Politics, polemics, but especially... prediction!

First, an item from the news.

So, only the Cheneys sat on the right side of the Aisle as every Republican member of the House boycotted… um, found ‘important business elsewhere’… when the House met to memorialize the officers killed by the rioters on 1/6/21. 

When the Cheneys - who stole billions from us in the Great Iraq Logistics Scam that was the sole real purpose of the Second Saddam War - say THEY have had enough of the Trumpist nightmare they helped create?

Sigh, history repeats. Like the Prussian "Junkers caste" lords who in the 1920s were SO sure they could 'control' the brown shirts they had subsidized. And around 1936 started murmuring: "what have we done?"



Heed this from The Sorcerer's Apprentice, from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:



Oh, here comes my master! Help me Lord, I plead!


Spirits I have conjured, no longer pay me heed.

See "So you still think you can control them?" from Cabaret.

== Prediction time? ==

It’s ‘prediction season' again! For example Mark Anderson of the Strategic News Service has one of the most brilliant predictive success records around. See Unveiling SNS's 2022 Predictions. 

I’ve dribbled-out my own across the years and have written extensively about the need for predictions registries and the use of wager demands to hold blowhards accountable.

But for years I’ve gone on record in many places calling 2023 the Year of the Flying Car… though at first it will likely be hobbyists away from town… plus licensed air-limo services in cities. For the Rich, of course. And watch how that works out!

One of my better recent items: “Repairing the World: is that creative, preserving power in human hands?” I am interviewed by the legendary John Elkington for Green Swans Observatory. (October 2021).  A PDF transcription is available.

I participated in this report by the World Economic Forum on Positive AI Economic Futures. "Many computer science experts believe that, in this century, machines will be able to do most tasks better than humans. Given these sorts of predictions, it is important to think about the possible consequences of AI for the future of work and to prepare for different scenarios. Continued progress in these technologies could have disruptive effects: from further exacerbating recent trends in inequality to denying more and more people their sense of purpose and fulfillment in life, given that work is much more than just a source of income."

One of my most biting essays about politics and economics has been updated and reposted on The Street. As is my wont, I pause often to demand wagers, e.g. whether Supply Side/Thatcherism ever made a successful prediction of positive outcomes. No one ever steps up to bet, proving the cowardice of adherents of that mad cult... but also the polemical stupidity of Keynesians, for not using this simple method to highlight who's been right a lot... vs. who is always, always wrong.

Oh, any guesses why the Street folks chose to conclude the essay with an image of the grave of Karl Marx?

"Former White House strategist Steve Bannon on Monday dug in on this threat that Donald Trump-loyal “shock troops” will move to “deconstruct” the federal government the minute a Republican takes over the Oval Office again.

“We need to get ready now,” Bannon said on his “War Room” podcast. “We control the country. We’ve got to start acting like it. And one way we’re going to act like it, we’re not going to have 4,000 [shock troops] ready to go, we’re going to have 20,000 ready to go.""

== we’ve got anti-vax & climate denialism backwards! ==

Everyone (it seems) gets this backward. It's accepted that our fact professions - from science/teaching/journalism/medicine to the 'deep state' intel/military officers - are attacked by the Mad Right in order to prevent action on climate change. 

Wrong! 

Instead, climate denialism... and anti-vax and the rest ... are agitprop used to rile up confed/MAGAs, getting hem to aim their resentment at 'elites' of knowledge, rather than the elites of money/lordship who are actually stealing from those poor schlumps. In other words, oligarchy is applying exactly the same trick used by plantation lords in the 1860s to get a million poor whites to march and die for their class oppressors. 

Just watch Fox for a while or listen to Sinclair radio (kremlin) jocks. Vastly more time and energy is spent explicitly attacking nerds in the various fact professions than explicitly attacking races/genders etc. Make that a wager. Moreover, there's a reason for that. While disempowered victims (races/genders/the poor etc.) are hurt most by Mad Right policies, they are not the ones standing in the way of oligarchy's current putsch to grab all world power.

(Think. The powerless aren't the chief worry of the powerful. That is a tautology.)

The empowered clades who are blocking that ambition are the fact and knowledge professions. Including law and civil service and the officer corps and above all scientists. Discrediting the boffins is among the very top oligarchy priorities.

Hence, the anti-vax 'movement' and denialism and all that are inexplicable except in this context, where it suddenly becomes clear WHY the Foxites are deliberately killing thousands of their own followers with a campaign to divert them away from life-saving medicine. If they did not have climate denialism and anti-vax and abortion, they would have to concoct some other cult mythologies to use in the war on nerds.

Stop fracturing the coalition to save democracy and the enlightenment! See "Democracy Cannot survive the fracturing of the Democratic Coalition" by Ian Bassin in The Bulwark: “In the early days of the first Trump presidency, our organization cohosted a “Summit for Democracy” at which the keynote speakers were a Democratic senator, a Republican senator, and opposition leaders from Russia, Poland, and Egypt who had experience facing off against autocrats. At the end of the event, the foreign opposition leaders were asked to each give one piece of advice to Americans now facing the specter of authoritarianism. 

The Polish MP Agnieska Pomaska said this: “Don’t let the opposition fracture.” Her advice was born of experience. In Poland, the increasingly autocratic ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), initially rose to power in 2015 on only plurality support (35 percent in the first round of voting) because the opposition could not stay united. In Hungary, the autocratic Fidesz Party managed to translate its own plurality support into legislative supermajorities in large part because the Hungarian opposition fractured in the lead-up to both the 2014 and 2018 elections. Once in power, both PiS and Fidesz then engaged in a program of dismantling democratic institutions and checks and balances. …”

The conclusion of the Bulwark article: Bassin notes, “In their book How Democracies Die, the Harvard scholars Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt compared four countries’ experiences in interwar Europe. In Belgium and Finland, far-right extremist parties gained some traction after World War I. In both countries, the center-right united with the left to block those anti-democratic parties from ascending further to power. 

In Italy and Germany on the other hand, the center-right in both cases chose not to do that, and instead sought to co-opt the political appeal of rising far-right movements by incorporating them into their ranks. We all know what happened next. Thus far, most pro-democracy Republicans have chosen to try to tame, or co-opt, the rising authoritarians in their midst. This is a mistake. Stopping the next authoritarian attempt will require a broad, united opposition. This unity of purpose is more crucial than any legislation.”

Science fiction visions, starting with flying cars, plus Sherlock and comedies and more.

May this day be joyous for those who celebrate it as special... and for those who don't. And may the year ahead be our best-yet, though the worst of all that follow.

And now, on to ruminations!

 It has been said that: "A top task of the SF author is not to predict the car, but the traffic jam."

 Let's update that. What are the consequences of flying cars? And I have long predicted that 2022 or 2023 would be the year they arrive, at least in part.

As a sci fi writer, I peer ahead to note that these luxury flyers that will be largely used (at least at first) by the rich to avoid the frustrating congestion of our streets.

So, will one outcome be better traffic down here, when the rich people leave the roads? Or will the flight of wealthy folks to the sky be just like when, after 9/11, the wealthy abandoned First Class on airline flights in favor of corporate/private jets and charters, resulting is a massive deterioration of life for the rest of us air travelers. Because till then, the rich and influential still had to use the same airports and planes, and their complaints were heeded. So what happens when they abandon our streets and highways, leaving us to fester while they demand more tax cuts?

So, will we get angry, seeing these demigods zipping above us? Will this be another tech advance that swiftly percolates down to the rest of us, as I portray in my short story “Transition Generation”? Or might flying cars carrying sky lords be the final insult leading to revolution? 

There, that's my cynical worst take. And it leads to a top demand when the revolution comes (that they seem determined to drive us to.) We will take torches to the charter areas of the airports and - at point of our pitchforks - scream at the brats "Get back into First Class, where you belong!"

(Eat yer heart out, Robspierre & Lenin!)

Another question. Might flying cars, be used for terrorism? 

Sure, (1) they are tiny. (2) AI controlled. That’s problematic, and in Existence I posed swarm terror attacks using drones and flying cars. Still, rule-systems can be adjusted, and (3) there will be banned areas with plenty of laser defenses. But yes. Tradeoffs and dangers.

One prototype under development: the flying AirCar, invented in Slovakia, which can transform into a sports car in minutes. This video presents other experimental flying cars including the Aero Mobil, the Klein Vision Air Car, the AirBus PopUp, the Terrafugia and the PAL-V. Some modern updates to those envisioned in Sci Fi movies such as The Fifth Element, Blade Runner, Total Recall, The Jetsons, Back to the Future... and so many others.

By coincidence, I just read (and blurbed) the latest book by J Storrs Hall - Where Is My Flying Car?  The book ought to have gone into all that.

Oh, want irony? For 50 years Los Angeles required all tall buildings to have flat roofs for heliports than then were seldom used. Now, after the law was rescinded, may come the golden era of rooftop taxi service. Again, for elites.

Followup: Sorry, I thought it was obvious that (a) initial uses will be between licensed landing pads and (b) automatic control will be almost absolutely required. And yes, within those limits I reiterat: I expect it in the next two years.  At which point the whine will shift from "Where's the flying car?" to "Where's my flying car?"

== Recommended... ==

One of the greatest directors of all time, whose work I laud in VIVID TOMORROWS: Science Fiction and Hollywood, is Nicholas Meyer, who saved Star Trek, among many things. He also is a noted innovator in the wide and popular Sherlock Holmes canon, having initiated the latest era of fun creativity with The Seven Percent Solution. Now comes his latest The Return of the Pharaoh: From the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D. Such brain food.

On a lighter note... Marie Vibbert's lively and rollicking Galactic Hell Cats is way fun, as is the trailer. 

Which reminds me of a micro-rant I have been meaning to issue: Mars Attacks is best watched with the music on... but with the insipid/unfunny dialogue turned off. Better, switch to a version that's dubbed in a language you don't know - no subtitles! All the unintentionally stupid things vanish and the intentionally stupid ones amplify! You'll imagine hilarious lines! Trust me on this. Try it.

 And for more sci fi hilarity, try my own comedy: The Ancient Ones.

One of you reminded me that I have TWO works of comedic SF. Now, there are many styles and varieties of humor! In my recent novel The Ancient Ones, I tried for the level of pun-laced satire and irony-amid-plausibility Terry Pratchett achieved with such grace and that I could only aspire-to... with - sure - a few moments of pure lampoon... while mixing genres... Star Trek Pastiche with vampire-zombie-werewolves! You can sample the first 3 chapters free at my site and decide if Brin is merely crazy or Crazy!

But there's another attempt at comedic SF that you can also try for free. Gorilla My Dreams - a broad, lampoony and immature take on my own Uplift Universe, plus several guest cosmoses. Something for the weekend. Don't drink beverages while reading too close to the screen... 

Though indeed, many have enjoyed the lighter side of Kiln People and The Practice Effect.

== And furthermore ==

Tales from the Bridge: All Things Sci-Fi hosted A Conversation with David Brin.

Beyond Dune and Foundation: a list of Golden Age SF classics that should be adapted to the screen, including Mockingbird, The Dispossessed, and The Demolished Man.

While we started with flying cars, science fiction has also offered more dire visions of possible future: a list of 20 greatest apocalyptic novels includes classics such as Earth Abides, Parable of the Sower, On the Beach, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Alas, Babylon, as well as The Postman. 

Probing the future: very good news… and some very bad...

We'll get to weighing some very good news… and some bad… in a second. But first --

So You Think You're Smarter than a CIA Agent? asks an article on NPR News, citing The Good Judgment Project -- a four-year research study organized as part of a government-sponsored forecasting tournament. Thousands of people around the world predict global events. Their collective forecasts are surprisingly accurate. 

For the past three years, 3,000 average people have been quietly making probability estimates about everything from Venezuelan gas subsidies to North Korean politics as part of  an experiment put together by three well-known psychologists and some people inside the intelligence community. According to one report, the predictions made by the Good Judgment Project are often better even than intelligence analysts with access to classified information, according to Alix Spiegel on NPR News.

Philip Tetlock, one of the three psychologists who came up with the idea for the Good Judgment Project, also wrote Expert Political Judgment: How Good is it? How Can We Know? His concept started simple:

First, if you want people to get better at making predictions, you need to keep score of how accurate their predictions turn out to be, so they have concrete feedback.

But also, if you take a large crowd of different people with access to different information and pool their predictions, you will be in much better shape than if you rely on a single very smart person, or even a small group of very smart people.'

These desiderata will sound familiar to some of you, who have read my own, decade-old calls for new kinds of Predictions Registry concept — which ought to be civilization’s utter-top priority, for a number of reasons that I lay down in that article.  As for "collective smarts" see how Smart Mobs are portrayed in Existence!

== Reasons for optimism, while everyone goes grumpy ==

A fascinating study for the US Defense Department concludes that three "almost shocking" dollops of positive news are transforming our prospects for the better -- even as the public mood in the U.S. keeps sinking into inexplicable funk. The report: "Some Aspects of the Future Security Environment: Considering 1987, 2012, and 2037," looked back and forward 25 years, according to an unclassified summary released by Office of Net Assessment of a Summer Study in late 2012, by Jesse H. Ausubel and Alan S. Curry.

It begins by surveying the world effects of globalization, an ongoing phenomenon which remains fraught with tension and opportunities for economic setbacks… but under which vast numbers of human families are rising, every year, out of grinding poverty, into some level of (very) basic comfort. Those who complain about other effects of globalization, while conceding the good things, have some credibility. Those who do not, have none.

Then comes a real surprise: "Water provides a second big change in resource concerns during the past 25 years. In 1975, almost all experts forecast large increases in use of water by the United States. In fact, most of the forecasts vastly overestimated demand -- and water withdrawals in the United States peaked about 1980. The trend in actual use has been flat for decades, even as U.S. population has grown about 80 million, the population of Turkey. Agriculture consumes far the most water. In the United States the decoupling of food production from land accounts for much of the moderation of demand. Sparing land usually means sparing water, both here and abroad. We see in farming in other industries increasing precision where we use more bits of information but less stuff -- less energy, fertilizer, pesticide and water. So the idea of a global water crisis seems far-fetched."

How fascinating. We've become so used to gloom and assuming the world will burst into flame everywhere over water. Indeed, there will likely be some local stress!

"At the same time, some regions clearly experience stress because of weak management and complex borders. Among regions to watch are upper basins where nations are building dams to capture water that flows downstream through other nations, e.g. the upper Indus, Mekong, and the Tigris and Euphrates, where Indian, China and Turkey; respectively, are adding storage with all its benefits and risks, including political consequences downstream.”

Okay, as Forest Gump would say – “one less thing….” Sort of. But then…

== Is fracking your friend? ==

"A third big surprise in resources of the past 25 years is the discovery and acceptance of the abundance of natural gas, methane."  Since this report was issued in 2012, the arrival of frack-released gas and oil has crashed into public attention, with nearly everyone leaping to take one extreme position or the other. Either this is capitalism at its best, with no need to regulate, or else it is satanic poisoning of the air and aquifers.

In fact, there are many reasons to believe the trend needs and merits strongly assertive regulation by a government that implements the public will, to get both the economic stimulation/jobs/security that come from energy independence and the capping of leaking greenhouse gas sources and tight protection of aquifers. Both the benefits of methane weaning us off of filthy coal and continuing the spectacularly successful incentives that have brought sustainables like solar and wind into the mainstream, becoming viable at a rate that’s far faster than automobiles and airplanes became practical, a century ago.

The potential harms that accompany good news seem to set members of my Baby Boomer generation a-quiver with agitation and zero-sum thinking. Almost never do boomers, of left or right, contemplate the positive sum, win-win. The possibility that we might enhance the good effects and minimize the bad.

Our calmer and more pragmatic heirs will be better off without our grumpy-boomer asses around.

== Feed us! ==

Then there’s agriculture. It was thought that the increases in crop yield that happened under Borlaug’s “Green Revolution” were peaking just as populations were rising, bringing the curse of Malthus back into play. In fact, the verdict is mixed, so far. There is clear evidence that climate change is affecting crop yields - destroying both farmlands and grazing zones. These problems are exacerbated by many stupidities in re water use, pest management, monoculture, monopoly controlled GM seeds and a myriad other vexing perplexities and needs for action. On the other hand, new kinds of crops emerge all the time. And we also have on the horizon algae-culture, and tissue-culture meat, and far better fish farming, any of which may be game changers.

We’ll need them. For when fertile zones at lower latitudes turn to desert, we lose areas with two growing seasons. Canada and Siberia may get warmer but the new “farmlands” lack topsoil and languish in total darkness for half the year. This is not a fair trade.

The report also discusses mixed news about population. There is the aging developed world, with fears of demographic collapse. There is China, with it’s own one-child-affected situation. There are realms like Africa and India where Malthus looms as a spectre… and a few places of relative balance like the US and Canada, who benefit from the invigoration of immigration. It is WAY too soon to breathe any sigh of relief!

Still… it don’t look (yet) like Soylent Green.

Ah, but then there’s worrisome news….

== China on the brink? ==

“China is like an elephant riding a bicycle. If it slows down, it could fall off, and then the earth might quake.” – James Kynge, China Shakes the World: A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future -- and the Challenge for America.

John Mauldin and his partners are worried about China.

“After 30 years of sustained economic growth topping 8% and a successful bank cleanup in 2000, the People’s Republic was well on its way to blowing through the “middle income trap” and transitioning to a more advanced consumption-based economy. But then in 2008 the banking crisis in the United States abruptly ushered in a painful era of balance sheet repair across the developed world and delivered a demand shock to emerging markets. Rather than allow the Chinese economy to fall into recession at such an inconvenient time, the Party leadership sprang into action to stimulate demand with its largest fiscal deficit in more than 60 years and to mobilize bank lending with historically low interest rates and enormous liquidity injections.”

As a result, China’s total debt-to-GDP (including estimates for shadow banks) grew by roughly 20% per year, from just under 150% in 2008 to nearly than 210% at the end of 2012 … and continued rising in 2013. Even more ominous, corporate debt has soared from 92% in 2008 to 150% today. 

“China has consumed just 65pc of the cement it has produced in the past five years, after exports. The country is currently outputting more steel than the next seven largest producers combined – it now has 200m tons of excess capacity, more that the EU and Japan's total production so far this year.”

But property is the biggest bubble, as it was in the U.S. and Europe. “The average price-to-rent ratio of China's eight key cities is 39.4 times – this figure was 22.8 times in America just before its housing crisis.”

George Soros holds that “The major uncertainty facing the world today is not the euro but the future direction of China.”

== The lesson: optimism? Pessimism? ==

It’s neither! It is that the world is far, far too filled with good trends and news to make cynicism and gloom anything other than wretched, simplistic treason. Show me the cynic who is actually and pragmatically useful to anyone! Or who actively and effectively helps to solve any of the problems that he (almost never “she”) grouses about!

I would say the same thing about fizzy, polyanna, best-of-all-worlds optimists, too… if you could point me at any. Sure, I know a few “singularity” types who think we’ll all be gods within 30 years. But none of them prescribe indolent shrugs, the way cynics do. Most optimists admit the desperate need for action!

But cynics aren’t our worst adversaries. The very worst people – enemies of your future and of your grandchildren – are the manipulators who are propagandizing to millions that they should hate science. Hate the people who know stuff. Hate the very idea of mixed, vigorous, confident, can-do effort to solve problems, partly together, via consensus government, while mostly through our markets and families and individual efforts.

Those are the folks who are waging war against your kids.

Questions I am frequently asked about… (Part IV) Prediction and the Future

Continuing this compilation of questions that I’m frequently asked by interviewers. This time about…

 == THE FUTURE== 

--Your writing touches on the impact of technology upon humanity, and its power to change our daily lives. Can you expand upon that? 

Let me ask you (and the reader) this: have you ever flown through the sky? Or walked into a dark room and made light happen, with the flick of your fingertip? Once upon a time, these were exactly the powers of gods! So why don’t you feel like one? 

Because we gave these powers to everyone, that’s why. Ironically, the moon landings seemed less marvelous because we all shared in the experience via TV. The fantastic images that our space probes have taken of solar system glories would seem magical and almost religiously marvelous if you and I had to sneak into the palace, risking arrest, in order to view them. Or if we had to crack open a wizard’s secret grimoire. 

Take the palantir from Lord of the Rings, a crystal window on Gandalf’s desk through which he can explore ideas, gather information, view far-away events and communicate instantly across great distances…there are only three differences between the palantir and your laptop:

(1) The wizards and elfs kept such wonderful things for themselves,

(2) the result was calamity, horrible war and near-loss of everything, 

(3) it sure helped make a romantic story, captivating millions.  

If only you and a dozen other folks were on the internet, able to see far and access all knowledge, we’d all be in awe of you, too! But then.. it wuldn't work so gud.....

As for the future? Get ready to be even more godlike! If we’re lucky, future advances will also be shared with everybody and so you won’t notice! Too bad. But hopefully, we’ll be wise. 

--What is your record as a prognosticator? 

When prediction serves as polemic, it nearly always fails. Our prefrontal lobes can probe the future only when they aren’t leashed by dogma. The worst enemy of agile anticipation is our human propensity for comfy self-delusion. 

Peering ahead is mostly art. We all have tricks. One of mine is to look for “honey-pot ideas” drawing lots of fad attention. Whatever is fashionable, try to poke at it! Maybe 1 percent of the time you’ll find a trend or possibility that’s been missed. Another method is even simpler: Respect the masses. Nearly all futuristic movies and novels—even sober business forecasts—seem to wallow in the same smug assumption that most people are fools. 

This stereotype led content owners to envision the Internet as only a delivery conduit to sell movies to passive couch potatoes. Even today, many of the social-net and virtual-world companies treat their users like giggling 13-year-olds incapable of expressing more than a sentence at a time. Never gifted with the ability to engage in of actual discourse. All right, maybe that does describe most of our fellow citizens! (Especially the extremes of both right and left.) Still, people will surprise you.  And over the long run, their collective wisdom rises. And in small groups they can be positively brilliant.

A contrarian trick that has served me well is to ponder a coming technology and then imagine, What if everybody gets to use it? In really smart ways? Many of those imaginings have come true. (Readers maintain a Predictions Registry page that tracks hits and misses for my novel Earth.)

--Are you pessimistic or optimistic about the future – and why? 

I am known widely as an optimist. This is not quite true. What I am is a contrarian. And hence, when I see cynics and despair junkies all around me -- around all of us – screeching simpleminded whines and playground sneers, I am naturally drawn to poking at their lazy models of the world. 

Even if the pessimists and cynics were right... and they aren't... they are totally not being helpful. Their attitude is the quintessence of laziness and voluptuously smug self-indulgence.   A rationalization for indolence. 

Dig it. All hope in the world has been achieved by problem-solvers.  We need more of them. All the can-do pragmatic problem-solvers we can get. 

--In your opinion, are we headed for a dystopic or utopian future? 

Again, people tend to call me a propagandist for optimism, because I occasionally portray society as not totally stupid... or our fellow citizens as something slightly more evolved than sheep.  In fact, I am an optimist only by comparison to the reflexive contempt-for-the-masses that you see in most knee-jerk fiction these days. 

Actually, I’m kind of a gloomy guy. History shows how often and how easily bright beginnings failed, giving way to darkness once again. We have a genius for snatching failure from the jaws of success. It will not surprise me if our present renaissance collapses. If we betray our values for short-term expediency.  It has happened countless times before. 

But Science Fiction fights that trend, even in (the best) dystopias! Our dark warnings poke the ground, finding pitfalls and quicksand just ahead. The topmost warnings - those that seem vivid and convincing - turn into self-preventing prophecies that deeply affect great numbers of people, ensuring that a particular mistake won't happen. Consider stories such as Dr. Strangelove, On The Beach, The China Syndrome, Silent Spring, Soylent Green, and so on. These drew attention from millions of people toward possible doomsday scenarios. Millions who became active, fighting for a better future. Were those efforts futile? Or are we here today because of them? 

The greatest self-preventing prophecy was surely George Orwell's chilling Nineteen-Eighty Four. Who does not feel girded, inoculated by the metaphors of Big Brother and the Ministry of Truth? Determined to the cause of preventing them ever from coming true? If we manage to preserve freedom and hold all the big-time liars accountable, it will be in no small part thanks to science fiction. 

I just wish more authors would notice what they are a part of...a vast process of error-discover and error-detection that constitutes part of our society's immune system against terrible mistakes. So by all means write warning-dystopias! But try to be original and helpful. You did not invent black leather. Or mirrorshades. And the people may not all be fools. Who knows?  They might actually listen to you… heed your warnings… and thus make you a false prophet. 

Read the story of Jonah.  And then snap out of it!  Your job is to be credible. To help us notice and avert. It is not your task to prove right.

Scare folks with plausible failure modes. Make them worry… and help make it not happen.

 --Is there hope for the future? 

I foresee a 60% chance that we'll eke through the crises ahead and make it to an era when humans become mature and careful planet-managers, instead of frantic over-exploiters. One when we have found solutions to the critical choices before us and passed most of the harsh tests, raising new generations who are both mighty and wise. 

I don't view those odds as "optimistic" at all! Not when the alternatives are horrible. Such probabilities are barely good enough to justify having kids, then using every day to help them become joyful problem-solvers who will be net-benefits to the world. 

I think we’ll squeak by. Alas, the glorious civilization that may emerge after a century of hard times could be missing some fine treasures… manatees, blue whales, krill, the Amazon Rain Forest, privacy... and every human being who wasn’t immune to Virus X. 

I had a thought, lately. Heaven and Hell may not be such bizarre thoughts, after all! Consider our godlike descendants, with power at their fingertips to compute and emulate any reality. They will be able to ‘call up’ simulated versions of people from times past, especially 20th century folk, what with all the data available about us, including photos, video, skin cells in all our old letters and scrap books, etc. What will they do with that power? (See my short story, Stones of Significance.)

Those who helped build the utopia of tomorrow will be remembered, immortalized, in software simulations by our descendants. Those who hindered progress, who obstructed or simply did nothing, will at best not be invited back. At worst, they might be assigned unpleasant roles in software scenarios. Might the old notion of Purgatory have some resurrected relevance, after all? I leave possible extrapolations of this idea to the reader. 

See more articles on: Creating the Future.

-What is humanity’s greatest flaw? 

Humans are essentially self-deluders. The mirror held up by other people helps us to perceive our own errors… though it hurts.  In his poem “To a Louse,” Robert Burns said: 

“O wad some Power the giftie gie us 
To see oursels as others see us! 
It wad frae monie a blunder free us, 
An’ foolish notion…” 

(“Oh would some power, the gift give us, to see ourselves as other see us. It would from many blunders free us, and foolish notions…”) 

Or, my own aphorism:
CITOKATE: Criticism Is The Only Known Antidote to Error. Too bad it tastes so awful, to be on the receiving end…  so that most of us never even thank our enemies for pointing out our mistakes for us.  Think about that. If criticism is the only way we catch our delusional errors, why do we resent those out there who willingly, eagerly, give us what we need, in order to do better and to be better?

It is a gift economy!  After your foe as heaped upon you a laundry list of things to fix, you should thank him or her... and then return the favor!  Purely (of course) out of the kindness of your heart.

(A side note: look at the end of every book I publish.  There are 50+ names. Pre-readers and critics who helped find errors or slow-patches or inconsistencies.  I don't mind praise, as well.  But it is a lower priority than quality control. Looking at criticism that way is a great tool for success.)

--Would you rather be living 100 years from now, when we’ll presumably have access to so many more answers? 

Is it better to sow than to reap? Jonas Salk said our top job is to be “good ancestors.” If we in this era meet the challenges of our time, then our heirs may have powers that would seem godlike to us — the way we take for granted miracles like flying through the sky or witnessing events far across the globe. If those descendants do turn out to be better, wiser people than us, will they marvel that primitive beings managed so well, the same way we’re awed by the best of our ancestors? I hope so. It’s poignant consolation for not getting to be a demigod. 

--What concerns do you have about the future? 

I am concerned about one thing, above all, understanding how and why humanity escaped (at last) from its old, vicious cycle of feudalism and began a tremendous enlightenment. One that included vital things like science, democracy, human rights and science fiction. I've come to see that openness – especially being receptive to free-flowing criticism -- has been key. Secrecy is the thing that makes every evil far worse than it would have been. It is especially pernicious when practiced by the mighty.

And that is what we'll talk about next time.

==

Return to:

Part 1: Questions on Writing and Science Fiction

Part 2: Questions on Science Fiction and Fantasy

Part 3: Questions on Brin books, Uplift, and The Postman

Part 4: Questions on Transparency, Privacy and the Information Age

David Brin

http://www.davidbrin.com

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