Elmat, Taleb is a bright guy ...... but I don't see the point of an
intellectual rant. It's clear he has a beef against a bunch of elite somebodys and, knowing well some of what he is referring to, he is partly correct and has a valid beef. But all of this is misdirected. Even worse, none of the fine language and finger pointing helps anybody except the people whose minds love to incessantly gnaw on energy consuming ideas much like how a dog gnaws on a bone. This is a predicament that all thinking humans face. A thinking crisis with poor outcomes unless the entity behind the thinking functions without any kind of greed. If we keep failing collectively it is because, at the highest levels, this greed is rampant. Even in your favorite political person --- no matter who.
Leave aside the problem I just stated. There is no solution without a moral fix, and I am not wise enough to prescribe a solution. But we are not headed up anywhere on the planet without people --- both at the top and collectively --- thinking in terms of "for them" and not "for me".
Look at a more obvious problem. A crisis of misuse. Use technology (and science) as an example. First come computers. Think of the ways in which they are misused, and exploited by authority to take away some of your liberty and thus humanity --- a more efficient accounting of what you owe, how you work, and even a computer that can replace you. I can assure you that whoever built the first computer did not have such uses in mind and would withdraw his contribution if he came to meet that to which it has led.
Then go to networks. Information. Misinformation. Satellites. Drones. Wars. Better bombs. No need to even see the people you kill or feel the horror in the action. Authority can now reach into your living space. Then go to cameras. Well, they watch you at every traffic stop. I don't have to go on ..... it does not matter what the technology is ---- it is built to be used against you. Gun owners love guns. Many of them will meet the receiving end of one because it is not possible to shuffle about with one kind of energy and not attract an energy to balance it. Everything is sold to you with a "for your good" label. False, of course.
We are surrounded by the monstrosities we have created, even as we marvel at our own brilliance.
In the end WE are the problem. So the solution is an individual solution and possibly, probably, a very slow one with lots of suffering and lots of learning before the collective can hope to climb up a ladder one step at a time.
Leaders. We don't need idiots who say elect me. We need to identify and drag out the wise sorts who do not want leadership or money or power or fame or anything else and stick them in these positions for as long as they can tolerate the nonsense. If anyone can solve problems it will be real problem solvers like them. Not crooked actors, talkers, con men. If we can't look inside and know good, we won't know it on the outside.
Idealism? Yes. But what the heck. Look at what we get instead. :) |
