humans can be programmed just like machines. but there is a definite limit.
i will define the context since it might not be obvious to the outside observer or to audiences without prior knowledge of this context.
in computer science, there are essentially two models for giving commands to machines (i.e., programming them): imperative and declarative.
imperative programming — just like the prototypical use of the word imperative in general studies — decrees that one entity (usually a human) issues commands to another entity (usually a machine, but often other humans and sometimes non-human animals). for example, “joe instructed the machine to buy shares of stock when the share price lowers to $3.50.” the example implies that joe has specific instructions (for specific reasons) and has already made those decisions a priori. the action is carried out when the trigger occurs. it implies, to some degree, that the machine is stupid and the human is smart. this has been the typical, unmarked command structure in computer programming for many decades.
declarative programming, which is a bit more esoteric and hard to grasp, defines functions or behaviors, not commands. the reason this is esoteric is because it implies that machines know how to interpret the required behaviors and then act accordingly. for example, “Joe turned on the flag in the computer’s memory that set the behavior of his app to always check for security breaches before letting a user log into his system.” the example implies some sort of sentience, which if taken seriously would be false reasoning. what it really means is that the machine had been programmed with said behaviors by a human at some point in the past. in a slightly more frightening scenario, it implies that the machine has learned (hence the term machine learning), typically through various forms of analysis that are known to be optimized for (at this point, binary processing) machines — for instance, statistical analysis, neural networks, etc. basically, the machines are thought of as having “artificial intelligence” that can creates models that can then form the basis for their behaviors. regardless, data must be gathered or observed before the machine can learn. beyond the potentially frightening and esoteric nature of declarative programming, it’s hard to grasp because humans (and other animals) don’t seem to work this way. or do they?
can declarations be applied to models of human behavior and humans themselves?
two very interesting questions, which will need quite a lot of thought and analysis to understand. my intuitions say “no.”
why would it matter? because it’s being done, consequences be damned. i have observed that leading-edge proponents of our technological revolution are attempting to pass from one domain into the next by applying declarations to human systems (also known as markets) and humans themselves.
as always, i will attempt to look to the five domains for inspiration here. (don’t be afraid of the five domains — they are just a tool in the toolkit of analysis, like a hammer or an electron scanning microscope.)
as with any new technology, there is risk of failure. unfortunately, passing from one domain (or in this case, creating a new domain) involves considerably more risk. think about the change in human civilization when metal technology was invented (and adopted) or — more fittingly — when communism was idealized. communism is a declarative model of human behavior. it declares that human systems will behave in a certain way. unfortunately, the humans in those systems didn’t want to (could not?) behave in such a manner and the communist system — which was enforced in the ussr through authoritarianism and continues to be enforced in China through flat deception) fell apart or had to be adapted.
what are the declarations being applied in today’s world?
- washing hands is required
- touching your face is forbidden
- staying home and forgoing entertainment and socialization is compulsory
- wearing a face covering is the law
do these sound familiar at all? perhaps a clue can be found in the old testament, the new testament and the quran.
more insidious are the unrealistic (and often fantastic or physically impossible) declarations:
- order everything you need through an app
- the real world is a game or a simulation
why are these insidious? it comes down to (ironically) the means of production on the one hand and on the other the causality of the physical world. the means of production don’t exist without humans to run the system. the dream of the terrifying technology-industrialists is that the machines will build themselves. sure, maybe in a thousand years after they’ve replaced us. for now, not a chance. therefore, humans will have to do the jobs. that necessitates putting some humans into a class they might not want to be in. that sounds an awful lot like slavery doesn’t it? but less abstract is the belief that the rules of physical reality can be subverted through gamification or by “breaking the simulation.” folks, gamification will only take you so far. everybody will figure out that you’ve gamed the system and within minutes your niche will be flooded with copycats who are far better than you are at your game. second, there is no simulation. that’s the reasoning of a great imagination or a fantasy. so far, we haven’t found any ways to break to laws of physics. and believe me when i say, we are trying and have been trying very hard for a very, very long time.
what is the final outcome here? failure, on a grand scale. humans are humans. they behave the way evolution “programmed” them to behave. certain animals can be trained to behave in certain ways, like elephants on a tight-rope, but that expectation only goes so far. any fool can see that the elephant can do nothing more than walk a tightrope. that’s literally the limit of its abilities, no matter what tricks you try to teach it or spells you conjure or insults you hurl at it or switches you beat it with. regardless of whether you apply imperatives or declarations, the elephant will neither fly nor speak. likewise, humans will always be humans, and the only way to change that is to get rid of the humans and replace them with … something … else.
good luck with that.
*** never forget that the slavic word for slave is robot, and the roman word for slave is slav. that’s a poetic way of saying that we’ve been here before already (a couple of times in fact).