Peter Baldwin examines the question of whether we live in a special time. "Over a decade ago the late British philosopher Derek Parfit included the following statement in the conclusion of his last book, On What Matters."
We live during the hinge of history. Given the scientific and technological discoveries of the last two centuries, the world has never changed as fast. We shall soon have even greater powers to transform, not only our surroundings, but ourselves and our successors. If we act wisely in the next few centuries, humanity will survive its most dangerous and decisive period. Our descendants could, if necessary, go elsewhere, spreading through this galaxy.
If there are special times, then there are special moments. William MacAskill of Oxford University "took the debate about the hinge hypothesis and longtermism out of academia and into mainstream media, gaining some influential adherents including Elon Musk, who sees his goal of making humanity a multiplanetary species as necessary to ensure its long-term survival."
Do we have a special duty to the future because we live in a hinge year like 2024 instead of 1100 BC? Some people, especially activists, believe that special moments in history give them extraordinary license. The problem, as Baldwin rightly points out, is we have no good way of reliably knowing what present acts will most significantly affect the future. We can't be sure if we are truly special or just think we are.
One of my favorite short stories is Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder," in which he proposes that even so trivial a thing as treading or not treading on a prehistoric butterfly could be a hypothetical hinge of history. For those unfamiliar with the story, "in the year 2055, time travel has become a practical reality, and the company Time Safari Inc. offers wealthy adventurers the chance to travel back in time to hunt extinct species such as dinosaurs." When the monstrous Tyrannosaurus approaches, one of the hunters panics, steps off the path, and crushes a butterfly. They continue everything else as planned, but when they return to their original time, they find everything changed. How could this happen? As the safari guide foreshadows the explanation at the start of the story:
"Say we accidentally kill one mouse here. That means all the future families of this one particular mouse are destroyed, right?"
"So they're dead, so what?"
"So what?" the guide snorted quietly. "Well, what about the foxes that'll need those mice to survive? For want of ten mice, a fox dies. For want of ten foxes a lion starves. For want of a lion, all manner of insects, vultures, infinite billions of life forms are thrown into chaos and destruction. Eventually it all boils down to this: fiftynine million years later, a caveman, one of a dozen on the entire world, goes hunting wild boar or sabertoothed tiger for food. But you, friend, have stepped on all the tigers in that region. By stepping on one single mouse. So the caveman starves. And the caveman, please note, is not just any expendable man, no! He is an entire future nation. From his loins would have sprung ten sons. From their loins one hundred sons, and thus onward to a civilization. Destroy this one man, and you destroy a race, a people, an entire history of life. It is comparable to slaying some of Adam's grandchildren. The stomp of your foot, on one mouse, could start an earthquake, the effects of which could shake our earth and destinies down through Time, to their very foundations. With the death of that one caveman, a billion others yet unborn are throttled in the womb. Perhaps Rome never rises on its seven hills. Perhaps Europe is forever a dark forest, and only Asia waxes healthy and teeming. Step on a mouse and you crush the Pyramids. Step on a mouse and you leave your print, like a Grand Canyon, across Eternity. Queen Elizabeth might never be born, Washington might not cross the Delaware, there might never be a United States at all. So be careful. Stay on the Path. Never step off!"
The world turned on a butterfly.
For those who dislike arguments based on fictional short stories, we can consider the COVID bat, without whose definite existence (the best scientific authority of WHO assures us) a zoonotic pandemic would never have occurred. This tiny critter closed supply chains, killed millions of humans, and caused billions to wear masks. Had someone stepped on the mutant bat carrying the first human transmissible COVID virus, the pestilence might never have occurred.
For those who regard COVID as being as fictional as Bradbury's dinosaur, perhaps the recent failed assassination of Donald Trump will finally provide an acceptable example. A New York Times photographer captured the image of a bullet missing Donald Trump's head by a literal quarter of an inch. A little more to one side, and Joe Biden might never have had to admit to impairment and gone on to be president until 2028.
Clearly, the smallest deeds can change history entirely with incalculable consequences. Without special insight into how our actions will change the future, there is no way of telling which of our acts have the hinge property or are just inconsequential. Some theoretical physicists have even argued that nothing, however tiny, is inconsequential. Everything is a hinge.
One interpretation of quantum theory holds that every possibility inherent in a situation actually happens. Called the many worlds theory, "MWI's main conclusion is that the universe (or multiverse in this context) is composed of a quantum superposition of an uncountable or undefinable amount or number of increasingly divergent, non-communicating parallel universes or quantum worlds. Sometimes dubbed Everett worlds, each is an internally consistent and actualized alternative history or timeline."
Whether or not this is true, ordinary human intution suggests that the thing that we have done—or left undone—could have future ramifications far beyond our ability to predict. Any moment, any act could be the most important of all. If so we should do our best always because you never know. You just never know.
“...for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch
