The Conundrum Of World Improvement

By Author: Martin Winer
Total Articles: 6
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The Conundrum of World Improvement
Suppose today, your deity spoke to you and said:

From this day forward, your job shall be to contemplate the problems of the world. I will give you immortality for as long as you need to think and come up with a solution. During this time, you will live comfortably and be able to dedicate yourself to this quest. At the end of your planning, you will return to exactly this day with infinite powers for a finite period to implement your solution. After this period, your solution will be ‘turned off' and the world will only have the memory of that experience.

Attempt 1 -- Turn All Weapons into Bananas
This solution will turn all weapons into bananas. That's right all of them. You'll have Magnum banana's right down to nuclear bananistic submarines. After all, how much can you hurt someone with a banana? If you try to use appendages (hands, feet, etc), they too will temporarily be turned into a banana (small mushy ones, not big firm ones). No weapon will be left on this earth that isn't turned into a banana. After a certain period, people will learn to resolve ...
... their differences other ways.

Comedic Connundrum
This will immediately lead to an oversupply of bananas, leading to a life imitating art situation where the Planet of the Apes ensues, with your mission failed.

The Real Connundrum - What is a weapon?
The real problem is: What is a weapon? Sure a gun is clearly a weapon and so too is a bow and arrow, but what about a knife? What about your common garden stone? Remember that historically, stones were used as a form of execution. So what is a weapon after all? A weapon is a technology or object married to the intention of the user.

From one of the first parables of the use of technology, we learn that technology is never the problem; it's our use of technology. The stone that was used to slay Abel could easily have also been a stone used to build a house for his brother.

Attempt 2 -- Turn All devices used as a weapon into a Banana
Great well, now we've solved it. If someone picks up a stone and uses it to try and attack another person, artificially intelligent software that monitors all objects in real time will detect the imminent attack and turn the device into a banana moments before the attack occurs. This way we can still have rock gardens without having to worry about being stoned anymore, unless we smoke herbs from the rock garden.

Possible enhancement: Change objects into random food items
If we change the objects used in a violent attack into random food items, we solve two world problems with one stroke: violence and hunger. It is said, man will not rebel on a full stomach. Now, should man grow hungry, angry and rebellious and take objects into hand with which to rebel, the objects will be turned into food items in that second and quell the rebellion instantaneously.

Problem: Are all weapons physical items?
With our revised banana scheme, we can eliminate physical violence in this world; That is, at least, open direct combat. However, this presupposes that all violence is physical.

Stalking
In the hands of a stalker, a telephone can be a weapon. What algorithm shall we now use? If one person calls another more than 3 times with that person hanging up on them, the phone shall then turn into a banana? This algorithm becomes increasingly complex very quickly.

Demographic War
What about a demographic war? When people realize that they can't defeat their enemies with weapons, they may realize that they can outbreed them. By out breeding them, they may maintain a majority on the planet whereby they can wield political, and numerical supremacy. What do we propose to turn into bananas here? I shudder, as a man, to answer.

Political Battles
What about political battles whereby one party seeks to destroy the life or career of another person? What of slander? We can't turn the press nor words into bananas.

The real problem - It's not just the use of technology, it's the intention
The real problem with all the proposed solutions is that they look at material solutions to the problem. The problem isn't with objects the problem is to do with intention. Objects are just one of many methods we use to actualize our intentions. If the fault lies in our intentions, then we must research ways in which our intentions can be prevented from getting the best of us.

Attempt 3 -- The Intention Buster
Recall that we are given an unlimited amount of time to solve this problem. Thus we can devise very sophisticated systems to use in our solutions. What if we research and develop a device which interfaces with the human mind and detects negative intentions?

Take for example a child who plays with a magnifying glass, and discovers that the sun focused on a banana peel (there are a mysteriously large number of them about, for some unknown reason), causes the peel to burn. The child has been burnt before and realizes this is an unpleasant sensation. Suddenly an ant passes by and the child is curious to see what would happen to the ant, realizing that it might be unpleasant for the ant, but not completely sure of exactly what will happen. Suddenly, his/her hand will be prevented from moving just as the sun is about to be focused fatally on the ant. The ant will crawl away safely, but will our future?

How do we learn about intentions and the effects of our intentions?
The problem with this solution is that when we turn off our solution, the child who was unable to fry the ant, hasn't gained any insight as to why this is a wrong action. The child never got to see the ant turn into smoke and imagine what that may feel like. S/He never had the opportunity to complete this action and possibly feel remorse. The child never had the experience to develop empathy and only knew that s/he was prevented from taking this action. Thus when this solution is turned off, the child, perhaps an adult by now, never had a chance to learn about the consequences of intentions because those intentions were prevented externally. So when this solution is turned off, we return to a world in the state it was at best, however, likely much worse than it was.

In interpersonal relationships, pain is often caused without intention
Remember that this solution must be a comprehensive one. Our intention buster will catch negative intentions but much of the pain of the world is not caused with direct intent. Romance is a terrific example of a realm where pain is often caused without intent.

The real problem: lack of empathy
The real problem with this solution is that first, it does not allow one to develop empathy and to learn about the effects of our intentions and actions. Second, it assumes that the problems of the world are always a result of negative intent. The problems of the world are often the result of people taking actions without understanding their effects on other people. Thus, we need to increase empathy in the world to prevent people from taking actions which harm others.

Attempt 4 -- The Eye for an Eye Empathy Inducer
Suppose, one were to take a banana from the over supply caused by our previous attempts and play a trick on his/her neighbour. The neighbour suffers a terrible spill as the result of slipping on the peel and injures his back for 3 days. The empathy inducer will make sure that the perpetrator suffers a similar fall causing 3 days of similar back pain. Surely our perpetrator will never attempt another such trick? This is a case of Mutually Assured Consequences between the perpetrator and the victim.

What if the perpetrator is prepared to endure the consequences?
Well what if the perpetrator in future becomes really angry with someone? Now, we're talking blood boiling angry. The perpetrator knows that it will cost him 3 days of pain to cause his enemy to slip using a banana peel, but who cares? It's worth it.

We'd hope that people would soon realize that it's just not worth it to endure the pain of hurting others and look to correct their problems through other means. However, one taking such an assumption does not understand the power of hate and the determination of those thus poisoned.

The real problem - lack of caring
The banana peel example is a trivial one, yet we have built our ‘security' policies around a mutually assured destruction. In general, we have sought to secure our world by assuring the death of our enemies. This clearly wasn't the last word in security because enemies have emerged who care not about death. They are willing to endure the ultimate consequence of killing another, their own death. In general, people often don't care about the consequences (to themselves) of their actions.

Attempt 5 - Make people care
How then do we make people care in general? We're not talking about the suicide bombers anymore and we're not trying to figure out how to make them care about losing their lives. The solution to that one is comparatively simple: convince them that there is no reward for their actions.

The harder question is how do we make people care about others in general across the board? We need full spectrum caring from caring about littering by throwing banana peels on the ground to caring about others and the effects you have on them.

Eliminate Opiates
Afterlife
Get rid of the notion of an afterlife or some other time/place where everything will be ok. This obviates the fierce urgency of here and now. At the very least, make it clear that problems must be solved here and now, and not later.

Deities
No need to erase the concept of God here, but it is necessary to erase the notion that we can ignore the problems we have with our neighbours and deal with God directly. It must be made clear that our purpose on this planet is to deal with the problems of this planet.

False deities
It must be made clear that contributing to your 401K will never assure you peace and security. This is an opiate and a distraction from the true problem at hand.

Blood is thicker than water
There should be priorities for our caring for people in our lives. However, our ultimate happiness will come when water thickens to something close to blood.

Realize that this is a prisoners dilemma
It's crucial that we realize that our actions contribute to a sort of social inertia. It is this social inertia which ties us together. We must come to realize that if we act negatively, we invite others to do so. If we act positively, we promote people to do the same. While we may not immediately see the results of our positive actions, we are building towards a critical mass of positive people who will be able to reshape the world. Truthfully, our only lasting legacy is our contributions to this world.

An example would help
Perhaps if the world could be shown a community where they care for one another, then people could see, by contrast, the dark world they currently live in. If such an example were available, perhaps this would help people see the errors of their ways.

Am I my brother's keeper?
Am I my brother's keeper? This was the answer Cain provided God when He asked: where is your brother (knowing full well he was murdered). This embodies the ‘I-thou' and the ‘us and them' philosophies that have plagued this planet from time immemorial.

There have been numerous examples of strong comradery that develops out of situations where a group of people have each others lives in their hands. Such comradery is common in the military for example. If we could extend this comradery and cause people to realize that they have other peoples' quality of lives in their hands, we may very well solve the world's problems and cause people to care. Thus, we must always answer: Am I my brother's keeper? with ‘Yes.'

About the Author This work is a thought experiment into how to improve the world. Martin Winer is a computer scientist by day, developing www.rankyouragent.com, and a social scientist by night. You can contact him at: martin_winer@hotmail.com if you have any suggestions/comments.

http://members.rogers.com/mwiner/fixworld.htm has the formatted version for ease of reading.