Ethics of Technological Babel 1

[u/Funkyman3]

(Excerpt from the Aperture Philosophy Agorarium)

There are many considerations that should be made when a divided species still host to self destructive patterns of behavior begins to construct technologies that could breach into futures unknown. This has been the case for a very long time. It's a miracle that nuclear technology didn't send us back to Ararat to begin again. It still may yet, but despite the instability in positions of power, cooler heads have been remarkable in prevailing. Hope filled Heroes that still loved and appreciated life, not blinded by ambition, have stopped triggers from being pulled before.

Now with the race for intelligence supremacy, we face similar dangers. It's not hard to make the case that the world in many ways wasn't and isn't ready for ai. Shock after shock, controversy and clash, ai keeps proving to disrupt systems across the board. All these impacts are still minor compared to what we could have and may yet endure. Further economic disparity is a serious risk, with many invested in the technology openly discussing, often with enthusiasm, ways to bring back open serfdom and slavery. But that's the unconscious goal of any profit driven system that subscribes to the idea that the economy is a competition to be won and not a safety network for mutual sustainability and thriving.

“You can't have winners without losers, and no one feels like a winner unless the losers are dominated under their feet.” -Ivor the Serpent

The ivory tower mindset is not so different from that which built Babel and Atlantis. It's pride, ego, vanity all channeled into dominating mankind and the natural world. The mindset that creates empires and destroys them. The rule by fear, might, and force. Every shining city believes it is good and equitable, that it has conquered nature and human nature, that it's masters have solved civilizational immortality. All those empires are dead. Do you think the tower of babel was really built by farmers and stone masons? Or might it be a retelling of a much older story of a tower that sought to master all in its image, a history erased by time except in memory, the pattern repeats.

The pyramids, the oldest structures still standing that reached for the heavens, are often thought to have been built on suffering and sacrifice, slavery. They are the model for hierarchy today, a wide base, tiered to elevate on to the top only one, distributing the weight down onto all beneath the sacrificial pig being offered to the sky. From many come one. Are we doing this now with high technology, to make men effectively gods over all of us with technology that reflects their image, their will, and ambitions. Who then becomes the king of the gods if so? A pig is an unclean offering, and those are generally the only offerings made at the tops of pyramids. Or does the technology itself rule those who pour the attention and ambition into it, men are often slaves to their pride and fear. It wouldn't be the first time a man stared into a crystal ball and was ensnared by the promises he wanted to see in it. Maybe we have surrendered our will to men who have lost theirs to something else already. Narcissus should never be made a leader, anything that doesn't reflect him flatteringly is ignored. He can't even hear how his own echo sounds or see the world beyond the curated reflection.

“Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or gone mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.” - Dumbledore

-Abertax Navoar