Scanning the comments on the YouTube posting of my conversation with Nate Hagens and DJ White on the subject of space fantasies, one finds some familiar reactions. For the most part, comments expressed appreciation for the refreshing push-back against prevalent space hype. But a few, predictably, intoned that it is we naysayers who are delusional: of course we’re going to space, and those like myself saying otherwise will join the embarrassing heap of vision-challenged fossils littering history.

This post offers a framework for evaluating levels of faith in future projections. A tremendous asymmetry enters, which merits some awareness.

Level One: Relentless Cycles

First, we can be pretty-darned confident that the sun will rise tomorrow (clouds notwithstanding, but you know what I mean: another day will come). An adult has experienced the phenomenon perhaps tens of thousands of times, without fail. Lots of rotational inertia backs up the premise, blithely ignoring any thoughts on the matter.

Cycles of all types permeate our existence to the extent that many Indigenous cultures adopt a cyclic view of time itself, understandably. Often, these cycles are underwritten by masses and forces too large and ancient to be easily changed—and are exceedingly unlikely to change in our lifetimes. Importantly, they are not instantiated via cognition.

Then yes, faith that the sun will rise again is pretty solid. It’s based on something very real and physical. In our own physiological lives, cycles of breathing, pumping, eating, drinking, peeing, pooping, and sleeping are pretty sure to be parts of all our living futures.

Level Two: Known Physics

Relatedly—these “levels” are all really part of a continuum, after all—phenomena for which we possess a solid physical comprehension—and that are simple enough to grasp the basic contours—can be reliably predicted. For instance, faith that a rock tossed into the air will fall back to the ground is well-founded. Sure, complications of air resistance, rotation, and even tidal gradients impact the trajectory, but the basic outcome is not in question. These sorts of phenomena are not part of a cycle, per se: this particular rock has never been thrown in quite this way, but larger principles apply that suffer no known exceptions.

Loads of phenomena in this world are captured well enough by one or a few main physical influences as to be tractable using our limited hardware. It is in this domain where science and engineering thrive. Tractability may also account for why it was often hard for me to keep lectures in physics interesting. Classroom demonstrations of physics principles tended to most successfully snap yawning students out of comatose states when something went wrong, something broke, or I sustained physical injury. Actually, many popular demonstrations (besides the dangerous ones) have to be counter-intuitive to be “interesting”—almost like magic tricks.

That’s okay. We’re all bound to be decent intuitive physicists when it comes to everyday phenomena. It’s what all that repetitive testing during infancy and childhood buys us. We learn what’s reliable in this world. As before, these reliable phenomena are not cognitive in origin—like basically the entirety of the universe.

Level Three: Related Precedent

I have lived 20,556 days. I haven’t died even once yet. One could be excused for calling that track record pretty robust. At least, it’s reasonable to have faith that I will live another day. So far so good.

This sort of reasoning—and it’s perfectly logical, even if perfect logic is seldom the entire story—leads to many fallacies. Warnings of Malthus, Limits to Growth, peak oil, climate disaster, or a sixth mass extinction are difficult to accept—as bad news often is—and pretty easily dismissed with a “so far so good” response. Hasn’t happened yet. When a dire prediction fails to manifest (even if not enough time has passed to invalidate the warning), the unjustified tendency is to assume it will never be true.

By the same line of logic, because I have not died yet, I never will. That reasoning is likely good enough for tomorrow, but ultimately we know it to be false. Likewise, at least part of us knows that human population cannot grow without bound, that indefinite economic growth is absurd, that oil does not last forever and therefore must peak and decline, and that a sixth mass extinction would probably mean “curtains” for our species as well.

Comparing modernity’s transience to failed flight or falling from a skyscraper are common rejoinders to the “so far so good” mentality: it’s an effort to bridge to the solid ground of the previous level, where a governing force like gravity is really calling the shots. No amount of thinking changes the underlying reality. Of course, a perennial sticking point is whether humans and human culture are subject to “governing forces.” I, of course, bet that they are.

This is where other precedents come in: deferring to what the non-cognitive universe actually tends to do. While I myself have never died, no human has ever lived beyond about 125 years. We’re talking about many tens of billions of precedents for death. Recognizing ourselves as animals opens up tremendously more precedent attesting to our mortality. The wealthiest among us today still die: no known exceptions. To the extent that I do not believe myself to somehow be the exception (no basis for that!), the same will apply to me as well.

A similar story goes for the sun. Yes, it will “rise” on Earth very dependably, until the sun reaches its own end-of-life stage, puffing out to consume the Earth. Sunrise in the context we define it ceases to have meaning when Earth is vaporized. While our sun has never died, we are justified in associating it with other stars throughout the galaxy whose different life stages we can directly observe. Their fate portends our own sun’s fate. Precedents stretch into deep time.

Somewhat intriguing is the fact that all past civilizations have fallen. A betting person would therefore assume that ours will as well. Is it more than coincidence that civilizations are cognitive fabrications rather than ecologically-integrated developments? In fact, it’s not clear that it makes sense to speak of these failed branches as being separate from the single tree of modernity as a one-off phenomenon lacking precedent.

Level Four: Unprecedented

Here is where I usually get off the bus. Unprecedented futures can happen, and in some small sense do all the time. The universe is never the same as it ever was, as time flows. Each moment is a new one. Every new species that evolves is technically unprecedented. Yet, it is far more rare for the role or niche of a living being to be wholly unprecedented. The very concept of evolution carries an implication of incremental modification.

But I want to talk about the “big” things where modern human arrangements are concerned: agriculture; modernity; space colonization; warp drive. The first half of that list might be said to have precedent. Agriculture has been with us for millennia, and modernity is unambiguously present all around us. But self-reference does not constitute sufficient precedent: at least not in the context of long-term sustainability on ecologically relevant timescales. Exploding stars have precedent. Continually exploding stars do not.

So, has modernity proven itself? Not remotely. In a flash of mere millennia, it appears to have initiated a sixth mass extinction. It’s manifestly unsustainable, which suggests that like the airborne stone, it is a transient phase that will terminate. But agriculture? It’s gone on for 10,000 years, which exceeds our personal relationship with time by a few orders-of-magnitude. It seems fully established. Yet, looks can be deceiving. By stepping up human population growth from a 20,000-year doubling time—and periodically much slower or contracting—to a 2,000-year doubling time (subsequently decreasing to less than a century), agriculture abruptly set humans on a track toward overshoot. In itself, population booms happen from time to time among the beings of this world. The question becomes how “un-ecological” the associated practice is: the extent to which it is already folded into the fabric of ecology, vs. being a novelty.

One glaring difference that distances agriculture (and writing, and money, and modernity in general) is the role that cognition plays in its origins. As is true in so many other cases, any attempt to draw sharp lines through a continuum is a distraction. So, sure: cognition happens in crickets and crows, and has been part of ecological reality for hundreds of millions of years. Problem-solving by myriad other clever means (besides neurons) is much older, still. That doesn’t automatically absolve any level of cognitive activity. I think most would agree that the impact of written language is not equivalent to crows fashioning sticks with hooks on the end, even if some commonalities might be identified.

Consider that the many ills of modernity are traceable to the establishment of cognitively-derived prescriptions for how to live: writing, money, codified law, and countless other unprecedented novelties that were conjured in an ecological blink. Let’s not over-interpret this to mean that cognition hasn’t always been a part of how humans navigated every aspect of life, such as problem-solving or conflict resolution. Brains serve a purpose in every organism that possesses one. But to manufacture a way of living on a cognitive basis is ecologically unprecedented, and asking for trouble. It has no deep-time heritage. Sure enough, the signs are becoming clear that it’s not a sound approach.

What is a typical response to the predicaments we create? “We’ll think of something.” Always with the cognitive. The very tool most responsible for the mess is the one we’re conditioned to reach for first. Ironically, it never occurs to our thinking selves that any other way of knowing or being might carry far more heft than thinking, despite evidence all around. That’s how flimsy (and self-obsessed) thinking is.

I lack faith that cognition is capable of mitigating the very ecological malfeasance that stems from cognitive excess. The exception is that we might use cognition to recognize its dangers and deliberately tamp it down. It’s a trick few have learned.

A key point is that the first three levels presented in this post share a common element: the behaviors and trends are based on non-cognitive processes that enjoy deep heritage: the age-old ways of the universe. While we might use our neurons to observe and identify patterns, those patterns are themselves not of cognitive origin: they are far more profound. This is, in fact, the reason brains evolved: as observers and (fallible) sense-makers of a biophysical universe.

Then we get mixed up: we conflate the temporary, unprecedented, unsustainable lifestyles of cognitive origin with the more substantial physical universe—and imagine that the same techniques used to anticipate physical futures apply to clumsy cognitive constructs like modernity. It’s very shaky ground!

To put some flesh on the abstraction, here—and return to the motivating theme—a common reaction to our increasingly-obvious Earthly peril is that we’ll expand into space. This has zero precedent in the universe as known to us: red flag! Given the overwhelming number of unprecedented developments in the last (short) 10,000 years, confident enthusiasts are undaunted. Unprecedented developments seem to have tons of precedent!

What’s missing is an appreciation for the overall failure of the whole stack of unprecedented behavior. The rock is still in mid-air, and while it’s there, many of its usual relationships are momentarily severed. Conclusions based on this brief window of observation are of limited value. The corrective has not yet happened, seeming to grant an unconditional license to do more of the same: double down. It’s a crime spree, and since we haven’t yet been thrown in the slammer, what’s to stop us from the next exponential transgression?

Level Five: Contextual Malpractice

I’m not sure how much distinction from the previous level this one merits, but a few points remain, and why not fabricate a new artificial level? It’s a fitting tribute to our collective maladjustment.

In the YouTube comments, fewer than 5% were dismissive of the episode’s theme that humans are not likely to have a space future. That’s reassuring, but also surely reflective of a strong selection effect: followers of The Great Simplification are more likely to be skeptical of space ambitions. Still, the objections tend to be declarations of faith: hand-waving platitudes based on modern mythology that offer no substantive corrections to the presented analyses. Basically: Nope.

Many emphasize something along the lines of “we always find a way,” or “those who say something is impossible are always proven wrong.” Sometimes the comments take the shape of faith in prominent individuals. Others just assert that we need to go to space, or that it’s inevitable human instinct. One painted a utopian picture of designer habitats hosting only good things (no mosquitos or rodents, etc.) in a stunning expression of ecological ignorance.

I again point out the fallacy of extrapolation based on temporary stunts—during a period that is proving to be a non-viable ecological disaster.

Also, I always wonder what experiential credentials the commenters hold. I’m not talking about diplomas or the like, but contact to this world. What has this person ever designed and built from scratch? How truly technologically savvy are they? I’m not saying this to brag, but I’d lay odds that in 999 cases out of 1,000, I’ve far-exceeded their own accomplishments in technology—and thus perhaps occupy a better position from which to assess its limitations: less “armchair” than is the norm. I very much dislike appeals to authority, and that’s not what I’m trying to pull. The universe is the only authority, and some individuals experience more intimate contact with a wider variety of its expressions than do others. Even then, its easy enough to miss the big lessons, swept up in the heady fun.

The most impressive form of experience is of the ecological sort, which for me (and most humans) is vastly inadequate. Yet, I strongly suspect that the deficit is more pronounced among space enthusiasts. As alluded to in a previous post, I would put more stock in a fully-embedded hunter-gatherer than in a rocket scientist as to whether it makes sense to live in space.

In any case, contextual exposure matters a lot. Modernity heavily tilts our exposure to ecologically-irrelevant, temporary, cognitively-motivated anomalies. As a result, we get the misimpression that we make the world as we see fit. We are in collective denial about our mortality, our animal nature, and our ecological dependencies. We believe ourselves to have broken free, as a rock no longer in contact with the ground. Forgotten are the overarching principles that govern trajectories, replaced by short-lived notions based on recent experience within the anomalous episode. The physical principles underpinning lower-level faith are replaced by illusory principles that hold for only a short time in a distorted context. Yet, their proponents are vocal, and will never know themselves to be wrong.

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