Rule by robots or the Religious Right — we compare, you decide

April 16, 2005

Guest Post by Morbo

Federal Appeals Court Judge Richard A. Posner has penned a new book titled Catastrophe: Risk and Response, which examines various disasters that could befall humankind.

Posner discusses the usual eco-threats — global warming, pandemics, massive earthquakes and so on — but I found his discussion of man-made disasters more interesting, specifically, the possibility that we might someday be enslaved by robots.

“Superintelligent robots with a silicon or other inorganic base (or an organic one, for that matter) may be the next stage in evolution,” Posner writes. “Human beings may turn out to be the 21st century’s chimpanzees, and if so the robots may have as little use and regard for us as we do for our fellow, but nonhuman, primates. The robots may kill us, put us in zoos, or enslave us, using mind-control technologies to extinguish any possibility of revolt, as in the movie ‘The Matrix.'”

(Full confession: I have not read the entire book, just an excerpt in Skeptic magazine.)

At first, I was alarmed by this. But a moment’s reflection caused me to start to wonder if robot overlords might be better than the ones we have now — the Religious Right.

Let’s face it, America is rapidly becoming a Christian fundamentalist theocracy. If the glazy-eyed followers of some TV preacher or “beat-your-kids-for-Jesus” Christian radio counselor don’t like your end-of-life decision, their minions prod Congress to butt in. And Congress, instead of telling them to go jump in a lake, meets in special session to pass the law. Pharmacists will no longer turn over your birth control pills if Jesus tells them not to. The president wants to spend $2 billion of taxpayer funds on “faith-based” initiatives, and many public schools are afraid to even mention the word “evolution.” Teens are offered Bible stories in lieu of sex education, and courthouses are being redecorated to include huge Ten Commandments displays.

Rule by robots might be better. Let’s compare the two, shall we?

Your Daily Routine

Under Robots: Day: working in salt mines. Night: posing in zoos for amusement of your robot masters. Weekends: polishing robot overlord

Under Religious Right: Day: watching “700 Club.” Night: church. Weekends: church (with annual break for Promise Keeper meeting)

Attitude Toward the Arts

Robots: Controlling soulless electronic microchips means they have no appreciation of music, art, literature or poetry

Religious Right: Responsible for “Left Behind” novels, “Christian rock” and paintings featuring Jesus welcoming Robert E. Lee into Heaven

Leadership

Robots: Will force us to bow to the Robot King, His Excellency Computing Unit XR-23 (powered by Windows XP for Robot Tyrants)

Religious Right: Will force us to bow to President Ralph Reed (powered by good old-fashioned greed)

How Will They Deal with Spam?

Robots: Sophisticated brains and high-tech circuitry may finally figure out a way to stop Russian spammers who keep trying to convince you that your PayPal account has been suspended.

Religious Right: New laws mandate no porn, hence no internet, hence no spam, hence no problem

Operational Creation Myth that Influences All Decisions

Robots: Implausible story about a legendary “lost data file” buried on the hard drive of a Radio Shack IBM PC clone, circa 1988

Religious Right: Implausible story about a mercurial God who gave humans free will then punished them for using it

New National Beverage

Robots: WD-40

Religious Right: Welch’s grape juice — just like Jesus drank!

A Nice Thing They Might Do for You

Robots: Implement “Matrix”-like pseudo-universe that at least provides the illusion of happiness

Religious Right: Let you skip out early during mandatory viewing of movies starring Kirk Cameron

I can only speak for myself, but the robots are looking better all of the time.

I know it’s a horrible thing to ask of anybody, but someone should read this book, to find out exactly why these super-intelligent robots would want to enslave us. I’ve never put much credence in the idea that they would need to use us as batteries.

  • You can add Mullah Bobson to that of the Mullah Reed crowd.
    These people have no regard for others, they use fear and shame to subjigate those who might waiver. They have one goal and that is to bring all of the USA under their control and command.
    They are using a history book that they rewrote, to do it. The bible version they use is the English Standard Version and was rewritten from the other versions leading back to the King James Version. They have rewritten that history book to satisfy themselves.
    There is not one chapter or verse written by God!!
    All of the bible is hearsay. It is written about someone doing wonderful things for us as human beings.
    To me, its like some WallStreet Journal reporter writing that James Dobson had sex with G.W. Bush.
    Its all a story, unproven and unprovable.

  • We’re already enslaved by robots. Except they’re not mechanical robots, they are legal and financial robots: corporations and markets.

    A corporation is an artificial, autonomous entity: a robot. It was created to serve humanity AND NOW HUMANITY SERVES IT!

    Think about it. We all worship “the market”. We all must serve it. We live and die by its graces and sufferance. We don’t work for people anymore, we work for corporations. We toil for the benefit of artificial, man-made entities which are not human. They are not controlled even by those who are supposedly in charge of them: the Fed, the major investment bankers, the various world governments, even the UN, all have just the most tenuous control over the market. In fact, it controls them more than thay control it. WE WORK FOR ROBOTS.

    A corporation does not feel. It does not have human emotion. It has no empathy. It has no morals! It is like a shark. All it cares about is “growth”. It must eat, eat, eat, eat, endlessly eating, eating everything in sight– and everyone’s time and energy–, until there is nothing left.

    They control the minds and thoughts of the vast majority of people. Only what they deem appropriate is allowed on the air or in print, although we are fighting back on the Internet, but who knows how long that will last? And, of course, that is only for us rich folks in the West. Most of the people on this planet have never seen a computer– but yet they are working either directly or indirectly (via WTO/IMF/WorldBank) at the mercy of some corporation or another.

    We are already well on our way to being enslaved by robots. Right now we still have some control over them, but not much.

  • Um, not to sound not like a weirdo commentator (since that appears to be a theme right here), but I’m also now leaning toward robot overlord. I’m always imagining my dad, who’s new to email, getting tricked into passing his personal information off to the Ruskies. Thinking about that makes me feel bad – bad about the world; bad about my dad’s naivette; bad about the missed opportunities during my youth, when things seemed perfect, to tell him how much I love him. Spam sucks, and the robots are the ones who can take it down.

  • Right on, Publius! I’ve been saying this for a few years, hoping the meme will percolate. No doubt I received it from somewhere.

    Ooooh! Careful of those mechanical objects enabled by electronic computers!!! Scaaaary!!

    As Thomas Pynchon’s Proverb for Paranoids had it, “if they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry much about the answers.”

  • I feel constrained to point out that in my personal view most if not all of the extremist Religious Right are in fact robots themselves by definition.

    Just because they happen to be constructed of allegedly organic materials as opposed to metallic composites doesn’t mean that they have any shred of humanity or even the smallest capacity to reason outside of their tiny and carefully controlled programming.

    So it doesn’t matter which one wins since one is just as empty as the other.

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