Trump impeachment hearings: a Rorshach test for the world?

trump Impeachment hearings

Do you remember what a Rorshach test is? Basically, they show you and image which is somehow very compelling, but different people have  very different strong reactions, all thinking they know what they are really seeing.

I suppose that a majority of the people look at these hearings thinking EITHER "We really need to save the world by getting rid of this evil person fast" OR "Those evil Democrats are scheming to destroy us all and must be destroyed first."

An intelligent Democrat recently said to us: "I don't understand why the Republicans don't join this. Don't they understand that they too will be destroyed if this guy continues?" My reply to her: "Maybe some of them want to wait until after the election, when they think THEY will get to decide who replaces him." But that was a big "maybe"; many possibilities are in play.

My own immediate response was: this reminds me of the severe importance of those internet design issues I have not committed enough to solve, issues which the rest of the world somehow can't see straight on, so much so that disaster seems to loom on every one of the alternative paths now in clear focus.

It reminds me of how humans alone, as the only REAL intelligence making decisions on earth, but empowered by ever stronger technology, seem to be on a path to extinction well before the hundred year climate stuff. The hearings make me think of humans killing themselves. Yes, we see one overloaded guy at the center of the hearings, lashing out in dozens of disastrous ways. But we know that there are many others in play, on far right and far left, who may not speak as openly as he does, who have even  crazier things to say.

The war between the left and the right (NOT the only war in play) reminds me a lot of Lotfi Zadeh, the famous father of fuzzy logic,whom I had a lot of contact with when he was alive. He rightly attacked irrational extreme black and white thinking. But what was his alternative? A fuzzy middle?
When I look at the choices for US President, the best I really see in the neighborhood (in a fuzzy way) would be Klobuchar, whom I think of as "the candidate from that weird unappreciated place called planet earth." Will Iowa bring her at least to consideration? Yet when I hear her echo the party lines on the Middle East... which Trump has rightly resisted... it limits my enthusiasm. And in any case, what chance does she have? (Sure I would vote for her if I lived in Iowa.)

What this REALLY tells me is that humans alone may not be on a path for survival. Even if human life is number one on the list of what we care about, is it not time to think about  the need for a bit more real coherent intelligence on this planet? Could a well designed automated dialogue system run a less silly and confused management of BOTH sides in events like this hearing and the one to come in the Senate? Or even to the messes which CAUSED the hearing, messes due to ANY President (or chairman) having greater and vgreater power not really restrained by objective reality?

No, I am not a devotee of Ethereum. I do not believe that Elon Musk or Ethereum are the salvation of humanity, Karl Schroeder's novel Stealing Worlds is closer to the spirit of what may really be coming as IT changes the entire world game, but  the reality is more than that.

BUT: instead of the misleading, cartoon promises of Musk and of Ethereum, can we come up with designs which really make good on those promises, which have a really solid mathematical foundation?

The sad fact is that I do not know anyone else on earth who knows nearly as much as I do about that stream of applied math. And yes, I know the players and the field. I see partial answers, which are important, but how could we avoid a grossly dehumanizing endgame?  Why are humans today so oblivious to how serious the threats are?

Part of it, I suspect, is that they don;pt understand basic principles which culminated in Von Neumann's book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. We are heading today towards a Nash equilibrium, which means death in the new game, and do not appreciate the needs and possibilities for a realistic progress towards Pareto optimality (building on important foundations which many of us know a little about, but not enough). Some folks think that AI is about a bunch of little apps on their smart phones (or independent robots) which will just fight it out.

But an integrated market style system implies further risks.

In the end, in the struggle between silicon and  carbon, I see a mess as bad as these hearings. We need more from a third player, which I view as dark matter and energy ... the authentic spiritual side of human life. But where is THAT in the hearings? Nancy Pelosi has said a few things suggesting she might remember a bit about soul...

What if your best hope is something clearly present but very hard to focus on?

As a tangent... there is research which might help a bit in injecting dark matter and energy into computer systems, as well as enhancing human life in that natural way. But will people even remember it after I die of old age (the timing of which is ever harder to predict in my case)? Will humans even remember that self-destruction and extinction are not the only choices?