Matt Ridley -- The evolution of everything
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There are a number of themes in Ridley's book, and I believe we can
classify under several broad categories: (1) There is the
descriptive aspect under which he wants use to view many of the
processes in the world around us (and inside us, too) as processes
that evolve, processes that are self-organizing, that are not
controlled in any top-down or centralized way, and that are driven
in a bottom-up and decentralized way by the actions of many agents.
And, (2) there is the normative aspect where he wants to tell us
that this decentralized, bottom-up, self-organizing way is how
things *should* be, and that lots of things go wrong whenever an
wherever top-down, centralized control takes over.

I think we can see where we're headed with that.  We're off to a
political agenda that promotes small government and low taxes.

You can likely also easily figure out that I'm on the opposite side
of the political spectrum on this.  I'd be on the liberal side of
the aisle in the U.S. Congress, if I were a member of Congress.
Whereas, Ridley, who actually *is* a member of the British House of
Lords would be on the libertarian side, which, because the
terminology may be different over there, might be called the liberal
faction.

No matter, lots of Ridley's ideas and thoughts are worth reading and
thinking about.

Actually, Ridley has me leaning in his direction early on in the
book, because he introduces and praises the ideas from Lucretius and
his "De rerum natura", in particular the way it is discussed by
Stephen Greenblatt in "The swerve: how the world became modern".

In terms of explanation and understanding, Ridley is very much
opposed to what he calls skyhooks.  I take that to mean an
explanation based on an idea that cannot be observed, verified, or
refuted.  Elsewhere in "The evolution of everything", Ridley refers
to Karl Popper's ideas about refutability and about how a theory or
claim that cannot be refuted actually has no explanatory power or
meaning.

Early on in "The evolution of everything", Ridley criticizes
Enlightenment thinkers for maintaining their religious beliefs in
their explanations of nature.  And, I think it would be useful to
view much of Ridley's book as an attempt to purge our thought of all
thinking that is backed up by some sort of irrational belief that
cannot be refuted, and, therefore, really has little or no
explanatory power.  In a sense, Ridley's project in this book is to
see just how far he can go in eliminating skyhook thinking, the use
of an unsupported base for our ideas, and especially in eliminating
any top-down, authority basis for our ways of understanding
ourselves, our history, our values, our politics, our technology and
science, and much more.

A word or two about Ridley's use of the term "evolution" -- Ridley
does not mean to infer some sort of biological or genetic sense of
evolution.  He really is trying to emphasise incremental, often (but
not always) gradual change, and change that is not designed in
advance or controlled in some central way.  Another way to to
describe Ridley's approach is to say that he wants to show that
nature, society, science, technology, morals, and all the rest
changes in a pragmatic way, that these processes change and advance
(although we need to be careful about assuming some sort of
universal and god given values about that is and is not advancement)
by muddling along and by trial and rejection, etc.

Part of Ridley's goal is to show that the institutions, conceptual
frameworks, etc that are important to us are currently evolving and
will evolve in the future.  But, an important part of his agenda is
also to show that they have evolved in the past and that their
development in the past was incremental and bottom-up, and,
importantly, that they had no central planner or design.  Ridley
believes that institutions, just like biological organisms, are
subject to selective pressures while they evolve, resulting in
incremental changes that cause them to become better suited for the
environment they evolve in and to become more (better) adapted for
that environment.

In fact, Ridley believes that, for example, (the collection of all
our technologies?) is or has become an autonomous, self-perpetuating
organism.  I suppose that suggests that our technology is going to
go on evolving and developing, regardless of anything we do to
limit, control, or stop it.

Ridley is opposed to most and current patent and copyright law.  He
feels that, rather than encourage innovation and technological
advance, these laws and "protections" protect monopolies.  It would
be of value to hear Ridley's thoughts about copyright protection
applied to Open Source software and writings.  One purpose of
applying an Open Source copyright is to prevent the capture of a
project or body of work by someone who might try to put a
restrictive copyright to that work.  That seems to me to be an
effective way to *encourage* innovation.

To get an idea of just how broadly Ridley wants to apply his ideas
about evolutionary, incremental, self-organizing development, think
a bit more closely about the book's title: "The evolution of
everything" and then take a look at its table of contents.  Sixteen
chapter titles begin with "The evolution of xxxx".  One of Ridley's
central themes is that nothing appears out of nothing; everything
develops (incrementally) out of many predecessors.  New technologies
develop out of previous ones, which develop, in turn out of previous
technologies.  New laws develop from previous ones and from much
else, in addition.  New morals, customs, fads, etc develop from
earlier ones.  Etcetera.

Some of Ridley's optimism about the ability or likelihood that
incremental processes will turn out for the best and that they will
do so without control or regulation from a centralized governing
body makes me queasy.  Ridley is not a blind or oblivious optimist.
He has been a writer for "The economist" and "The Times" of London
for a number of years.  He was chairman of the UK bank Northern Rock
when there was a run on the bank and the bank was bailed out by the
British government.  So, he must surely understand how things "left
to themselves" can go awry and go haywire.  One would think that
he'd have come to believe that a bit of centralized regulation would
be helpful in some contexts.  But, that does not seem to be the
case.  He really does seem to be a full-throttle, in it all the way,
free market, deregulation purist.

There is a downside to all this talk about how our institutions,
science, technology, society, and so much more evolve, develop
incrementally, and are emergent.  To say that an organism or
structure is emergent, is to say that it evolved out of many things
in a path dependent way, and that this development was not
predictable.  That implies that we cannot say much in the way of
explanation about why it developed into the particular structure
that it did.  The background for this emergence and the predecessors
from which something emerges (the items in the path dependent
development or emergence, so to speak) can be extremely complex.
What's more, those preceding events and conditions can include both
things in the physical, natural world and things and events in the
society, educational system, accumulated media and literature, etc
from which the emergent conditions and system develops.  Ridley is
well aware of this complexity.  He is, from what I can tell, a
believer in and proponent of chaos and complexity theory.

For Ridley, to say that something came about through evolution is to
say that it is made up of cumulative changes.  That implies several
things.  For one, it means that the road to its current state was
(is) path dependent.  And for another, it means that changes are
(mostly) preserved as new changes are added.  So, I suppose, we can
look at any complex, evolved system as a series of states, each one
of which proceeded from a previous state.

One important aspect of seeing evolution in so many different
systems at so many different levels is that those systems can
interact with and influence each other.  That's a bit hard for me to
my get my head around.  One example that Ridley gives is that our
genetic system influences and is influenced by our social system
(society).  So, we as a species are changed by the society and
culture that our species has created.

Ridley has unbounded confidence that incremental, bottom-up,
evolutionary, organic changes produce better results that any
top-down centralized control could have.  I'm sure there are cases
and contexts where that is true, but I'm also sure that there are
cases where uncontrolled growth has produced unpleasant results.
Ridley seems to be claiming that the incredible, unprecedented
economic growth and increase in the average standard of living that
has occurred since the start of the industrial age is one of those
success stories.  I'll agree.  But, that growth has also had serious
negative consequences.  To me, it seems that a bit of planning and
control would have helped at times.  But, I get the feeling that
Ridley believes that not only would control of that process be
*bad*, but that it would also be impossible.  These are strange
claims from someone who criticizes belief systems because they are
not refutable and because no amount of evidence is accepted as
destructive to belief in the system.

Another criticism that Ridley has of top-down, centralized systems
is that the goods and services they provide are more expensive that
similar goods and services that might have been provided by an
uncontrolled, decentralized system.  Again, you can see where he is
headed with this: towards smaller government, reduced regulation,
and lower taxes.  But, I wonder how Ridley would explain how we get
bridges and roads and major parts of our communication systems if
everything must be funded by the private sector?

"The evolution of everything" seems to be an argument for no
centralized government control or funding for *anything*: science,
technology, infrastructure development, and education, too; they are
all worse off from centralized, government control.  So, does that
mean that our roads and bridges will be better if produced by the
private sector?  That seems like a very extreme position.  And,
Ridley's arguments for these positions usually amount to citing from
a single book that he has found that supports his claim.  That's
very weak, don't your think?  In my public library or at Amazon.com
I'm confident that I can find some book to support almost *any*
position.

Ridley's heroes are rational skeptics: Lucretius (whom he quotes
that the beginning of each chapter), Spinoza, Voltaire, and Richard
Dawkins.  I'd say that we should follow that kind of recommendation
and that we should be rational and skeptical about Ridley's ideas,
too, and that we should look for worthwhile, informative ideas in
"The evolution of everything", as well as ideas to be skeptical
about.

In spite of my criticisms and skepticism (I'm trying to take
Ridley's advice to be a rational skeptic), "The evolution of
everything" is very much worth reading.  It's packed with lots of
interesting ideas and arguments that will stimulate you to think in
new ways about very significant problems.

Ridley, himself, is a fascinating character.  For more about him,
you might start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley.
I'd love to hear his thoughts on the current (Feb. 2016) controversy
between the U.S. government and Apple computer over whether Apple
should provide the government with the ability to access data on any
of Apple's smartphones.  I'm guessing he'd have a few rants about
that.

02/29/2016

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