Melancholia

Yesterday, I was looking at the Copernican Principle developed by Richard Gott that allows one to estimate the likely time an existing object will continue to survive. I have shown that based on this methodology, it seems much more likely that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin will just be a fad rather than the oft-hyped replacement of fiat currencies. It also allows us to state that Microsoft and IBM will likely still be around long after nobody remembers Facebook anymore.

The Copernican Principle becomes even more fascinating if we apply it to social concepts like capitalism or socialism. Capitalism can be traced back to at least 16th century Britain, if not further. For the sake of argument, let’s take the foundation of the first stock company, the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) in 1606, as the symbolic starting point of modern capitalism. Then capitalism, with its structure of shared ownership of the means of production by owners of capital, is roughly 400 years old. Socialism, on the other hand, can be traced back a long time too, but a commonly accepted starting point can be found in the publication of Marx and Engel’s “Das Kapital” in 1867. Thus, socialism as a potential form of governance is about 150 years old. The Copernican Principle allows us to estimate that with a 95% probability, capitalism will still exist in this world 10 years from now and up to another 15,600 years, while socialism will exist at least for another four years and up to 5,850 years into the future.

So, to all my socialist friends I will say that your dream of abolishing capitalism is unlikely to happen any time soon and to my capitalist friends I will say that you will likely be challenged by socialists for centuries if not millennia to come. Now, you might say these calculations are ridiculous, but I dare you to come up with a better guess that is grounded in sound logic and does not rely on hypothesis and projections of the future that may or may not be proven right. The political pendulum constantly swings between left and right. In the 1950s, the pendulum was right of centre, but then swung to the left in the late 1960s and during the 1970s. In the 1980s and 1990s it swung right again until the advent of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). In the aftermath of the GFC, left-wing politicians seemed to have had the upper hand before right-wing populists gained popularity. Today, we see a resurrection of the left in reaction to the rise of right-wing populism. And so, the world continues in a constant struggle between the ideas of the right and the left.

Now let’s get even more audacious and try to predict the future of the human race. Humans in their current form as homo sapiens have wandered the earth for about 350,000 years. Using the Copernican Principle, we can estimate a 95% confidence interval for the extinction of humans on Earth and end up with an estimate of 8,974 years to 13.65 million years from today. This means that the religious fanatics who try to convince you that the end of the world is near are probably wrong – but I guess you knew that already. More importantly, the Copernican Principle allows us to state that humans are likely to be around long after capitalism and socialism have been replaced by some other form of social governance. More troubling, though, the Copernican Principle states that humans will outlive democracy and eventually replace it by some other form of political rule.

Thus, even though the Copernican Principle starts with the assumption that we are not living in a special moment in time, it leads us to conclude that in some way, our times are special because they are dominated – at least in the West – by democracy and a high degree of individual freedom and prosperity. The Copernican Principle tells us that these circumstances will not last forever and that humans will “outlive” these periods eventually. Luckily, it seems that we will have a couple of millennia before that happens.

Of course, I cannot end on this rather hopeful note. Because while the Copernican Principle is applicable to situations that are driven by social interactions, there is one prominent area where the Copernican Principle is not applicable: science. Because the laws of nature are fixed and rather deterministic (at least once you are human or anything else bigger than an atom or a molecule) predictions about future developments in nature can be made with a much higher degree of accuracy than the Copernican Principle allows. And science tells us that climate change will make life on Earth much less comfortable in the coming decades. Science also tells us that the idea of leaving Earth and colonising Mars, let alone another planet outside our solar system is completely ridiculous and a waste of time and resources. Science also tells us that we are not alone in the universe but that other life forms exist. But it also tells us that it is extremely unlikely that we will ever meet them or make contact. And finally, science tells us that the sun will eventually run out of fuel and expand into a red giant star. The good news is that the sun will not swallow Earth as it expands, because our planet is too far away from it. The bad news is that the expansion of the sun will pull our planet out of its orbit, so that it will spiral into the sun and burn. And that will be the end of life on Earth and in the solar system in general.

PS: Don’t worry. I am not depressed, and I am not going to jump off a bridge anytime soon. I just sometimes like to follow a train of thought to wherever it leads me. I have written in the past how I come up with ideas and today’s commentary is an example of the crazy stuff I normally delete before I write my commentary. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow with an “upbeat note” on how using Facebook is like smoking cigarettes.

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