No society can do without social inequality, because it must foster the useful knowledge and skills of its citizens in order to survive in the competition among nations. If it were to defy this imperative—as Mao did during the Cultural Revolution and as Vladimir Putin has done since the attack on Ukraine, through which he lost his best minds to foreign countries—then a country slides into the abyss because it falls behind technologically. If, on the other hand—as in turbo-capitalism—it is a state’s declared goal to reward useful knowledge and skills beyond measure, then it risks an uprising by the disadvantaged segment of the population and thus destroys social stability. Nothing is as dangerous to a state’s cohesion as the resentment of segments of the population who were respected citizens just yesterday but suddenly count for nothing. When millions of Germans lost their jobs in the wake of the Great Depression of 1929 and were forced to beg at public soup kitchens to feed their families, they turned to a man who, until 1928, had been nothing more to the overwhelming majority than a political clown: they turned to Adolf Hitler.
Putin and Trump – Resentment and its Bloody Legacy weiterlesen
Kategorie: general
Dialog between two natural intelligences (Dr. Gero Jenner and Prof. Katharina Zweig) and two artificial ones (DeepSeek and Chat GPT)
Gero Jenner:
We are currently witnessing humanity going through a kind of frenzy because artificial intelligence seems to promise it the ultimate triumph of reason. What a single human being can never know because their memory is limited and their thought processes require more or less time, artificial intelligence achieves in a moment having at its immediate disposal enormous storage facilities for the entire volume of human knowledge. In principle, with the help of AI, every single person today has access to all the knowledge of all people from the present as well as the past – provided that this knowledge has been stored in some data storage system.
Dialog between two natural intelligences (Dr. Gero Jenner and Prof. Katharina Zweig) and two artificial ones (DeepSeek and Chat GPT) weiterlesenThe Sciences (of Nature) can only be true if their Premises are wrong
Science fulfills an existential purpose. It serves to help us find our way by recognizing regularity – and hence predictability – in the events surrounding us. The need for such regularity and predictability dominates us to such a degree that we even invent it when we cannot discern it within the things themselves. People in earlier times believed that spirits and gods caused volcanoes to erupt, and droughts or diseases to occur, or that sacrifices and prayers could persuade them to avert such evils. That is, they invented a fictious causality being unable to recognize true causes. The objectively existing order of nature was understood only to the extent that was essential for the survival of the species: hunting animals or growing plants required a careful understanding of existing natural laws. Only since the Enlightenment und subsequent Industrial Revolution did humanity move beyond this elementary stage, but then this happened at a very rapid pace. Science is now capable of artificially creating new life forms in the laboratory and fundamentally altering existing ones with the help of genetic manipulation. Human voyages to distant planets, which were previously only conjured up in fairy tales and myths, have turned into a real possibilities.
The Sciences (of Nature) can only be true if their Premises are wrong weiterlesenHow bad is AI (Askgpt)? Incredibly bad!
Recently, I wanted to find out more about two brothers – not just any brothers, but, alongside Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt, Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel and the brothers Thomas and Heinrich Mann, two men who could hardly be more important for the intellectual history of Germany: Georg and Ludwig Büchner. One of them recognized as a literary genius only decades after his death, while the other was a celebrity in his time.
How bad is AI (Askgpt)? Incredibly bad! weiterlesenNexus or Harari, the visionary
What a biography! The range of this great thinker extends from “Sapiens – a brief History of Mankind” to “Nexus – A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI”, which means that it embraces three centuries of European intellectual history. While “Sapiens”, the great early work, was still imbued with that euphoria of progress and science, or at least with that amazement at its demiurgic achievements that we already know from Francis Bacon in the early 17th century, “Nexus” surprises us with its radical skepticism.
Nexus or Harari, the visionary weiterlesenHe who does not work shall not eat!
This highly controversial saying, which goes back to St. Paul, is one of the most significant of all, because all existing or utopian social systems can be derived from it. All either arise from agreement with it or from protest against it.
He who does not work shall not eat! weiterlesenIsrael and Ukraine – about wars of princes and wars of faith
The 1949 Geneva Convention defined war crimes by setting out specific rules on how wars may not be waged under any circumstances. Protecting civilians is the top priority. This agreement was a great attempt to secure fundamental human rights. However, the effort was doomed to failure from the outset.
Israel and Ukraine – about wars of princes and wars of faith weiterlesenCan we still be saved?
Confronted with such a question, the critical reader will think of several counter-questions. Who is meant by „we“? From “what” are we meant to be saved? And “who” dares to ask such a curious question? Can we still be saved? weiterlesen
All against all: the cyberwar against truth and reason
(section taken from my yet unpublished new book »Homo Faber – what holodoxy tells us about the future of man«)
Hardly any thinking person today would still claim that the „progress“ of weapons technology makes the world a better let alone safer place, but this was precisely the prediction made with regard to the internet and the social media. The interconnectedness of all with all appeared to its creators as a promise of worldwide dissemination of truth and knowledge. The fact that everyone could now express their opinions and that these could, in principle, be heard by everyone else on the globe was even hailed as the dawn of a new global democracy.
All against all: the cyberwar against truth and reason weiterlesenGerman Language Screwers
Since antiquity, humans know that they are a species of political animals: „zoon politikon“. They want to be appreciated and understood by their peers. That’s why they have a strong need for harmony and resonance – on a less pleasant note, one could call this aspiration a desire for uniformity. German Language Screwers weiterlesen
The unresolved Challenge of Freedom
Not long ago, politicians and even some scientists tried to convince us that democracy would soon spread throughout the world, as if history were following some kind of teleological law. Historical evidence has always argued against such a view, but reason and our feelings of right and wrong seemed clearly in favor of it. Must it not seem much more desirable to every rational and justice-seeking person to take an active and participatory part in political affairs rather than to follow the dictates of a government that decides over his head? Doesn’t such an attitude make democracy an imperative?
The unresolved Challenge of Freedom weiterlesenNatural versus Artificial Intelligence
Recently, the world has been shaken by a hitherto unknown fever, its name: Artificial Intelligence or AI. Given the clever answers that a program like ChatGPT gives to arbitrary questions within seconds, the collective excitement is understandable. Some people even believe they are talking to more than merely an intelligent machine; they imagine they are communicating with a compassionate human being. Yuval Noah Harari sees an apocalyptic time dawning where we will all be puppets of artificial intelligence.