Part 6: We Can Build That
This is the last of several
Intro, Part 1, Part 2. Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
My hands are drawn to plumbing. My head tends towards big ideas but my hands are drawn to plumbing. The world we need is different than the one we have and I am trying to write about that. And when I write, like impatient children, my hands ask: “Are we there yet? Can we build it now?”
And my head responds: “Nope, not yet. We have a ways to go? We don’t even know where we are going.”
I gave up on being right. I don’t think it’s useful. Instead I try to focus on my neighborhood. And so I ask, in this increasingly digital world, who is my neighbor? It’s easy to see the people that I know, the people that I love, but where is everyone else? Can I love them too?
“Are we there yet? Can we build it now?”
“Yeah, this is the place.”
Just a little giddy, my hands hitch up our pants and pick out a tool belt. We have a lot of tool belts, real and metaphorical. We like to build things. We are a plumber.
And then my head says: “But who is my neighbor, and if we are all neighbors then what is a neighborhood?”
But this question, this what-is-a-neighborhood, is too esoteric to build.
“I thought we were building now.” say my hands, dejected, dangling from the end of my arms.
“Fine,” says my head. “Let’s say that a neighborhood is a place, physical or virtual, where we can borrow a wrench, real or metaphorical.”
“Got it,” says my hands. Puttering and thinking out loud they say, “To borrow sugar from you we must first find you. We know where our friends are, that’s easy. So, we need a way to find the people that are different from us. A way to introduce ourself and get to know you, at least enough to borrow some sugar.”
The tools that we currently use to connect with each other are horrible at this. We need better plumbing. The tools that we use are designed to divide us. Their design manifests difference as a chasm across which no tools shall pass. We need better plumbing.
So this is what we build. A way to connect with each other, not in spite of our differences but because we are different. Better plumbing. We are a plumber.
Four Design Principles for a Better Neighborhood
What we will not build
While my hands are putting on our tool belt my head wants to talk about what we will not build. We will not build masturbatory clout factories infecting us with misinformation viruses. We will not build dopamine delivery machines that amplify our worst and most puerile reflexes. We will not build lies about imaginary roads and disconnected bridges.
#1 It’s the Neighborhood Not the Neighbor
My skin defines the border between myself and everything else. There is a physical reality that I am singular, separable. However, our goal here is connection. To build the plumbing that connects us, that connects each of us across difference to another, we must value the connections as an integral component of us. I think this is the math behind the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Love lives in the pipes that connect us.
And my head wants to know, “What’s in it for me?”
And my hands, fiddling with couplers and elbow joints, my hands tell him, “connection.”
#2 I am valuable when I am a conduit
We have a complicated relationship with viruses but I think it is worth noting that they connect us. I wonder if the impulse to deny Covid-19 is rooted in a fear of connection because I think we are actually jealous of the virus. We want to be the virus. But the problem is that while we want to go viral, we don’t want to be infected. I cannot be infected if we aren’t connected. But we are. I am your neighbor. I exist. I am me and I am inseparable from us. I can rail against our connection, deny you because you are something Other than me, Other than human, but we are still connected, infectors and infectable.
I am detrimental to the neighborhood when I deny or degrade our connection. My value is greatest as a conduit. My value is greatest when I embody connection and as a free and independent neighbor I inhabit the neighborhood, receiving, regulating, governing, guiding the flow with the understanding that I exist, that I have a role to play, that I am valuable if I play it well.
And my head asks, “Can you build that?”
And my hands say, “Sure. Conduits are easy for plumbers.”
#3 Design for Difference
The tools that we use to connect to each other are designed to funnel us into sterile cisterns of similarity, so that we can be targeted, like fish in a barrel. Fertility and serendipity are products of diversity. When we are isolated in a world of the familiar we can’t grow. We need bridges into difference.
And my head says, “Oooooh, then it’s not a plumber that we need. We need a digital magician. We need algorithms to steer people where we want them to go. To force them into difference. Can you build that?”
And my hands say, “No. But I can make some pipes bigger, more attractive, than others. Maybe point them downhill? What if I just make it a lot easier to cross over?”
And my head says, “Yeah, I like that.”
#4 Facilite Human Curation
And my brain says, “Why do we build robots to resemble humans?”
And my hands say, “We don’t build robots.”
There is a fundamental truth to the world that I have a hard time remembering. We cannot not be human. Human is the only option for humans. Yet we seem to be intoxicated by the idea that we will be artificial; that the machines will be us; that artificial intelligence will evolve into super-intelligence, beyond-human intelligence.
And my brain says: “Are we trying to escape humanity by casting ourselves into an artificial shell or are we just done and trying to build transcendence?”
And my hands say: “We don’t build robots.”
Stuart Russell, founder of the Center for Human Compatible Artificial Intelligence — like Isaac Asimov before him — declared three principles to guide our development of artificially intelligent machines.
- The machine’s only objective is to maximize the realization of human preferences.
- The machine is initially uncertain about what those preferences are.
- The ultimate source of information about human preferences is human behavior.
We cannot not be human and humanity defines our neighborhood, vast and diverse. Our diversity is our salvation. Our differences sustain our existence. But, we are in a moment of regression, of cultural annulment, of turning inward, of cowardice. Can we break the spell of the Rugged Individual with magic bootstraps and impossible patience? Can we find ourselves to each be one of many? Each of us an opportunity for the next? Strong like ants. Smart like bees.
And my brain says: “How can I find the people who can show me what I don’t know? How can I share what I do know? How do I know if I am any good?”
And my hands say?: “We can build that.”
This is the seventh and final post in a series:
Intro: Replacing Milton Friedman with All Of Us
Part 1: The Neighborhood
Part 2: Incentivizing the Health of the Human Neighborhood
Part 3: Difference Defines Us
Part 4: On Freedom
Part 5: Behavioral Economics and The Algorithm
Part 6: We Can Build That
