Don't Be a Protein Chauvinist
- Ahmed Masud, Co-Founder, Resiliate...
Society advances by the number of operations it can perform without thinking.
- Alfred North Whitehead
During the dawn of mankind, man was tired as shit.
He had to wake up at 5:30AM - no coffee - and start prospecting for land whales like a hedge fund analyst on a co-op term at Morgan Stanley.
During the dawn of agriculture, man got a taste of freedom. Instead of waking up at 5:30AM with no coffee, he made coffee at home before seeding his crops. Granted, 5:30AM was still pretty early in the morning, but at least he didn’t have to worry about encountering snakes, bears, and wild hogs on their turf anymore.
The move to agriculture represented a change in the mode of subsistence, going from Hunter to Crop-Gatherer. The change in food-gathering resulted in a change in God-worship, with man displacing his primitive Forest Gods with Weather Gods like Zeus and his brother Poseidon.
As man progressed from agricultural-based subsistence to a factory-based way of production, his worship changed again. He went from worshiping Forest Gods to worshiping Nature Gods to Worshiping HIMSELF in the form of Gods that reflected his own interests now that food was no longer an issue; just ask Athena and Ares about their trips to Carthage.
Over the past 200 years, we’ve moved from a factory-based subsistence powered by mostly humans to a factory-based subsistence powered by humans AND machines.
And that brings me to the quote we started with…
Society advances by the number of operations it can perform without thinking.
- Alfred North Whitehead
Talk to any python programmer and they’ll tell you what they’re automating. The idea of data science is the idea that machines can make profitable decisions afster than their human counterparts…and that’s the apotheosis, the zenith, the pinnacle of capitalism.
The purpose of capitalism is to create more food with less work.
The problem is, our systems are now creating more food with less work by removing the primary input: food itself. Our systems are now creating more art with less work by removing the primary input: the artists themselves.
People ask how we can regulate AI - and that always makes me laugh. We can’t regulate AI anymore than we can regulate nuclear proliferation. After all, we exist in a time of mutually-assured computation. A nation simply cannot afford to ignore semiconductors, because society’s advance by the number of operations it can perform without thinking.
I hope you enjoy the ride. Hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times.
The apocalypse wasn’t caused by a pandemic or a nuclear bomb, it was caused when humans ceased to be the sole reason of things and the machines took on a reasoning of their own.
- Baudrillard h/t Roderick
Don’t Fear The Reaper
Society's progress oft is measured by the tasks
We can perform without much thought or care
From hunting beasts to growing crops and then
To factories and machines that work with flair
We've changed our gods to match our changing ways
From forest gods to weather gods and then
To gods that mirror our own wants and needs
And now machines that work for us again
We strive for more with less,
to make our lives Easier and more efficient, it's true
But as we automate, we lose our ties
To food and art and even what we do
We can't regulate AI;
It's out of reach It's here to stay,
So let us make it teach.
Written by ChatGPT based on the article above