Dear Extropy,

Issue Number 13 was excellent. Keep up the good work.

Re: the debate between Charles Platt and Max More over the proper libertarian ethic toward free speech, I must add a third perspective, that of Libertarian Pragmatism.

This point of view says all obsessive, overly intellectualized generalizations about human beings have proven wrong in the past, and will prove wrong in the future. While Libertarian dogma sounds much nearer to human nature than Karl Marx’s fantasies about us, it makes little sense to defend Freedom of Speech on purely intellectual grounds.

We call it sacred and fundamental, yet no other human civilization agreed with this rather pushy statement. Instead, history shows strong evidence for a very basic and compelling human drive not to hear things we disagree with, and to suppress dissent by others. Far from inalienable, it is all-too easily taken away.

Moreover, history shows that when a society’s fear level rises, intolerance and suppression do also. Supposed sacredness will not protect freedom when the mob is frightened.

To the Pragmatic Libertarian, there is one truly effective rationale for defending Freedom of Speech. A rationale that is both necessary and entirely sufficient. It is this — Those societies which practice it have prospered to a degree that vastly exceeds the success of any civilization that suppressed free speech.

Instead of idealizing human nature, this argument works with that nature’s many paradoxes. Take one of the greatest ironies of life, which I call the Allegory of the Peacock.

While pea-birds might be better served in general to be small quick and camouflaged, their physical traits have been dominated by what is good for individual pea-cocks. The reproductive success engendered by bright flashy tails has overwhelmed what might be thought of as good for the group as a whole.

Likewise, in all of human history, there has been discovered only one effective antidote to error. That antidote (more of an anodyne, actually) is

LETTERS

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criticism. Mutual, adversarial, open, cantankerous. Criticism allows mistakes to be exposed before they are set in motion. Anyone who thinks today’s society is especially error prone has no sense of perspective re: how incredibly successful we’ve been at mistake-avoidance, or how complex are the incredible tasks we’ve set ourselves which no prior civilization ever tried — (e.g. universal justice & quixotic, high-tech battles to counteract every ill effect of bad luck.) The media is filled with mistakes we almost made, but which are more often than not caught in time, or modified, as a result of criticism.

Alas, criticism is the one non-physical thing which human beings find almost as painful to receive as torture. It is human nature to avoid it, suppress it. Leaders hate it, even when they claim otherwise. Kings have always crushed it.

Look at all the mistakes that fill human history, you can see that what was good for the individual king — suppression — nearly always overwhelmed what was good for society — encouragement of adversarial debate. Only recently has the latter become so institutionalized that it has become the norm. Coincidentally, only recently has libertarianism flowered.

Now here’s the point. No one can tell in advance which criticism is right. There is only one way to ensure we will always get the maximum of useful criticism, and that is to treat freedom of speech AS IF it were sacred, fundamental, holy, inalienable! Only when there is clearly too much of it can we ever be sure we’re getting enough. Only when imbeciles, politically-correct doofuses and Limbaughs get podiums are we able to say that our anti-error immune system is up and running.

(Indeed, there is evidence that it has lately metastasized into a modern fetish of distrust that exceeds any error-

correcting need in today’s society. But that’s another topic.)

Some insist on purist definitions such as “anything goes, so long as you do no harm”. To these folks I respond by asking where such a rule is founded anywhere in biology or in the long history of human interactions on this planet? It sounds elegant, and I’m willing to include it in discussions of what kind of creatures we would like to become. But in the near term I’d rather base my libertarianism on the way the world works. It’s less self-righteous and far more convincing, while leading to the same conclusion — freedom must be preserved.

With best regards, David Brin brin@alumni.caltech.edu

[…] it makes little sense to defend Freedom of Speech on purely intellectual grounds.

I’m not sure to what I extent I agree with you. Certainly I hold to a pragmatic form of libertarianism in that I believe the principles can ultimately be justified only by their results. However, I don’t see that this means we shouldn’t make generalizations and principles. If, by “intellectual grounds” you mean views such as Murray Rothbard’s natural rights position, then I concur. I prefer to ground libertarian rights in a kind of principled pragmatism. Much better than the natural rights view is the contractarian/rational choice approach (such as used by Jan Narveson in The Libertarian Idea and by David Gauthier in Morals By Agreement — reviewed last issue). When done properly, such an approach is grounded in what works, i.e., by looking at actual human behavior.

We call it sacred and fundamental, yet no other human civilization agreed with this rather

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pushy statement.

Most libertarians don’t seem to regard free speech as a fundamental right. As I suggested in my reply to Platt, such rights are derived from and defined in terms of more general property rights.

Likewise, in all of human history, there has been discovered only one effective antidote to error. That antidote (more of an anodyne, actually) is criticism.

I thoroughly agree. People have a hard time accepting criticism, even though it’s vital to growth and improvement. I find this such an important issue that I presented a paper dealing with it at EXTRO¹ (“Pancritical Rationalism: An Extropic Metacontext for Memetic Progress.”) As our resources and capabilities grow, I anticipate Extropy Institute focusing heavily on finding ways to increase our ability to be critical and to accept criticism.

(Indeed, there is evidence that it has lately metastasized into a modern fetish of distrust that exceeds any error-correcting need in today’s society. But that’s another topic.)

The problem is that few people are any good at appropriate criticism. They are over-ready to distrust in some ways while far too resistant to criticizing and questioning in other areas. Someone who distrusts big corporations or the government may blindly believe in a religious dogma or other forms of propaganda. We all need to become better at understanding our own complex motivations in order to see where we need to become more, less, or more intelligently critical. Thank you for your thoughts. — Max More more@usc.edu more@extropy.org

Physics of Immortality

by Frank Tipler

Date: 21 Jan 95 21:28:01 EST From: Dave Lindbergh 70310.267@compuserve.com

Re Michael Price’s review of Frank Tipler’s Physics of Immortality, I too

read the book as well as Tipler & Barrow’s earlier The Anthropic Cosmological Principle.

I agree with almost all of Price’s comments on the book, good and bad, but I disagree about its ultimate worth. Tipler’s vision of the Omega Point is far from proven, yet it is a vision of what we, residents of the universe, might ultimately achieve.

We can take it as our project to realize Tipler’s dream, to colonize the universe with intelligent life, to make the universe an ever- better place to live. We can choose, ultimately, to build “angels”, resurrect all intelligent creatures, and to offer them a free and challenging existence, rather than an infinity of hells “tortured forever by sadistic virtual demons”.

Tipler’s logic may well be circular, his dream of heaven wishful. But it may be within our power to make it real, eventually. Perhaps we can take his vision a goal, rather than as prophecy.

I’m less interested in speculating about the future than in making it happen. We, the people alive today, make the future happen. We choose the future by our actions. Tipler’s vision is a possible one, worth pursuing. We may not succeed, but we might, and we can try.

—Dave Lindbergh david.lindbergh@itu.ch

From: Hal hfinney@shell.portal.com Date: Thu, 12 Jan 1995 23:03:08 -0800

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This book was reviewed pretty unfavorably in the recent Extropy by Mike Price. I agree with many of Mike’s specific points, but I think the book has more to offer than he suggests.

Specifically, I think the picture Tipler paints of the future of life in the universe is very ambitious. He has life engulfing the universe and taking charge of virtually every aspect of energy and matter. The very shape of the universe itself is controlled. Apparently, left to itself, the universe would collapse wrong, starving life of energy. However, living beings should be able

to use the “butterfly effect” to get massive results from tiny changes. In this way the universe can be made to collapse just right to ensure continual energy availability.

This vision is highly Extropian in terms of its optimism, expansion, and the transformation which living things will have to undergo. I also think, although Tipler does not emphasize this, that during the collapse phase life will be faced with ongoing challenges as we move to higher and higher energy regimes, without limit. This would suggest a future of unlimited challenge and change rather than eventual success and stasis.

Some aspects of his picture can be criticized from the extropian perspective. The actions needed to control the shape of the universe would require considerable cooperation between the actions of living things at widely separated parts of the universe. This might suggest a non-extropian uniformity and enforced order. However, my understanding of the physics is that centralized control would be difficult or impossible due to speed of light considerations. Rather, the various living beings must be essentially autonomous, cooperating out of rational self-interest in a true spontaneous order.

Mike points out that Tipler’s ideas, like other resurrection models, do not promote individual action. This is legitimate but I still feel that the book will introduce many people to the idea that life may become so powerful that we will be like gods. This will come as a revelation to most readers.

The book does provide some interesting information about religions beyond the simple Christianity we are mostly exposed to in the West. Tipler goes to some lengths to compare conditions in the far future when life is virtually omnipotent to various religions’ views of the powers of God. It is not too surprising to me that he finds many similarities; religions are largely based on wish fulfillment, and in the future we will have the power to make our wishes come true directly. In the process, though, Tipler does say a lot about religions that I had not known.

In sum, although the religious aspects of the book may irritate many Extropians, I think it will be a good

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introduction to many ambitious and Extropian ideas for less experienced readers.

Hal Finney

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From: Hal hfinney@shell.portal.com Date: Sat, 14 Jan 1995 17:14:13 -0800

Robin Hanson:

Tipler is optimistic, but I’m not sure he’s ambitious. In his view, the reason the future holds so much promise is because the laws of physics almost directly require us to succeed. No need to work toward expansion, transformation, or even long personal life – physics requires unbounded expansion which will resurrect us all in simulations. “God” (embodied in the laws of physics) will make sure all our wishes are fulfilled.

I did not read Tipler’s logic in quite this way, although I didn’t find it com- pletely satisfactory either. Tipler seemed to say, assume that life will exist and grow forever. On its face this is a moderately optimistic and slightly extropian view, but it does not appear too extravagant. However, Tipler then shows that the challenges facing this assumption are very great: heat death if the universe is open, which he does not think can be overcome, or collapse to singularity if the universe is closed, which has its own problems. It turns out that in order for life to survive at all, it must become nearly omnipotent, with all the tremendous powers that he describes.

The problem that I had with this was not so much the resurrection aspect, where I agree with most of what Mike and Robin have said, but rather I felt that Tipler had put one over on me. The original assumption that life would last forever sounded reasonable enough. But I didn’t realize at the time just what I was being asked to buy into. If he had started off saying, let’s assume that life

will become omnipotent, that is something most people would be a lot slower to agree to. But the thrust of his book is to show that these two points are equivalent. If life is to succeed at all, it must become God.

You can argue with Tipler’s physics, as Mike does in his review, but to the extent that Tipler is right then this does tell us something interesting and perhaps unexpected about the universe.

It is interesting, BTW, that Tipler has tried to create testable predictions from his theories. He says some things about the Higgs boson or some such particle and something about the Hubble constant. There was recently some surprising measurement of the Hubble value (recall that it showed that the universe was younger than thought, possibly younger than globular clus- ters). I tried to figure out whether this value was consistent with Tipler’s theory, and as best as I could tell, it was not. Tipler needs to have the universe older than these recent observations would show, as I read it. However my physics is pretty rusty and I could be mistaken.

Hal

From: price@price.demon.co.uk

(Michael Clive Price)

Date: Sun, 15 Jan 1995 09:35:01 GMT

Hal writes:

It is interesting, BTW, that Tipler has tried to create testable predictions from his theories. He says some things about […] the Hubble constant. There was recently some surprising measurement of the Hubble value

Yes, some recent observations by the appropriately named Hubble space telescope (and some land-based observatories) indicate that the universe is expanding faster than had been thought. (Observations of the Virgo cluster of galaxies – which is a crucial yardstick for other, greater distances – place it nearer than previously sus- pected. We know their recession velocity from the red-shift, so by shrinking the scale of our extra-local- cluster neighbours we get a higher Hubble constant, since the Hubble value

is a measure of recession speed/ distance.)

This new value for Hubble (of approx. 80 km/(sec*megaparsec)), if confirmed, would cause a bit of a minor upset for some astronomers since if we project the expansion backwards, with the new value, we find that the big-bang is too recent. As Hal says:

(recall that it showed that the universe was younger than thought, possibly younger than globular clusters).

And the globular cluster ages are fairly well established. There is a way out of this – the only way I’m aware of, which I also (luckily) quite like – which is to revive an early idea of Einstein’s, after a fashion, and introduce an extra, quite natural, term into his equations. This term is called the cosmological constant (I won’t go into the details) which accounts for the higher expansion rate which is driven by both matter and the intrinsic energy of the vacuum (the cosmological constant) and automati- cally pushes the big-bang further back in time. It also accounts for some other long-standing astro-puzzles, like missing mass. There is no missing mass, just the cosmological constant acting as if the universe was pervaded by extra mass-energy. (Missing mass is distinct from dark matter, which is matter we know to exist from the rotational dynamics of galaxies, but which is non-luminous.)

I tried to figure out whether this value was consistent with Tipler’s theory, and as best as I could tell, it was not.

That’s right. Tipler predicts H <= 45 (in above units), whilst the latest observations give H = 80 +/- 17. Even worse, for Tipler’s “theory” which requires re-collapse, is that this high H says that the universe will expand for ever, whether or not it is open or spatially closed. As the universe expands the expansion is increasingly driven by the cosmological constant which is not diluted away by the expansion, unlike ordinary matter.

Michael Price

price@price.demon.co.uk

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