Тег: Technologies

The Illusion of a Satiated Demographic Sunset: Why There Will Be No One to Fix Robots in a Half-Empty World

We always say that if you regulate every step, burden a person with a million prohibitions, licenses, and fines for every sneeze, people will simply stop having children. A human is a biological being, and animals in cramped cages do not reproduce. But the response we get is simply, “So be it; there are too many people as it is, and if there are fewer, there will be no traffic jams, nature will cleanse itself, and silence and beauty will prevail.” Usually, we counter with economics: infrastructure will collapse, the solidarity pension system will burst, and markets will shrink to the size of a street stall. That is exactly what will happen. But behind this facade hides something far more terrifying—technological regression and the risk of a slow but certain extinction of humanity as a species.
 
Population reduction enthusiasts stubbornly see a human only as an “extra mouth,” a “source of carbon footprint,” and a walking problem. But a human is not just a mouth, but also a brain. It is the entrepreneurial spirit, ingenuity, and labor. So let’s break down in simple terms why the dream of a “small, cozy humanity” is a most dangerous illusion.
 
First, rare talents. Geniuses capable of driving fundamental science do not appear by government decree. They are born statistically rarely—roughly one in a million. If you have a population of 8 billion, you have a pool of eight thousand potential Einsteins, von Neumanns, and Turings. Cut the population in half, and you cut that pool by exactly 50%. Cut it even more, and breakthrough ideas will become many times fewer. And yet, it is these individuals who create the technologies that later feed and heal everyone.
 
Second, the specialization trap. Modern scientific and technological progress relies on an incredibly deep division of labor. In the 18th century, an erudite person could understand mechanics, botany, and philosophy. But today, the low-hanging fruit of science has already been picked. To move the edge of knowledge even a millimeter, thousands of ultra-specialists are needed. One person cannot design a lithographic scanner for chips, synthesize a molecule for a rare cancer, and build a thermonuclear reactor all at once. The larger the society, the more unique, niche professions it can afford. A small society, even if everyone has three higher education degrees, is physically incapable of maintaining millions of complex competencies simultaneously.
 
Thirdly, economies of scale and technological accessibility. Developing a new processor or medication costs billions of dollars. In a global market of billions of people, these colossal costs are spread thin—resulting in penny-priced pills and affordable smartphones. Shrink the market, and the most complex projects will cease to be profitable. Businesses simply will not invest in something they have no one to sell to. First, niche drugs for rare diseases will disappear, then specialized equipment, and eventually entire industries. The state, of course, will attempt to save the situation with “subsidies,” but taking money from a shrinking economy is a path toward an even faster collapse.
 
Fourthly, knowledge does not live in books. Blueprints without a living chain of succession are just dead terabytes of data. Complex technology lives only in the hands of practitioners: when a gray-haired engineer passes on implicit skills to a young graduate student right at the machine tool or in the laboratory. If one generation is replaced by a much smaller one, the chains break. Humanity has lost technologies more than once—from the recipe for Roman concrete to the ability to quickly reproduce the rocket engines of the moon program.
 
And finally, we cannot simply stand still. Nature does not take pauses for a “cozy life.” Bacteria mutate and develop resistance to antibiotics. The climate presents surprises, infrastructure decays, and space threats have not gone anywhere. For civilization to simply maintain its current level of security, it must run as fast as it can forward—discovering new energy sources, creating new materials, and new medicines. If we slow down the scientific and technological progress due to a shortage of brains, we are not staying in place, but beginning to slowly slide into a new dark age.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Technologies are born in garages, not in barracks: the truth about the role of the MIC

Let’s talk about a common myth that everyone has surely heard: “without military development, we would be without the internet, smartphones, and GPS.” In other words, it is believed that war and the defense industry are the main drivers of technical progress. But is that actually the case?

Take the internet, for example. We are told it was supposedly invented by the Pentagon in case of a nuclear war, but the facts do not support this. In reality, ARPANET (the ancestor of the modern internet) was originally a civilian project handled by various American universities; it was simply funded by the military budget. The military provided the money, but all the work was done by university scientists and programmers. And the famous HTTP protocol, which we are using right now to read this post, was actually devised in Europe by physicists at CERN—purely for the convenience of exchanging scientific articles. The army had absolutely nothing to do with it!

What about GPS? Yes, in this case, the military really did launch satellites so that missiles would land more accurately. But why did GPS become available to everyone? Because civilians turned a military toy into a “people’s” technology. President Reagan opened GPS to everyone after the tragedy with a Korean airliner to improve flight safety, and ultimately, civilian developers transformed the navigation system from a military secret into a popular app for finding the nearest pizzeria.

And do you know who created the first microprocessor? No, not generals or intelligence agencies—it was developed by Intel for a calculator. Meanwhile, the army was conducting its own classified developments that the world wouldn’t have seen for at least another 30 years if not for civilian engineers. While the military was worrying about how not to reveal secrets, the market was already fully utilizing commercial processors.

Space? You would think that here, the military is definitely ahead of the rest of the world. Yes, rockets were first created as weapons, but real space achievements happened mainly thanks to NASA’s civilian programs, and today, private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin. While the army argues over the best way to shoot from space, Elon Musk has already launched a rocket that returns on its own.

Why aren’t the military always the coolest innovators? Because for the military, the main priority is reliability. They prefer proven technologies and avoid risks. Try suggesting experimental equipment on a battlefield to a general—he will look at you as if you are crazy. Entrepreneurs and scientists, however, are not afraid of risks; that is why most real breakthroughs happen in Silicon Valley garages, laboratories, and universities, rather than in the classified basements of intelligence agencies.

The history of the USSR is a vivid example of how relying exclusively on the defense industry leads to technical backwardness in everyday life. Remember the joke: a Soviet microwave is so reliable that you can hide in it during a nuclear strike—because it is a secret defense device weighing half a ton. A civilian economy handles innovation better because competition and freedom create powerful incentives for breakthroughs. Military technologies usually only catch up to what has already been created by civilians.

By the way, if you think the army funds fundamental science, you are mistaken again. The military needs guaranteed solutions here and now, not research that will yield a result in 30 years, which may not even be suitable for combat. Fundamental research is conducted by universities and private laboratories. They are the ones giving the world quantum computers, new medicines, and the materials of the future. The army simply takes ready-made technologies off the shelf.

Another example: IBM, Apple, and Google register thousands of patents every year, while defense departments register only a handful. Commercial companies compete in innovation, whereas military competition is often limited to budget tenders, where the main thing is not quality, but friendship with the right people in ministries. Therefore, when someone tells you that progress is impossible without war, remind them: the true driving force of humanity is peaceful curiosity, creative freedom, and normal market competition, not missiles and tanks.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

The future belongs to ideas incomprehensible to the stationary bandit

Voluntarist, Bitarch

When a person adheres to certain views regarding the social order, desires specific social changes, and especially engages in practical activities aimed at their popularization and implementation, they may encounter certain risks and threats. I think it is unnecessary to remind you that oppositional views are very often persecuted by the established political power. Even in fairly liberal and democratic societies of the Western world, human rights and freedoms are still limited, and views that do not align with the government agenda are suppressed. And what can be said about non-liberal and non-democratic societies? In them, one can receive severe punishment, or even lose one’s life, simply for expressing an opinion that does not coincide with the “official” point of view.

Activity that questions the established social system is obviously dangerous and risky. But does this problem apply to absolutely all such activity? Let’s look at a few striking examples that allowed it to be successfully avoided.

One such example is the emergence and spread of the internet. This led to previously unseen informational freedom, the effective uniting of people sharing the same interests, and the free organization of various activities, including those aimed at achieving social changes. A very important role in the formation of a free internet specifically was played by the fact that stationary bandits (states) simply underestimated its potential. Many conservative “experts” in the past were extremely skeptical of the internet and believed that it would not have a significant impact on social and economic life.

Imagine what would have happened if governments had understood the potential of the internet from the start. They would surely not have allowed such freedom, introducing many laws regulating its operation long before its wide distribution. Perhaps the creation of any internet resources would have been subject to direct regulation and licensing by government agencies. Also, internet providers would have been required from the beginning to technically design the network’s operation in a way that prevented the emergence and functioning of resources not approved by the government.

Of course, nothing of the sort happened. Governments seriously began to regulate the internet only when access to it was already in the hands of almost every person, countless resources had been created within it, and it had become an integral part of economic activity. They and their “experts” turned out to be fools, unable to understand a fundamentally new informational tool.

A similar story happened with cryptocurrencies. States explicitly forbid using anything as a medium of exchange and payment other than the money they themselves issue. But initially, cryptocurrencies were barely perceived as money by anyone; they were treated as a toy, a diversion for a small number of “geeks.” And only when they acquired huge scales did governments undertake their regulation. Most likely, if governments had realized the potential of cryptocurrencies from the start, they would have simply introduced laws banning any such means. Now, it is too late to introduce a complete and abrupt ban.

One can conclude that it is safest to participate in the promotion and implementation of those ideas aimed at achieving social changes which no governments will initially take seriously. And such activity has the best chance of actually changing the world, since governments, due to their own lack of understanding and lack of interest, will not ban it or punish the people associated with it.

Perhaps those who are still engaged in activity that is quite clear and absolutely comprehensible to stationary bandits should switch to other ideas that are underestimated by them despite their enormous potential? For example, such an idea could be the complete eradication of violence as a tool for achieving any goals and as a method of interaction between people, which is what is promoted on this channel.