Introduction
There is a saying that edifies us on our own ignorance. “Those of
us who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. It is
often quoted and seen as a lesson in prudence for any decision maker
when looking to the future. After all history is vast and varied
enough to provide analogues for almost any situation we have to deal
with as both individuals and nations.
Think of the Crusades, how they tells us of the dangers of allowing
political ambition to be infused with religious zeal. Or how the
Second World War reiterated to Hitler an age old lesson, do not start
a land war in Asia. There are even more arcane and counter intuitive
lessons to be learnt, for example the success of Spain's conquest of
the new world brought a glut of silver into its coffers, surely they
assumed at the time there could not be such a thing as too much
wealth. Yet the laws of our economic systems are subtle and often
ferocious, with so much silver in the economy it became essentially
worthless and the country suffered a horrible period of hyper
inflation as a result.
All of these things to the careful student of history are invaluable,
if there is nothing new under the sun then surely there is a lesson
to be learnt for almost any situation? Unfortunately, for all of our
gains as a species, for all of our planning and preventative
measures, hindsight is still a bitch.
Historic study lacks the ability to provide foresight and analysis of
the unknown and unprecedented. Where our predictions and knowledge
of past events fail us we become victim to The Out of Context
Problem. The Out of Context Problem, (otherwise know as an Outside
Context Problem or Black Swan Event) is the truly alien happening, an
event for which there is no previous understanding of or frame of
reference to, something which can effect a population with deadly
force.
Definitions
Zero Context's favorite description of the Out of Context Event is
found in the literary works of the unfortunately late but oh so
marvelous Iain Banks (otherwise known as Iain M Banks to the
hopelessly nerdy scifi readers among us).
The majority of his science fiction literature involves his greatest
creation, the pan galactic civilization know as The Culture. The
Culture is a race of humans and god like AIs known as the minds who
live together in perfect symbiotic harmony, where humans enjoy a long
life of hedonistic pleasure and the minds act as a rather informal
steering committee. Interestingly The Culture is one of the few
examples of a Utopia in literature where the civilization does not
rely on authoritarianism to lay the foundations for a “perfect
society”. Political quirks aside the point of The Culture within
the books is that they are the most advanced civilization in play
within the galactic community. They cannot be out gunned or out
witted, which is why Excession is considered to be one of the better
Culture novels; within Excession The Culture meets its match and then
some [1].
Don't worry there are no spoilers ahead but the central plot hook of
the story is the sudden appearance of a large uniform sphere in
Culture space, it is utterly immune to any test or scan, possibly
older than the universe, and may be, worryingly intelligent. Banks
refers to this in his typically glib manner as an Outside Context
Problem and describes it thus.
“An
event that the civilization has no frame of reference to. Or
previous understanding of...
...That most civilizations would encounter just once, and which they
tended to encounter in the same way a sentence encounters a full
stop.”
Or in other words, you encounter something which you have never seen
before, you do not understand and have no way of dealing with it. So
it kills you, till you are dead. Perhaps this all sounds a bit
exotic and outrageous so Zero Context would like to provide a real
world example of the Out of Context Problem at its most extreme.
At the height of their empire the Aztecs were to their knowledge,
unmatched. Their capital city had one of the largest populations on
the planet. Their armies had crushed and subjugated their rivals and
their emperor was quite literally a god made flesh. You would think
in such a situation you were utterly unassailable, and rightly so.
However they had not taken into account the possibility of a more
potent enemy across the ocean, one from a world of much older
civilizations, one who was frighteningly more advanced than they were
and one who also held its enemies in equal contempt.
So when Cortez appeared on the shores of the new world with a small
but technologically peerless army, their old beaten rivals smelt
revenge and lead Cortez straight to the Aztec's doorstep. It did not
take long for the entire Aztec civilization to come to a sudden and
crashing halt [2].
Classifications
It is outside the scope of this article for Zero Context to discuss
how one may address the sudden appearance of an Out of Context
Problem, but perhaps the taxonomy of such an event can be further
defined. This is important since it will allow a conceptualization
of the breadth of such occurrences and ultimately may help address
how such an event may be overcome.
Taking
from the work of Nassim
Nicholas Taleb who first coined the
notion of a Black Swan Event, it was described as thus [3].
- The event is a surprise (to the observer).
- The event has a major effect.
- After the first recorded instance of the event, it is rationalized by hindsight, as if it could have been expected; that is, the relevant data were available but unaccounted for in risk mitigation programs. The same is true for the personal perception by individuals.
We should consider the type and the
source of the out of context problem.
The type of the problem can be
classified as either alien or
excessive, whilst the
source of the problem can be considered to be natural,
human, or other
intelligence.
The type of out
of context problem determines the form in which it takes.
- Alien: Where the challenge appears from its lack of reference. The problem is not necessarily large in scale but its solution is inherently unknown since there are no records for its occurrence. Examples would be the emergence of paradigm shifting technologies such as the printing press or nuclear weapons. Or the discovery of before unknown systemic complexities that raise existential crisis’s such as the impact of the carbon cycle on climate change.
- Excessive: Where the challenge exists in such volume it has exceeded its understood limitations. Pandemics such as the Black Death and the Spanish Flu are perfect examples of this. So is the sudden merger of militias in northern Iraq and Syria into the behemoth of violence that is now know as Islamic State.
The source of out
of context problem describes the processes that created it.
- Human: The systems that humans create are complex, and with the inclusion of computing power into our civilization the complexity is rapidly growing outwards. Due to the vagaries of the interactions within our systems it is not surprising that our political and economic systems create a wealth massive fucking problems. The financial crash of 2008 is testament to the danger of unchecked data running through a labyrinthine system, whilst the First World War would have not spiraled out into the killing fields it became if it was not for the complex series of mutual protection pacts, colonial ambitions and carefully scheduled train time tables.
- Natural: Where challenges emerge from the natural laws of the universe. This could be a gigantic solar flare, or gamma ray burst, or the sudden and devastating Boxing day tsunami that was borne out of a huge earthquake below the Java strait.
- Other Intelligence: Basically AIs and aliens. It may sound absurd, but so many of the out of context problems we have faced up to now may have seemed absurd for the people of the day. Of course this can only be considered if aliens do indeed exist and creating an AI is possible, but is also contingent on the fact that they would want to mess with our shit. Both possibilities are the Out of Context Problem in its truest form since there is no way of knowing how a non human intelligence of that level would behave.
The Maori as a case study
To help solidify the concepts described above, Zero Context will now
present an example of a group of people who have both been the cause
and victim of an Out of Context Problem. On the surface both seem to
be the same issue but once one applies the taxonomy system it is
evident the type of Out of Context Problem posed in each situation is
subtly different.
To briefly describe the Maori as a people. They settled New Zealand
in the 13 century as part of an expansion of the Polynesia culture.
They have a strong martial history and culture, exemplified in the
now iconic Haka dance.
In 1835 the Maori came into contact with the Moriori on what is now
known as Chatham Islands, the contact was brief but brutal. The
Maori may have been armed with more advanced technology but they were
outnumbered almost two to one by the Moriori, who being native to
the island knew the area intimately, on paper it seems that they were
at a distinct advantage. Yet the Maori prevailed and essentially
wiped the Moriori out. The reason is due to the type of Out of
Context problem the Maori presented, they were a human alien
problem. The beset islanders understood the source of the problem
(the sudden and deadly contact with other humans) but the type of
problem they presented was utterly incoherent to their culture. The
Moriori had a strong tradition of resolving conflict through peaceful
negotiation, they had no answer to a rapid and violent onslaught, so
they ran and hid across the island, only to found and killed or
dragged into slavery.
However the Maori were also victim of a very similar problem. The
colonial ambitions of the British empire eventually reached their
shores and inevitably conflict arose. The British initially found
their ambitions thwarted by a motivated and well armed enemy, the
Maori had collected a large armory of guns and used them with expert
skill. However in the end the limitations of their civilization lead
to their defeat.
The British empire was at the the time on the very cusp of
industrialization. The expansion of its economy and technology
allowed for larger and larger portions of its population to retried
from agricultural roles and take up specialist jobs. Specifically in
this case these people had specialized as soldiers, who were
regularly supplied but the agricultural power of the empire. The
Maori on the other hand did not have the luxury of a developed and
diversified economy, its warriors were also its farmers, and when it
came to the necessity of avoiding starvation the warriors had to
return to their fields to reap their harvests. This eventual lack of
manpower on the front-lines lead to their defeat.
The Maori culturally understood the threat of the British empire, and
understood how to deal with its incursions onto their land. However
this is an Out of Context Problem of an human excessive variety simply
because they could not counter the permanent influx of supplies to
their enemy. They were simply overwhelmed [4].
Look to
the future and consider the wildest speculation
The discussion above helps us hone in the taxonomy of these
potentially devastating events. This is only the start of defining what an
out of context event is and the differences between them, however
this can be further refined and Zero Context will aim to do this in
future articles. This may seem like an esoteric aim but the
consequences of these events are potentially terminal, so the the
more detailed the definition the more prepared we can be.
An important caveat should be mentioned here. This does not
necessarily include unintended consequences. The CIA defines these
as the result of the blowback effect; to summarize when you do
complex stuff shit happens. The nature of unintended consequences
shall be investigated in future Zero Context articles.
Regardless of what has been discussed so far the question begs, how
the hell do we deal with out of context events? It is here that Zero
Context will suggest that we turn to the story tellers of the world
for the answers to these questions. Science fiction is in essence a
series of out of context problems thrown at a protagonist and
describes the way that character attempts to analyse and overcome
these challenges. Perhaps within science fiction and other
speculative fiction we can find imaginative Out of Context Problems
and how the individuals in these books adapt to these events, may
well be edifying.
So in Zero Contexts next article we will be discussing exactly that.
Citations:
1: Excession by Iain M Banks, 1996, Orbit Books, ISBN: 9781857234572
2: The Aztecs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec
3: Black Swan Events: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
4: The Maori as victims and cause of an Out of Context Problem: Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, 1997, ISBN: 8601300069159
