Comment on Socialism

• Diva@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  I am citing this work, it’s not my original thought.

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  • Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I’m not blaming you, I blame Posadas, but that was a load of rubbish, and I’d like to explain why because I still find this a fascinating line of thought.

    hey, on the contrary, may be on the way to exploiting all the energy existing in matter. They can use all the energy that we still do not know how to employ on Earth, and transform it into light.

    There are sections like this where Posadas says what might be possible. Sure, no problem there. But then they just sort of continue on as if it is for sure possible. Maybe this is just a style of writing that I personally don’t find agreeable, but I think it is not the correct strategy if your goal is to come to the conclusion that extra terrestrials probably/necessarily are using a given economic/political model.

    We can conceive of a being which, just by raising its hand, can produce light, draw energy to it, push it away, and organise it. It is possible.

    Then there are parts like this. Just because something is conceivable doesn’t mean it is possible. I can conceive of a perpetual motion machine, but the laws of physics prevent it.

    Science, on the contrary, is subject to those who finance it. Astronomers, physicists, where should they go to find the equipment for their research? They cannot do so, without money. They are not, as individuals, rich enough to pay for these things and also get by. It is the capitalist state, or indeed the Soviet state, that has the means to pay. They can thus install their equipment, but they limit their capacities to capitalist interests or the bureaucratic limitations imposed by the leadership of the workers’ state.

    This is to me, easily one of the critical misses of this piece. They acknowledge that there is problems with how we support the sciences, but this problem is just handwaved, moving onto the next thing. There are more economic systems out there than just capitalism and USSR style socialism. We’ve made technological progress under both, and many of the others. We even made technological progress under feudalism and barter systems.

    And because scientific progress can be achieved through any of these economic systems*, we can’t just assume that extra terrestrials found themselves on our doorstep due to one particular economic model.

    * At different rates obviously, but progress nonetheless.

    All the news of UFOs (unidentified flying objects) around the various parts of the world coincide. There are many coincidences, not all of which are exaggerations. We believe and accept that these beings exist. The majority of people who have seen them say that they are normal beings; and the people who speak of them say that they do not believe in ghosts or spirits. Many people have already seen UFOs. General MacArthur, that Yankee murderer, said with regard to the disappearance of a plane that had struck a strange object: ‘perhaps we – together with the Soviets – will have to make war against an enemy arriving from outside Earth’. But conciliation of this type has its limits.

    All the people who say that they have seen extra-terrestrials, UFOs, coincide in the fact that these beings have not frightened them, and that they have made themselves understood, without using an audible language, showing them that they mean no harm. They do not provoke a feeling of alarm, but of serenity. They create sensations of mellowness, suppleness, harmony, reassurance. They do not inspire any fear. They must give off a sense of security by their movements, by their facial demeanour, or in other ways. None among those who have seen them have said ‘I was scared, they frightened me’. On the contrary, they awaken a pleasant sentiment, one of respect. They must emit some sort of rays that cause this sensation, if they do exist. None among those who have seen them has said that they were attacked. They have shown no interest in attacking, violating, stealing, possessing: they have come to observe.

    This section in particular reeks of woo-woo. To put it bluntly, the evidence for extraterrestrial UFOs is severely lacking. Additionally, there are other, better, simpler and therefore more likely explanations of these things. There is very clearly a cultural aspect to it. People who claim to have been abducted routinely describe extraterrestrials as looking like whatever TV alien style was popular at the time of their childhood. For some that’s big rubbery green monsters, for some its little gray guys with black eyes.

    There is also strong indication that it is a cultural phenomenon due to the fact that the majority of sightings happen in the U.S. and the U.K.

    worldpopulationreview.com/…/ufo-sightings-by-coun…

    Posadas seems to acknowledge this:

    We need to wait for further proof. It is possible that they have appeared, though it is also possible that there has been much fantasising, exaggeration or mystical deductions on the part of those who have seen them. But there is testimony from people who seem thoughtful.

    But then immediately turns around and acts like extraterrestrial UFOs are a certainty:

    We do not know what form they take, or their number, but they must exist, or else they would not appear like this. There are reasons enough why capitalists would not invent these matters.

    This means that they have no need for war, that they do not come to Earth with goals of conquest in mind.

    They have no aggressive impulse, they have no need to kill in order to live: they come only to observe.

    There is one final critical miss here, in my opinion:

    The existence of flying saucers and living beings on other planets is a phenomena that the dialectical conception of history can admit. The most immediate consequence we can draw is that, if these beings do exist, they must have a societal organisation superior to our own. Their appearances are not the effect of bellicose or aggressive sentiments.

    This line of thought relies on the earlier premise that extraterrestrials are already here and are peaceful. I think I’ve sufficiently explained why there is insufficient reason to believe that. But worse is, even if they did exist and are currently peaceful, that still doesn’t necessarily prove anything about their economic/political system.

    It could be the case that they’ve only sent recon ships to prepare for invasion, to extract capital value from our planet. It could be the case that they never grew out of feudalism, and their monarch simply finds us entertaining. It could be the case that they are hyper individualistic, using a barter economy with no government, but are long lived enough to make technological progress on an individual level, and there’s only a few of them in orbit poking around. I absolutely love science fiction, and I could go on with a million other made up examples that would fit the narrative here, but it’s only ever going to be fiction. There needs to be much stronger evidence than what Posadas provided.

    I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts on this. Because while I heavily disagree with Posadas, this is still an incredibly interesting topic.

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    • Diva@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      I have some thoughts, though I need you wait until I’m off my phone or it’s going to be a rambling mess

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    • Diva@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Frankly the whole trotskyist tradition can be a bit woo-woo-y when it comes to talking about global revolution, at baseline.

      At some level it’s also a quasi-doomer meme to be like ‘okay nuke us already so the space comrades can save us’

      I don’t buy the flying saucer stuff, it strikes me as at best creative speculation.

      re:

      And because scientific progress can be achieved through any of these economic systems*, we can’t just assume that extra terrestrials found themselves on our doorstep due to one particular economic model.

      • At different rates obviously, but progress nonetheless.

      My read on the passage related to this is that there’s always some inherent inefficiency when it comes to scientific production, due some combination of the economic system (and also the need for global collaboration vs national borders/defense concerns). For example if you were viewing technological development on different planets, all other things being equal but one has a fractured global government with hundreds of different defense concerns and intra-class conflicts sapping resources and scientific ability, vs a planet that has progressed beyond that, and is able to direct all resources towards a single purpose. One of those is going to be more effective in material terms. Maybe there’s some benefit to class competition when it comes to over-stepping what is sustainable within a given system, but I would say it’s debatable.

      • I would actually point out that we have an extremely pressing example on our current planet where the endless-growth orientation of our economic system is de-terraforming our planet before we have demonstrated any ability to re-terraform it, when you’re looking at things on an interstellar timescale this starts to look like something self-defeating rather than a ticket to rapid development.

      I would say that given the large scientific capabilities and organization, and commitment over time needed to meaningfully act on an interstellar scale, any systems which are not at a stable equilibrium will simply not exist long enough to actually have an impact.

      My original statement was:

      any interstellar species is going to have already necessarily passed far beyond our existing social structures, and would looks like communists to any earthly observer.

      The rationale is essentially just that any system stable enough to actually sustain existence at those timescales for that time would necessarily look different, and could not look like a system with constant boom and bust cycles, as eventually the technology gets the the point where the ‘bust’ is a self-annihilation. I guess I’m just not that confident that we’re on a trajectory which would result in us becoming an interstellar civilization without the need for major overhauls to our political economy first, and it makes it hard to envision aliens getting to that point while still also being tied up with internal ethnic strife and economic crises.

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      • Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        I don’t buy the flying saucer stuff, it strikes me as at best creative speculation.

        I’m glad we’re in agreement there.

        For example if you were viewing technological development on different planets, all other things being equal but one has a fractured global government with hundreds of different defense concerns and intra-class conflicts sapping resources and scientific ability, vs a planet that has progressed beyond that, and is able to direct all resources towards a single purpose. One of those is going to be more effective in material terms.

        I also agree here, though I think the importance of the speed of progress isn’t the important part here. Even if it takes a billion years, it potentially wouldn’t matter because an extraterrestrial race could have evolved a billion years earlier than us. Though this gets into the problem of stability over long periods like you’ve mentioned.

        I would actually point out that we have an extremely pressing example on our current planet where the endless-growth orientation of our economic system is de-terraforming our planet before we have demonstrated any ability to re-terraform it, when you’re looking at things on an interstellar timescale this starts to look like something self-defeating rather than a ticket to rapid development.

        Absolutely, but another thing to consider is that it may not be a requirement to have a fully habitable planet. Earth has already, since before industrialization, had places that are effectively uninhabitable to humans. We’re reducing the area that is habitable at a terrifying rate, but it could be the case that it becomes irrelevant. My mind goes to a world like that of Earth within the Warhammer 40k series. The Earth is just fucked, plastered and cemented over, with a poisonous atmosphere, etc. They just brute force the problem by ignoring it.

        That, and living on a planet may not be necessary in the first place. Given the composition of our asteroid belt, it has basically everything we’d ever need for potentially thousands of years, easily available and minable, relatively speaking. Outside of food problems, it could potentially be possible to live nomadically in space.

        any systems which are not at a stable equilibrium will simply not exist long enough to actually have an impact.

        Maybe, maybe not. It could be the case that wormholes, alcubierre drives, and other forms of FTL shenanigans are impossible, and the only way to get somehwere else is to send a generational ship. If that’s how things play out, intelligent life might hope from one system to the next in a manner similar to conway’s game of life. It isn’t at equilibrium, because each planet is drained of resources rapidly, but there is enough momentum to keep things going.

        The rationale is essentially just that any system stable enough to actually sustain existence at those timescales across those distances would necessarily look different, and could not look like a system with constant boom and bust cycles, as eventually the technology gets the the point where the ‘bust’ is a self-annihilation.

        That could be the case. It also could be the case that those timescales aren’t needed, because FTL is somehow possible. We literally just don’t know right now.

        To add even more to this complete speculation, it may be the case that there are stable political systems, without boom and bust cycles, that aren’t capitalist, socialist, or communist. It could be the case that technology inevitably advances such that the bust is self-annihilation, but it could also be the case that technology inevitably advances such that there isn’t any possible way for their to be a bust, that it isn’t possible to revolt against the bourgeoisie/monarch/dictator. AI systems are going to get a lot more crazy over these next few years, and a large chunk of it will be used to quell protest and dissidents. They can already track people based on the gait of their walk, what when (not if) that technology is expanded upon? The technology is very clearly here to use small scale drones to attack individual people, what happens when (again not if) that technology is expanded upon? We may find ourselves in a position with the bourgeoisie impossible to touch thanks to technology.

        This question of economic/political stability is essentially just one possible answer to the fermi paradox and great filter.

        I guess I’m just not that confident that we’re on a trajectory which would result in us becoming an interstellar civilization without the need for major overhauls to our political economy first,

        Yeah, I agree.

        and it makes it hard to envision aliens getting to that point while still also being tied up with internal ethnic strife and economic crises.

        Maybe I’ve just focused on science fiction dystopias too much, but I can envision it. But that’s not to say I think it likely.

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