Of Implants and Foundation’s Edge, Redux:
Our ever increasing codependency on integrated levels and overlapping sub-levels or analogs of forces and electronic grids for facilitating applications for utilities and communications is leading us inexorably to need to install microchips in, perhaps eventually, every animate creature, so that his/her/its whereabouts, activities, transactions, trades, credits, and accounts can be traced or monitored at all times.
Were good governance found-able or assure-able at all times, such extensive monitoring may be tolerable. Historically, however, time and again, small cadres of single minded zealots, communists, or terrorists have made effective use of devices and persons for spying in order to flip or abuse great power, to the horror of nearly everyone else.
Once privacy comes to be meaningless, how soon follows resourcefulness, dignity, and liberty?
Asimov’s series of “Foundation” science fiction novels may be interpreted in respect of three “foundations”: first, everyday citizens; second, a suspected cadre with ability to spy on or read minds at distance; and third, an unknown “Gaia” cadre of robots or cyborgs with ability to monitor, read, and change minds without detection, whose purpose is to facilitate human purposes. (Does an inner voice ever whisper there may be a "fourth foundation," beyond our "physical" measure or comprehension, but not beyond our somewhat ambiguous intuition? Elohim?)
As we become ever more interconnected, co-dependent, and vulnerable to coups by small, unsuspected cadres, however “progressively well-intentioned,” does it not become more important to retain and ensure checks and balances for sealing off or locking down potential coup masters, pending possible de-commissioning? After all, the honeymoon may be grand, but not worth losing your head.
Our ever increasing codependency on integrated levels and overlapping sub-levels or analogs of forces and electronic grids for facilitating applications for utilities and communications is leading us inexorably to need to install microchips in, perhaps eventually, every animate creature, so that his/her/its whereabouts, activities, transactions, trades, credits, and accounts can be traced or monitored at all times.
Were good governance found-able or assure-able at all times, such extensive monitoring may be tolerable. Historically, however, time and again, small cadres of single minded zealots, communists, or terrorists have made effective use of devices and persons for spying in order to flip or abuse great power, to the horror of nearly everyone else.
Once privacy comes to be meaningless, how soon follows resourcefulness, dignity, and liberty?
Asimov’s series of “Foundation” science fiction novels may be interpreted in respect of three “foundations”: first, everyday citizens; second, a suspected cadre with ability to spy on or read minds at distance; and third, an unknown “Gaia” cadre of robots or cyborgs with ability to monitor, read, and change minds without detection, whose purpose is to facilitate human purposes. (Does an inner voice ever whisper there may be a "fourth foundation," beyond our "physical" measure or comprehension, but not beyond our somewhat ambiguous intuition? Elohim?)
As we become ever more interconnected, co-dependent, and vulnerable to coups by small, unsuspected cadres, however “progressively well-intentioned,” does it not become more important to retain and ensure checks and balances for sealing off or locking down potential coup masters, pending possible de-commissioning? After all, the honeymoon may be grand, but not worth losing your head.
For how long should the entire world be expected to trust that the United States’ political system of checks and balances will somehow allow us to muddle through? Alternatively, what rational person trusts Sharia law, Communism, Aristocracy, or Dictatorship?
As competing beings and societies become ever more vulnerable to mutual first strike capabilities, in respect of what logic or philosophy should a system of practical checks and balances evolve — specifically? More importantly, how can we reasonably hope to ensure we will remain able to recall wayward leaders or to neutralize their power?
4 comments:
Worth the repeat:
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RESISTING EVIL: To will to live as though Being’ness (or “God”) were only an unambiguously, unenlightened monstrosity is to reduce all you stand for only to monstrosity. It is to fulfill only evil, borne of false, unenlightened sense of self and Being’ness. Instead, pause and listen more to what Being’ness says to your intuition; be less ruled by other mortals’ interpretations.
To emerge from a void, evil needs nothing more than absence of Good Will. But, evil’s weakness is that there has never been, and never will be, a complete void of good will.
Jews, Christians, and Muslims need to decide whether to believe God is monstrosity, lipstick, or Enlightened, Ambiguous Will (i.e., Elohim).
For one who is weak in flesh to worship God as monster is to rationalize oneself as worthy evangelist, whose ire, once empowered, must not, without monstrous consequences, be challenged. To find and unite with others similarly inclined, though they be weak as individuals, is to multiply the power and terror of monstrosity.
For those who prefer to relate to God as other than monster, emerging patterns of false facades that facilitate fear must not be ignored.
Have faith, but keep your powder dry.
For a good explication about why we need a right to associate, protest, and demonstrate, without necessarily having to surrender vital private information to the government, see http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/opinion/17kristof.html?ref=opinion.
Moral Empathy for Machine Intelligence ---
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE:
Snippets from http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4287680.html?series=60:
"The first real AI would be something that we don't even understand," says Wright, "because we didn't program it. It will be more dissimilar in the way it thinks, than we are to a mouse."
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There's no sense of alarm in Wright's voice when he describes this self-refining machine intelligence—no more than when he casually mentions the notion that, as technology progresses at an exponentially faster rate, towards the so-called singularity, any number of breakthroughs could, as he puts it, "cause the world to go extremely non-linear." When he provides, as classic examples, a computer AI taking over the world, or self-propagating nanobots turning everything into a grey goo, it's impossible to tell whether he's joking, or worried, or simply fascinated. But when he's asked whether that hyper-advanced AI would retain its knowledge of humanity, Wright says, "I would imagine that it can understand us. But the really scary part of this is that we don't know."
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Comment abouot Anekāntavāda:
The concept of anekāntavāda seems not altogether dissimilar from Soros' notion (and rather unprincipled use of) of "reflexity," as well as Godel's theorem of incompleteness. Every mortal perspective has its imperfection, or Achilles heel. What helps see us through, morally, is judgment availed of insight, informed not just in book learning or in personal will to power, but through humble, empathetic appreciation and experience of a variety of perspectives. Effete elites twist to ignore as much, at their peril.
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