Fukuyama’s End bothers me. Certainly it was very influential. But it seems difficult to debate around in a rigorous way. Like, if I were to say, “What about communist China?” I would expect objections like, “Well, they’re just a market economy with political repression on top,” and “The Social Credit System is just American credit ratings taken to a logical extreme.”
What about, “What about the Taliban?” Is the response, “It’s not successful”? How successful does an idea have to be before we count it as a “credible vision”? “They’re just gangsters”? Is gangster heroin capitalism not a credible vision?
What about, “What about Juche?” 25 million people live in DPRK, under a system that’s been remarkably stable through three dictators and extreme international sanctions.
What about, “What about Mormon dominance of Utah politics?”
Most importantly for our purposes here, what about, “What about an AGI that takes a strategically decisive action?”
For China, the Taliban and the DPRK, I think Fukuyama would probably argue that they don’t necessarily disprove his theses, but it’s just that it’s taking much longer for them to liberalize than he would have anticipated in the 90s (he also never said that any of this was inevitable).
For Mormons in Utah, I don’t think they really pose a challenge, since they seem to quite happily exist within the framework of a capitalist liberal democracy.
Technology, and AGI in particular, is indeed the most credible challenge and may force us to reconsider some high-stakes first principles questions around how power, the economy, society… are organized. Providing some historical context for how we arrived at the answers we now take for granted was one the main motivations of this post.
Fukuyama’s End bothers me. Certainly it was very influential. But it seems difficult to debate around in a rigorous way. Like, if I were to say, “What about communist China?” I would expect objections like, “Well, they’re just a market economy with political repression on top,” and “The Social Credit System is just American credit ratings taken to a logical extreme.”
What about, “What about the Taliban?” Is the response, “It’s not successful”? How successful does an idea have to be before we count it as a “credible vision”? “They’re just gangsters”? Is gangster heroin capitalism not a credible vision?
What about, “What about Juche?” 25 million people live in DPRK, under a system that’s been remarkably stable through three dictators and extreme international sanctions.
What about, “What about Mormon dominance of Utah politics?”
Most importantly for our purposes here, what about, “What about an AGI that takes a strategically decisive action?”
For China, the Taliban and the DPRK, I think Fukuyama would probably argue that they don’t necessarily disprove his theses, but it’s just that it’s taking much longer for them to liberalize than he would have anticipated in the 90s (he also never said that any of this was inevitable).
For Mormons in Utah, I don’t think they really pose a challenge, since they seem to quite happily exist within the framework of a capitalist liberal democracy.
Technology, and AGI in particular, is indeed the most credible challenge and may force us to reconsider some high-stakes first principles questions around how power, the economy, society… are organized. Providing some historical context for how we arrived at the answers we now take for granted was one the main motivations of this post.