by Nate Givens
Nate Givens blends the approaches of writer and engineer into a single perspective on science fiction, starring analogic reasoning. The outcome can be seen in his short story “Echo, Write To All”, available to read in our [March/April issue, on sale now!]
Isaac Asimov once defined science fiction as “that branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance upon human beings.” This gets right to the speculative heart of science fiction, and hard science fiction in particular: imagine a plausible scientific advance and then work through its potential ramifications.
The appeal of this kind of purposeful, rigorous speculation has for me is not so much in predicting the future (although hard science fiction can certainly be put to that purpose), but in better understanding ourselves and our world today.
Analogic reasoning is a fundamental tool in our cognitive toolkit, allowing us to grapple with complex, unfamiliar, and abstract concepts by analogizing them to more familiar objects. Although it’s by nature imperfect and imprecise, it is often a great starting point and sometimes the best we can do. The speculative strain in science fiction is basically the literary equivalent of analogic reasoning.
One of the most powerful aspects of analogic reasoning, a power that can both inform but also mislead us, is the way that it can powerfully engage our intuitions. At its best, this makes analogic reasoning more enlightening: tapping into emotional and intuitive along with strictly rational similarities. At its worst, this makes analogic reasoning deceptive for precisely the same reason. Philosopher Daniel Dennet called thought experiments engineered to hijack our intuition in illogical ways intuition pumps.
Whether tapping into genuine similarities or obfuscating important differences, the intuitive aspect of analogies is where a lot of their power comes from. And it also explains why science fiction is so much more powerful than dry academic thought experiments. We get stories. Stories that engage and captivate us and that – through that engagement – have far greater potential impact than a solitary premise – no matter how interesting – can have on its own. We are narrative creatures. Narratives, like analogies, are a fundamental aspect of our cognitive toolkit. Embedding speculation within stories isn’t incidental; it’s a key aspect of analogic reasoning.
But what are the “scientific advances” that we can use as the fuel for our stories? The greatest examples come from technology. Whether we’re investigating the technology itself or using the technology as a way of drawing out particular concepts, the most straightforward approach is to pick a futuristic technology and make that the “what if…” that drives the story. For example, iterations on uploading our consciousness into machines combine hard inquiry in the frontiers of computer and neuroscience with philosophical inquiry into the nature of the self.
But many of the most profound “new” technologies are not, in fact, new at all. One great example of this comes from Friedrich Hayek’s famous 1945 paper “The Use of Knowledge in Society”. In the paper, Hayek explained how market-determined prices operate as signals in an economy, rapidly conveying information about relative value to everyone in the economy and thereby allowing decentralized coordination of productive resources.
We are narrative creatures. Narratives, like analogies, are a fundamental aspect of our cognitive toolkit. Embedding speculation within stories isn’t incidental; it’s a key aspect of analogic reasoning.
Hayek’s insight was profound and the paper remains one of the most impactful of the 20th century. However, he did not discover a new technology in the same sense that a commercially viable fusion reactor would be a new technology. That’s something we don’t know how to do yet, at least in practice. Using market prices to coordinate economic decisions, on the other hand, is something that we were already doing. Hayek’s discovery wasn’t how to do something we hadn’t done before, it was a recognition of a pre-existing mechanism.
Markets are one example of what are often considered “social technologies”. In the original sense of the word, dating to the 19th century, social technology was a synonym for what we would now call social engineering: the attempt to apply scientific principles to improve society. This branch of “social technologies” has had mixed results, to say the least. In the more modern sense of the word, however, social technologies refer to often informal social practices that are already in place, often without the deliberate, conscious design of any person or group (at least in the early stages). Alongside markets, other common examples include language, law (which developed from informal social norms), and religion.
Most people view religion first and foremost in terms of its doctrine, that is, the things it says. But when we view religion as a social technology, we are much more interested in the practice of religion, that is, the things it does. For example, assenting to religious principles–especially when this entails a cost–has the function of creating social trust. In this view it doesn’t really matter what the content of those principles happens to be. Belief in Zeus, Shiva, or Jesus will do equally fine. What matters is that adherents pay a price (e.g. through sacrifices or simply just dedicating time and effort) to signal their assent and, in this way, construct a community.
In “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” Hayek unlocked one critical mechanism of markets as a social technology, but certainly not the only one. Other erstwhile hidden mechanisms of markets have already been discovered, and more remain to be discovered in the future. The same is true – probably even more true – of religion. We know, or at least have solid theories, for how religion functions as a social technology to generate trust. What else does it do? And what benefit or harm may these mechanisms have for a changing society? Once we recognize that religion is subject to analysis as a form of technology, these are questions which science fiction is uniquely suited to tackle, which is what I set out to do in my story “Echo, Write to All”.
The Astounding Analog Companion 