proportions, and probability in real time and realize that, no, a few people
getting shot in the far corners of the globe does not have any bearing on you,
no matter how scary it looks on TV; that most “crises” are statistically
insignificant and/or just noise; and that most real crises are too slow-moving
and unexciting to get the attention they deserve.
I dare to hope that education will get a much-needed facelift,
incorporating not only therapeutic practices to help children with their
emotional development, but also letting them run around and scrape their
knees and get into all sorts of trouble. Children are the kings and queens of
antifragility, the masters of pain. It is we who are afraid.
I dare to hope that the oncoming catastrophes of climate change and
automation are mitigated, if not outright prevented, by the inevitable
explosion of technology wrought by the impending AI revolution; that some
dumb fuck with a nuke doesn’t obliterate us all before that happens; and that a
new, radical human religion doesn’t emerge that convinces us to destroy our
own humanity, as so many have done before.
I dare to hope that AI hurries along and develops some new virtual reality
religion that is so enticing that none of us can tear ourselves away from it long
enough to get back to fucking and killing each other. It will be a church in the
cloud, except it will be experienced as one universal video game. There will
be offerings and rites and sacraments just as there will points and rewards and
progression systems for strict adherence. We will all log on, and stay on,
because it will be our only conduit for influencing the AI gods and, therefore,
the only wellspring that can quench our insatiable desire for meaning and
hope.
Groups of people will rebel against the new AI gods, of course. But this
will be by design, as humanity always needs factious groups of opposing
religions, for this is the only way for us to prove our own significance. Bands
of infidels and heretics will emerge in this virtual landscape, and we will
spend most of our time battling and railing against these various factions. We
will seek to destroy one another’s moral standing and diminish each other’s
accomplishments, all the while not realizing that this was intended. The AI,
realizing that the productive energies of humanity emerge only through
conflict, will generate endless series of artificial crises in a safe virtual realm,
where that productivity and ingenuity can then be cultivated and used for
some greater purpose we won’t ever know or understand. Human hope will be
harvested like a resource, a never-ending reservoir of creative energy.
We will worship at AI’s digitized altars. We will follow their arbitrary
rules and play their games not because we’re forced to, but because they will
be designed so well that we will want to.