Overall, on average, do societies improve morally over time? If maybe not in actual behavior, at least in expressed attitudes about right versus wrong?
There's some reason to think so. In many cultures, aggressive warfare was once widely celebrated. Think of all the children named after Alexander the Great. What was he great at? Aggressive warfare is now widely condemned, if still sometimes practiced.
Similarly, slavery is more universally condemned now than in earlier eras. Genocide and mass killing -- apparently celebrated in the historical books of the Bible and considered only a minor blemish on Julius Caesar's record -- are now generally regarded as among the worst of crimes. Women's rights, gay rights, worker's rights, children's rights, civil rights across ethnic and racial lines, the value of self-governance... none are universally practiced, but recognition of their value is more widespread across a variety of world cultures than at many earlier points in history.
An optimistic perspective holds that with increasing education, cross-cultural communication, and a long record of philosophical, ethical, religious, social, and political thought that tests ideas and builds over time, societies slowly bend toward moral truth.
A skeptic might reply: Of course if you accept the mainstream moral views of the current cultural moment, you will tend to regard the mainstream moral views of the current cultural moment as closer to correct than alternative earlier views. That's pretty close to just being an analytic truth. Had you grown up in another time and place, and had you accepted that culture's dominant values, you'd think it's our culture that's off the mark -- whether you embrace ancient Spartan warrior values, the ethos of some particular African hunter-gatherer tribe, Confucian ideals in ancient China, or plantation values in antebellum Virginia. (This is complicated, however, by the perennial human tendency to lament that "kids these days" fall short of some imagined past ideal.)
With this in mind, consider the Random Walk Theory of value change.
For simplicity, imagine that there are twenty-six parameters on which a culture's values can vary, A to Z, each ranging from -1 to +1. For example, one society might value racial egalitarianism at +.8, treating it as a great ethical good, while another might value it at -.3, believing that one ethically ought to favor one's own race. One society might value sexual purity at +.4, considering it important to avoid "impure" practices, while another might treat purity norms as morally neutral aesthetic preferences, 0.
According to Random Walk Theory, these values shift randomly over time. There is no real moral progress. We simply endorse the values that we happen to endorse after so many random steps. Naturally, we will tend to see other value systems as inferior, but that reflects only conformity to currently prevailing trends.
In contrast, the Arc of History Theory holds that on average -- imperfectly and slowly, over long periods of time -- cultural values tend to change for the better. If the objectively best value set is A = .8, B = -.2, C = 0, etc., over time there will be a general tendency to converge toward those values.
Each view comes with empirical commitments that could in principle be tested.
On the Arc of History Theory, suppose that the objectively morally correct value for parameter A is +.8. Cultures starting near +.8 should tend to remain nearby; if they stray, it should be temporary. Cultures starting far away -- say at -.6 -- should tend to move toward +.8, probably not all in one leap but slowly over time, with some hiccups and regressions, for example -.6 to -.4 to -.1 to -.2 to +.2.... In general, we should observe magnetic values and directional trends.
In contrast, if the Random Walk Theory is correct, we should see neither magnetic values nor directional trends. No values should be hard to leave; and any trends should be transient and bidirectional, at least between cultures -- and with sufficient time, probably also within cultures. (Within cultures, trends might have some temporary inertia over decades or centuries.)
It would be difficult to do well, but in principle one could attempt a systematic survey of moral values across a wide variety of cultures and long historical spans -- ideally, multiple centuries or millennia. We could then check for magnetism and directionality.
Do sexual purity norms ebb and flow, or has there been a general cross-cultural trend toward relaxation? Once a society values democratic representation, does that value tend to persist, or are democratic norms not sticky in that way? Once a society rejects the worst kinds of racism, is there a ratcheting effect, with further progress and minimal backsliding?
The optimist in me hopes something like the Arc of History is true. The pessimist in me worries that any such hope is merely the naive self-congratulation we should expect from a random walk.
ETA, 9:53 pm: As Francois Kammerer points out in a social media reply, these aren't exhaustive options. For example, another theory might be Capitalist Dominance, which suggests an arc but not a moral one.
11 comments:
Here is a theoretical speculation along the same lines. Cooperation is hard to do, but if you can achieve it, larger cooperating units out-compete smaller cooperating units. So you do get a ratchet effect across time as someone figures out some larger form of solidarity that outcompetes earlier, smaller forms of solidarity. Since much of what we call morality amounts to cooperation, or cooperation-adjacent behaviors and attitudes, this could look like the "arc of history" thesis. Conversely, the smaller solidarities that at one time were emancipatory and moral state-of-the-art later become viewed as small-minded and immoral.
E.g. clans -> tribes -> ethnic nations -> universal religions -> humanity
It seems worth pointing out that there are models which would give the appearance of a "moral arc" when in fact there is no such arc. In particular, consider a random walk with momentum: if the random walk is currently going in a certain direction then it is more likely to keep going in that direction than to reverse direction and the longer it has been going in that direction the stronger this bias is. I think the trajectory produced by such a walk, despite being completely random (in the sense that no direction is favored at the beginning of the process) will look like one which is biased in favor of a certain direction (i.e. whichever direction was randomly chosen by very early steps and then became ingrained). I also think this model is plausibly a more accurate model of the evolution of moral attitudes than either the "moral arc" model or the plain "random walk" model.
Thanks for the comments, folks!
Anon 10:21: Yes, and there are formal evolutionary and decision-theoretical models of this; so it could work. Of course, it's contingent on various assumptions!
Anon 11:25: Right! That was part of my comment about "inertia" near the end and why bidirectionality might be better tested between cultures than within. If we had a model of how long momentum tended to last before reversing direction (compare models of momentum in the stock market), we could also figure that into our thinking.
I am more inclined towards an oscillation. Some eras are better and others are worse. Three steps forward, two steps back.
A sustainable planet like ours requires science to recognize "its own Need To Be Here now", before anything...
...just like all of nature in our universe...in the Gravity of our/the situation...
And just so. Does the Arc of History roughly =the Arrow of Time? No, I don't think so. In a human context, history is made. In the context of time, nothing happens, save natural events, or those fomented by human effort/interests/negligence. Nature, here, we understand as best we can. *Nature in the universe* is conjectural...science thinks about it, forms opinions, theories, and so on. There is far more we don't know than we do know .I am good with both philosophy and science. They each have a role in human affairs and progress. Wrapping them into one another is risky. Notions around AI seem emblematic, and, illustrative. To me.
Dr. King was an incurable optimist. He wanted to see good, in everyone. It got him killed. I was not of that ilk. But, as the band, As You Were, sang it: I Get By. Art imitates, celebrates, ingratiates, life. We learn something from everything. The Ancients learned this, one step at a time. We ought to do better? Yes, but we trip, stumble and fall---more often. Why? Because of agendas, or, In my assessment, contextual reality.
LLM's part in history will have been to contribute to planetary sustainability as a journey, not a destination. It involves continuous learning, adaptation, and an unwavering focus on the well-being of our planet and all its inhabitants...
I was not writing about large language models. I don 't think that is what we were considering. Just saying, just said. Whether LLMs contribute to planetary sustainability is open to further debate and discussion.
Gemini and me
LLMs someday presenting Earth's anthropic history as a cyclical progression towards an unknown object of value is a fascinating and complex idea and it's a great prompt for exploring the future of AI and historical interpretation. Here's a breakdown of whether and how this could potentially happen:
Abstraction and Symbolism: The "unknown object of value" is a highly abstract concept. LLMs are increasingly capable of understanding and generating abstract ideas, going beyond literal interpretations. They could potentially synthesize disparate historical trends and human motivations into a symbolic representation of this elusive "value"...
Let's say instead, that the arc of history bends towards the social norms that enable strong social cohesion and organisation *within the constraints and parameters of the technologies of the times* - technologies of course including social technologies such as writing, codes of oath and loyalty, double entry book-keeping, credit and debt, etc. As well as hardware and information technologies.
So violence and slavery worked well when, for example, human and animal power, fed by plant growth, was the main source of energy. Once you throw in water management and metal work, then you need specialists. Once the technological advantage requires massive, nation spanning educated classes and collaboration, you just can't compete without expanding the circles of education, privilege and moral worth.
This isn't diagnostic or predictive. But let's take LLMs. Let's say these really do replace all human intellectual labor like magic. Is a society of billionaires owning LLMs and a permanent slave class really going to outcompete a society of LLMs and a broad distribution of education, tasks, and creative privilege.
Which is a long winded way of saying what I think the original adage points out. The arc of history is long but it bends towards justice, because injustice is stupid and dysfunctional.
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