Posts Tagged ‘progress’
“We are saved by making the future present to ourselves”*…
Recently, Steven Johnson (and here) received the Pioneer Award in Positive Psychology from UPenn’s Positive Psychology Center. Presented by his friend and mentor Marty Seligman, it honored Johnson’s “work over the years advancing the cause of human flourishing.”
From his acceptance speech…
… I’ve always been drawn to… long-term perspectives, where you position yourself… in the larger context of hundreds or thousands of years of human suffering and progress. Some of my California friends even built an entire organization to celebrate that long-term view: the Long Now Foundation, which is dedicated to thinking on the scale of centuries or millennia, encouraging us to get out of the 24-hour news cycle that dominates so much of our lives today. A technologically advanced culture cannot flourish without getting better at anticipating the future. That’s why science fiction matters. That’s why scenario planning matters. That’s why complex software simulations that enable us to forecast things like climate change on the scale of decades matter.
And here I want to bring us back to another idea that Marty Seligman has been an advocate for. Almost ten years ago, he edited a collection of essays called Homo Prospectus which had a huge influence on my thinking about the world. The core idea behind that book was that a defining superpower of human beings is our ability to mentally time-travel to possible future states, and think about how we might organize our activities to arrive at those imagined future outcomes.
“What best distinguishes our species,” he wrote in the introduction to that book, “is an ability that scientists are just beginning to appreciate: We contemplate the future. Our singular foresight created civilization and sustains society. A more apt name for our species would be Homo prospectus, because we thrive by considering our prospects. The power of prospection is what makes us wise. Looking into the future, consciously and unconsciously, is a central function of our large brain.”
It is unclear whether nonhuman animals have any real concept of the future at all. Some organisms display behavior that has long-term consequences, like a squirrel’s burying a nut for winter, but those behaviors are all instinctive. The latest studies of animal cognition suggest that some primates and birds may carry out deliberate preparations for events that will occur in the near future. But making decisions based on future prospects on the scale of months or years — even something as simple as planning a gathering of the tribe a week from now — would be unimaginable even to our closest primate relatives. If the Homo prospectus theory is correct, those limited time-traveling skills explain an important piece of the technological gap that separates humans from all other species on the planet. It’s a lot easier to invent a new tool if you can imagine a future where that tool might be useful. What gave flight to the human mind and all its inventiveness may not have been the usual culprits of our opposable thumbs or our gift for language. It may, instead, have been freeing our minds from the tyranny of the present.
The problem now is that the future is getting increasingly hard to predict, in large part because of what has started to happen with artificial intelligence over the past few years. I’ve spent a lot of my career looking at transformative changes in technology, and I’ve come to believe that what we’re experiencing right now is going to be the most seismic, the most far-reaching transformation of my lifetime, bigger than the personal computer, bigger than the Internet and the Web. And while there is much to debate about what the impact of this revolution is going to be for the job market, for politics, and just about any other field, there is growing consensus that it is going to provide an enormous lift to medicine and human health. The Nobel Prize for chemistry going to the AlphaFold team last week was arguably the most dramatic illustration of the promise here. Earliest this month, Dario Amodei—the founder of the AI lab Anthropic, makers of Claude–published a 13,000 word piece on where he thought we were headed with what he calls “powerful AI” in the next decade or two. The line that really struck me in the piece was this:
My basic prediction is that AI-enabled biology and medicine will allow us to compress the progress that human biologists would have achieved over the next 50-100 years into 5-10 years… a compressed 21st century.
Whether or not something that dramatic does come to pass—and I think we have to take the possibility of it seriously—it seems clear that given the kind of biological and medical advances that AI will likely unlock, there is significant headroom left in the story of extended human lifespan, perhaps even a sea change in how we age. That is, on one level, incredibly hopeful news. But it is also the kind of change that will inevitably have enormous secondary effects. To understand just how momentous those changes could be, take a look at this chart:
That’s the 6,000 year history of human population growth. You might notice, if you really squint your eyes, that something interesting appears to happen about 150 years ago. After millennia of slow and steady growth, human population growth went exponential. And that’s not the result of people having more babies—the human birth rate was declining rapidly during much of that period. That’s the impact of people not dying. And while that is on one level incredibly good news, it is also in a very real sense one of the two most important drivers of climate change. If we had transferred to a fossil-fuel-based economy but kept our population at 1850 levels, we would have no climate change issues whatsoever—there simply wouldn’t be enough carbon-emitting lifestyles to make a measurable difference in the atmosphere.
The key idea here is that no change this momentous is entirely positive in its downstream effects. Trying to anticipate those effects, and mitigate the negative ones, is going to take all of our powers of prospection.
When I was putting together my thoughts for this talk, my mind went back to the one time I spoke with Marty, about five years ago, when I was writing about cognitive time travel for the Times Magazine. As usual, I was incredibly behind in actually doing the reporting for the piece, and I’d called Marty desperate for a few quotes on a tight deadline. He very generously found time for me, but he had to do the call from an animal hospital, because as it happens he and his family were in the middle of putting their dog down. So our very first moments in conversation with each other plunged right into the depths of loss and grieving and the strange bonds that form between animals and humans. There was no small talk.
As I said earlier, death is, in the most basic sense, the termination point of human flourishing. But it’s also the shadow that hovers over us while we are still alive. We have done so much to minimize that shadow over the past century or two, going from a world where it was the norm for a third of your children to die before adulthood to a world where less than one percent do. But what does it mean for human flourishing if that runaway life expectancy curve that we’ve been riding for the past century keeps ascending? What does it mean if AI starts out-performing us at complex cognitive tasks? How do we flourish in that brave new world? Do we take on a new responsibility—not just ensuring the path of human flourishing, but also the flourishing of our AI companions? These are all difficult questions precisely because of time. The rate of change is so extreme right now we don’t have as much time to learn, and adapt. The doubling of human life expectancy was a process that really unfolded over two hundred years, and we’re still dealing with its unintended consequences. What happens if that magnitude of change gets compressed down to a decade?
I don’t know the answers to those questions yet, I’m sorry to report. But maybe spelling them out together helps explain something about what I’ve tried to do with my career, which I think from afar can sometimes seem a bit random, bouncing back and forth between writing about long-term decision making or exploring the history of human life expectancy and building software with language models. This award is called the Pioneer Award, and while I’m deeply honored to receive it, I don’t think of myself so much as a pioneer in any of these fields, but rather as someone who has consistently tried to find a place to work that was adjacent to the most important trends in human flourishing, so that I could help shine light on them, explain them to a wider audience, and in the case of my work with AI, nudge them in a positive direction to the best of my ability. That you all have recognized me for this work—pioneer or not—means an enormous amount to me. You can be sure I will do my best to savor it…
On progress, the “compressed 21st century,” and the importance of foresight: “Ways of Flourishing,” from @stevenbjohnson in his newsletter Adjacent Possible. Eminently worth reading in full.
(Image above: source)
* George Eliot
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As we take the long view, we might recall that it was on this date in 1873 that Illinois farmer Joseph F. Glidden applied for a patent on barbed wire. It became the first commercially-feasible barbed wire in 1874 (an earlier, less successful patent preceded his)– a product that would transform the West. Before his innovation, settlers on the treeless plains had no easy way to fence livestock away from cropland, and ranchers had no way to prevent their herds from roaming far and wide. Glidden’s barbed wire opened the plains to large-scale farming, and closed the open range, bringing the era of the cowboy and the round-up to an end. With his partner, Isaac L. Ellwood, Glidden formed the Barb Fence Company of De Kalb, Illinois, and quickly became one of the wealthiest men in the nation.
“Why do I feel so exercised about what we think of the people of the Middle Ages?”*…
There was more to the period than violence, superstition and ignorance: The Economist on a new book, Medieval Horizons, from Ian Mortimer…
“In public your bottom should emit no secret winds past your thighs. It disgraces you if other people notice any of your smelly filth.” This useful bit of advice for young courtiers in the early 13th century appears in “The Book of the Civilised Man”, a poem by Daniel of Beccles. It is the first English guide to manners.
Ian Mortimer, a historian, argues that this and other popular works of advice that began appearing around the same time represent something important: a growing sense of social self-awareness, self-evaluation and self-control. Why then? Probably because of the revival of glass mirrors in the 12th century, which had disappeared from Europe after the fall of Rome. The mirror made it possible for men and women to see themselves as others did. It confirmed their individuality and inspired a greater sense of autonomy and potential. By 1500 mirrors were cheap, and their impact had spread through society.
Mr. Mortimer sets out to show that the medieval period, from 1000 to 1600, is profoundly misunderstood. It was not a backward and unchanging time marked by violence, ignorance and superstition. Instead, huge steps in social and economic progress were made, and the foundations of the modern world were laid.
The misapprehension came about because people’s notion of progress is so bound up with scientific and technological developments that came later, particularly with the industrial and digital revolutions. The author recounts one claim he has heard: that a contemporary schoolchild (armed with her iPhone) knows more about the world than did the greatest scientist of the 16th century.
Never mind that astronomers such as Copernicus and Galileo knew much more about the stars than most children do today. Could a modern architect (without his computer) build a stone spire like Lincoln Cathedral’s, which is 160 metres (525 feet) tall and was completed by 1311? Between 1000 and 1300 the height of the London skyline quintupled, whereas between 1300 and the completion of the 72-storey Shard in 2010, it only doubled. Inventions, including gunpowder, the magnetic compass and the printing press, all found their way from China to transform war, navigation and literacy.
This led to many “expanding horizons” for Europeans. Travel was one. In the 11th century no European had any idea what lay to the east of Jerusalem or south of the Sahara. By 1600 there had been several circumnavigations of the globe.
Law and order was another frontier. Thanks to the arrival of paper from China in the 12th century and the advent of the printing press in the 1430s, document-creation and record-keeping, which are fundamental to administration, surged. Between 1000 and 1600 the number of words written and printed in England went from about 1m a year to around 100bn. In England, a centralised legal and criminal-justice system evolved rapidly from the 12th century. Violent deaths declined from around 23 per 100,000 in the 1300s to seven per 100,000 in the late 16th century.
Another “horizon” was speed and the sense of urgency that went with it. By 1600 a letter bearing important news could be carried 200 miles in a single day, thanks to people starting to use relays of horses at staging posts. Over the course of the 14th century mechanical clocks were developed, allowing time to be standardised and appointments to be kept.
The period was also marked by growing personal freedom, with the banning of slavery within England by the English church in 1102 and the rapid decline of serfdom after the Black Death of 1348-49, when nearly half the labour force died. Political power expanded to include a growing land and property-owning yeoman class. Whoever thinks the Middle Ages were all darkness has a middling understanding of history’s truths…
Shedding light on the Dark Ages: “Is everything you assumed about the Middle Ages wrong?” (gift link) @TheEconomist on @IanJamesFM.
* “Why do I feel so exercised about what we think of the people of the Middle Ages?…I guess it’s because so many of their voices are ringing vibrantly in my ears – Chaucer’s, Boccaccio’s, Henry Knighton’s, Thomas Walsingham’s, Froissart’s, Jean Creton’s… writers and contemporary historians of the period who seem to me just as individual, just as alive as we are today. We need to get to know these folk better in order to know who we are ourselves.” — Terry Jones (@PythonJones) in The Observer
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As we look back, we might recall that it was on this date (the feast day of St. Mary Magdalene) in in Middle Ages (more specially, in 1342), that Central Europe’s worst flood ever occurred. Following the passage of a Genoa low, the rivers Rhine, Moselle, Main, Danube, Weser, Werra, Unstrut, Elbe, Vltava, and their tributaries inundated large areas. Many towns such as Cologne, Mainz, Frankfurt am Main, Würzburg, Regensburg, Passau, and Vienna were seriously damaged, with water levels exceeding those of the 2002 European floods. Even the river Eider north of Hamburg flooded the surrounding land; indeed, the affected area extended to Carinthia and northern Italy.
“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable”*…
Over the last decade there has emerged a growing and influential intellectual movement focused on progress— how it happens and how to speed it up. Fomented by thinkers like Tyler Cowan and Patrick Collison, the movement has raised tantalizing prospects… and some real fears about the risks that experimental, entrepreneurial efforts to accelerate advancement might entail: will enthusiasm outrun safeguards? And who gets to define what represents “progress” anyway?
Jason Crawford, another leader of the progress movement addresses these concerns…
In one sense, the concept of progress is simple, straightforward, and uncontroversial. In another sense, it contains an entire worldview.
The most basic meaning of “progress” is simply advancement along a path, or more generally from one state to another that is considered more advanced by some standard. (In this sense, progress can be good, neutral, or even bad—e.g., the progress of a disease.) The question is always: advancement along what path, in what direction, by what standard?
“Scientific progress,” “technological progress,” and “economic progress” are relatively straightforward. They are hard to measure, they are multi-dimensional, and we might argue about specific examples—but in general, scientific progress consists of more knowledge, better theories and explanations, a deeper understanding of the universe; technological progress consists of more inventions that work better (more powerfully or reliably or efficiently) and enable us to do more things; economic progress consists of more production, infrastructure, and wealth.
“Scientific progress,” “technological progress,” and “economic progress” are relatively straightforward. They are hard to measure, they are multi-dimensional, and we might argue about specific examples—but in general, scientific progress consists of more knowledge, better theories and explanations, a deeper understanding of the universe; technological progress consists of more inventions that work better (more powerfully or reliably or efficiently) and enable us to do more things; economic progress consists of more production, infrastructure, and wealth.
But this form of progress is not an end in itself. True progress is advancement toward the good, toward ultimate values—call this “ultimate progress,” or “progress in outcomes.” Defining this depends on axiology; that is, on our theory of value.
[Crawford unpacks humanist and biocentrist values as examples…]
… What are we talking about when we refer to “progress” unqualified, as in “the progress of mankind” or “the roots of progress”?
“Progress” in this sense is the concept of material progress, social progress, and human progress as a unified whole. It is based on the premise that progress in capabilities really does on the whole lead to progress in outcomes. This doesn’t mean that all aspects of progress move in lockstep—they don’t. It means that all aspects of progress support each other and over the long term depend on each other; they are intertwined and ultimately inseparable…
David Deutsch, in The Beginning of Infinity, is even more explicit, saying that progress includes “improvements not only in scientific understanding, but also in technology, political institutions, moral values, art, and every aspect of human welfare.”
Skepticism of this idea of progress is sometimes expressed as: “progress towards what?” The undertone of this question is: “in your focus on material progress, you have lost sight of social and/or human progress.” On the premise that different forms of progress are diverging and even coming into opposition, this is an urgent challenge; on the premise that progress a unified whole, it is a valuable intellectual question but not a major dilemma.
“Progress” is also an interpretation of history according to which all these forms of progress have, by and large, been happening.
In this sense, the study of “progress” is the intersection of axiology and history: given a standard of value, are things getting better?
In Steven Pinker’s book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, the bulk of the chapters are devoted to documenting this history. Many of the charts in that book were sourced from Our World in Data, which also emphasizes the historical reality of progress.
Not everyone agrees with this concept of progress. It depends on an Enlightenment worldview that includes confidence in reason and science, and a humanist morality…
[Crawford reviews critiques of “progress” and unpacks the disastrous history of “progress” thinking– which contributed to totalitarianism– in the 20th century…]
… To move forward, we need a wiser, more mature idea of progress.
Progress is not automatic or inevitable. It depends on choice and effort. It is up to us.
Progress is not automatically good. It must be steered. Progress always creates new problems, and they don’t get solved automatically. Solving them requires active focus and effort, and this is a part of progress, too.
Material progress does not automatically lead to moral progress. Technology within an evil social system can do more harm than good. We must commit to improving morality and society along with science, technology, and industry.
With these lessons well learned, we can rescue the idea of progress and carry it forward into the 21st century and beyond…
Agree? “What is Progress?” from @jasoncrawford.
* Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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As we analyze advancement, we might spare a thought for George Westinghouse; he died on this date in 1914. An engineer, inventor, and industrialist, he built his first fortune marketing the railroad air brake that he invented. But he soon turned his attention to the emerging electrical industry– of which he became a pioneer. He acquired the rights to inventor Nikola Tesla‘s brushless AC induction motor (the initial “engine” of everything electric from industrial motors to household appliances) along with patents for a new type of electric power distribution, polyphase alternating current… which put Westinghouse into direct competition with Thomas Edison, who was promoting direct current. (In the end, AC came to dominate.)
“Crossing the river by feeling the stones”*…
How to live in our complex world? Samuel Arbesman on Incremental Humanism…
… there is a decent amount of contingency in the paths that technological innovation take:
…if we replayed the tape of human history, we would find that the sequence, timing, and (sometimes significant) details of inventions could be quite different, but that the main technological paradigms we discovered would also be discovered there. We would find steam power, electricity, plastics, and digital computers. But we wouldn’t find qwerty keyboards; we might not find keyboards at all. It’s tough to quantify this kind of thing in any meaningful way, and of course we can never know for sure, but my suspicion is that the technology of an alternate history of humans would look about as different from our own as the flora and fauna of Central Asia look from the flora and fauna of the central USA.
So when it comes to innovation, we forever live behind a Veil of Progress. This Veil prevents us from not only understanding the possible positive visions of the future that might win out, but even grasping how different technologies might recombine for further innovation. There is a certain fogginess towards the innovative future that we live within…
…
As per Kenneth Stanley and Joel Lehman in their book Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned… in a high-dimensional search space, aiming towards an objective will not work. Instead, it is best to develop novel stepping stones that can be productively recombined. This expanding of the adjacent possible is a much more effective strategy.
So how should we operate if we are constantly living behind the Veil of Progress? It requires humility and incremental tinkering.
The idea of humanism consists of, according to Sarah Bakewell, “free thinking, inquiry and hope.” But there are also other facets, from a sensibility of moderation, to a focus on improving the world.
I think incrementalism is also a key feature of humanism. As Adam Gopnik noted in his book A Thousand Small Sanities about liberalism: “Whenever we look at how the big problems got solved, it was rarely a big idea that solved them. It was the intercession of a thousand small sanities.”
This approach, of incremental humanism, is also a necessary part of the ideals of progress. Imagining a better future and incrementally improving towards this, even in an undirected manner, is the way of managing the veil of progress. As Rabbi Tarfon noted in the Talmud, “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.” We are part of a long chain of improvements, all part of a tech tree that we can’t see and which involves a balance of innovation and maintenance (for we must preserve what we already have if we hope to be able to build on what has come before us). Revolution is the quick bandage that sounds appealing, but don’t be led to think it will necessarily result in enduring change. Big ideas can be seductive, but incremental change is the only way to live under uncertainty.
Living in a complex world where one’s impact is difficult to fully know requires an incremental humanism. This means having a vision of the future, but a more gradual and piecemeal one. This also means having a certain amount of long-term humility…
How to face the future: “Living with the Veil of Progress,” from @arbesman.
* Chen Yun, via Deng Xiaoping
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As we feel our ways, we might recall that it was on this date in 1961 that Decca Record released “I Fall to Pieces,” written by Hank Cochran and Harlan Howard and performed by the inimitable Patsy Cline. It started slow, but became Billboard‘s “Song of the Year” and has since, of course, become a classic.
“Every solution tends to become the next problem”*…
Dingxin Zhao is sociologist who marshals history, historiography, and his own discipline to explain how ancient Chinese wisdom can shed light on the troubled times through which we’re living…
During a reading project I undertook to better understand the “third wave of democracy” — the remarkable and rapid rise of democracies in Latin America, Asia, Europe and Africa in the 1970s and 80s — I came to realize that this ascendency of democratic polities was not the result of some force propelling history toward its natural, final state, as some scholars have argued. Instead, it was the result of American political influence spreading around the world after the U.S. had established itself as the sole global superpower.
However, the U.S. endeavor to impose its political system in foreign lands where its policymakers did not have much knowledge facilitated the rise of many low-quality democracies, ethnic conflicts and refugee crises and triggered a global resurgence of authoritarianism and conservatism. Adding to such complexity, the crippled democratization movement, promoted under the banner of liberalism, inadvertently eroded the prominence of liberal ideologies — the very bedrock of enlightenment — across the world.
Upon arriving at this conclusion, I grappled with a sense of unease. I began to question whether I leaned too conservatively or possessed a certain authoritarian personality. Eventually, I realized that my conclusions were influenced by a Daoist perspective on history that had been imprinted on me during my upbringing in China.
Such a Daoist understanding of history contrasts with the teleological tenets found within the Judeo-Christian tradition and the symmetric cyclic interpretations that are also common in Western thought. And it could provide several insights in comprehending our increasingly intricate and uncertain world.
According to the Tao Te Ching, a succinctly composed text attributed to Laozi from the Warring States period (475-221 B.C.E.), history revolves around two pivotal elements. The first is that it unfolds in cycles that are characterized by perpetual transformations and negations. This cyclical perspective on historical development immediately sets the Daoist understanding of history apart from the linear and teleological understanding found in Judeo-Christian traditions, exemplified by narratives in the Bible and subsequently interpreted in diverse ways by theologians…
[Zhao explores the contrast, with both the teleological and the cyclical, using illuminating examples from St. Augustine, Hegel, Marx, Oswald Spengler, Neil Howe, Mancur Olson, Ibn Khaldun, and others]
… The second pivotal element within the Daoist understanding of historical development departs from this symmetry. The forces guiding each historical transformation and negation need not be the same: an “asymmetric cyclic theory.”
In the Tao Te Ching, Laozi famously wrote, “The Dao that can be stated cannot be the universal (or eternal) Dao.” This proclamation essentially asserts that symmetric cyclic theories cannot lay claim to universal or eternal truths. This is because the significance and function of any causal forces invariably change with different contexts.
In premodern China, Laozi’s precocious and highly sophisticated grasp of history often veered into mystical directions. Today, armed with the insights of modern social sciences, I would characterize the Daoist asymmetric cyclic theory of history as the “principle of reverse movement.”
This principle posits that as any organization, political system, idea, culture or institution gains ascendancy, the opposing, undermining forces concurrently intensify. In China, this has been visually conveyed through various forms of taiji diagrams. Among these diagrams, the one I believe best encapsulates the core of history’s asymmetric cyclical nature is also the simplest: Two forces of opposing nature undergo simultaneous change over time. As one force grows stronger, the other weakens, and vice versa.
To give some examples: In arenas of military and economic competition, entities that organize better and produce more efficiently tend to gain an edge. This nature of military and economic competition induces cumulative development — a form of societal change that bolsters humanity’s capacity to generate and accumulate wealth. In early modern Europe, heavily influenced by the linear historical outlook of Judeo-Christian traditions, thinkers often formulated theories that portrayed such cumulative developmental processes as progress toward a better future.
However, in the Daoist principle of reverse movement, as one actor in military or economic competition progressively secures the upper hand, opposing actors would also gather momentum. For instance, the dominant actor becomes increasingly susceptible to various errors — over-expansion, underestimating adversaries, disregarding internal vulnerabilities and potential crises. Meanwhile, weaker actors respond to their more formidable opponent by intensifying their desire to change, including learning from their opponent and striving for “self-strengthening.”…
[Zhao unpacks more examples]
… A Daoist understanding of history could contribute three key insights to the contemporary landscape of political theory and civilizational prosperity:
First, it asserts that historical transformations are not propelled by uniform forces, a perspective that challenges the concept of history being directed by a predestined end or ultimate purpose.
Second, it imparts a sense of humility upon influential social actors as their power ascends, encouraging them to gain insight into potential pitfalls and shifts that might undermine their status and avoid the fallacy of justifying their power supremacy by some teleological and thus moral rationale.
Third, it cautions us against the hubris of making linear predictions about upward-trending social tides and urges us to embrace the intricacies of complexity and acknowledge the multifaceted interplay of diverse forces. By doing so, we are compelled to appreciate the heterogeneous nature of historical change.
Belief in a linear or teleological understanding of history imparts a stronger sense of purpose in life, allows believers to create a more committed moral community and compels individuals within that community to act in a more principled manner. However, “true believers” can be convinced that they alone possess the correct beliefs and are aligned with the right course of history, that they hold a moral high ground to convert, exclude or even resort to violence against those deemed to be on the “wrong side.” Numerous times in centuries past, this belief has led to genocide, imperialism, racist governance, political purges and cultural conflict.
…
The Daoist principle of asymmetric reverse movement not only rejects the imposition of a direction onto history but also negates the existence of any specific, law-like forces underpinning the apparent cyclic patterns of historical events. Laozi’s concept of wuwei has prompted some scholars, like Charles Hucker, to interpret it as an ancient anarchist ideology that has “little to offer in the way of a governmental program.” However, in truth, Laozi is advocating for a form of statecraft characterized by profound humility. This humility is a rare trait, especially among powerful social actors — particularly very resourceful state actors. It becomes even scarcer within cultures dominated by a teleological comprehension of history…
Understanding the principle of reverse movement in history: “Daoist History” in Noema— eminently worth reading in full. And usefully accompanied by “A Daoist Take On The World Gone Sideways,” by Noema editor Nathan Gardels.
* your correspondent
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As we honor humility, we might recall that it was on this date in 1890 that journalist Nellie Bly began her 72-day trip around the world.
In 1888, Bly suggested to her editor at the New York World that she take a trip around the world, attempting to turn the fictional Around the World in Eighty Days into fact for the first time. A year later, at 9:40 a.m. on November 14, 1889, with two days’ notice, she boarded the steamer Augusta Victoria, and began her 24,899-mile journey.
She brought with her the dress she was wearing, a sturdy overcoat, several changes of underwear, and a small travel bag carrying her toiletry essentials. She carried most of her money (£200 in English bank notes and gold in total as well as some American currency) in a bag tied around her neck.
Bly traveled through England, France (where she met Jules Verne in Amiens), Brindisi, the Suez Canal, Colombo (Ceylon), the Straits Settlements of Penang and Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. Just over seventy-two days after her departure from Hoboken, having used steamships and existing railway lines, Bly was back in New York; she beat Phileas Fogg‘s time by almost 8 days.
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