Correlation vs. Causation? Does the universe conspire against freedom?

Several interest areas overlapped when Cato Unbound asked me to present a run-down on SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)...and to then riff into the implications for human politics. 

Specifically, what does our failure (so far) to find evidence of ET Civilizations - (sometimes called the Fermi Paradox) - suggest about how individuals and societies might organize themselves?  That seems a stretch!  I’ve cataloged about a hundred hypotheses for The Great Silence, and only a couple of them relate to how societies might self-organize.  Still, those insights might be of interest to you.

Since it was for Cato, the specific question that I deal with (after summarizing the overall Fermi Paradox), is right there in the title: “SETI, METI and the Paradox of Extraterrestrial Life: Is there a Libertarian Perspective?”

Specifically, I find one fact compelling: nearly all human societies that had agriculture - and many that didn’t - also practiced feudalism, in which a few strong men would gang up to repress all others and establish rules so that their own sons would have harems.  This habit seems so prevalent - having only been (partially) broken in the last 200 years - because it was reinforced by Darwinian advantage… the strong men who pulled it off got more offspring.  And hence, one wonders: might the same pattern - under which competitive markets, science and liberty were all systematically crushed - also be common among other races out there, across the galaxy?

Might that be a factor in helping to explain the Fermi Paradox? And if so, is it sensible for libertarianism to support the only thing that ever broke from feudal modes — moderate, liberal democracy?

And yes, I am a heretic according to today’s dominant strain of libertarians, Rand-Rothbard-indoctrinated and obsessed with propertarianism… rather than the focus preached by Adam Smith, which was flat-open-fair competition. Competition which - in turn - requires at least a degree of moderate regulation? If only to prevent feudalism’s return?

== Hostile reactions! ==

I’m used to getting prickly, even fiery responses, when I speak of Smith at libertarian gatherings. (Though in fairness, they do keep inviting me! A willingness to hear other opinions that is rare on today’s left and entirely extinct on today’s mad right. Indeed, next year's FreedomFest 2015 will feature a visit by uber-Keynsian Paul Krugman!) 

Needless to say, I received some heated comebacks this time.  

One commenter said:  “Correlation is not causation. That "99% of societies with metals and agriculture swiftly devolved into feudalism" says nothing more other than "99% of societies with metals and agriculture swiftly devolved into feudalism". Why that happened requires theory.”

Oog.  Seldom is the platonist view laid so bare… Plato’s preaching - pushed also by Marx and Freud and so many others - that the incantation is more important than the experiment. It evolved into Ayn Rand’s dogma - that chains of if-therefore proclamations are somehow “objective” and therefore get to trump gritty reality.

 Alas, one can often tell how little an interlocutor knows about science by how blithely they bandy truisms as if they were incantations. Take the one raised here.

 “Correlation is not causation" is a convenient a way to airily dismiss any relevance to all actual, factual information that we have about human societies. 'Do not bother me with any of that,' this fellow appears to be saying. 'I have mantras and metaphysical incantations to develop!’

In fact, correlations are of great scientific importance. They are generators of hypotheses. Further, the stronger and more consistent the correlation, the more pertinent a scientist deems them to be. They do not prove causation... we have procedures for that.

But they do establish a plausible baseline. Moreover, the closer and more consistent the correlation, the more a burden of proof shifts to those who proclaim the correlations to be irrelevant.

In this case, we know that bullying cabals of cheaters have conspired to dominate others and steal and wreck markets across 99% of societies for at least 6000 years and probably 250,000. Across all continents and wildly varied cultures, this universal pattern perfectly "correlates" with Darwinian advantage to the bully-cheaters. It is the broad fact known about human societies ... and those who would shrug it off — in favor of following incantatory gurus — are in no position to lecture us about “science.”

An honest libertarian - even a “theorist” would recognize and accept the burden that this long and lamentable pattern lays upon our feet.  If 99% of societies were feudal pyramids of hierarchy and inherited status, it suggests that our own - with its emphasis on individualism, rights and competitive creativity is a rare exception. Not an outgrowth of “natural law” but instead an invention, spectacularly clever, complex and needing perpetual maintenance, lest it slump back into older, more entropic ways.

== Might we be the first to evade this trap? ==

I do not claim that a persistent social pattern explains the entirety, or even a majority of the Great Silence Mystery.  But I do rank this failure mode among the Top Ten of Fermi Paradox hypotheses.

Only one society ever systematically evaded this attractor trap. Its methodologies included moderate regulation to keep competition flat, open and fair. Not perfectly! But vastly better than any other society... by orders of magnitude. We moderate Smithians know that this revolution is the best thing that ever happened... 

...beyond engendering vast wealth and science and reducing ancient mistakes like racism and sexism, it also made more libertarians than any other society ever!

It was not built by platonist theoreticians whose incantation mantras pile high "logic" that is endlessly refuted by actual human experience. Nor will it be extended by indignant, simplistic snits, or raging counterfactuals… like “all government is bad and no concentration of wealth is ever toxic.” That mantra is exactly what oligarchs want sock-puppets to recite, as they rebuild a feudal order.

We’ve got an opportunity to escape a trap that may have held back hundreds of other sapient species out there, perhaps millions. In the main article I ask what possible societies might arise from descendants of – say – pack carnivores, like wolves? Or solitary hunters, like tigers? Or solipsistic omnivores (bears), or herd herbivores? Or ants? But here’s a funny thing. Not one of them seems guaranteed safety from the feudal attractor-state.

We seem to have found a way… if we don’t blow it, by betraying the pragmatic enlightenment invention–experiment in favor of… theories. But so many are pushing to abandon the experiment! So many yearn - even in fantasy tales and films - for a return to old ways.

 In the end, we may be kept from the stars by a simple flaw - our habit of delusion and self-hypnosis.

Do visit the main article. It may lay out some rarely-considered ideas about our cosmos.