Looking Backwards - And Forwards? The writer and director of the TV mini-series, Devs, Alex Garland, clearly anticipates that quantum computing and quantum mechanics are going to be inextricably entwined. This allows him to play with the weird paradoxes of quantum physics – like matter being in, and not in, our universe at the same time. These raise the possibility of there being more than one universe. Or many. Or even an infinite number of universes! If that’s the way it is, however, then wouldn’t it mean that an infinite number of pasts – and futures – are also possible?
DEVS is a fantastic futuristic television mini-series
– which ends next week on Soho. Now, don’t worry, there will be no spoilers in
this post, so please feel free to read on. It’s certainly not giving too much
away to say that in addition to serving up a riveting plotline and a first rate
cast, Devs also offers master classes in both the future of information
technology and philosophy.
Driving the drama forward is the age-old debate between
those who believe that human-beings possess free will and those who insist that,
since every effect must have a cause, our “choices” are entirely predetermined.
Devise a computer of sufficient capability, Devs’ determinists insist,
and not only will it allow you to see back into the past, but also forward into
the future.
Mind-bending stuff.
Once you enter this territory, however, the question inevitably
arises: “Which past and which future?” The writer and director of Devs,
Alex Garland, clearly anticipates that quantum computing and quantum mechanics
are going to be inextricably entwined. This allows him to play with the weird
paradoxes of quantum physics – like matter being in, and not in, our universe
at the same time. These raise the possibility of there being more than one
universe. Or many. Or even an infinite number of universes! If that’s the way
it is, however, then wouldn’t it mean that an infinite number of pasts – and
futures – are also possible? And wouldn’t it then follow, logically, that in
this “multiverse” anything you can imagine happening either will happen, or, has
happened already?
Here then, in the spirit of Devs, is one of the
infinite number of histories of the Covid-19 virus and the global pandemic
which it spawned.
In a biological research facility on the outskirts of Wuhan,
in China’s Hubei province, scientists create a new, highly infectious and
potentially deadly coronavirus. Unfortunately, lax handling protocols result in
a number of the research facility’s staff becoming infected. With terrifying
speed the virus spreads through Wuhan’s 11 million inhabitants. Alerted to its
unchecked community transmission by a conscientious physician, the Chinese
authorities are faced with a daunting series of choices.
The most noble choice is, obviously, to contain the disease
within China’s borders and do everything possible to prevent it from infecting
the rest of humanity. This option, however, is fraught with risk. What if the
virus mutates into something even deadlier? What if it cannot be contained?
What would such an outbreak do to China’s already faltering economy? How could
the Chinese Communist Party preserve its power in the face of tens-of-thousands
– perhaps millions – of fatalities? And what would China’s enemies do? Would
they help? Or, would they stand back and watch the regime of Xi Jinping go
under?
In the very large subset of worlds in the multiverse where
this most ruthless sort of political calculation prevails, such questions tend
to lead political leaders away from noble choices. This case was no exception.
The government of Xi Jinping adopted a policy of strategic inaction. It delayed
informing the World Health Organisation of the virus’s extraordinary
infectiousness. More crucially, it delayed shutting down Wuhan, Hubei, and
China itself, until the virus was safely aboard the world’s airlines and
winging its way unheralded across the planet.
If humanity suddenly had to contend with a new coronavirus,
then, from the perspective of Beijing, it was far preferable to have the whole
of humanity contending with “Covid-19” (as it would soon be called) than only
that fraction of humanity residing within the borders of the People’s Republic
of China. To have protected the rest of the world – particularly its most
powerful nations – from the virus’s devastating economic side-effects would
have been indistinguishable from allowing China to be defeated in a major war.
Sharing Covid-19 with the rest of the world made much more sense in
geopolitical and economic terms than heroically bearing its burdens alone.
Receiving the world’s praise is one thing; giving the rest of the world the
whip hand over your country’s future is something else altogether.
Having allowed the virus to escape, it then behoved the
Chinese Government to do all within its power to mitigate its effects and, if
at all possible, stamp it out. Obviously, the first country to come out the
other side of what was now a global pandemic would enjoy a tremendous advantage
over all those other nations still stricken and locked down by the presence of
Covid-19 in their populations. Certainly, China did not lack the totalitarian apparatus
necessary to contain and eliminate the virus among its own people.
Even in another universe, far, far away, it would not have
taken long for those well-schooled in the realities of ruthless political
calculation to grasp what China had done. Could they prove it? No. But proof is
not always required when the logic of a particular course of action is so
compelling. If every effect has a cause, then it is no great matter to work
one’s way back through each successive stage of a crisis to locate the first
move, the first “choice”, that set it in motion.
Small wonder that China’s principal rival, the United States
is so agitated by the bind in which it now finds itself. It simply cannot
afford to be locked down, but it lacks the totalitarian apparatus needed to
drive its population through the slaughter associated with acquiring “herd
immunity” in the shortest possible time. Even if it did (and astutely exploited
the Patriot Act offers a sufficiently ruthless American government tremendous
scope) the United States has chosen, democratically, to afflict itself with its
worst President ever. To look upon an America more riven with sectarian hatred
and social division one would have to travel back in time to the Civil War of
1861-65.
If the Chinese Government operating in this alternative
universe had been in possession of the time-mastering super-quantum-computer at
the heart of the action in Devs, it could not have played its hand with
more far-sighted political acuity. China took an “accident” (if you believe in
such dubious concepts) and turned it into an opportunity to take over the
world.
Not to worry, though. There are plenty of other universes
where this didn’t happen. We might even be living in one.
This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Friday, 24 April 2020.
