The Birthday of Samuel Butler (1835) – Mathematics of Utopia

Butler wrote ‘Erewhon’, a utopian satire. He described a society where machines were banned – a vision of technological singularity. The mathematics of utopia involves social welfare functions (maximising happiness), resource allocation (linear programming), and game theory (cooperation). Butler anticipated that machines might evolve consciousness – now studied as the ‘singularity’ (Ray Kurzweil). Utopia mathematics is a thought experiment: can we prove the existence of a perfect society? Arrow’s theorem suggests no.