The Post-Will, Post-Fate Future

Our wills and fates do so contrary run, that our devices still are overthrown; are thoughts are ours, their ends none our own.

Shakespeare succinctly summed up a fundamental debate about human nature with that quote. It seems that we are predestined to play certain roles in our lives. When we look back at the episodes that define our existence, often we find that patterns seem to emerge from the randomness that permeates our interactions. This is possibly an illusion, but it also refers to something we know to be true, that we make unconscious decisions that subtly and overtly shape our lives.

Every bit of us is being broken down into discrete chunks of data. And all of that data is processed with other data, and constantly refined algorithms comb through all that data to sort and find patterns. It is the avowed goal of the founders of Google, for instance, to create a personal assistant that optimizes all of the minute decisions we make in a day. Less traffic than usual? Your sleep not quite as sound? Sleep in for 10 more minutes before getting up, this will be determined for you.

Now the AI deprives of us will, but it does not exactly exist as fate either. That is, it determines in a mathematical manner the most efficient way to live in our lives at the moment, from moment to moment. It does not determine an overarching theme for our lives. But how will we cope with this new aimlessness?

It seems likely that the majority of people will acquiesce, handing control of their lives over to algorithms and enjoying the placid comfort of decision-less existence. People who rebel will almost certainly be at a disadvantage, both in the comfort of their lives and in their place in society. This is I, Robot and The Matrix in real life. Will AI have to give us the illusion of control in order for us to maintain our emotional equilibrium? But we will know it is a lie. We will all have to find our unique pleasures and goals. Even the realm of art will be penetrated by AI, and a society of artists will be unnecessary, so will self-improvement. So what exists beyond the intellectual? The only thing that we will control or want to control, and the only thing that distinguishes us from an intelligent computer, is our emotions and physicality. Perhaps we will seek to manipulate our emotions, “I wish to feel joy!” Or maybe, due to the imperfections of human psychology, profound sadness. The other is physical pleasure. Drugs and stimulations will be in high demand.

I’m not sure where this leaves us as a species, but once our minds are rendered impotent compared to a computer, all we have left are our bodies and our primitive feelings. Existence, even immortal existence, could be rendered utterly meaningless. That flaw, that has driven humanity so far, to discover meaning, always asking “why?” and “how?” will certainly be our undoing once there is no purpose to answering those questions.

Succesful Institutions and the Republican Party

With Ted Cruz dropping out of the Republican race for the President, Donald Trump is left as the only truly viable candidate for the nomination. While this may be the will of the American voter, it is a failure of the Republican Party as an institution.

The Republican Party guides conservative thought into a useful and effective organization which seeks to advance those political interests, or it did at one time. The arc of this presidential election so far has mirrored the destruction of the Republican Party as an effective institution. As the party’s split, largely along racial lines in the 1960’s, as discussed in an earlier post, the GOP became the sole political party advocating conservativism. Since that time they have had an increasingly catastrophic failure in branding and while at the same time becoming sclerotic. While Republicans won national elections 7 times since 1968, they have failed to expand their party, they have stood still while the country has not.

They have failed to counter the argument that they are a party for wealthy white men. The evolution of American demographics have doomed the party due to its lack of foresight. Republicans were going to have a difficult time winning the Presidential election regardless of who there candidate was, simply because homosexuals, young people, women, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans do not vote Republican in large enough numbers.

There other major failure is more recent. In an effort to overcome their demographic challenges the Republican Party co-opted and then ignored grassroots conservatives. The Tea Party was a robust movement with both major funding and an active and motivated core of supporters. Republicans gleefully allowed Tea Party candidates to run on Republican tickets in order to win seats in local and statewide elections and then failed (and over-promised) to enact their reforms. This has led to disillusionment with the Republican “establishment”.

The final major failure of the Republican Party has been cowardice. Key figures in the Party have allowed someone who represents both of their major flaws to become the front runner without disavowing him. Donald Trump has doubled down on their branding failure by representing the GOP’s old base of constituents with xenophobia and racism AND by railing against the Establishnent’s failure to take seriously the reforms demanded by conservative activists.

Some responsibility lies with the Obama administration for failing to take the Republican view into consideration and passing the Stimulus package and the Affordable Care Act without many and any Republican votes, thus alienating the group further. But the majority of the blame falls squarely on the Republican Party for allowing a duplicitous demagogue to hijack their institution.

The GOP is a failed institution, one which now, with the face of their Party as Donald Trump, no longer even supports reasonable conservative values. The real problem here is that it is bad for the nation to not have an organization that can properly harness major political thought but also to not have any counter for the Democratic Party. It is not good to have large swaths of the government controlled by a single party that does not have to refine its message, or moderate its most extreme impulses. Democrats will not win on the strength of their ideals, but on the basis of having no organized opposition. Ted Cruz was a poor candidate in this sense as well, but Donald Trump has signaled the death-knell of the Republican Party, and we will not have to wait until Election Day to discover that.

Privacy and Newsworthiness

New norms of privacy are being developed in our intensely digital society. As people place more of themselves online they open themselves up to ever-greater intrusion from cyber pathways. The current young generation has been accused of narcissism for their desire to document their whole lives on Facebook and Snapchat, but the desire still remains to conceal themselves as well as protect themselves from prying eyes. Attempts to reconcile the increased vulnerability have been highlighted in litigation (the Supreme Court ruled that smartphones are different in kind from items like wallets because of the personal information they contain), by doxxing and other phenomena of mob justice online, by the backlash against NSA spying, and by the increasingly personal approach of the news media.

Recently, a court sided with former wrestler and entertainer Hulk Hogan against Gawker media, a purveyor of serious news and commentary, but also of tabloid-style scandalousness and rumor, because it released a sex tape it had obtained of Hulk Hogan and a friend’s wife. In a deposition a senior editor for Gawker facetiously said that any sex video of a person over the age of 4 was appropriately newsworthy to be published for mass consumption.

The Intercept is an often thought-provoking and bias-challenging read. Glenn Greenwald built his media establishment out of his access to the Snowden leaks and that trove has proved to be an extraordinary resource for him and his company. But the inception has, at times, cast its shadow over the day-to-day operations of the newspaper. Not everything secret or classified is newsworthy. The government conceals itself out of an institutional inertia that seeks to keep everything under its control. That over-classification harms not just the transparency of the government, but the ability to understand what is newsworthy.

The struggle for the newsmedia is two-fold. One, it is difficult to distinguish between what is secret and what is newsworthy. With the increased vulnerability of secrets deposited online and their ability to be rapidly disseminated comes difficult decisions about the information that is actually useful to the public. Two, there is no absolute line demarcating the difference between a person’s private life, especially if they are a public figure, and their public life. If every date and sextape a celebrity makes is also a continuance of their business life as reality stars then it is hard to tell what is sacred.

What all of this amounts to is a breakdown of privacy norms that have been in place for at least hundreds of years. When everyone lived in small groups, villages, or communities, there was a very reduced sense of privacy. A problem or personal issue of any member of the tribe or group was dragged into the light and the community dealt with problems and issues as a whole. But now that tribe or community has expanded to everyone with an internet connection, and people are not used to those stresses and pressures. Strengthening privacy laws is an uphill battle. It seems instead that people should grow more tolerant, and that society should shift their thinking to both expect less privacy and to be more accepting of others’ flaws and secrets.

Corporate Responsibility, Part 2

Another area where corporations have increasing influenced the modern world and where their responsibilities are in question is in social issues. Lately, many corporations have made public their opinions on LGBT rights, most notably in North Carolina. This stance by corporations is driven almost entirely by profit and by keeping their own employees happy. LGBT consumers represent an enormous and under-exploited source of revenues for many corporations so it makes sense that they advocate for LGBT rights.

Worldwide, however, populations are not as sanguine in their debates about social issues. In Pakistan, for example, you may be hacked to death for promoting Western values of inclusion and human rights. Coca-cola may be all for LGBT rights in the United States, but is mute on the subject in Pakistan. As drivers of social change, a globalized corporation can pick and choose where it wants to make a principled stand.

The real fear is that ultimately a corporation may dictate what social norms are acceptable and which are not, that they will have more power than a government or other groups that do not have an explicit profit motive. Is it dangerous for social wellbeing to be tied to an entity that only acts in self-interest?

Currently in the United States the government is more than capable of enforcing basic standards of human rights and essential moral behavior, but around the world the power of corporations to influence and enforce social mores could lead to a moral relativism. This could have the ironic effect of reducing the acceptance of supposedly universal values of human rights which are advocated by globalized organizations because of the ancillary effects of globalization. The power of the consumer is the only possible way of putting effective pressure on corporations to promote the same values everywhere. In a globalized world the citizenry need to have an appreciation of the struggles of people in other areas so as to promote increased equality and spread universal values. Without the participation of citizens, a corporation, by reinforcing the views it sees as profitable, can increase strife between peoples and societies.

The Fading Importance of the Human

The key puzzles of identity and of our perceptions of our own physical bodies are changing due to the forward march of technology. As a matter of fact, our bodies and their importance in the functioning of society have largely been eclipsed by robots, and the assault on the dominance of the human mind is well underway. It seems that in the future the active participation of people may not be necessary for the well-ordered functioning of society at all.

The oddities created by the God-like knowledge of the fundamental processes of the universe are apparent just below the surface. Look at the advertising for exercise and eating healthy, for example. They are sold as balancing an equation that will produce optimal health and fitness. The body is increasingly seen as an object that can be perfected, that can be poorly or expertly crafted. Genetics will be able to be engineered for our children. Erasing imperfections and mistakes, our natural processes will be optimized.

Technology has distorted our views of ourselves and enlarged the gap between perception and reality. Technology and the proliferation of media have created a situation where more people are in poor physical condition while simultaneously being more concerned about their physical appearance and condition than ever before in history. More filters separate us from a direct perception of reality, and we are more and more living in a virtual world overlayed on the real one. We are already cyborgs, in a practical sense if not a literal one. We are attached to our smart phones and the digital world constantly and live entire aspects of our lives inside of invisible structures constructed of code that live inside of servers.

The upheaval caused by the lack of employment is only the tip of the spear being plunged into the heart of the human species. If fundamentally, the question of life is one of meaning, there will soon be no object for which there is meaning to contemplate. Our desire for perfection and ease will lead to the destruction of everything that makes humans human. Biology’s weakness is overpowered by the superior computing power and efficiency of robotics and digital memory. It is only a matter of time before we are entirely fused into computerized systems. More than jobs to do, people will need a philosophy that justifies our continued existence.