Technology, Humanity, and the Existential Test


Can we govern ourselves? Will we?

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These questions beg a simpler one: What makes us human?




How will it turn out?





4 thoughts on “Technology, Humanity, and the Existential Test”

  1. As i read this and think about the question can we govern ourselves? where are we headed? i cant help but think about the story of the frog and the scorpion. If one has never heard it, it goes like this… a scorpion is on the edge of a river bank and ask the frog, “can you carry me to the other side.” The frog says, “oh no because you’ll sting me and i’ll die” to which the scorpion replies, “that wont happen because if i sting you i’ll drown too”. The frog thinks about it and says, “OK”. Half way across the river the frog feels a terrible sting in his side and says, “mr scorpion, why have you stung me, now we will both drown”, to which the scorpion replies, “i couldn’t help it, it’s in my NATURE!”. As much as we may try to fight our nature, universal law says eventually you will succumb to your nature and that is not even necessarily bad in the big picture (though we may think it is), you were designed with that nature for a reason. Perhaps one we cant even see. Can’t help but to be a bit of a philosopher when you read John’s articles! Of course my dad would reply, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin” 🙂

  2. I am reminded of Frederick Bastiat’s treatise the Law (written at the time of the French revolution) which basically holds that we are ordained to use whatever resource that is available to better ourselves as long as we don’t interfere with someone else’s right to do the same. The governance of that process is the basis for law. In the age of technology perhaps the evolution of government is the maturation of open source and blockchain which will allow individuals to combine to make decisions that are good for specific ends and then disband only to come together to solve some other problem. This begs the question of centralization vs. decentralization – I can’t think of any lasting centralized decision process. I believe an answer worth testing is decentralized community decision making. There might always need to be some type of overiding arbitration process to interpret “fairness” but I am not entirely sure how it would work. The United States and its Constitution appears to be the latest pre-algorithm attempt to address the issue however imperfectly.

  3. “We call these systems government. It is imperfect but… it’s better than anarchy.”

    I believe you misrepresent anarchy. It is not chaos. It is self governance. I personally believe it is fairer, more efficient, and arrives at far better outcomes than any of the systems of authoritarianism that have thus far dominated governance (if you can call it that) since our shift to agriculture.

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