(2023-09-29) Schroeder Who Paints The Dew On The Daisy

Karl Schroeder: Who Paints the Dew on the Daisy? I talked about space settlement (space migration) in my last couple of posts; but this is not a newsletter about that. Space was just an example to illustrate an approach to thinking about complex problems—and a prototype for designing a purely 21st century science fiction.

If we have any hope of solving the massive, systemic problems that threaten our futures, we have to be aware of how we think about change. (Grand Challenge, Theory of Change)

Here are six theories of change, ranked (roughly) from the most primordial and instinctive to the newest and most non-intuitive. Each one comes with an example from Science Fiction

each of the following books constructs an inescapable prison with its theory. What’s important to the story I’m telling with them is that they seem to represent increasingly mature ideas of how change happens

Theory 1: He Did It

a tyrannical and jealous God pulls the strings of history like a puppet’s, and for everything else that happens, we must find someone to blame

Example: Dune

Theory 2: Natural Cycles

inevitability of decay and rebirth

Example: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.

Theory 3: It's All Clockwork

Inspired by Laplace's deterministic view of the universe, this theory suggests that everything is predetermined. This theory gives us storytellers two things: nihilistic despair, and (over)confidence in technology. This is the realm of strategic planning, grand engineering projects, and generational social change

Example: The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov (Asimov Foundation)

Theory 4: We Can Manage The System

Systems theory

the world is not just complicated, but complex

Systems tried to become an objective science of control

fear of Salvador Allende’s new cybernetic governmental apparatus for Chile, Cybersyn, was one of the factors that led to Pinochet’s barbaric 1973 coup

The classic introductory book on Systems is Donella H. Meadows’ Thinking in Systems.

Example: The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson

Theory 5: The Dimension of Surprise

It was only in the past forty years or so that we learned that irreducible complexity means that even in a fully deterministic universe, prediction is impossible.

Foresight practitioners had long included surprise in their analyses. They refer to unforeseen events as “wild card” scenarios. The author who most successfully brought the idea of surprise in planning to public attention is Nassim Nicholas Taleb with his idea of the ‘black swan.’

‘high-impact events for which a probability cannot be assessed.’

If they’re called ‘low probability’ then despite how high their potential impact, planning will not happen. Realizing that you don’t know what the probability is should be terrifying enough that you turn your attention to such possibilities.

Alicia Juarrero discusses complexity in the context of cognitive science in her book Dynamics in Action

particular kinds of systems: non-repeating ones that can only be understood in terms of two factors: context, and history

Example: Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer

Theory 6: Constraint

I’d like to end with a less commonly known theory. Constraint is both an ancient and an utterly modern model of change.

examples of physical processes whose existence and behaviour are not governed by any natural law, but rather by the constraints imposed by a particular situation

Things fall down because they are traveling in straight lines through spacetime that is curved by the mass of the Earth. Spacetime imposes a constraint

Marc Lange’s excellent book Because Without Cause: Non-Causal Explanations in Science and Mathematics describes many great examples of this.

Example: Lockstep by Karl Schroeder

To write Lockstep, I set myself a deliberate design constraint: create an original space opera universe, with interstellar travel, just like Star Trek or Star Wars, but without breaking any known laws of physics

Sneak Peek: Time Travel Story

In my next post, I'll talk about other ways I’ve used constraint in my work—in particular in my novel Lady of Mazes.

But I’ll also explore how this theory of change can reframe other imaginative work, in SF and in solving our own problems here on Earth.