Artificial intelligence and the dusk of the cyberneticists

The people who make up the administration in the age of works, that is the people who decide in which technologies to invest, are called cyberneticists in Soviet literature. I'll use that term in this post, because it lends itself well to the Star Trek school of thought, i.e. that progress leads to ever greater control and liberalism, pursued in the last two posts.

Originally, ultimate control of in what to invest lay in the hands of the Catholic Church, which to this end had placed the credit business in the hands of the Jews. I already explained how it could then steer history by mobilising the people against the Jews, thus forcing them to only support the kings who toed the line of the church.

Not much has changed since, but the focus here is not on the parallels, nor the apparent breakdown of the parallel, e.g. corporate control of the press, but on the basic business.

The basic business of cybernetics is twofold:

1. to prevent independent investment by preventing independent liquidity and
2. to invest in the technologies that are seen as making life better.
   

In order to achieve the first goal, the price of natural resources, in particular food, needs to be depressed, for they are a natural source of wealth. This can be done by investing in large scale producers relying on cost efficient production and price competition or, if need be, by driving up expenses via security threats or driving down profit margins by smear campaigns, which can also be used against any manufacturing facility, which has become too profitable, like Toyota or Volkswagen.

Thus the economy is kept dependent on credit. Concerning the second goal it is important to note that it is conceived in the aforementioned mindset of progress as control and liberalism, but now we must make a fundamental critical observation, namely that

• control over nature increases human freedom and felicity, but
• control over people doesn't necessarily do the trick.
  

Still, cyberneticists see themselves essentially as people's friends and helpers by protecting them from power imbalances and ideological aberrations.

I spoke of getting ahead of oneself in the previous post, which is natural for enthusiasts, and there are enthusiastic policers as well, but as far as the control over people is concerned, there is another driving force behind the overextension of control, namely fear of people.

Assumed control over the climate and the human immune system are both examples of the exaggeration of science's abilities, but the reason behind them is not overoptimism, but that private wealth has become involved in efforts like fair trade, crowd funding and Bitcoin that provide independent investment, which must be fought, and unnecessary protections are a way to get at the offending party.

Back in the '50s people realised that they were headed towards a push-button world and they made some good comedies considering the desirability of this. These days there's only Johnny English Strikes Again. I don't know whether you still remember the time when you would define macros, that is sequences of key strokes and mouse movements which you could repeat with a single key stroke. Doing this these days with all the inbuilt sensors and abilities of a smart phone, you could set off the craziest chain reactions by tilting your phone the wrong way and it should really be comedically explored.

Anyway, just goes to show that the business of controlling people is getting ever more nerve-racking. And the pinnacle in this regard is artificial intelligence. So, in order to protect people from power imbalances and ideological aberrations, the only viable course of action is to push people into a virtual reality, where they can't harm anyone. That's what the mindset of liberalism by virtue of control ends up with. I remember a member of matrixfans.net proving it before the forum was discontinued by stating that he had found the perfect solution for humanity, namely to let everybody live in his own fantasy world, and quite a few films depict heaven like this as well, although, somewhat surprising, Star Trek: Generations is criticising the idea (and Star Trek: Insurrection goes full hippy, but Gene Roddenberry had died a little prior to the release of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) - then again, there is an episode called Errand of Mercy in the original series, though with the caveat that you can only live by divine standards when you are a god.

I wonder though, those who hold that view, how do they suppose we ever become gods, when we have to be stripped of our interaction with the real world for our own good? Or doesn't it matter? Will they be happy as gods in their fantasy worlds? There is something lacking there, isn't it? Like understanding the difference between a picture and space? Or more directly, like understanding that you have a place in the world, that what occurs within you relates to what occurs without. It may be inconceivable for them, but they'd not protect what matters.