The need for a world-view

Human cognition tends to be near-sighted and compartmentalised. We try to solve the problems in front of us, instead of zooming out to compare the relative importance of all our different problems. Similarly, most of us give specific explanations of historical phenomena, instead of zooming out to overall historical patterns. Our thinking about the future is much the same: we give predictions about specific domains (population trends, climate change, etc.) but do not integrate these different predictions into one overall model.

The nature of our cognition isn’t the only reason we do this, however. Historically, there were attempts at providing, e.g. general theories of history. Cases in point include Hegel, Marx, and Comte. Many of these theories were simplistic and fundamentally flawed. That may have contributed to an aversion against big-picture “philosophic history” (cf. Chapter 1 of Ernest Gellner’s Plough, Sword, and Book).

But the right reaction to those failures isn’t to turn away from big-picture historical explanations, but to provide better ones. There are no doubt macro-level patterns of history, and those patterns are arguably more important than the details of individual events. So we want to have theories about those patterns.

And when it comes to the future, it’s arguably even more important to have integrated, general models. If you have a model of carbon emissions or population trends centuries ahead that ignores developments in other domains, such as artificial intelligence, it may turn out that it is entirely irrelevant. Insofar as these models are seen as all-things-considered predictions of the future, they can’t be compartmentalised, but must look at the overall trajectory of the world. So we need a theory about that.

Creating general models of the past, of the future, and of what we as a society should prioritise to do, is obviously hard. But at the same time, it’s also fun. It’s an intellectual adventure to think about the big-picture issues, which can be very rewarding in itself.

So as a society, I think we should allocate much more time and attention towards general world-views. In particular, I think we should invest more time in understanding what the future may come to be like. There seems to be a surge of interest in the future, not the least due to the increasing focus on climate change, but much of it is quite unsystematic. Hopefully Will MacAskill’s upcoming book on the long-term future can help launch a more sophisticated debate.