Proposal – Political/Economic Jubilee Fellowship
The author recognises that there are some significant benefits to extinction, especially the end of human suffering. However, the majority of humans today are biophilic (lovers of life) who want to do what they can to avoid extinction (even though individually we are all going ‘extinct!’) This idea is for this majority.
Project: Create a viral publicity campaign to set up a global fellowship of individuals who have a simple shared ability to imagine a ‘better,’ less destructive/more constructive way of living than ‘Capitalism’ (trade, ownership and money) offers, and who therefore call for a Jubilee – an END BY date for The System, after which other way/ways of organising ourselves and sharing our resources can be introduced.
Perhaps we can go with 2030, the date set for Klaus Schwabs ‘Great Reset’ although this can be changed.
Ever since the release of ChatGPT in October 2022, experts in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been voicing their concerns about the dangers of AI, in particular AGI (Artificial General Intelligence.) Recently (April 2023) hundreds of them have called for a halt in the development of AI and in May 2023, Geoffrey Hinton, considered to be ‘the Godfather of AI’ left Google and added to the list of those with growing concerns.
The great danger of AGI according to experts like Eliezer Yudowsky, is the alignment problem, which Yudowsky has defined as “the problem of building powerful AI systems that are robustly and verifiably aligned with human values."
David Shapiro, author of the book ‘Benevolent by Design’ (available online for free) suggests that in order for an AI system to be ‘aligned’ it must be programmed with exquisite ‘heuristic imperatives’ (AKA control functions) which he defines as ‘a set of fundamental guiding principles that are designed to be embedded into autonomous AI systems at various levels. These principles serve as intrinsic motivations that drive decision making, learning, self-evaluation, and cognitive control, much like human intrinsic motivations and psychological needs ¹.
After much consideration, he proposes in his book that AI be programmed with three Heuristic Imperatives to provide a solid foundation that align AI with values which are benevolent towards all sentient life, namely
- reducing suffering
- increasing prosperity and
- increasing understanding.
(Please refer to his book to get a deeper understanding of each of these functions. This is just one opinion. There could be other imperatives which stem from these or in addition to them but this is beyond the scope of this essay.)
Before we continue, let us briefly agree what we mean by ‘artificial?’ For this article we will be going with ‘man made’
Although the alignment problem has only come to the public’s attention recently (including my own) as Daniel Schmachtenberger suggested in a recent YouTube interview (3) we have already been subjected to unaligned Artificial Intelligence for a long while. After all, Corporations and Governments are a form of man-made intelligence. They are legal fictions, created by man and are clearly not aligned with values which are benevolent towards sentient life, which is why we seem to be heading towards several cliffs at great speed.
The System (which we can call Capitalism and which is based on trade) is actually working in diametric opposition to Shapiros Heuristic Imperatives. It is INCREASING suffering for the masses, DECREASING prosperity (and wellbeing) and DECREASING understanding. A corporation is obliged by law to create profits for its shareholders, regardless of the affect it has on sentient life. Take, for example, Social Media corporations like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. The algorithms of all these platforms are programmed to maximise user attention to the platform and in so doing, we see INCREASING suffering, DECREASING prosperity (and wellbeing) and DECREASING understanding to all but a tiny vampiric class. The System is making us more sick and more stupid by the day. Another offender is the food industry. It is making us sick in the mind and body, with sugar added to so much and dangerous and addictive additives and fats which destroy our bodies, souls and minds and even making it hard for us to think straight. And Big Food is causing great suffering to our non-human animal ‘cousins’ as well as to the environment. This applies to many, if not most Corporations (Big food, Big Pharma, Media, Gaming and gambling and of course at the root of all these – the banking system) as well as ALL Governments (who are to a huge extent bought out by Corporations) -All of these legal fictions are unaligned or malevolent AI systems.
The current system is steeped in systemic violence, planetary destruction and astronomic waste. Surely if we get the right minds together, we can find better ways of living and sharing the resources on this planet?
If you need more convincing that The System is actually programmed to destroy our minds and bodies (except for the tiny parasitic class), firstly take a look at the work of filmmaker and author Peter Joseph (creator of The Zeitgeist series of documentaries, author of ‘The New Human Rights Movement’ and recently his podcast ‘revolution now’ where he sets out how The System rewards systemic violence, planetary destruction and astronomic waste. In his latest podcast episode (44) he explains how many big corporations are not even profitable if you take in account the ‘collateral damage’ (pollution, species extinction etc,) they are causing!
Our debt based, competition based consumerist system (the economic, political and legal systems which are inextricably linked) with its lust for never ending growth, leads to the acceleration and exacerbation of so many of the problems we face including - environmental degradation, loss of natural habitat, destruction of the Amazon, species extinction, plastic waste, sea pollution and air pollution, addiction, poor mental health, war, animal abuse, to name but a few. This AI (man made) system is clearly INCREASING suffering, DECREASING prosperity and wellbeing and DECREASING understanding.
Also checkout Derrick Jensens’ premises from his book ‘endgame’ included below for a stark and honest appraisal of the brutality of Capitalism.
Although many of us may know much of this intuitively, The System controls the information we see and focus on, ALL OF WHICH is designed to keep us distracted from realising that it is THE SYSTEM (man made intelligence) which is the problem. (This is why organisations like Extinction Rebellion are allowed to operate, as they too distract us all from a primary cause of much of our problems – The System. By trying to tweak The System or make demands of The System, groups like ER are actually doing The System a favour by distracting people from realising that The System has to go if the masses actually want to avoid massive and fast destruction.)
If The System is already ‘unaligned AI’, how can it be possible to align our new super powerful AI systems with benevolent control functions when the very corporations that are creating them are not aligned themselves!?
With the rapid advancement of AI, we may be able to build benevolent AI systems which will inform a critical mass of people, that it is indeed The System which is the problem, however this is only the first step. Most of us in the West are inextricably involved and invested in The System through pensions, investments as well as having no choice but to use The System to get our basic (and not so basic) needs met. If The System was ended tomorrow, untold suffering, death and destruction would abide across the spectrum including in the poorer countries as a knock-on effect. (From where would we get our medicine, food, energy, technology etc.?) However, if it continues ad infinitum, it can cause equal or even more suffering in the not-too-distant future.
Hence the idea of a Jubilee, to give enough time for multi-disciplinary groups to form - ethicists, technologists, complex systems experts, creative thinkers, psychologists, communicators etc. With the help of benevolent AI systems, as well as intelligence enhancing practices and compounds, such as breathing techniques, fasting, meditative practices, psychedelics and other plant medicine, these groups will develop alternative ways of living and sharing resources and perhaps experiment in small groups with some of the ideas. Whenever the sell by date of The System is reached, we will hopefully have options for new ways of living. And if more time is needed, or urgency due to catastrophe is needed, that date can move. And the AI will also have to assist people deal with the parasitic class who will be using as many resources as they can to oppose this transition. (We are all part of the parasitic class in some sense as we rely on cheap labour for most foo our products and services.)
(In his book, the New Human Rights Movement, Joseph outlines some ideas about how we can move away from the antiquated, barbaric, and outdated trade and competition model to a resource-based model with guardianship rather than ownership (just one man’s idea of an alternative to this psychopathic destructive system. There must be more ideas, and benevolent AI can help us with this)
There are billions of people on this planet that have respect for the Bible. These people may be persuaded by the idea of a Jubilee, which is a biblical idea (Leviticus 25, 8-10)
Perhaps Klaus Schwab, leader of the World Economic Forum (WEF), should be given a Nobel peace prize for suggesting we need a Great Reset, suggesting that by 2030 ‘You will own nothing and be happy!’ The WEF removed this from much of their website because of course he didn’t mean EVERYONE will own nothing and be happy! Just MOST people, with the exception of a tiny parasitic class, who will own everything! (Blackrock and Vanguard come to mind – they have their dirty fingers in every pie.) Let us, however, take his idea and run with it FOR EVERYONE. Let us declare that by 2030 (or some other date), NOBODY will own anything. We will find different ways of relating to the land, to non-human animals, to the finite resources on this planet and to our fellow humans (many of whom are ‘owned’ by corporations and governments – i.e., slaves). And we have say, six years to come up with ideas. Maybe we can let Schwab and his super rich behind-the-scenes controllers, put their tender in for continuing the memes (stories) of ownership, money and debt and by The Jubilee, we can then measure it against other models/memes in terms of benevolence or malevolence towards sentient life.
The Jubilee fellowship as described above in the intro, could be a global political initiative, uniting all those who have imagination for something better than this cruel joke of a system. As stated, the purpose of the fellowship is SOLELY to call for a global Jubilee, without specifying any particular solution, so as to give time for solutions to emerge and to unite millions or even billions with a common, easy to understand goal. In the time between now and the ‘Great Reset,’ working groups will emerge around the world to create alternative ways of living together based on Heuristic Imperatives that are benevolent towards mankind (and all sentient life) and can be tested as such. Part of the research would be developing a way of deciding which system(s) would ‘win the tender(s)’, but it would of course require evidence of benevolence.
The other Primary Cause
A far less popular primary cause of our problems is the creation of sentient beings in the first place, who have the capacity to suffer, some of them very greatly. This can also be explained in terms of unaligned AI.
One could argue that human DNA is a type of Artificial Intelligence – it is Man-made (through the act of sex it is passed on) (Note that non human animals DNA is animal made, but also it could be said that all DNA has evolved over millions of years, and it is DNA that creates man or at least leads man to create more men or you could say DNA is created by evolution (or God if you are a believer.)
For the sake of this article we suggest that our DNA was to a degree, man made, by our parents, and that DNA mirrors the system in that it has no benevolent heuristic imperatives. As Richard Dawkins explains in ‘The Selfish Gene,’ sentient beings are survival machines for genes and memes – i.e. we are being used by DNA to help DNA survive for millions of years, using our disposable ancestors and our disposable selves (none of US survive for millions of years!) to keep DNA and the whole game going at the terribly high cost of a huge amount of suffering of sentient beings to varying degrees, depending on various factors, but suffering being common to ALL sentient life. DNA’s sole purpose is to perpetuate itself regardless of the effect this has on the parents, the child created, the animals and the environment. Because DNA is unaligned AI, for so many sentient beings including non-human animals, procreation
(1) INCREASES suffering (for the mother during and after pregnancy, for the parents, for some animals who can even die in the process of conception or birth) and for the human and non-human animal created who had no experience of suffering before it was conceived)
(2) DECREASES prosperity/well-being for the fellow humans who have to share finite resources with more people, for SOME human parents (although in many cases parents argue that their children INCREASE prosperity and for fellow humans and
(3) DECREASES understanding (as there is no time for contemplation for most parents as they struggle to get by with all the pressures parenthood brings)
This is a bitter pill to swallow and is counter intuitive, however, benevolent AI systems who have no skin in the game, may guide some of the emerging groups to discourage and disincentivise procreation, especially in this critical time when so many people will lose their jobs to AI. In order to reduce suffering and to increase prosperity and understanding, we could help reduce the number of births by supporting women (both in first and third world countries) with better education, promoting birth control and using AI to develop technologies which would allow men and women to temporarily sterilise themselves (at the touch of a button) so that they can enjoy sex without the often unwanted side effect of procreation. Perhaps one day it can be encouraged again when we have found ways to edit out (using CRISPR) the nasty illnesses and increase Hedonic setpoints (see the work of David Pierce) so that people will find it easy to really enjoy their lives. Or to put it another way, if a benevolent system were to replace the current malevolent one, one could test the heuristic imperatives of procreation and only choose to do it if it DECREASES suffering, INCREASES wellbeing, INCREASES understanding.
(1) The Control Problem - Github. https://github.com/daveshap/HeuristicImperatives
(2)
(3) In his book ‘The New Human Rights Movement’, Jospeh outlines some ideas about how we can move away from the antiquated, barbaric and outdated trade and competition model to a resource-based model with guardianship rather than ownership (just one man’s idea of an alternative to this psychopathic destructive system. There must be more and benevolent AI can help us with this)
(4) https://derrickjensen.org/endgame/premises/ (some of the red inked words are added to the original.)
• Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial (wayward) civilization.[4]
• Premise Two: Traditional (sane) communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their land bases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.
• Premise Three: Our way of living—industrial (Babylon) civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.
• Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.
• Premise Five: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control—in everyday language, to make money—by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production (‘capitalism’). If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called ‘justice’.
• Premise Six: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.
• Premise Seven: The longer we wait for civilization to crash—or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down—the messier will be the crash, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and for those who come after.
• Premise Eight: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.
• Another way to put premise Eight: Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and stupid (sick, insane). Sustainability, morality, and intelligence (as well as justice) requires the dismantling of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your land base.
• Premise Nine: Although there will clearly some day be far fewer humans than there are at present, there are many ways this reduction in population could occur (or be achieved, depending on the passivity or activity with which we choose to approach this transformation). Some of these ways would be characterized by extreme violence and privation: nuclear armageddon, for example, would reduce both population and consumption, yet do so horrifically; the same would be true for a continuation of overshoot, followed by crash. Other ways could be characterized by less violence. Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it’s not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default. Yet some ways of reducing population and consumption, while still violent, would consist of decreasing the current levels of violence required, and caused by, the (often forced) movement of resources from the poor to the rich, and would of course be marked by a reduction in current violence against the natural world. Personally and collectively we may be able to both reduce the amount and soften the character of violence that occurs during this ongoing and perhaps long-term shift. Or we may not. But this much is certain: if we do not approach it actively—if we do not talk about our predicament and what we are going to do about it—the violence will almost undoubtedly be far more severe, the privation more extreme.
• Premise Ten: The CULT-ure as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to (selfishly) destroy (over consume) life.
• Premise Eleven: From the beginning, this culture—sadocracy—has been a culture of occupation.
• Premise Twelve: There are no rich people in the world, and there are no poor people. There are just people. The rich may have lots of pieces of green paper that many pretend are worth something—or their presumed riches may be even more abstract: numbers on hard drives at banks—and the poor may not. These “rich” claim they own land, and the “poor” are often denied the right to make that same claim. A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper. Those without the green ‘tokens’ generally buy into these delusions almost as quickly and completely as those with. These delusions carry with them extreme consequences in the real world.
• Premise Thirteen: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist (effectively!).
• Premise Fourteen: From birth on—and probably from conception, but I’m not sure how I’d make the case—(genetotrophic disease!) we are individually and collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes—and our bodies—to be poisoned.
• Premise Fifteen: Love does not imply pacifism!
• Premise Sixteen: The material world is primary. This does not mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot rely on Jesus, Krishna, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, the Higher Power or even the Easter Bunny to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and not just the movement of God’s eyebrows. It means we have to face this mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on Earth—whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live here—the Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly (sick) to think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is silly and (a)pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real.
• Premise Seventeen: It is a mistake (or more likely, denial) to base our decisions on whether actions arising from these will or won’t frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of (selfish insane) citizens (chimpanzees).
• Premise Eighteen: Our current wayward sense of self is no more sustainable than our current wayward use of energy or technology.
• Premise Nineteen: The culture’s problem lies above all in the (deluded) belief that (over) controlling /consuming and abusing the natural world is justifiable.
• Premise Twenty: Within this (consumption crazed) cult-ure, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions.
• Modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the power and monetary fortunes of the decision-makers and those they serve.
• Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are founded primarily (and often exclusively) on the almost entirely unexamined belief that the decision-makers and those they serve are entitled to magnify their power and/or financial fortunes at the expense of those below.
• Re-modification of Premise Twenty: If you dig to the heart of it—if there were any heart left—you would find that social decisions are determined primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature.