While all of Dyson’s case studies were exciting to hear about, and as rich with possibilities for truly wonderful science fiction, several of them deserve especially close attention. The first of these was a story about Dyson’s own involvement in an attempt by President Carter to provide affordable housing for the poor. Specifically, Dyson was part of a group assembled by HUD and charged with finding out how high-tech materials and processes could be used to produce cheaper housing. He went into fair detail about how he and the other scientists called on expert after expert to inform themselves on the state of the field, and how they spent a great deal of time developing alternatives to common practice. Upon examination, using new materials didn’t look promising for economic reasons, so they focused on discovering more efficient methods to assemble existing materials. And they found them. They blocked out a number of ways to fabricate housing materials differently, and especially more efficiently. They established that they could in fact cut the cost of housing substantially, and then, when they were done and quite proud of themselves, they found, in Freeman Dyson’s own words, “that they had reinvented the mobile home.”
After the waves of laughter subsided—half of it surprise, half of it appreciation for Dyson’s humility in including his own work among his examples of failed projects—Dyson went on to spell out the implications of his story. They, and he, had failed in part due to the scientific arrogance about which he had already warned us. That he himself fell prey to it was a lesson on just how pervasive this arrogance is. They were the scientists; surely they could do a better job than the market! He was careful to indicate that this assumption was wrong, and that the mobile home industry had already done a better and cheaper job in all of the areas that the group produced proposals. By implication, Dyson was indicating that it is always possible to ignore “native” knowledge, and to abstract erroneously from a recalcitrant specific problem, even in one’s own land. He closed this account by summarizing the socio-cultural reasons mobile homes would not solve the problem of housing the poor, and accented that scientific solutions must always fit existing cultural contexts to fully solve problems of social justice.
Dyson followed this failure in addressing the problems of the poor with a summary of Habitat for Humanity, which succeeds without any particular technological advancement, then with other case studies about solar panels powering lights in Asian villages and computer networks in South African schools, the micro-credit banking of the Grameen Bank, and closed with an account of his recent trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Several themes ran through it all: Dyson’s deep desire to alleviate pain and suffering, his respect for other individuals doing so on any level, from the level of loaning money to buy a hammer (literally) to making global decisions about the proper future for bio-engineered plants, and his desperate desire to bring knowledge and ethical action together.
Dyson closed his talk in a surprising fashion, but one entirely appropriate for a scientist; he decided that there was not sufficient information to answer either of his opening questions. He did, however, state several lessons that could be drawn from all of his case studies. The first of these was that if one compares top-down projects and bottom-up projects, bottom-up projects have a much higher rate of success. He drew several dry observations about the American tendency to favor top-down solutions, but stopped before actually pointing fingers. I, on the other hand, could not help but see that he was pointing out how often economic success and military might had led us into policies that were anti-democratic, anti-freedom, and anti-community; it was as if Dyson was critiquing the pull towards an imperial perspective that accompanies any great power, be it political or scientific.
His second lesson was also appropriate for a scientist; he observed that step-by-step experimentation with trial and error built in tended to work, while single schemes intended to resolve every aspect of a problem always failed. This too fits a sort of cybernetic model of politics, and sets Dyson quietly in opposition to many social trends. Americans are impatient people, and most countries have terrible difficulty establishing temporary laws, just as most politicians find themselves unable to propose partial solutions. By default, many of Dyson’s successful examples must be local, and/or private; only those organizations can act in accord with his lessons in the realm of realpolitick.
His third and final lesson was that collaboration is always necessary. To apply a high quality of technology well, he argues, one needs local economic initiatives. And from this lesson Dyson slid quickly into conceptually swampy ground. He abandoned his more measured stance and began to make generalizations. Two of these were that the free market ideology was as dangerous as socialism, and that ethics must rule our decisions, and ethics dictates that a gap between rich and poor was wrong.
The audience again roared with applause at these two points; I was and remain puzzled. What do these statements mean? To take the first, if it is true, how would one organize an economy? What system of distribution is an alternative to both capitalism and collectivism? Most of Dyson’s solutions assumed a right to property. Some used government funds; usually these were applied locally. I found and find myself paralyzed as I attempt to apply this lesson. Vote for or against a bill? Refuse to vote? I know what a Dyson sphere would look like; I don’t know what a Dyson society would look like, except that there would not be a gap between rich and poor, and it would tend to be organized on a local level. Did we have a hard scientist who was an anarchist? That seemed unlikely.
His second pronouncement, that ethics must guide our decisions, seems inarguable. except when you apply it back to his case studies. Mao was seeking to destroy the gap between rich and poor; he was seeking to equalize wealth. Were these not ethical goals, by Dyson’s standards? In other words, Dyson’s bravura performance as a visionary scientist seemed a bit myopic here. Surely he was not suggesting that it was easy to establish a shared ethical code? Or that science offered a single ethical answer?
But by the time I could formulate these questions, dozens of others were already in the queue to be read to Dyson. These ranged from in-jokes about his family there in town, to his interest in baseball, to how to resolve the recent terrorist challenge to America. Here Dyson showed another reason that he deserves my respect: his bravery. Some of the questions were very pointed; the audience clearly preferred one answer to another. In all cases, Dyson spoke directly and clearly. You may like his answers; I laughed with pleasure at the way he turned the assumptions of the ecological activists against them. You may not like his answers; I found myself wincing at his proposed solution to the question of peace between Israel and Palestine, which seemed both naîve and arrogant. But in all cases, he offered answers that managed to be honest, that communicated complex ideas with clarity and grace, and that energized his listeners. Regardless of the immediate emotional response he may have triggered, he always made his listeners think, and, more importantly, helped them to think well.
As I left the auditorium, I reflected on the possibility that Freeman Dyson may be all that I saw, and be even subtler than I thought. Maybe he knew that I and other listeners would surge to classify his ideas within existing systems, and that we would be all too willing to surrender our intellectual autonomy and let the scientist tell us what to do. That way, as each of Dyson’s case studies demonstrated, led to disaster. Instead, what he offers is hope, or better, a myriad of hopes, all of which were freely available to us so long as we were in there working along with him, negotiating solutions and voicing our needs. Freeman Dyson made it seem possible to collaborate in the creation of wonder, and that is a great gift indeed.
Greg Beatty recently completed his Ph.D. in English at the University of Iowa, where he wrote a dissertation on serial killer novels. He attended Clarion West 2000, and any rumors you’ve heard about his time there are, unfortunately, probably true. His previous publications in Strange Horizons can be found in our Archive.
Fiddler
By H. Courreges LeBlanc, illustration by Shelton Bryant
12/3/01
November always dragged around the station, but today was one dead Sunday. Not one car pulled off the interstate all morning. Nothing hit the drive but a thin steady rain, puddling slow rainbows in the oil. Me and Harnie just tilted back our chairs against the cigarette rack, watched the monster movie, and waited for the game to start. The big flying turtle was about set to barbeque downtown Tokyo when the drive bell rang, and up sluiced a car so damn gorgeous it hurt to look at it. A ‘37 Buick Roadmaster it was, painted a red so rich it was nearly black, that straight eight engine whispering like a lover while teardrops of rain rolled down the chrome grill.