Cutting the Hype

These days it is all but impossible to open the Net without stumbling over zillions of references to artificial intelligence (AI). What it is; the things it can and will do; the good things it will bring about; the fortunes it will make for those willing and able to make the fullest use of it; and, above all, the disasters which, thanks to God the Computer and His human acolytes, are just around the corner and, unless countered in time, may yet bring about the destruction of mankind.

In what follows, I want to cut the hype a little by providing a very brief list of some of those things. And, on the way, explain why, in my view, either their impact has been vastly exaggerated or they will not happen at all.

Claim: AI can and will make countless workers superfluous. The outcome will be massive unemployment with all its concomitant problems. Such as a impoverishment, a growing cleavage between rich and poor, class struggles, political upheavals, uprisings, revolutions, civil warfare, and what not.

Rebuttal: Much the same was said and written about the first computers around 1970, the first industrial robots during the 1950s, and so on backward in time all the way to the first steam engines during the first few decades of the 19th century in particular. Fear of technologically-generated unemployment may indeed be tracked back to the Roman Emperor Vespasian (reigned, 69-79 CE) who had the inventor of a labor-saving device executed for precisely that reason. World-wide, during the almost 2,000 years since then, employment has often gone up and down. However, taking 1900 as our starting line, not one of the greatest upheavals—not National Socialism, not the Chinese Revolution not decolonization, not feminism, to list just three—has been due mainly, let alone exclusively, to technological change. As my teacher, Jacob Talmon, used to say: I know all that stuff about history, anonymous political, economic, social, cultural, and, yes, technological forces. But, absent Lenin, do you really think the Russian Revolution would have taken place?

Claim: AI and the ability to manipulate and spread information of every kind (spoken, written, in the form of images) will make it much harder, perhaps impossible, to distinguish truth from falsehood, honesty from fraud.

Rebuttal: True. But so did the invention, first of speech, then of writing (see on this Yuval Harari Sapiens, which helped inspire this post), then of print, then of newspapers, then of photography, then of film, then of the telegraph, then of electronic media such as radio and TV. Every one of them was open to abuse by means of adding material, subtracting material, and plain faking. And every one of them often has been and still is being so abused day by day. Long before the invention of “intellectual property” thieves and counterfeiters were forging ahead. Photoshop and Deepfake themselves are computer-generated. But what one computer can generate another can counter; at least in principle.

Claim: In the military field, AI will help make war much more deadly and much more destructive.

Rebuttal: The same was said and written about previous inventions such as the machine gun, the aircraft, and the submarine. Not to mention dynamite which its inventor, Alred Nobel (yes, he of the Prize) hoped would be so deadly as to cause war to be abolished). In fact, though, it is not technology alone but politics, economics and various social factors—above all, the willingness of individuals and groups to fight and, if necessary, die—that will govern the deadliness and destructiveness of future war, just as they have done in the past. Caesar’s conquest of Gaul is said to have caused the death of a million people. Tamerlane in the fourteenth century wiped out perhaps 17 million. And even that is easily overshadowed by the number Genghis Khan, using nothing more sophisticated than captured mechanical siege engines, killed a century and a half earlier. Here I want to repeat a statement I have often made before: namely that the one invention that has really changed war, and will continue to make its impact felt in all future wars to come, is nukes.

Claim: AI will put an end to art and artists.

Rebuttal: A little more than a century ago, the same was said and written about film bringing about the end of the theater. Starting almost two centuries ago, the same was said and written about photography sounding the death-knell of painting. Need I add that photography and film, far from causing art to disappear, have themselves turned into a very important art forms?

Claim: “AI-powered image and video analysis tools are used for a wide range of social impact applications. They can detect anomalies in medical scans, assess crop health for farmers, and even identify endangered species from camera trap images, aiding conservation efforts.”

Rebuttal: as if all the things, and any number of others like them, were not done long before anyone heard of AI.

Claim: AI has changed/will change “everything.”

Rebuttal: Back in the 1990s, exactly the same things were said of .com. Yet looking back, it would seem that the things that did not change (the impact of poverty, disease, natural disasters, war, old age and death e.g, as well as that of love, friendship, solidarity, patriotism, etc.) are just as important as those that did.

If not more so.

Change and Continuity (Again)

As a few readers may recall, this is the third time I’ve addressed this topic, which has now been haunting me for several years, in this blog. Partly that is because I believe, with Nietzsche, that the fact that everyone thinks something does not prove it is true. If anything, to the contrary. And partly because, if the study of history, to which I have devoted my life, is to go beyond mere incoherent tales and be of any use at all, some things must remain the same.

What I wanted to know is this: against the background of the constant and often tumultuous change that everyone keeps talking about, is there anything that does not and will not change? Originally I hoped to write a book about that question; having already published a volume about the history of man’s attempts to see into the future, at first I thought the task would be fairly easy. Never have I been more mistaken! In the event writing the new book proved to be beyond my powers, at least for the moment. So I let it go, more or less.

Doing some shopping earlier this morning, for some mysterious reason I found myself thinking about the topic. As many others have also noted, often the best ideas seem to come out of nowhere. Especially during exercise; and especially if the exercise is neither too strenuous to allow for thought or too light to make a difference to the heart and lung system in particular. Think of James Watt who had the idea of a separate boiler, leading to the modern steam engine and thus to the industrial revolution, come to him, completely unexpected, during a Sunday walk in Edinburgh Common.

So what I am going to do today is draw up a list, however incomplete and however superficial, of some propositions that, as far as I can see, have been, are and presumably always will remain true. Such as form a sort of skeleton, or chassis, or framework, for social life to hang itself on, so to speak.  As I do so, maybe, just maybe, one thing will lead to another. Until, probably by working by fits and starts, one day I shall have something to say on the topic that is more inclusive, more solid, and more worth publishing in some other suitable format.

*

The laws of physics the laws of physics provide just what I’ve been looking for: namely, a sort of skeleton, or chassis, or framework, for social life to hang itself on. The laws of physics do not change—or else they would not be laws.

*

Emotion, Thought, Knowledge and Understanding

Just how emotion, thought, knowledge and understanding grow out of, and interact with, our biological makeup on one hand and the surrounding physical world is unknown. And unknown it will almost certainly remain until the end of time.

Now as ever, so much of our thought is governed by our cultural background on one hand and wishful thinking on the other as to make “objectivity” very difficult, often all but impossible.

Everyone believes he is the most intelligent, except for a few who agree with him (Thomas Hobbes).

The more we learn about the world, the more numerous and more difficult the questions that present themselves and demand an answer.

Obtaining a good picture of the past is hard enough; obtaining a good picture of the future, all but impossible.

Economic Life

Man does not live by bread—here broadly understood as nutrients of every kind—alone. That said, the need for bread goes a long way—though never all the way—to govern the shape and functioning of every individual and every society. And the other way around.

There never has been a human society whose members, or at any rate many of them, did not produce/work for a living.

Where an army cannot go, an ass loaded with gold will (Philip II, father of Alexander the Great).

Resources, whether in the form of nutrients, or living space, or mates, or allies, or honors, are always limited. Those who pursue them will face competition and pay a price; those who own them will have to defend them.

Prices are governed by the interaction between supply and demand.

Gresham’s law: Bad money will drive out good.

Wealth is always relative. That is why poverty will never disappear from the face of the earth.

Psychology

The essence of life (not just human life, but that is beside the point in the present context) is the quest for growth/power in its endlessly varied forms (Nietzsche). Conversely, when the quest comes to a halt death cannot be very far away.

Freud was right. Not only does the sub-consciousness really exist, but it strongly influences everything we are, think and do.

Given the right circumstances, almost any person on earth is capable of extreme tenderness and extreme cruelty. Not seldom, both.

As often as our senses tell us the truth, they deceive. Ditto, our memory.

Very often, when circumstances prevent us from venting our anger on others we will direct it at ourselves. And vice versa.

The one thing we humans cannot do is sit still and alone in a room and do nothing (Blaise Pascal).

Social Life

Everything in social life is interwoven with everything else and impacts on everything else,

Man is a social animal (said Aristotle). No man can live on his own.

Absolute freedom can only exist in a desert.

If only because they cannot cope on their own, the young are always subject to some kind of education.

No society has ever been, or ever will be, without religion, art, music, fashion, ceremonies, feast days, games, etc.

No society has ever been, nor will be, completely egalitarian in the sense that every one of its members occupies a similar position, owns the same amount of goods, is addressed in the same manner, and always treats all the rest equally.

Politics

Man is the conspiring animal (Lyndon LaRouche).

Politics is the art of the possible (Otto von Bismarck).

It is politics that determine who gets what (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin).

Any government is better than no government (Thomas Hobbes).

Telling truth to power is always difficult, often dangerous.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely (Lord Acton).

Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan.

Had it been possible to open a tyrant’s soul, it would be found covered with scars.

Niccolò Machiavelli: Amidst so many who are bad, how can a good one maintain himself?

Aside: Gender and Sex

Women form half of humanity, and not the least important half.

So powerful and potentially so disruptive is the drive to mate that no society has ever existed that did not do its best to regulate it in one way or another.

Everything about women is a riddle, and the riddle has one solution: pregnancy (Nietzsche).

The relationship between the sexes is highly asymmetrical. The more manly a man, the more women will like him. The more a woman tries to become/behave like a man, the less men will like her (Jean-Jacques Rousseau).

Now as ever, women do most household work. Ditto childcare, nursing, social work, etc.

Society is run by men and strong women (Margaret Mead).

Women on average are smaller, lighter, weaker, less robust and more vulnerable than men. That is why they need the protection of men. Not only does that need go a long way to govern the relationship between men and women, but it guarantees that, in the future as in the past, women will be dependent on men. And, to some extent, subordinate to them.

A man who sacrifices himself for a woman will be admired. A man who allows a woman to sacrifice herself for him will be ridiculed, despised, or both.

A man who competes against a woman and loses, loses. A man who competes against a woman and wins, also loses.

A man’s pleasure is in a woman’s hand (Aristophanes).

Where women are respected, the gods dwell (Hindu proverb).

War

No known human society has ever been, nor ever will be, without some form of legalized group violence. Aka, war.

If you want peace, prepare for war (Roman proverb).

A centralized state is hard to conquer but easy to hold. With a decentralized one the opposite applies (Machiavelli).

Dulce bellum inexpertis (Desiderius Erasmus: sweet is war for those who have not experienced it). But don’t get me wrong: terrible as war is, and precisely for that reason, it can also provide the greatest joy there is.

War is motivated by a combination of interest—hence Clausewitz’s famous dictum—on one hand and emotion on the other. The two can, and sometimes do, pull in opposite directions.

War is a moral and physical struggle waged by means of the latter (Clausewitz again).

The essence of war is fighting around which everything else revolves. No fighting, no war.

The cardinal coordinates of war are violence, pain, danger, fatigue, uncertainty and friction.

War is a duel on an extended scale. Ancient or modern, large or small, it is governed by the rules of strategy just as many games are.

The principles of war—intelligence, deception, surprise, concentration, economy of force, and the like—are eternal. Not one of them has changed, and not one of them ever will.

The larger the distance between base and front, the more expensive and the more difficult waging war becomes.

Other things equal, the stronger form of war is the defense. Still, no war has ever been won by a pure defense.

A stream of water pouring out of a bucket will only spread for so long before coming to a halt. Similarly, attackers only have limited time at their disposal. Either they win within that time, or else they will be forced on the defense. For the defender, provided only he can hold out long enough, the opposite is the case.

A sword, plunged into salt water, will rust!

The longer a war, the less profitable it is likely to be.

Only the dead will see the end of war.

*

Given these and tens of thousands of other truths, how can anyone seriously maintain that nothing ever changes?

Where Does All That Put AI?

At some time between 2,000,000 and 500,000 BCE, men (and, lest we forget, women-lesbians-gays-transgenders-queer people-bisexuals-asexuals) exchanged animals’ cries/roars//barks/howls etc. for true speech with all its infinite nuances and complexities. Doing so, they became capable of much better interspecies cooperation and changed the course of history. Forever.

At some time between 500,000 and 200,000 BCE they learnt how to control and use fire. Doing so they greatly expanded the range of possible habitats and edible foods and changed the course of history. Forever.

At some time between 500,000 and 100,000 BCE they invented clothing, enabling them to spread into a great many environments that had previously been uninhabitable and stay in them throughout the year, regardless of season or weather. Doing so they changed the course of history. Forever.

At some time around 10,000 BCE they invented agriculture, enabling much larger numbers of people to live together and be fed. Doing so, they changed the course of history. Forever.

It is said that, at some time around 10,000 BCE, they invented war, meaning the use of coordinated violence by the members of one group of people against those of another. Doing so, they changed the course of history. Forever.

At some time around 4,000 BCE they invented the wheel, thereby enabling not merely people but much larger and heavier loads to be moved much farther, faster, and at lower cost. Doing so, they once again changed the course of history. Forever.

Around 3,500 BCE they invented writing, thus enabling much larger numbers of people to form polities, cooperate, and undertake tasks far greater than anything their predecessors could. This invention, too, changed history. Forever.

Around 2,500 BCE they learnt to work iron, thus laying the foundation of much subsequent technology and changing the course of history. Forever.  

And so on, and so on. Leading through the invention or discovery of bow and arrow (ca. 70,000 BCE), weaving (in eastern Anatolia, ca. 7,000 BCE), astronomy (in Egypt and Mesopotamia, ca. 4.000 CE), high-sea navigation (4,000-2,000 BCE), gunpowder (in China, ca. 1,000 CE), print (1450), modern observation-experiment-mathematics-based science (1650), the steam engine (1729), the railway (1825), the telegraph (1830), the dynamo (1831), the electric motor and internal combustion engines (1860 and 1873 respectively), the telephone (1875), radio (1895), quantum mechanics and relativity (1900 and 1905 respectively), heavier than air flying machines (1903), penicillin (1928), TV (1936), electronic computers (1948), and the structure of DNA (1953), to mention but a few out of tens if not hundreds of thousands.  Starting at least as far back as when the Emperor Vespasian had an inventor executed lest his invention, a new kind of crane, should rob many citizens of their livelihood, many of them were initially seen as absolutely catastrophic. The introduction of gunpowder, print, and mechanical weaving all brought about similar reactions (including some that were violent), by various groups of people. Ditto the advent of nuclear weapons (1945) which, many authors, both military and others, keep telling us will inevitably lead to Armageddon and must therefore be combatted by every means.

Fast forward to the present. Writing for the Economist Yuval Harari has put himself at the head of entire herds of pundits. His argument? Artificial intelligence, by learning to use language in ways that are sometimes almost indistinguishable from those hitherto reserved for humans, is on the threshold of doing so again. And, as it does so, may take the rudder out of our hands and lead us into a new catastrophe much worse than all previous ones.

Far be it from me to dispute the significance of these and any other number of ground-breaking inventions and discoveries. Had it not been for them, then presumably we would still have been living on the African savanna in nomadic or semi-nomadic groups of between 50 and 150 individuals. Gathering fruits, tubers and berries; hunting birds and small animals; trying to avoid being eaten by crocodiles as well as any number of big cats; and watching every second child die before it could reach puberty. Or else, going back still further in time, crying out to each other while swinging from tree-branch to tree-branch as some of our ape-like ancestors are believed to have done.

But consider.

First, suppose it is true that each of these and other inventions and discoveries has pushed history onto a radically different “new course.” In that case, how come that, after thousands upon thousands of years of innovation, so many of our earliest traits, both psychological and social, both individual and collective, are still with us? Including our need for company; our craving, partly successful but partly not, to try and understand how things work; our ability to recognize the comic and laugh; our enjoyment of play; our capacity for extreme cruelty; our ability to create artefacts of every kind; our attraction to beauty and to music; our frequent anxiety about what the future may bring; and as many others as you may care to list.

Second, suppose it is true that history’s course has undergone any number of truly fundamental changes. In that case, how come that some ancient items—e.g. Egyptian wall-paintings, the game of Go, the Bible, Greek art, the Platonic Dialogues, Confucius’ Analects, Laotzu’s Book of Tao, Euclid’s Principles of Geometry, Shakespeare’s plays, the works of Rembrandt and Vermeer, to mention but a few, are not only with us still but appeal to us just as much as they did to our ancestors?

In other words: Isn’t history a fabric made up of both the warp–the threads that run lengthwise — and the woof — the threads that run across? And isn’t it true that, without the both of them, it could not exist?

There have indeed been many changes: but have they really been as fundamental, let alone as disastrous, as the drumbeat of so many pundits suggests? If so, how did we increase from perhaps as few as 600 breeding individuals during the last ice age to 8 billion people today?

Where does all that put AI?

Seven Things That Will Not Change

Ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution during the last decades of the eighteenth century, humanity has become obsessed with change. First in Europe, where the revolution originated and gained momentum. Then in Europe’s overseas offshoots, primarily but not exclusively the English-speaking ones in North America and Australasia; and finally in other places as well. By the middle of the nineteenth century, at the latest, it was clear that the world was being transformed at an unprecedented pace and would continue to do so in the future. Those who joined the bandwagon, as Japan did, prospered; those who refused to do so fell behind and in many cases have remained backward right down to the present day. As change accelerated there appeared a whole genre of visionaries who made it their job to try and look into that future—starting with Jules Verne and passing through H. G. Wells all the way to Ray Kurzweil and Yuval Harari.

As readers know, I am a historian. As a historian, I have spent much if not most of my working life doing what generations of historians have always done and still keep doing: namely, identifying the origins of change, tracing its development, pointing out its implications, and speculating on where it may yet lead. So with Polybius who, about 160B CE, believed that no one could be so ignorant and so lazy as to fail to take an interest in the way Rome expanded until it dominated the entire Mediterranean; and so with countless authors today.

In this post, though, it pleases me to try to put the idea on its head. Meaning, I am going to focus on some of the things that have accompanied humanity for a long, long time and which, I think are not going to change. Certainly not any time soon. Perhaps, not ever.

  1. A world without war, meaning politically motivated and organized violence, is not in the cards. To be sure, starting in 1945 much of the planet has enjoyed what is sometimes known as the Long Peace. Meaning that, relative to the size of the earth’s population, fewer people have died in war each year than was the case during any other period from which figures are available. But let there be no illusions: the most important, if not the only, reason behind the decline is not the kind of sudden wish for peace (“the better angels of our nature”) some authors have postulated. It is nuclear deterrence which, by cutting the link between victory and survival, has prevented the most important countries from fighting each other in earnest.

Unfortunately experience has shown that, under the shadow of the mushroom cloud, there is still plenty of room left for smaller, but no less bloody, conflicts. Especially, but certainly not exclusively, of the intrastate, or nontrinitarian, kind as opposed to the interstate, trinitarian one. Such being the case, a world without war would require two things. First, a situation where every person and every community is always sufficiently content with his/or its lot to refrain from resorting to the use of organized violence against other people and other communities. Second, a world government capable of identifying and deterring those who would resort to it from doing so.

War is to a large extent a product of the emotions. As a result, such a government would have to pry into the brains of every single person on earth, monitoring the emotions in question and possibly using electrical and chemical methods to regulate them were necessary. That would apply both to the rulers and to the rulers. For good or ill, though, there is no indication that either of those conditions, let alone both, are anywhere close to being met.

  1. There is no reason to think the world in which we live is better or happier than previous ones. Not only is happiness the product of many different interacting factors, but its presence or absence depends on circumstances. Does it presuppose a minimum of physical comfort? Yes, of course, since those who are screaming with pain can hardly be happy. However, the extent of that comfort, and even what counts as comfort, is largely dictated by what we expect and do not expect. For all we know a bushman of the Kalahari, as long as his world remained intact, was quite as content with his lot as a resident of Monaco where per capita GDP stands at $ 162,000 per year and no one pays income taxes.

Does happiness require a belief in God? Possibly so, but contrary to what priests and imams and rabbis are always saying there is no proof that religious people are happier and less troubled than unbelievers. Does it require leisure, time in which to relax, enjoy, and think? Yes, of course, but the fact that, in Rome during the second century CE, almost half of the year consisted of feast days does not mean that the contemporaries of Marcus Aurelius were happier than their ancestors or their successors. Does it require an occasional dose of adrenalin? Yes, of course, but again there is no reason to think the ancient gladiatorial games were less able to provide it than modern football does. Does it require good interaction with at least some other people? Yes, of course, but there is no reason to believe that such interaction was less common and less satisfying in previous generations than in our own. Does it require purposeful activity? Yes of course, but then what does and does not count as purposeful is almost entirely up to the society and the individual in question. Some find happiness in risking their lives while trying to climb the Himalaya; others, in staying at home and looking after their flower beds or simply reading a good book.

To claim, so soon after Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and whole hosts of lesser murderers that our world is getting better and happier—that is worse than a lie. It is, rather, making a mockery of the dead.

  1. Poverty will not be eradicated. Taking 1800 as their starting point, economic historians have estimated that, in the developed world, real per-capital product has risen thirtyfold. Based on this, and assuming the benefits will keep spreading like ripples in a pond, there have been countless confident predictions concerning a golden future in which everyone will be, if not exactly as rich as Jeff Bezos, at any rate comfortably off.

However, these predictions have failed to take into account two factors. First, wealth, poverty and of course comfort itself are not absolute but relative. In many ways, what was once seen as fit for a king is now not considered suitable even for a beggar; for example, a house without a flush toilet, running water, hot water, and, in cold climates, some kind of heating system. Second, though the production of material goods has in fact increased almost beyond measure, the way those goods are distributed has not become more equal. If anything, taking 1970 as our starting point, to the contrary. The two factors combined ensure that the contrast between wealth and poverty, plutos kai penia as Plato called them twenty-four centuries ago, will persist. And so will the psychological, cultural, social and political consequences it entails.

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  1. Whatever some feminists may say, men and women will not play the same role in society, let alone become the same. Partly that is because nature has made them different—as is proved, above all, by the fact that women conceive, bear and give birth whereas men do not. And partly by other biologically-determined differences between them in respect to size, physical strength, robustness, endurance, risk-taking, aggression, and dominance. So fundamental are these physiological differences that they dictate much of the social order. For example, that men should be the maintainers and protectors of women rather than vice versa.

Not only are men and women different, but they want to be so. “The more like us you become, mes dames,” that incorrigible skirt chaser, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is supposed to have said, “the less we shall like you.” Conversely, in all known places and societies the worst thing one can say about a man is that he is like a woman. It is the differences between men and women, as much as the similarities, which attract them to each other. On pain of humanity dying out for lack of offspring, had they not existed they would have to be invented. So it has been and so, in all appearances, it will remain,

  1. We shall not gain immortality. It is true that, starting in late eighteenth-century France and Sweden and subsequently spreading to other countries, global life expectancy has more than doubled from about 30 years to a little over 70 today. Moreover, and again taking a global perspective, the pace at which years are being added to our lives has been accelerating. This has led some people to reason that, if only we could increase it fast enough (meaning, by more than a year every year), death would be postponed to the point where we shall become immortal. The first person to live for a thousand years, it has been claimed, has already been born or is about to be born soon enough.

However, the calculation is flawed on four counts. First, most of the increase in life expectancy has resulted from a decline in the mortality of the very young. To that extent it represents, not an increase in lifespan but a simple statistical sleight of hand. Second, the term “global” masks the fact that, the higher life expectancy in any given country, the harder (and more expensive) the attempts to increase it further still. In other words, we have entered the domain of diminishing returns; starting in 2015, in twelve out of eighteen high-income countries life expectancy has actually declined.

Third, the fundamental underlying reality has not changed one iota. Now as ever, the older we grow the more errors creep into our DNA, the more susceptible to age-related diseases we become, and the greater the likelihood of us being involved in an accident; turning us into runners on a treadmill and leading up to our final collapse. Fourth, and as a result, it is true that the percentage of old people has been growing rapidly. However, there is no indication that the life span granted to us by nature has been increasing or is capable of being increased.

  1. The mind-body divide has always existed and, as far as anyone can see, will continue to exist. Starting at least as long ago as the Old Testament, people have always wondered how dead material could ever give birth to a living, sentient, self-aware, being. Especially in regard to the brain as the most important organ in which thought, emotion and, not least, dreaming take place. To answer the question, they invented a God who, to speak with Genesis, blew “the spirit of life” into man’s nostrils.

Darwin, in coming forward with his theory of evolution did not solve the problem; instead, he side-stepped it. Recent advances in neurology, made possible by the most sophisticated modern techniques, are indeed astonishing. In some cases they have enabled the deaf to hear, the blind to see, and the lame to (sort of) walk. Yet they are limited to studying the structure of the brain and tracing the patterns of activity that take place in it as we engage in this activity or that; at best, they duplicate a tiny fraction of that activity. They neither can nor do tell us how objective chemical and electric signals translate into subjective experiences. Leaving us exactly where we were thousands of years ago when our ancestors, while well aware that consuming certain substances led to increased awareness and others, to torpor, had no idea as to how those effects were produced

Computers can perform calculations a billion times faster than we can. However, they cannot experience love, hate, courage, fear, exhilaration, disappointment, hope, despair, and so on. Between them, these and countless other emotions shape our personality==in fact they are our personality. All are linked both to each other and to the “thinking” part of our brains; they influence our thought and are influenced by it. It is, indeed, probable that a thought that did not originate in some kind of emotion has yet to be born. That is why, even if computers and their programs grow a thousand times as sophisticated and as complex as they are today, they still won’t be able to develop anything like a human personality.

  1. Our ability to control the future, or even to predict what it will be like, has not improved and almost certainly will not improve one iota. There used to be a time when looking into the future was the province of shamans, prophets, oracles, Sibyls, and even the dead who, as in the Bible, were raised specially for the purpose. Other people tried their luck with astrology, palmistry, augury (watching the flight of birds), haruspicy (interpreting the entrails of sacrificial animals), yarrow sticks, crystal balls, tarot cards, tea leaves, patterns left by coffee in near-empty cups, and other methods too numerous to list.

Some of the attempts at prediction relied on ecstasy, others on the kind of technique broadly known as magic. Starting around 1800, at any rate among the better educated in Western countries, two methods have dominated the field. One is extrapolating from history, i.e. the belief that what has been going up will continue to go up (until it doesn’t) and that what has gone down will continue to go down (ditto). The other is mathematical modelling, which consists of an attempt to identify the most important factors at work and link them together by means of algorithms.

As the enormous accumulated wealth of many insurance companies shows, of the two the second, especially as applied to very large numbers of people, has been the most successful. But only, as the bankruptcy of AIG back in 2008 demonstrated all too well, as long as conditions do not change in a radical way. And only at the cost of ignoring what to most people is the most important question of all, i.e. what the future will bring for each and every one of them.

Do these considerations suffice to put change, that keynote of modernity about which everyone is talking all the time, into perspective?

Seven Things that Will Not Change

Ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution during the last decades of the eighteenth century, humanity has become obsessed with change. First in Europe, where the revolution originated. Then in Europe’s overseas offshoots, and finally in other places as well. By the middle of the nineteenth century, at the latest, it was clear that the world was being transformed at an unprecedented pace and would continue to do so in the future. As change accelerated there appeared a whole genre of visionaries who made it their job to try and look into that future—starting with Jules Verne and passing through H. G. Wells all the way to Ray Kurzweil and Yuval Harari.

Today it pleases me to try to put the idea on its head. Meaning, I am going to focus on some of the things I think are not going to change. Certainly not any time soon. Perhaps, not ever.

1. A world without war, meaning politically motivated and organized violence, is not in the cards. To be sure, starting in 1945 much of the planet has enjoyed what is sometimes known as the Long Peace. Meaning that, relative to the size of the earth’s population, fewer people have died in war than was the case during any other period from which figures are available. But let there be no illusions: the most important, if not the only, reason behind the decline is not the kind of sudden wish for peace (“the better angels of our nature”) some authors have postulated. It is nuclear deterrence, which has prevented the most important countries from fighting each other in earnest.

Unfortunately experience has shown that, under the shadow of the mushroom cloud, there is still plenty of room left for smaller but no less bloody conflicts. Especially, but certainly not exclusively, of the intrastate, or nontrinitarian, kind as opposed to the interstate, trinitarian one. Such being the case, a world without war would require two things. First, a situation where every person and every collective is always sufficiently happy with his/or its lot to refrain from resorting to violence. Second, a world government capable of identifying and deterring those who would resort to it from doing so. Since war is to a large extent a product of the emotions, moreover, such a government would have to pry into the hearts of every single person on earth. For good or ill, though, there is no indication that either of those conditions, let alone both, are anywhere close to being met.

2. Poverty will not be eradicated. Taking 1800 as their starting point, economic historians have estimated that, world-wide, real per capital product has risen thirtyfold. Based on this, there have been countless confident predictions concerning a golden future in which everyone will be, if not exactly as rich as Jeff Bezos, at any rate comfortably off. However, these predictions have failed to tqake into account two factors. First, wealth, poverty and of course comfort itself are not absolute but relative. In many ways, what was once seen as fit for a king is now not considered suitable even for a beggar. Second, though the production of material goods has in fact increased, the way those good are distributed has not become more equal. If anything, taking 1970 as our starting point, to the contrary.

3. We shall not gain immortality. It is true that, starting in late eighteenth-century France and Sweden and spreading to other countries, global life expectancy has more than doubled. Moreover, the pace at which years are being added to our lives has been accelrating. This has led some people to reason that, if only we could increase it fast enough (meaning, by more than a year every year), death would be postponed to the point where we shall become immortal. The first person to live for a thousand years, it has been claimed, has already been born or is about to be born soon enough. However, the calculation is flawed on two counts First, most of the increase in longevity has resulted from a decline in the mortality of the very young. Second, while the percentage of old people has been growing rapidly, there is no indication that the life span granted to us by nature has been increasing or is capable of being increased.
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4. There is no reason to think the world in which we live is happier than previous ones. Not only is happiness the product of many different interacting factors, but its presence or absence depends on circumstances. Does it presuppose a minimum of physical comfort? Yes, of course, but the extent of that comfort, and even what counts as comfort, is largely dictated by what we expect and do not expect. Does it require a belief in God? Possibly so, but there is no proof that religious people are happier than unbelievers. Does it require leisure? Yes, of course, but the fact that, in Rome during the second century CE, almost half of the year consisted of feast days does not mean that the contemporaries of Marcus Aurelius were happier than their ancestors or their successors. Does it require good interaction with at least some other people? Yes, of course, but there is no reason to believe that such interaction was less common and less satisfying in previous generations than in our own. Does it require purposeful activity? Yes of course, but then what does and does not count as purposeful is almost entirely up to the individual.

5. Whatever feminists may say, men and women will not play the same role in society, let alone become the same That is partly because they are not the same—witness the biologically-determined differences between them in respect to size, physical strength, and the reproductive functions (some experts would add a tendency towards risk-taking, aggression, dominance, and a penchant for mathematical science, but that is moot). And partly because they do not want to be. “The more like us you become, mes dames,” said that incorrigible skirt chaser, Jean Jacques Rousseau, “the less we shall like you.” Conversely, the worst thing one can say about a man is that he is like a woman. It is the differences between men and women, as much as the similarities, that attract them to each other. So it has been, and so it will remain,

6. The question how consciousness could have arisen will not be answered. Starting at least as long ago as the Old Testament, people have always wondered how dead material could ever give birth to a living, sentient being. Especially to the brain as the most important organ in which thought, emotion and, not least, dreaming take place. To answer the question, they invented a God who, to speak with Genesis, blew “the spirit of life” into man’s nostrils. Recent advances in neurology, made possible by the most sophisticated modern techniques, are indeed astonishing. However, they cannot tell us how objective chemical and electric signals translate into subjective experiences; no more than our ancestors knew why certain substances led to increased awareness and others, to torpor. To that extent, the advances in question have not really got us any closer to solving the problem.

7. Our ability to predict the future, let alone control it, has not improved and will not improve one iota. There used to be a time when looking into the future was the province of shamans, prophets, oracles, and Sibyls, and even the dead who were raised specially for the purpose. Other people tried their luck with astrology, palmistry, augury (watching the flight of birds), haruspicy (interpreting the entrails of sacrificial animals), yarrow sticks, crystal balls, tarot cards, tea leaves, and patterns left by coffee in near-empty cups. Starting around 1800, at any rate among the better educated in Western countries, two techniques have dominated the field. One is extrapolating from history, i.e. the belief that what has been going up will continue to go up (until it doesn’t) and that what has gone down will continue to go down (ditto). The other is mathematical modelling, which consists of an attempt to identify the most important factors and link them together by means of algorithms. Of the two the second, especially as applied to very large numbers of people, has been the most successful. But only as long as conditions do not change in a radical way; and only at the cost of ignoring what to most people is the most important question of all, i.e. what will happen to them.

Is that enough to put change, that keynote of modernity about which everyone is talking all the time, into perspective?

The Things That Have Not Changed

In the field of war studies today, nothing is more fashionable than pointing to the prevalence, inexorability and rapidity of change. Meaning, among other things, social change, organizational change, and doctrinal change. And, of course, technological change, the kind that is often perceived as the factor that drives all the rest in front of it the way a shepherd drives his flock.

In this post, I want to do the opposite: To wit, say a few words about the things that have not changed. And which, to quote the nineteenth-century English poet Alfred Tennyson, “far as human eye can see” are not going to change either.

1.War as the continuation of politics by other means. War has never been, nor can be, an independent thing in itself. A war that does not serve politics, here understood not simply as the political process but in the broadest sense as the objectives which the belligerent community sets itself, is, in Clausewitz’s words, “a senseless thing without an object.”

2. A fight between individuals is known as a duel. War, however, is not an individual activity but a collective one. As is well known, a collective can be more than the sum of its parts. However, under the wrong conditions it can also be less. That is why factors such as cohesion, discipline, leadership etc. are as important as they are.

3. War is a strategic activity. Meaning that it is waged by two or more belligerents, each of whom is free and able to pursue his own objectives while at the same time interfering with the other so as to prevent him from doing the same. It is the strategic character of war which is behind its so-called principles. Such as initiative, attack, defense, decision, attrition, concentration, maintenance of aim, maneuver, flexibility, intelligence, security, and all the rest.
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Particularly important in this respect is the relationship between offense and defense. As Clausewitz says, there are two reasons why the latter is the stronger form of war. First, there is the analogy of the bucket; the more successful the attacker, the further away from his bases he gets and the more vulnerable his communications. Second, there is the element of time; whatever does not take place favors the defense. The outcome is the culminating point, the one at which an offense, unless it has ended in victory, inevitably turns into a defense. All this was true when war first made its appearance on earth some twelve thousand years ago. And all this will continue to apply even if and when it is waged by spaceships flying in outer space and firing laser beams.

4. As well as being a strategic activity, war is a violent one. Where no violence is involved there can be no war, only metaphors; as, for example, in “diplomatic war,” “economic war,” “psychological war,” and the like. Coming on top of war’s strategic character, it is the ever-present violence that makes it the domain of hunger, thirst, cold, fatigue, suffering, danger, pain, death, and, last not least, sorrow and regret. And that requires, on the part of those who wage it and fight in it, qualities such as fortitude, determination, and presence of mind needed in order to endure it and be successful at it.

5. Finally, violence in turn means that the possibility, even likelihood, of escalation is always there. Side A delivers a blow. Side B responds with a more powerful blow. And so on. If irrational factors such as hate and vengefulness were not present at the beginning, very soon they surface and make their impact felt. Escalation quickly follows. It threatens to burst right through the bands imposed by the very political controls that provide it with its raison d’etre.

To return to the beginning, all this is true regardless of organization, doctrine, technology, and what have you. At this time when new gadgets that supposedly bring about “fundamental” changes in the conduct of war have become a daily phenomenon, let those with ears to listen, listen.