Lambdas and meathooks and crossbows, oh my!

[pozorvlak]

I have now returned from Edinburgh, where I was visiting a symposium to celebrate the 60th birthday of Gordon Plotkin (not his death, as totherme and I had somehow assumed: fortunately, we discovered our mistake before we tried to console anyone). It was a theoretical computer science conference, which isn't really my area, though there's some overlap: I think I knew five of the other attendees, including totherme. My motivations for attending were a) a chance to hang around and chat with totherme, b) a chance to meet some CS people, in case I decide to move in that direction when I finish my PhD, c) a chance to hear the extremely eminent Dana Scott speak. I mostly got at least something out of all the lectures (with the disturbing exception of Marcelo Fiore's lecture, which was pretty much pure category theory). However, if I have to see another model of the untyped lambda calculus in the next month I shall not be responsible for the consequences of my actions.

One of the things totherme and I discussed (as well as the monadicity of trees, database APIs, context logic and the like), was the idea of the Grim Meathook Future. Joshua Ellis's original post from which the name is taken is worth reading, and quite short: the relevant bit is

The upshot of all of this is that the Future gets divided; the cute, insulated future that Joi Ito and Cory Doctorow and you and I inhabit, and the grim meathook future that most of the world is facing, in which they watch their squats and under-developed fields get turned into a giant game of Counterstrike between crazy faith-ridden jihadist motherfuckers and crazy faith-ridden American redneck motherfuckers, each doing their best to turn the entire world into one type of fascist nightmare or another.

Of course, nobody really wants to talk about that future, because it’s depressing and not fun and doesn’t have Fischerspooner doing the soundtrack. So everybody pretends they don’t know what the future holds, when the unfortunate fact is that — unless we start paying very serious attention — it holds what the past holds: a great deal of extreme boredom punctuated by occasional horror and the odd moment of grace.

Or, as jwz put it:

Well, the "grim meathook future" is a very specific, peak-oil-and-fascism sort of doomed. "Doomed" covers all sorts of upsetting eventualities, like man-made black holes, killdozers, and our new robot overlords.

I don't pretend that my categories are the most concise possible.

Now, post-Katrina, the possibility of the GMF has been weighing on my mind rather: in fact, I become more and more convinced that this is what the future has in store for us.

Which leads me to my question: assuming for the sake of argument that the GMF is inevitable in some form, what should I be doing now to prepare for it? What skills can I gain that will enable me to survive (I've given up on prospering) in the post-oil, post-tech, post-sanity economy? I'm thinking things like first aid (to patch yourself up, and to make you too useful to be killed outright). Knowing how to tan leather or make bread or grow food or some other tangibly useful thing. And knowing how to do it all without electricity or anything made from petrochemicals.

So, I turn to you, my personal brains trust. What do you recommend? Assuming that we don't nuke ourselves to death, of course.

On a completely unrelated note, this is the best eBay item description ever. Thanks to Mat for the link.

Comments

[michaelp-j (from livejournal.com)]

One of the things I've learned from talking to people here at Rothera is that having a trade (as distinct from a profession) is much more useful in more places. So for example, plumbers, electricians, mechanics, builders and carpenters are all capable of doing those sorts of jobs all over the world, and that there are many places in the world crying out for them to do just that. I would recommend the following list of professions for surviving in a world of decreasing technology:

- hydraulic engineer (in places where wars are not being fought over oil they may well be fought over water)
- electrician (particularly with knowledge/experience of autonomous systems and alternative energy)
- mechanic (even with rising oil prices the internal combustion engine will be with us for a long while yet)
- textile worker (even with global warming and relaxing social attitudes to sex, people will still want clothes and tents)
- ceramics worker (making stuff out of clay is low-tech and very useful)
- farmer

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Ceramics are a good thought - it's one of the oldest technologies there is, so you can presumably bootstrap a kiln out of very little. And the others are good, too. There will be rather a lot of textile workers, of course, but it can't help to have the skills yourself. Hence the interest in darning, to some extent...

[johnckirk.livejournal.com]

This webcomic advocates pottery as a useful skill in GMF:
http://www.partiallyclips.com/index.php?id=1120&c=1

[johnckirk.livejournal.com]

Certain types of first aid are probably useful, but not the way it's taught now. E.g. it would be good to be able to fix a broken leg with the aid of tree branches, but it's not much use to know how to use an AED. Arguably it might be more useful to learn a martial art, so that you can beat other people and steal their food :)

There was a blog entry along similar lines that I saw recently:
http://blog.air0day.com/2006/06/04/are-you-worthless/#more-49
and you might find it amusing, although it does contain some spoilers for early episodes of Lost season 2. Actually, you'd probably like his blog in general (Bruce Schneier recently quoted from this entry.)

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

That is a good blog! And don't worry, I've never seen Lost.

Speaking of martial arts, one of the things that got me thinking about this was a thread over on esrblog in which one of the gun-nuts (of which there are many) said that even if this global warming thing wasn't an alarmist hoax, then stocking up on guns would be good for survival in the GMF (though he didn't use that term). One of the liberals (of whom there are very few) said that while guns and canned food may have their place, they're not a long-term solution (unless you intend to be an out-and-out raider): to survive long-term, you need the kind of skills that MP-J mentions above. I'd include a link, but I can't find it with Google, and lack the stomach to trawl through loads of ESR blog comments.

[johnckirk.livejournal.com]

I've been re-reading Batman: No Man's Land recently, where the USA seals Gotham off as a lost cause, and it turns into a semi-feudal society. There was an interesting standoff in that, where a guy tried to mug someone with a gun, and the would-be victim said "You're bluffing, because if you did have a bullet then it would be worth more than [the item he'd get]". Archery might make more sense, particularly if you could get away with sharpened sticks rather than metal arrow-heads.

[totherme.livejournal.com]

Arguably it might be more useful to learn a martial art, so that you can beat other people and steal their food :)

I'm firmly of the opinion that surviving as an individual by martial ability in a hostile environment for any length of time is untenable. There's always a bigger guy. Failing that, two guys. Or four. Call it an even dozen. What if one of them's armed? All of them? Maybe you've got a headache, and are reacting a bit slow. Or you slip on a banana peel. And you've got to sleep sometime...

No - hostile environments suck. Fortunately we (as a species) have millions of years of experience of cleverly not being in hostile environments, through one cunning means or another.

I reckon you want to be useful (like randominfo says - plus maybe carpentry - I've often fancied having a go at that), and most definitely not threatening (so even if you do, for some unrelated reason have a black belt in something (or a firearm), I reckon you really shouldn't wear it (visibly)).

Most of all though, I think you want to be amiable, and cheerful. Aside from the practical benefits post-apocalypse, I think that's a generally more fun way to be while we're waiting around for it to happen ;)

(footnote: Folk with more respect for Neal Stephenson's post apocalyptic opinions than mine should check out his answer to question 9 ^_^ )

[johnckirk.livejournal.com]

Update on Ye Olde Comment - that blog has moved, so here are the new links:
http://www.nomachetejuggling.com/2006/06/04/are-you-worthless/
http://www.nomachetejuggling.com/2006/08/21/worst-security-tool-ever/