“Civilization begins when the individual in the pursuit of his ends can make use of more knowledge than he has himself acquired and when he can transcend the boundaries of his ignorance by profiting from knowledge he does not himself possess.”
-Friedrich Hayek-

“I know that I know nothing.”
-Socrates-

In a recent piece Nyan Sandwich says that we should try to “capture Gnon”, and somehow establish control over his forces, so that we can use them to our own advantage. Capturing or creating God is indeed a classic transhumanist fetish, which is simply another form of the oldest human ambition ever, to rule the universe. This was indeed one of the main ideas of enlightenment Rationalism, the idea that the universe can be completely comprehended by human reason and thus conquered and controlled by Man.
The lesswrongian transhumanists are simply one of the present day incarnations of the rationalist ideology.
To capture Gnon, is of course, to become Gnon. To know Gnon, is to be Gnon because if one knows Gnon in its completeness, he has become Gnon. The Cult of Reason is indeed the worship of Reason as something that can capture God, or something that is even God itself.

Nyan tells us that:
“ Instead of the destructive free reign of evolution and the sexual market, we would be better off with deliberate and conservative patriarchy and eugenics driven by the judgement of man within the constraints set by Gnon. Instead of a “marketplace of ideas” that more resembles a festering petri-dish breeding superbugs, a rational theocracy. Instead of unhinged techno-commercial exploitation or naive neglect of economics, a careful bottling of the productive economic dynamic and planning for a controlled techno-singularity. Instead of politics and chaos, a strong hierarchical order with martial sovereignty.”

Such naive rationalism however, is extremely dangerous. The belief that it is human Reason and deliberate human design which creates and maintains civilizations was probably the biggest mistake of Enlightenment philosophy. Indeed such naive rationalism is one of the defining characteristics of the French Revolution and one of the reasons why it failed so miserably.
The conclusion of this Supra-Rationalism is that human civilization can indeed be consciously designed and steered by humans themselves. And not only that, even nature itself can be put under the control of human reason. Through history of course, this kind of belief has always led to the same results – central planning, loss of individual freedom and the advent of state totalitarianism.  


It is the theories of Spontaneous Order  which stand in direct opposition to the naive rationalist view of humanity and civilization. The most famous representative of this tradition are thinkers like Hume, Smith, Ferguson, Menger, and Hayek. The consensus opinion regarding human society and civilization, of all representatives of this tradition is very precisely summarized by Adam Ferguson’s conclusion that “nations stumble upon [social] establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design”. Contrary to the naive rationalist view of civilization as something that can be and is a subject to explicit human design, the representatives of the tradition of Spontaneous Order maintain the view that human civilization and social institutions are the result of a complex evolutionary process which is driven by human interaction but not explicit human planning.


Of course Man always wants to plan, he always wants to control, to know, and to dominate. In Rationalism Man’s arrogant ambition can be seen in its full glory. It is a very misguided one however, as it idealizes man, puts him and his intellect on a pedestal which he has not earned and will likely never earn. Indeed one of the defining characteristics of rationalists is that they have the tendency to regard human reason as infallible, which is a grave mistake. And even the term “Rationalistic Theocracy” already reveals some very serious totalitarian overtones. And Nyan’s belief that reason and central planning by a strong hierarchical order with martial sovereignty can put Man in complete control over his evolution, environment and in the end maybe even the whole universe by “capturing” Gnon itself, is a dangerous fantasy which through history has had anything but a good track record. Man’s reason really is not all that it is hyped up to be and people have the tendency to always overstate its capabilities.
One should always remember the words of Hume that in the end “reason is always a slave to the passions”.

It is no coincidence that the Original Sin of Adam and Eve was that they ate from the Tree of Knowledge, thereby acquiring the faculty of reason. And of course, various texts have been written dealing with the great tragedy of reason and human consciousness in general. I will not deal with these topics at length in this post, but it is important to keep them in mind in this discussion.

Now, let’s deal specifically with Nyan’s arguments against the free reign of the forces of Gnon.
On “the destructive free reign of evolution”, the only reason that it is currently destructive is because Man has neglected it. When you neglect the laws of evolution and indeed the laws of Gnon, it will lead to your own demise. In modern society natural selection, evolution and Darwinism are totally shunned. Just go around and ask random people what they think about Social Darwinism and most of them will tell you that it is some sort of an evil Nazi pseudo-science. We have totally disregarded (through progressivism) the incentive structures that drive evolution and then we wonder why we are devolving? It is not because evolution has been allowed free reign. Modern society has indeed done everything possible to suppress the free reign of evolution, driven by the ambition that it can place it under control and even defeat it. This is of course just another utopian rationalist fantasy, which only leads to Azathoth sending his Pale Horseman to slowly reap our dysgenic species into extinction.
Also earlier Nyan makes the point that evolution does not move species towards more advanced forms. I completely disagree with this view. The key problem here of course is how we define “advanced”. I do not think that a life form which doesn’t have a better chance of survival than its predecessor can be in any way considered more “advanced”. Indeed such a life form seems like a failure and a degeneracy from the previous one from which it evolved. In my view evolution is indeed a clear progress towards more advanced life forms. Also, Nyan says that evolution does not necessarily optimize for intelligence. This is true, evolution only optimizes for survival. But if “intelligence” does not lead to better survival chances then it is not intelligence at all. Humans rose to the top of the food chain thanks to their intelligence and are the most dominant species of the planet. In my view this is quite a clear indication that evolution does tend to favor intelligence as a very effective tool for survival. Nyan must be using a very odd definition of more advanced intelligence if it is not something that improves the genetic fitness of the species. Throughout history the tendency amongst humans has been that the more intelligent and capable have a higher survival rate than the less intelligent and capable. The opposite tendency is an entirely modern phenomenon, resulting from the twisted incentive structures in modern society.

On “rational theocracy, careful bottling of the productive economic dynamic and planning for a controlled techno-singularity”, as I already said I think we are getting into pretty dangerous ground here, especially considering the history of previous ideologies incorporating high degrees of “central planning”.
Not to mention that a “planned techno-singularity” already sounds somewhat dull. And of course to subordinate the singularity to human reason and planning, reveals the very humanist and anthropocentric bent, which is not surprising at all, considering that rationalists are almost always great humanists as well.
In my opinion Nyan’s desire to “bottle the productive dynamic” would lead not to a planned techno-singularity, but likely to no techno-singularity at all. Capitalism, being the main drive of accelerating technological advancement eventually leading to the singularity, cannot properly function when attempts are made to “bottle it”. Indeed as a positive feedback loop, Capitalism cannot be meaningfully “bottled” and “constrained” without castrating its great productive potential. A positive feedback loop is always chaotic, compared to the controlled and seeking a stable equilibrium negative feedback loop, but it has potential for a continuously accelerating exponential growth, something which the latter clearly avoids. (I will talk about this in more detail some other time)
Indeed it seems to me that the means that Nyan has chosen are quite unlikely to help him achieve the goals that he desires.

 

In the end I would like to wrap this up by making it clear that Gnon and his impersonal forces are not enemies to be fought, and even less so are they forces that we can hope to completely “control”. Indeed the only way to establish some degree of control over those forces is to submit to them. Refusing to do so will not deter these forces in any way. It will only make our life more painful and unbearable, possibly leading to our extinction. Survival requires that we accept and submit to them.
 Man in the end has always been and always will be little more than a puppet of the forces of the universe. To be free of them is impossible.

 Man can be free only by submitting to the forces of Gnon.