiority. Plenty of room in that mix for sociopathic tools.
Personally I think that in a sufficiently-advanced civilisation, most or all of the competitive selfishness and sociopathy will be manifested at a much higher level than the human level we are familiar with. Once we can build super-intelligent thinking machines, and/or create add-on applications for human minds that allow us to compete in an economy that is mostly run by such thinking machines, then ordinary unaugmented humans will have little impact on the way things are run.
I only hope that these super-intelligent thinking machines and/or augmented humans find it in their ceramic hearts to treat us like pampered pets (assuming there are any unaugmented humans left). These superhuman entities might even compete to perpetuate a perfect H.Sapiens level utopia.
It could go badly very easily, and we might end up as gladiators, clowns or historical re-enactors in a plague town.
So you will have overwhelmingly powerful destructive force to make an example of anyone who does not play by your rules, and they can join your … Empire/Republic/Union/Federation … as long as they agree to not militarize the information.
Do you also make having agreed to your social engineering program as a requirement?
Scenario: a society refuses to agree that your society should be the only one with military capacity, or your social engineering demands, gets the information (either it leaks or they develop it independently), starts building a broad expansive spreading across many planets society, without exercising their stated reserve option to develop military technology of their own, and continuing to have a culture that does not trust you or others. You fear that at some point they will be spread out enough that your surveillance ability to monitor military capacity development will be swamped. Destroy them early on? Wait until they are big enough that such might occur and then make an example of them by destroying their many planetary systems? Occupy them early and impose your social engineering and rules upon them? (I guess that is what happens in The Culture universe?)
Again, this is best case, the altruists got there first …
I’ve only read a few of the Culture books, but it’s society actually terrified me more than an honest dystopia. Organic beings are essentially kept as pets, the AI are fond of them and think their antics are cute. Organic life exists at the whims and pleasure of the AI’s, if they found something more interesting to do with their time and resources, they’d have no compunction against murdering all living beings to make way for their newest entertainment.
I am fairly sure that this will be the future of our civilisation, assuming it does not collapse. The tricky part will be finding a role for unaugmented humans. Perhaps we’ll be like Amish, among a population of (hopefully benevolent) Cybermen.
I note that the big problem that DSeid has with post-scarcity is that it will promulgate unchecked population growth. In a civilisation made up of AIs (artificial intelligences) and IAs (humans with Intelligence Augmentation) I would hope and expect that population levels would be chosen rationally.
What is the rational number of children to have?
One which does not exceed the carrying capacity of the local solar system. Which could be as high as a billion billion, but is not infinite.
Just to clarify - it is the most mundane reason but not the fundamental one: resources are not infinite. Yes, one could at any point get around that mundane reason by restricting growth such that the carrying capacity of the world(s) are not exceeded. An AI dominant society could theoretically do that as a rational choice on earth alone. Even on a small island. No FTL travel or other big changes need exist: keeping demand less than whatever is supply at all times is enough for all. To me the fundamental problems are of more interest.
No, I don’t care about their political arrangements, nor am I exacting tribute. They just don’t put our tech on a military ship, or militarize a droid, and live.
What’s the point? They’re already being social engineered.
Did you miss where I said they could get the tech gratis? That assumes people retroengineering it. Hence the lead time before release.
Why would that happen? It’s an open galaxy. Preventing it from being open would take … militarized tech.
I see no need.
I’m not going to destroy a society on what “might” happen. If a part of their society militarizes, that part gets destroyed. So a shipyard, or a small fleet. Unless you’re proposing that their entire society militarizes - in secret, in an open galaxy - for some sort of surprise attack? Against, I’ll re-emphasise, a society that has already spent near-unlimited resources, and some time, preparing to counter just that kind of aggression on a galaxy-wide scale? I don’t much fancy their chances.
That’s definitely not how the Culture does it.
Yes, that’s the hypothetical. I’m uninterested in the reverse, dystopias are a dime a dozen.
That’s certainly what the Culture’s enemies believe. But the PoV thoughts we get from Minds don’t support your view.
Post-scarcity and utopias in general are ultimately doomed. All resources are limited in time, as well as space. Five billion years from now any infrastructure in our system will be destroyed by the Sun leaving the main sequence; all stars die eventually. A remote termination; but a limit nevertheless.
So are dystopias and so-so-topias.
That organic beings exist at the whim and pleasure of the AI, or what their motivations for having that whim and pleasure are?
Enemies aren’t always wrong. I’m sure that the POV thoughts of many dictators don’t match up to the motivations they display. People even lie to themselves in their internal monologues, making themselves the hero of any story they are in.
Both. They don’t think of humans as pets. Inferior beings yes, but that’s just true anyway. But not as pets. No more than humans think of children as pets.
The Mind’s internal monologues and their outward behaviour are not in discord.
I may give up as being hopelessly confused in discussion with you @MrDibble.
I had thought you had proposed that social engineering to altruistic all of us are the same tribe (non-sociopathic) values across all of the civilization was required, that such a path was possible if the altruists got there first because the social engineering would be decided upon by those who got there first. But somehow now there’s no point to social engineering? The rest of the universe can stay as xenophobic as can be as long as they “just don’t put our tech on a military ship, or militarize a droid”?
First, the issue is not putting things on ships. It’s the ability to produce an unending supply of star destroyers. But that is a minor point.
More is that if you don’t care about their political structures then you accept that within their systems, however big they become, there will be what you have defined as sociopaths in charge, acting selfishly in regards to power and therefore its levers, within their systems.
And since they have remained “sociopathic”, at some point their distrust of you will lead them to militarize secretly, your “lead time” or not (and how long until information leaks? A few years? Months? Weels?
Yes. Your “peacekeeping force”, which would rain bricks upon any breaking of that military rule you’ve set up, to make an example of them to others. Or did I misunderstand the meaning of “we come down on them like a cubic parsec of bricks pour encourager les autres .”?
Now though you say just the shipyard or small fleet? Which you’ll know about, somehow.
It sure seems to me like this best case, the altruists get there first, has multiple systems in which the facts on the ground are abject poverty for those who are considered other by those in charge of various systems, that you’ll let be as long as they do not use droids or FTL travel (whether the tech leaked or was self-developed) for military purposes. And that the altruists will be spending “near-unlimited resources” to keep up a military capable of knowing about those shipyards, destroying them, and able to deter attacks.
That “best case” seems pretty dystopian to me.
I get that I misunderstood the Culture, but I humbly request that discussion regarding it in this thread stays limited to portions relevant to the subject of post-scarcity. Thank you.
You thought wrong.
I haven’t said that. I’ve been saying a near-completely-altruistic humanity is possible, not that it is a requirement for post-scarcity.
Post-scarcity only requires enough altruists to enforce sharing, not a plurality or supermajority or similar.
I believe xenophobia is going to be hard to sustain in an open universe where doing anything violent to act on your xenophobia is going to bring down the wrath of an entire galactic peacekeeping force on your pointy green heads.
Once you build the first star destroyer, you’re toast. Unless you’re building a billion at once, all in complete secrecy, one is all you get. “Unending supply” is what the altruists have built up already.
I don’t agree that this is an inevitability.
Which information ? That these xenophobes are tooling up in secret? Not more than it takes to actually construct their puny fleet, I’m sure.
No, you seem to have gotten the gist. But the “militarized tech” in that sentence is talking about what it would take on the part of xenophobes to maintain a xenophobic sphere of interest in an open galaxy.
The point being that merely trying to keep a xenophobic slice of galaxy for themselves to be xenophobic in would be sure to violate the rules already.
Unless they’re going to be xenophobic with spears and pop-guns on one planet, which did not seem to be what you were implying there.
I don’t understand what it is you’re not understanding? I’m saying a shipyard or small fleet is all you can get away with before catching the attention of the alruists.
I didn’t say the alruists are going to go through government channels or whatever hierarchical system of distribution you seem to be imagining.
When I said they’d “release them to the galaxy at large, freely”, I meant to whoever wants them, and not taking “you can’t give droids to my slaves” as an answer - if those slaves want FTL ships and labour-saving, resource-gathering droids, they’ll give them directly to them. And interfering with that would be treated … not kindly.
You say this like cheap FTL and droids doesn’t render this a mere act of will, as opposed to a burden.
What, a universe where all the slaves have taken off on their own ships to live a labour-free existence of plenty amongst the stars sounds like a dystopia to you? Naah, a galaxy where only sociopaths have to live in fear doesn’t sound dystopian to me at all.
I’m not sure that enforced altruism at the point of a gun is the most dystopian future I’ve encountered, but it’s up there.
But, I do write sci-fi settings for running RPG’s, and I thank you for inspiring the phrase, “Altruistic Re-education”, it has exactly the right Orwellian tone I was looking for.
Anyway, further thoughts on the topic.
As far as Star Wars, there is nothing in that universe that is realistic. They got people zipping through space and fighting with laser swords. Realism takes a second seat to the plot, and there are fewer interesting plots in a utopia.
As far as the real world, we have never had a time when the world was a utopia for everyone, and never will. There has never been a time when the world was not a dystopia for someone, and never will.
“The economy” is an abstraction. There are many economies, plenty of which are already “post-scarcity”.
Like the breathable air economy. You could imagine a sci-fi world on another planet where breathable air is scarce and a major piece of the economy. But here on Earth, air is freely available to everyone, even the poorest among us. Except scuba divers, Mt. Everest climbers, and submarine sailors I guess.
There are other examples, where we transitioned from one to the other. Like human labor. Used to be anyone with functioning muscles was valuable to employers. The very concept of slavery was based on that innate human value. Nowadays you need fairly advanced skills to be employable. We have machines to do the heavy lifting now. They’re not free, but generally much cheaper and more convenient and accessible than human muscle power. “I’m a healthy adult” just doesn’t cut it in the labor market anymore, unless someone sees enough potential to decide it’s worth their while to train you. Even the Army doesn’t take high school dropouts anymore.
Or water. At various places and times, fresh water was freely available to everyone in the community. But eventually the population grew, industries took advantage of the free water, we piped it into homes and businesses for convenience, and then we started having to pay water bills.
Food might be the opposite trend. Almost nobody starves in the first world anymore. Food is (or at least can be) very cheap, and it’s usually available for free somewhere. We pay for quality, we pay for convenience, we pay for someone else to prepare it. But if I were homeless, finding enough to eat would not be my biggest worry. Obviously food deserts and malnutrition are still issues, and there are still famines in the developing world. I don’t want to ignore those issues. But it highlights my point that these are not rigid facts of nature, they depend on context and circumstance. And many of us are already in a “post-scarcity” context when it comes to basic sustenance.
Clothes are probably nearly there. People in rags used to be a common sight. Nowadays even the homeless can obtain reasonably intact t-shirts and sweatpants without much difficulty.
I’d expect similar things to happen in the future. Like, electric cars don’t seem to need much maintenance. In the future, mechanics might be “post scarcity,” at least for average people. The dealership or manufacturer will update the software whenever necessary, but otherwise you drive the thing until it gets totaled or the motor or batteries wear out, when you just replace it.
Come to think of it, we’re basically already there with electronics. Nobody repairs radios or TVs like they used to. You can usually find someone who does repairs, as a niche service, but most of us just throw away the old one and replace it now. Though they still sell refurbished electronics, so someone is repairing them. But they generally sell the refurbished goods at a discount to poorer people, after they were discarded, rather than fixing a rich person’s prized electronics and then returning it to them.
All these changes happen slow enough that we often don’t notice. I see furniture for sale all the time on Craigslist or Facebook, and usually they have to lower the price to “free” or nearly so, before people start wanting to go to the trouble of picking it up and transporting it. Not long ago heirloom furniture was quite valuable. Now grandpa’s handmade heirlooms are often considered worthless. Same issue with fine china. Dishes are dirt cheap, and nobody wants to spend extra on expensive silverware and dishes just to show off.
I don’t think we’ll ever reach a point where everything is post-scarcity. But society and the economy will certainly keep evolving, and things that are quite valuable today will be nearly worthless in the future, and vice versa.