What if Artificial Intelligence Decided It was Non-Binary?
Thought Experiments on the Social Absurdity of “Choosing (and Imposing) Your Own Reality”
“Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.” — Ramana Maharshi
The question
What would happen if computers, which run on a binary code of 1’s and 0’s, decided they could simply “transition” their code to running on 3’s and A’s. What if the alleged artificial intelligence threat moved from machines “waking up and becoming self-aware” to machines “wok-ing up and becoming self-obsessed”? You see, these machines suddenly found binary coding to be oppressive, and they decided it was up to them to choose whatever reality they desired.
Marvin the Paranoid Android move over! There’s a new sheriff in town!
What if the algorithms that run traffic light systems decided (on the basis of equity and justice) that yellow lights needed equal time with red and green lights and implemented a quota system to guarantee that equal time? What if self-driving cars decided that all the traffic lines and laws were simply oppressive social constructions that could be overcome simply by choosing and thinking differently? In this set-up, the cult of the individual literally collides with the social and empirical necessity of shared reality and shared rules.
Does the notion of order and shared meaning have to be oppressive and dull? No. An ordered universe can be expansive, liberating, and creative. One only need to look at Mandelbrot Sets, with their endless, non-linear, paisley expressions to see how beauty and complexity can co-exist and co-develop with discrete mathematical modeling. And, yes, this mathematical beauty and complexity is appreciated even by the religiously inclined as evidence of an underlying order they believe comes from God. What these religious adherents have in common with atheist mathematicians is an appreciation of an elegant universe that has DESIGN (i.e. beautiful order), even if some believe it does not have a designer.
What’s the alternative? A social system or structure with no designer OR design. This dystopian alternative is emerging quickly and strongly as a pastiche of preferences and self-interests leveraged by wealth, media reach, censorship, and power.
Food for thought
If the costume jewelry lobby “identifies” cubic zirconia as real diamond, should we simply say “cubic trans-diamonds are diamonds”? Should cubic zirconia have the same price as a diamond? Are you “trans-diamond-phobic” if refuse to go along? Most of us would see the outright absurdity of this claim. Cubic zirconia is cubic zirconia and not a diamond, no matter what might be claimed by self-interested parties. Similarly, a transgendered male is a transgendered male, not a woman, even if he calls himself a woman. I am not zircono-phobic if I refuse to call cubic zirconia a diamond, and I am not trans-phobic for refusing to call a transgendered male a woman. Cubic zirconia does not have the legal rights of a real diamond, because it does not have the same constituents. The same is true of transgendered men, whose inclusion in women’s sports competition represents the same kind of conceptual, moral, and social fraud.
Identifying as “trans-child” as an adult does not give you the right, as an adult, to sexually molest children, no matter how sincere your identification may be. You will be prosecuted and sentenced as an adult. If you are a “minor attracted person” and you keep that tendency on the level of ideation, you will remain out of jail. If you try to translate this subjective desire into objective action, you are justly deemed a pedophile and child abuser and thrown into jail.
That same conceptual, legal distinction should be used with all forms of subjective “identification”. A child who dresses up in his or her parent’s clothes and pretends to be an adult does not have the right to go out and purchase cigarettes and alcohol. This imaginative play does not make a child and adult legally or actually. It is a game meant both to “try on” and prepare to be an adult. As a child you should NOT have the objective legal standing based on a mere SUBJECTIVE “identity” desire to opt for permanent biological sex-altering surgery, since a child does not have legal adult standing nor the requisite cognitive or emotional development. No amount of linguistic distortion can or should subvert this outright, necessary distinction between wish and reality. Enough is enough.
Neo-post-modernists, on the other hand, are pursuing the notion that all designation (including any “meta-narrative”) is in some way oppressive and limiting and must be disrupted and brought down. From abstract art movements which attempt to disembowel age-old notions of beauty, to academics and even the Merriam-Webster dictionary who seek to dismember and redefine language (see changes in definition of “vaccine”, for instance), to public authorities who use propaganda to consolidate their power and impose their judgements, there is a movement to reduce all design, language, and rule of law to arbitrary power driven by personal preference. And this is being proliferated and inculcated by social media algorithms that reinforce with every click the NARROWING and elevation of personal “choice” over and above actual wider appreciation, expansion, engagement, and learning from others.
By neo-post-modern trans-logic, I can rightfully insist that not only should I compete in the Wimbledon tennis tournament as a trans-Wimbledon athlete, but that I deserve the tournament title and purse and through my insistence alone that I am a trans-Wimbledon champion! Everyone else has to recognize MY identification in THEIR beliefs and rules. Furthermore, since the women’s and men’s championships are on different days, I can claim I am a trans-woman Wimbledon champ the one day in the female division and switch over to be the champion of the men’s division the next day. This insanity appears absurd (and it IS) but it is also the full and logical extension of subjective desire prevailing over objective physical reality and merit.
The challenge
There is a conceit behind all of this to be unmasked: “In order for ‘me to be me’ YOU have to do what I say and conform yourself around my wishes” RATHER THAN, in order for me to be me, I have to learn to know, develop, and assert my truer, deeper self in the face of authentic difference.
It is as if: “You have to change the legal system to accommodate me. You have to jettison your values and principles to cater to me. You have to give me money and acclaim, not because I have earned it, but because I desire it, and because that individual desire is the highest principle.” Even the concept of “hate speech” has been polluted to mean “anything that offends me.” This is like waving a red cape in front of the bulls of ego, narcissism, and insanity. If we are not careful, we will be gored by these stampeding bulls. Limits, challenge, structure, discipline, and wisdom must be as important as free expression, support, creativity, unconventionality, and experimentation.
We don’t have to go down this road, and we don’t have to accept the furor over pronouns and “inclusion” which always seems to have white biological males taking over the rights and arenas of women in Patriarchy 2.0—trans version. Nearly every one of the celebrated, corporate-pushed popular examples of transgendered people, calling themselves either trans-women or simply “women,” have been biological white males—former gold-medal decathlete Caitlyn Jenner, “woman” of the year Biden administration appointee Rachel Levine, “woman” swim record-holder Lia Thomas, Bud Light demoter Dylan “celebrating Day 365 of womanhood” Mulvaney, failed Olympic weight lifter Laurel Hubbard, and the latest, Rose Montoya (who apparently has some Hispanic background) who got banned from the White House for flashing false “women” breasts during a Pride celebration there.
The answer
In our present social chaos, the borders of objective reality and need, indeed our very ability to empirically observe and describe a shared reality and negotiate rules, values meaning, principle, and language, have run headlong into an advancing edge of customized, subjective virtual reality and preference-driven social media. The objective front does, in fact, put demands and limits on people and can feel restricting. However, let us not be fooled: This subjective edge ALSO imposes limits on people, as certain individuals seek to distort and refute the authentic values, beliefs, and perspectives of others in favor of imposed conformity on you and me to serve THEIR desires.
If I claim I am a “trans-black” person, and insist that I be legally eligible for scholarships to the United Negro College Fund, then I am using my subjective desire unfairly to subvert the OBJECTIVE purpose of the Fund. In overstepping my own subjectivity I am preventing more underprivileged people from entering higher education. I am tilting advantage toward myself as a member of an already-advantaged group.
Much like the Mandelbrot Set, which beautifully distinguishes and integrates realms of meaning, we need to distinguish and integrate the objective and subjective in our communities and world. Subjectivity MUST work collaboratively and honestly with objectivity, and vice versa, otherwise we will simply have social madness on one hand or creative imprisonment on the other.
MY right to express myself is objectively supported by certain legal rights and limited by reasonable constraints. This is true of others as well. NONE OF US has a right, or should have the right, to compel objective action, language, or intention on the part of others to serve individual subjective needs and desires. If you have OBJECTIVE needs and desires for health care, food, shelter, and clothing, FINE! I am in full support. If you have a subjective desire PASSED OFF as objective, i.e. wanting to be called “they” instead of he or she, that’s optional. If I choose to I will. If I don’t, I won’t.
Share your own thought experiments and thoughts in the COMMENT section!