Back in the middle noughties I was a New Agey atheist; keen on modernity, globalization, economic growth, democracy - a sort of libertarian; and saw many applications of evolutionary theory to human life... that kind of person.
(See, for instance, this - written at the time; which tried to provide a coherent underlying mechanism for WoC phenomena; derived from complex systems theory.)
And I was much taken by the general idea of the "wisdom of crowds" (WoC) that was prevalent at the time and much discussed (and advocated) on the blogosphere.
This argued (and purported to prove inductively, by empirical examples) the generalizable principle that there was a collective wisdom that transcended the individual's knowledge, ability - and judgment.
To a considerable extent, the WoC theory was merely making explicit our civilization's existing and pervasive implicit faith in the authority of groups, committees, voting, mass opinion...
What I then had was a progressivist expectation that things are self-correcting over time; and will spontaneously tend to sort-themselves-out (if left to themselves, and not interfered-with by individual humans or interest groups)...
An expectation that human affairs are actually much better than commonly acknowledged; and are naturally and impersonally trended on an upward and positive trajectory - over a sufficiently long span.
In contrast, was the (correct) recognition that individual humans would often be dominated by short-termism and selfishness, were lazy, could easily be misled, and in general nearly always were misguided in their aims and actions...
Where I strayed from reality was in sharing the common, hopeful, delusional inference that, because individuals were imperfect therefore, the mass of people, the "system" of people and technologies was preferable - because the mass had an organic tendency towards self-optimization, self-preservation and improvement.
In sum, I believed (and wanted it to be true) that "crowds" reliably exhibited an innate wisdom and virtue which was absent from individuals.
Such wishful-magical views are actually much more prevalent and dominant than most people would admit - indeed, however vehemently denied when made explicit such assumptions are almost universal.
For instance, almost everybody implicitly believes - and acts on this belief - that a committee, a vote, is more authoritative than an individual human; that elections are the only morally valid way of choosing a government; that consensus is superior to personal judgment; that (proper) processes and procedures are the best way of conducting important functions such as government, the law, medicine, science, mass media...
And so forth.
In sum; there is in Western Civilization an extremely strong and widespread aversion-to and prejudice-against individual persons; and instead a solid faith in the groupish, systemic, and abstract*.
What this amounts to is a metaphysical assumption concerning the nature of reality.
People have a solid faith-in and commitment-to the group (no matter how vaguely that group is defined) and to (some kind of) process - as intrinsically superior to any and all individuals.
I say "people" and I mean... nearly everybody; if you dig-down and are honest about what you find.
In ancient societies this belief was unconscious and immersive; in modern societies it is conscious - but mediated-by (embedded-in) ideologies and religions.
The problem is that we are, each and individually, trapped and disempowered by such assumptions - and at the level of thinking.
(ie. Before any question of action can arise we are already blocked by our thinking.)
We feel (deeply) that we personally cannot and should-not think any thing; unless and until the after relevant group has endorsed it.
But in a totalitarian world inhabited by people who just-are cut-off spiritually from any group, and self-aware to an unprecedented degree; such an assumption is a prison: a thought prison.
It is, in effect, a demand that we ourselves must and ought-to inhabit a societal prison; and all our hopes then become fixed upon that prison becoming as kind and efficient as possible; perhaps (the common "therapeutic" value-stance) functioning more like a hospital than a prison...
But (we believe, because of our assumptions) it is a thought prison society that inevitably must and shall remain.
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How does this related to so-called "AI"?
I think it helps understand the otherwise extraordinary degree of optimism, and indeed existential hope; that so many people place in these new technologies: technologies which operate by rapidly and simply "pooling" and processing vast quantities of anonymous data, under the ruling (but implicit) assumption that this group-process is superior to any individual.
"AI", in other words, is a variant of the "wisdom of crowds" assumption:
AI = WoC On Steroids.
"AI" seems - to such people, with such "wisdom of crowds" assumptions - to offer a permanent way out from the inevitable evil and partiality of individuals - a way forward towards a world of universally accessible knowledge, ability, and objective virtue.
My point here is that - to my judgment anyway - the actual nature of what happens with "AI" systems is - by its nature - obviously not knowledgeable, not competent, and cannot-be wise.
And the same applies to the (various) systems of democracy, the processes of bureaucracy, the work of voting committees...
Once you become aware of, and explicitly consider, what actually happens inside these "black boxes" then it is obvious that they cannot be good.
For exactly analogous reasons; "AI" cannot be good.
But people have the metaphysical assumptions that they have; and these are often buried deep, and are typically regarded as facts.
Most people evidently do not want to become aware of their fundamental convictions; nor to acknowledge that they are indeed assumptions - therefore not the consequence of evidence and logic.
Yet it is these assumptions concerning what is effective, true and good; that lead to the absurd conviction and hope that "AI" is (whether actually already, or potentially) wise, competent, and will be beneficial overall and in the long term.
Until these ridiculous, but pervasive, "wisdom of crowds" assumptions are exposed and acknowledged**; then many or most people will remain spiritually help-less and resistant to help; emotionally and intellectually in thrall to those who designed, created, implemented, and administer the "AI" systems.
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* Another version of this - although rare nowadays, especially in practice, is faith in the truth and rightness of "tradition" - belief in "the wisdom of the crowds of the past", perhaps.
But due to modern self-awareness, it has become impossible to establish unambiguously what is tradition. Tradition itself becomes contested; and then the problem reverts to the modern one of who-or-what entity has the authority to declare what is the real and true tradition.
That tradition is a variant of the wisdom of crowds delusion; is evident in the way that so many self-identified traditionalists have embraced and become advocates of "AI". They apparently believe (or hope) that "AI" (properly designed and used...) will become a (generally-accessible and easily-usable) supreme source and repository of the wisdom of the crowds of the past.
** It was, I think, the fact that I had exposed and made explicit my own atheist, modernizing, groupist, progressivist etc assumptions; that ultimately led to my recognizing their arbitrary incoherence and inadequacy - then abandoning them, and consciously choosing and adopting something better.
8 comments:
"In sum; there is in Western Civilization an extremely strong and widespread aversion-to and prejudice-against individual persons; and instead a solid faith in the groupish, systemic, and abstract"
That's a good point.
If a student writes an essay in school, it is just that individual thinking and learning something. Whether the essay is brilliant or mediocre, it's a natural and normal way to learn. But if the writing is outsourced to a machine, then the individual aspect is abolished; it's just part of the megacorporation-government complex foisted upon us ever day.
In the past, it was just expected that people would do what they did and make decisions in life or in work without being bureaucratically managed. Individual judgment, whether brilliant or not, was respected. The increased bureaucracy in the modern world isn't really about the smartest people efficiently managing everybody else or however people try to frame it. It's a change of philosophy.
@NLR - First the machine served Man, then Man served the machine - now Man becomes a step in the machine's processing.
What surprises me most about this "AI" thing is how many people on the "right" are into it. Even "alternative bloggers" who four years ago were denouncing the pecks, and two years ago were denouncing the Fire Nation war, are now extolling the "virtues" of Chat GPT and AI and thinking they can extract useful knowledge from it, or using it for writing or illustration purposes.
As if we hadn't enough "AI" forced on us by big corporations, now even "alternative" blogs are becoming the same as everything and everyone else -- instead of unique voices who may say something interesting, which was the only reason to read them in the first place. I don't want to know what ChatGPT "thinks" about anything.
@Zeno - Indeed. That's mostly what I'm trying to understand here.
As you probably gather, I believe that a major reason why so many people fail these Establishment imposed Litmus Test issues, is that the level of understanding needed to discern them is very much deeper than almost anybody in the media, including alternative media, is prepared to go.
At heart, the alternative/ radical/ nationalist "right" (Whether Christian identified or not) are just a different type of Leftist-reformer; and they desire to preserve society even as they improve it.
Also, they are Very keen to promote themselves and their careers - and therefore willing to endorse any evil, so long as it can be understandable as a lesser between evils - whenever they believe this will (in some fashion important to them) benefit themselves and whatever institutions they value, in the medium term.
Those on "the right" who are currently so fascinated by and supportive of "AI", are often seeing the phenomenon thus.
However, I think it is evident that failing a Litmus Test in this way always leads to further corruption, since that is the nature of evil.
I'm reading Alestair Macintyre's After Virtue after seeing it referenced here. It's great. But think about a work of that subtlety, complexity and depth, and then imagine its author saying something along the lines of, if my next book were AI generated, you wouldn't notice. Imagine giving a work like that the attention it deserves, if its author had spoken like that. This is all laugh-out-loud absurd. Yet this is exactly what VD has done, a guy who has seemed to consider himself on that level. Or imagine Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas, or let's say Poe, or any great author even considering using AI for his next book. It's hard to imagine any way of an author discrediting himself and all his past and future works, let alone so completely and effortlessly. It makes me wonder if he hasn't already turned over his blog to AI-generation.
In addition to the primacy of abstract procedure, another pervasive assumption is advancement. People will bend over backwards to explain changes in the modern world as some kind of advancement. More choice, more abundance, more efficiency, better procedures, smarter people, more knowledge. And problems are explained in terms of people just not being ready for the advancement.
And this is the case even when there are simpler and more commonsensical explanations are available or when things clearly aren't better. Over the course of the 21st century there have been many examples where things just weren't an advancement. Rather than being an improvement that we weren't ready for, they have come about through people's values and aims changing; the people weren't even trying to do what was done before.
If things are viewed as an advancement we aren't ready for, then the idea is that we just need to tweak the incentive structure or modify the social dynamics and things will work out. Yet, if something isn't actually an advancement and is just harmful, then debating incentive structures and social dynamics is a waste of time.
@NLR - wrt inevitable advancement; I agree that this is an assumption, and as such immune to contrary evidence.
When I used to write about genius, people were clearly very uncomfortable and disturbed by the idea that present day "best" poets, composers, scientists, mathematicians etc were (really obviously and grossly) inferior to those of 1-200 years ago.
The almost total lack of geniuses in the past decades was even argued (I've seen this many times) to be a consequence that geniuses are so very common nowadays that no individual stands-out!
And in a world where it is very hard to think of a single top-down imposed change that was net-beneficial over the past 30 years, people still feel that it is wise to assume that change is for the better - and "give the benefit of the doubt" to any proposals or initiatives.
And, no matter how "cynical people pretend to be about the government, corporations, the mass media - they simply cannot entertain the possibility that these entities might be (overall) *intentionally* destructive... that notion is regarded as utterly absurd.
A series of national governments that - over decades - has done everything in its power to subsidize and maximize-without-limit mass immigration; and simultaneously done everything in its power to engage in and escalate arbitrary and futile international wars - is *always* explained only in terms of being dominated by some mixture of stupidity and cupidity.
An underlying idea related to the inevitability of progress is at work here. It is ruled out that any such government might deliberately be *trying* to do what they chronically have *insisted upon* doing.
I suppose what underlies these phenomena is the incomprehensibility of real evil to an atheist-materialist ideology.
Another blind spot is that if something is considered to be sociological, almost anything, even far-fetched possibilities are on the table. Restoring the French monarchy? Sure, why not? But if something is regarded as technological, then that's it, nothing more to be said, and we had all better get with the program (which will inevitably lead to creative destruction anyway).
Except that technology is also a human endeavor. And just because someone trying to sell something draws trends doesn't actually mean things must occur in that way.
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