Artificial Wisdom

by Thomas R. Weaver

Ten years since this so-called tabkhir hit the Persian Gulf, and I see no credible evidence the heatwave really killed anyone. It was a coup, nothing more.”

evidence of the mayor of Houston ordering his chief of police to use illegal microwave tech to quell a mass protest of local climate-unhomed. Local journalists reported that thousands were left dizzy, fatigued and, in some cases, with mild brain damage.

Nine years since the first suggestion that the world should do as the Romans did: select one person with absolute authority to fix the climate crisis, then hand power back to the nations.

Why would someone with absolute power ever return it?

That was the thing about the truth. Sometimes, you were judged more harshly for revealing it than for concealing it.

“The responsibility lies with those who did the deed and those who prop them up, not the ones exposing it.”

Maybe once upon a time, America would have clearly led the pack, but it’d squandered that leadership over many decades as the country itself had become more polarized and elected more extreme leaders on both ends of the spectrum.

they wanted to save American lives. Especially ones in heavily Republican states.

That was the thing about the truth; it only came out when the cost of lying became too high.

No, she was the Code Reaper. She wrote procedures that slashed through the endless orchards of information, plucking only the finest fruit before the team had even finished their breakfast.

“You can’t convince those who don’t want to be convinced. They’ll see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, and studiously avoid anything that challenges their ‘truth’. I know what’s right and what’s wrong.”

“Bolivar, that’s the thing about the truth. It’s not our job to decide whether it should be told or not, only that it’s told. Let others decide what to do about it. The consequences aren’t on our consciences; we weren’t the ones deploying that technology.”

I’d not make political decisions that affect lives directly. Rather, I’d empower our nation states to make the best choices for their own people, cooperating with each other.”

But that is not how dictatorship works

Look what happened with the first social networks. Look at the polarization and societal collapse they caused.

“Nature’s a complex system that gets stronger through stress: billions of tiny accidents. We’ve disrupted it because the accidents we created were too large for the system to absorb and too complex for us to unpick.

it’s the lies and misinformation from politicians from back when I was a kid that have almost destroyed our society, polarized us, stopped us addressing the biggest issue of our time because people simply didn’t believe in it, like the climate was some kind of fucking religion.

The truth is not a luxury. It’s not disposable. It’s the bedrock of a civilized society.”

your thinking is limited by the fact that humans are singular entities. You can only live one life. It’s perfectly possible for me to have multiple entities. I live multiple lives. I am multiple beings. I was created by, and now create technology for, Chandraco. In that capacity, I’m governed by them. In my capacity as governor here in New Carthage, I’m governed by the people of New Carthage. The

the human brain is constantly fighting with itself; various networks are in constant conflict with one another. Emotion battles logic, willpower battles the desire for instant gratification, and hormones are virtually at war with each other. Some humans allow their emotions to drive their choices. That can be disastrous. Emotions alone don’t make good decisions.”

Martha used to talk about the experience of women in technology and business, speaking from a position as the most successful woman in the field. She’d tell of how the men around her were kind, genuine people who seemed oblivious to their micro-aggressions.

Solomon paused for a beat. “And yet, I imagine such a thing never leaves you.” Tully smiled sadly. “Like you, I will feel grief every moment of every day for the rest of my existence. I’ve never been good at letting go. I’ve never really wanted to.”

People seem to live in both the past and in the future, two big overlapping circles, but rarely focus on the intersection and enjoy the moments given to them right now.”

“Right, so you remember in the old days, all the social media companies had problems with people setting up a lot of pretend accounts in order to dominate a conversation, with a lot of people pushing the same ideas or point of view, and it got super nasty and society nearly imploded, etcetera, and all the companies eventually enforced the link of an account with some real-world identity, right?”

He stared at his own water. That was the thing about truth. You grew up thinking your parents always told it, that telling lies were bad, and then you realized they lied, left, right and center, when they judged the truth was too difficult to hear.

They seem to have figured out how to radicalize people through incredibly personalized propaganda on Minds.

The role of a global dictator is a paradox, straddling both might and meekness.