Musings of a Lynx

Saw this and it's too cute not to share... about some ABCs to live into!

It is not a stretch to imagine that it will be easier for AI to develop a new cancer drug than it will be at ensuring that those who need that drug will actually be able to get it.

Not that a new cancer drug wouldn’t be great, of course.  But what will be valued here?

What will we value?

Will we value it for being a new tool to save people’s lives from a terrible disease? Or will we value it for its ability to extract wealth from people with cancer?  (And, thus, from all of us, through the spread cost of insurance?)

For here’s the thing:  Pretty much none of society’s problems can be solved directly by a machine, for the fundamental reason that they are a/the result of our human behaviour and of the societal systems and structures we invented, especially its incentives.

So while companies may herald the untold untapped unimaginable unpossible abilities of their new products that they very desperately want to sell us, the cold truth thing is this:  We’ve already known the solution to so many of our biggest challenges and ills for centuries.  It’s just that those in power continuously and consciously choose not to implement them.  And those of us with an influence on this power continuously, whether here consciously or unconsciously, choose to let it slide and/or avert our gaze from it.

Tuberculosis has been curable for over 80 years; well over 1 million people will die from it this year.  The world produces an abundance of food; well over a quarter of the world’s population suffers from food insecurity.

We know how to make these things not a thing… but we do not and are not.

Technology is great.  It allows us to achieve some amazing, remarkable, awe inspiring things.  Especially when we work together.

Yet it can also be used to bedazzle and hoodwink us in an effort to vacuum up all of our agency, our wealth, our future, and more, just so that someone can buy a yacht to keep their other yacht company.

Being clear-eyed and present inoculates against this bedazzlement, revealing the desperation and the chicanery and the attempt to harm through gross profit.

Then we can choose how we actually want to proceed forward so that we can actually solve those challenges and ills for all.

Often those who create something momentous weren’t trying to do that.

As in, they weren’t trying to wow the world, and they weren’t trying to become an icon.

Instead, they were following an interest, or a passion, or a curiosity of theirs.  Or they were trying to help someone local, or a family member, or solve an issue or an ill that they could not abide.

And, almost always, they were a cog in a long line of research and tradition.

Then, lo, fortune smiled and things came together in that moment!  Eureka!

Which is great for us, as we can reap what got created.

All of the above is a good reminder to 1) not lionize solely the creator, 2) not to go even further and worship them, and 3) (and perhaps most importantly) to be very wary of those who seem more fascinated with and invested in their fame and/or wealth and/or image and/or adoration than with their creation.

Which is not to say we shouldn’t celebrate and acknowledge the creator(s), only to say to celebrate them with the correct amount.  And, even better, to more celebrate the achievement and the creation.

As, I would say, what happened with the Apollo moon program, where the achievement of all of NASA and of humanity to get us to the Moon is celebrated on par with the celebration of the astronauts who went there.  As Michael Collins even described as he was touring the world after Apollo 11, people came to him and were celebrating, “Wow, wow, we did it, we did it!”  Not ,“You astronauts did it,” or, “You americans did it,” but “We, human kind, did it.”

It can be worth checking in

As we go about and experience the world

In trips or visits or voyages or whatever

That we don’t turn “not a 100% perfect and awesome experience”

into being a failure

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Whether we point that failure towards ourselves or others

or both…

It doesn’t excite us

It robs us of the visceral experience of it all

It robs us of joy and delight

It robs us of curiosity and newness

And it totally robs us of the whole point

Of the trip and going out in the world

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Suddenly, everything sucks

And we’ve got nothing but disappointment, upset, and frustration

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Worse, it clings to us

Tinging our days going forward

Preemptively ruining our whole next excursion

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So it’s best to aim for 80% awesome

And love it all as it comes

So we can love it for what it is