A New Evolutionary Model for Political History: Marx et al. apply the evolutionary model to socio-political history. Classically, whenever Darwinism has been applied to human affairs, it has either been in the form of social Darwinism or dialectic materialism. It is the latter that concerns me. One way of viewing Marx is that he believes that evolutionary processes will lead to the overall improvement of the proletariat, who become gradually more successful at overthrowing the bourgeoisie regimes. Thus as the dialectic progresses, proles become better at violently casting off the shackles of their oppressors until they cast them off so thoroughly that they obliterate the historical paradigm that allowed those shackles to be forged in the first place; in doing so, they create the infinite and perfect Communist post-historical state.

But must evolution ONLY apply to the proletariat? Of course not. Consider its application not to the governed, but to the government. Can we feasibly apply the evolutionary model to states and their successors? We submit that we can. After all, states have a finite lifespan: They die. Their traits are, to a certain extent, inheritable; our ignorance of history is not so total that new states utterly fail to take traits from their parents. By way of example, consider the case of America’s democratic system, inspired by yet distinct from its most immediate “ parent”, the British parliament. Thus “ parent” states can pass traits onto their “children”, a key requirement for evolution. Are certain traits selected against? Undoubtedly, since states which are overly brutal or ineffective in their exertion of control are much quicker to be destroyed—by hostile overthrow, revolution, coup, et cetera. Thus traits are both passed on over the course of history and selected for or against—thus natural selection can certainly apply! Artificial selection, as well: note that the historians and social engineers are, by and large, members of the bourgeoisie and thus contribute to the development and improvement of the states. Thus the process of evolution is at least plausibly applied to states. It will, of course, tend to be lethargic, since states trend toward longevity; on the other hand, the capacity for total overhaul is much greater in the political sphere than the biological. As with beasts, epochs of significant turmoil and stress will increase the rate of phenotypic transformation, as it becomes more and more important for states to possess advantageous traits. We may consider periods of social revolution and economic downturn to be harbingers of significant evolution—see how much the nature of the nation-state changed in the late 18th and mid 20th centuries. Were we making predictions, we would suppose that we are entering into another period of aggressively rapid evolution. The forces of globalisation, economic downturn, and imminent global catastrophe will surely accelerate the discarding of disadvantageous phenotypes, resulting in evolution as conventionally understood.

Further analysis must be cautious, lest we conceive of both state evolution and biological evolution too teleologically. It is tempting to speculate on what sort of state will be the “final” state, produced at the “end” of evolution—but such concepts are treacherous fallacies in the realm of nature, and there is no reason yet to believe that they are any more legitimate when applied to states. One may imagine some hypothetical “ perfect” state, whose phenotype renders it immune to the various selections which apply to other states and immortal, so that it is unchanging and undying. One must not imagine this hypothetical state as an inevitable outcome of the state evolutionary process, for to do so is to engage in unforgivably lax teleologization.

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Meta-Ethical Framework: The Valuative Continuum: There are several problems with contemporary approaches to ethical decision-making, regardless of origin. Briefly, they are as follows: The expectation of omniscience; the refutation of akrasia; the insistence on discrete valuation. That is, ethics generally proceeds under the expectation that ethical agents are omniscient, or nearly so, and that ethics is incapable of incorporating ignorance and uncertainty into itself without merely mandating “Minimize them!”; similarly the expectation that no one will experience moral weakness, and the inability of humans to live up to their ethical expectations is a flaw to be eradicated rather than accommodated; and finally that actions are divided more-or-less strictly into obligatory, forbidden, and outside the purview of ethics itself.

These are problems, for omniscience is unattainable and akrasia is inexcoriable. The pursuits of each are dead ends, which have led to a number of intellectually rich but ultimately sterile ethical frameworks. However, there have been a number of current authors who have attempted to respond in a more pragmatic (and therefore relevant) way: The “ought implies can” principle comes to mind. What concerns us, however, is the tendency for ethicists to treat ethics as solely a decision procedure for resolving Moral Dilemmas, and everything else is just not an ethical decision. That is, ethics is for questions like “If you were in a lifeboat with no food and only a convicted murderer, a woman pregnant by way of incestuous rape, and a terminally ill man on elaborate life support, whom would you cannibalize first?” and not questions like “What font should I use for this paper?” (Note that, for the second question, “Your font choice doesn’t matter; pick anything you like” is a very different answer from “Don’t be daft, that’s not an ethics question in the first place.” The latter is the one you would expect from a philosopher who believes that ethics is restricted to Moral Dilemmas. The former is the one we would like to encourage.) Furthermore, when answering an ethics question, the goal is to eliminate all possible courses of action but one (or all possible intentions but one, for a good Kantian); every normative recommendation takes the form of either an absolute “do this” or an absolute “do not do this.” This is clearly an oversimplification. There are almost always multiple ethically acceptable courses of action or intentions, and not every acceptable course of action is equally valid. We submit that it is necessary to introduce a system for evaluating moral/ethical decision-making that takes into account the non-discrete nature of decision making.

The system is tripartite. First, there is a value assignment system. This is a set of principles, axioms, and so forth that allows one to assign a numerical value to an action or intention. Generally speaking, a value of 0 would be ethically neutral; a negative value would be an action which is worse to commit than to avoid; and a positive value would be an action which is better to commit than to avoid. A simple value assignment system would be cost-benefit analysis, where the value assigned to an action is the profit generated by that action. The second part is the value continuum, which is simply the continuum of all relevant actions, ordered by assigned value. Note that the value continuum is descriptive, not prescriptive! The third part is the decision procedure, which is the system by which the information of the value continuum is converted into actual normative recommendations. A possible decision procedure is “Only act so that your actions have a positive value.” Note that the value assignment system and the decision procedure are independent, and the meta-ethical system does not presuppose any particular assignment system or decision procedure. This is an extension of prior ethical frameworks, not a replacement. We do not seek to invalidate previous ethical frameworks, only recontextualize them for broader applicability.

Consider the advantages of this system. First and most importantly, it more accurately reflects the non-discrete nature of ethical decision-making. Second, it allows for decision procedures which are not reliant on endorsing one course of action to the exclusion of all others—though single-action decision procedures are still possible. Third, it should allow for more explicit discussion of ethical decision-making, if the value assignment system used is made clear to all concerned.

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Is Intrinsic Value Always Unquantifiable?: A common theme in discussions of things with intrinsic value—nature, life, free will, and so on—is that value which is intrinsic is also value which is unenumerable. This shows up, typically when someone suggests assigning a numerical value to, say, the aesthetic beauty of the Alaskan wilderness. “The value is intrinsic!” we hear, with the corollary that “You can’t put a number on it!” Is intrinsic value always unquantifiable?

We see no reason for it to be so. After all, “intrinsic” simply means value “in itself” or “for its own sake” or a number of synonymous expressions. There is nothing in the definition that states that “intrinsic” must mean “incapable of being expressed by a number”. Could not the Alaskan wilderness have an intrinsic value of 278,128?

Perhaps there is a kernel of truth that intrinsic value cannot be monetary value, since monetary values are the products of a human abstraction and thus not intrinsic. Still, the unfounded rejection of intrinsic, enumerable value stifles valuable discourse.

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A Method of Very Rapid Interstellar Travel: Assume the truth of Joao Maguijo’s VSL theory. Convert the solar system into a massive particle accelerator, to use as a generator of cosmic strings, to create corridors with extremely high local c. Travel along these corridors.