Humanity, or its biological or technological successors, may eventually be governed by a “singleton.” That’s a concept invented in 2005 by philosopher Nick Bostrom, who defined it as “a world order in which there is a single decision-making agency at the highest level.” A world government would be a singleton. An artificial intelligence that’s taken over the planet would also be a singleton. Bostrom’s concept was flexible. A singleton could be good or bad; human or non-human; authoritarian or democratic (there could be contending viewpoints and factions, operating within a single system). A singleton might be key to eliminating war and other problems, or it might be something terrible that can’t be challenged or escaped, as there’s no competing framework or place to seek refuge.
For better or worse, Bostrom hypothesized, humanity’s heading toward a singleton, the culmination of millennia of increasingly large-scale organization. If we’re ever in contact with advanced alien civilizations, in this view, they too are likely to be singletons. Multiple singletons can exist in the universe, provided they’re far enough apart to not have regular contact or encroach on each other’s authority.
I’m not convinced any of this is going to happen. Space colonization might mean there are multiple societies, with no one in overall charge. Technological alterations of humanity, such as genetic engineering or tech implants, or AI’s separate development, might produce diverse civilizations that can’t be subsumed into a single system. Maybe societies on the floor of the ocean, or in caves on the moon, or in simulated worlds, will go their own way, avoiding interaction with others. These scenarios, much like those of a singleton, might be great, horrible, or anywhere in-between (with any number of possibilities as to who—some or all of humanity; or among whatever non-human entities—might benefit or suffer).
The “uni-party” (or “uniparty,” as it’s often non-hyphenated) that some think exists in U.S. politics, with Democrats and Republicans offering essentially the same thing, could be seen as a precursor to an eventual singleton, if such a thing were to go global and assuming that a uni-party exists in the first place. The concept appeals to the politically disgruntled, having migrated from the Ralph Nader left to the Steve Bannon right, with early stirrings in 19th-century complaints about Republicrats and Demicans. Still, I note that there are sharp partisan divisions on abortion, climate change, NATO, Ukraine, immigration, Christian nationalism, and the afterlife. Such differences contravene the uni-party thesis, or at least require that party leaders are strikingly effective at papering them over.
I imagine any future singleton would also have to deal with a wide range of public opinion, and that its rise would generate some kind of backlash. In attitudes toward technological development, for one thing, humanity exhibits a broad spectrum, perhaps broader than the standard left-right political spectrum. At one extreme, there are anarcho-primitivists, who want to revert to a prehistoric level of technology; at the other are accelerationists, who want to speed up technological development. The latter have an offshoot called effective accelerationists, or e/acc, a portmanteau of accelerationists and effective altruism. Breakaway movements are common in the evolution of ideologies, much as they’ve been a pervasive element of religion, with new sects and cults forming more often than they merge.
A planned new version of Battlestar Galactica recently bit the dust. I had mixed feelings about that, as I’d initially loved the 2004–2009 reboot but thought it ended poorly (which raised the question of whether another reboot might do better or worse). A merit of the 2000s version was that it showed humanity’s fractious nature; that even under attack from a non-human enemy, the Cylons, and driven to the brink of extinction, humans were still working at cross-purposes and fighting each other. That seemed realistic, but the series ended with an implausible development where humanity collectively embraces a massive societal change, entailing deprivation and hardship, for the long-term greater good, without resistance or even disagreement. If there’s one thing that’s not going to happen, that’s it.
—Follow Kenneth Silber on X: @kennethsilber