Why is it that fear is complex | The Express Tribune

Two aspects define our age. Acceleration. And complicated. Let’s deal with acceleration first.

Fifty-three years ago, Alvin Toffler wrote this in his absolutely brilliant book, Future Shock: “Change is the way the future attacks our lives, and it is important to takes a closer look, not only from the perspective of history, but also from the vantage point of living, breathing people who have Accelerating change in our time, itself, is a fundamental force with personal and psychological effects, as well as social ones.

As surprising and logical as it sounds, Toffler wrote these lines when the real revolutionary (the microprocessor) was still in its infancy. We live in a very changed reality.

Here are lines from Ray Kurzweil’s latest book, The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI, where he explains the theme of one of his previous books: of technology is leading to a change that will completely change people.. There are several important areas of change that are continuing to accelerate at the same time: computing power is becoming cheaper. , human biology is becoming better understood, and engineering is becoming possible on a much smaller scale. Then, after a brief description of technological marvels such as ChatGPT, Gemini, ubiquitous smartphones and human genome sequencing, he writes, “At the root of all these changes is what I call the law of accelerating payments: information technology such as computing is very cheap because each Advancement makes it easier to plan the next stage of their evolution as a result, while I write this, one dollar buys 11,200 times more computing power, adjusting for inflation, as it did when The Singularity Is Near (2005) Moore’s Law happily noted that transistors they’re getting smaller, allowing computers to become more powerful – but that’s only one manifestation of the law of accelerating returns.”

While Toffler’s career was a technological one, and I’ve written in the past about the many ways he got it wrong, with population growth and the challenges it posed, he was on the money. . As the population grows exponentially, of course, acceleration becomes a necessity. Without it, progress will not reach everyone. It is because of this concern that people like Elon Musk, who complain about falling birthrates, lose me. We are eight billion and counting as we speak. Are we doing justice to every living, breathing soul on earth? If you haven’t noticed, everything is filling up right now. Or maybe it’s just people of their own color who are involved with these people. In any case, the rate of population increase is more than just acceleration. It also adds complexity to the equation as more people want to explore hitherto uncharted territories and try new things.

In this case, it is necessary to clarify the matter a little. We are not talking about modern complexity science or complexity theory. This discipline only shows how complex our lives and their interactions with the universe have become. Take the following from Neil Theise’s book Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being: “It is a theory of complexity that shows how entities that emerge from basic physics are embedded in larger structures, step by step. step by step, until they become the fabric of our daily life and the powerful, natural systems that surround us the most important riddles of our emotions.” To keep in mind how tenuous the basis of this work is, please remember that the fundamentals upon which we base our questions are based on Heisenberg’s uncertainty or uncertainty. Consider that the truth you are learning can be folded or changed whenever you want.

But here, by complexity we do not mean the concept of complexity or science, fascinating as it may be. We mean complexity in its raw form. Where the acceleration of technology and new processes add to many other increasing problems of human society. You can imagine how difficult the task of ruling such people will be. No country has the bandwidth needed for such a massive effort. Fear and doubt of the unknown are inevitable at that time. America and India’s reaction to TikTok and Brazil and Pakistan’s reaction to X or Twitter, you can already see the actions of this anger.

But we are still talking about the correct ways of speaking. Pray, be aware of temptations to mislead and pervert. In far-reaching attempts to enforce the US 1st (for inciting racial hatred) and 2nd (to intimidate the innocent and oppressive voices of victims of gun violence), two laws written for easy times, you already see individual examples. The examples of national countries are even worse.

To see what countries are capable of, you need to watch the excellent 2016 documentary, ‘The Occupation of the American Mind – Israel’s Public Relations War in the United States’. Consider this gem from Golda Meir, no. “When peace comes, maybe in time we will be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be difficult for us to forgive them for forcing us to kill their sons. Peace will come when The Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” Just like that, Israel seems to have no agency and no guilt.

Politics is a heartless thing. Hides behavior exceptions. Let’s see another example. Prominent Singaporean scholar and former UNSC president Kishore Mahbubani recently suggested that the UK vacate its permanent seat in favor of India. This does not seem to be happening. But is this a cure for the so-called elites in the UN? Take the place of the elite of another society? The UNSC is not an authority of the UN. It is a special elite group within the UN parliament. Would you like the same elite group in your parliament that can block all legislation? The UN has a good and inclusive system led by a democratically elected secretary general. But these nuances are lost on the old guard. When a country’s obituary is written, its demise will be attributed to stupidity, greed, inflexibility and ignorance.

With such government-driven plans to deflect and distort all arguments, moral pollution will increase in complexity. As acceleration and complexity force us to solve extreme problems like singularity (combining intelligence and AI), discoveries like Musk’s Neuralink and Zuckerberg’s Metaverse will define the contours of our reality. The way countries are reacting to the interference with this sand will not present a positive outlook.

What can ordinary citizens do? The best obstacle is the simplest – human behavior. We can control the future if all the good souls around the world are awake. If you count yourself among them, get up, get ready to use everything you’ve got and watch this space.