At any present moment, before retrospect can make its exclusions, the cultural atmosphere is thick with junk ideation, which is, in that moment, indisputably influential, even dominant, and therefore not to be excluded from any meaningful understanding of what we are and how we proceed over time. It is the collective expression of the individual capacity for error which is continuous with our gift for hypothesis and no doubt crucial to our ability to learn and to imagine. ^[1]

Marilynne Robinson

 
It may be a fundamental aspect of human nature that we create kludges in the presence of mystery. We’re a story-telling species, more content with explanation than the anomalous unknown even if our stories are totally wrong.

I was reminded of this recently while reading an observation made by Eric Mazur, a physics professor at Harvard, who argued that lectures do not foster active learning in students. He said, “In a real-world problem, you know where you want to get, but you don’t know how to get there. … The goal is known, but the prescription to get there isn’t.” ^[2] Mazur contrasted this with the lecture-textbook situation where the algorithm is known but the answer it will bring is unknown. I think he’s on to something.

For a complex problem, we can often intuit an acceptable outcome but then have no idea how to get there. Creating stories to bridge this gap seems a natural inclination. In the course of doing this, we activate our enormous capacity to generate errors and to learn.

Consider global warming as an example. Most people would probably agree that it’s not a good idea to fry the earth. Living sustainably in our biosphere might be one way to phrase an acceptable outcome. But even if this imagined future received widespread support, no yellow-brick road leads to the destination. The goal may be clear, but the prescription is not.

This seems to be true for many real-world problems. It is certainly true in science. I’ll again use quantum foundations as a manageable example for exploring how errors help us grapple with complex problems.

§

Christopher Fuchs, now at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, argues that quantum theory puts the cart before the horse by emphasizing mathematics rather than physical meaning. Fuchs says, “We should be relentless in asking ourselves: From what deep physical principles might we derive this exquisite mathematical structure? Those principles should be crisp; they should be compelling. They should stir the soul.” ^[3] He concludes this thought with a concrete image, saying “Until we can explain quantum theory’s essence to a junior-high-school or high-school student and have them walk away with a deep, lasting memory. we will have not understood a thing about the quantum foundations.” ^[4]

Used in “shut up and calculate” mode, ^[5] quantum mechanics needs no interpretation. For many years now, its mathematical formalism has successfully helped design and build much of the technology of our ever-connected networked life. But if you dare to wonder what actually happens in the quantum world, deeper questions emerge that beg for explanation. It’s story-telling time. These stories are called interpretations.

I set myself the task of seeing if I could make any sense of the various interpretations of quantum mechanics. I did this as a proxy for Fuchs’ high school student. Could I walk away with anything approaching Fuchs’ “deep, lasting memory” of quantum mechanics?

My first thought was to use the Wikipedia summary of interpretations of quantum mechanics. ^[6] It includes a very nice table that compares and contrasts fourteen different interpretations along eight different dimensions (e.g., does the mathematics represent something physically real or only our knowledge about what may transpire during measurement?). The immediate visual impact of Wikipedia’s summary is one of considerable variation. No interpretations are identical when compared across dimensions. Conversely, no dimension receives unanimous agreement when compared across interpretations. Basically it’s a 14×10 table that identifies many points of dissension. ^[7]

This nicely captures the diversity among interpretations, but I’m reluctant to go much farther with that analysis. The basic problem is ancient. As Laozi said in roughly 300 BCE, “names can name no lasting name.” ^[8] Or as Gregory Bateson phrases the same notion, “the map is not the territory.” ^[9] Attaching names to interpretations is useful to a point, but it doesn’t capture the vibrancy that real people bring to learning situations. People are not static and neither are the stories that physicists use to make sense of quantum mechanics. In this sense an interpretation is a living entity that changes with time and may be unique to individuals.

Instead, I’ll rely on Maximilian Schlosshauer’s Quantum Interviews, ^[10] which uses written interviews with 17 prominent quantum physicists and philosophers. Each interviewee addressed the same series of questions. Their answers provide color and nuance to the diversity among interpretations, and clearly demonstrate a genuine sense of struggle with interpretational issues.

From the questions that Schlosshauer asked each individual, I chose three that I thought, in combination, might persuade me that quantum mechanics is understandable. These questions were:

1. Big Issues: What are the most pressing problems in the foundations of quantum mechanics today?
2. My Favorite Interpretation: What interpretive program can make the best sense of quantum mechanics, and why?
3. The Measurement Problem: The quantum measurement problem: serious roadblock or dissolvable pseudo-issue?

I chose the last question as representative of the various dimensions that distinguish interpretations. Measurement and the role of the observer has been a quintessential point of disagreement since Bohr and Einstein parried in the 1920s and 1930s.

It’s helpful to mention how the participants in the quantum interviews were selected. According to Schlosshauer, “The interviewees for this book come in all foundational stripes: agnostics, informationalists, Bohrians, Everettians, Bohmians, Bayesians, collapsists, ensemblists, reconstructionists—you name it.” ^[11]

As preparation for the analysis, I made a large table with names of interviewees in the rows and Schlosshauer’s questions in the columns. In each of the cells of this table, I entered notes while reading an interviewee’s response to a question. Quantum Interviews is organized around questions and that’s the order I used for this first reading. When completed, the table provided an convenient overview and made comparing and contrasting responses easier. I then re-read the responses, this time organized by person, so I could get a more coherent sense of what each interviewee was saying in total.

I did walk away from this exercise with Fuch’s “deep, lasting memory” of quantum mechanics, but it’s not the one he intended. Rather than a memory of understanding, it’s one of fracture. Splinters lie everywhere, ^[12] although some larger fragments remain intact. My conclusion was that I could never understand quantum mechanics in its present state.

§

Current interpretations of quantum mechanics are brilliant, creative, bold, and elegant. Yet given the considerable disagreement among these stories, most must also be wrong in part or total. Perhaps some new fundamental insight or principle will emerge that provides theoretical quantum physicists the catalyst needed to escape from their present trough. Or perhaps some particularly insightful experiments will winnow the interpretations, refine aspects of those remaining, or even point in entirely new directions.

These may sound like harsh words, but I do not intend them that way. What we see in quantum foundations today is a mass flailing entirely appropriate for states of ignorance. This is cause for celebration. It is the act of generating ideas, identifying errors, learning from the errors, and repeating the process.

At this point, please re-read the quote by Marilynne Robinson that opens this essay. Take your time, pausing with each phrase until the unfolding thoughts register. For me, the impact was remarkable.

Robinson uses the term junk ideation similarly to the way I use kludges. They are errors, sometimes even blunders of whopping proportion and tenacious durability. But kludges are us, and they are necessary components in the process of imagining, exploring, and, ultimately, learning.

Robinson also argues that mystery, our ignorance of the unknown, impels learning. She says, “Certainty is a relic, an atavism, a husk we ought to have outgrown. Mystery is openness to possibility, even at the scale now implied by physics and cosmology. The primordial human tropism toward mystery may well have provided the impetus for all that we have learned.” ^[13]

For real-world problems like the nature of quantum reality, learning is the only solution. Thinking, imagining, conjecturing, probing, failing, listening to the mystery, relaxing in the anomaly, and learning. It takes the best that we can give. It’s frustrating, humbling, slow, and tortuous. It’s also beautiful and cause for hope.

Reference Notes

1. ^ Marilynne Robinson, “Cosmology”, When I Was a Child I Read Books, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2012, p192.
2. ^ Craig Lambert, “Twilight of the Lecture,” Harvard Magazine, March-April 2012, pp26-27.
3. ^ Christopher A. Fuchs, Quantum Mechanics as Quantum Information (and only a little more), arXiv:quant-ph/0205039, 08-May-2002, p4.
4. ^ Ibid.
5. ^ The instrumentalist stance on quantum mechanics argues that no interpretation is necessary because no answer to why is required before using quantum mechanics. For a humorous but serious history of the origins of the phrase “shut up and calculate,” see N. David Mermin, Could Feynman Have Said This?, Physics Today, May 2004, p10. My regards to Wikipedia’s Interpretations of quantum mechanics for the link to this history.
6. ^ Wikipedia, Interpretations of quantum mechanics
7. ^ You can get a rough sense of the degree of variation across interpretations and dimensions by using the modal cell value in each dimension as a basis for comparison. For example, the modal (most common) entry for the dimension Wavefunction Real? is Yes. There are 7 Yes values, 3 No values, 1 Agnostic value, 1 footnote-qualified Yes, 1 footnote-qualified No, and 1 footnote-qualified Agnostic. The modal value here is Yes, and there are 7 other values that diagree with the modal value. If you do this across all dimensions, 44 of the total 132 cell values (33%) differ from modal values. I make no claims that this is in any way rigorous, but it does indicate that a substantial amount of disagreement exists among the 14 interpretations that Wikipedia considered.
8. ^ Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo (translators), Tao Te Ching Lao-Tzu, Boston: Shambhala, 2007, section 1.
9. ^ Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2002, p27
10. ^ Maximilian Schlosshauer (Ed.), Elegance and Enigma: The Quantum Interviews, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2011.
11. ^ Schlosshauer, Elegance and Enigma, page x.
12. ^ Considerable vitality exists in quantum foundations today. Here is just one example. During a single week while I was writing this post, three articles appeared on a quantum physics pre-print site that each offered fresh interpretations of quantum mechanics. One provided a “linguistic” interpretation, another a “quantum field” intepretation, and the last a “probabilistic transactional” interpretation. For details, see: Shiro Ishikawa, The Linguistic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, arXiv:1204.3892 [physics:hist-ph], 17-Apr-2012; Art Hobson, There are no particles, there are only fields, arXiv:1204.4616 [quant-ph], 19-Apr-2012; and Ruth E. Kastner, The Possibilist Transactional Interpretation and Relativity, arXiv:1204.5227 [quant-ph], 23-Apr-2012.
13. ^ Robinson, When I was a Child, p197.

First, I am writing about tomorrow. I worry about the world’s kludges (e.g., global warming), and I have no magic answers. Writing helps me think through these concerns, forcing me to put words together as ideas I didn’t recognize previously.

Second, I am writing about learning. In the midst of daily living, the world of kludges can look positively frightening. But up a level, at a meta-level, learning processes occur almost everywhere. Think of evolution as an example; it’s learning. I find it hopeful that the world features learning so prominently.

Third, I am modeling the messiness of learning. What you see written in these posts about quantum physics is hard-won learning on my part. No doubt some of it is naive or uninformed. But that’s how everyone learns. You grapple with something, you do your best to straighten out the thoughts, you write them down, you discuss them with others, you scrap it all, and then do it over again. This process takes time, which is the main reason the posts appear infrequently.

I am literally immersed in the research and philosophy of quantum foundations. It is truly bewildering, but ever so slowly I am getting my bearings. I read pre-print articles, journal articles that are not behind paywalls, popular books, technical books, science magazines, and subscribe to many science-related RSS feeds. I also watch physics lectures and videos available on the web. I am still dreadfully unable to comprehend the mathematics, but that is not all bad. I see generally what physicists are attempting. But I cannot know it from the inside as theoretical quantum physicists do.

Fourth, I am writing about how we might engage the world’s kludges. Theoretical quantum physics is a mess, so it’s a wonderful analogy for other current messes in the world. The world will never be free of kludges, but perhaps we can learn how to blunt the most egregious ones and to build more flexibility into new kludges we construct. Quantum physics is trying desperately to tell us something profound about our world, as are other economic, political, and social kludges. While writing about quantum theory for illustration, I can refer naturally to these other searches for the fundamental.

Fifth, I am playing when I write. It all starts with the words I wonder and imagine if. Most of my thoughts like this turn out to be fanciful and get dropped quickly. But I’ve had one such thought for several years now. As I said earlier, I see learning everywhere. So then … I wonder if a generalized form of learning is hard-wired into the universe. If so, this might pop up in the statements of physical principles that eventually lead us out of the wilderness of quantum physics.

Most likely this is just another bizarre thought, synapses connecting dots that don’t exist. But a predisposition toward learning may be an essential component of the physical world. Some theoretical quantum physicists believe that information, simple binary zeroes and ones, is the essence of the material universe. It sounds impossible that a daffodil is somehow constructed from bits. But if true, then … imagine if learning is a way to remix or even create that information. Wouldn’t that be fantastic!

Sixth, I am writing to my daughter Tucker. I would like her kids (yet unborn) and grandchildren to have something that they can giggle about and say “weird old gramps.” Perhaps it will also affect the way they choose to live their lives.

So, Tucker, this is for you. Enjoy.

Seeing the Ox

Yellow oriole on a branch—one call after call.
Warm sun, gentle wind, green willows on the
        riverbank
Just this and no more; the meeting is unavoidable.
Stately head and stately horns: hard to finish that
        painting!

Translated by Lewis Hyde^[1]

 
The Oxherding Series of 10 drawings, text, and verse from 12th Century Buddhist tradition illustrates the ten stages on the path to satori or enlightenment. When I started drafting the present post, I realized that the Oxherding Series provided a metaphor for my two previous posts (Notions on How to Proceed and On the Right Track), although Buddhist thought and enlightenment were not at issue there or here.

The first entry in the Oxherding Series is Searching for the Ox, where we find ourselves knee-deep in self-constructed kludges and go in search of that which is fundamental.

The second Oxherding entry is Seeing the Tracks, when we’re at a still point between past and future and only the dance exists, and we first see footprints left by something fundamental.

The third Oxherding entry is Seeing the Ox, when we first glimpse the fundamental.

What might such an encounter be like?

Again I’ll use the context of quantum physics to explore this question, because the images are so intense. I also appear headed somewhere with these posts, and snippets from quantum mechanics will play an important role. More about this in my next post.

§

In 1927 at the age of 25, Werner Heisenberg^[2] published a tsunami that continues to ripple through the world of physics. His idea is most frequently referred to as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, although Heisenberg almost never called it a principle and preferred other terms than uncertainty.^[3] Regardless of the name, the idea was profound. Stephen Hawking, the renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist, calls the principle “a fundamental, inescapable property of the world.”^[4]

The core assertion in Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is that classical physics, which describes the world we humans experience, does not translate well into quantum physics, which describes the atomic and sub-atomic world. Here’s how Heisenberg framed the issue, using the pronoun one to refer elliptically to himself:

One could speak of the position and of the velocity of an electron as in Newtonian mechanics and one could observe and measure these quantities. But one could not fix both quantities simultaneously with an arbitrary high accuracy. … One had learned that the old concepts fit nature only inaccurately.^[5]

The more accurately you measure the position of an electron, the less accurately you can measure its velocity,^[6] and vice versa. In fact, there is a small bound that limits their joint accuracy. This limit gets imposed only in the miniscule spaces of the atomic world. And … the actual joint accuracy is unpredictable.

Ouch. A conundrum with consequences, and the fallout starts with language.

§

People think in stories^[7] and the images those stories produce. But we have no language that corresponds with quantum phenomena. As Heisenberg descibed this disconnect, “it is not a precise language in which one could use the normal logical patterns; it is a language that produces pictures in our mind, but together with them the notion that the pictures have only a vague connection with reality, that they represent only a tendency toward reality.”^[8]

Quantum phenomena can be described in elegant mathematics, but not in simple physical concepts suitable for stories. Even the mathematics is strange; it provides recipes^[9] for experimentalists but couches all predictions as probabilities. Meaning that the outcome of any single observation is unpredictable, while repeated observations conform in total to the expected probability distribution.

The words particle and wave also fade in the quantum fog.

If one electron is directed toward a partition containing a single slit, the electron will pass through the slit and strike a screen placed behind the partition. Essentially the electron behaves as particle. But with two slits in the partition, the single electron passes through both slits simultaneously, behaving like a wave and leaving a banded interference pattern on the screen.^[10] Measurement and observation force quantum phenomena to express themselves in classical terms, but also leave the queasy sense that what actually happens in an atomic event remains disguised.

Position, velocity, particle, wave, and other concepts such as energy and time, all considered well-defined in classical physics, do not adequately describe the quantum world. And this just barely scratches the surface of quantum weirdness. Unfortunately, the mathematical alternative of quantum states in multidimensional Hilbert space doesn’t evoke many stories.

The result is that considerable room exists for interpretation and disagreement.

§

Heisenberg developed the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics, not from clear statements of physical principles, but by describing how the atomic world presented itself in spectroscopic observations. With the uncertainty principle, he declared that classical concepts do not describe what is actually happening in the atomic world. In both cases, he accepted the limitations of the observable.

From that foundation and after many intense discussions with Neils Bohr, Heisenberg insisted that the observable was a good as physicists could do, that they should worry less about what atoms are and concentrate more on what atoms do.^[11] As Heisenberg stressed, “we have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”^[12] In an oft-quoted statement, Bohr put matters even more starkly: “It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.”^[13]

That stance raised the hackles of many physicists. Prominent among the early objectors was Albert Einstein. A decades-long struggle ensued, with Bohr and Einstein as principals.^[14]

Even though Einstein’s position evolved over the years, his core concern was unequivocable, “one can hardly view the quantum-theoretical description as a complete representation of the physically real.”^[15] In otherwords, there is something occurring underneath quantum theory that captures the physical essence; quantum mechanics only delivers what we can observe about that essence.

Sometimes this philosophical schism gets portrayed as realists (Einstein et al) versus anti-realists (Bohr, Heisenberg et al). I prefer not to attach names to moving targets. Let it suffice that the Bohr-Einstein dialogue was the most obvious splintering of theoretical quantum physicists into different camps. New fissures still appear today.^[16]

§

Jack Kornfeld wrote a book whose title captures much of the complex nature of things fundamental. He was referring to Buddhist enlightenment, but he could easily have been referring to anything fundamental. It’s called After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.^[17]

There’s a tendency, certainly for me anyway, to picture the fundamental as something that simplifies and clarifies, likely in a manner that is aesthetically pleasing.

The example of quantum physics should nuance that picture. Indeed, the fundamental may simplify, but it can also obfuscate, move us blindfolded into unfamiliar territory, and create disagreement and dissension. Quantum mechanics and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle did all of those.

At first glance this might seem discouraging. But if you move up a level, another picture emerges. Theoretical quantum physics still looks a mess. But what process has been occurring since the 1920s? It’s learning, isn’t it? To be certain, learning occurs at the individual level, but it also occurs at an organic meta-level much like evolution.^[18]

This learning may require decades or even centuries. Very likely it will uncover many fundamentals along the way. Here I’m not just referring to quantum physics. We’re all involved in various forms of meta-level learning. Think of learning how to make economies less dependent on fossil fuels so we don’t fry the world with climate change; or learning globally how to live together with our diversities and disagreements; or learning how to create flexible institutions that don’t ossify into bastions of control and power.

Even though laundry time is not much fun, we all need clean clothes. I find this story hopeful.
 

Reference Notes

1. ^ In Lewis Hyde’s spare sense oxherding, he translates the Sung Dynasty Oxherding Series by rendering each syntactic Chinese unit as a simple English sentence. For comparison, see Hyde’s “one word ox” or “American ox” translations that provide respectively less and more language than the “spare sense ox.” For more background and another translation, see Roshi Philip Kapleau, The Three Pillars of Zen: Teaching, Practice, and Englightenment, New York: Doubleday, 1980, pp313-325. For interpretive photographs, see Andrew Binkley’s Ten Ox Herding Pictures.
2. ^ Two years earlier, in 1925, Heisenberg provided the first mathematical foundation for quantum physics by explaining the spectroscopic characteristics of hydrogen. His achievements in the foundations of quantum theory brought Heisenberg the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics, when he was cited for “the creation of quantum mechanics.”
3. ^ The word uncertainty only appears in an appendix to Heisenberg’s paper, written after a critique by Neils Bohr. Heisenberg preferred the words inaccuracy or indeterminacy, and he always used these words in combination with relations rather than principle. See Jan Hilgevoord and Jos Uffink, The Uncertainty Principle, Stanford Encyclopdia of Philosophy, Section 2.4. For a wonderful discussion of the various names applied to Heisenberg’s idea, see: David Lindley, Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science, New York: Anchor Books, 2008, pp149-150. My favorite term is one used by current German-speaking physicists, which Lindley translates into English as the blurriness relation.
4. ^ Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, New York: Bantam, 1998, p57.
5. ^ Werner Heisenberg, Physics & Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science, New York: Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2007 (original publication 1958), pp16-17.
6. ^ In the mathematics for the uncertainty principle, the two terms are position and momentum (rather than velocity). Momentum is just the mass of an object multiplied by its velocity. Here I follow Heisenberg’s lead in using the more accessible term.
7. ^ Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2002 (originally published 1979), pp12-16.
8. ^ Heisenberg, Physics & Philosophy, pp154-155.
9. ^ According to Anthony Leggett, a Nobel laureate in physics, “the whole formalism of quantum mechanics is, in effect, nothing but a reciple” [emphasis in original]. See Maximilian Schlosshauer (Ed.), Elegance and Enigma: The Quantum Interviews, Berlin: Springer, 2011, p79.
10. ^ For a more detailed description of this two-slit experiment, see Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, A Briefer History of Time, New York: Bantam, 2008 [original publication 2005], pp95-98.
11. ^ Lindley, Uncertainty, p110.
12. ^ Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, p32.
13. ^ Quoted in Lindley, Uncertainty, p196.
14. ^ For a wonderful story of “the struggle for the soul of science”, see: Lindley, Uncertainty
15. ^ Letter from Einstein to Max Born in 1948. Quoted in Don Howard, “Revisiting the Einstein-Bohr Dialogue,” 2005, pp31-32. PDF available here.
16. ^ For a compact overview of the various interpretations of quantum mechanics, see the Wikipedia entry. To actually experience these interpretations, see the interviews of 17 physicists and philosophers in Schlosshauer (Ed.), Elegance and Enigma. It is truly remarkable how much disagreement exists.
17. ^ Jack Kornfield, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, New York: Bantam, 2000.
18. ^ Gregory Bateson refers to evolution and learning as the two “great stochastic processes.” See Bateson, Mind and Nature, chapter VI.

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement
     from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still
     point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.^[1]

T.S. Eliot

 
In Notions on How to Proceed, I suggested that we are knee-deep in nasty smelling kludges of our own making. I then claimed somewhat glibly that we know how to proceed. As with all kludges, discovering or rediscovering the fundamental opens a path forward.

That’s all very fine, but it raises an important question I did not address. If something fundamental is obscured, how would you recognize it? Even tripping over it might not be sufficient.

The special case of foundational research in the physical sciences sheds considerable light on this question.

§

In the beginning was the Classical, and the Classical was with Physics, and the Classical was Physics.^[2] That pretty much describes the legacy that classical physics casts on its descendents.

Classical physics concerns the physical reality that humans perceive.^[3] So it’s natural that an anthropocentric physics should be most highly developed. But the backwash of this legacy drags at progress when the classical meets the non-classical.

In such circumstances, the fundamental is easy to miss. Physical reality that Lilliputians might perceive offers a splendid example.

Quantum mechanics is the study of physics in the miniscule spaces of atomic and sub-atomic scale. The name itself marvelously incorporates the tension when classical meets non-classical, mechanics being a term inherited from human scale physics where it seems obvious to speak of bodies located and moving in space, and quantum referring to the discrete, non-continuous, yes-no nature of atomic scale where the classical concepts of bodies located and moving in space must be radically nuanced.

In 1900 Max Planck ushered in a new century and a new foundational concept in our description of nature when he suggested that energy in the form of light and other electromagnetic waves could only be emitted or absorbed in discrete bundles, or quanta. One hundred and ten years later, we have an exquisite mathematical formalism for quantum mechanics that frequently gets described with pride that goeth before a fall, as done here by Christopher Fuchs at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

In the history of physics, there has never been a healthier body than quantum theory; no theory has ever been more all-encompassing or more powerful. Its calculations are relevant at every scale of physical experience, from subnuclear particles, to table-top lasers, to the cores of neutron stars and even the first three minutes of the universe. Yet since its founding days, many physicists have feared that quantum theory’s common annoyance—the continuing feeling that something at the bottom of it does not make sense—may one day turn out to be the symptom of something fatal.^[4]

Ouch. How strange. The calculations of quantum mechanics work splendidly, but nobody can explain how the mathematics flow from simple physical principles. How quantum reality behaves is clear; but what is doing the behaving and why are impenetrable.^[5] Clearly something fundamental awaits discovery.

§

The meaning of quantum mechanics, its interpretation, falls under the moniker of quantum foundations. Physicists, philosophers, and mathematicians ply their trade there, and they share a mathematics wand with magical powers.

Roger Penrose speaks of the “deep unity between certain areas of mathematics and the workings of the physical world.”^[6] It is a genuine mystery why this unity exists, but mathematics does provide an elegant tool for touching physical reality. This occurs during the familiar but awkward dance between experiment, observation, mathematics, and theory. In the absence of experiment, as sometimes happens at the margins of science, aesthetics and beauty and symmetry and intuition offer a substitute.

This awkward dance has another name. Learning.

Consider how you learn something that is challenging when mentors, friends, books, or web searches do not readily offer guidance. It’s just you and your flailings that little-by-little bring specks of insight. Quantum foundations is like that. It is chaotic, incredibly creative, and strewn with epic battles that date to the 1920s when its mathematical rigor solidified and Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein enjoined their classic debates.^[7]

Those debates rage yet today with the intensity of religious fervor, as Maximilian Schlosshauer nicely notes: “Today, the soul-searching quantum foundationalist can choose from a great many faiths, each with their individual gospel of interpretive salvation.”^[8]

You’ve got to love quantum foundations today. It’s truly a mess, but in the best and most positive use of that term. Learning is always a mess, whether it’s done by individuals or in a network of other learners. That is cause for celebration.

§

The key points in the saga of quantum mechanics are that the fundamental still lies obscured; and that the way to discover the fundamental lies in learning.

This works better in the sciences than in our world of self-imposed kludges, where experiments occur on the massive scale called living, observations are filtered through politics and values and cultures, mathematics offers only a meager crutch, and theory is either non-existant or hotly contested.

The awkward dance of science and our own socially constructed kludgedom do share one similarity. Both are grounded in learning.

As Eliot notes, where past and future are gathered lies a still point and the only thing is the dance. The dance, I believe, is learning.
 

Reference Notes

1. ^ T.S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton,” Four Quartets, New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1943, p15-16.
2. ^ This plays on James 1:1 to describe classical physics. Very likely this description is not original with me, but I could not locate a citation.
3. ^ This is my colloquial rendering. Einstein and Infeld define classical physics more precisely in this way: “Classical physics aims at a description of objects existing in space, and the formulation of laws governing their changes in time.” See Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, The Evolution of Physics: from Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta, New York: Touchstone, 2007, p291. But naming anything seems to provoke disagreement. The term classical when applied to physics is no different. See, for example, the Wikipedia entry for classical mechanics.
4. ^ Christopher A. Fuchs, “QBism, the Perimeter of Quantum Bayesianism”, arXiv:1003.5209v1 [quant-ph], 26-March-2010, p1.
5. ^ Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, New York: Vintage Books, 2007, p1028.
6. ^ Penrose, Road to Reality, p1033-1034.
7. ^ Don Howard, “Revisiting the Einstein-Bohr Dialogue” (PDF), 2005.
8. ^ Maximilian Schlosshauer (Ed.), Elegance and Enigma: The Quantum Interviews, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2011, p61.

We have access to all the information of the biosphere, arriving as elementary units in the stream of solar photons. When we have learned how these are rearranged against randomness, to make, say, springtails, quantum mechanics, and the late quartets, we may have a clearer notion how to proceed. The circuitry seems to be there, even if the current is not always on. ^[1]

Lewis Thomas

 
It got so I could smell a kludge before I ever saw it.

Anyone who’s written a computer program will know what I mean. I would code something, it worked, and eveyone was happy. But all too soon an enhancement request appeared. I patched the program and life proceeded. This got repeated repeatedly. Each iteration proved more difficult to cobble together than the last. Occasionally I noticed a faint scent, but quickly resumed programming accretions. At some point the odor became too ripe and pungent to ignore. Finally I faced facts. My program was now a kludge, a patchwork of work-arounds so brittle that its very usefulness was imperiled.

Truly this is a gift, a moment when a kludge becomes a playground. There you can bumble, inspect, consider, hack, imagine, create, and learn. Ultimately, to kludge is to learn. Only then can you discover what is fundamental but obscured, and recast it in a simple, elegant, and powerful way. To be certain this is painful, but it nonetheless opens a path forward.

Kludges happen on scales both grand and small. And, like a virus that mutates in the face of an antibiotic, a kludge enjoys unlimited reincarnations. This proves important and is best illustrated with a familiar example emphasizing only certain features.

§

The heavens have always awed humans with their mystery, but the movements of heavenly bodies also serve very practical functions. Navigation on open seas, predictions of celestial events such as eclipses, and calendrics of seasonal and religious events depend on an accurate understanding of the motions of the Earth, moon, sun, planets, and stars in the cosmos. Therein lies a story of kludges.

Let’s join the tale in the 4th century BCE, when Aristotle’s philosophical cosmology depicted a stationary Earth at the center of the universe. A series of concentric spheres, each composed of an ether substance, rotated around the Earth. Each sphere contained one visible object, including the moon, each of the five known planets, and the sun. A final sphere contained all stars since they appeared to move as one fixed unit. Each sphere rotated with a unique motion that approximated what an observer on Earth would see.

Aristotle’s geocentric conception contained circular and spherical symmetries consistent with belief in divine shapes, but its predictions of heavenly motion proved too inaccurate for practical use. Over the next 500 years, enhancements appeared that culminated in 150 CE when Ptolemy published his mathematical explanations for the movement of heavenly bodies. ^[2]

The Ptolemaic system was accurate within the measurement limits of the day, but its foundation rested on several ad hoc kludges. Heavenly spheres still rotated around the Earth, with centers now offset from the Earth. Philosophically, but not technically, the Earth remained the center of the universe. This helped match prediction with observation, but was not sufficient. Epicycles were then added. These allowed heavenly bodies to rotate in small circles within their sphere, so motion became a combination of spherical and epicyclical movement. This again helped, but not enough. Ptolemy then added another offset that effectively relaxed the requirement of perfectly circular motions. For the next 1200 years, the Ptolemaic system was good enough, as in “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

Eventually cracks did appear in Ptolemy’s constructions. For example, the equinox slowly drifted away from the 21st. This played havoc with religious events such as Easter that were determined relative to the equinox.

In 1543 CE, the year of his death, Copernicus published On the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs ^[3]. In it he reimagined what was fundamental by scrapping geocentric assumptions. Instead Copernicus proposed that Earth and the other planets orbited the sun. This settled some inconsistencies in Ptolemy’s system, but because it still retained spherical and circular movements the Copernican system did not significantly improve predictions of planetary motions. Better accuracy wouldn’t happen until the early 1600s when Kepler proposed elliptical orbits. Then in 1687 Newton introduced the idea of gravity and demonstrated how gravitational forces lead naturally to elliptical orbits.

That, however, is not the end of the story. Kludging to learn about the mysteries of the cosmos continues vigorously. We call it science, of course, because that sounds better than kludging. But whatever its name, the core is learning; repeated iterations of kludging and learning.

§

Like Lewis Thomas, my notions on how to proceed are hazy. Unlike him, I don’t believe we need an explanation for the late quartets before proceeding.

Perhaps an electrical switch for Thomas’ metaphoric circuit lies hidden in the nose. In which case, hmmm, do you smell something rank? Nasty; it’s [fill in your favorite kludge; mine is: nations drugged on oil and blind to climate change].

We’ve been handed a gift, a moment when a kludge becomes a playground. Maybe the Earth [fill in your favorite: mine include: oil; politics; financial services; higher education] isn’t the center of the universe.

If not, then what?

We know, don’t we? Across all political persuasions, we know. There’s no need for a Copernicus or a Newton. We can all smell a kludge.

In our daily actions, don’t we have enormous latitude to bumble, inspect, consider, hack, imagine, create, kludge, learn and then live that which is fundamental but now obscured?

Indeed.
 

Reference Notes

1. ^ Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell, New York: Viking Press, 1974, p15.
2. ^ The Galileo Project, Ptolemaic System.
3. ^ The Galileo Project, Copernican System.

Would a better understanding of the unity of mind and nature speak at all to how we might better live in this world? And, specifically, what would it say about learning?

This is a huge question. I am literate in several areas, but a rank novice in others. For starters, I expect to traipse across the nature of time; the quantum enigma; Goethe’s way of science; Bohm on wholeness; Buddhist concepts of time-being and mind-nature; the Batesons on the epistemology of the sacred; Wittgenstein’s investigation of language.

Sounds far out doesn’t it? Definitely. But so much fun, even if nothing comes of it.

I’ll be lost in the confusion of learning and thinking for a long time I expect. Hence the sabbatical. I’m afraid that if I tried to write blogs throughout this process, that they might be totally inarticulate. When I have something that seems worth saying, I’ll write again.

If anyone has any suggestions about source materials, I would be very grateful for your recommendations.

Thanks, Gary

[W]e strived to meet the needs of a booming New York technology and design community with a new kind of collaborative environment. Over the past year, General Assembly has become a campus for technology, design, and entrepreneurship and a social education experience for developers, designers, entrepreneurs, dreamers, and those simply wanting to learn.

 
Dougald Hine, The University Project: Five Reasons, 25-September-2011.

There’s something important coming together around networked technologies and new sociable collaboration spaces, that’s beginning to feel plausible as an alternative home for the spirit of the university.

BioCurious has made interesting strides recently, but it is still too early to tell which direction they’ll end up going. Follow the links listed below to find out more.

Like BioCurious, General Assembly (GA) bundles incubation, co-working, and learning in a physical space designed to be deliberately collaborative, but focused on the community of entrepreneurs, designers, and technology developers in New York City. For a startup that is only about a year old, GA brings deep pockets ($4.25 million investor funding) and a prime location (20,000 sq ft in Manhattan). Apropos I guess is their first certificate program on web design that costs $3000 for 60 hours of instruction. But they also offer a variety of single classes (e.g., Social Selling with Facebook Apps on the OpenGraph) and are home to an impressive number of startups. For more information, please follow the links listed below.

The University Project offers an interesting contrast to both BioCurious and General Assembly. It is a project rather than a startup, although the formative idea came as “I want to start a university” from Dougald Hine, a serial entrepreneur (School of Everything and Dark Mountain). Participants in the project are still exploring the notion that “new sociable spaces of collaboration — from hacker and maker spaces, to social centres, to coworking spaces and media labs — might offer an alternative home for the spirit of the university.” They have an unconference planned in London for the weekend of October 14-16, 2011 that features a diverse set of themes. Like GA, the physical space used by the University Project sounds extraordinary … 12,000 sq ft in Hub Westminster in the heart of London. Please follow the links listed below for more information.

Three quick observations.

1. With BioCurious and General Assembly, we’re talking about brick-and-mortar learning. There may be online components but the need for face-to-face collaborative spaces trumps virtual or digitally remote spaces. For the University Project, physical space at Hub Westminster also plays a prominent role.
2. The University Project may want to reconsider the use of the word “university.” In a profound sense, “education” and “school” and “university” all fall into a category of backward-compatible terms used to refer to yesterday’s learning.
3. I’m troubled by the scale, or maybe the aspirations for scale, evident in learning at General Assembly. I continue to believe that the truly creative and difficult work will involve imagining and birthing learning that is cheap, simple, and accessible to all.

 
 
Related Links

• General Assembly
• Upcoming classes
• Member startups
• First certification program
• University Project
• Universities: Past & Future .. an unconference weekend
• Slides of Hine’s talk at TEDx London
• Hub Westminster: a new institution for changemakers
• Related projects that re-imagine universities
• BioCurious
  • BioCurious self-description
  • Blog
  • Classes

Reflections

Up to this point, I’ve deliberately tried to maintain the distance granted from writing with a quasi-academic style. That works well for description and explication, but eventually the most important question for each of us is “what do I really think about all this?” I’d like to end this post by making explicit my own views.

Peak oil is real. In fact, peak in all fossil fuels is real. Only the timing and rate of descent are in question. Timing, however, is sooner rather than later.

Climate change is also real and hugely serious. It should provide an immediate brake on the use of fossil fuels, but that seems doubtful. Most national leaders will pursue growth and life-as-we-know-it until a point where financial considerations dictate otherwise. Likely that will be way past the point where the transition can be managed tolerably well. Hopefully it won’t be too late.

More-of-the-same means that renewable energy sources, improved efficiency in the use of existing resources, and conservation are not likely to receive their full due any time soon. So we move out farther along the limb we’re sawing behind us.

Is scarcity industrialism our next stage? Perhaps. But what I find generally lacking in peak oil scenarios is a sense of fun and hope. I suppose this should not be surprising. Collapse scenarios can easily depict the loss of what exists today. It’s much more difficult to imagine the totally new.

Industrial society is surely unsustainable now. So I agree with both Schumacher and Greer that we humans need to see ourselves through ecological lenses, as beings both limited and liberated by nature. However, I would suggest one important addition. The minds of people are also a primary resource in the same sense as nature.

Considerable precedence exists for this suggestion. In Buddhist thought, for example, the notion of mind-nature appears prominently. It is defined by Kazuaki Tanahashi as the “foundation of all things.”^[1] Writing in the 13th century, Zen master Dogen describes mind-nature as:^[2]

… mind-nature in buddha-dharma includes the entire phenomenal world … Nothing, not even bodhi or nirvana, is outside mind-nature.

More recently, Gregory Bateson suggested “a necessary unity” of mind and nature.^[3] He bases this on the fundamental similarity of two systems, which each have a random component and a selective process so that only certain outcomes from the random actually endure. Such systems are called stochastic. In Bateson’s words: ^[4]

We face, then, two great stochastic systems that are partly in interaction and partly isolated from each other. One system is within the individual and is called learning, the other is immanent in heredity and in populations and is called evolution. One is a matter of the single lifetime; the other is a matter of multiple generations of many individuals.
…
[T]hese two stochastic systems, working at different levels of logical typing, fit together into a single ongoing biosphere that could not endure if either somatic or genetic change were fundamentally different from what it is.

In evolution there is random genetic change accompanied by natural selection. In learning, Bateson describes the corresponding stochastic process this way:^[5]

Today I would emphasize that creative thought must always contain a random component. The exploratory process – the endless trial and error of mental progress – can achieve the new only by embarking upon pathways randomly presented, some of which when tried are somehow selected for something like survival.

Yes, we do need to live sustainably within the limits of mind-nature.^[6] Mind deserves the same care and nurturing we give to other natural resources. Today this is far from the case. The world’s people lie woefully fallow.

At this crucial point in time, a huge need and opportunity exist for all people to fully engage their creativity, to experiment with new learning forms, to fail and adjust and try again, and ultimately to help drape tomorrow on learning.

I cannot conceive of what learning will look like in a hundred years. But I feel certain it will not look like education. Getting there requires lots of imagination. It also requires an abundance of gentleness.
 

Notes

1. ^ Kazuaki Tanahashi (ed). Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dogen. New York: North Point Press, 1985, p307.
2. ^ Ibid. p154.
3. ^ Gregory Bateson. Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc., 2002.
4. ^ Ibid. p141.
5. ^ Ibid. p172.
6. ^ Note that this differs fundamentally from the tired economics notion of human capital, which is used in the context of producing a good or service whose worth is determined by a market. Mind-nature is priceless.

Implications for Online Learning

The way this works is that we take as fact the scenario of scarcity industrialism. We then try to imagine education and learning in such a future. What might it look like?

Here again space limits the extent to which I can explore this topic. A formal analysis might examine in detail one institution or even an entire education level and then play out implications. In another form, the analysis could start fresh and ask what forms of learning seem consistent with the scenario. If you’re interested in such analyses, I encourage you to undertake the explorations. In a time of transition, such work might prove invaluable.

What I’ll do here is consider only online learning in the energy constrained world of scarcity industrialism. Is online learning compatible with this scenario?

In a single word, no. If there is no Internet, there is no online learning. But a single word does not adequately answer the question. No future happens instantaneously; there is always a transition period.

So a better question is this: Is online learning compatible with the run-up to scarcity industrialism? The answer here is yes, but with qualifications. As long as the Internet is available, online learning for some people in some locations would exist. With generally rising energy prices, however, it would likely be expensive. Not exactly ideal conditions for anything bolder than a stop-gap effort.

This is still not a very satisfying exploration of the feasibility of online learning. With the limited transportation and relocalized economies of scarcity industrialism, some form of online learning might offer a compelling way to connect people and allow them to communicate, share, and learn from the world. This seems far preferable to a return to the one-room schoolhouse. But just because something is preferred doesn’t mean it will happen.

Morphing online learning into some form adaptable to scarcity industrialism will require resourceful and creative people willing to experiment, fail, learn from their failures, and try again. E.F. Schumacher offers some help here with his suggestion of “a technology with a human face.”^[1] He describes this as:^[2]

… making use of the best of modern knowledge and experience, is conducive to decentralization, compatible with the laws of ecology, gentle in its use of scarce resources, and designed to serve the human person instead of making him the servant of machines. I have named it intermediate technology to signify that it is vastly superior to the primitive technology of bygone ages but at the same time much simpler, cheaper, and freer than the supertechnology of the rich. One can also call it self-help technology, or democratic or people’s technology – a technology to which everybody can gain admittance and which is not reserved to those already rich and powerful.

What does this mean for online learning? Is an intermediate online learning technology feasible? Not having the technical networking and communications knowledge required, I’m not the person to best answer that question. But I can suggest a few projects that seem to be tentative steps in this direction. Here are some examples:

1. Open Mesh
   

   Open-Mesh creates ultra low-cost zero-config, plug & play wireless mesh network solutions that spread an Internet connection throughout a hotel, apartment, office, neighborhood, village, coffee shop, shopping mall, campground, marina and just about anywhere else you can imagine.

2. Serval
   

   Communicate anywhere, any time … without infrastructure, without mobile towers, without satellites, without wifi hotspots, and without carriers. Use existing off-the-shelf mobile cell phone handsets.

3. Village Telco
   

   The Village Telco is an initiative to build low-cost community telephone network hardware and software that can be set up in minutes anywhere in the world. No mobile phone towers or land lines are required. The Village Telco uses the latest Open Source telephony software and low cost wireless mesh networking technology to deliver affordable telephony anywhere.

4. ahumanright.org
   

   Our vision is to connect all people by creating and stewarding a freely available decentralized global system of communication.

5. Village Base Station Project (PDF) and Demonstration Review
   

   [T]he Village Base Station (VBTS) [is] a GSM base station designed to be deployed “off the grid” to locations without power or network infrastructure.

In an age of scarcity industrialism, we need something simple, cheap, small-scale, decentralized, and modular for easy scalability. None of the projects just mentioned was initiated with scarcity industrialism in mind, but they all seem cast in that spirit. If anyone is interested in pursuing the feasibility of intermediate online learning technologies, Greer offers seven questions he believes need answers when “triaging” technologies for the postcarbon transition.^[3]

Notes

1. ^ Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, p157.
2. ^ Ibid. p163.
3. ^ Greer, The Long Descent, pp175-177.

Scenario of Scarcity Industrialism

E.F. Schumacher makes a useful distinction between forecasts, which he calls “presumptuous,” and exploratory or feasibility studies:^[1]

In the one case I assert that this or that will be the position in, say, twenty years’ time. In the other case I merely explore the long-term effects of certain assumed tendencies.

We first need a scenario of how peak oil and climate change may play out in the future. This provides Schumacher’s “long-term effects of certain assumed tendencies.” It is then possible to explore the implications for learning.

There are no end of peak oil scenarios from which to choose. I’ll use one that is based on extensive work in three books and a popular blog.^[2] The work is that of John Michael Greer and the scenario of tomorrow is one he calls “scarcity industrialism.”^[3]

Map the likely results of current trends onto a scale of human lifespans and a compelling image of the future emerges. Imagine an American woman born in 1960. She sees the gas lines of the 1970s, the short-term political gimmicks that papered over the crisis in the 1980s and 1990s, and the renewed trouble in the following decades. Periods of economic and political crisis, broken by intervals of partial recovery, shape the rest of her life. By the time she turns 70, she lives in a beleaguered, malfunctioning city where nearly half the population has no reliable access to clean water, electricity, or health care. Shantytowns spread in the shadow of skyscrapers while political and economic leaders keep insisting that things are getting better.^[4]

Greer follows this paragraph with a second one about the American woman’s great-grandson born in 2040 and then a third paragraph about the great-grandson’s great-granddaughter born in 2120. Respectively they represent an age of salvaging and an ecotechnic age that Greer suggests may follow scarcity industrialism. Ecotechnic refers to a non-utopian future in which humans finally move beyond the unsustainable patterns of today and see themselves as “subject to the same natural laws and ecological patterns as every other living thing on Earth.”^[5]

It’s difficult to do justice to Greer’s notion of scarcity industrialism in a single paragraph. To help fill out the scenario, here are phrases that Greer uses to describe what follows our present age of abundance. The more dramatic of these phrases would tend to appear deeper into scarcity industrialism or even in the age of salvage.^[6]

limits to growth begin to bite; serious declines in energy availability; industries like tourism that use titanic flows of energy shut down; commuter lifestyle no longer viable; neighborhoods form around jobs; increased housing density with apartments and row houses; an RIP for the global economy based on cheap transportation; less dependence on foreign resources; less influence of multinational corporations; more willingness of governments to use force to control resources; decentralized energy infrastructure; the end of the information age; human labor becomes less energy-intensive than machines, increasing substitution; relocalized economic activity; economic contraction; frugality; backyard gardens, organic farms, food-coops, farmers’ markets; no retirement; money less relevant; household economies viable again; social conflicts; gutting of social safety nets; slashing of salaries and benefits; impoverishment of millions of previously affluent people; circle of wealth and privilege narrows; unwillingness of society to acknowledge it is in decline; faltering corporate food system; local networks of mutual exchange and support; refurbishing salvage; increased use of appropriate intermediate technologies; conservation; transition toward sustainability; renewable resources; passive solar home heating; long period of trial and error; incremental steps; nature has the final say; depopulation; human migrations; warmer, wetter, ecological change; volatility in energy prices; wars; paper wealth becomes worthless; people work many jobs; established institutions go to pieces; national bankruptcies; hunger; adaptive human efforts and nature’s responses; muddling through; dissensus useful to increase breadth of ideas and experimentation; non-market economies of custom, reciprocity and collective benefit; work of human hands and minds is once again the main source of value; low-tech transportation and communication; Internet is an early casualty, although some government, research, and corporate use; decline punctuated with periods of rebound; collapsing public health; political turmoil; electricity an urban amenity used mostly by the wealthy; transportation unravels, but trains viable longer; critical freeway corridors; auto industry withers; the predicament we face is as least as much a social and cultural crisis as a technical one; experience guides efforts rather than ideology.

Greer’s work provides a rich resource for thinking critically about tomorrow. It’s a thoughtful and well-written depiction of the near future that challenges readers to consider what happens to industrial societies that, in a mere 300 years, managed to blow away nearly one-half of the recoverable fossil fuels that it took nature half a billion years to make. If you have any interest in tomorrow, I highly recommend Greer’s work. It will force you to reconsider how you understand change.

Lest anyone too quickly dismiss the possibility of scarcity industrialism, it’s important to note that Greer stands on firm historical footing. Many previous civilizations have risen, flowered, matured, and then collapsed. For numerous examples, see the academic work of Joseph Tainter^[7] or the more popular but still extensively researched work of Jared Diamond.^[8]

Notes

1. ^ E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered, New York: Harper Perennial, 2010, p. 251.
2. ^ All three books are published by New Society Publishers. The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age (2008); The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World (2009); and The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered (2011). John Michael Greer blogs at The Archdruid Report.
3. ^ Several scenarios might be used in a formal analysis, typically differing on the level of change anticipated (e.g., none, significant, or likely). Peak oil scenarios commonly anticipate substantial change, as does Greer’s scarcity industrialism. The advantage of divergent scenarios is that they can be compared and contrasted, which sometimes helps in the exploration. However, in the limited space of a single post only a single scenario can be considered.
4. ^ Greer, The Long Descent, p31.
5. ^ Greer, The Ecotecnic Future, p245.
6. ^ These phrases are not direct quotes. They are what I’d call near quotes that stick as close as possible to the actual words but incorporate my editing or interpretations when needed to make the phrases concise yet consistent with what I believe Greer intended. I used all three books listed in citation 26 and Greer’s blog post How Not to Play the Game. Note that scarcity industrialism, the age of salvaging, and the ecotechnic age are what Greer calls “workable sketches” that occur in slow, overlapping, and uneven ways that make assigning specific phrases to specific ages a little difficult. In some cases it was a judgment call as to whether a phrase should be associated with scarcity industrialism.
7. ^ Joseph A. Tainter. The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
8. ^ Jared Diamond. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Penguin Books, 2005.