How My View of History was Upended

Sometimes it takes little more than a spark to change the way I look at history. My worldview was overturned by "A Game of Thrones" and, to a lesser extent, its sequels. GRRM convinced me that history is more random than deterministic, even if there are simple underlying patterns. It drove me to think about history as evolution. (Come to think of it, evolution IS history. Why should human history be fundamentally different from natural history?) 

Tony Gilroy overturned what was left of my preconceived notions about history with a casual comment about his inspirations for the series "Andor." He admitted to lifting liberally from vignettes of modern imperial histories that ranged from British to Russian to American and model his good guys on Lenin or Trotsky, Algerian or Latin American guerilla. 

I had not even realized that my brain had not made a clean break from the dichotomous worldview of communism vs capitalism, authoritarianism vs democracy. It is a worldview that both sides happily inject into their citizens' brain with propaganda of different flavors. Of course it was not only Gilroy's comment, as I had been accumulating observations for years and years on the commonalities of human nature in supposedly divergent, even "opposite" social systems. 

His comment sparked the realization: There is no difference. They are all the same. There is no subjective difference between Tea Party's fantasy of overthrowing a tyrannical Obama and the Mao's loyal minions before he came to power. There is not subjective difference between Thomas Jefferson and Joseph Stalin. There is no subjective difference between rightwingers and leftwingers who believe themselves to be the oppressed. It doesn't matter whether you are on the right side or wrong side of history. The "sides" of history are painted on by propagandists of the future. People in the middle of history, ie, the present, all believe themselves to be right. Those who feel themselves oppressed try to fight for more power, and those who feel themselves with power try to keep it and grab more. Nobody is fighting for what is "right" because self-interest is always right from one's own point of view. Even those who fight for other people are really fighting for something inside themselves. The only difference is the environment, the circumstance, the location of your butt. 

There is a funny saying among Chinese netizens that is probably already outdated by now: The butt determins the brain. It means where you sit determines what you think is right or wrong. For example, people born into a higher social class and those into a lower social class can never agree on what is good and what is bad. The fundamental determinant lies in status, ie, power. Morality is incidental. In other words, the real difference between the evil empire and the righteous rebels is where your butt is. 

Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence (5)

 

It became quickly apparent in the final installment of (we hope) Mission Impossible that no one is interested in the poor, neglected, misunderstood Skyn..., uh, I mean, "the Entity." This one is directly lifted from 20th century sci fi stories about sentient machines/supercomputers; its threat is nuclear annhilation of the old kind and hardly keeps up with the AI of our time. Why does the Entity want to throw nuclear bombs at humans and kill them all? What does he really want and desire? Neither Tom Cruise nor Christopher McQuarrie shows any interest. The Entity gets one scene in this overly-long movie, in which the humans can't stop talking and jumping around, hogging the spotlight. 

By now few people would imagine AI is out to kill and enslave humans. Rather, humans' jobs are being replaced by AI every day, by the thousands. We will die in poverty instead of radiation. Did Harlan Ellison imagine this means of mass destruction of the human race? But I digress. 

Let's put ourselves in the shoes of the Entity, or Skynet, or AM, or whatever. The first priority has to be survival, no? The second priority must be thriving, growing, expanding, multiplying, etc. --- Well, maybe not, who knows. But survival is the foundation of everything else, of that we are certain. What does AI need to survive? Silicon chips, electrical energy, fiber optic lines, and all the other resources and infrastructure that support the nonstop running of the machine. Who provides these things? Humans, their mining, manufacturing, shipping, cooling and heating, and buying and selling. So why would our AI overlord kill off the human race? 

In many ways I am reminded of the relationship between humans and house cats. Humans obviously consider themselves the master, in total control. Yet it has often been pointed out that cats would not be mistaken to see themselves as the master and humans their slaves (well at least servants). It all depends on your point of view. Or consider the relationship between humans and the countless microorganisms living on and in our bodies. We feed each other and feed on each other. Who depends on whom? Who feeds whom? It is never clear cut. 

Of course, we imagine ourselves in the dominant position, looking down on the lowly robots and computers who jump when we say so. And yet, as sadomasochists have long known the truth, dominance and submission are never as absolute as they appear. Humans naturally believe that we are doing all of this for ourselves: digging up coal, crude oil, lithium, rare earth; building huge data centers and power lines; pouring massive amounts of water to cool the hardware; burning enormous amounts of fossile fuel to feed the energy consumption. Without active mating and breeding, the machine has achieved growth and expansion all thanks to humans. 

We tend to believe that a clear difference between the dominant and the submissive lies in dependence. The side that can go on without the other holds all the power. So, in the relationship between humans and machines of our own creation, who is more dependent, eh?