It seems to me that the open society is in a perpetual state of trying to outrun an endless sequence of problems: would-be invaders from closed societies, internal activists who would rather close down the society in the name of stability, exhaustion of resources on the planet, solar system, and so on, the inevitable asteroid impact or supernova, etc.
replyAnd the idea is that this endless sequence of problems exists regardless of how open your society is. So even if you were able to implement a perfect set of authoritarian rules to establish a stable closed society with the technology to capture all the resources from the solar system and redirect all dangerous asteroids, well crap, you still weren't innovative enough to stop the supernova from killing everyone 200 million years later.
Seems right to me
replyWorth noting that Popper himself would probably reject this as he explicitly argues history has no meaning or direction. I'm inclined to see this view as in tension with the idea that openness promotes growth combined with the idea that growth is self-selecting
replySounds like nihilism.
replyThe output of /dev/random doesn't have meaning, but that doesn't make my kernel a nihilist.
replyWhy can't the society have evolving rules? Looks like your "rules rigid enough to structure a society" phrase denies this is possible, for no reason.
replyI was likely being too definitive there. I think there is a strong tension between rules rigid enough to structure a society and maintaining a principle of openness. I think optimistically allowing for failures of various kinds (one could imagine it at a lower level than the entire society) allows for a more robust pursuit of openness.
reply