We all live in a world filled with human imperfection. There has never been a time or place where the people have figured out a permanent arrangement for living together without eventually war and oppression destroying human happiness. Maybe the currently prophesized Super Artificial Intelligence will be able to construct this perfect society and keep it working indefinitely. Or maybe it’ll just be HAL 9000 creating a termite hive with us as the worker drones and itself as the Queen (or King if HAL is so inclined).
But I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for this Metallic Messiah. I doubt the possibility that the powers that be would let this new master to be unbiased and allow the little people to get a fair shake. It’s already been shown that he who pays the bills gets to write the algorithm.
So, I don’t expect a fair shake from the digital gods. But that doesn’t mean they won’t be put in charge. I guess the Chinese are in the lead in implementing their social credit system and there’s no reason to believe that this country will be different. And here’s the kicker. The young people already believe in this thing. I was told this weekend that, “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear from the digital gods.”
Now, this was a chilling statement. And I provided a counterstatement. I said, “Yes but, who gets to decide what is wrong and what if the definition of what is wrong can be changed by other people?” Then even if you’ve followed the rules, you can still be considered a criminal for your past actions.
I threw that out there and I think it made an impression. I further explained that freedom of speech and even freedom of thought were becoming less and less protected and that the loss of these things was very difficult to accept for people who took them for granted. And that was because we have always enjoyed their benefits.
Now I did say that everybody needed to decide these things for himself but I said I thought it was a good idea for any thoughtful person to test some of the slogans being tossed around by those in charge of schools and governments to see if they were consistent with a free way of life or if they were a way for government to take away people’s freedom. I also told him to listen and think about things going on around him but to not reveal to just anyone what he really thought. I hope I was persuasive.
This is becoming a more difficult world to navigate for the younger generations. That line about having nothing to hide if you haven’t done anything wrong was expressed by the head of the WEF, Klaus Martin Schwab. This is the guy who wants us to own nothing, heat our homes with windmills and eat bugs. The fact that he is being echoed by impressionable young people is beyond worrisome. It’s frightening.
What it’s told me is that it’s important for us to reach out to the young everywhere we can and provide them with some counterprogramming to the propaganda that the Left fills their heads with in school. And I think it’s not that hard to do. Be calm and friendly and bring up real life counterexamples to the platitudes from the Left. It’s relatively easy to do and it lays down seeds in their minds that can sprout at another time when some new occurrence triggers it. I think the main trick is not to be the angry dogmatist ranting against some present idea. Instead use the Socratic approach and demonstrate the weaknesses in these ideas and that will be enough to start the ball rolling in their minds.
But I wish it wasn’t called the Socratic method. I never trusted that guy. He hung around boys a little too much.