Adolph and the Griper's Paradox
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I and the kids enjoy the animated futuristic series Futurama -- we buy the DVD's, we do not watch it on commercial television, infested as it is with advertisements, which are, as I explain to the kids, gray matter-sucking brain worms designed not only to steal our thoughts away and to intentionally dirty our minds, but they also, most disturbingly, rob us of the ability to feel our own feelings and value our own values. This satire Futurama features a society in the year 3000 where not only do the various races of humans mix together casually, but also outlandish aliens with or without physical bodies.
Most popular around here is its robot character Bender, who goes off on a bender when he does not get enough alcohol, instead of the reverse as with a human drunk. He is an embittered robo-rights crusader who observes little robots going around picking up after litterers and sardonically comments, "Oh, sure. Let the robot do it." I like that little criticism of that protean monster being called by academics "critical theory." But in fact the question of robot rights will surely pose a growing dilemma to ethicists as they become more advanced. At the present level they are no different from a car or a toaster, but as robots increase in both intelligence and usefulness they will surely start to claim the rights that go hand in hand with intelligence. Or at least, that is what many ethicists think.
Myself, I think that future robots will never differentiate themselves from the Internet. They will be walking portals, talking search engines, Google personified. If I talk to my toaster, my car or my computer, I will be talking to the same entity, the most intelligent, informed mind available. Most people expect robots to be independent and self-sufficient, just like people, cats and dogs are. But with instant wireless connection to the net, why dumb them down? Why not take advantage of their greatest strength, their connectivity? Why try to reproduce what living organisms already do very well? Nor will this Internet Superbrain will be entirely artificial; it may be connected and mediated by computers, as the Net already is, but much, if not most, of its processing, judgments and decisions will be done by the best thinkers available, human experts available and interconnected online. These experts now and for the foreseeable future will be primarily human, be they individuals, Ad Hoc groups or whole scientific disciplines making decisions by majority vote.
I am not talking about routine decisions, of course. These can and should be automated and handled by computer brains. If I make an observation to my robot toaster about how I want my toast this morning, the toaster or a computer-mediated toasting FAQ on the Internet will provide a canned answer. But if I ask something new or difficult, it will know enough to hand the question off to the best responder available.
I might say, "Toaster, where is life taking me?" It would listen and duly pass my question off to my life-planning software portal; if its answer does not satisfy, the question would move off to some "Meaning of Life" philosophy portal on the Internet. In other words, the answer would be handled the same as if I were at my computer, at my car, or any other machine interface. The toaster of the future, no matter how sophisticated, will always be a utensil, an "it" rather than a "thou." It will be owned, not owning, whereas the stupidest, vilest human, as long as he is sound of mind and does not barter away his own rights, will always be capable of owning any utensil.
But my point in saying all this is that the very idea of "owning" anything will be changed by these connected robotic interfaces. How could owning things in a cybernetic world order be the same as owning things now? Our primitive system of exclusive ownership will crumble to the ground. As it is now, I can take a hammer, walk into the kitchen, smash our toaster to bits and toss it into the garbage. Since I rarely eat toast I would never miss it, though I suspect the members of this household who do eat toast might have something harsh to say to me about what I did. But outside the narrow circle of this household nothing and nobody has anything to say about what my little rampage cost them.
I said before that future connected toasters will always be as much utensils as our primitive, low tech toasters today. Let us say that we did own a toaster of the future and I did the same thing. I take a hammer, walk into the kitchen and prepare to smash it to pieces. Before I can raise the hammer it would warn me of all the costs this intended act will entail. Right now this would be impossible to calculate accurately, since costs of recycling, replacement, packaging and delivery are hidden under a two foot deep slime of graft. But let us say that it is smart enough to give an estimate:
"If you smash me it will cost you about twenty dollars to replace me plus it will cost society a hundred bucks in hidden costs and add five to the seventy billion pounds of greenhouse gasses pumped into the atmosphere every day. Plus, there will be moral as well as financial costs. Willful destruction can be addictive. Plus, by destroying a functional tool you will be depriving someone else of the chance to use this toaster until it breaks down."
This is a frivolous example, but there is no telling how our thinking will change once formerly hidden information is, as it were, built into the very fabric of our environment, once every wall we see, every tool we touch is available for questioning. Connected robots working together will amount to what is being called ubiquitous computing; ubiquity will allow an ongoing dialectic with the sum of knowledge, using our surroundings as what Bacon called the Organon (an instrument for acquiring knowledge). Today only people can be grilled for information on demand, and then only certain people at certain times. Pets are so popular because they are available to relate to more often and in different ways from human peers.
Internet search engines are already giving us a glimpse of what is soon to come. Grade school pupils are getting to know Google not long after they can recognize the face of their flesh and blood teachers. Soon search engines will become more active, they will push questions at us, as Socrates did. As soon as they detect an imbalance in our life, they will start throwing out subtle questions and suggestions for righting the balance. Meanwhile, people everywhere will learn to question everything around them more intelligently. Everything before, behind, overhead and underfoot will be quite literally an object lesson designed by very clever teachers.
This will spell the end of materialism. Once people get used to gaining wisdom from objects as well as people, they will learn to value the lesson above the medium by which the lesson came. How long after that will it be before we all see that we are morally obliged to share and interchange our possessions? Why not make our union with the best of what can be known official by just getting married? By that I mean, why not just admit that everything already is partially owned by many people and by all people? Why not give them a due share in ownership? Why should the world not have a say in how things are disposed of, in whether they are wasted or not? Consider this complaint that J-J Rousseau made in his Confessions after some important people absconded with his property and refused to give it back:
"From the weak to the strong, such an act would be a theft: from the strong to the weak, it is nothing more than an appropriation of property, without a right." (Rousseau, Confessions)
Poor people are thieves, rich people appropriate; they are protected by power, law, and even language. This is a complaint you often hear from the little guy, the same gripe Bender made on behalf of the little cleanup robots: "Yeah, sure, let the robot do it." But who is there to complain when the biggest voiceless minority (so voiceless that it does not realize that it is actually a majority), All Mankind, is being ripped off? Nobody. Exclusive ownership means that I own it, nobody else has a say. That is why I think it is useful to personify the oppressor of all mankind and call him Adolph Nobody.
For me, the tyranny of Adolph Nobody over everybody was underlined lately by an argument that took place just after a group viewing of "An Inconvenient Truth." Friend A walked out incensed at how the little guy was being robbed by rich, powerful, wealthy polluters. Our planet is boiling and they are to blame.
Friend B pointed out that in this case it is the rich and powerful who have the most to lose from global warming. It is not some or a few who will lose out but everybody, and no matter how adamant they will sooner or later see the light and get onside with the protectors of the environment. If there are plotters they are screwing themselves first and nobody but an idiot would fail to realize that. Friend A was adamant that this was a conspiracy issue that the few must have something to gain by the destruction of the planet. They must have something to hide, to plot about. Nothing would veer A from his "us" versus "them," from his poor good guys versus evil elite mind-set.
I was reminded of something Michael Ignatieff wrote, that the left has permanently crippled itself by buying into an anti-Bush, oppositional, conflict theory, conspiratorial way of thinking about the world. Oppressed minorities are good at complaining, but blind griping erases the ability to rule. From our Baha'i viewpoint, both houses, right and left, are cursing themselves by kicking away at Adolph Nobody, which paradoxically gives all their power to Adolph. Meanwhile the rights of everybody are elbowed out completely. This "griper's fallacy" has been around since long before there were Marxists. Consider this example of an Adolph Nobody statement by John Adams (Thomas Jefferson's buddy) that, while having a toehold on the truth about absolute, exclusive property, ultimately misses the point about finding a solution to the problem:
"In every society where property exists there will ever be a struggle between rich and poor. Mixed in one assembly, equal laws can never be expected; they will either be made by the members to plunder the few who are rich, or by the influential to fleece the many who are poor."
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