Тег: Progress

Why the sated is no comrade to the hungry, and technology is driven by those whose asses are on fire

Do you know what a cozy chair at Stanford, a patent for 20 years ahead, and a lifetime grant from the NSF have in common? Exactly—the desire to change nothing. Why bother? The bread is already buttered, topped with caviar, the competition has been squeezed out by copyright laws and NDAs, and any new idea is a risk that your beautiful, multi-year body of work might become obsolete even before it hits the pages of Nature. Therefore, when yet another overfed professor curls his lip at a new technology, it’s not “weighted scientific skepticism,” but simply the instinct to preserve a comfortable spot.

A case that should be tattooed on the forehead of every skeptic: EUV lithography. In the mid-1980s, Japanese engineer Hiroo Kinoshita from NTT became the first in the world to produce an image using extreme ultraviolet light and reported it at a meeting of the Japan Society of Applied Physics in 1986. The reaction from the room? To quote Kinoshita himself: “The audience was extremely skeptical. However, my faith did not change.” During the same period at Bell Labs, Aubert Wood and Bill Sylfvast tried to push the same idea in the US—and received an “extremely negative reaction” from reviewers: they claimed that even if every component were assembled, the system would be so complex that its uptime would be “negligibly small.” Now look at 2026. Every chip in your smartphone, every graphics card, every AI accelerator—all of it is made on machines that use the exact same EUV lithography that the mainstreamers laughed at. What would have happened if Kinoshita had listened to his “esteemed colleagues” and gone to teach optics to freshmen?

Now let’s move to the Ukrainian trenches. Remember how back in 2020, serious men from military academies chuckled at the idea of FPV drones? “Toys for children,” “unserious weapons,” “real war is tanks and artillery.” Military science is generally one of the most conservative swamps on the planet—careers there are built over decades, and you certainly don’t get patted on the back for “unserious ideas.” But in 2022, when the AFU faced a question of physical survival, it suddenly turned out that a dirt-cheap FPV drone with a shaped-charge warhead could take out a million-dollar tank. And the conservative soldiers, for whom all this was “not according to regulation” just yesterday, turned enthusiast home-builds into an entire branch of service in a year and a half. Because the alternative was to die. And death is an excellent motivator to cast aside corporate pride and take what works.

The pattern is simple: technology is not pushed forward by those who are “doing fine.” Technology is pushed forward by those who have a choice between “accepting the new” and “dying” (metaphorically or literally). So let’s list some categories of people who are truly desperate:

– Startuppers with no money. They have nothing to lose but their over-commits. That’s why garage teams, not IBM’s R&D departments, give birth to the things that change industries.
– Fighting armies of the weaker side. Ukraine with drones, Mujahideen with Stingers, Finns with Molotov cocktails. The stronger side always has the temptation to “crush with mass,” while the weaker side only has their brains.
– Scientists from the “wrong” countries and institutes. When you can’t get an NSF grant simply because you aren’t from the “right” laboratory, you are forced to make a breakthrough just to be noticed at all. Half of the Nobels in the last 30 years went to people who were first dismissed by the mainstream.
– Patients with incurable diseases. The most desperate drivers of biohacking and DIY medicine. They literally have nothing to lose, so they are the first to test gene therapy from a garage.
– Victims of domestic violence in third-world countries. When you have no option to turn to the police or social services against an abusive father, the covert addition of drugs to food to enhance a violence inhibitor no longer seems like some kind of psychosis.

The conclusion? If you want to see the future—look at those who have no choice. They are the true engine of progress. And the “esteemed experts” will catch up in about 15 years—once the technology can be used to defend another dissertation and they can quietly live until retirement.

P.S. Hiroo Kinoshita, by the way, lived to see it. And let’s hope that he sometimes smiles cunningly while reading ASML’s annual reports.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Science is a method, not a publication in a journal, or why it’s more important to try than to publish

In the comments on our posts, a discussion periodically flares up that deserves its own post. Frankly, we can even thank the skeptic “Sperry UNIVAC,” who constantly comments on our publications, for highlighting the problem so vividly. A classic conflict between two worldviews – institutional and free (or, as you might put it, hacker –) has emerged. The core of the complaint is simple and timeless: “Where’s your notarized printout? Where’s the publication in a peer-reviewed journal? If there’s no article, then there’s no science, and you’re just nobody.”

Let’s take a deep breath and break this down without aggression, from the perspective of common sense and freedom. There’s a dangerous misconception that science only happens when serious guys in white coats gather in an office, write complicated text, send it to other guys, and they put a “APPROVED” stamp on it. However, science is a method, a way of knowing the world through proposing and testing hypotheses. If I mix two chemicals in my garage and get a new molecule, that molecule will exist objectively. It doesn’t care whether I have a diploma, whether an ethics committee approved it, or if respected professor gave it a like. Reality doesn’t require bureaucratic validation.

Appealing to authority is not an argument! Our opponent writes: “I know biologists, I can ask them.” But the history of science is a graveyard of authoritative opinions that shattered against the enthusiasm of practitioners. The Wright brothers didn’t publish preprints before their flight. They fixed bicycles. And the “serious scientists” of that time wrote treatises about the impossibility of heavier-than-air flying machines. Steve Wozniak assembled the first Apple in a garage, not at IBM’s laboratory. If they had waited for review by “equal scholars,” we’d still be riding horses and doing calculations on abacuses.

We, libertarians, believe in spontaneous order and decentralization. We believe that a monopoly on truth is the most harmful of all monopolies. Modern academic science is in deep crisis. Firstly, it’s a reproducibility crisis – countless “peer-reviewed” articles cannot be replicated. Secondly, the influence of politics and grants – scientists often research what they are paid for, not what needs to be researched. Finally, gatekeeping – the system is structured to weed out “outsiders,” even if they have breakthrough ideas.

As for our project, the search for drugs to enhance the mechanism of violence inhibition isn’t being done for a line in a resume or an impact factor (citation index), but rather to solve a problem. Although we don’t have a “body” in the form of an article in Nature (although the experiments we’ve conducted on animals essentially repeat experiments from such articles), we have data, experiments, openness to discussion about substance, not form, and a proposal for anyone to verify what we say – all instructions are available on our website.

Of course, the skeptic is right in one thing: methodology matters. You can’t just drink a smoothie and say “I beat aging.” There needs to be control, a sample, honesty – things we strive for. But demanding that enthusiasts fully comply with the bureaucratic rituals of a large academy is like demanding that an indie game developer follow Ubisoft’s corporate standards.

We live in the age of Open Source. Linus Torvalds released Linux not into a scientific journal, but into a mailing list. And this changed the world. Biocachers today are computer hackers from the 80s. They may call them freaks and marginals. But it’s often in “garages” that what will become mainstream is born. We respect academic science, but we don’t make it an idol. If you value a “game” (an article, a review, a status) – go to the university library. If you value “riding” (searching, trying, failing and finding) – welcome to the biocachers. And better argue about data, dosages, receptors, rather than measuring yourself by degrees and connections.

P.S. Our critic also mentioned Perelman, however the irony is that Grigory Jakovlevich just threw the whole academic community into hell with his rules, prizes, and rituals, publishing a proof simply on the internet. So thanks for the example, he’s playing for us!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

What do Medieval times, Akademgorodok, and Silicon Valley have in common?

Many of you probably think that “science must be free.” But let’s dig a little deeper – why is this important, and why should libertarians especially worry about the growing attempts by the state and politicians to tell scientists what to think and what to teach?

Of course, first and foremost we need to understand that science isn’t just boring guys and gals in laboratories. Science is the engine of freedom and progress. If we allow scientists and teachers to freely think, experiment and even make mistakes, then society wins out in the end.

As an example: when the first universities appeared in the Middle Ages, kings and popes didn’t understand at all what these strange fellows were doing in groups, talking in Latin about some “ideas”. Students and professors of the University of Bologna were so audacious that they wrested the right to self-government from the authorities. As a result, science flourished – and universities became islands of freedom even in gloomy feudal Europe.

Let’s move to the 20th century. The USSR – not the freest place, is it? But during Khrushchev’s thaw, an academic town called Akademgorodok was founded in the Siberian taiga. Scientists were allowed to research things that were forbidden in Moscow. Genetics, banned by Stalin, suddenly came to life, and Akademgorodok became one of the few places where you could freely argue and read banned books. A paradox emerged: a communist state built a tiny libertarian paradise in the middle of the taiga. For a short time – but even brief freedom spawned entire scientific schools of world-level quality.

Today, Silicon Valley is synonymous with innovation. And its formula for success is simple: you take universities (Stanford, Berkeley and others), add lots of freedom and a little bit of capitalism, thoroughly mix it up, and let it steep. The result – a place that attracts millions of talents from all over the world. But now imagine: what if officials or politicians decided which technologies to develop and which to ban for ideological reasons? Most likely, an iPhone would be the size of a brick and called “Gosfon-1” (State Phone – 1).

Now about the sad stuff. Recently, attempts by conservative politicians to interfere with university work have been multiplying around the world. This has already been happening for a long time in the USA, and during Trump’s presidency the situation only worsened, as the federal government doesn’t hesitate to impose its wishes even on world-class universities like Harvard and Columbia, forcing uncomfortable leaders into resignation, or trying to ban foreign students from studying there, which will quite likely lead to a reduction in their budgets and loss of competitiveness. In Russia, the state is simply trying to keep scientists fully under control, considering them rather inconvenient people. As a result, we have censorship and dismissals for views. And those who could be useful to their Motherland are leaving abroad. After the attempted coup in Turkey, Erdogan carried out a “purge”: over 6000 university professors were fired for political disloyalty. Just imagine – an entire university town disappeared within a couple of months.

Why is it important for libertarians to protect science? Because science is a free market of ideas. It’s that very competition that allows us to identify the truth and reject delusions. The more the state interferes in science, the greater the risk of error, because centrally managing knowledge is just as absurd as managing the weather.

What can be done? To support scientists facing pressure and censorship. To demand that the state stop interfering with education. To protect universities’ right to autonomy and self-government. Because freedom of science is not a privilege for scientists – it’s a guarantee of our common progress and well-being!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Around Progress in 80 Days: How Technology is Changing the World Using Only What Already Exists at Hand

I was recently idly watching the film based on Jules Verne’s novel, “Around the World in Eighty Days,” and realized a thought that perfectly fits our picture of the world. What do the gentleman Phileas Fogg and, say, Steve Jobs have in common? It seems like nothing. One is a fictional character from the Victorian era, the other is a real titan of Silicon Valley. But the point is that both pulled off a brilliant trick that’s available to each of us. And they didn’t need endless government grants or major scientific centers for this.

What was Fogg’s genius? Did he invent super-fast steamboats? Build a personal hyperloop? No! This guy didn’t invent anything himself. His bet became possible only because, by 1872, the world was already covered with ready infrastructure. Steamships were running, rails had been laid across America and India, telegraphs were buzzing. All of this was created by different people, different companies, at different times and for different purposes.

What did Fogg do? He simply looked at all these disparate pieces and first saw in them a single system. He didn’t just see “the ship to Suez” and “the train to Calcutta,” but a global transport network that could be “hacked”—that is, used not for its intended purpose (just getting from point A to point B), but for a crazy, ambitious task—flying around the planet on a bet. His breakthrough was in the new combination, not in a new invention. He was, essentially, a brilliant project manager who found synergy in what everyone else had lying under their feet.

And now let’s move to our time. Don’t we see the same thing happening with the greatest breakthroughs of the last 50 years? For example, the personal computer. It wasn’t an invention of something single. It was a brilliant combination of existing things: microprocessors, hard drives, monitors, keyboards, mice. The breakthrough was in the idea of putting it all together and placing it on a desk for an ordinary person. Or the internet—just a set of common rules (protocols), the language that already existing computers had agreed to communicate with each other. Genius was in creating this “language,” this universal interface. Don’t forget about smartphones. Steve Jobs, during the presentation of the first iPhone, said: “This isn’t one device. It’s three: a phone, a widescreen player, and an internet communicator.” Apple didn’t invent mobile communication, touchscreen displays, or GPS. They took the best that was already on the market, brilliantly combined it into one body, wrote intuitive software, and gave us the Swiss Army knife of the digital age.

The most important thing is that such breakthroughs don’t require an accelerator or a NASA budget. What’s needed is freedom of thought, observation, and the right to experiment. You, the reader of this post, can come up with tomorrow how to combine two known technologies and get something that will change the world.

What prevents this most of all? Of course, the good old bureaucracy. Imagine if Foggu had to get a visa for every border crossing, like residents of many countries with “weak” passports? He’d still be filling out an application somewhere in Mumbai. It’s state regulation, with its passion for “organizing,” “certifying,” and “checking,” that kills the very flexibility and speed needed for combinatorial breakthroughs. While officials are writing regulations on using drones to deliver pizza, free enthusiasts are already figuring out how to use those same drones and neural networks to monitor forest fires.

So, friends, the next great breakthrough is probably already here – just in the form of disparate parts. All the necessary technologies, services, and ideas are already on the table. What’s more, our project to find drugs to enhance violence inhibition was achieved with minimal means by analyzing existing neuroscience research and re-checking widely available animal drugs. And between you and me, ethology doesn’t end on the problem of violence, nor do our studies!

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

A few words about scientific and technical progress and modern civilization

Voluntarist, Bitarch

There is a position based on the idea that scientific and technical progress and modern civilization are an evil capable only of making humans unhappy. Of course, this position is not very popular and is unlikely to ever gain significant support, but I would like to say a few words about how untenable it actually is.

The conversation can begin with the fact that the opponents of progress themselves have survived largely because of it, rather than having a high probability of dying from hunger, cold, or disease in early childhood. Moreover, the drastic increase in human survival rates and the accessibility of benefits is an obvious consequence of progress. However, it is sometimes less obvious that only thanks to progress does humanity have any chance at all of surviving in the long term.

Some may argue that progress has created means capable of severely harming all of humanity (by destroying the environment or even serving as weapons of mass destruction). However, it is pointless to argue against the fact that it is the lack of progress that could harm humanity the most. In such a case, it would be 100% unable to leave the boundaries of its home planet and would perish during the next planetary-scale catastrophe. The Earth is not eternal; furthermore, some catastrophe could happen very soon, rather than hundreds of millions of years from now. It turns out that opposing progress means advocating for the complete annihilation of humanity in the future. Is any of the critics of progress ready to openly support such an idea?

Another argument against progress is the alleged suffering of people in an urban environment that is unnatural for them. Instead, a life close to nature is proposed, to which the human psyche is best adapted, and for the sake of human happiness, the possibility of preserving humanity in the future can be sacrificed now. Of course, in reality, prehistoric people suffered greatly; archaeological evidence often shows traces of prolonged physiological stress from hunger and disease on their remains. The transition to primitive agriculture also did not fully solve this problem; just a few centuries ago, crop failure (for example, due to climatic factors) was a common cause of famine, and peasants of the past regularly suffered from food deficiency and monotony. An average resident of a modern city, who is constantly fed, kept warm, and fairly healthy, will clearly be happier. But this is not even the point; the point is that, according to the opponents of progress, the human living environment must be frozen in time.

One of the most natural processes for all living things is adaptation to changing environmental conditions. And modern urban civilization, like any form of potential future civilization, can easily be called a new living environment to which one simply needs to adapt. Moreover, humans also gain an advantage—they control how the new environment will be structured, which makes adaptation easier. Without progress, the change in the environment would still happen due to inevitable climatic changes, but people would have to do without such an advantage, facing an increased chance of premature extinction instead of adaptation.

An opponent of progress is ready to appeal to the naturalness of a certain living environment for humans. But why then does he deny such a natural process as adaptation? Why does one kind of naturalness satisfy him, while the other does not?

Finally, it should be said that opponents of progress simply have no chance of turning their ideas into reality. They will not be able to convince everyone, and their only way out is to forcibly compel others to renounce progress. But without progress, there simply will not be significant means to carry out such compulsion, especially on a global scale. And groups of people promoting progress will always have an advantage in terms of the means allowing them to protect themselves from such violent coercion. Thus, any ideas against progress are simply stillborn.

People are enslaved by violence, not by technology

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Luddite and anti-progressive positions that oppose scientific and technological progress, while quite unpopular, still exist, creating a myth about the enslavement of people by technology. These positions blame technology specifically for the fact that people are rapidly losing their freedom and happy lives. For example, with its help, governments gain more power and the ability to manipulate people, meaning that scientific and technological progress, starting from the moment of the industrialization of society, is an evil that must be eradicated. Of course, many would consider such argumentation extremely absurd without further explanation, but let us nevertheless look at what is wrong with it.

The point is that technologies themselves do not lead to any enslavement of humans. This is primarily caused by violence as a method of solving problems and achieving certain goals, including when used by those same governments. All of them rely on the threat of applying certain “legitimate” and “legal” force measures against any ordinary person if they do not follow a specific order. Technologies in this case only make such a threat more effective in its execution and help strengthen the power of already existing governments.

But think about it—even with the simplest tool, such as a hammer, it is much easier to intimidate, subdue, or even maim a person than with bare fists. However, a hammer is created to drive nails, and the problem lies within the person who is capable of committing violence using any available tools, not in the hammer itself. The exact same situation applies to weapons—the problem is not with the weapon, but with the tiny percentage of people willing to use it to commit violent attacks.

It is the problem of violence and the fact that some people strive for the forceful subjugation of others that needs a solution. As soon as this problem is solved and violent hierarchies of dominance disappear from society, technologies will cease to contribute to the enslavement of people in any way. It is necessary to fight violence and the tiny percentage of violent offenders in society, not technologies, which, by the way, are the only thing that could save people from endless hunger, disease, child mortality, and other terrible phenomena of the past, and will also allow humanity to survive and continue its existence in the long term.

Indiscriminate Violence, “Legitimate” Violence, and Scientific and Technological Progress

Voluntarist, Bitarch

At present, society, especially of the Western model, has adopted a model of so-called permissible, selective, or “legitimate” violence. It consists of the idea that violence is permissible toward a specific person based on a law adopted by the majority of people in a given territory. However, since this is a cultural norm, it cannot be viewed as a given; it is necessary to understand that in other societies, this norm may differ. For a significant part of human history and in a significant number of societies, a completely different model of non-selective violence was practiced. Today, the Taliban, who recently took power in Afghanistan, can specifically remind us of this. This model consists of the following:

  • Violence may be applied not only to the lawbreaker but also to their family, relatives, and friends; even random people who have committed very minor offenses, or those who have done nothing at all, may become victims of violence for the purpose of intimidating society and strengthening power;
  • The absence of freedom to agree or disagree with the established law, including through changing one’s location and residence due to restrictions on freedom of movement.

All other things being equal, proponents of non-selective violence have a better chance of victory compared to those who advocate for moderate violence. They will not hesitate to intimidate society, carry out brutal purges, and even organize mass killings and genocide. Due to a much greater willingness to commit violence, their violent potential is far higher.

But in reality, conditions are usually not equal. And one of the important conditions is the level of technological development. For example, this condition played a decisive role in the colonial conquests by Europeans, or in the recent fight against terrorism in the Middle East (including against the Islamic State). If this circumstance had not existed, if the level of technological development had been equal for everyone, then representatives of the Western world would simply have lost in the vast majority of battles. There would have been no colonization of lands already inhabited by other peoples, and there would be nothing to say about the fight against terrorist groups. The side resorting to less selective violence would have had much greater chances of winning, and in those cases, the consequences would have been fatal.

In the absence of significant technological superiority, the Western world could easily be conquered by a crowd of Taliban, ISIS members, or some other psychopaths simply armed with Kalashnikov rifles. If the order of selective violence is to be maintained, it cannot do without scientific and technological progress. But scientific and technological progress, in turn, creates certain risks of violence, including catastrophic ones. The time is not far off when even small organizations, or even individuals, will be able, for example, to recreate a dangerous virus or master ultra-high-capacity energy sources. It is terrifying to imagine what would happen if high technologies were applied for violent purposes. Furthermore, these technologies may eventually be seized by the same terrorists (technologies tend to pass from hand to hand), and then the technological gap will no longer play a role—in the case of weapons of mass destruction, one does not need to be more developed or stronger than the opponent; it is sufficient only to inflict unacceptable damage upon them.

Given the critical importance of scientific and technological progress, as well as the risks it creates, one can conclude that it is necessary to fight against violence. As long as violence is accepted as a given, different groups of people will choose different approaches between selective and non-selective violence. And those who choose the second option—the less civilized and more violent people—will pose a severe threat to the lives of those who advocate for selective or moderate violence. I would especially like to convey this thought to conservatives, who often dislike progress. All that remains is to fight violence as a phenomenon as a whole. Only by completely eradicating it can we get rid of the corresponding risks.

Will contractual jurisdictions, each of which involves only individuals with similar views, lead to the eternal conservation of all social institutions and the cessation of the development of philosophical thought?

Siberian Extremist

This question had been pending for a while, and it came back to me in connection with the publication of Farid Khusainov’s review of Rodion Belkovich’s book on the history of American radicalism. The main point of the review (though not necessarily the reviewed book itself) is that individual freedom must be defended both from the central government and from enthusiasts of cozy conservative communities. I agree with this general conclusion, but now I want to understand how real the danger is that philosophical thought in a world of closed communities will cease to develop.

Indeed, isolated communities—as far as we can judge by the isolated communities we can observe—are not prone to a riot of ideas. This could be the Amazonian Indians, the aboriginals of the Andaman Islands, or the Amish beloved by Mikhail Svetov. These are very stable societies, capable of existing for centuries without any changes at all.

The example of ancient Hellas is quite telling in this regard. It consisted of many compact poleis, meaning territorial jurisdictions, united into leagues, which were contractual jurisdictions of a higher level; within the polis, there were phyles, demes, and other heteriai, which turned out to be extraterritorial jurisdictions, some contractual and some not. We know ancient Hellas as an example of a society with an exemplary explosion of philosophical thought. But even there, there was an island of stability: Lacedaemon.

It is well known what protected the Spartans from the corrupting influence of outsiders: a radical reduction of external trade contacts. You cannot trade much when your obols—monetary units with a value roughly equal to “one snack”—consist of hefty iron bars. Other poleis traded actively, and through this, they were open to mutual cultural influence. It is easy to see that the same characteristic is observed in modern stable communities: their external trade turnover is extremely low.

Will a world of many ECUs exist without trade relations between members of different ECUs? Highly doubtful, except perhaps as an exception. The extraterritoriality of jurisdictions further facilitates various connections with participants of other communities. And where there is trade, there is a search for profit. Where there is a search for profit, there is entrepreneurship. Where there is entrepreneurship, there is a constant readiness to observe and adapt others’ ideas. Rest assured, philosophical development will not disappear under panarchy.

Philosophers in search of new ideas

Progress, the State, and the Survival of Civilization

Vitaly Tizun, edited by Ancap-tyan

Supporters of the state often claim that scientific progress is impossible in a free society, and that only the state is capable of providing science with the resources necessary for its development. There are several objections to this thesis.

In Theory of a Free Society, I described in detail from an economic point of view how the state hinders the realization of any ideas. The state implements ideas in the least efficient way, as it can pour unlimited money into their embodiment without thinking about profit, while simultaneously restricting private initiative in the same field. Science is a typical example of such an approach.

But right now we are interested more in political rather than economic incentives, for it is on their basis that the state steers science.

Let’s take a classic example of conservative policy. Such a policy often prioritizes certain values (such as family, traditions, customs, nation, etc.). I will not say that these values mean nothing; for many people, they are very, very important. However, the state and political conservatives often justify absolutely any measures that they believe can protect these values, including measures that negatively affect other values and social spheres. Thus, we often encounter extremely absurd arguments stating that we must control progress and not allow it to be too rapid, as this could disrupt the traditional way of life of society. This not only sounds delusional but also does not work in practice, instead contributing to the destruction of the traditional way of life, which we will discuss below.

I will provide a couple of examples of how the politicization of science harms scientific development.

Nobel laureate James Watson was branded a racist and stripped of several honorary titles for asserting a link between the intelligence quotient and racial origin. Thus, a simple scientific observation was equated with calls for racial discrimination. Naturally, under such conditions, research into the influence of genetics on intelligence becomes hindered.

An even more egregious example is GMO-phobia. Hysteria, maintained at the level of political decisions, makes life extremely difficult for many potential players in this promising market, while a few corporations with serious lobbying capabilities reap superprofits thanks to politicians clearing the market.

But if this were only about transgenic plants, it would be half the battle; however, research related to the genetic modification of humans is also being slowed down. Conservatives thus attempt to protect human nature, but by obstructing small and gradual changes, they only ensure that when science advances enough to no longer be containable, the application of new technologies to change human genetics will become avalanche-like. The difference between enhanced and traditional humans will become too sharp, and this is exactly the scenario that conservatives fear so much.

Thus, the original thesis that the state, unlike a free society, is the only entity capable of ensuring scientific progress turns out to be fundamentally wrong; instead, we see that it is perfectly capable of hindering it.

If a free society proves to be insufficiently strong, and the doctrine of limiting the pace of scientific development remains influential enough, it will lead to humanity simply exhausting the resources currently at its disposal without ever gaining access to new ones, whether through an extensive path of development, such as space expansion, or an intensive one, through a radical increase in humanity’s energy capacity. This would mean the fading of civilization.

However, this is a very unlikely scenario. People usually mobilize quite well in the face of an obvious threat, and when the state itself acts as such an obvious threat, all the worse for it.

Turbulent emotions have a violent end; do not provoke turbulent emotions