I’ve come across The Techno-Optimist Manifesto and, well, I have thoughts. (I know, it was bound to happen eventually.) I agree with a lot of the points, perhaps even with most of them, but the rest strikes me as plainly naive:

As techno-optimists, we believe that we must, and we will, create more advanced human systems to prevent war forevermore. Human society will mature and overcome its barbaric history, learning to cooperate with each other so that we can create technological works of global magnitude, such as orbital rings.

Every dollar spent on the military is a blight on the country’s honor. We believe that military budget reductions are a cause for celebration because they symbolize progress towards the space age.

It’s a nice thought, and I fully believe that we must, as a civilization, get there, else we will destroy ourselves. But I just do not see a path from here to there, due to coordination problems on every level. Scott Alexander’s Meditations on Moloch is an extremely long essay that explores how and why this is the case, but here I will try to stay on the most salient points.

On an individual level, you have an incentive to seize an advantage even if it leaves everybody else worse off. After all, if you don’t, somebody else will, so in that perspective the question is not whether everybody else will end up being worse off (because they will be regardless of what you choose) but whether the person who is better off is you or somebody else. You have a family, aging parents, sick child, or perhaps just an insatiable lust for fried chicken: surely, it’s better if you have that money or power than somebody else, god knows what would they use it for.

The caveat, of course, is that everybody thinking this way destroys trust and cooperation, without which no group, society, or civilization can exist. Therefore, it is critical to collectively disincentive people from choosing so, by rewarding cooperation (people acting in defense of the collective) and punishing defection (people acting against the collective, e.g. by taking an advantage that leaves everybody else worse off), to use the terminology of game theory. Relatively few people will risk e.g. stealing, when there is little upside, and the downside is too risky and scary.

Ultimately, much the same principles apply to inter-group, and even international relations: each country is acting in their own self-interest. What kind of leverage does one country have over another, which could be used to keep each other cooperating instead of defecting? Individuals have lots of direct needs, which is useful for incentives, but countries have fewer: at the end of the day, the only tools for exerting influence on another country are:

  • diplomacy: asking nicely, making a trade,
  • sanctions: shunning a country, denying them economic opportunities even if it hurts you or others as well,
  • violence.

How do you convince a country like the USA, or Russia, or China, or North Korea, that they do not need an army? Or Ukraine for that matter? Each and every one of these countries will point to the others, and say that they have an army, I must be able to protect myself. To even begin to do so would require trust, and trust is difficult to achieve, as few tools exist to provide protection against malicious action.

The only way I see, even in theory, is if diplomacy or perhaps sanctions would always be sufficient. With individuals, these do the trick most of the time because individuals have many needs that they cannot easily meet on their own: even for the most primitive needs of shelter, food, and water, almost everybody is reliant on the society to collectively provide them. It’s difficult to imagine this for countries.

There is hope. The past century has seen the world become global and economies and cultures have intertwined in a way that they have never before, and it’s no coincidence that this has also been the single most peaceful period that humanity has ever experienced. Perhaps indeed technological development, which defined this century, can also take us further and promote ever greater global unity. Perhaps indeed one day nobody will feel like that they need a military.

To close with, I found Hal Wyler’s speech on diplomacy in the season 1 finale of the excellent TV show The Diplomat inspiring, and I’ll quote it here in full:

We started the Bosnia talks a few days after Suljic launched a bombing campaign that very nearly killed the woman who’s now my wife. It was my lot to spend more hours in locked rooms with that man than in the hospital with Kate. First time I met him, I refused to shake his hand. Rookie move. It probably set the peace back a year.

Communication isn’t the key. Diplomacy doesn’t open doors with a twist of the wrist. Diplomacy never works. It never fucking works. Diplomacy is 40 days and nights in a Vienna hotel room, listening to the same empty talking points. Getting trashed at the minibar. It’s getting to “no” over, and over, and over. The answer will be “no,” so don’t stop when you hear it. Diplomacy never works.

Until it does. I’ve given 30 years of my life for two moments. When enemies stood on blood-soaked ground… and grasped hands. I’d give it 30 more.

The second round of talks with Suljic… I shook his hand. Two years later, he was a tired man hoping for peace, and together… we ended the war.

One of the boneheaded truisms of foreign policy is that talking to your enemies legitimizes them. Talk to everyone. Talk to the dictator, and the war criminal. Talk to the poor schmuck three levels down who’s so pissed he has to sit in the back of the second car, he may be ready to turn. Talk to terrorists. Talk to everyone. Fail, and fail again. And brush yourself off. And fail again. Because maybe… Maybe.