Great Expectations

In many horror films a group of well-off happy teenagers are beset with a mysterious dangerous evil. The immediate simple responses are to hide or run away (they always choose to hide). The correct but more complicated actions would be to stay together with whatever weaponry they can find, call the police and parents, maintain contact, and put as much distance as possible between them and whatever while staying in the open.

Our own social horror worries are numerous and affect well-off happy people. Crime, wages, health, job uncertainty, children’s future, finances, climate change, global menace, inflation, education, and you can continue the list. Our immediate simple response is to whack away with simple government policies, which in turn whack away with simple slogans and usually ineffectively transient actions. But, like the kids in the horror film hiding in the shed, we all feel better for the moment.

So if we “just” clean out immigrants, remove regulations, lower taxes, jail anyone we don’t like, ignore snotty experts, get back to the good old days – everything will once again be perfect. Of course most of us can’t agree on what any of that means, how to do it, or if it would work.

But we have great expectations. Like the movie victims, we know blindly running somewhere else must save us. No time to think. Thinking is for those useless pointy-headed experts.

So far, most of the actions based on such great expectations seem to have had the usual result.

Time to scream again?

Adversarial Justice

Once upon a time we were taught the glories of the jury system, adversarial justice with lawyers jousting, and the concept of innocent until proven guilty. Those worked remarkably well in the good old days, but times have changed. Look at it one by one.

Juries are a huge inconvenience to most people, and are rarely necessary. Certainly not 12 people in person listening to arcane arguments. Then the adversarial system itself, expensive as hell, courts and judges and lawyers where those with the most money usually win, and in any case the proceedings themselves are too theatrical and slimy to give real satisfaction of justice done. And as for innocent until proven guilty – just a defense lawyer lie. Filmed evidence, revealed details of previous crimes, all the crap of the 12th century hardly relevant in an era of photography, cell phone locations, and DNA.

Actually, that is why a lot of trials end up in plea deals.

Now I know all evidence can be manufactured or falsified. But in most situations that’s hardly worth the effort. At this point, perhaps we should ease back on worrying about letting hundreds go free lest one innocent be convicted. The odds have changed.

Just another example of how our ancient constitution and irrelevant traditions betray society in the modern world. The whole thing should be taken apart, streamlined, and rethought. Taking into account technology and an interconnected world. Time to leave the methodology of the 12th century behind.

Capitalism’s End

(With apologies to Arthur C. Clarke)

The mythology of capitalism has been established as pervasively as was the divine right of kings at the close of the middle ages. Capitalism, claims the dogma, makes society healthy, wealthy and wise. No other human system works as well and never will.

Things change. Those kings were deposed, beheaded, or shackled with constitutional oversight. New forms of government arose, sweeping away kingly beliefs in mercantilism, aristocratic rule, religious social control. Many alternatives have been tried, capitalism emerged as one of the successful ones.

Things change. Clearly we have reached the end of the industrial revolution. Machines produce everything, including other machines. Humans remain in the economic mix, directing and inventing machines, filling niche services, and toiling in leftover areas like agriculture where machines are only gradually replacing them.

Things change. If current trends continue, machines will have taken over all the production, no need for human intervention at any stage. We need new ideas, but fanatic “capitalists” have become the ignorant priests and destructive luddites of our age, unable to imagine any other system, fearful of what they do not know.

Things change. Like kings, capitalistic corporations may be in their final moments, as those rulers once were.

Things change.

Are you ready?

1913

In autumn of 1913, the European-American world was content, fat, and happy. Europeans controlled the only areas of the globe and culture that they thought mattered. Americans led an exceptional city on a hill advancing to a perfected future. Both felt they were chosen, the rightful rulers of all others, and the guardians of civilization itself.

Intellectuals agreed. Countries were either stable or subdued. Logic and science were taming human irrationality, commercial interconnection made major war impossible. Henry Ford and others were demonstrating just how affluent modern mass production could make everyone. If anything, the rulers and masses were a little too complacently optimistic about the future.

Even the social unrest of the previous 50 years seemed to have settled down. Fiery socialist, communist labor agitators were more conciliatory. Gigantic strikes and revolutionary ideas were confined to a few backwaters. Even those short in duration. Most folks were fed, housed, and felt better off than they had ever been, expecting ever greater things to come.

Who could have predicted the next 40 years? What happened?

Even now, it’s hard to comprehend. One thing just led to another. At the end of it all, many smoking ruins, millions dead, politics unrecognizable. The very divisions of the political globe massively reshaped. And in spite of it all, massive technological industrial advance.

Yes, I do feel that September 2026 feels a lot like that autumn over 100 years ago. And, although I think some people feel the same way, I am pretty sure once again nobody has a clue what will come, or how to affect it.

AI Nightmares

A group of researchers have just claimed that artificial intelligence could destroy humanity within 10 years. It joins a long list of other scenarios from nuclear war to designed disease. Ours has been an age facing catastrophic end-of-everything fears for some time.

I’m convinced that any of an awful lot of things could totally and civilization as we know it. Not so sure about ending humanity – people are numerous, tough, and resilient. Hard to imagine nobody making it through an apocalypse.

Unlike many of the current explanations, my take is that AI would not direct the event, but would act as an enabler for some human agency. It is easy to imagine using AI to start a war or build a plague, for example. Alternatively, systems could easily and quickly become too AI dependent, meaning any breakdown or incapacity would kill millions or more with utility, food, distribution outages.

But AI actively ending humanity? I think not. It has no hormones, after all. And this evil monster has a pretty exposed brain in its data centers and power sources. Not to mention vulnerability to a strong EMP or direct missile explosion.  We tend to forget how much of our own evolution has been guided by self protection – of which AI has little.

Anyway, it really is just one other worrisome possibility, to add to those of an old guy who grew up hiding under desks for protection from World War III.

Boredom

Our 10-year-old grandson has been surrounded by every exotic age-appropriate toy from the cradle on. Today he largely disappears into cyberspace. Nevertheless, for a few years now, he will suddenly stop what he is doing and claim “I’m bored”.

Depression, ennui, boredom are all related. I assume they must have evolved for some reason. After all, other mental states like pain, hunger, sleepiness or even love have at least a purpose we can guess at. But what possible survival boost could being bored offer?

In fact, at first glance, boredom would seem to be an anti-survival skill. You’re sitting safe and comfortably when you are goaded to expose yourself to possible danger. Often it is better to do nothing.

And then there is the extremely strange resolution pattern. Many things can be tried with no result. Still bored. But a little later the same activity might seem very interesting. Weird.

I haven’t a clue. Like everyone else, I just throw ideas at depression, ennui, or boredom. I try various tasks with only partial and temporary success. Then – I get fully interested.

Until the next time.