Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Now that Trump is President, what will replace the dying climate crisis narrative?
The replacement scare has to be a comparatively new field, with vast knowledge gaps which can be filled with wild speculation disguised as expert opinion. It must plausibly threaten the lives and security of ordinary people – to attract research funding. The exaggerated risks must have the potential to engage public imagination. The new scare must be radically different from previous scares – otherwise people will see it as recycled CO2 hype (think the methane scare). And the new scare must have the support of popular culture – Hollywood must get on board, to help spread the fear.
There is a crisis narrative which ticks all these boxes – the rising threat of uncontrolled artificial intelligence.
Hollywood is already well on board with the AI crisis. The following is a list of Hollywood films since year 2000 related to artificial intelligence (original source Wikipedia);
| Year | Count | Movies |
|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 1 | A.I. Artificial Intelligence |
| 2002 | 1 | S1M0NE |
| 2003 | 3 | The Matrix Reloaded, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, The Matrix Revolutions |
| 2004 | 1 | I, Robot |
| 2005 | 1 | The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy |
| 2007 | 1 | Transformers |
| 2008 | 3 | Eagle Eye, Iron Man, WALL-E |
| 2009 | 3 | Terminator Salvation, Moon, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen |
| 2011 | 2 | Real Steel, Transformers: Dark of the Moon |
| 2012 | 3 | Prometheus, Robot & Frank, Total Recall |
| 2013 | 4 | Her, Iron Man 3, The Machine, Pacific Rim |
| 2014 | 7 | Automata, Big Hero 6, Interstellar, Robocop (2014 film), Transcendence, Transformers: Age of Extinction, X-Men: Days of Future Past |
| 2015 | 8 | Ex Machina, Chappie, Tomorrowland, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Terminator Genisys, aka Terminator 5, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Uncanny, Psycho-pass: The Movie |
| 2016 | 3 | Max Steel, Morgan, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story |
| 2017 | 2 (so far) | Ghost in the Shell (2017 film), Transformers: The Last Knight |
It is difficult to gauge overall interest in AI. From the graph at the top of this article, the number of people entering two key AI related search terms is substantially down from a peak in 2004 (the earliest date Google provides search term data), but may again be on the rise.
The last month or so there appears to be a lot of press interest in AI – I’ve seen a lot of news articles recently which discuss the potential for artificial intelligence to impact the lives of ordinary people.
For example (just from the last few days);
How artificial intelligence can be corrupted to repress free speech
Big firms embrace artificial intelligence
Australia’s big businesses are embracing artificial intelligence (AI), with two-thirds planning to replace jobs…
Scientists advising the US military say fears of an AI existential threat are ‘uninformed’
Mulling the Economic Effect of Artificial Intelligence Many executives and economists said they believe the technology will end up creating more new jobs than it displaces …
Artificial Intelligence to Drive China VC Investments in 2017
There has been a lot of speculation that artificial intelligence might prevent President Trump from restoring middle class prosperity.
Commentary: Shift to automation may prevent Trump from delivering on his jobs promise
As the election results rolled in last night, it became increasingly clear that America — and the world — would never be the same. The American people overlooked all of Republican nominee Donald Trump’s faults and elected him to office in the belief that he will fix the nation’s deep-seated problems of inequity and injustice. And they rebelled against the business interests and corruption that they believed Hillary Clinton represented.
Trump’s victory was enabled by technology — everything from his use of social media to Clinton’s email scandals to Russian hacking. But advancements in technology and how they reshape our economy may also keep him from delivering on some of the major promises that made him so popular during the campaign season.
…
Read more http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-trump-biz-tech-automation-robots-jobs-20161109-story.html
Is artificial intelligence a real threat to security and prosperity? The beauty of speculating about such an unknown field is that nobody really knows. AI driven weapons might remove human conscience from the battlefield. Runaway AIs superseding their software constraints could wreak havoc, causing environmental catastrophe, maybe even completely destroying the world. Artificial intelligence threatens to permanently eliminate jobs, by raising the skills bar impossibly high, driving workers and the middle class into state dependency and financial ruin. But similar things have been said about almost every major historical technological advance – and have always turned out to be hype.
Artificial intelligence has good potential to frighten politicians into funding lots of expensive but inconclusive studies. Since strong AI doesn’t exist yet, all opinions about the future of artificial intelligence are highly speculative – which is why I am calling artificial intelligence as the next eco-scare, the true heir to the failed CO2 scare.
Evidence that climate issue is not serious?
Ross the burden us is on the person proclaiming that there is a threat to provide the proof. The null is always assumed as default.
AI is something to be concerned about. But no more than badly programmed code for simple embedded systems that are used in systems that manage or control human safety. The issue is that implementations in charge of something like a missile with a warhead if programmed badly enough could be very dangerous. If there is anything peculiar about an AI system is that the multitude or permutations can not be tested bacause they cannot possibly all be known. So their should be some concern
No AI could ever be testable.
Try, the Kobayashi Maru test ala Star Trek …
Proton decay probability is increased unfocused psychic emanations. Only hope is for universal submission to thought adjustment (elites exempted).
More research funding is demanded.
is increased by…
I think there are a few things missing that AI doesn’t fill.
There’s no excuse for others to grab power and authority. I mean, what could they claim needs to done? Shut down Microsoft? Eradicate “smart phones”?
There’s also nothing to really give “the scared” the sense that they can personally “do something” about it. I mean, what could they do? Go back to using DOS?
And a biggie is that there’s no scapegoat that needs to be controlled.
“I mean, what could they claim needs to done?”
Well I suppose we’d need to look for motive; the question isn’t what they could claim, it’s why.
It’s understandable a group that had an AI might want to keep others from having one. They might make developing an AI without permission a crime. First you convince the general population that someone might turn the Frankenstein Monster loose on the world, then you get permission from them to toss anyone you don’t like in jail.
It’s a pretty old formula.
Ever read “Animal Farm” or seen the animated version? (The end of the animated version differs from the book.)
The motive is always profit, power, control. For the “enlightened”. They know better.
If you like your Turkey, you can get your Turkey.
Oxygen Depletion.
Useless Surplus Oxygen Depleters, or Useless SODs, need to be banished to confined spaces, such as unventilated prison cells, so they understand what it feels like, for every one else, to have them around.
Nitrogen depletion. Like in Falling Angels.
Whenever I read these types of articles about the threat to jobs by AI, I seem to get this mental image of the origination of the word ‘sabotage’ — with French workers throwing their shoes into machinery because the machines ‘threatened’ their jobs.
It depends how you define AI.
One thing I know: my field of software development is going to be increasingly automated over the next decade or so. It’ll take a bit longer to get into designing UX, which is where I’m focused, but it’ll happen. I could rage against it, but I’ve decided I’d have a better time working myself into a position where I tell the AI what to do.
Back in the day, we used to lovingly hand code the critical bits of DSP code in assembly.
These days, given the increased complexity of DSP chips, it is impossible to code more efficiently than the tools because of all the concurrent processes. That doesn’t mean the jobs have gone away. A quick google shows lots of Embedded Programming and Embedded Systems Architect jobs. I don’t remember when Embedded Systems Architect jobs became a thing, but they sure are a thing now. What I think has happened is that a job once done by humble programmers has become a lot more complex.
In other words, the jobs haven’t gone away but they have become a lot more complex.
There are really jobs open for assembly programmers? That’s news to me, I guess I should put out my paper. I used to write assembler when I was with NASA, probably hasn’t changed much since then 🙂
Maybe I’ll “come out” of retirement. What are they paying for experienced assembly programmers these days? I have dogs to walk, I won’t be cheap…
“my field of software development is going to be increasingly automated over the next decade or so.”
I remember people saying that back in the 80s: managers would write requirements and a program would generate the code to do what they needed.
Instead, we have far more software developers now than we did back then, because we have far more software. And the amount is only going to increase.
Some employers are looking for assembly as part of a skill set but I haven’t met an assembly-only programmer in a long time.
The basic skill in the embedded world is C. It really is the lingua franca for chips. If you’re looking for inspiration for an embedded project, check out these Arduino user projects.
were stuffed then..
no modern plastic shoe is going to do much but get shredded itself;-)
hey
a whole new market for Sabot?
I was really hoping for gravity shortages as in we are using up gravity faster than the earth can replace it. There would need to be a big gravity conservation tax controlled by the UN and a big effort to reduce the population.
Did you know that Canada, with less than 0.5% of the world population, utilizes more than 6% of the worlds Land-Mass-Gravity Allotment (LMGA).
In addition they (Canada) work “their” gravity for energy production and hydroelectric projects, on a per capita basis, more than almost all other countries.
Iceland, Greenland, Australia, Falkland Islands, and Svalbard are are also responsible for utilizing more than their fair share (based on any standard metric) of the worlds gravity. These countries also have the common trait that they are all significantlly above the median income measure as compared to all other countries.
Given the relative high incomes of the the typical countries that abuse (or even take unfair advantage of) the natural LMGA, there should indeed be some effort by the UN to protect our shared gravitational resource … we can’t just make more.
The Horror. The horror…
DonM, the best one yet, with reasonable assertion.
You are underestimating the ability of NGOs and the Green Mafia to keep enough graft in play over the next 4 years concerning AGW.
What to do
What to do
Knute asks: “What to do”
[sound of Lord Krill’s eyepiece swinging over left eye]
“We die”
— Lord Krill, “The Last Starfighter”, 1984
I agree with Knute. Rumors about the death of climate change are premature. All it takes is a hot spell, a damaging hurricane, or unusual weather of any kind for them to resurrect it and urgently demand funding to prevent our imminent demise. Unlike past scares that petered out, this one is tailor made to live forever. It may hibernate for a season, but any unusual weather will immediately awaken it from its nap.
Of course, just because they have one reliable crisis to promote doesn’t mean they won’t invent others. Nothing brings in funding like alarming the masses. So, during quiet periods between extreme weather events, they will alarm us with whatever potential crisis they can dream up. Crying wolf hasn’t hurt them yet. The public has a surprisingly short memory.
Self driving cars. That should fill in he blanks.
You mean it’s only a pause?
IBM WATSON for next president
Nah… I’d vote for HAL from 2001.
That 1968 movie is the first one I can remember that embedded AI, but I’m not sure that was the trendy term back then.
Here’s a thought: why don’t we manufacture this crisis, and get in on the ground floor of funding? We would only accept monies from all those morally pure leftist funding sources.
To make the narrative complete, we must add in AI/robot rights as and make this an unhuman rights crisis.
Google “robot rights” and you get 2,470,000 hits. I shan’t list them all here…
Support Unhuman Rights!™
I like the way you think. 🙂
Show me the money.
Well let’s see they did the global cooling scare and the global warming scare. So how about a “Climate Sameness ” scare. You see the climate has always been changing, but now it’s not, and its all our fault. Oh no! We’re all gonna die from the unrelenting boredom of Climate Sameness.
Oops, no img.
http://codinglair.com/image/toocold.jpg
🙂
Roy
Many smiles!
Auto
But they don’t say which Thursday!
We old people remember well the same threats back in the 60’s and 70’s. There was even a movie about a computer that raped and inseminated a woman.
The AI technology of the 70s did not have cheap gigahertz processors, terabyte memories and gigabit/second networks to work on. Current AI technology does. A simple AI task can be dispatched at fiber optic speed to massive data centers anywhere in the world today. Do not underestimate the potential of these intelligent systems.
” a computer that raped and inseminated a woman.”
That was my ex-wife’s excuse
Kurt Vonnegut–Player Piano. Read it in about 63-64, still “haunts” me
Forgetting “Scares” just for a moment, my HOPE is that we can concentrate on diverting all the monies and efforts (hitherto devoted to Climate Alarmism) to more more pressing needs (the likes of which have been well enumerated by Lomborg et al).
While automation does eliminate some jobs, it also makes the products being created cheaper.
To a degree this cheapness means that fewer people need jobs. (Or at least, full time jobs)
Even better, the cheapness means people buy more of other things and put their money into other investments, thereby, the economy grows. That is, robots just make the pie get BIGGER. With BETTER jobs for the average citizen.
As Bill Marsh points out here, https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/21/the-next-eco-scare-story/comment-page-1/#comment-2403514m,
the only ones who have reason to fear robots are: labor unions.
Or, rather, inflexible, ignorant, laborers like the ones mentioned by Mr. Marsh (and unions if state is not a right-to-work one).
Janice I am with you on that one.
The evolution of 3D printing will create an interesting set of manufacturing and service jobs. I think people will work less in future. They simply won’t have to.
If you look at societies with low land availability they farm ever smaller portions ever more intensively. Many people would like to do that while having a job as well. The future will be a lot more comfortable and healthier than the past. In other words, the trend will continue. The ‘threat’ is a highly defective economic order dominated for 100 years by two versions of greed (the Left and the Right) and a unbelievable corrupt banking system. An economic order is a reflection of human understanding, not a cause of it. Thus peddling an economic ‘system’ as a cure for anything defective in the human condition is a risky enterprise. The condition in the human heart precedes all development. Metaphorically, that which makes us human is not the cart, it is the horse.
The problem as I see it is not a shortage of jobs, but an increasing number of unemployed people incapable of doing those jobs. There are multitudes of people very competent to mow yards who could never be able to build robotic lawn mowers, regardless of how much training or education you give them. The intellect is simply not there. We will likely need some low-skilled labor for a long time, but maybe not that much. What do you do with the others? Resentment will build on both sides – with those who do not work resenting what those who do can have, and those who work resenting supporting those who do not.
I seem to remember a story about a massive construction job in India. A foreigner observed hundreds of people carrying baskets of dirt to level the site. Amazed, he exclaimed, “Backhoes and earthmovers would be far cheaper, and the work done much faster. What’s going on?”
The reply was, “Our people need money to live. Just giving it to them creates too much anger in society. So we give them jobs.” This is not a new problem, and we know this is just a bandaid solution. A long-term solution does not exist.
The rich vs poor meme could be what replaces AGW. While it’s couched in terms of the rich exploiting the poor, that’s not necessarily the story. Many just cannot contribute to today’s society in a meaningful way. They will always earn next to nothing. Automation will drastically increase the numbers making up that group. There are only two ways to stop the rich (which could soon be defined as anyone with a job) from becoming richer; a totally stagnant economy in which all progress stops, or taking from them and giving it to the poor. Neither of those solutions will resonate well with society. I see no good solution.
Crispin I think you discount the complexities of our universe when you assert “I think people will work less in future. They simply won’t have to.”
It depends on the idea someone will come up with the perfect recipe for printing a New York steak, in all it’s infinite variability. Will AI(s) be writing music meaningful to humans? Cooking the best bouillabaisse you’ve ever had? Sailing your boat for you? Flying your plane? Some things just can’t be done by someone else and there is no provably unique solution, even for a smart machine?
It will take awhile to get humans out of the loop.
Bartleby
Someone is already flying the plane.
Ships: Rolls Royce [and others] are working on autonomous ships.
Music; bouillabaisse – not yet [AFAIK].
Auto – still the oxygen depleting unit [but recently producing methane . . . . Diet??]
Auto, I wasn’t suggesting the plane couldn’t be flown, or the ship sailed.
I was suggesting no one can do either for you.
it is not just AI but all of the related technology that can be put together to create real world applications. Speech recognition and natural language processing technologies are becoming practical. Spoken queries can be presented to an expert system like IBM Watson and spoken answers provided. Help desk experts will be automated out of jobs. The list goes on and on. These systems are replacing legal associates in analyzing discovery material. They are better at looking for malignancies than human radiologists.
So what is going to happen? The jobs that are being automated are not minimum wage jobs. High paying technical and professional jobs are being automated.
What could Trump do about this. The EU makes a distinction between “technical”and “administrative” technologies. “administrative” technologies cannot be patented. What they ar is very vague but in brief any technology that can automate a human level job is “administrative”. This is the European response which is to adopt the Luddite strategy to try to prevent these technologies from becoming prevalent. Naturally this won’t work but will Trump try something similar.
TAG
Very interesting. Around Waterloo there are man Mennonite communities. They tend to pick levels of automation that ensure everyone has a job and is productive. That is why some still uses horses and reap with scythes. They wear clothes made with modern material, but are quite choosy about what modernizations they accept. It is a voluntary choice. I have seen CNC lasers in the barn and oil lamps in the house. What is touted as ‘civilisation’ often isn’t.
An example of jobs in manufacturing disappearing is the decision by Steve Jobs to change the iPhone screen from plastic to glass, at the last minute – 6 weeks before launch. To do it he gave the entire business to China and famously told the president that these jobs “are going and never coming back”. Apple made $26 extra per phone – being the cost of assembly difference due to wages. A 5% higher RMB or a 5% import tax would level the playing field.
The USA is very competitive in manufacturing – make no mistake. So is Germany. I have been told in Africa by manufacturers that German production is 20 times as labour-efficient as South Africa production, for example. ‘Cheap labour’ isn’t cheap if the labourer is ineffective, inefficient, or uncommitted, or can’t be disciplined.
German ‘labourers’ are often German, but they create so many jobs they have to import hundreds of thousands of workers from other countries. Is that the current USA situation? Not by a long shot. Why?
One approach is to raise the exploitative wages in low-cost production centres. There is a clothing manufacturing mafia/cartel that absolutely shafts the workers – and they are all in on it, meaning they work as a ‘guild’ to pay a pittance. That cannot be solved unilaterally, it requires international trade agreements that prevent exploitation, not secret international agreements that extend it.
It is not very difficult to establish the worthiness of actions:
Is it the TRUTH?
Is it FAIR to all concerned?
Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
https://my.rotary.org/en/learning-reference/about-rotary/guiding-principles
The US workers have a right to that too.
I don’t think the EU’s definition of “administrative” will hinder AI, since it wouldn’t really be possible to patent an AI anyway. You could perhaps patent a mechanism the AI is constructed with (the hardware, some of the software) but in the end an AI will fall under copyright protection (much better than a patent BTW if it could be done). It may become difficult proving infringement though since even a direct copy of an AI will likely diverge rapidly from its source. The tech used to develop AI now isn’t deterministic (well, it’s deterministic but it isn’t predictable. Sort of like the weather).
Maybe someday humans will invent deterministic intelligence. I’m not holding my breath.
Thinking a bit more, in today’s world it’s the weighting vectors that are valuable in an AI. Maybe that’s the reason behind Musk (& cadre) pushing “open AI”, the software that uses the weights then becomes unimportant, but it never was anyway.
So then we get into something a lot like DNA testing for parenthood. To what degree is the “soul” of an AI similar to another one? What past experiences do they share?
This could become interesting.
We can expect hysterical campaigns to “Save the Endangered Species” in Hollywood and Universities of Oxford, Pennsylvania and East Anglia, etc.
Like a hydra, the CO2 climate hustle still has plenty of heads that haven’t been cut off. Too much money for the hustlers is still on the table for them to just walk away accepting defeat.
No. they are just falling back, and will try to regroup with another IPCC AR (if they can w/o US govt support) or some other venue like a double down on the Ozone Hole Hustle.
With the dissapation of the 2015-16 ElNino, and solar minimum, were in for a few cooler years that will keep the climate hustlers on defense, but they will be back.
and if the climate hustle hustle does fully collapse, my money is not on AI, but on another Cold War this time with a real nuclear threat from rogue actors Iran and NK.
As long as someone keeps paying them. If not, eventually they’ll either find useful work or starve.
Follow –> the –> money………….. and you will find your answer.
“Peak oil” is still out there drooling and bellowing its nonsense designed to promote profiteering.
I think we recently hit “Peak stupid.” It can only get better from here . . .
Not too many years ago when oil prices peaked, I swear, everyone who was anyone in the industry was saying that we will never see oil below 100$ a barrel again. This time it’s different. The end of cheap oil ect..
The big scare has to be something existential – a threat to the very foundations of society or the ecosystem. Threats to ‘life as we know it.’ I see two candidates: religion and genetic modification.
The ‘materialist religion’ is that collection of memes which drives Western ‘culture’ and proponents of materialism (you are what you own) took over all large media by the end of the 20th Century. The major philosophical themes permitted to reach the public are all about ‘life is a fortunate accident’ and ‘morality and ethics are arbitrary constructs susceptible to radical change at the will of the community’.
On the one hand, while the physical universe is accepted to have hard limits, like the properties of a proton, the human universe is held to be infinitely mutable. On the other is the view that humanity is in permanent need of a Divine Educator because without it, we descend into, and are lost in, the animal world.
The key plays will be ‘What is moral?’ and “We humans have no right to…” The Us/Them split is already there to be exploited. Lots of opportunities exist for ‘othering’ and hate speech. Cheerleaders for the faithful already exist on both sides. Internecine squabbling will split and weaken them all. With much less money at stake, it will be easier to become physical.
Unnoticed in all this will be the risks posed by artificial currencies. That will be the thief in the night. One morning, you will own nothing.
The radical greens will continue to make genetics their pony. You can make any claim at all for the risks. It presents endless opportunities for scare tactics and disinformation. Diseases and bad genes abound. It is easy to imagine a catastrophe such as the loss of the Jallikattu cattle genes for A2 casein proteins in their reputedly hypoallergenic milk ‘closing the door’ on the prevention of numerous diseases. There are big badly behaved corporations to oppose with chained hands and vials of blood. The red, yellow and blue team marchers will love that fight.
Crispin, first I’d like to say I’ve always considered the way you think dangerous. No joke. Irony perhaps, but no joke.
If I had to bet, I’d take genetic engineering. It already has a firm attachment to the Eco-Nuts in the anti-GMO food movement and it shouldn’t be difficult to expand its core of support. It shares many of the aspects of AI from a religious and physical threat perspective; both involve creating an uncontrollable force posing an existential threat humans.
GMOs have the added benefit of a revenue stream consumed by an evil industry, not unlike the petrochemical industry, in fact remarkably similar since both are fields of organic chemistry. What’s not to like about Monsanto, DuPont or Dow Chemical? All of these deep pockets can be easily extorted. They’re guilty in the public eye already. Why shouldn’t they pay reparations to poor Elbonia?
Yep, I think you’ve tossed out two very likely picks. I’m going with genetic engineering over AI. By a large margin.
Crispin-
Count me in for genetically modified food being the next scare also. It’s the developed countries fault, it can be taxed, and people can individually do something to save the world (don’t eat GMF’s). Sarc/on: And best of all, it will keep the poorest people poor, because the world bank would not loan money to countries that tried to use GM crops to improve their agricultural output. For their own good, of course. Sarc/off.
No contest. First: Asteroid strike. Second: Yellowstone mega-eruption. Either one should be good for trillions of dollars.
Believe it or not, a SF writer in my town honest-to-goodness addressed the Rotary Club one evening last week about “Asteroid Awareness.” I am NOT making this up! Pity I don’t tweet, I’d have asked if perhaps he’d gotten “asteroid” and “hemmorrhoid” confused.
Actually we should be more aware of asteroids and the orbital mechanics thereof. Not only for collision avoidance, asteroids will be a major source of raw materials when we finally get our collective sh*t together and get off this planet in a major way. Tracking them will allow us to do mining and capture operations. Again, once we get our collective sh*t together and get off this planet in a major way.
Yellowstone mega-eruption? Nope. I’m not buying it. Not even Greenpeace and The Sierra Club combined with the National Audubon Society could mobilize suburban soccer moms for that cause. Not going to happen. You’d need to find people who actually cared about NW Wyoming and SW Montana. Idaho Falls. Think about this? Aside from the people who live in Idaho Falls (and their immediate relatives) who cares about it? Idaho Falls could be sucked into space by alien tractor beams and almost no one would notice. My the folks in Blackfoot.
No, I don’t think a Yellowstone Mega-Eruption makes the list.
“Maybe the folks in Blackfoot. ”
Left out the middle of the word. I don’t do that unless I’m really excited.
Well if it’s the mega-eruption that is expected sometime in the next twenty-thousand years or so (could be next week but not likely) USGS thinks it will affect everything across the country to the east coast. Think Tambora or Krakatoa. So a lot of people will care about it, when it happens. There was at least one disaster-movie about it. The last Yellowstone eruption was pretty big – much, much, much bigger than the puny Mt St Helens eruption. Visit Yellowstone and see the size of the caldera from that one…..
Puny? Hey! I flew through the dust plume of St. Helens and I tell that story often at cocktail parties. You’re stealing my flash here!
Chris, I sold my house south of the caldera last year, July 2015. I have to admit the caldera wasn’t a compelling reason, but I still feel a bit better now all of my real property is locate withing 100 miles of the San Andreas fault. A lot better really.
I’ve seen the Yellowstone caldera. It has seen me. We’re on equal terms. I generally don’t make plans based on movies, if I did “That Movie About a Big Rock Crashing Into the Earth” would have caused me to move to Mars.
Honestly, there are some things I just don’t find it productive to worry about.
But how do you leverage a future natural mega-disaster to support to control people’s lives? The crisis they need has to somehow be “our fault”.
our failure to exploit clean geothermal energy in the Yellowstone basin and thus relieve the incredible volcanic pressures.
Maybe the next scare is actually a current legit reality. The effect of electronics on human behavior.
With children, the addiction to their electronics and games has been called “digital or electronic heroin”. Many of us older humans that use the internet for educational purposes can appreciate what life was like back in the “dark ages” before the information highway allowed us to become enlightened in almost any field known to mankind. However, if one observes fellow humans in public……in lunch rooms for instance or in private………at social settings, when eating or interacting with other humans used to rule, one finds that use of electronic devices takes up at least a portion of that time.
Don’t get me wrong, this is the best time in human history to live our lives……by a wide margin. The science, medicine, machines. knowledge and technology provide comforts, entertainment and enlightenment far beyond what our ancestors could imagine.
However, we are also living in a massive electronic device laboratory, especially with our children. Personal and social interacting and face to face, human to human interactions are becoming less and less……….being replaced more and more with social media, forum, Facebook/Twitter type communicating on the internet.
This is awesome as it amplifies our ability to communicate by many thousands of times and at the speed of light. At the same time, it’s causing us to slowly morph into a society that is not just dependent and addicted to our electronic devices but also profoundly effected by the sites which we are drawn too.
These sites, which are unlimited and represent every element of every realm in society are often dedicated to specific information or uses. This is good because it offers something for everyone. It has the potential, when used constructively for us to become better informed and educated.
But humans have cognitive biases and with the freedom to choose on the internet, we will more often than not, pick arena’s that surround us with things that reinforce our belief systems and make us comfortable. One only needs to look at the intensity of the political divisiveness that has taken over to see the effects in our world today.
There are also numerous entities that understand this and use these powerful tools effectively with propaganda/fake news and ideologies to recruit and and brainwash those that are attracted to sites that feature an environment favorable to a certain belief/position.
There are also a great deal of sites which do not operate with the intention of “brainwashing” but are only a meeting places for like minded people. Like minded people exchanging ideas is often the recipe for their opinions to be reinforced……….even when they are flawed.
What would have to happen to cause it to go the other way or even to stop? Logically we must assume that this trend will continue. The communication tools will only become more powerful, so the effects will increase.
Our children are growing up knowing only this as their reality. As these profoundly different realities vs previous generations continue to get dialed into behavior(s), we will see more and more profound changes.
Some are good, some are bad.
Good post.
Those young whippersnappers are ruining the planet by demonizing CO2 and fossil fuels desperately needed by over one billion extremely poor people with no electricity.
I blame brainwashing by leftist teachers in public schools.
At least the internet gives children an opportunity to read alternative views and then question authority.
Outstanding insight Mike. I’ll be spending more time thinking about this. All at once, the technology has made it possible to discuss any subject with anyone in the world, but the conversation is both directed (often by a search engine) and self-selecting.
Back in the early 90’s sociologists called it “cocooning”; walking into an echo chamber and shutting the door behind you. The advent of cable TV prompted that analysis I think. Folks could choose from a much larger pool of ideas once they had 500+ channels to pick from, so they chose those channels that reinforced their belief system. The internet multiplied the effect really bigly.
Now the risk of meeting someone you don’t agree with is very much reduced. If you communicate on Facebook (or WUWT) for example, you aren’t likely to meet much ideological opposition, yes?
I have no idea how it will all work out either, but it will be interesting. Hopefully not a Stephen King novel.
Excellent post! I think Anthony should let you do a stand alone article on this. With your permission I would like to cut&paste this post and send it over to my wife, break her out of her Steeler Fixation for a bit. We have talked on this subject a bit in the past and she has always been interested in the effects of advertising and media use/abuse on population.
Genetic engineering accidently creates a virus that stops aging and within 5 years we will be under 6 feet of flies and mice. Be very afraid. I have seen the future.
Ha! Nematodes!
It seems that big Government and main stream media always have a way of combining forces to invent a “Bogey Man” to keep the populace distracted from real problems. They likely didn’t want us to know how inept their leadership quality usually was.
Long ago as a kid in school I remember talk of a coming ice age, possibly as a distraction while the life and death struggle of capitalism versus communism roared behind the scenes.
Next we had imminent nuclear war, with contrasting hope provided by a successful space program. There always had to be a looming disaster to keep us distracted from the true issues at hand. Remember Y2K?
While IA will become a significant issue soon, there is a clear and present threat to security and freedom that .must be met head-on, and soon.
It is radical religion and terrorism.
There are some bad, bad actors out there, and their ability to do horrific things to us is a frightening reality.
The fictional series by Kenneth R Loomis on geo-politics and terrorism was an eye-opener for me.
Still striving to find out what on earth you might be talking about.
Bogey Man is a fellow who likes Humphrey Bogart movies
Boogie Man is a fellow who likes boogie woogie piano music
Boogeyman is the word I believe you wanted to use.
We must be very careful with the words we choose, just like the leftists are oh, so careful.
If we write Bogey Man, or Boogie Man, when we really meant boogeyman,
then readers might get confused, especially leftists, who start out half confused
when they wake up every morning !
One must not write:
“Global warming is the current Bogey Man” (promoted by leftist scaremongers).
The correct words are:
“Climate change is the current boogeyman” (promoted by leftist scaremongers).
Richard Greene writes:
Richard, I’d argue the correct words are closer to: “Climate change is the current boogeyman as promoted by authoritarian, totalitarian, dictatorial scaremongers who prefer to be called Progressives (in a pinch Socialists, but never Communists or Fascists).”
Boogerman works as well.
“Welllll, if I had a big horse pistol like that I wouldn’t be scared of no boogerman!!!”
“I”m not scared of no Booger man”
… can’t match John Wayne’s delivery though.
““Welllll, if I had a big horse pistol like that I wouldn’t be scared of no boogerman!!!””
John Wayne, “True Grit”, both times. (the second one doesn’t count).
I must give honorable mention to the campy sci-fi classic, “Cherry 2000”, starring Melanie Griffith. Made in 1987, the story is set far into the future. IMDB says, “In the year 2017, When successful businessman Sam Treadwell finds that his android wife, Cherry model 2000 has blown a fuse….” We’re here!