Effects of technological regression on a global scale?

[NRSASD]

Picture the scene:

The year is 1969. The US has just successfully conducted a moon landing, and while there, made first contact with galactic society. The aliens let us know that within the next five years, a massive invasion from an unbeatable hostile force will be sweeping through this region of space, exterminating any advanced species that possesses space flight or is about to develop it. However, if the species is primitive enough, the invaders (let’s call them Reapers) will leave them alone. After a century or two space will be safe again once the Reapers leave.

The aliens think they have a pretty narrow chance of defeating these Reapers, but know beyond the shadow of a doubt that humanity would just be splattered by them without even slowing the Reapers down. Therefore, the aliens encourage our species to voluntarily give up our technology and pretend to be much less advanced than we are. Pre-electricity is probably sufficient.

What would happen to Earth? To our species? Do you think we could successfully regress that far? If we did, could we bounce back?

[Martin Greywolf]

Do you think we could successfully regress that far?

The question is how would the aliens convince various human factions to do this, but that particular topic is forbidden from being discussed by forum rules, since it's pretty much Cold War politics.


Therefore, the aliens encourage our species to voluntarily give up our technology and pretend to be much less advanced than we are. Pre-electricity is probably sufficient.

Technology doesn't quite work like that. First electrical batteries are from IIRC bronze age, and something like chemistry often doesn't require electricity to function. A portable automatic carbine (your AKs and M14s) is a weapon that is very much associated with post-electricity era, but there isn't anything stopping you from making a functioning one without electricity anywhere in the manufacturing process. Hell, diesel cars can be made to function without electricity, public lighting can be made to run on gas, and one Terry Pratchett designed a telegraph system that works without anything more complicated than a bright light.

You could probably make a functioning aircraft carrier and not use electricity anywhere on it or during the manufacturing process - it would be a real pain, but it could be done.

So, if your alien inspection just looks at electricity, it wouldn't be that hard to do, provided everyone is on board. Most of the recent advancements in biology, chemistry and medicine would still be on the table. If they are using some other sort of metric, like looking at overall tech level... what metrics do they use?

Because here's the thing, you don't really need electricity to go to orbit, solid rocket boosters lit with some sort of chemical reaction could get you there. It's immensely improbable for that to be a thing, because once you have enough knowledge about the world around you (physics, chemistry, math), discovering certain technologies/forces of nature is inevitable. There is almost no way for anyone to know what electrons are and not know about how electricity works. And making rockets without electricity is difficult, so why would you?


If we did, could we bounce back?

Look, at worst, you're looking to go back to age of steam and steel, e.g. Victorian Britain. That makes the odds of survival of humanity as a whole arguably better than Cold War, since no one has the capability of nuking all the things. And 300 years isn't that long, really, we have personal diaries of ordinary people from that far back, let alone important documents from national archives. Bouncing back would be a matter of a generation or two at worst - and some areas may well be more advanced, because no one is stopping mathematicians from doing their stuff.

[Mechalich]

Substantial technological regression, in a short timeframe (meaning less than a generation or so) requires mass death. There are many reasons but the simple one is agricultural output. Total food supply is closely tied to major technological advances that have boosted the agricultural process. As a result regressing technology means regressing food production levels, which means people die, in huge numbers (note that in 1969, this would be even more true than today, since that's prior to the Green Revolution in agriculture and during a period where the global food system was considerably more strained than it is at present).


The question is how would the aliens convince various human factions to do this, but that particular topic is forbidden from being discussed by forum rules, since it's pretty much Cold War politics.

Because substantial tech regression requires mass death, the easiest way for this to happen is actually for the aliens to simply conduct a limited assault on Earth themselves, one sufficient to induce global civilizational collapse. A major population reduction - ex. down to ~100 million worldwide - would severely curtail recovery rates and probably supply the necessary time to avoid discovery.

[Vahnavoi]

Simply icing all space programs would probably be sufficient if the Reapers are looking for orbital technology (satellites etc.). The friendly aliens could probably just destroy relevant facilities from orbit as a show of force and demoralize major world powers from trying again for foreseaable future. This would halt the space race and mean no GPS or other satellite-based technology going forwards, slowing down advancements in communications technology considerably.

Turning back the clock to pre-electric era would require significantly more destruction - co-ordinated intentional effort to do so is probably outside humanity's capability. Nuclear war is likely the only human-engineered mechanism capable of facilitating such a change.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Martin Greywolf
First electrical batteries are from IIRC bronze age….

Are you talking about the so-called “Baghdad Battery”? Because that’s long since been debunked.


Originally Posted by Martin Greywolf
You could probably make a functioning aircraft carrier and not use electricity anywhere on it or during the manufacturing process - it would be a real pain, but it could be done.

You can launch a hang glider off a catamaran and call that an “aircraft carrier,” but that bears no functional resemblance to the Big E, much less any combat capability. Modern aircraft carriers can’t be built or operated without electricity, to say nothing of the planes they launch.

[False God]

Plot twist, the aliens giving "kindly advice" are actually the Reapers and are just tricking humanity into being an easier target.

Well, the effects would be pretty much null since that's not at all how humanity functions. Not to mention, we just encountered an alien society that is advanced enough to give themselves a slim chance at possibly maybe holding off the "Reapers". You can bet your bottom dollar humanity would try to take their stuff first (if they weren't willing to share) before ever entertaining the idea of going back to pre-electricity.



If you're asking for an answer that buys into the premise: about 90% of the human population would DIE.

In the year 1750, arguably around the start of the industrial revolution, the ENTIRE POPULATION of the planet was around 800M. Up until that point, the ENTIRE POPULATION of the planet was only increasing by about 1M/yr. In the last 275 years, the Earth's population has increased to 8 BILLION, over 10 times the population in a historical scale, the blink of an eye.

This is in large part due to modern medicine, civil engineering (sewers) and numerous other technological advances that have reduced disease, increased health, increased longevity and reduced deaths from birth (both of mothers and children).

These aren't permanent improvements to humanity, they are effects that are administered daily from sewage treatment to medical care. They are absolutely necessary to continue to live in an incredibly dense urbanized environment. Ending them would bring about, effectively, the 4 horsemen. Plague first as people catch simple diseases (even Corona) and are unable to be treated while simultaneously rapidly spreading it. Famine second as the technology used to support industrialized agriculture just stops. War over the remaining resources and of course "who will disarm first" will take care of a substantial portion of the population. All leading up to one big fat answer: DEATH (which of course causes its own kind of contamination.

----
The Reapers would arrive to find a decimated world. It's waters dried up and polluted beyond use. It's farmland burned and irradiated. It's people mostly dead or dying from rampant disease and pollution. They'd pass us up on fear of catching something.

Could we bounce back? Probably. There's a lot of humans and it's unlikely the planet would be absolutely inhospitable. But it would take hundreds of years. All of our great minds would be dead. All of our technology destroyed. Anyone who knew how to use it would be 2 or 3 generations without ever having known what a cell phone is, much less a calculator or a car.

[Satinavian]

I generally agree with

"people would never give up their technology"

and

"if they did, it would be utterly horrible with billions of dead"



But i don't agree that it would be hard to bounce back. Books are quite longlively and with how many copies we have of everything, there is basically no chance of significant parts of knowledge to be lost. Sure, experience would be lost. But having the books means recovery would be much much faster than scientific progress had originally been.

And that is even without people preparing for bouncing back. There would be special secure storage archives for important knowledge Books, articles, but even blueprints that you wouldn't find in your average library. Addiionally, what do you think people would do with all the machines they are no longer allowed to use ? Sure, many would be recycled, but many others woule be stored. Because that is easy and they might be worth something again. Now durability is limited but many of these wouldsurvive as well or be able to be repaired or at least to provide examples for reconstruction.


Lost knowledge would never be relevant to buoncing back. Lost industrial capacity, environmental damage and number of peoples would be the limiting factors.

[KorvinStarmast]

What would happen to Earth? To our species? Earth would be fine, but our species would be wiped slick by the Reapers due to human nature being what it is. Lousy premise for a movie or a game.

[Vahnavoi]

To add to what False God said:

Both population levels and technological progress have been on a sharp upward curve for past 250 years or so. 1969 is very much on the steep incline of that curve, coming after several world wars (Napoleonic wars and the first and second worlds wars) and at least one global pandemic (the Spanish flu) failed to slow those things down and arguably accelerated them. Several African countries show this in even more extreme form, with historically unprecedent population growth and technological leaps despite colonialism, famines, wars and dictatorships.

That should give some perspective for what it would take to flatten the curve.

[Jay R]

I don't believe that we could get everybody to do it.

First of all, let's consider the obvious -- every nation but one has destroyed their nuclear bombs. Does the last nation with nuclear forces destroy theirs too, or do they take over the world first, and then destroy the nukes?

Once you have an answer to that question, take it back one step. All but two nations have disarmed. Does any nuclear nation trust another enough to be the second to last to disarm?

Once the answer to that one is clear, go back another step. There are three nuclear nations left. Does any of the three trust both of the others enough to disarm?

This logic also applies to any other technology. Who stops building aircraft carriers first? Who destroys all their factories first? Who destroys their hydroelectric dams first? Who dismantles the first hospital?


Then go back to the very beginning. Who trusts the aliens? We've just established that we don't even trust our own species. Do all nations on earth trust that the aliens are completely benign, and that their only goal is To Serve Man?

[Tanarii]

But i don't agree that it would be hard to bounce back.
If civilization collapsed, it would be very difficult to bounce back after significant time had passed. The primary factor would be a lack of surface level ores, gas and oil available to be mined. Those are necessary to re-jump start another bronze/Iron Age cycle, and even more so for another industrial revolution.

If the technology was being intentionally regressed, the metals could be stockpiled with half a millennium in mind of course. But I don't know if oil and natural gas can be stored that long in a refined state.

[Vahnavoi]

Refined fossil fuels cannot be stored for that long once they're out of the ground. If it's desired to preserve such resources, the only smart choice is to stop digging.

[Mastikator]

You'd be asking 7 billion people to die and they don't even know 100% for sure it's the correct course of action.

[Vahnavoi]

The years mentioned is 1969. There were only ~ 3.6 billion people alive at that point. Estimate for 1700 was 600 million. So the die-off would "only" need to be 3 billion.

[Tanarii]

The years mentioned is 1969. There were only ~ 3.6 billion people alive at that point. Estimate for 1700 was 600 million. So the die-off would "only" need to be 3 billion.
Not sure it'd need to go back to that level though. No electric powered harvesting machines or vehicles to transport to where it's needed. But are oil driven harvesters and huge container ships okay? Coal & steam driven locomotives for land transport. Regardless, we could probably assume the changes to wheat and rice wouldn't go away. So even if it was back to hand collected and horse and wagon and sail to get to market, the agricultural landscape should still be improved.

This scenario is basically David Weber's Safehold Series, which is why I'm thinking electricity is the only thing off the table.

[awa]

It partially depends on how well the aliens can sell the case, if enough the humans doubt than you run into the issue of bad actors running everything for everyone. However humans are actually pretty decent at coming together against common enemies if the aliens give a good enough space power point presentation it may greatly aid the endeavor. Sure a lot of humans will still die but if the humans aren't wasting so many resources competing with each other they could greatly minimize the Hardship from giving up technology.

As an additional point a lot of the improvements made over the centuries aren't just technology but knowledge knowing how to use fertilizers efficiently doesn't take that much advanced technology once you have done the initial science, and in the year in question significant portions of the world effectively didn't have "modern" technology any way, (this is still true today but it was more true then).

[JeenLeen]

I agree that the Reapers will wipe out humanity if people have to do it by choice.

Now, it's possible a very "ends justify the means" coalition could try to forcibly use technology to eliminate technology, then destroy it themselves once they've basically conquered the earth / nuked everyone but themselves... but other than something like that I see a mix of "It's a hoax" or "everyone else is giving up tech, so let us conquer them and rule until the Reapers kill us" messing up the system.

Could be a cool premise of a diplomatic/war-based game if you wanted to try to play persuading (or 'persuading') humanity to get so it can survive.

----

That said, assuming you could get it to work and low tech for a century or two...
Have you read the Foundation series by Asimov? It has some interesting ideas of a Dark Age, though it's all space-faring tech in it.
But I could see some mythical ideas of "storehouses of wisdom" that can be unlocked once the threat from the sky passes.

[InvisibleBison]

It partially depends on how well the aliens can sell the case, if enough the humans doubt than you run into the issue of bad actors running everything for everyone. However humans are actually pretty decent at coming together against common enemies if the aliens give a good enough space power point presentation it may greatly aid the endeavor. Sure a lot of humans will still die but if the humans aren't wasting so many resources competing with each other they could greatly minimize the Hardship from giving up technology.

I can't imagine anything short of outright mind control convincing all that many people to go along with the aliens' plan. From an individual perspective, it doesn't really matter whether I die as part of the mass die-off due to technological regression or I die because the Reapers exterminate humanity - either way, I'm dead. And while in theory I might survive the mass die-off, there's also a possibility that the aliens could defeat the Reapers before humanity gets squished, so neither option is absolutely guaranteed to kill me. Given that I'm almost certainly going to die either way, why not go with the option that lets me continue living in the level of comfort I'm used to before I die rather than the one that forces me to learn how to live in a pre-industrial society?

[Jay R]

Look at any two political parties, in any place, at any time, local, regional, national, or international. Has one of them *ever* successfully convinced the other?

And this time, we have to be convinced to do something that will in fact kill the majority of humans.

If all (or even most) humans reaching an agreement is necessary for the human race to survive, then
It.
Will.
Not.
Survive.

[awa]

I can't imagine anything short of outright mind control convincing all that many people to go along with the aliens' plan. From an individual perspective, it doesn't really matter whether I die as part of the mass die-off due to technological regression or I die because the Reapers exterminate humanity - either way, I'm dead. And while in theory I might survive the mass die-off, there's also a possibility that the aliens could defeat the Reapers before humanity gets squished, so neither option is absolutely guaranteed to kill me. Given that I'm almost certainly going to die either way, why not go with the option that lets me continue living in the level of comfort I'm used to before I die rather than the one that forces me to learn how to live in a pre-industrial society?

It would have to be a very good power point presentation,
that said per-electricity is not the same as pre industrial. And during the time period proposed significant portions of the world population are already effectively living in this manner anyway.

Look at any two political parties, in any place, at any time, local, regional, national, or international. Has one of them *ever* successfully convinced the other?

And this time, we have to be convinced to do something that will in fact kill the majority of humans.

If all (or even most) humans reaching an agreement is necessary for the human race to survive, then
It.
Will.
Not.
Survive.
I mean yes. Occasionally they do even if sometimes it doesn't seem that way right now. While it would kill the majority of humans today I dont think it would have killed the majority of humans then particularly if we get to keep oil and fertilizer. A lot of people maybe but not I think the majority.

You dont need to convince all or even the majority of people to live without electricity just the people with power. Large scale power plants are in the grand scheme of things fragile, blow them up and it doesn't matter what your opinion of aliens is you just lost all electricity.

Ironically nuclear weapons allows a rouge operator to hit the reset button with an almost literal push of a button.

[Jay R]

Ironically nuclear weapons allows a rogue operator to hit the reset button with an almost literal push of a button.

I agree that the most successful way to make this happen would be to unilaterally start a nuclear war. [For certain debatable values of "successful".]

[Palanan]

Actually this sounds like a great plot for a movie or a game. Start with the premise that virtually no one believes the aliens are even real—and the ones who do are discredited as loonies, because of course aliens aren’t real.

Keep in mind this scenario is set in 1969, so no internet, no cell phones, only three TV channels in the US (plus PBS).

Most other governments won’t believe the “aliens” are anything more than a loopy fiction manufactured by the US. The US military-industrial complex will choose to believe that the “aliens,” if they even exist, are simply lying to us—after all, why should the aliens expend the effort to invade if they can just convince us to surrender all our capability to resist them? Obviously, the answer is to increase industrial output to make ourselves a harder target—not for the so-called Reapers, but for the aliens who are claiming we need to give up our technology.

Between the US government and the military-industrial complex, it’s trivial to conceal or discredit any actual evidence of the “aliens,” with as many unfortunate accidents as required to silence anyone trying to speak publicly.

So it’s down to a select team of pilots, scientists and other specialists to take the necessary action—the few people who know the aliens are telling the truth and who are willing to do whatever it takes to keep humanity safe.

That to me sounds like a great scenario, sort of a mix of I Spy and classic Trek. If you do it right, every major government in the world will be after you, while you're essentially trying to be a Bond villain and the good guys, all at once. Sounds like one hella fun game to me.

[Mechalich]

Actually this sounds like a great plot for a movie or a game. Start with the premise that virtually no one believes the aliens are even real—and the ones who do are discredited as loonies, because of course aliens aren’t real.

Keep in mind this scenario is set in 1969, so no internet, no cell phones, only three TV channels in the US (plus PBS).

Most other governments won’t believe the “aliens” are anything more than a loopy fiction manufactured by the US. The US military-industrial complex will choose to believe that the “aliens,” if they even exist, are simply lying to us—after all, why should the aliens expend the effort to invade if they can just convince us to surrender all our capability to resist them? Obviously, the answer is to increase industrial output to make ourselves a harder target—not for the so-called Reapers, but for the aliens who are claiming we need to give up our technology.

Between the US government and the military-industrial complex, it’s trivial to conceal or discredit any actual evidence of the “aliens,” with as many unfortunate accidents as required to silence anyone trying to speak publicly.

So it’s down to a select team of pilots, scientists and other specialists to take the necessary action—the few people who know the aliens are telling the truth and who are willing to do whatever it takes to keep humanity safe.

That to me sounds like a great scenario, sort of a mix of I Spy and classic Trek. If you do it right, every major government in the world will be after you, while you're essentially trying to be a Bond villain and the good guys, all at once. Sounds like one hella fun game to me.

'We must kill almost all humans in order to save humanity' is an extremely dangerous and generally repugnant plotline even if a scenario is constructed where this is absolutely the case, and that scenario is difficult to construct. The Cold Equations took a lot of very deliberate effort to work through in order to make sure their were no alternatives. At planetary scale it's almost impossible to lock down the scenario tightly enough. If you actually run this game the most likely outcome is that a some point a player figures out an alternative the GM can't shoot down, but only after tens of millions have died. There are very good reasons why this sort of thing is usually left to the villains.

[TheStranger]

Pessimism

This is almost certainly the realistic and boring answer. But, if we take it as given that humanity will abandon any technology beyond a certain level because that’s the premise of the setting, what might that look like?

IMO, a lot depends on the social assumptions you make. Does humanity set aside its differences and set up a world government to benefit as many people as possible? Is it every nation for itself? Do the aliens just bomb every power plant and factory from orbit and then land an occupying force to round up stray tech and keep us from rebuilding? You get very different outcomes under all of those scenarios. I’m mostly assuming the second, though - every country agrees to go low-tech, but they’re responsible for their own needs.

Two more important questions: how much time do we have to transition into low-tech mode, and exactly what tech is forbidden?

If only electricity if forbidden, I think civilization could probably survive, more or less, given a coordinated strategy. Electricity is extremely useful in moving power around, but offhand there aren’t actually that many things that can’t be duplicated with other power sources (the flame-powered refrigerator being a somewhat mind-bending example). Granted, computers and communications and maybe some other areas probably take a step back, but not as much as you’d think. Given a few years of lead time (and a somewhat unrealistic level of coordination), it would probably be possible to convert infrastructure to use coal/gas/steam rather than electricity. Probably mechanical power (think windmills and water wheels, but on the scale of the Hoover dam) plays a role too. Point being, you lose one specific technology, but you have the advantage of infrastructure and scientific knowledge to find alternatives that didn’t exist in a historical pre-electricity period. Maybe there’s an adjustment period, maybe medical care and general quality of life are set back a few decades, but it’s not a total collapse and there might be some interesting paths forward along alternate tech trees.

If the answer is “no, you’re locked into mid-1800s technology,” things get harder but not overwhelmingly so. So let’s say you can have steam, but no internal combustion engines - that’s not ideal but you could probably salvage quite a lot of industrial capacity. Even steam-powered automobiles were a thing until it became obvious that internal combustion was better. Even highly-industrialized agriculture is still on the table, so with good organization and some lead-in time, you could probably continue to feed your population and maintain an industrialized society. Downside (unless you’re really into steampunk): a large portion of the world is grimy and depressing a la Victorian London.

If you’re forced to go pre-industrial, civilization as we know it is probably screwed, but there’s an outside chance that you can still stave off mass famine. You’ve certainly lost the infrastructure, industry, and mechanized agricultural system that allows a highly urbanized population and anything resembling the world of 1969. On the other hand, there’s enough arable land in the world to feed more than 3 billion people, as evidenced by the fact that 7 billion of us still have food. So if you use your lead-in time to clear every acre of arable land you can find, set up low-tech irrigation where it’s needed and feasible, and resettle people from cities into farming communities and get them set up working that land with animals, you might still be able to feed 3 billion people. You’re not as productive per-acre with pre-industrial tech, but maybe 3 billion is manageable. I’m not motivated to to the research and math on that, but it’s at least plausible that a renaissance-level society could sprawl over the face of the earth at that scale. I’m also handwaving governments somehow implementing top-down social change on a massive scale and moving people around as needed, so there’s that. Even with that, not every nation fares equally well here, and smaller industrial nations probably don’t have the land to feed themselves. So maybe you get mass migrations or maybe it’s possible to import food, or maybe those nations see starvation. Medicine also takes a big hit in this scenario, but doctors at least know about germs, so you’re probably not all the way back to pre-industrial mortality levels. Still, everything is set way back, and maintaining the cohesion, knowledge, and resources to bounce back is going to be a challenge. As noted upthread, the readily-available metals and oil have largely been used so it’s hard to bootstrap yourself if you didn’t prepare for it.

That last option also involves aggressive habitat destruction to clear land for a suddenly-agrarian population. Which… might have consequences? And even with the other scenarios, we haven’t talked about how society can sustain itself over any amount of time. I mean, it’s fine to say that you can support an industrialized society without electricity by powering things off coal, oil, or gas, but there’s a finite amount of all that stuff and you’ll be using it even faster than we actually were during the 1970s. Which also has consequences, and technological advances that might provide alternatives are blocked. So while you can maybe keep things going from 1969 while staying below reaper-triggering tech levels, that’s not the same as saying you can keep it up until the reapers go away. Heck, it’s not entirely certain how we’ll do over the next 200 years without reapers.

On a side note, I’m imagining a setting where humanity doesn’t cooperate so the aliens bomb us back to the Stone Age. Then they leave some overlords to live on Earth with us and keep tech down then help with uplift when it’s safe. That could be cool.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Mechalich
‘We must kill almost all humans in order to save humanity’….

This phrase is entirely your own invention. Neither the OP nor myself said this or advocated for this in a single word we’ve written.

[Mechalich]

This phrase is entirely your own invention. Neither the OP nor myself said this or advocated for this in a single word we’ve written.

But it's inherent to the concept.

There are two ways to produce a technological regression: openly through the deployment of overwhelming force, or by the inducement of some sort of massive disaster that completely collapses global civilization. Either way a massive number of people - at least on the level of global nuclear war (which is not, by itself, sufficiently destructive to achieve the sought after goal) - will die. The people who order this, whether humans or aliens, will inevitably appear as if they are horrible villains, even if they are in fact ultimately correct.

The overall scenario is extremely grim. It posits that the only possibility of survival is to meet and maintain the entire species within the 'not a threat' criteria of obliteratingly powerful oppressors for upwards of ten generations and that doing so requires fundamentally altering every aspect of existing society. Any path to the survival of the species involves the death of most of the humans currently alive.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Mechalich
But it's inherent to the concept.

It’s not. That’s your preconception, not mine.

[Vahnavoi]

@TheStranger:

The issue with your idea is not with governments or technology. We have examples from the last century of governments effecting top-down change in society, moving urbanized population to farm the land.

The issue is the people. You cannot uproot urbanized people, put them on a farm, tell them to grow food and expect them to succeed. A lot of the people that'd be moved around plain do not have the skills to do what this plan requires. The example attempts lead to economic crashes and famines.

This is why I agree with Mechalich: it's not possible to reverse technological progress and population growth on a steep upward climb without mass destruction.

[NRSASD]

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and comments! It’s been fun reading and thinking about them.

The reason I broached this subject was because I had recently learned of that throwaway line in Mass Effect 3, where an alien species does exactly what I proposed as an attempt to avoid the Reapers. In the game, we have no idea how that turns out, but I was curious to game it out a bit and see if it could be done.

I find this idea intriguing because, on a narrative mechanics level, I can’t think of any other example where technological regression is something desirable. In any other story I can name, the characters who advocate for it are idealistic, religious, and/or crazy; there are no pragmatic arguments for it.

Regardless, I agree that mass destruction is not a requirement to solve this issue, merely its most likely outcome. For my two cents, I think it would be extremely difficult, with conspiratorially minded people sabotaging the process and the top 1% cheating and trying to keep their technology.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by NRSASD
I find this idea intriguing because, on a narrative mechanics level, I can’t think of any other example where technological regression is something desirable. In any other story I can name, the characters who advocate for it are idealistic, religious, and/or crazy; there are no pragmatic arguments for it.

Orson Scott Card wrote a story about exactly this theme a number of years ago, which might be worth a look. It deals with overwhelming transformations in human society and the very personal consequences. I can find the title if you’re interested.

And I’d say it’s a mistake to assume that idealism and pragmatism are always mutually incompatible. Human beliefs and circumstances are simply too varied and intricate to make easy, one-size-fits-all assumptions.


Originally Posted by NRSASD
Regardless, I agree that mass destruction is not a requirement to solve this issue….

Agreed on this point. I quickly came up with a potential solution that wouldn’t require anything like what some others have automatically assumed. Not sure if it’s feasible with early 70s tech, but if you push a little into Bond-villain territory it could be the basis for a solid game.


Originally Posted by Vahnavoi
The issue with your idea is not with governments or technology. We have examples from the last century of governments effecting top-down change in society, moving urbanized population to farm the land.

The issue is the people. You cannot uproot urbanized people, put them on a farm, tell them to grow food and expect them to succeed. A lot of the people that'd be moved around plain do not have the skills to do what this plan requires. The example attempts lead to economic crashes and famines.

Without going into detail, in some cases the efforts failed to provide proper training for the people doing the work. But there have been other cases in which translocation of urban populations has succeeded in opening up new agricultural lands.

Note that this has been disastrous for the ecosystems involved, but from a strictly human perspective it’s been successful.

[NRSASD]

Orson Scott Card wrote a story about exactly this theme a number of years ago, which might be worth a look. It deals with overwhelming transformations in human society and the very personal consequences. I can find the title if you’re interested.

And I’d say it’s a mistake to assume that idealism and pragmatism are always mutually incompatible. Human beliefs and circumstances are simply too varied and intricate to make easy, one-size-fits-all assumptions.

Note that this has been disastrous for the ecosystems involved, but from a strictly human perspective it’s been successful.

Sure! I’ll track down a summary somewhere.

Agreed, idealism and pragmatism are not contradictory or exclusive. I was just stating that I’ve not seen a story where the pragmatic solution to the problem was technological regression (besides that Orson Scott Card book apparently).

And yeah, the environment is going to get clobbered by this. Even in a best case perfect scenario.

[TheStranger]

@TheStranger:

The issue with your idea is not with governments or technology. We have examples from the last century of governments effecting top-down change in society, moving urbanized population to farm the land.

The issue is the people. You cannot uproot urbanized people, put them on a farm, tell them to grow food and expect them to succeed. A lot of the people that'd be moved around plain do not have the skills to do what this plan requires. The example attempts lead to economic crashes and famines.

This is why I agree with Mechalich: it's not possible to reverse technological progress and population growth on a steep upward climb without mass destruction.

I don’t disagree with you, I’m handwaving the adjustment by individuals as well. The overwhelming majority of the working-age population is physically and mentally capable of farm work even if they don’t have the skills, and they have a few years of lead-in time to develop those skills with the full resources of an industrial society behind them. I’m assuming that any government engaged in something like this is also investing heavily in setting people up to succeed, and that the people involved are motivated to give it their best shot for the same reasons that the government is.

I kicked my last post off by acknowledging that the realistic answer is that vast numbers of people die. Maybe everybody, maybe 80%, but lots of people regardless. But if want to run a game/tell a story where that doesn’t happen, it’s not entirely impossible. “Governments and individuals are (near-) universally on board here and do what needs to be done to make this happen” is part of the suspension of disbelief that a setting based on this idea would require. I’m not trying to say no suspension of disbelief is required - there are lots of reasons that things wouldn’t go well if this was a real situation. I was mostly just looking at how the tech might work if you handwaved the human element to be whatever you need it to be.

There’s lots of near-future or alternate history fiction that has as part of its premise that institutions and societies have responded to something in a particular way that probably doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. If you want to engage with the work, you just have to roll with it.

[warty goblin]

I think the timelines and degrees make a big difference. If the problem is "in three years we need to shut off all the lights for a month or two" it's entirely doable. If it's "we need to regress to, like, 1850 and stay there for the next 500 years" it isn't. Even if you somehow got the world to buy in initially, after like 150 years nobody is going know anybody from the original time, and somebody is going to decide that light bulbs are a good idea again.

This scenario reminds me a bit of the Leigh Brackett novel The Long Tomorrow, where after a nuclear war the survivors return to a roughly 1850s sort of rural economy, on the grounds that boy did developing past that not work out. Technological advancement and urbanization ate banned, there's a constitionally mandated maximum population density. This is maintained by religiously motivated mob violence, but at the time of the story, about 70 years after the war, is clearly already starting to fray at the edges.

[Tanarii]

Agreed, idealism and pragmatism are not contradictory or exclusive. I was just stating that I’ve not seen a story where the pragmatic solution to the problem was technological regression (besides that Orson Scott Card book apparently).
David Weber. Safehold series. Edit: it's a done deal at the beginning of the series though, and it happens with a colony, not the Earth. The Earth has already been destroyed by the aliens and the human colony is on the run.

[Anonymouswizard]

The most reasonable way to regress your technology without widespread death is to have a small population to begin with. So it'll likely work if a colony decides they don't want beyond X, but not in the situation described.

I do find the need to go to pre-electric times a bit strange. It feels logical to me that a society/species might not decide to actually research space travel until a much higher technology level than Earth has, especially if you consider how inefficient it is. My suggestion would be to use the media to convince the public to stop being excited about space (over, most likely, decades) and monetary pressure to move scientists and engineers into different fields.

With any luck when the Reapers show up they'll just see a species covering it's planet in cables and making more disease resistant crops. If this alien species defeats the Reapers you don't have to deal with the fact that you willingly made the technology gap larger.

To move into ME3 more specifically, the issue is that the Reaper harvest lasts anywhere from decades to a couple of millennia. That's a long time to keep very motivated, passionate, and creative people* from finding new ways to poke the universe with a stick and see what it does.

* i.e. scientists.

[Batcathat]

I do find the need to go to pre-electric times a bit strange. It feels logical to me that a society/species might not decide to actually research space travel until a much higher technology level than Earth has, especially if you consider how inefficient it is. My suggestion would be to use the media to convince the public to stop being excited about space (over, most likely, decades) and monetary pressure to move scientists and engineers into different fields.

With any luck when the Reapers show up they'll just see a species covering it's planet in cables and making more disease resistant crops. If this alien species defeats the Reapers you don't have to deal with the fact that you willingly made the technology gap larger.

I don't know. If I was an alien concerned enough about others gaining space travel to wipe them out, I would probably be cautious enough to target any planet that seems to have even a slight chance of developing it soon-ish, regardless of when societies "typically" start working on it.

That said, pre-electric to space flight isn't that long in the grand scheme of things, so if they're that cautious even regressing that far might not work.

[warty goblin]

I don't know. If I was an alien concerned enough about others gaining space travel to wipe them out, I would probably be cautious enough to target any planet that seems to have even a slight chance of developing it soon-ish, regardless of when societies "typically" start working on it.

That said, pre-electric to space flight isn't that long in the grand scheme of things, so if they're that cautious even regressing that far might not work.

If you're in the xenocide business, I think it mostly comes down to how often you can, on average, visit any given planet. If it's every century, electricity seems a reasonable mark. If it's every thousand years or so, agriculture. If you're pushing a million years between weeding trips, tool use. Much longer than that and I think your safe threshold is probably something like multicellular life with a nervous system. Sure that's a conservative threshold, but it's not like you're using the planet for anything, and the entire setup of the problem kinda guarantees that you don't care about (other) life in the first place.

[Mechalich]

If you're in the xenocide business, I think it mostly comes down to how often you can, on average, visit any given planet. If it's every century, electricity seems a reasonable mark. If it's every thousand years or so, agriculture. If you're pushing a million years between weeding trips, tool use. Much longer than that and I think your safe threshold is probably something like multicellular life with a nervous system. Sure that's a conservative threshold, but it's not like you're using the planet for anything, and the entire setup of the problem kinda guarantees that you don't care about (other) life in the first place.

It also depends on whether or not you're able to put monitoring devices in place.

Nuclear detonation is the sort of thing that makes a useful benchmark for the capabilities of civilization that happens to be detectable from a long ways away, like light years if you have enough telescopes in place. A xenocidal civilization can park detectors at the edges of star systems and just watch for nukes going off as a warning method to trigger subsequent follow-up. Nukes have a long pedigree of being used this way in science fiction, arguably as long ago as The Day the Earth Stood Still in 1951.

[Tanarii]

Two other series where human technology causes aliens to invade

Peter F Hamilton's Salvation series where detecting radio waves signals triggers an alien invasion where they attempt to capture and preserve sentient minds. And another alien species that attempts to warn any species that just triggered the first.

Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space has a series of tech reducing incidents:
- the Melding Plague attacks certain kinds of advanced tech and infects it, causing voluntary regression
- the Inhibitors set traps to lure in an identify sentient star-faring life, and then regress or eliminate it, with a goal of preserving all life in the galaxy through a future disaster. At least one other alien species exists that hides from it, using other species as cats paws to trigger the traps and see if the Inhibitors still exist.
- the Greenfly, a human created terraforming nanotechnology going terribly wrong (that possibly absorbing the Inhibitors) and decides life is a threat to its existence.

[spectralphoenix]

As long as you're introducing hyperadvanced aliens, you might as well use them. Maybe instead of telling humanity to please consider giving up their technology, they set up a satellite that emits an inhibition field over the Earth that interferes with electrical discharges much past the bioelectricity needed to stay alive. They give a few years warning to let us prepare, and they set it to automatically self-destruct after 150 years. I think the "everyone just decides to give up their tech voluntarily" part of this is pretty hard to accept, but if you wanted to do a scenario of preparing for the lights to go off, or in the world after it's been returned to the past, I think that would be a good way to do it. It also takes some of the moral responsibility off if the humans never had a choice in the matter.

[Berenger]

This reminds me of the Stargate: Atlantis episode Underground where the Genii had a similar problem (a certain level of technology and population density invited 'cullings' by the Wraith). Their solution was, of course, to cheat. They put the majority of their civilization, including an extensive military industry, in deep underground bunkers shielded from detection and left a small percentage of the population topside to pose as a thinly populated, primitive agrarian society.

[Palanan]

Originally posted by Palanan
Orson Scott Card wrote a story about exactly this theme a number of years ago, which might be worth a look. It deals with overwhelming transformations in human society and the very personal consequences. I can find the title if you’re interested.


Originally Posted by NRSASD
Sure! I’ll track down a summary somewhere.

Still looking for this one. I read this some 25 years ago, and most of my paperbacks from that time aren't easy to get to. Will let you know when I find it.

[KorvinStarmast]

The years mentioned is 1969. There were only ~ 3.6 billion people alive at that point. Estimate for 1700 was 600 million. So the die-off would "only" need to be 3 billion. Every human roll a 1d6.
All of those who rolled a six can live.
Form a line over there.
The rest need to form a line over there and turn them selves in for conversion into fertilizer.
We thank you for your service sacrifice
:smalleek:

[Tanarii]

Still looking for this one. I read this some 25 years ago, and most of my paperbacks from that time aren't easy to get to. Will let you know when I find it.
You're probably thinking of the limitations the Oversoul makes in the Homecoming series.

[NRSASD]

This reminds me of the Stargate: Atlantis episode Underground where the Genii had a similar problem (a certain level of technology and population density invited 'cullings' by the Wraith). Their solution was, of course, to cheat. They put the majority of their civilization, including an extensive military industry, in deep underground bunkers shielded from detection and left a small percentage of the population topside to pose as a thinly populated, primitive agrarian society.

Yeah, I remember those guys! It’s been a bit. Even in that case though, technological progress was still viewed as a universal good thing to strive towards; so much so it’s worth faking an entire agrarian society on the surface. Still, a clever answer to the problem, although not one we could implement quickly enough I bet.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Tanarii
You're probably thinking of the limitations the Oversoul makes in the Homecoming series.

I’m really not. I know Homecoming very well, and what I’m remembering is entirely different, a standalone story in a near-future timeline. Homecoming is forty million years out, which is hard to confuse with anything else.

[Jay R]

Every human roll a 1d6.
All of those who rolled a six can live.
Form a line over there.
The rest need to form a line over there and turn them selves in for conversion into fertilizer.
We thank you for your service sacrifice
:smalleek:

Giggle. You're still assuming advanced technology.

They don't need to form a line to be converted into fertilizer. Just let them starve to death and leave them where they are. They will become fertilizer on their own.

[SpoonR]

The thing is, before roughly 1950, electricity is only “required” for energy transport. Machine shops can run from steam engines and flywheels. Most chemistry is mix chemicals, maybe add heat. Steam driven cars are a thing.

Without electricity you have difficulty making controls. No CNC machining*, but the tools and measuring equipment are still there, which means a skilled crafter can still make precision parts, just not as fast. Tractors and fertilizer isnÂ’t much affected.

To me it feels like you have a die-off because food production isnÂ’t quite as efficient, but a lot of tech is still possible just on a slightly smaller scale. big limiting factor will be how much burnables you still have access to. You can use tree instead of coal or oil, but I think it’s much less effective, and how much factory can you support when you have to regrow your fuel?

I think Eric Flint, 16xx series?, is a bunch of people get sent back in time a few hundred years, and how much non-electric tech they can re-make with materials available in that era. One set of stories specifically includes a machine shop with lathes etc all run off a flywheel and belt power setup.

[Gnoman]

Lack of electricity is somewhat crippling in the 1632 series, even though they do a lot with steam and fluid computers.

[Satinavian]

The thing is, before roughly 1950, electricity is only “required” for energy transport. Machine shops can run from steam engines and flywheels. Most chemistry is mix chemicals, maybe add heat. Steam driven cars are a thing.
But the premise was not "give up electricity and substitute it with other technology", the premise was giving up all technology developed around and after electricity was discovered. It was used as a benchmark on how advanded the technology was allowed to be kept, not as the only specific thing to be banned. That means basically everything from the last 150-200 years (based of the fictional start date, not now) has to be given up. You might be allowed to keep the earliest steam engines, but forget about the internal combustion engines. Or artificial fertilizers.

[awa]

so how bad this scenario is in part depends on how cynical it is (I have seen plenty of fiction works where some calamity causes all of humanity to join hands and work together after one big speech and others where every one in charge is suicidally obstructionist.) and exactly how the technology gets limited has a big impact for instance a lot of advancements were organizational and knowledge based rather than technological, if the aliens are just scanning for electricity it is much more survivable than if they are scanning for fertilizer as well.

It could vary wildly between some imagining of a utopian agrarian community where the cities and suburbs have been abandoned for farms as far as the eye can see to a irradiated hellscape where every choice and action simply makes everything worse.

[Psyren]

Earth would be fine, but our species would be wiped slick by the Reapers due to human nature being what it is. Lousy premise for a movie or a game.

Yeah that. We'd fail, get wiped, and some other life form may or may not arise on Earth depending on the extent of the collateral damage. Next!

[Ashtagon]

...and that their only goal is To Serve Man?

I'm am absolutely certain that at least some people will think the first group of aliens' objective is indeed To Serve Man (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man_(The_Twilight_Zone)).

But seriously, humanity is so fractious that getting everyone, or even enough people to be credible from a cursory orbital survey, to abandon electricity and more advanced tech (so, back to Steam Age tech) is pretty much impossible.

[Lord Torath]

My first thought was Kang and Kodos from Treehouse of Horror 1 (https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Treehouse_of_Horror): Hungry are the Damned (https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Treehouse_of_Horror#Hungry_are_the_Damned) and their book How to Cook Humans. I mean How to Cook For Humans. Wait, was it How to Cook Forty Humans? No, I'm pretty sure it was How to Cook for Forty Humans.

[Lemmy]

The only way you could make a majority of humans give up technology is if there are clear, concrete, harsh immediate consequences.

The only setting I can think of that comes close (and it's a super well developed setting) is the one from the Guilty Gear games, where electronics can be (and often are) possessed by an other-worldly entity known as "The Will of the World", so humanity is forced to stop using electronics almost immediately... But, it's kinda pointless, since they end up replacing electronics with magic, and even create magitech made to look and function in pretty much the same way as certain electronics.

But without extreme circumstances like that... There's simply no way you'll convince enough humans to do it.