Poor Predictions

I haven't had much cause to think about the rising power of algorithms recently. Maybe I've settled into a comfortable pattern, and just missed the actual control those sneaky electronic devils have over my life, but I really haven't seen much.

My wife and I listened to, "Ready Player One", read by Wil Wheaton. I enjoyed it. Sure, it's a post-apocalyptic tale of young people with no future spending their lives playing video games, battling a huge and well-financed corporation over the future of an online virtual reality system, so no one ever addresses any of the real problems facing the human race in their time, instead opting to spend all their time and energy on entertainment, consuming resources and doing nothing of any value, but it was  fun. The poor, suffering teens overcame all the odds, and solved the puzzles that were beyond the abilities of the world's finest minds and supercomputers because it was about '80's culture, which not logic can interpret, and to which reason should never be applied. But some of the artificial intelligence was impressive, and the hero took a lot of chances and found clever ways to do what he needed to do to win.

But it didn't make me fear the algorithms. It was set around 2045, and the world was dying because of global warming and an end to the supplies of fossil fuels. But we have better solar technology than they did already. If the multi-billion dollar corporation had spent its money on solar power instead of oology, it could have saved half the planet instead of just losing to a high school dropout.

Will we follow the path that leads to dystopia? Our current president seems to want to. He is trying to increase extraction of fossil fuels, auctioning off leases of public lands for fracking, and eliminate restrictions on emissions, so we can add more and more carbon to the atmosphere. Short term economic gains at the expense of a polluted and warming world. I think even our current artificial intelligence knows better, to say nothing of actual science.

Of course, this president has also said that if his party loses control of Congress, the stock market will crash, and the dystopian future we all fear will come next week.

I really hope the electorate decides that's a theory worth testing.