Outline

Laws of Development [1][2][3]

Laws of Information Theory [1][2][3][4]

Laws of Technology [1][2][3][4]

Laws of Prediction [1][2][3]

These edicts aren't scientific laws, of course, but they may be important developmental constraints on Earth's complex systems (e.g., highly statistically probable, on average, in all Earth-like environments), potentially universal moral principles, or at least useful rules of thumb. There are many more than these that we could propose, but I consider the following particularly important to keep in mind as we construct a foresighted 21st-century systems theory.

Other authors have also championed several of these. I've made some attributions where known, and will make additional ones as memory serves and as readers point me to prior citations. I hope you find them useful. Let me know of any others you'd highly recommend.

1. The universe is an evolutionary developmental system, with both a rigged and statistically predictable long-term developmental outcome and myriad unknowable, unpredictable short-term evolutionary paths.
(John Smart, also partially championed to some extent by Lee Smolin, Ed Harrison, Steve Wolfram, Ed Fredkin, John A. Wheeler, Simon Conway Morris, Jack Cohen, Ian Stewart, Robert Wright, and several others). Evolutionary development, through a statistically predictable succession of universal archetypes (cosmological, chemical, biological, cultural, technological, and beyond) is a central paradigm for understanding accelerating change. This paradigm appears to operate on all known physical-computational levels, including our universe itself as a complex system, which appears to be following both unpredictable local evolutionary pathways and a predictable global developmental lifecycle within the multiverse.

2. Inner space, not outer space, is the apparent constrained developmental destiny of increasingly complex systems in the universe (also known as the "Law of MEST Compression, MEST Efficiency, or MEST Density").
(John Smart, also partially championed by: Eric Chaisson, Lee Smolin, and Buckminster Fuller (etherealization)). A black hole-equivalent transcension, not lightspeed expansion, may be the developmental destiny for the future of local intelligence, our Destiny of Species, as in the title of my book. Life's history has been doing more and more (universal computation) with less and less (physical resources, MEST per standard computation), and we will soon be doing almost everything with virtually nothing. I call this driver MEST (Matter, Energy, Space, and Time) -compression, -efficiency, or -density, and it appears to be an unrealized developmental attractor for all complex systems.

3. We are engaged in an asymptotic approach to universal computational limits, and an apparent, effective computational closure (also known as the "Law of Locally Asymptotic Computation"), a form of path dependent developmental optimization at the universal scale.
(John Smart, unknown others) This is an abstract and controversial concept, involving the way initial constraints and emergent limits to computational complexity create a form of path dependent optimization and intelligence maximization in all developmental processes, leading to the need for their regeneration. At the universal scale, our rapid approach to an apparent fundamental universal granularity of physical-computational dynamics (the Planck Scale), combined with the constraint of physical law, may soon lead for a utility maximum for local intelligence. Closure is a way a way of understanding developmental recycling, and our apparently "U"-shaped curve of universal change. The concept has been called by many names by investigators at different systems levels: ergodic theory in statistical thermodynamics, canalization in genetics, category saturation in management theory, etc. More on this in my forthcoming book.

1. The Cosmic Watermark Hypothesis: Informational Intelligence (average distributed complexity (ADC)), a product of two-way communication in a collective of evolutionary systems, grows superexponentially at the leading edge of local development.
(Eugene Wigner, John Smart, several others). More on this topic later. An increasing number of careful thinkers in anthropic cosmology suggest that the most interesting and unexpected feature of the universe is that so much of its fundamental architecture and process conforms to a range of simple, easily discovered rules and laws. The universe is unreasonably tractable to simple analysis. For more on this profound concept see a brief overview here.

2. The Empirical Ethics Hypothesis: Informational Interdependence (breadth and depth of symbiosis, or non-zero sum interactions) a product of two-way communication in a collective of evolutionary systems, grows superexponentially at the leading edge of local development.
(E.O. Wilson, Robert Wright, Matt Ridley, many others). More on this later. For now, read E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology, 2000, Robert Wright's Nonzero, 2001, or Matt Ridley's Origins of Virtue, 1998, if you'd like clues to a statistically inevitable calculus of civization, mathematics of morality or "game theory of getting along" in increasingly complex swarm-computational systems.

3. The Child-Proof Universe Hypothesis: Informational Immunity (ADC resilience to catastrophe), a product of two-way communication in a collective of evolutionary systems, grows superexponentially at the leading edge of local development.
(John Smart, unknown others). More on this topic in my coming book. For now, let me direct you to any good introductory book on immune systems, such as How the Immune System Works, Lauren Sompayrac, 1999. Immune systems are foundational elements in complex systems. In human beings, for example, they are much more fundamentally important than the brain, in many respects, as stable intelligence never develops without concomitant immunity—and yet immune systems were the last major system discovered in human physiology, and are still one the most overlooked and poorly understood topics in modern education. Immune systems are seen, to varying degrees, in all substrate levels in universal evolutionary development, from galactic, stellar, planetary, plant, animal, neurologic, social, and technologic systems. They are apparently a key part of the deep structure of any cosmic system which allows the local development of computational complexity.

Immune systems work very well, in general, and even in those instances where they fail, they are generally quite benign in their damage to the network, though their failure can be devastating to the individual. In example after example, the immune learning which occurs with any catastrophe always seems to statistically increase the average distributed complexity (ADC) of the local network, if not the individual. This hypothesis has valuable implications for ways we can use our growing understanding of the lever of immunity to aid the stable development of our increasingly human-surpassing technological intelligence.

4. The Incomplete Universe Hypothesis: Informational Incompleteness (a zone of intractability) is a permanent feature of local computation.
(Kurt Godel, Alonzo Church, Alan Turing, John Barrow, Patrick Grim, Gregory Chaitin). No complex adaptive system is ever informationally complete. Questions can be asked from within any system that can neither be proven nor disproven using the computational resources of the system, no matter how complex. Information theory is difficult, and a bit abstract. For now, read John Barrow's Impossibility, 1999, or The Universe That Discovered Itself, 2000, Patrick Grim's The Incomplete Universe, 1991, and Gregory Chaitin's The Limits of Mathematics, 1997. More on these topics at a later time.

1. Technology learns ten million times faster than you do.
(Eric Chaisson, Paul Churchland, John Smart several others). We all better get used to this fact of modern life. Whether you measure it by communication (input, output) rates, computation (memory, processing) or replication rates, technological evolutionary development (and, I assume, evolutionary developmental learning, such as that which lead to human intelligence) generally runs at least seven orders of magnitude (10 million times) faster than genetic systems with regard to important rates of computational change. Chaisson's measure Phi (Cosmic Evolution, 2001), a metric of dynamic complexity, provides a valuable cosmological perspective on this process. Phi is free energy rate density, or the free energy available for physical-computational dynamics in local space time, and Chaisson shows that the Phi of a pentium chip (its relevant rate of potential marginal learning from its environment, not its structural complexity) is, to a first approximation, six orders of magnitude greater than the human brain. If we can take such measures as a rough proxy for the dynamic learning potential for information and nanotechnology as a whole, as I believe we can, we should expect great things from our technological progeny relatively soon in the human future.

2. Humans are selective catalysts, not controllers, of technological evolutionary development.
(Kevin Kelly, John Smart, several others) Technology's evolutionary development appears directed by both a latent universal developmental trajectory, and the finite evolutionary learning capacity available within each substrate. Humans are technology's primary stewards and developers today, but it is becoming clear that as technology develops its own intelligence and autonomy at accelerating rates, humanity's role has already moved from self-appointed controller to selective catalyst of the kinds of technological futures we prefer. It is most commonly in the evolutionary path we take, and generally not in the developmental outcome, that we find the essence of our individual and social democratic choice.

It would be futile, for example, to try to stop the global adoption of the wheel, or electricity, or computing, or human-competitive autonomous intelligence (A.I.), or even the ability of a handful of motivated individuals to be able to engineer superpathogens in their basement in 2100, as all of these appear to be statistically inevitable technological developments within the network of human civilizations. Nevertheless, we have the power to locally delay (with regulatory or social adoption "speedbumps") and even temporarily regress any particular developmental outcome (as Japan and China did with handguns for several centuries, for example), and to create our own local evolutionary pathways to these eventually inevitable capacities, and to reward the emergence of environmental conditions that make these capacities nonthreatening when they finally do emerge. Thus we might ensure the emergence of A.I.'s that have been incrementally proven to be safe via stepwise development, we might spur the global ability to manufacture and deliver effective antidotes to any biological pathogen by 2050, and we might catalyze the emergence of enough global development and transparency to prevent most individual terrorism attempts from emerging, while simultaneously providing fine grained assurances of individual liberties and meaningful employment for those who seek it.

In the same manner, as we come to realize that even humanity as a whole does not control the technological world system, we can nevertheless strongly influence the evolutionary path of a range of harmful technological applications (e.g., nuclear weapons proliferation, CBW research, pesticides and pollutants, first generation nuclear power technology), while accelerating the development of balancing and beneficial technologies (e.g., communications, computation, automation, transparency, immune systems R&D), and phasing them in in ways that improve, rather than disrupt, human political, economic, and cultural systems.

3. The first generation of any technology is often dehumanizing. The second generation is generally ambivalent to humanity. The third generation, with luck, becomes net humanizing.
(John Smart, several unknown others). With reflection, the consequences of this law are self-evident in technological systems that we can observe at every scale. We can observe it in the effects of civilization on the human being (our first generation was the age of monarchy, slavery, and perpetual state warfare), with industrialization (our first generation was the polluted, dehumanizing, child labor utilizing factory), with automobiles (our first generation uses dirty fossil fuels, and originally had few safety features), with televisions (our first generation are noninteractive, and separate and deeducate us almost as much as they socialize us), with calculators (our first generation cause us to lose even mental calculation skills even when we desire to retain them), with computers (our first generation are expensive and have terrible interfaces and are restricted to an educated technological elite), with the internet (our first generation is buggy, primitive, hacker-infested, and far too anonymous), and with cell phones (our first generation increase motor vehicle accidents as they require too much human attention).

It is a constant challenge to the designers and users of any technology to seek ways to minimize the duration and extent of the negative externalities we so often see with any new technological deployment. Yet even with our best intentions, we seem to take three steps forward, two steps back, six steps forward, two steps back— the eternal dance of accelerating change. Those who would criticize a technology as dehumanizing and unacceptable would do well to realize that developmental advances have always always been associated with disruption and some degree of dehumanization, as we learn to adapt to the new order of things.

Fortunately, the faster and more intelligent our technology becomes, the greater the social standard we can hold it to, and the sooner we can move it from dehumanization and disruption to enhancement in its net effect. A recent example is takeback legislation (cradle-to-cradle recycling of manufactured goods) a third generation of manufacturing that has increased the sustainability of European manufacturers without significantly impacting their competitiveness. There are good arguments that sustainable takeback programs would have been impossible in a world without supply chain automation, recycling automation, and other technological advances, but there is a time when such advances become affordable, and it is incumbent upon us to recognize when that time has arrived, and to advocate for the next generation to to emerge.

4. Technology should serve, self-actualize, and improve people and their cultures, not degrade, addict, or enslave them in 'structural violence.'
(Richard Rhodes, Jacques Ellul, several unknown others). In the thoughtful and accessible Visions of Technology, 2000, Richard Rhodes introduces the concept of structural violence, which he defines as the ways that the infrastructure and most common features of our technological environment often do great violence to us as individuals and as a culture.

Perhaps the most obvious example would be the automobile, a tool most of us must use to compete in the modern world (we have little choice in the matter), and yet one that claims 40,000+ lives in the U.S. and 1.2 million+ lives in the world every single year. Leaving fossil fuels aside for the moment, which also have great health, environmental, and political costs, and focusing solely on safety, just a little thought applied to the issue makes it clear that we could make many low-cost improvements to our automobiles and the political-legal structure around them that might cut these terrible costs in human lives to half of their present daily toll, or less.

Clearly intelligent machines will be driving us, with vastly lower fatalities, just a few decades (or generations) hence. But what can we do in the meantime? The list of presently unutilized technological aids to this problem, as for so many other social problems, is quite long. Consider modifications to the car, such as four point harnesses, internal occupant sleds, crash webbing, internal airbags, bumper airbags, telemetry-assisted braking (where sharp braking in one car induces braking in all cars in the vicinity), and even helmets (which some of us would wear if they were retractable, and if there were an insurance break for wearing them). There are many potential modifications to the environment (rumble strips, lower speed limits, etc.) and to legal requirements (drivers ed, driver training, license renewal). Some of these should be required, some should receive R&D and prize money to stimulate innovation, some should be subsidized with insurance incentives for their use, some should be promoted in drivers ed, and some left to the free market.

The public apathy that exists today with respect to the safety of automobile technology is itself a clear form of structural violence, as the true social costs of the technology are hidden from the citizen, the putative ultimate decider in our democracy. Such apathy will only change when voting citizens are allowed, and incentivized, to realize the real ongoing cost of such technologies to our culture.

Imagine a country with the foresight to pay for the production of two minute accident reports, delivered to all car navigation computers, summarizing all the fatal and critical accidents that have occurred in the driver's county since the car was last driven, the currrent trend in such accidents per capita and per miles driven, and some brief safety lessons that may be drawn from them. Now imagine a culture that required the in-car watching of such reports on at least a weekly basis in order for the car's ignition to turn on. Would that be a new form of enslavement or a tool for social improvement? Clearly these are issues for a democracy to decide, but we are far today from even considering them. While we can point to partial exceptions, from Singapore to Scandinavia, the modern social system promotes apathy on such issues in virtually all countries, and the transportation machine continues its killing unnoticed.

We can make a similar case for structural violence in many social problems, as I will do in the second of my forthcoming books. If we seek to understand the universe and our place in it, we must recognize that technology is not only by far the most rapidly learning and the most powerful system in the human environment, but also a system that we can craft to serve, self-actualize, and improve us every day.

We appear to be inevitably and progressively handing off the mantle of highest intelligence to our technological successors, but we remain responsible for our own continued improvement, as individuals and as a species. When we ignore that responsibility, when we succumb to technology's many distractions, addictions, and outright enslavements, we deny our future and remain impoverished.

1. The more things change, the more some things stay the same.
(Paul Saffo, John Smart, several others). Futurists who say "the only constant is change" haven't done their homework. Human systems (psychology, sociology, politics, economics) are amazingly stable in their evolutionary psychology, even in a world of accelerating technological change. So many social events that appear novel are best understood as recycled versions of yesterday's news. Cars were initially banned in San Francisco and Manhattan. So were Segways. The anonymous Wild West gave way to law and order, and the anonymous Internet is doing the same. The ratio of women to men in frontier America (e.g., San Francisco, 1849) was originally 50:1. Same for frontier Transhumanism, those who expect technology will increasingly surpass human ability in coming decades (U.S., 1980's). Cable TV was initially commercial free. So were Movies. So was TiVo. More generally, any apparently universal development-dependent process, such as exponential growth in technological complexity, is something we can count on continuing in future environments. We know in our bones that computers will be twice as powerful every 12-18 months (or less) for the rest of our natural life. Or we should.

2. Most prediction is a predictable failure.
(Ed Cornish, John Smart, unknown others). We should not find it surprising that the average futurist, missing the subset of developmental events, has a poor record of prediction. The paradigm of evolutionary development tells us that the vast majority of any average sample of the local events we observe will be evolutionary, and evolutionary events are intrinsically unpredictable. Only careful developmental systems thinking allows us to tease out that special class of events, constraints, and trajectories that are tied to the hierarchically emergent developmental structure of the universe and its complex adaptive subsystems, not to these systems' random, chaotic searches of their local environmental phase space.

For example, at the molecular scale, human development is intrinsically unpredictable. But step back to see the big picture, and after you've seen one human life cycle you've got a good idea how developmental (not evolutionary) events will proceed in the next. And after you've seen a multiplicity of developmental cycles, at a range of matter, energy, space, and time scales, you've got a good idea what kinds of developmental events are occurring in your local environment.

I can't predict which software company will be dominant in 2030, but it is a good bet that they all will be running the most sophisticated CUI network in existence. I can't tell you what computer architecture will come after MOS, but I can predict it will be vastly more MEST compressed and efficient. And in a controversial astrobiological example, while you would go broke quickly trying to predict the exact shape of humanoid life forms on other Earth-like planets, or the styles of cars that will sell best in those worlds, you can make an excellent developmentalist bet that those planets must all produce computationally dominant humanoids, that the humanoids will all be highly likely to have two eyes, bilateral symmetry, jointed limbs (possibly with an average of five fingers on each limb), and large number of other predictably convergent developmental features. Furthermore, there are great developmentalist arguments that all such planets will be very likely to invent internal combustion-based, automobile-like machines as swarm computing time-compression devices, that the dominant car body plans will involve four wheels, and that the environment must include a vast number of other universal technological archetypes, or developmental optima, such as electronic computers. And if you find any of that hard to believe, you're in good company. I'll do my best to address these issues in my book.

3. Long-term predictions of computationally-dependent processes tend to be socially unreasonable.
(Ray Kurzweil, Jim Dator, John Smart, several others). This is a variant of Ray's observation that we live in a world of historically exponential (or superexponential) growth in computational processes, and yet use intuitive linear models to approximate change. If we don't incorporate at least a few socially unreasonable forecasts in our extrapolation of accelerating technologies, we are blinding ourself to the real future, and aren't appropriately preparing or prioritizing our efforts today. Most likely, we won't put the appropriate time, energy, or resources into the places where they would have the greatest "unreasonable" positive effect, simply because we don't believe such amazing change is possible.

That's our own loss, and it impoverishes us in the present wherever we lack sufficient social foresight into the inevitable mechanisms of accelerating change. We at ASF will do our part in coming years to attempt to rectify our species' cultural proclivity for ignoring the historically unreasonable growth of computation.

Additions? Missed Attributions? Disagreements? I look forward to your comments.
Thanks to Dale Carrico and Jeff Thompson for helpful feedback.

Sincerely,


John Smart
President, Acceleration Studies Foundation