A Discussion About Technology and Being Human with Kruptos: With a Treat from the Outer Limits

We are Human in our Making of Tools, not in Our Using Them or in Our Being Used by Others as a Tool.

Ironically, or perhaps because my thoughts are being monitored by “The Stream” (Haha), after volleying briefly with the author of Kruptos (see link), I just happened to select this episode of ‘The Outer Limits’, and episode which I had not seen before:

"Stream of Consciousness," 'The Outer Limits'

Here is the pertinent conversation with Kruptos so far, located at

19. Can Humanity Master Technology?

κρῠπτός

Feb 23Author

Yeah. That is kind of it for me. I appreciate the audio even though I enjoy reading, but my work has me in my truck a lot and I would never be able to keep up otherwise.

David Schmitt, Ph.D.

American Siberia - David Schmit…

15 hrs agoLiked by κρῠπτός

I listened to your article with great interest (as usual). I gave a talk at a MacIntyrean Enquiry conference, and elsewhere, a ways back on some neurobiological speculations concerning craft versus technical learning. I was also interested in the negative aspects of our choices for, and as a result of the imposition of, bureaucratization and the lost of human intellect, emotion, will, and creativity for not-necessarily desirable provisions of convenience. This also leads inevitably, I argue, toward 'organization mobbing' as an internal mechanism of self-regulation.

κρῠπτός

15 hrs agoAuthor

Thanks for the kind words. Once you really start meditating on the effects of passing off so much of our abilities to machines and systems, the effects upon us are startling. You final observation is an interesting one, maybe worth some longer reflection, this passing off of our internal moral regulation to the system is sound. In a sense, we will need a social credit based surveillance state to act as, in Freudian terms, our ego.

David Schmitt, Ph.D.

American Siberia - David Schmit…

3 hrs ago

Herein may be part of the self-limiting corrective to the techno-tyrannical mess we are in. Well, I should say that the failures of the secular aspects of this mess will impact the overall power of the fundamental spiritual mess we are in. The spiritual is where, of course, the real battle must, and will, occur. Nonetheless, we will be propelled toward the spiritual confrontation as the temporal realm of, as you call them, technique-based systems reach a multitude of overwhelming crisis points.

To elaborate (ramble, perhaps) on the frailty of these temporal systems, we cannot evade the fact that we make up, and that we are part of, an ecological system. We are part of a whole with at least some aspects describable in cybernetic terms. Ultimately, we are embedded in a system that must obey the Logos. The technocrats, those who worship technique over all other things, cannot indefinitely get away with the idolization of the imbalanced condition. The pathology they engender by their desires and plans must necessarily fail by a sort of implosion. They cannot design enough feedback loops because human knowledge is woefully imperfect. As I recall, there are canonical limits to engineering control systems, each of which has a non-zero probability of failure. Moreover, their setpoints, their goals, cannot coincide with anything anywhere near the true Telos. Their efficiency ratios cannot incorporate real numerators and denominators for the scale of things that they want to control. Their cost-benefit ratios become meaningless. Too much becomes unaccounted-for externalities. To simplify, they choose efficiency ratios that merely take into account the few, the chosen-few technocrats. (Perhaps what you meant by ego-centered control systems. Their models are meaningless when trying to define universal systems. Like an impish boy who is frustrated that his erector-set project failed to satisfy, they have a tantrum and conclude that it will all be easier if they simply smash anything traditional, natural, truly ecological, and then depopulate in order to make their equations -- although flawed -- more tractable in their failures. So, their vision is doomed. But this does not mean that we all do not suffer greatly as their playtime turns out to be catastrophic in in what they view as their romper room.

Wisdom is more than knowledge and knowledge is more than merely processing information.

Additionally, earlier today, I had a discussion with Substack author, Common Knowledge Edinburgh, along similar lines. That author was pointing out some negative influences that Ivan Pavlov had with his researches into behavioral conditioning. Here’s the link and below is my response to this line of interesting inquiry by the author:

https://substack.com/home/post/p-141963453

“I suspected that you might have had a sensitivity regarding animal experimentation. I completely understand that sentiment and concur regarding the importance of caring for animals. I think that it is important to know as much as we can about what makes us human, including our biology and -- thus -- our vulnerabilities. We possess both machine-like features as well as being free, choosing beings. (In even very simple terms outside of some brain processes, the arm is a mechanical lever---but we could agree that that fact does not make us deterministic robots in our thoughts and actions.) This I have worked long and hard at understanding and explaining. It is the task of the free, human being to master the machine like aspects much as one would master the use of a mechanical tool. Without deeply understanding both aspects, one cannot succeed in becoming efficacious as a defender of your freedom of mind and in becoming evermore virtuous. In fact, one will be exposed to the possibility, likelihood, and -- frankly -- certainty of being tyrannized by an enemy, a human and spiritual predator, who will better understand one's vulnerabilities than oneself.”