MM notes, chapter 7 to the conclusion

finishing my review of A Theory of Everyone

This is my last post on Michael Muthukrishna’s A Theory of Everyone. It covers his forward-looking and prescriptive chapters.

MM writes,

What destroys the high scales of cooperation in a peaceful, prosperous society is lower scales of cooperation. The president who steals from the people to enrich her family; the mid-level manager who gives jobs and other perks to his friends. These temptations are ever present, but when there are not enough jobs to go around, when the world feels more zero-sum, we enter a vicious feedback loop that incentivizes these lower scales of cooperation.

Culture varies across populations. Using answers to the World Values Survey,

the most culturally close countries to the US are Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain. Singapore is culturally close to the US as well. . .The most culturally distant countries are Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and Indonesia.

MM describes the American approach to immigration in very idealized terms.

Rather than encouraging assimilation to a pre-existing culture, the melting pot is supposed to promote a new, mixed, American identity drawing on all people from around the world. The idea is that no single culture dominates but all contribute to the creation of a uniquely American culture.

Elsewhere, particularly in Europe, there is considerable tension between the pre-existing culture and immigrant groups. My concern with the United States is that the left holds the pre-existing culture in contempt. The left no longer supports the melting-pot model. Instead, it supports what MM calls the mosaic model, in which cultures are to be kept separate.

In describing China, MM writes,

By no definition is it a liberal democracy. But the desire for freedom is also not a human universal. Desires for food, safety, and a better life for our children are.

…At the same time, liberal democracies don’t seem to scale well to large, diverse, online socially networked populations

…Americans may be horrified if they realize that their approach is much like China’s CCP, where change can only happen within the party, but with two parties instead of one.

How can democracy improve? MM writes,

Instead of trying to design the future of governance or democracy, we must use the principles of democracy itself to help it evolve. But that requires radical diversity combined with meritocratic selection.

MM has positive things to say about start-up cities. But to me, start-up cities are a designed solution. Real cities evolve organically.

Even more radically, MM argues for what he calls programmable politics. As he points out, the ideas here closely mirror those of Balaji Srinivasan, whose book I reviewed skeptically.

MM has an entire chapter on fighting inequality, called “Shattering the Glass Ceiling.” It again reflects his optimism that individual deficits of character or ability can be altered by cultural institutions.

MM’s next chapter is called “Triggering a Creative Explosion.” In it, he writes,

science works because we commit to a method of discovery, there is agreement on what counts as evidence, and, most importantly, we are incentivized to show others that they’re wrong. It’s a collective act that slowly converges on the truth. But our findings can only be trusted if we are free to find the opposite to whatever current political sentiments suggest is the right answer.

Jonathan Rauch dwells on this at length in The Constitution of Knowledge. See my review.

MM ends this chapter sounding a bugle.

Our species needs the next Industrial Revolution—a true energy revolution. For that, we need a creative explosion. Policies that ensure that information is freely transmitted and that successful outcomes are rewarded without overly punishing failure lest we harm diversity and risk-taking give us the best chance of triggering that creative explosion. One place where it is essential we get it right is where the Second Enlightenment was born: the Internet

A few pages later, MM writes,

Those who design popular social media platforms and AI tools have incredible power to shape the software of our minds and therefore our societies…These decisions currently do not reflect a theory of everyone and the ways in which we evaluate who to learn from and what to learn. But by marrying an understanding of cultural evolution and engineering design, we can use the tremendous power of the Internet and social media to enhance the brilliance of our collective brain.

Long ago, I got tired of people saying how they think social networks should work. If you have a better idea, build it.

Before concluding, MM has a chapter called “Becoming Brighter.” It has one section that expresses his optimism that we can make humans smarter with better education methods. The other section concerns the potential for artificial intelligence to help humans. Personally, I think that unless artificial intelligence can be deployed to radically improve education, I see little hope that education will make a difference in human intelligence.

In his conclusion, MM writes,

As energy return on investment and energy availability continue to fall to precipitous levels, our civilizations are quickly losing the excess energy necessary to overcome the danger we find ourselves in.

…But there is reason for hope. Our everyday experience tells us that what we see online, hear on the radio, or read in newspapers is not representative of most people. In real life, people don’t really hate each other than much. On most topics, people are ambivalent, apathetic to all but a handful of issues that directly affect their everyday existence, waiting instead for what is required to reinforce their group identity. Most people are kind and cooperative at a scale that would surprise our ancestors. Before those norms change, we must harness them [along the lines of the preceding chapters].

MM believes that new energy discoveries are necessary and sufficient to move us close to utopia. He sees the changes he proposes as a means to that end.

I did not find this the latter half of the book satisfying. Some of MM’s ideas strike me as vague, on the order of “we need to get better at ____.” When he offers more specific suggestions, they strike me as unlikely to achieve their desired aims.

Regarding culture, I think that the difference is that I do not share MM’s faith in the goodness of humanity. MM seems to treat today’s society as a skilled athlete that just needs an upgrade in terms of training and conditioning. I see it as more like a cancer patient whose recovery is in grave doubt.