As introduced in the prior post, studying the interaction between “ought” and “is” permits a scientifically grounded approach to morality. Previously we looked at the importance of avoiding absorbing states. Today we will consider the mobilization of resources.
We visited Luang Prabang in Lao as a family and observed monks in the ritual morning alms walking down the street with locals and some visitors putting rice into their bowls. The alms bowl is one of only eight “requisites” which Buddhist monks are allowed to possess as personal property. This is obviously an example of an extreme restriction by morality on the acquisition of resources but it does serve to illustrate nicely that morality can have a substantial impact on the availability of resources.
A historical example is Europe, which was stuck in nearly a thousand year rut during the Middle Ages. Yes some magnificent churches were built during this time and some fabulous castles as well but beyond that societies were resource poor. Many people had virtually no personal possessions and often were reliant on alms for survival much like the Buddhist monks. In a particularly terrifying example, there wasn’t enough vellum produced so that religious texts were copied over older philosophical ones giving rise to palimpsests. In Europe this didn’t change substantially until the Enlightenment and the rise of Protestantism.
Having grown up in Germany, another example of different moralities (using this term broadly) having different success in mobilizing resources was the stark difference between the development of East and West Germany post World War II. After initially running neck-to-neck for some years, the market-based system in the West pulled away dramatically accumulating vastly more resources a significant fraction of which was mobilized for generating additional knowledge in different forms ranging from research universities to product innovation by private enterprises.
Now you might make the same objection as in the prior post: why should mobilizing resources be good? Isn’t that again a moral judgment? And yes, just like “longevity” isn’t a good in and of itself, resource mobilization isn’t either. Here too we need to consider the relationship between resources and knowledge. The operative question is: can we mobilize sufficient resources to advance knowledge?
As introduced in the prior post, studying the interaction between “ought” and “is” permits a scientifically grounded approach to morality. Previously we looked at the importance of avoiding absorbing states. Today we will consider the mobilization of resources.
We visited Luang Prabang in Lao as a family and observed monks in the ritual morning alms walking down the street with locals and some visitors putting rice into their bowls. The alms bowl is one of only eight “requisites” which Buddhist monks are allowed to possess as personal property. This is obviously an example of an extreme restriction by morality on the acquisition of resources but it does serve to illustrate nicely that morality can have a substantial impact on the availability of resources.
A historical example is Europe, which was stuck in nearly a thousand year rut during the Middle Ages. Yes some magnificent churches were built during this time and some fabulous castles as well but beyond that societies were resource poor. Many people had virtually no personal possessions and often were reliant on alms for survival much like the Buddhist monks. In a particularly terrifying example, there wasn’t enough vellum produced so that religious texts were copied over older philosophical ones giving rise to palimpsests. In Europe this didn’t change substantially until the Enlightenment and the rise of Protestantism.
Having grown up in Germany, another example of different moralities (using this term broadly) having different success in mobilizing resources was the stark difference between the development of East and West Germany post World War II. After initially running neck-to-neck for some years, the market-based system in the West pulled away dramatically accumulating vastly more resources a significant fraction of which was mobilized for generating additional knowledge in different forms ranging from research universities to product innovation by private enterprises.
Now you might make the same objection as in the prior post: why should mobilizing resources be good? Isn’t that again a moral judgment? And yes, just like “longevity” isn’t a good in and of itself, resource mobilization isn’t either. Here too we need to consider the relationship between resources and knowledge. The operative question is: can we mobilize sufficient resources to advance knowledge?
Resource mobilization is necessary for knowledge creation. First, we need resources to free ourselves up from foraging initially and farming subsequently so that we can apply ourselves to learning, creating and sharing knowledge (what I call the knowledge loop). Second, many types of knowledge can only be found by building up the equipment necessary to explore and discover it. Without developing the microscope for instance, we might never have found that there is a microcosm.
This is my favorite interpretation of the biblical story of the fall from paradise. In paradise we were provided for by God. But once we had tasted the forbidden fruit of knowledge we were expelled and had to fend for ourselves. What knowledge did is that it let us accomplish certain things, such as farming. But those new capabilities resulted in a new set of problems. For example living close to animals gave rise to zoonotic viruses. So once you have embarked on knowledge you forever need to come up with additional knowledge. And that requires mobilizing additional resources.
The most recent and dramatic example here is global warming triggered by the burning of fossil fuels. Clearly fossil fuels were a huge energy unlock for humanity that made possible a ton of progress. But now we need even more energy to be able to deal with the consequences. So the mobilization of additional resources is necessary to allow humanity to continue solving problems. As I have pointed out in my book The World After Capital, the allocation of resources to problems such as global warming is downstream from attention. We have sufficient capital to address the issue but insufficient attention to make the necessary changes.
There is a clear link here to the need to avoid absorbing states. We require the resources to advance our knowledge sufficiently to fend off existential threats. And yes some of these are of our own making but certainly not all of them. Earth’s history is replete with examples of species – such as the dinosaur – and human civilizations – such as Easter Island – that did not have enough knowledge to deal with an existential threat. Both dinosaurs and Easter Island are also examples of misguided resources. The dinosaurs grew bigger and bigger, developing more muscle but not more brain. And Easter Island poured resources into the creation and movement of giant statues.
Continuing to mobilize resources to advance knowledge and thereby protect humanity from absorbing states is thus part of what I consider the universal moral core.
Claude Opus 4.5 made some helpful suggestions on the first draft of this post. Claude Sonnet 4.5 has drawn the illustration.
Resource mobilization is necessary for knowledge creation. First, we need resources to free ourselves up from foraging initially and farming subsequently so that we can apply ourselves to learning, creating and sharing knowledge (what I call the knowledge loop). Second, many types of knowledge can only be found by building up the equipment necessary to explore and discover it. Without developing the microscope for instance, we might never have found that there is a microcosm.
This is my favorite interpretation of the biblical story of the fall from paradise. In paradise we were provided for by God. But once we had tasted the forbidden fruit of knowledge we were expelled and had to fend for ourselves. What knowledge did is that it let us accomplish certain things, such as farming. But those new capabilities resulted in a new set of problems. For example living close to animals gave rise to zoonotic viruses. So once you have embarked on knowledge you forever need to come up with additional knowledge. And that requires mobilizing additional resources.
The most recent and dramatic example here is global warming triggered by the burning of fossil fuels. Clearly fossil fuels were a huge energy unlock for humanity that made possible a ton of progress. But now we need even more energy to be able to deal with the consequences. So the mobilization of additional resources is necessary to allow humanity to continue solving problems. As I have pointed out in my book The World After Capital, the allocation of resources to problems such as global warming is downstream from attention. We have sufficient capital to address the issue but insufficient attention to make the necessary changes.
There is a clear link here to the need to avoid absorbing states. We require the resources to advance our knowledge sufficiently to fend off existential threats. And yes some of these are of our own making but certainly not all of them. Earth’s history is replete with examples of species – such as the dinosaur – and human civilizations – such as Easter Island – that did not have enough knowledge to deal with an existential threat. Both dinosaurs and Easter Island are also examples of misguided resources. The dinosaurs grew bigger and bigger, developing more muscle but not more brain. And Easter Island poured resources into the creation and movement of giant statues.
Continuing to mobilize resources to advance knowledge and thereby protect humanity from absorbing states is thus part of what I consider the universal moral core.
Claude Opus 4.5 made some helpful suggestions on the first draft of this post. Claude Sonnet 4.5 has drawn the illustration.
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If I'm following correctly, death is bad and survival is good is the fundamental assumption. Knowledge causes survival so it is good. Longer trajectories cause knowledge so they are good. While I know the project is about morality, it seems like striving for a morality in this way isn't needed. Running through the logic and looking at the world around us with a view to long term survival seems worthwhile in and of itself. Unrelatedly, it seems to me that in a world where knowledge is nearly the highest good, we need AI to help us use and navigate and correlate it. I can read all day long, but it gets harder and harder to use and create new knowledge as the amount of knowledge grows without the help of LLMs.