[p2p-research] Review: Rational Optimist

[Ryan]

  Sent to you by Ryan via Google Reader: Review: Rational Optimist via
Overcoming Bias by Robin Hanson on 5/22/10

On Thursday Matt Ridley presented his new book The Rational Optimist at
CATO, and I commented (vid available). Here’s roughly what I said:

The formula for a successful popular non-fiction book these days is a
sandwich: meat between bread slices. The bread is a general thesis that
can be explained in a paragraph, with both a normative part to let
readers take sides, and a positive part to let readers display
sophistication. The meat is 400 pages of entertaining and
vaguely-related but mostly unnecessary detail. Most readers would be
overwhelmed if all this material were actually required to understand
the thesis, but would also be insulted by a 40 page book.

Ridley achieves this formula well, and his meat is unusually dense and
informative; I learned lots. But since reviews are supposed to focus on
the bread, so let’s go there.

Ridley’s positive thesis is that specialization and trade among
non-relatives was the key driver of innovation that let humans advance
far beyond other animals. We have good evidence of trade over 100 mile
distances about 80,000 years ago, and it may go back much further. I
completely agree with Matt here; trade was a key. And since people tend
to think that whatever made humans unique must be great, since we
humans are of course great, this should lead folks to think trade is
great.

Ridley attributes the farming and industry growth speedups to humans
recruiting more living species via domestication, and then recruiting
dead species via fossil fuels. I instead attribute those speedups to
percolation transitions that increased network scales, first for trade
and then for expert talk.

Ridley’s normative thesis is optimism, that things have long been
getting better, and this will long continue. While I mostly agree,
Ridley overstates his case. For example:

Knowledge … is genuinely limitless. There is not even a theoretical
possibility of exhausting the supply of ideas, discoveries, and
inventions. This is the biggest cause of all for my optimism. … The
combinatorial vastness of the universe of possible ideas dwarfs the
puny universe of physical things. (p.276)

Well possibilities may be inexhaustible, but their value is not. Within
a million years we’ll find pretty much all combos that give value to
creatures like us, and for trillions of years thereafter they’ll be
little net gain. Balking at paying large costs to avoid small risks of
climate change catastrophe, Ridley says:

The trouble with this reasoning is that it applies to all risks, not
just climate change …. Why are we not spending large sums stockpiling
food caches in cities so that people can survive the risks from North
Korean missiles, rogue robots, alien invaders, nuclear war, pandemics,
super-volcanos? (p. 333)

But we should spend such sums. Just as we get more careful with our
kids as we live longer, the more optimistic we are about our long term
future, the more we should spend now to safeguard it.

Ridley is also too tempted to conflate optimism about the total power
of our civilization with about optimism about individual quality of
life. While he accepts that totalitarian governments have at times
reduced quality of life, and may do so again, he doesn’t directly
acknowledge that farming reduced life quality, via wars, slavery,
nutrition constraints, etc. And I envision that, within a century or
so, new em tech will allow far more rapid population growth, reducing
per capita wealth.

Overall though, Ridley is right: optimism is rational, even if uncool.

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