You are given the temporary use of a “What If” machine. The machine allows you to travel forward in time by 50, 100, or 500 years to take a look around, then travel back to your current time.
But it isn’t just a time machine. The machine allows you to plug in certain variables based on your ideology. You can see, then, what the world would be like in 50 years if UHC is passed. You can see what the world would be like in 100 years if all drugs were made legal.
The question: If you plugged in the variables you think are the best fit for your ideology, then you went forward in time to see how they worked out and they utterly sucked, would you change your ideology? Or, would you say that results don’t matter?
If you plugged in variables that are diametrically opposed to your beliefs and then found they had great results, would you embrace them? Or, again, would you say that results don’t matter?
Depends on what you mean by ideology. I think that we should refrain from enslaving people even if it turns out to be the case that enslaving people is a much more efficient way to maintain order or make tennis shoes or whatever. In that case, the freedom itself is the desired result, and damn the consequences.
However, if we’re talking about UHC, we’re probably really talking about means to an end. The goal is to the the best care for the most people at the least detriment to most people’s quality of life in other areas. UHC proposes to meet that aim in a particular way. If I went to the future and discovered that under UHC, all the doctors quit doctoring and went into more lucrative careers as televangelists, leading to the complete collapse of medicine and the annihilation of 98% of the population by plague…well, it may be time to toss out UHC, or at least twiddle with the implementation a little.
Well, for one thing some are ends and some are means. Not having slavery is an end; UHC is a means. I support UHC, because my goal is better health & medical care for less money and I think UHC is the way to do that. If it turned out it didn’t work, I’d discard it. But not having slavery is something I consider a good in itself, and one of overriding importance. Slavery ending is one of the standards I’d be using to see if a particular timeline change was good or bad in the first place.
You also have to consider the steps in between, and the next step beyond. If you go forward 500 years to a wonderful outcome, do you consider the 300 years of misery that led up to it? What about a worse fate in 700 years? Would accept a paradise if it required a 200 year period of 70% infant mortality? Which would be better, 1000 years of small ups and downs (think fluctuating between the U.S. in 2006 and the U.S. in 1932) or 800 years of paradise followed by 200 years of pure hell (think Federation as shown in STNG to 12 Monkeys levels of collapse)?
Point being, one point in history is hard to judge by.
I think for the short term, you have to assume that the future you take a peek at includes history books you could read for the intervening time (as long as that future isn’t so bleak that writing has become a lost art, or some such). For the long term, I think that 500 years is probably long enough to see the major ramifications of anything we’re doing now.
The only real risk I see is that the choices right now might lead to a 1984-like totalitarianism, where all the history books say that the intervening decades or centuries were sunshine and roses, when they were actually anything but.
In practial terms, I think the main goal of such experimentation would be to see whether the implementation of the ideology had unintended consequences, and whether the effects you were counting on it having actually came to pass. So, what you’d really be looking for most of the time would probably be effects that are readily observable and directly attributable to it within the next 25-50 years or so. I certainly don’t think that it’s likely to come down to massive world shifts at points hundreds of years in the future - it would be near-impossible to determine if such changes were caused by your policy, or something else that was butterfly-effected as a result of your policy but which would be better corrected by a different tweak elsewhere.
(Of course, if I was using the machine, my main goal would be to check the lotto numbers on one of my trips. But that’s just me.)
Yes, but for me, I think even seeing the results wouldn’t be of much help. I mean, you get to set the beginning, and see the end, but i’m not knowledgeable enough to be able to tell how it got from one to the other. Was it my idealogy? Was it that, mixed with something else? Was there a particular event that led to the failure, was it the result of many things building up, or was it an entirely gradual, general change?
I mean, look now, at the thousands of commentators and books who all have their own opinion on why things are as they are now. I’d be in that situation, without even the benefit of having lived through it myself. I can only imagine i’d have to change my views, but I don’t know what to, is the problem.
I’ve always believed that there’s no contradiction between ideology and results. If the results are bad, something in the ideology needs to be adjusted. Of course, being human, I’m sure I’d find some of my ideas more difficult to change than others.
And yeah, it’d sure be fun to just go back and forth, testing all sorts of criteria.
I’d have more fun going into the past to screw with things, just to see what would happen.
Revenant Threshold has nailed the basic problem with the OP’s notion - though we recognize the potential for uninteded consequences, unless we can review the intermediate steps, looking at a final result is useless. It would be much more valuable as a learning tool if I could find out what the major flaws in my political beliefs would be (if they were fully implemented) because then I could tweak (rather than discard) those beliefs. Also, I’m far more concerned with the 50 year span (my own lifetime) than a 500-year span. The only thing I think I could do for the latter group is implement a policy stressing education in the sciences and hope for the best. The intermediate steps would be infathomably complex, though they seem deceptively easy in hindsight.
Of course, it may turn out that the best way to protect freedom as I understand it from whatever political forces will come to bear 100 years from now is to pre-emptively nuke the Arab world and China. Is that an option?
Yeah, right. Anybody with a time machine knows that the money is in lottery tickets and sports scores. Screw the “feel groovy” controls, stay in real time. Jump forward 100 years, snag some “year in review” news magazines, some sports almanacs and winning lottery numbers (by date, region, etc). Memorize the results of major sporting events for the next five years, just in case, before popping back. Hide the time machine so you can use again later if you still feel that annoying “do goodnik” itch when you get tired of snorting blow off hooker’s asses.
I think a “what if” machine only functions when activated with a fing-longer. So if you’re not also given access to a fing-longer, the whole thing is moot.
I’d be rather interested to see how my ideology would fare. After the absurd hyperbole thrown about regarding the last administration, and the absurd hyperbole being thrown about over this one, I suspect rather well.
I’d hope so. I mean, I’m this close to cackling with glee just imagining being able to test this stuff. People who didn’t think it was the neatest thing EVER would be dead to me.
As a consequentialist, I can’t justify going against clear results.
I’m a former Malthusian who’s gradually become a New Deal social democrat. My opinion of say, Aristide, or Robespierre, has changed with more observation & will likely change more. I go through this all the time just paying attention.
No problem,we have to live in the real world because the real world isn’t going to change to suit our beliefs, so I’d change my ideology to fit the facts rather then my wish fulfilment desires.
Anyone who didn’t is foolish.