there is no particular reason why this aristocracy would be oppressive
No, see, out of the set of all societies only a very small fraction is “not oppressive” by a reasonable definition. So unless you are really aiming for that small subset, you are all but guaranteed not to get there. The question should be “is there a particular reason why X would not be oppressive?”
We have more tools to oppress now, as well. In some sense feudalism was only a thing because you couldn’t send messages faster than a horse/boat.
No, see, out of the set of all societies only a very small fraction is “not oppressive” by a reasonable definition.
The “reasonable definition” is tricky to agree on—many would say that aspects of modern democracies are oppressive in some respects. I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure that in historical feudal societies the aristocracy generally gained power through military force, rather than economic or intellectual routes. This is going to select for people who are naturally inclined towards oppression.
We have more tools to oppress now, as well.
Such as? I know there is increased surveillance, but given events such as the arab spring, it seems like modern communications are far more a tool for expressing and organising dissent.
Absolutely—and that’s my point. You are after something tricky and subtle, not something simple like “no death penalty.” So most societies will not have it. The answer to the question of whether we have any reason to believe [society] will not have [tricky and subtle thing] is “yes, the thing is tricky and subtle.”
Such as?
It is super neat that the panopticon society is also operating in reverse, e.g. cell phones filming police being thugs. It’s hard to work out counterfactuals properly, dystopian writers often get them wrong. But here is a partial list (some of these are double edged, naturally):
big data analytics, cheap world-wide communication, strong crypto, clever PR/marketing people, professional bureaucracy, multinational corps, cheap manufacturing of all sorts of horrible things, incredibly deadly weapons, ability to kill via drone strikes, learning to coordinate larger and larger organizations (see for example how China learned to crowd-source censoring and online propaganda on the cheap), etc.
Well, that’s quite a long list. To pick out a few of your examples:
multinational corps
My impression is that one of the main arguments against corporations is corporate lobbying. Under an examination-based system, there is no campaign funding which should go a long way to removing this problem. And the ‘multi-national’ bit is an incentive against wars.
incredibly deadly weapons
You can kill a lot of people with machetes.
learning to coordinate larger and larger organizations (see for example how China learned to crowd-source censoring and online propaganda on the cheap)
Large scale co-ordination is good! People like Gwern argue that large-scale cooperation to suppress harmful technologies is mankind’s best hope of survival.
Big-data and facial recognition applied to CCTV cameras is understandably something of concern. OTOH, some of the bitcoin people think that blockchain technologies will bring down governments.
No, see, out of the set of all societies only a very small fraction is “not oppressive” by a reasonable definition. So unless you are really aiming for that small subset, you are all but guaranteed not to get there. The question should be “is there a particular reason why X would not be oppressive?”
We have more tools to oppress now, as well. In some sense feudalism was only a thing because you couldn’t send messages faster than a horse/boat.
The “reasonable definition” is tricky to agree on—many would say that aspects of modern democracies are oppressive in some respects. I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure that in historical feudal societies the aristocracy generally gained power through military force, rather than economic or intellectual routes. This is going to select for people who are naturally inclined towards oppression.
Such as? I know there is increased surveillance, but given events such as the arab spring, it seems like modern communications are far more a tool for expressing and organising dissent.
Absolutely—and that’s my point. You are after something tricky and subtle, not something simple like “no death penalty.” So most societies will not have it. The answer to the question of whether we have any reason to believe [society] will not have [tricky and subtle thing] is “yes, the thing is tricky and subtle.”
It is super neat that the panopticon society is also operating in reverse, e.g. cell phones filming police being thugs. It’s hard to work out counterfactuals properly, dystopian writers often get them wrong. But here is a partial list (some of these are double edged, naturally):
big data analytics, cheap world-wide communication, strong crypto, clever PR/marketing people, professional bureaucracy, multinational corps, cheap manufacturing of all sorts of horrible things, incredibly deadly weapons, ability to kill via drone strikes, learning to coordinate larger and larger organizations (see for example how China learned to crowd-source censoring and online propaganda on the cheap), etc.
Well, that’s quite a long list. To pick out a few of your examples:
My impression is that one of the main arguments against corporations is corporate lobbying. Under an examination-based system, there is no campaign funding which should go a long way to removing this problem. And the ‘multi-national’ bit is an incentive against wars.
You can kill a lot of people with machetes.
Large scale co-ordination is good! People like Gwern argue that large-scale cooperation to suppress harmful technologies is mankind’s best hope of survival.
Big-data and facial recognition applied to CCTV cameras is understandably something of concern. OTOH, some of the bitcoin people think that blockchain technologies will bring down governments.