Physics Does Not Play Politics

Peter Watts is a Toronto-based marine biologist, science fiction writer. and futurist. If you haven't read any of his books or stories, you're missing some of the most intense and well-thought-out SF published in the last couple of decades. I highly recommend his novel, Blindsight.

A few years ago he had run-in with the US border thugs guards that resulted in him being banned from entering the US. That hasn't seemed to affect his popularity in other parts of the world, and he's been a frequent guest at conventions and conferences in Europe. Recently, he was a guest at a conference called Designing the Future and wrote an extensive blog post about his experience there. (He doesn't blog often, but his posts are always worth reading).

I was particularly struck by this passage.

Days later, during the think-tank postmortem, one of the Human rights activists suggests that these events might benefit from having scientists on board. She does it in strangely grudging tones, though, adds “even though scientists are a pain in the ass” and that their discussions are always so “completely apolitical”. I chip in that our survival— and more importantly, the survival of the millions of species we’re dragging down the toilet with us— ultimately comes down to the laws of Physics, and Physics doesn’t care about politics.

She asks me later if I’ve read The Three-Body Problem, lets out a small whoop when I admit that I have. “I knew it! I knew when you made that comment about physics, you had to have been influenced by that book.”

Well, no. I’ve known about physics pretty much since high school. And I have to wonder about any mindset that regards the primacy of physics as such an alien concept that it could only have come from the depths of a nihilistic science fiction novel. But I am starting to see a pattern; of the eighteen people gathered here, I think I’m the only one with a degree in science. All these other polymaths— curators, activists, artists and architects— their careers center around people. The challenges they face are largely, essentially political; the solutions are political too. Their whole lives come down to negotiations, to meetings in middles. Such insights would have been invaluable back before things got this bad, back when What Has To Be Done could still fit into the set of What’s Politically Doable. But now the cascades and feedback loops have kicked in; now we’ve got to deal with Physics, and Physics does not play politics.

When your life has been spent putting people front and center, putting human welfare and happiness above all, is it any wonder that you might want to look away from a scenario in which Humans get what they deserve? Everyone in this room is looking for a desirable future. I may be the only one who defines that as a future without us. 

"Physics does not play politics." I want that on a T-shirt.