Given the discussion on the distinction between cliology and applied cultual evolution (and other means of social management), a brief, all too brief, account of the ethical stance is demanded here. The first person pronoun is generally avoided on this site, not particularly for scholarly reasons, but rather in an attempt not to contaminate the work too much with the opinions I personally hold. Of course, this is all still the views of the author, and should be read and considered in that light, but adopting “I” would be to tempt in the kind of subjectivity that I want to keep out. Hence, I will only use “I” where the context is blatantly opinionated. This section on bioethics, the ethical aspects of cliology, represents such a context
Cliology, in its present form, is about engineering, mostly on the basis that I am an engineer, and engineering is what I know. Engineers and ethical philosophers do not see eye to eye. Engineers want to roll up their sleeves and solve practical problems, not “waffle” endlessly about what is right and wrong. The downside of this is that we engineers avoid the subject of ethics as-if it is nothing to do with us. My understanding of ethical philosophy is admittedly weak. I do have to recognise that tools intended to influence culture have the potential to have an impact on many lives, for benefit or detriment. So while I might not have a deep philosophical understanding of all the dilemmas cliology faces, I think it is worth raising the issues as food for thought.
There is a strict and necessary partition between the instrument of cliology, and its field of application, between the toolmaker and tool and tool user and use. The toolmaker may have an intention when making the tool and may use their own tools, but that does not guarantee the intention of other users and their uses of the tool. A tool in itself can have no ethical stance and the intentions of the tool user, where ethics do come into play, are really non of the toolmakers business. Indeed, it would be unethical, even if it were possible, for the toolmaker to impose their personal ethics, where they to conflict with the tool-user, upon the tool-user. However, it is still acceptable to limit the capacity of the tools (much like NVIDIA’s choking of data-mining capacity on the RTX cards), or even refuse their supply, like age-restricted sales of alcohol and tobacco.
It is reasonable for those who just-so happen to be toolmakers, in their personal capacity as humans, to attempt to influence others to tool use in how they see as being right. Cliological tools might be ethically-agnostic, but they are powerful instruments of cultural persuasion. Those who develop and configure cliological tools, in their other role as a user, also get the right to use them as they see fit. A kind of self-replicating self-reference emerges here: cliological tools (whether called so or not) can be used to spread the adoption of cliological tools; they can also spread certain ethics. Hence cliological tools can be used to spread the ethical use of cliological tools. Another way of looking at this is clioethics is heritable.
There is an inevitability to certain technologies emerging at some point, whether they are given assisting nudges or even resisting attempts at suppression. Cliology by any other name is coming, whether we like it or not. Variants on the theme have found their way into speculative science fiction: thought experiments that extrapolate technological trajectories into a narrative; and real management fields like behavioural economics. Cliology is just a convenient name for the systematisation of principles that have been around since the dawn of civilisation. These principles are gaining academic and scientific attention now, which will transcend into solid engineering models and technologies now that the fourth industrial revolution is upon us.
The one-eyed man is king
The thought experiments of speculative science-fiction is insightful. Flynn’s In The Country of the Blind tackled many of the intricate issues head-on. It presents an alternative narrative against the backdrop of actual historical characters. In the novel, a secret cabal, the Babbage Society, attempts to use different engines to tease out the laws of history, calculate forecasts, and make interventions with a view to creating utopia. The book is set both in the Victorian era where the idealists are dreaming up how they would like the world to become, and the present (well sometime around the 1990s), where generations of interventions have come into fruition. A spoiler alert: the society has schismed into two sects. A group that maintains the Babbage society name has become a corrupt perversion of the original willing to stop at nothing to preserve the secret that they have taken to manipulation and greed. The other group, the Utopian Research Associates, who simply study dispassionately with the occasional “adjustment”. An ex-journalist, come property developer stumbles on their secret and blows the whole thing wide open. A history research group is set up at Denver University, and in an effort not to get lynched, the Babbage society takes action and mayhem ensue. Other secret cliologist emerge out of the woodwork, like the Quetelet, and an old Boston investment firm. The narrative peters off into some kind of action-spy-thiller, but Flynn does explore some critical themes in Red Malone’s dialogues with Sarah Baumont.
As a side-note, Malone’s dialogues are employed as a trope to expose the long backstories of the novel’s players. Technical and terminological inventions for the story are explained with plausable scientific reasoning. The Babbage society are recognised as engineers and have been using memes to steer history using a method they call “cliology”. Obviously, this is from where I cribbed the term, and this site represents my aspiration to realise some of the principles explored in the novel. History repeats itself, art reflects life, and truth is stranger than fiction.
The dialoges provide the prime takeaways that science can learn from fiction, a few of which require discussion here are somewhat interlinked. S full review of the novel is needed at some point.
there is a partition between those who engage in an emotionally detached study, and those who intervene or perhaps interfere.The Babbage society started out with utopian ideals, better living through science. their aim was to apply their new technology, the difference engine, towards not only understanding the dynamics of history, but to employ that knowledge in building a society for the greater good. They saught willful intervention and to quote baumont’s shock “they weren’t scientists, they were engineers”.
academic vs management
Corruption and drift of its users Schism between those who just watch and those who apply with morals perverted selfishness. In novel – generations had drifted from orignial aims. unreconcilable resulting in schism. We see this in religion and else.
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back seat battle cry of, “somebody should do something about it, but that isn’t our job”
The extreme case of learning about history without learning from it. Henry Thomas Buckle, the “Father of Scientific History” who attempted to state and exemplify the general laws that govern the course of human progress (Cf Turchen.) As a contemporary of Darwin, and similar to Spencer, was loaded with European centric progressivism. systemic bias in psychology studies towards WEIRD (“western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic”) subjects [why make this point?] victorians had unbridled urge to do something about stuff not just study. Risky combination – victorian practicality and victorian ethics. note victorian ethics are not necessarily restricted to those who lived in Queen Victoria’s reign.
The conference of the CES had something of the air of that Denver history group’s meeting.
incomplete knowledge
Academic, practitioner schism, real users, no need to be paranoid, Snowdon = Baumont
We are all amateur cliologists!
From literary explorations to the philosophical and practical treatments
Ethics and accuracy drawn from ITCOTB, the wrong hands and abuses; meta-memes to nudge good use.
the wrong hands, be self-selecting; I’ve deliberately used “crank” to put off the narrow-minded
dystopia – the manipulation and misuse of others for the gain of an elite, this is happening anyway; secret cabals; shadowy government programmes; Dr. Evil and other megalomaniacs; fiction is replete Orwellian newspeak nightmare, or Huxley’s neo-pavlovian. In real writing Skinner or Chomsky’s critique of Skinner. Or Barneys, or Postman, or even Ogilvy
lofty utopian fantasies, or selling more widgets: applied cultural evolution, human well being, saving the planet.
Of course social control is a moral minefield, fitted with peat bogs, and snake pits and bear traps and banana skins.
Literary scholars should make a meal of this, Expect academic and perhaps personal attacks
Biglan; Turchin
Taylorism and scientific management, or fostering empowerment and eliminating microaggression in the workplace
Draw from Libertarian paternalism
this is a scalpel – the instrument ethical neutrality in itself, the application is down to the wielder – “with great power comes great responsibility”, or with medication “always read the label”
epistememes – education, not pavlovian conditioning; meme inoculation; vaccine and pro-biotic against dysbiosis,
Pretty much any technology can be abused, some more than others.
“Nobelisation”
Engineering, technical and scientific graduate courses rarely spend time on deep ethical philosophy. Perhaps this would be a distraction to objective effort. Notwithstanding, human nature and ambient culture inspires the scientist to hope their contribution is for the good. Cliology is a special case as it is dynamite, and that metaphor is apt. Firstly, designer memes can detonate an explosion in opinions and attitudes. Secondly, those attitudes and opinions can be probiotic or dysbiotic. Alfred Nobel both discovered dynamite, and perhaps more importantly, the public perception of his doing so. A Parisian newspaper, in mistaking Alfred’s brother’s death for that of Alfred, printed
The obituary stated, Le marchand de la mort est mort (“The merchant of death is dead”)[4] and went on to say, “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.”[25] Alfred (who never had a wife or children) was disappointed with what he read and concerned with how he would be remembered.
This lead him to donate his fortune to his famous Prizes for an array of outstanding contributions to civilisation. The Nobel Peace prize particularly holds up role models for moral rectitude. Indeed, the prizes are a vector for memeplexes of applying science to the good.
Evolution of Co-operation and v-meme
On a personal note more suited to the blog, and should anybody ever read this, then obviously as a human I have my own views, prejudices, opinions, aspirations, curiosities, needs, cultural biases, social conditioning, and psycho-pathology. I’ve elected to constrain the first personal pronoun to the blog in an attempt to reduce contamination of the main pages with my own ego, yet set aside a partition wherein I can freely celebrate my acknowledged limitations on objectivity as a “cliologian”. However, the effort of the main pages are (hopefully as a “cliologist”) more objective. Although it might sound like an abdication of responsibility and dodging the moral bullets, I can’t really presume to tell anyone how to use this stuff because I don’t know nor is it pertinent moreover.
Of course, invite preferably gentle criticism, but I want to separate criticism of my ideals whether totalitarian or libertarian is irrelevant here, from the criticism of the tools, least a bad workman blames his tools.
I see cliology more like a coding language, what people code in it is non of my business interfering with. This is akin to the W3C being lambasted because others have used HTML in websites that some find repugnant (no links needed).
Applied cultural evolutionists might propose what might be a “good” culture, I concur, but cliology as an instrument, a tool, is intended to be ideologically neutral and to be applied by practitioners including those applied cultural evolutionists.
exposure, an open secret; should anybody care – like Hustle, or … (exposing the amature cliology of corporations)
outside the shed
swords or ploughshares dilemma
Bainbridge – we are sons of bitches. – Welcome to the human race.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiHTfqAAHUI