"Progress"

PhilGoetz

I often hear people speak of democracy as the next, or the final, inevitable stage of human social development. Its inevitability is usually justified not by describing power relations that result in democracy being a stable attractor, but in terms of morality - democracy is more "enlightened". I don't see any inevitability to it - China and the Soviet Union manage(d) to maintain large, technologically-advanced nations for a long time without it - but suppose, for the sake of argument, that democracy is the inevitable next stage of human progress.

The May 18 2012 issue of Science has an article on p. 844, "Ancestral hierarchy and conflict", by Christopher Boehm, which, among other things, describes the changes over time of equality among male hominids. If we add its timeline to recent human history, then here is the history of democracy over time in the evolutionary line leading to humans:

Pre-human male hominids, we infer from observing bonobos and chimpanzees, were dominated by one alpha male per group, who got the best food and most of the females.
Then, in the human lineage, hunter-gatherers developed larger social groups, and the ability to form stronger coalitions against the alpha; and they became more egalitarian.
Then, human social groups even became larger, and it became possible for a central alpha-male chieftain to control a large area; and the groups became less egalitarian.
Then, they became even larger, so that they were too large for a central authority to administer efficiently; and decentralized market-based methods of production led to democracy. (Or so goes one story.)

There are two points to observe in this data:

There is no linear relationship between social complexity, and equality. Steadily-increasing social complexity lead to more equality, then less, then more.
Enlightenment has nothing to do with it - if any theory makes sense, it is that social equality tunes itself to the level that provides maximal social competitive fitness. Even if we agree that democracy is the most-enlightened political system, this realization says nothing about what the future holds.

I do believe "progress" is a meaningful term. But there isn't some cosmic niceness built into the universe that makes everything improve monotonically along every dimension at once.

Pre-human male hominids, we infer from observing bonobos and chimpanzees, were dominated by one alpha male per group, who got the best food and most of the females.
Then, in the human lineage, hunter-gatherers developed larger social groups, and the ability to form stronger coalitions against the alpha; and they became more egalitarian.
Then, human social groups even became larger, and it became possible for a central alpha-male chieftain to control a large area; and the groups became less egalitarian.
Then, they became even larger, so that they were too large for a central authority to administer efficiently; and decentralized market-based methods of production led to democracy. (Or so goes one story.)

There are two points to observe in this data:

There is no linear relationship between social complexity, and equality. Steadily-increasing social complexity lead to more equality, then less, then more.
Enlightenment has nothing to do with it - if any theory makes sense, it is that social equality tunes itself to the level that provides maximal social competitive fitness. Even if we agree that democracy is the most-enlightened political system, this realization says nothing about what the future holds.

I do believe "progress" is a meaningful term. But there isn't some cosmic niceness built into the universe that makes everything improve monotonically along every dimension at once.

The situation can be influenced on too many levels. In a dictatorship, weapons win. In a liberal democracy in theory weapons should not be relevant, because they are only used against criminals and external enemies; the conflicts should be decided by votes. However in real-life democracies the people with power can sometimes use police and secret service to harm their opponents; they just can't do it too openly. Maybe espionage is even better that weapons; if you have access to plans of your opponents and if you know about their internal conflicts, you have big advantage. If cryptography can give them security, you can make cryptography illegal. Etc. The existing power can be in many ways used to protect the status quo. Also education, or deciding which projects will be financially supported by state and which will get administrative barriers.

Besides using violence, the critical abilities are to coordinate and influence others.

It remains to be seen how this could change in the future, especially when one considers that Internet-based open politics may be a possibility.

Even with internet-based politics, money can give you huge advantage. Find smart people who agree with your cause, and give them money, so they don't have to work, and can spend all day online, advocating your cause; while your opponents must spend 8 hours a day in work. Find stupid people and pay them to follow your smart opponents online, and fill discussions in their blogs by stupidity and hate, post false accusations, create artificial controversies. Simply, create a feeling that majority of smart people agree with your cause, and that there is something fishy about your opponents.

Raising the sanity waterline is a noble goal, but as soon as it will visibly harm someone's political agenda, there will be problems. Just like creationists are able to make a museum with dinosaurs to support their cause, I expect that if "sanity waterline" activities will become popular, copycat "alternative sanity waterline" activities will appear soon. And it is easy even for an x-rationalist to shoot themselves in the foot, especially if someone will help them to aim.

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