We all have demons. In many cases these demons are in the mind. Those things that cause mental pain and suffering. In a reconciliation with acceptance grounded in humility combined with a going forth in newfound wisdom, transformational experience can result. I am speaking here of the spiritual and of the sacred of the individual, but this applies to the macro too. Meaning and truth from experience result in wisdom. A wisdom that is a decision process of what to keep and what to reject. This process can create angels which are serendipitous. Demons become angels.
There is no denying that tech has been our collective angel. It has saved us from so much pain and suffering. It has given us hope in the future. It is also taking us like a boiling frog to the cliff of a status quo shift from advancement to decline. Currently tech is on a revolutionary course that may destroy us. I say revolutionary because it is now self-organizing without real constraints.
It is my view that this process of change is without the basic wisdom of reflecting on what knowledge to keep and what to reject except around the margins. This is most apparent with AI which I have given several posts on, but it is not confined to AI. It is also as basic as the modern car culture that has made globalism possible. It is basically the complexity that we are embedded with more generally. All those things that bring relatively affordable and reliable food, water and shelter to us. Mainly from fossil fuels, advanced materials, and the grid. A grid that is of power and digital.
This complexity exposure risks failure far more than the threat of AI applications of autonomy and performance turning on us. There are many warnings of the machine turning on us once it achieves the singularity of transhumanism. What is more likely to turn on us is a vast investment in a network that can’t be sustained resulting in a bifurcation of destructive change where abandonment, irrational, and dysfunction cascade. This is present even without AI in our complex global culture of just-in-time support but increasingly this complex is now far more exposed with the huge AI bubble.
It is my basic opinion from my life system of REAL Green that this AI bubble of both finance and tech will be stopped in its tracks by basic constraints of human confidence, resources, and economics. It is often the weakest links that bring a system down. The AI bubble has so many weak links. One of the weakest is our civilizational complexity itself. It is apparent resources and capital may be a hard limit, but complexity is less understood. Resources and the capital threat appear less immediate. The complexity issue is less understood but may be more immediate.
The complexity issue points to a door passed through and then a return is no longer possible. We may have created an enhanced system that fails without a backup plan. Many important skills and hard-won knowledge could be lost in a relatively short period of time. Vital resources used up and mal invested in a way of life with no future.
I am speaking of that angel that are those wonderful things both abstract and physical that give our world a feeling of comfort and enjoyment. This angel may become our demon if the AI revolution adapts civilization as the technocrats and tech oligarchs wish for. Robots and an artificial general intelligence may be just that switch which flips an angel to a demon haunting our collective soul with collapse.
I want to offer hope to you that entertain my REAL Green adaptation. This hope I offer is that this AI bubble will burst soon and the result will be painful but longer term useful. I am also speaking of the related renewable and battery tech driving the energy transition. That bubble has burst but has achieved some great tech for the macro decline process that the planet and human civilization is in. This AI demon may hit the wall of constraints both physical and abstract that serendipitously stop the unrestrained revolution of technology. This is the last frontier that could end our civilizational growth based mal adaption fantasy.
The angel of this is some very useful tech that can be applied to powering down our growth-based system. A way of life of manifest destiny which is a way of life without a future. We are still going to need growth to adapt to decline that will be the mess of a failing modern life. Modern life to me is an everything bubble but one that has created some very powerful tech that if reoriented with hard-won wisdom could make the decline process less swift and dramatic. The survival of a species is dictated by its resilience to the speed and depth of a shock.
I have no idea if this demon we have created will end up being an angel. If what is occurring right now were to be stopped very soon before its infection into the vital organs of civilization the resulting and remaining capabilities could help us through the bottleneck ahead of a failure of the narrative of unending growth in a finite system. If a wisdom that comes out of this hypothetical crisis is strong enough to overcome the cascading decline of abandonment, irrational, and dysfunction then we may have an angel of transformation to a new mankind post techno man.
REAL Green Adaptation 