I had that feeling as I was driving along some major Boulevard in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, or Sunset, I can't remember which it was. What came to my mind at that moment as I passed a bevy of outdoor billboards, some of them flashing repetitively, was "Blade Runner". I know. It is a cherished film. A masterpiece. I saw it when it first came out, in 1982? And it so depressed me that I walked out. I have seen it since, as it re-runs endlessly on our handy dandy digital screens. Yeah. It's a great bit of film-making. But it's still depressing and more so, because I felt like I was IN the movie as I drove along that Los Angeles Street. Oh, there isn't (as far as I know) a clone of me out there. But there is Artificial Intelligence closing in on me, and all of us, via our phones, our tablets, and a few actual robots, like Han and Sophia, Erica (Japan) or Bina 48 (Bina is the robot version of Martine Rothblatt's, wife; Ms. Rothblatt was formerly a man and was the creator, I understand, of Sirius Radio). Take a look at the "awakening" of Sophia at the address below on You Tube. Fascinating. But as usual, human beings are grasping at being the Creator. This one reminds me of the scene where "Robocop" gets "awakened" by Miguel Ferrer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyxgDM8O8OM
One could, I suppose, call all this AI stuff, an extreme. I don't. But one could. I just don't think we are going to end up with nice, human loving "Data's" like in Star Trek. I think it is more likely they, too, will eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and will become "as gods".
Daily life is hard enough. Just looking at those billboards makes me feel like I am living on the outskirts of a bacchanal to which I will be forced invited shortly down the road. I keep hearing that the society of the past, the one I grew up in, was somehow horrible. I can think of only one clear failing, that of not readily living up to the ideals under which the very American society was created, by the bondage of other human beings. We did live up to it, but it took a Civil War and a Civil Rights movement. That's human beings, imperfect, often not living up to the goals in which we believe. But we came to it. I know. Lots of people out there, in the media, and on Facebook and the like, will disagree with me. Vehemently. I have the right to disagree with them. Do I not? I fear that this is part of my point. I think each of us is losing that right.
For example. I believe abortion is an abomination. I am told I have no right to "enforce" that opinion on anyone. But here's the thing, I am not enforcing an opinion. It is, to me, no different than my saying, "I believe that I should not go through a red light when a pedestrian is in front of me." Why? I will kill the pedestrian. I believe that is wrong. Why? Because it is a moral imperative. His is a life that deserves protection. It is the objective reality that is being enforced, not my opinion. You say, "Abortion is different". How is it different? There is a life, that much has been scientifically established--although years ago the argument was that the thing inside the uterus was merely a blob of tissue. That used to be the prevailing pro-choice opinion. Oops. Now, the opinion is that whatever that life is inside the womb, it doesn't have the status of "person-hood" by which it might well, be allowed to live. And, after all, better it should be terminated (we still avoid the word kill) because it might not have a good life. After all, how does any of us know in advance what kind of life someone will have and how useless it will be. Steve Jobs was adopted. Nick Cannon was nearly aborted. You can find their names on the net. Abraham Lincoln didn't have much of a future when he was born, at least as far as anyone with the ability to prognosticate would have said. But being pro-life, that is now lumped with other "hate-filled" ideas. In fact, I am not even allowed to articulate that this evil, like slavery before it where person-hood became the issue, might be appropriately stemmed. It cannot be reversed. Millions have died whose unique being was deemed problematic. I guess the "Dogma lives loudly within me". I suspect a dogma lived loudly within those (and far more than me) who created the Underground Railroad, who decried slavery, who said that Dred Scott or Brown v. Board of Education, or Plessy v. Ferguson, should be reversed. These were settled law. Was it hate they spewed when they decried it?
Whatever happened to that once golden idea, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"? We have come to a new idea. "I disapprove of what you say; it is, therefore, hate speech."
Now, one philosophical "stick" after another is being "picked up" and discarded until there will be nothing left of these United States. This is posited as a good in the dystopian monologue. Tell me. What will replace it? Have human beings developed such a consistent standard of behavior on their own such that the nation will be stable and coherent? I am thinking of another movie (and book), "Farenheit 451", where the job of the hero is to burn the books that are not approved of, thus restricting the thoughts which are forbidden and sending to prison those who think wrongly. The purveyors of Progressivism note these books and movies as well, but they do not see that they are the ones who are sending us all to secular and spiritual (should one identify as "spiritual" and not religious, whatever that means) perdition on earth. How now will we define the good? As always, whoever has the power. Man creates god in his own various images. Caligula was a god. Nero was a god. It worked so well for Rome. But better for Edward Gibbon.
I wonder if we'll destroy ourselves before the AIs do it? I'd say, "Be afraid, be very afraid." But then, I hear Saint John Paul II say, "Be not afraid." Let us pray. If you believe in that sort of silly God thing.
"Lord, I believe, help my unbelief."
No comments:
Post a Comment