The Irony of a 'design' culture

"Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one" - Voltaire

We speak of a VUCA* ‘world’ and more latterly of a BANI** ‘world’, yet I find that we are more inclined to the precise opposite. That we prefer a more deterministic world and cannot reconcile with ambiguity let alone incomprehensibility. And so, and at end, it is a deterministic or a determined world that we in fact come to shape.

Cleaning up for ambiguity is not in itself problematic. The issue is rather the animus for anything amounting mystique and opacity. We relent on the side of description and classification - the definite and the finite. In doing so, expunging the very world of and forestalling for creativity itself, which by definition is a puzzling and abstract phenomena. The problem is in an incapability to accept that which we cannot contemplate, let alone understand. Eventually condescending and diminishing of the numinous. In his book The Master and His Emissary, Ian McGilchrist, decries the shunting/ reduction of right-brain inclination or integration to the esteeming of a left-brain orientation and dominance. This a malady of a secular/ contemporary society. An orientation that we not only prize but seek out in the form of certitude and firmness. An orientation that has become exclusive and dominant, beating out for the anything amounting abstraction or the unknown. Hence ‘The Master’ (left-brain) and the ‘Emissary’ (right-brain) - the master in charge. According to McGilchrist, the left hemisphere tends to focus on narrow, analytical, and fragmented aspects of reality, breaking things down into parts to better understand them. In contrast, the right hemisphere perceives the world in a holistic, integrative manner, attending to context, relationships, and the "bigger picture." It is more connected to emotions, intuition, and the embodied experience.

A plight, indeed, befalling the 20th century at large and increasingly the last 30/ 40 years, is the sidling towards the labelling of things and an equivalent fallout in that we struggle to hold on to opposing views contemporaneously. Such, vehement opposition, enervating truth itself. We’re scared of intuition as an example, even where we lionise it as the culmination of a wisdom of sorts. We laud creativity in tandem. Even where we talk of intuition we want to codify it such that we can teach it. We’re unhappy with it being opaque and abstract. We need to put our finger on it. Such need to define things is to mandate the left-hand side of the brain. Which is to stultify the right-hand side of the brain by necessity.

AI itself may be a distillation of this inclination - to pursue things in algorithmic terms increasingly i.e. in certain and bounded terms; to guarantee for outcome. This perhaps the apogee of left-brain dominance; the culmination of linear thinking; the end-state of this thing called ‘alignment’. To reduce or to blot out for that which is not formed or firm; the diminution of largesse and freedom. This a certain position as opposed embracing imagination. AI will approach creativity certainly, but only as a simulacrum. Will it originate new thoughts, except programmed in that direction? I am yet to be convinced. And I love AI. Turns out I can hold two competing thoughts in mind at the same time and not go mad!

The maths should only serve the value. The order of things matters. Irony indeed.?

*VUCA - Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity - from the 1980's and shaped by the Cold War

**BANI - Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible - from 2013 (circa) but popularised only a 'few' years back and shaped by climate and global systemic change