What about influencing? If, in order for things to go OK, human civilization must follow a narrow path which I individually need to steer us down, we’re 100% screwed because I can’t do that. But I do have some influence. A great deal of influence over my own actions (I’m resisting the temptation to go down a sidetrack about determinism, assuming you’re modeling humans as things that can make meaningful choices), substantial influence over the actions of those close to me, some influence over my acquaintances, and so on until very extremely little (but not 0) influence over humanity as a whole. I also note that you use the word “we”, but I don’t know who the “we” is. Is it everyone? If so, then everyone collectively has a great deal of say about how the future will go, if we collectively can coordinate. Admittedly, we’re not very good at this right now, but there are paths to developing this civilizational skill further than we currently have. So maybe the answer to “we can’t steer the future” is “not yet we can’t, at least not very well”?
it’s wrong to try to control people or stop them from doing locally self-interested & non-violent things in the interest of “humanity’s future”, in part because this is so futile.
if the only way we survive is if we coerce people to make a costly and painful investment in a speculative idea that might not even work, then we don’t survive! you do not put people through real pain today for a “someday maybe!” This applies to climate change, AI x-risk, and socially-conservative cultural reform.
Agree, mostly. The steering I would aim for would be setting up systems wherein locally self-interested and non-violent things people are incentivized to do have positive effects for humanity’s future. In other words, setting up society such that individual and humanity-wide effects are in the same direction with respect to some notion of “goodness”, rather than individual actions harming the group, or group actions harming or stifling the individual. We live in a society where we can collectively decide the rules of the game, which is a way of “steering” a group. I believe we should settle on a ruleset where individual short-term moves that seem good lead to collective long-term outcomes that seem good. Individual short-term moves that clearly lead to bad collective long-term outcomes should be disincentivized, and if the effects are bad enough then coercive prevention does seem warranted (E. G., a SWAT team to prevent a mass shooting). And similarly for groups stifling individuals ability to do things that seem to them to be good for them in the short term. And rules that have perverse incentive effects that are harmful to the individual, the group, or both? Definitely out. This type of system design is like a haiku—very restricted in what design choices are permissible, but not impossible in principle. Seems worth trying because if successful, everything is good with no coercion. If even a tiny subsystem can be designed (or the current design tweaked) in this way, that by itself is good. And the right local/individual move to influence the systems of which you are a part towards that state, as a cognitively-limited individual who can’t hold the whole of complex systems in their mind and accurately predict the effect of proposed changes out into the far future, might be as simple as saying “in this instance, you’re stifling the individual” and “in this instance you’re harming the group/long-term future” wherever you see it, until eventually you get a system that does neither. Like arriving at a haiku by pointing out every time the rules of haiku construction are violated.
What about influencing? If, in order for things to go OK, human civilization must follow a narrow path which I individually need to steer us down, we’re 100% screwed because I can’t do that. But I do have some influence. A great deal of influence over my own actions (I’m resisting the temptation to go down a sidetrack about determinism, assuming you’re modeling humans as things that can make meaningful choices), substantial influence over the actions of those close to me, some influence over my acquaintances, and so on until very extremely little (but not 0) influence over humanity as a whole. I also note that you use the word “we”, but I don’t know who the “we” is. Is it everyone? If so, then everyone collectively has a great deal of say about how the future will go, if we collectively can coordinate. Admittedly, we’re not very good at this right now, but there are paths to developing this civilizational skill further than we currently have. So maybe the answer to “we can’t steer the future” is “not yet we can’t, at least not very well”?
Agree, mostly. The steering I would aim for would be setting up systems wherein locally self-interested and non-violent things people are incentivized to do have positive effects for humanity’s future. In other words, setting up society such that individual and humanity-wide effects are in the same direction with respect to some notion of “goodness”, rather than individual actions harming the group, or group actions harming or stifling the individual. We live in a society where we can collectively decide the rules of the game, which is a way of “steering” a group. I believe we should settle on a ruleset where individual short-term moves that seem good lead to collective long-term outcomes that seem good. Individual short-term moves that clearly lead to bad collective long-term outcomes should be disincentivized, and if the effects are bad enough then coercive prevention does seem warranted (E. G., a SWAT team to prevent a mass shooting). And similarly for groups stifling individuals ability to do things that seem to them to be good for them in the short term. And rules that have perverse incentive effects that are harmful to the individual, the group, or both? Definitely out. This type of system design is like a haiku—very restricted in what design choices are permissible, but not impossible in principle. Seems worth trying because if successful, everything is good with no coercion. If even a tiny subsystem can be designed (or the current design tweaked) in this way, that by itself is good. And the right local/individual move to influence the systems of which you are a part towards that state, as a cognitively-limited individual who can’t hold the whole of complex systems in their mind and accurately predict the effect of proposed changes out into the far future, might be as simple as saying “in this instance, you’re stifling the individual” and “in this instance you’re harming the group/long-term future” wherever you see it, until eventually you get a system that does neither. Like arriving at a haiku by pointing out every time the rules of haiku construction are violated.