Dear folks,

Re: (essay contest) How should humanity steer the future?
Here's my own submission to the contest, pending acceptance.

  TITLE   An end to steer by, and a means

  ABSTRACT
     Claiming that humanity has an essential end in the cosmos, I
     propose a means of attaining it.  The limit of light speed is
     small enough, I argue, and the interstellar distances large
     enough, that together they form a barrier to extinction events;
     life can radiate across that barrier (just), but death cannot.
     Assuming a rational, purposeful morality and a supreme valuation
     on reason, I deduce (M0) that morality must purpose the endless
     continuity of rational being.  This becomes the material end to
     steer by.  The formal means to this end I then derive by
     analysis: (M1) that morality relates personal action to a
     universally collective end; and (M2) that it promotes a maximum
     of personal freedom compatible with equal freedoms for all.  From
     these 3 principles of a moral theory, I proceed to elaborate the
     corresponding practices, beginning with the present.  Modern
     society is regulated by laws and other text-based norms.
     Therefore the key capability at present is to compose consensus
     texts without limiting anyone's freedom of expression.  I
     describe 3 inventions that together would enable this:
     recombinant text, transitive voting and vote pipes.  The
     combination I call a 'guideway'.  I explain how a network of norm
     and election guideways, if introduced to society, would engage
     with its pre-existing legislative, electoral and other decision
     systems to form a primitive steering mechanism.  This would
     immediately generate a demand for consensus on the overall
     course, including our ultimate origin and destination.  I propose
     to meet this demand by introducing a further guideway - namely a 
     myth-making, or 'mythopoeic' overguideway - to complete the means
     of steering.  Recalling the claimed, material end, I conclude    
     that the future of humanity is necessarily of mythic         
     construction.  The essential, material practice of rational being
     is the perpetual telling and retelling of its own, immortal myth.

  FULL TEXT   http://zelea.com/project/autonomy/a/end/end.pdf

  AUTHOR
     ... a software engineer in Toronto specializing in collaborative
     social media.  His current work is based on project Votorola.   


I'd welcome critical comments,

-- 
Michael Allan
 
Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
http://zelea.com/


> Deadline: April 18, 2014
> http://www.fqxi.org/community/essay
> 
> Dystopic visions of the future are common in literature and film,
> while optimistic ones are more rare. This contest encourages us to
> avoid potentially self-fulfilling prophecies of gloom and doom and to
> think hard about how to make the world better while avoiding potential
> catastrophes.
> 
> Our ever-deepening understanding of physics has enabled technologies
> and ways of thinking about our place in the world that have
> dramatically transformed humanity over the past several hundred
> years. Many of these changes have been difficult to predict or
> control — but not all.
> 
> In this contest we ask how humanity should attempt to steer its own
> course in light of the radically different modes of thought and
> fundamentally new technologies that are becoming relevant in the
> coming decades.
> 
> Possible topics or sub-questions include, but are not limited to:
> 
>    * What is the best state that humanity can realistically achieve?
> 
>    * What is your plan for getting us there? Who implements this plan?
> 
>    * What technology (construed broadly to include practices and
>      techniques) does your plan rely on?  What are the risks of those
>      technologies?  How can those risks be mitigated?
> 
> (Note: While this topic is broad, successful essays will not use this
> breadth as an excuse to shoehorn in the author's pet topic, but will
> rather keep as their central focus the theme of how humanity should
> steer the future.)
> 
> Additionally, to be consonant with FQXi's scope and goals, essays
> should be sure to touch on issues in physics and cosmology, or closed
> related fields, such as astrophysics, biophysics, mathematics,
> complexity and emergence, and the philosophy of physics.