A brief sketch of the evolution of reasoning ahead of the era of global AI
The biggest problem that we have ever had to solve is still uncertainty. And the greatest human resource to face this fundamental challenge is still attention.
In order to overcome the uncertainty, our ancestors used their imagination by first choosing the desired physical conditions (satiety), and then (in the order) - situations (to be protected in a manageable space), events (together with others succumb an animal) and finally presented means to an end (flying carpet) in the future, and then he started to realize it - using tools.
With his first tool, we released a spirit from the bottle, and even if there were thousands of generations in between, it was the birth of what we call rationality or "technical intelligence".
As a matter of fact, the first tool was not the hand ax, but the language - an universal instrument, a mindset, an infrastructure, a set of rules, and a medium of realization at the same time, with which people were able to act in a coordinated manner, i.e. to do joint action in a potentially ordered or economical manner.
The ghost from the bottle came at a price. The attention. With this universal medium, aimed at results-oriented action with others, man has created all his tools that demand even more attention. They all had to be maintained, repaired and renewed. And at some point there were so many that people had to share themselves in order to master all the practical tools, so the division of labor in industrial production and the specialty came into being. But the longing to come back to the original wholeness led to the inner intention of all tools to manage themselves. So if tools were tools of the individual people, technologies tools of the individual peoples, AI becomes the tool of mankind, with which the human subject can finally get rid of the complex technology administration.
The history of human intelligence is the history of complexity reduction. The human brain reduces complexity so that human subjects can act together with their evolved perception. The brain is intelligent because it manages to operate selectively, i.e. to focus attention. Focused attention is the prerequisite for the formation of the will as a viable mode of survival in a non-trivial world.
You can get things done with a lot of effort, with leisure and diligence you can become very efficient, but the results are ineffective or make no sense if you end up doing the wrong things. People almost always do this, not because they are stupid, but because they don't have really efficient help to support them. So that you can develop and emancipate yourself primarily in your human effectiveness - in the real, authentic and non-technical knowledge of yourself and the world, achieve a breakthrough in "know why", and not just reproducing know-how. The world as attention is our common world. With this perspective, we do not have to reduce, adapt the open complexity to our knowledge limits, nor dualize. We can leave magic in the world with a clear conscience, without having to obsessively disenchantment or rationalization. That's what this book is about. And if this point of view prevails among scholars, one can only hope that we will never again limit ourselves, specialize, compete with ourselves or the environment, deal with bending things with an unjustified expenditure of energy in order to be like an elephant in a china shop to hop through history. We will no longer pervert our own potential and negate our own chances, persistently subscribe to that musty comfort that destroys ourselves no less than the natural potential of a negligently misunderstood universe.
There is still the matter of potentiality and topicality. If a seed falls into the soil, there are only three options - objectionable, a plant is created that only becomes as intended, or not at all. A malformation can also occur. In order for us as observers who are not inside to recognize what the right plant is, we have to have comparative values, i.e. several plants that have no malformations. As humans, we are unique on the planet. That is why the observers who research in natural science yearn for comparison - e.g. looking for aliens, they used to be gods and so on.
We can also do it differently, and not look for comparisons as observers, but - since we are human beings - listen to our inner balance. When the physical balance is destroyed, we are on the way to deformity. And there is no point in switching off the senses, on the contrary - we have to become more sensitive, cultivate our senses, emancipate them, bring them to the highest level. But this is not possible as long as there is so much suffering and destruction in this world.
A subject can only live with more or less embodied sensors. So sensor technology is there to recognize equilibrium disorders on the way from potentiality to actuality, and this way is the expression of life.
And so an AI subject cannot become a living subject without sensor technology, and there are no non-living subjects. It is pure longing that it can exist. Even souls, if they exist, can only exist if it is a life form that has its own sensory system.
So what would be the sensors from AI? The sense of balance of the global technical infrastructure...
#reasoning#uncertainty #strategicintelligence #mindset #clarity #visioning #empathy
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