Terra Ignota - Ada Palmer

This quartet of “political science fiction” novels really gripped my imagination. Using this space to unpack a few of the key themes and claims.

Rivalry of the “in-path” and the “out-path”

The “underwar” depicted in the third and fourth books centers on Gordian vs. Utopia warring over their two respective projects. At first, it seems that these two shouldn’t be fighting: they’re both tiny hives, intellectual and knowledge-seeking, both with a mission of conquering death.

But, it turns out, there are some important conflicts which make their plans (at least narratively) incompatible:

• Unitasking vs. multitasking. Gordian views conquering death as the incontestable top priority; Utopia wants to reach the stars and conquer death
  • … and empirically, they’re spending almost all of their resources on the former, rather than the latter
  • … and Utopia has “six times the resources” of Gordian
  • … so practically speaking, not much effort is being spent on conquering death
  • “once you’re knocked down, once my branch becomes the trunk, you’ll finally give immortality your whole effort, guarding the billions here and unlocking our potential instead of firing a quarter of Earth’s produce into space!” - Faust
  • Resolution
  • Practically speaking, Gordian loses both the war and JEDD’s choice; and so they lose their opportunity to divert Utopia’s resources fully toward their path.
  • Utopia agrees to devote more of its resources to conquering death and understanding the mind in collaboration with Gordian. JEDD seizes and apportions their resources in keeping with the treaty.
    • n.b. This is probably only an acceptable outcome to Gordian because of the existence of Bridger’s relics—without them, they’d still harbor resentment about this project being unnecessarily slowed.
• Biological vs. computational immortality. Gordian plans to achieve immortality via mind uploading; Utopia aims primarily for biological immortality.
  • Resolution:
  • Bridger’s relics make biological immortality a tractable and palatable alternative to mind uploading; they also contain many clues which will accelerate the development of computational immortality. The two projects both suddenly seem much more tractable, and hence less fully rivalrous.
    • … but I don’t think this would be enough if Gordian hadn’t definitely lost.
• The will to seek the stars. Gordian’s success—practical immortality on Earth, perhaps by living in computers—would mean much less enthusiasm for space travel. (Not discussed much in book, but it might also mean less practical capacity, if everyone’s living on enormous fixed compute infrastructure.) Utopia won’t be able to recruit many vocateurs if the Earth is a paradise.
  • More locally, this conflict plays out over Bridger’s relics, which contain precious scientific clues for both immortality and space travel. Faust: “And you’re about to suggest that we could share, both study Bridger’s relics, advance together against Death and toward the stars. And we could have if Utopia was less selfish about their dying dream. But they fear that if we make Earth better quickly, then posterity won’t want to leave it, that if Death stops being a threat, then the fiercest of all evils will be Distance, and no one will retain the will to seek the stars. So, to protect their future, Utopia spirited all H.E.L.E.N.’s treasures to the Moon, where no one else can touch them.”
  • Furthermore, Utopia’s work is likely to provoke war, either instigated by Utopia itself (to maintain the will to seek the stars) or by other Hives which might seek to seize Mars. Gordian opposes war; they want to create a paradise on Earth.
  • Resolution:
  • JEDD will seize and redistribute the moon and Mars a couple centuries after they are colonized. And the same for the next colonies after that, time and again, so that they’re forced to continue to expand. This removes the causus belli from other Hives and also prevents Utopia from becoming mired in the paradise the others will seek to create in each world.
  • Also… if too few Utopians want to seek the stars, they plan to revive historical figures (like Hobbes, Mycroft, Achilles) who would willingly suffer in the black between the tsars.

Mapping onto reality

How do these conflicts and their resolutions map onto the world we actually live in?

• Are longevity programs and space programs meaningfully rival?
  • A key challenge here is that we can’t predict research trajectories. If we issued some kind of an edict like “you can only work on research which will advance the project of immortality”, would the industrial research on yogurt cultures which yielded CRISPR-CaS-9 have been permitted?
• Is it a serious threat that we’d run out of people willing to seek the stars?

Utopia’s income and spending

Utopia represents 5% of the world’s population and 27% of its income. Just by way of comparison, the US represents 4% and 24%, respectively. These numbers are surprisingly close! Palmer may have chosen them intentionally to evoke the US.

That said, the Apollo Program consumed roughly 0.5% of US GDP at the height of its operation. It sounds like Utopia’s spending is more than 100x higher in relative terms—i.e. that they’re spending more than half their product on their Project.