The Rise of Dismal Science Fiction

https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/how-science-fiction-helps-us-understand-our-economic-system.html

by Hooke • 8 years ago

73 50 8 years ago

cpeterso• 8 years ago

Manu Saadia's Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek is kinda the reverse: it's an examination of Star Trek's post-scarcity economy, how matter replicators change everything, and what people do with their free time when they don't have to work.

There's a big hole in Star Trek canon of how Earth transitioned from ST:TOS to the post-scarcity economy of ST:TNG. I would love to see Star Trek delve explore that era instead of rebooting and rehashing so many prequals.

Here is a transcript from an NPR interview with Paul Krugman about Saadia's book:

https://www.marketplace.org/2016/09/07/world/economist-paul-...

Semiapies• 8 years ago

The problem of telling the story of that transition is that it's like trying to go into detail about the physics in Cochrane's ship in First Contact—the writer would be trying to explain a completely made-up thing (warp drive or the TNG socio-economic system) that itself is nothing more than a handwave to allow stories to be told.

lostcolony2• 8 years ago

Not really. It would be trying to describe the human element of the technology. We'd not be trying to explain the post-scarcity utopia, but -how humans first reacted to it-.

Look at how humans act now. We have more than enough resources for everyone on earth to have sufficient food. And yet some starve. Why? Because of distribution problems, of corruption, etc. We expect people to work if they want to eat. Why? Because we culturally view it a moral failing if someone doesn't work without good reason (and even then we view those who have reason with suspicion). Look at the discussion around automation + UBI. Even if we assume automation can handle all the work that has to be done, people take the stance that it won't/shouldn't work, that it will only destabilize the economy, rather than improving everyone's lives. A replicator is just another form of automation in that regard, and there would be plenty of people who could object to it.

Just because we have the technology doesn't mean it's initially available to everyone. And even when there's enough availability of the tech, some humans will try and regulate it, to protect the existing interests, and other selfish reasons, with various rationales. That would be -interesting-. Moreover, it would, like all good scifi, reflect our current society, by showing the same attitudes and concerns currently at play, but in a different, futuristic context (one that ideally challenges people's perceptions, but without the baggage that causes them to instinctively get defensive).

I think it could make damned good television. Though, I think, it would be a far cry from what we expect from 'Star Trek'.

posterboy2• 8 years ago

And it's so easy it doesn't even need telling. They simply replicated earth like environments until one succeeded. If they you divide by infinity anything may happen.

abecedarius• 8 years ago

It's true that Star Trek is just a story. OTOH, a machine that cheaply and quickly assembles feedstock into pre-programmed patterns is not physically impossible like warp drive -- it's just something we can't yet make. 3d printers are a crude preview. 19th-century people could have tried to forecast the consequences of Babbage's idea of a computer. It wouldn't have been a ridiculous thing to try: they had electricity and classical economics.

OTOH I wouldn't expect a look at a world with 'replicators' to look much like Star Trek, in the same way Robin Hanson's The Age of Em reads differently from Altered Carbon.

YeGoblynQueenne• 8 years ago

> The problem of telling the story of that transition is that it's like trying to go into detail about the physics in Cochrane's ship in First Contact—the writer would be trying to explain a completely made-up thing (warp drive or the TNG socio-economic system) that itself is nothing more than a handwave to allow stories to be told.

I'm binge-watching Voyager and DSN and the truth is that we are treated to quite a bit of made-up science, like subspace physics and the like. Everytime an away team has to be trapped at the far end of a mission to advance the story, someone jumps up to explain why they can't be beamed up in "technical" terms (then someone is ordered to "remodulate"). Everytime a technologically superior enemy corners the Voyager, one hit brings the shields down to 0 because they've been "rotating their weapons frequency" (then someone reports they're "compensating"). Almost every episode of Voyager at least has some made-up-on-the-spot techno-babble like that. It's been a while since I watched TNG but I think it wasn't different there, either.

It's not like the series skirts away from made-up science is what I'm saying, at least when it comes to "physics". They could just as well make up some "sociology" or "history" if they wanted.

mr_toad• 8 years ago

They never explain what happens with things that are still scarce. There are several episodes where mention is made of valuable artworks. Peoples time is still scarce, for example holodeck programs take time to create. Starships are clearly not free, and therefore neither is interstellar transport.

Like much of the Star Trek universe, it seems that the writers threw in a neat idea and never gave it much thought.

hueving• 8 years ago

Well for that stuff you obviously just have a central planning committee issue portions optimal for society.

jdietrich2• 8 years ago

We do know that Federation citizens use non-Federation currencies. Barter seems to be reasonably common in the Star Trek canon.

My own theory is that the goods that are still scarce are utterly trivial, like Beanie Babies or Pogs circa 2018. Everything that you might reasonably want or need is completely free within the Federation; a handful of eccentrics might covet a rare painting or an antique, but the vast majority of people would see their preoccupation as absurd. A lay person might admire a rare painting, but they would see no reason to steal it.

I also think that Federation culture plays a significant role. It's clear that greed of any kind is seen as primitive and antisocial by the overwhelming majority of Federation citizens. We could draw parallels with the Amish or Mennonites - you can't have status goods in a society where displays of wealth actively lower your social status. The Federation is not just a post-scarcity economy, but a post-scarcity culture.

We could think of the time investment in things like holosuite programs as being loosely equivalent to the philanthropic activities of the very wealthy circa 2018, conferring no material benefit but a substantial degree of social capital. Designing a hit holosuite program might not earn you any money, but it would get you an invite to the Federation equivalent of TED. Joseph Sisko charges nothing for meals at his creole restaurant, but earns the respect of his neighbours.

This is a fascinating article speculating on the mechanics of the Federation economy:

https://medium.com/@RickWebb/the-economics-of-star-trek-29ba...

qubex• 8 years ago

In the Star Trek The Next Generation Technical Manual which I obsessed about as a child, the authors (Rick Sternbach and Micheal Okuda, graphic designers on the show) go to great pains to emphasise grow things about the replicators: first, that they have limitations in terms of resolution, and that replicated objects are only ”approximately correct” (something that in-universe is referred to as ”molecular resolution”, so that they cannot run off and start replicating characters)m and secondly, that replication has a huge energetic cost (to foreclose on the risk that one might infer the capability to replicate whole starships at the press of a button). As such, I have never viewed the replicators as being ”post-scarcity” myself, but to have simply shifted the effective constraint to an energetic limitation.

XorNot• 8 years ago

On some level they're probably just efficient sewage processing.

KozmoNau7• 8 years ago

So the replicators make a liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea?

lloeki• 8 years ago

replicated objects are only ”approximately correct”

Regarding food and drinks, there are numerous quips across TNG that replicated edible things aren't quite up to spec to the homemade, natural ones, and often altered to provide optimal nutrients† or prevent deleterious effects (notably alcohol).

† I suppose that's how Troy's getting away with her massive chocolate dessert consumption

fragmede• 8 years ago

Star Trek: DS9 Season 3 Episode 11 and 12, "Past Tense" touched on this with it's portrayal of the fictional Bell Riots in 2024 that were instrumental in getting the United States to face the social problems it had been ignoring.

squarefoot• 8 years ago

Trek's premise is that a just few hundred years in human evolution will be enough to make the human brain socially mature so that after solving the scarcity problem there won't be any crime, save for just a few villains here and there. Sadly it's pure scifi because should such a thing happen it would require no less than ten thousand years minimum, probably a lot more just to get to a significative point. Having more doesn't make a human less likely to commit a crime: a homeless who didn't eat for days could kill a passer by to steal his sandwich, a lower class citizen could do the same to steal an iPhone, a smarter one could organize bank robberies/kidnaps/drug traffic then launder the money by building a legit business etc. If being wealthy made people less likely to commit crimes we would solve all humankind problems just by putting billionaires in power seats. Having more just moves the target; that's a byproduct of the human desire to get more, which is perfectly fine if one keeps the stance of not harming others to get there.

autarch• 8 years ago

Charles Stross incorporates economics into a lot of his writing. His two related novels Saturn's Children and Neptune's Brood are all about the economics of a post-human society. The latter of the two has a really interesting take on crypto-currency.

His Merchant Princes series is all about how a dimensional travelers exploit lack of economic knowledge in parallel worlds with less developed economies.

And Halting State and Rule 34, two near future novels, both touch on economics and related themes quite a bit.

Jedd• 8 years ago

I really enjoy reading Charlie's work, especially the speculation around transition societies. You can add Accelerando to the list of his works that include some serious consideration of economics (in a way that whilst reading you don't think, 'eww - economics' :)

Actually, Singularity Sky also has a lot of good - and stealthy - economics material.

gattr• 8 years ago

I'd also mention P. F. Hamilton's "Fallen Dragon", where FTL travel is possible, colonization of a few nearby Earth-like planets has happened... but it's not economically viable after all, which leads to some twisted consequences.

locopati• 8 years ago

John Brunner, Ursula Leguin and Alfred Bester (to name just a few) were covering this ground back in 60s and 70s.

whyenot• 8 years ago

not to mention Philip K. Dick

mirimir3• 8 years ago

As I started reading this, I had to recheck the date. Because this is such an old topic. I mean, haven't Stephenson and crew beaten it to death? And then he went and wrote D.O.D.O., which lacks even the thin edge of hope in Seveneves. Both of which I love, by the way.

letlambda• 8 years ago

Yeah, but he feels sort of bad about it... http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/book/hieroglyph

All the way to the bank.

TheOtherHobbes• 8 years ago

SF is the only literary form to focus consistently on politics and economics. This goes back past Heinlein to the pulps of the 30s and 40s.

mirimir3• 8 years ago

And further back, if you consider Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726) to be SF. There is a flying island, after all.

SF and fantasy give authors much greater leeway to challenge cherished beliefs. Because it's all so preposterous.

walrus01• 8 years ago

I don't even know how an article managed to mention dystopias and blade runner, in 2018, without even a mention of "Altered Carbon". That, and it ignores that "The Expanse" was a series of novels (I think there's like... eight books now?) a long time before it was a TV series. The novels go into a great deal more detail on the lives of the Belters and how the political situation depicted came about.

posterboy2• 8 years ago

The expanse has a little bit of what might count as hard sci-fi and the rest is just milking it for adventure storytelling in an admittedly capturing manner.

Apocryphon• 8 years ago

The Expanse takes pains to treat space travel, combat, and so on in a hard sci-fi way to the point of making it seem rather mundane. But you're right- the point of the series is about the human element, which is actually relevant to the OP-

> Okay, so what you’re really asking me there is if this is hard science fiction. The answer is an emphatic no. I have nothing but respect for well written hard science fiction, and I wanted everything in the book to be plausible enough that it doesn’t get in the way. But the rigorous how-to with the math shown? It’s not that story. This is working man’s science fiction. It’s like in Alien, we meet the crew of the Nostromo doing their jobs in this very blue collar environment. They’re truckers, right? Why is there a room in the Nostromo where water leaks down off of chains suspended from the ceiling? Because it looks cool and makes the world feel a little messy. It gives you the feel of the world. Ridley Scott doesn’t explain why that room exists, and when most people watch the film, it never even occurs to them to ask. What kind of drive does the Nostromo use? I bet no one walked out of the film asking that question. I wanted to tell a story about humans living and working in a well populated solar system. I wanted to convey a feeling for what that would be like, and then tell a story about the people who live there.

https://www.orbitbooks.net/interview/james-s-a-corey-2/

dbcooper• 8 years ago

Altered Carbon treats the brain as a computer that can have its hard drive swapped out. That's really stupid and a good reason to ignore it. It's also particularly poorly written.

Semaphor• 8 years ago

Altered Carbon treats the brain as a computer that can have its hard drive swapped out

To be fair, that's just magical alien technology. Humans don't even know how it works.

It's also particularly poorly written.

The writing is not great but not horrible either. The plot is far ahead of the writing style though.

barry-cotter• 8 years ago

Altered Carbon makes no sense on an economic or sociological level. Maybe that’s why it’s ignored.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/02/the-ems-of-altered-car...

Set many centuries in future, our descendants have colonized many star systems. Technological change then is very slow; someone revived after sleeping for centuries is familiar with almost all the tech they see, and they remain state-of-the-art at their job. While everyone is given a stack as a baby, almost all jobs are done by ordinary humans, most of whom are rather poor and still in their original body, the only body they’ll ever have. Few have any interest in living in virtual reality, which is shown as cheap, comfortable, and realistic; they’d rather die. There’s also little interest in noticeably-non-human android bodies, which could plausibly be pretty cheap.

beefman• 8 years ago

The film Tomorrowland (by Brad Bird) is a wonderful take on this. Like Iron Giant, it bombed in theaters. And somewhat ironically, got some of the worst reviews of any good movie I can think of.

TeMPOraL• 8 years ago

I love Tomorrowland and I recommend it to all my friends. I'm sad it bombed; I only discovered it accidentally on Netflix last year. Now I rewatch it from time to time to get a boost of motivation and positive energy.

I love this movie because it's positive about humans and future - which is unlike pretty much anything made in the last two decades. (Hell, it even goes meta on that point.)

lykahb• 8 years ago

The examples in the articles used the economic ideas only as a building block, not as the primary motivation for writing the novels.

I don't believe that Blade Runner is about recession more than the AI and humanity. Where good fiction uses ideas to supplement world-building, bad one would build the world to illustrate an idea.

_coveredInBees• 8 years ago

I think this article could have used a few more Amazon affiliate links. I always enjoy a well-researched article with lots of irrelevant cross-references.

mpreda• 8 years ago

But no mention of PKD (Philip K. Dick) and his novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", on which the movie "Blade Runner" is based.. ?

pjc502• 8 years ago

Blade Runner the film has remarkably little economics in it, it's more of a post-colonial treatment: some runaway slaves from the colonies have escaped back to the motherland, where they are subjected to pseudo-scientific tests to deem them subhuman so they can be executed.

The original PKD novel is much stranger and explicitly mentions a World War Three which has made a large number of animal species extinct. It's much more focused on the questions of mechanical substitutes for emotional relationships and the affect on the self.

girvo• 8 years ago

To add to the recommendations, I’d like to mention Kim Stanley Robinson’s “New York 2140” which is heavily focused on the economic structures that he posits will arrive after future catastrophes driven by climate change. And the rather smug interludes are witty and amusing and somewhat depressing all at the same time.

The Rise of Dismal Science Fiction

Related Stories