Our World’s Limbo (0 of IV) | [tk]

& the unwinnable game that we humans didn’t know
we‘ve all been unwillingly / innocently / involuntarily fixated in since quite some time ago.

“Unless we learn to outuse smartphones, smartphones will act exactly like our personal fast pass to hell.”

“Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere” had not been this nearly-perfectly true and relevant until this present point of human history.

To elucidate this common-sense description of human conditions more precisely and clearly- we will also be obliged to investigate the ever-increasingly-popular idea that “some humans should skip death and live forever.”

Those who champion the idea of “The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant” and proactively seek eternal human immortality, or more simply put, those who genuinely wish to skip death and to live forever; these ever-greedy-for-more egos/entities, if unhinged and uninterrupted, are bound to be the original root cause of a sure plunge to hell and/or complete annihilation of humanity.

From the case of AlphaGo to AlphaZero, we learnt and could infer that the most brilliant human minds in the world added together still won’t stand any chance against an “Alpha-Billionth-Iteration-powered-Entity“*.

One thing is certain however, only one plot of human immortality is non-self-defeating, meaning it will necessarily arrive in this eventual situation in which one immortal entity outgames and outowns (and likely enslaves or annihilates) everybody else, be they 7.7 billion in numbers or 7.7 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion.

That one ego/entity is set to dictate everyone (if there is still any) and everything for the ever after, necessarily resulting eventually in eternal pain and suffering for all conscious beings. Eternal- with no end and no way to end.

All meanings we humans have ever cared about and been curious about, will be undone in physical presence. Everyone we cherish and love will cease to exist after enduring an unknown but predictably enormous amount of suffering, all while marching slowly but surely to the eventual extinction of any trace of human beings having had ever existed in this pocket of space in Universe. As if human beings have never happened and existed and mattered in this Universe’s reality.

Stephen Hawking & Elon Musk, among many who saw and could discern, had warned us multiple times. There will be no return once past that particular point of singularity, and that point of singularity could happen without us the ordinary people knowing at all. Only to leave every one of us forever stuck in the futile fantasies of what we should/could have done but did not.

In fact, it is most likely the point of singularity (one ego/entity assuming absolute power) would happen privately. And whoever has absolute power never shares voluntarily, so begins the unchanging era of A.I.T.D. – consisting of ever-greater but never fully satisfying amount of bliss enjoyed by one; and inconceivable depth of pain suffered by inconceivable number of people and animals for inconceivable amount of time.

We humans, too preoccupied and engrossed in competing and rivalling with each other, collectively took no action for however long, much like 7.7 billion individuals vying to drive a car with exactly one steering wheel — nothing useful ever gets done. Nor have we as one world human group engaged in any meaningful international and intercultural deliberation on how to avert the most imminent-cum-the most certain wipe-out-everything existential threat facing all of us humans.

It is not just that humanity and all things we have ever cherished and loved will be no more, or that the pain and suffering future A.I. devices could induce in us humans is truly beyond human understanding and truly exceeds the boundaries of human imagination.

It is also that — we know with blunt and absolute certainty that there exist infinite forms of infinitely truer/kinder/higher forms of way of life / civilization, never to be materialized and actualized in this Universe; and that we as one humankind will forever miss out on revealing, knowing and experiencing such better versions of Universe.

All because some ultra-rich, ever-greedy-for-more humans are stuck in believing “eternally-undying-life” is the most satisfying/gratifying, the happiest, the most ideal form of human existence/way of life. And these maximally-greedy dogmatic believers of exact Materialism who wish to at all costs skip death, will therefore necessarily carry upon us all our first and final this-worldly wipe-out-everything disaster — every member of humankind, old and young, and all potential future members of humankind.

Along with humanity’s realistic possibilities of achieving truer/higher/kinder forms of way of life / civilization / freedom / human dignity / absence of malice and ill will / empathetic comprehension and kindness towards our common kind and all other conscious beings of Universe.

And the most precious thing in our known Universe – human compassion and love, will too disintegrate, decay and vanish, never to return.

“…but if we never leave, so we never return…”

References –

Bostrom, N. 2005. “The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant.” Journal of Medical Ethics 31 (5): 273–77. https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.2004.009035.

‌Chalmers, David. 1995. Facing up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies 2 (3): 200–19. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195311105.003.0001.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, and Helen Zimmern. 1956. Beyond Good and Evil : Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. London: G. Allen & Unwin.

Harari, Yuval N. 2015. Homo Deus : A Brief History of Tomorrow. New York, Ny: Harper Perennial.

Hawking, Stephen, Elon Musk, Max Tegmark, and Jaan Tallinn. 2015. Review of Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence: An Open Letter. Future of Life Institute. October 27, 2015. https://futureoflife.org/2015/10/27/ai-open-letter/.

Lee, Bruce, and John R Little. 1998. The Art of Expressing the Human Body. Boston: Tuttle Publishing.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Peter M S Hacker. 2011. Philosophische Untersuchungen = Philosophical Investigations. Oxford [U.A.] Wiley-Blackwell.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, and C K Ogden. 2015. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London ; New York: Routledge.

Russell, Stuart, Daniel Dewey, and Max Tegmark. 2015. “Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence.”AI Magazine 36 (4): 105. https://doi.org/10.1609/aimag.v36i4.2577.

Stephen Hawking: ‘Are We Taking Artificial Intelligence Seriously.” 2014. The Independent. May 1, 2014. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-transcendence-looks-at-the-implications-of-artificial-intelligence-but-are-we-taking-ai-seriously-enough-9313474.html.

Williams, Bernard. 2006. Problems of the Self Philosophical Papers, 1956-1972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

(Full version was originally published on 1 May 2022 on clutch.hk)