The Present Through the Lens of the Future – Part 5 – Expanding ‘I’

Imagine it is 500 years in the future and there is a student whatever-the-equivalent of ‘reading’ whatever-is-the-equivalent of a ‘book’ of history^*Given that ‘history is written by the victors’ and the narrative recorded in the ‘book’ will thus depend on the path society has taken, we are necessarily predicting the future when we seek to answer the question.  But absurd idealizations of objectivity aside, how might the present moment be viewed? about our present. What will be considered the grand challenge of our time^*One boundary condition is necessarily that there is someone to ask the question, thus some degree of ‘victory condition’ must have been met (from an existential perspective).  So in answering the question, perhaps it is impossible to avoid the bias of our own perspective on what must be true if we are indeed going to survive.?

The contenders:

• Climate Change
• Finite Resources
• A World Without Growth
• Evolving Our Values
• Expanding ‘I’
• Coping with Acceleration
• Digital Life
• Polarization vs. Homogeneity

Expanding ‘I’

Valuing Ourselves, Society, and the Future

Another interpretation of ‘climate change as a symptom’ relates to our relative valuation of ourselves, the collective species, and the future.

Let’s look at the concept of an ‘externality’ – an impact on a system external to the source of agency. Climate change is described as a negative externality because the emissions that one member of society is responsible for may incur costs to other individuals. The locus of agency is the individual in this definition.

Climate is also an externality in the context of a broader definition of the source of agency. The society of the present (comprising individuals alive today) is choosing to continue to produce emissions that will incur costs to the society of the future (at least in part comprising individuals that are not alive today).

Perhaps our grand challenge is in the definition of what comprises ‘external’ – of the level of collective that we consider having agency.

At the present, we define the unit of agency as a single human. It’s obvious why – this is the level at which we directly feel a sense of ‘I’ and a sense of agency. However ‘I’ contains a whole lot of sub-entities (the 3 * 10¹³ cells in our body, the 4 * 10¹³ bacteria, etc.). We don’t hold our cells accountable for our actions, despite the fact that we are an emergent property of the pattern of interaction of these entities (other than the occasional neurological diagnosis where we blame a part of the brain for our abnormal behavior). But is the the primary experience of our existence any less arbitrary of a level at which to define ‘agency’ than others? Is a physician that fouls up a brain surgery because she hasn’t slept in 24 hours to blame, or is the hospital and the shift policy to blame? Or is the competitive nature of healthcare that requires hospitals to seek efficiencies in surgeon deployment in this country to blame? The answer is less clear.

What is more alive – an ant, or an ant colony? Ants have some modicum of processing power, and they each can be seen to be acting as independent agents. But ant colonies exhibit fantastically complex behavior that exceeds the complexity that can be modeled by an individual citizen of the colony. If we zoom out, sometimes it is easier to view the behavior of an ant colony as evidently comprising of agency than that of a single ant.

We are eminently more complex than an individual ant (and perhaps our own brains have sufficient modeling power to emulate a universal machine), but perhaps our society is, like ant colonies, a superspecies organism that exhibits yet higher complexity and deserves its own sense of agency.

One of the most famous studies in the history of social science is the ‘marshmallow test.’ It goes something like this:

The subject (typically a child) is told ‘you can have one marshmallow now, or you can have two marshmallows in 15 minutes.’ The first marshmallow is left in front of the subject during the 15 minute test period.

This test of delayed gratification supposedly correlates remarkably to various metrics of success and achievement later in life. It requires a theory of mind for oneself, a sufficient sense that one’s future self will have a preference for marshmallows not entirely dissimilar from one’s present self, and a sufficient valuation of said future self relative to said present self. Notable of the test is that there are no externalities – the only person affected is oneself (we’ll avoid the philosophical morass of discussing whether future selves and present selves are the same self).

If we’re held responsible as individuals, the analogy of the marshmallow test for climate would go something like:

The subject is told ‘you can have one marshmallow now, or you and another person who you’ve never met can have one marshmallow in 50 years.’ The first marshmallow is left in front of the subject during the 50 year test period.

Turns out, not as many folks are willing to wait under these conditions. The outcomes improve slightly if we make the situation a bit more personal:

The subject is told ‘you can have one marshmallow now, or you and your future child can have one marshmallow in 50 years.’ The first marshmallow is left in front of the subject during the 50 year test period.

Yet, still we don’t seem to be making the choice to wait for the second marshmallow.

But what if the level at which we took responsibility, and measured utility, wasn’t at the individual level, but at the societal level? Then the analogy would be:

The subject (a species) is told ‘you can have one marshmallow now, or you can have two marshmallows in 50 years.’ The first marshmallow is left in front of the subject during the 50 year test period.

Forgive the absurd analogies. The point is – perhaps our grand challenge is to evolve into a species-level superorganism that takes responsibility, and defines agency, at the species level. Then maybe, just maybe, we could all be the kid that waits for two marshmallows.

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