Algorithm's Counterattack

 Algorithm's Counterattack

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The more a human sacrifices for an imaginary story, the more stubbornly he clings to the fantasy.

Living with fantasies is much easier because it gives meaning to suffering.

The more painful a sacrifice, the more certain a person believes in the existence of the object to which it is offered.

The talking ego chooses to continue to suffer in the future, refusing to admit that the pain of the past was meaningless.

If the talking ego is about to admit to the mistakes of the past, he must turn the story around and give meaning to those mistakes.

It can be seen that the talking self is an imaginary story, like the state and the money. Each of us has a sophisticated device for creating our own story, which discards most of our experiences and retains only a handful of handpicked samples.

In the end, the lives of people who lead lives of various genres, where comedy and tragedy are repeated, are only stories.

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So what is the meaning of life?

Liberalism says that each must use their free will to create meaning not only for their own lives but for the entire universe. However, life science shakes liberalism to its roots by claiming that the idea that individuals have free will is nothing more than a fictional story created by a set of biochemical algorithms.

Liberalism succeeded because it was politically, economically, and militarily justified to give value to all human beings.

But the majority of the 21st century will lose their military and economic value.

In the past, there were many things only humans could do. But now robots and computers are catching up with humans, and sooner or later they will do most jobs better than humans. Intelligence is decoupling from consciousness, which puts humans at risk of losing economic value.

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Until now, high intelligence has always been paired with advanced consciousness. But now humanity is developing a new type of unconscious intelligence that can do these things much better than humans. All of this is based on pattern recognition, and sooner or later, subconscious algorithms will be better at recognizing patterns than human consciousness.

Perhaps the most important question in the economy of the 21st century is 'what should all those surplus people do?'

What would a conscious human do if we had a highly intelligent, subconscious algorithm that could do almost anything better?

What will you do when mindless algorithms can teach, diagnose, and design better than humans?

What will happen if algorithms do better than humans at remembering, analyzing, and recognizing patterns?

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The idea that humans will always have special abilities that exceed the capabilities of subconscious algorithms is only hopeful. The current scientific answer to these fantasies can be summarized in a simple principle.

An organism is an algorithm. All animals, including Homo sapiens, are a set of organic algorithms that have been selected through millions of years of evolution.

The calculation of the algorithm is not affected by whatever material the calculator is made of. So there is absolutely no reason to think that organic algorithms can do things that inorganic algorithms can never do, or do better than them. As long as the calculations are correct, what does it matter whether the algorithm is made of carbon or silicon?

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It is true now that organic algorithms do many things better than inorganic algorithms, and experts reiterate that some things will remain 'forever' things that inorganic algorithms cannot. However, 'forever' often turns out to be 10 to 20 years in the end.

In fact, over time, it becomes increasingly easier to replace humans with computer algorithms, partly because algorithms are getting smarter, but also because humans are becoming more specialized. Ancient hunter-gatherers needed to be able to handle a wide variety of skills to survive. So designing a robotic hunter-gatherer would be incredibly difficult. But over the past few millennia, humans have become increasingly experts. Since they are experts in a much narrower field, they are easier to replace with artificial intelligence.

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If algorithms drive humans out of the job market, wealth and power will be concentrated in the hands of a small elite who own almighty algorithms, creating unprecedented social inequality. Or the algorithms may master themselves.

If the algorithm makes the right decisions, it will raise a lot of money, which can then be invested where it sees fit.

Maybe the algorithm will buy the house and become the landlord. It should be recalled that already most of the legal owners of the planet are not humans, but intersubjective entities such as states and corporations.

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So what will people do?

It is often said that the last sanctuary of man is art. But there's really no reason why art creation is safe from algorithms. Art is not the product of an enchanted spirit or metaphysical soul, but of an organic algorithm that recognizes mathematical patterns. Then there is no reason why inorganic algorithms cannot produce art.

Many jobs will disappear in the future and many jobs will be created. However, the key in this era should not be simply to create new jobs but to create new jobs that humans do better than algorithms.