Accepting that you don't have all the answers

Today I'm speaking at two events, generally about how we take lessons from the past and from our ancestors, applying them to today’s problems.? I’m speaking with incredibly accomplished people at the Widsom AI conference and the CASBS Center at Stanford.???

I probably should feel imposter syndrome—who am I to speak of such things? But I don’t. I’m happy to contribute to the conversation and to have a dialogue without all the answers. I’ve come to believe the act of having a dialogue, just getting to speak with others is the answer. As J. Robert Oppenheimer said about quantum mechanics and the scientific process: “What we don’t understand, we explain to each other.”

We have clear lessons from the past with fission: what we learned, what could be, the threats and opportunities missed. And even if we make mistakes, bad choices and fail - don’t give up. The nuclear arms race became a global threat that still haunts us every second of the day, even though many have forgotten about it. It’s designed with a hair-trigger, auto-escalating MAAD theory that would truly destroy the world as we know it —that can be started by a single individual in a growing number of unstable political environments.

Taking those lessons from the worst possible outcome that could result from exploring science, the answer could seem simple: ban the science! Stop it! Right?

Well—no. Counterintuitively, the arms race it produced hasn’t killed us all (yet) and has ushered in a post-World War II period of peace, with the lowest rate of human violence per capita in history.? We have had rising global prosperity and international cooperation - the few outbreaks of violence are terrible but could not escalate to true life-and-death conflict that wars usually get to - so far.

The answer to our growing scientific powers is the same answer all religious and mythical traditions have laid out for us:? acceptance. ? Sure - I’m going to spend the rest of my life working to undo and mitigate the threat of nuclear arms, with not a ton of hope of succeeding. But I accept that.? Ya gotta do something with your time, right?

Our worried, internal feelings do not control the world. We are just part of it—so much is beyond the control of each individual, each organization, or each law. Forces as powerful as fission and AI and life itself are the universe expressing itself in ever more complex ways, a process as unstoppable as the rising sun. We need to accept our ultimate mutual vulnerability. Religion developed and survived for a reason: it has had evolutionary value. It tells us to drop the fear and accept our mortality, the impermanence of life is a universal truth.

Once you accept that nothing lasts forever and that things are about as bad as they can get, you can work your way back.?

Fission: we need more of it, not less. We need the science to create abundant energy on a massive scale. And the weapons they produce? They are born out of fear of the “other” - of the enemy, of the Bad Guy.? We, of course, are the Good Guys, which is why we had to rush to create weapons that are 1000x stronger than those used on Hiroshima that will be able to kill millions more men women, and children of the Bad Guys.? ? We do that for their own good, of course, as we are the Good Guys.????

Policymakers believed they were making their public safer by building bigger bombs—a principle and philosophy that was never going to work - but hey they tried.?

What does work - what actually makes you safer - is talking to your enemy, “the other,” the one you fear, the Bad Guy. If you meet your most hated political enemy, sit down, and have some coffee with them - you will find so many commonalities.? That is this process that the world needs more of.???

No technical or regulatory silver bullet solves the universe’s complexification. ? You can’t ban AI. In scientific terms and the deepest philosophies, there isn’t really a “right” or “wrong” in a thriving flourishing human society or in a smoking pile of rubble from nuking ourselves. It’s the same thing to…God, or the Universe - in the long term, and perhaps the short term. So we can make any choice we want. It’s a matter of taste and style. For the record, I prefer the non-smoking-pile-of-human-ashes option—but hey, that’s just a personal preference.

Let’s take the fruits of our technology and science and enjoy having tea or a beer with people from other cultures. Let’s have AI and automation that removes drudgery—and eventually, the jobs.? The word “job” started as a derogatory term for short-term labor, not something to be revered as the goal. We need purpose and meaning - there is lots of room for automation to do the job part of a job.??

Let’s get 3 billion people out of grinding, starving energy poverty.? Let's create 10x more energy with the exact science that could kill us all - 10,000 safe nuclear reactors instead of 10,000 genocidal nuclear weapons.

The very act of doing that is fun! But it’s a choice. Some people may stylistically prefer automated robots crushing the bones of their enemies in a burned-out shell of what the world used to be.? People are making that choice right now - but a very small percentage of them, and they are killing children for their own good, as the Good Guys.

Accept them for wanting that, for viewing themselves as the Good Guys..? We can all get along, approaching it from different angles.? And maybe build back from there.?