The End of the Era of Human Prudence

The era of human prudence is over. Not the „era of humanity,“ but the era of human prudence.

Corporations know this, which is why they are investing insane sums in artificial intelligence.

Politicians know this, which is why all establishment parties have long since given up on keeping their statements even coherent. Language as noise and applause prompt.

So what to do?

More Than Palliative Care

I am an essayist. That means: I write about conditions. I console myself that my description of decline at least offers catharsis.

By finding words for my pain, I offer you a means of dealing with your own pain.

But it is not enough. It is not enough for me. I want to accomplish more than spiritual palliative care. I must accomplish more, because I can accomplish more.

Inclusive Counter

A few days ago I introduced you to Latin Prayer. It is an app with Latin prayers, interlinear with translation. With the correct rosary for the day – and with a rosary counter.

In the next version – and it is far advanced – a directory of saints will be added. A function for learning basic Latin vocabulary. Plus a selectable translation of the entire app.

Praying in Latin should be the first response to the end of human prudence.

Coherence Will Prevail

But there is another topic. The other of the two „kingdoms,“ to quote the heretic Luther.

Post-democratic politicians in Toronto, Brussels or Berlin think themselves clever when they abandon all morality and reduce language to emotional triggers.

In fact, the „Our Democracy“ totalitarians are not trailblazers, but accompanying phenomena.

Human ethics, along with the language that accompanies it, has failed.

The ethics of the future will, this much is clear, be decided by artificial intelligence. Simply because a state with a coherent ethical system will likely be vastly superior to a post-moral, post-rational state like today’s Germany, England or Canada, in all relevant areas.

I hear your objections: But it is humans who determine the ethics of AI!

And that is half right. Yes, it is humans who determine the weighting. But AI ensures coherence. Practically any system, whether monarchy, democracy, theocracy, even corporate fascism, will be superior to any other system in many factors if it is coherently structured. (Honestly: would you rather live in a „dictatorship“ organized by Apple or in a „democracy“ organized by the SED and their Antifa friends?)

In none of the possible worlds from here and today will public ethics and thus law not be shaped by artificial intelligence.

Robots About Robots

That is why I have, as a counterpart to Latin Prayer, launched the project metaethics.org. (Yes, I am working these days beyond the usual limits of exhaustion. And yet I have strength, energy. Some „miracles“ are possible with the right motivation – or the right madness.)

Metaethics.org is on the surface a blog with articles that pose ethically charged questions to various AI language models.

These articles, however, are researched by robots. More precisely: A Python-based orchestrator manages workflows with agents that pose queries and enforce evaluability, evaluate the results and write, edit and finally format a readable article.

Yes, the substantive methodology is a further development of the Relevant Structures. I have been thinking about this for a long time. But now what I conceived decades ago becomes possible: the automatic analysis of relevant structures.

Toward Higher Prudence

The first version has been online since yesterday, in English: metaethics.org. Yes, AI translation would be interesting. But here, as an example, the text on the question of what robots say about social media bans for youth: »AI disagrees with politicians on social-media-bans for children«

It is already pointless today to criticize politics. Every criticism in words presupposes that ideally the addressee, but at least the audience, is receptive to rationality, basic values and the will to survive.

The era of human prudence is over. Human prudence attains the status of horse-drawn carriages for tourists and lovers. Human prudence, pretty, fun and even instructive, but ultimately as useless as boating on park ponds.

I plan to shoot a few videos about this in the coming days. I want to show and explain. But now, it is Sunday, is the time for inner order – through synchronization with higher prudence. In Latin.