===originally published 8/6/17=== [[brought forward as a consequence of noticing that every time someone publishes an article critical of technology (social media, specifically) that the comment threads are barren... not one tenth the commentary as on other articles. Looks to me like pretty solid evidence of a major CE (ceSocialMedia) defending itself with an implanted avoidance/repression mechanism of some sort... but... that's just me and I'm a long way from the middle of the curve]]
I love Tevye. Like Forest
Gump he’s one of the strongest and gentlest of creatures possible to imagine,
which probably explains why both of them are fictional. Still, look with eyes
that can see and it isn’t hard to see bits and pieces of both men in many
people. There is even yet a great deal
of nobility in the world. Not as much as there used to be, but still a good
amount.
One of the many things I’m
watching in relation to the supply of nobility are those robots. Well, not as
much the robots as the onset of the “artificial intelligences” dear Dr.
Strangefuck wants to have running them. I’m watching them because of what
they’re going to do to humanity by ways and means unrecognized by most.
Allowing for a couple of other things not recognized by very many people I’m
afraid it’s not going to be pretty. But, probably better to start at the
beginning.
Face it, the nerds of the
world are in celebration. Their dreams are coming true. AI robotics and the
rise of the benign techno-tyrants and hey, the nerds get their turn at the top
of the food chain. Fair enough, every dog gets to have his day when the over decorated,
sophisticate kinky, round healed horny soashwhore thinks he’s the one she wants
for her toy. Enjoy her while it lasts kid, she’s very high maintenance. No, the
rise of the techno nerd is not the focus of my concern.
The focus of my concern
is akin to the income gap thing, how the rich just keep getting richer making
the poor look even poorer by comparison. Money doesn’t play much if any part in
my concern, although the competence and productivity that are the foundation of
money’s value most certainly do. Both of those are at risk, of course they are,
but even more than that is poised to fall into the abyss as a consequence of
AI.
Societies have this odd
habit of migrating in the general direction of what’s needed to maintain the
internal delusions and self deceptions a society uses to define itself. If
you’re looking for where a society is headed next this is a good thing to bear
in mind. One of the most major players on the modern stage of social definition
by self deception is partisan politics, and the onset of AI driven industry is
going to have a massive, a huge impact on what they have to work with.
The collective entity
cePartisanPolitical has two daughters, ceLiberal and ceConservative. Very
binary, very us and them, and very-very saleable. One reason it is so easily
sold is that both polarities facilitate something that no one will admit to and
most people will secretly do: pick an attitude that lets them support their own
ego by looking distinctly down on the remainder of their world. The daughters
offer their faithful a radically different platform, rationalization, in
support of this secret agenda, of course they do. But the net effect is the
same which is how their mother keeps tabs on her daughters’ playtime and
maintains her position in the mix.
The conservatives?
They’re very sporting folk, the ones who call themselves winners on the big
playground of life regardless of their bank balance. In large degree they’re the ones still
trapped in the false doctrine of God favoring the righteous (read
compulsive traditional) with financial
success, it shapes their attitudes about a great many things. They’re not really a large portion of this
concern.
Why? Because there’s only
so far down you can push the floor of ceConservative’s world. Broke is broke,
destitute is destitute. If you try and push that floor any lower, if you even
push to many down onto that floor? People have a bad habit of protesting that
with this little thing called a revolution. Those get bloody, and they’re
terrible for business. They’ll be stone faced defiant in public, but all of
those within ceConservative’s sphere of influence are aware of this, scared of
it, ceConservative has always been a prime sponsor of the spy vs spy
surveillance security thing so she can keep a close eye on that line, she
pretty well has to.
No, where AI is concerned
it’s ceLiberal that worries me. You see,
the way ceLiberal sells her version of
live looking down a long nose is by using socially sanctioned pity to pump
up her hosts in comparison to those less fortunate. The rationalization she
offers, and it’s a good one solidly founded in causal reasoning, is that of
course you have to look down on them if you’re going to see those who need your
help.
The demand of ceLiberal
is that if you want to claim her name you must make an apology for any success
of your own by living to help those who didn’t climb as far up ceConservative’s
ladder of success as you did. It goes without saying that ceLiberal is the
younger daughter, her tactic is a superbly sanctimonious counter-attack against
what ceConservative has been hustling for quite a few centuries.
It’s not a totally
ignoble tactic, but of course it’s self defeating in the long run. If you truly
help someone then there comes a time when that someone doesn’t need any more
help. If you hang around trying to “help” after that point you’re not helping,
you’re at best a nuisance, at worst an enabler. If you’re true to your life
definition of living to “help” you have to go find someone else unfortunate
enough to endure your pity in exchange for a hand up.
If there were only a
small percentage of liberals this wouldn’t be much of a problem. No minor
fraction is going to run the world out of people who genuinely need help. But
when ceLiberal is hosted on a fairly high percentage of a fixed population?
Under those circumstances running out of people victimized by unjust
discrimination is a very real problem.
When ceLiberal began
challenging ceConservative on the political scene the unifying focus were
groups comprising twenty, twenty-five, thirty percent of the population
suffering legitimate injustices. Seventy five years later they’re down to
groups of one percent, half a percent, tiny groups of people where the
eccentricities of personality, sexuality, that put them in such a small group
in the first place are going to attract unhappy attention regardless of the
society they live in.
The standard answer for
this has been for ceLiberal to periodically spend a cycle convincing the world
that what wasn’t a problem yesterday is
a terrible pressing problem now. All their yammer and bully publicity tactics
are focused for a time selling the idea that what was considered the normal
consequences of some life choice yesterday are actually a foul and unjust
discrimination today. That’s where ceLiberal is today… short a new demographic to
pity. Sadly, over the years ceLiberal has shown a terrible habit of
manufacturing her own basestock for the pity parties that unify her hosts.
The problem with
introducing AI into this situation is that AI will in short order defeat one of
the naturally occurring safety factors on
the power of collective entities such as
ceLiberal. Collective entities are mounted on human lives, the lifespan of the
collective is tied hard and fast to state of the human lives that host it. One
mitigating factor on that power is that regardless of how the humans
orient and arrange themselves and their
attitudes to establish “this is me, I’m part of us, that is the them that I am
not a part of” the sum competence of the species had to remain adequate to
support life. Hungry people, cold people very quickly dump all social
definitions (and a great deal beyond just those definitions!) to arrange a full
belly and a warm place to sleep. Fact of life.
With AI in the game the
constraint of survival is gone. The humans are free to define themselves by descending
to depths of despair and depravity never before imagined without needing to
worry about remaining sufficiently sane to keep the race alive, AI is in charge
of that. With the physical removed from the picture what is left? Maturity, rationality,
anything to resemble the ethical? Of
course. All those things which supported the sanity required to stay alive are
no longer needed, disposable, each and every one will erode away into history as
AI renders them obsolete.
Given ceLiberal’s panache
for redefining rational life into artificial
pathos it’s transparent how AI could easily be ceLiberal’s Messiah and the
Waterloo of her hated sister ceConservative. There has never been
any bottom beneath ceLiberal’s need for something more pathetic to unify her
hosts in ego supporting pity, with AI in the game finding something more
emotionally pathetic will no longer be a problem.
In the long run this is
the most dangerous scenario that has ever darkened my thought. A century after
AI becomes a genuine power player I can easily see God Almighty changing the
sign over the Gate of Souls from “Earth” to “Hell” and directing his attention
elsewhere. There will be nothing noble left in the human race.
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