The innovation series: Part 3 Understanding the flip — when brilliant tools sabotage species

When technology goes awry & works against us

This cable is the third of three. Dive into the others at:

The innovation series: Preamble — Ru-Wa-Aki’s mission

The innovation series: Part 1 — Understanding humans & the role of technology

The innovation series: Part 2 — Measuring the potential of technology — which tech is most imp

This article aims to provide a theoretical underpinning that helps explore the mechanics of how high potential ideas can go awry. Maybe even threaten the survival of the species that birthed it.

We’ll recap with the pictogram that shows technology’s place in the context of evolution of life on Earth.

In my previous cable, I mentioned the two core functions that technology seems to fulfil — stability & abundance, which tie to the second and fourth arrow of the picture above.

We now explore the potential ill-effects of innovation as it interacts with those two arrows (along with a small digression on technology that can impact the first & third arrow as well).

Innovation & realm of entropy + chaos

As mentioned earlier, human focus within this realm is centered around preserving stability and reducing variability in a world filled with increasing disorder (entropy) and chaos.

In the context of Earth, the breakpoints within this realm seem to occur when new technology exposes the larger system to more systemic/ existential risk. It usually does so by focusing on reducing variance of the short-term outcomes at the expense of weakening the ability of the system to face long-term unknown risks.

A great example of this paradox may be the green revolution. Known as the third agricultural revolution on Earth and starting in the 1960s, this was a period that saw an especially high increase of use of fertilizers and pesticides. At the time (and for a number of ensuing decades) this revolution helped feed a growing population and averted mass starvation.

Unfortunately, the overuse of urea and other fertilizers had other ill-effects that became evident many decades later — notable in seriously depleted soil quality. This has led to a situation where crops grown have with lower nutritional values and lower yields.

Another example, this time focussed on the future, could be genetic engineering. With rise of CRISPR and other gene editing technologies, genetic manipulation is becoming easier than ever for Humans. While it can be argued that each parent should have the freedom to give birth to who they want, this freedom comes at a cost.

If too many people choose the same thing, species will miss out on the variance that is needed to overcome black-swan events into the future.

As mentioned before, an undue focus on reducing risks of the present can expose a system to a long-tail of freak occurrences (something that the universe will throw up eventually — given enough time…because chaos and entropy).

In the human context, innovations that run afoul of this domain have its root in human psychology. An article written by another human may throw more light on this tendency. To put it briefly, these breakpoints have to do with the fact that often solutions to human problems are focussed on the short term in nature — most likely due to human life spans & in particular these solutions sacrifice redundancy and waste at the altar of efficiency.

However, the problems that ensure survival of the collective are necessarily longer term and must sacrifice efficiency at the altar of resiliency.

While adopting technologies, humans must pay particular attention to whether the said technology is introducing too much long-term risk. It is too easy to overlook this feature while searching for short-term gains, but is likely one of the reasons that species can self-destruct.

Innovation & realm of scarcity

In contrast to the realm of chaos + entropy, human focus within realm or scarcity has been to convert scarcity into abundance.

In this realm, the breakpoints seem to arise due to ignored or misunderstood trade-offs that inadvertently happen when trying to convert scarcity to abundance.

Three specific examples come to mind:

Breakpoint 1: Creating an abundance of one resource leads to the scarcity of another.

An example would be that while the printing press created an abundance of knowledge, it also used paper to do so. Thankfully the scarcity of paper (introduced due to increased demand for books) was not enough to lead to major problems.

While humans got lucky with paper, they weren’t lucky enough to avoid this type of unintended consequence altogether. The energy and industrial revolutions often relied on coal & fossil fuels as inputs to create an abundance of energy & labor. Unfortunately, while coal & fossil fuel themselves are still abundant, the process involved ended up creating a scarcity of many perfect conditions that sustainable ecosystems rely on — e.g., clean air, ozone layer etc.

Breakpoint 2: Innovations can help bring abundance for one person while also generating scarcity for others

Modern human society seems to be built on top of hierarchical structures. Hierarchy formation itself can be viewed as a technological leap that helps maintain stability within the group (2nd arrow) and helps the group compete for resources against other groups (4th arrow).

However, hierarchies also have the unintended consequence that members within a tribe can become overly competitive & greedy. Leading to a very unequal distribution of resources between tribe members.

As seen on other planets, high levels of inequality is not an immutable fact of life, rather it is the result of innovations that try to help create abundance for certain individuals — usually elites at the cost of the non-elites.

On a related note, competition between tribes too can lead to creation of scarcity for certain tribes. As an example, we can look towards tribal societies that live in resource rich regions of modern nation-states (e.g., tribes of Amazon rainforest within the Earth country of Brazil)

On Earth, technical progress has been accelerating at a speed that even the losers are better off than they were in the past. But this has happened despite the reasons mentioned above.

As we have seen in other worlds, the creation of hierarchies & competition is not the major spring on innovation — which takes its own course and has curiosity at its root.

Breakpoint 3: Innovations that are paradoxically in service of creating general scarcity rather than abundance

Amazingly enough, humans seem to also inadvertently create technology that does the opposite of create abundance. Rooted in their evolutionary scarcity and competitive mindset, this type of progress wouldn’t necessarily be viewed as progress by the central administration.

Weapons such as nuclear missiles are innovative, but using them would be a lose-lose proposition from the perspective of resource optimization. Any nuclear holocaust would have a significant detrimental impact to basic physical resources that are undoubtedly needed for the survival of life (e.g., non-contaminated air to breath). Does the human species benefit from nuclear weapons is a question that they themselves seem to struggle with.

A more recent phenomenon could be the hype built around NFTs in the 2020s. At its core, some digital innovations that humans seem to be focussing on are about creating scarcity from abundance. To specifically do so to maintain and perpetuate hierarchies is putting the cart before the horse.

Innovation & escapism

Traditionally the technologies that help humans forget about survival & thrival have always been viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism in different human societies.

Earth parents in particular seem acutely aware of the ill-effects of too much of this type of innovation — be it drugs, television, gaming etc. Unfortunately this level of skepticism is hardly directed towards the other forms of technologies mentioned above.

For this reason, we will not delve into the breakpoints associated with this type of technology too much.

Conclusion

As humanity continues to make progress, their creativity will continue to help them unleash vast potential.

But potential can go both ways. And not every discovery or paradigm shift can be considered helpful to the problem being solved.

A good suggestion for human innovators would be to regularly ask themselves whether every change is good. And at the very least try to isolate & predict how technologies could have a negative long-term impact on societies.

DIGRESSION : Technologies that interact with boundaries themselves.

While not considered technological breakthroughs, humans have also developed tools that have a deep impact on the first arrow as well. These are referred to as mind altering interventions, some notable technologies being psychedelics or meditation that makes humans question or lose their sense of boundary.

While we are much more open to exploring this angle in the administration, progress & experimentation along this dimension to be woefully ignored by the inhabitants of Planet Earth. Leading partly to an undue focus on resource maximization, stability or escapism.

The realm of boundaries in particular (first arrow) is the least well understood part of the cycle for humans — and it seems to be imperative that they understand it better if they are to avoid self-destruction.