Are We Approaching the Inflection Point?

our rulers are failing on all fronts

The great conceit of humankind is the notion that we can control the weather. On the one hand we have the techies of EA and AI — Effective Altruism and Artificial Intelligence — imagining the amazing things they can do with an effective and properly planned effort to end global poverty. On the other hand we also have the greenies who are busy trying to shut down fossil-fuel consuming cars.

Then there are the DEI guys and guyettes who are having a bit of a cock-up on the Claudine Gay front. You might think that the very idea that the way to stamp out racism with comprehensive and mandatory programs of reverse racism is utter madness. But no. Instead of No Irish — or Blacks — need apply, we now have No White Men need apply. Surely, nobody can possibly believe such rubbish!

In England, the Lord Mayor of London is expanding the ULEZ (ultra low emissions zones) to the entire greater London area. You might think: no politicians is that crazy! But, as the Yes, Minister TV series pointed out, the politicians are the prisoners of their administrators in the government bureaucracy. What? You expect one guy to push back against the whole department?

But global warning, CO2, greenhouse effect, scientists agree… Yeah, how do you determine who is right? The answer is, you don’t, not until people are starving in the streets.

I think that the way to understand the world is to realize how accidental we are, a bunch of big-brained mammals living on the surface of a small planet in a gigantic universe (as we presently believe).

We talk about AI and how AI is soon going to far exceed the extent of human intelligence in the near future. But how big is AI? What is human knowledge and intelligence and artificial intelligence compared to the encoded knowledge and intelligence in our DNA?

There’s a news item about a cat in a nursing home that got into the habit of lying on the beds of people that soon died. Eventually the staff got wise and called the relatives when the cat selected a patient. I know of the case of an acquaintance, dying of cancer, whose dog woke up the whole family as he was dying. So what’s that all about? Why should dogs and cats be programmed to do that? Scientists agree that almost all behaviors have a survival and adaptation value. So what is the survival value here?

You know where I stand on all this. I believe that politics is a very blunt instrument, only for use in real emergencies. Politics and Effective Altruism can’ t do much to end world poverty. What seems to be real effective is the market economy. Fossil fuels as the cause of global warming and global warming as a problem may be grasping the wrong end of the stick. And any way, the important thing is to be ready to adapt to whatever the climate brings.

And as for DEI! Put it this way. Humans tend to get enthusiastic about things. Usually this enthusiasm is confined to some crazy cult. But sometimes a cult takes over the entire ruling class as in the Crusades to reclaim the Holy Land. Or socialism to save he working class from “immiseration.” Or anti-racism to save the world from racism. Or the clean energy revolution to save the world from climate change.

The way I understand this is that, for a ruling class, life is meaningless unless there’s an enemy to be fought and a war to be won. Because politics and ruling is all about defeating the enemy and mobilizing the nation to fight the enemy.

Unfortunately, experts agree — or they would agree if they weren’t taking money from the government — 97.2 percent of problems in this world cannot be solved by politics. In fact, experts agree, 98.6 percent of the time that government gets involved in something it Makes Things Worse.

And so I say that the total chaos on the crisis front, from AI to climate to DEI to Get Trump is maybe a divine signal that we are approaching the end of the Educated Age.

But what do I know!

Merry Christmas!