So, is this the final act, a horizon which we did not see because our eyes did not reach that far?

I am referring to the experiment of America, that we thought was “noble,” a special nation, as Madeleine Albright said in 1998, — the Indispensable Nation.  A city shining, set on a hill, an engineered-society, where every desire of the public is accommodated.  Is “this” is what we wanted?

Over lunch yesterday with a friend, we thought out loud about the ethical consequences of Artificial Intelligence.   AI enabled machines will form judgments applied to actions, judgments which we cannot deconstruct to disclose how decisions were made.  Already in San Francisco patrons are using autonomous vehicles for transportation around the city.  Over time with more and more learning machine ethics will diverge from human ethics.  We have no idea what the machine will value… 

And all of us, more soon than we imagine will live in a society that depends upon AI supply chains that deliver food, that transport materials to Home Depot, even transporting us by air to desired destinations… 

Is it any wonder that we see surrounding Trump, a surging revolt, refusal of “this” system that we’ve labeled representative democracy?  This scrum of 18 co-conspirators would be an apt clown crew for a Ringling Bros big top, if they were not in earnest to bring down a society founded upon rules, the best principles our reason has been able to construct.  Meadows, Eastman, Giuliani, Powell, Chesebro, Clark, Smith, Roman, Shafer, Still, Latham, Hall, Hampton, Cheeley, Ellis, Lee, Floyd, and Kutti.  Three of these clowns were “fake electors.”

Lest we die laughing at the absurdity of this scene, keep in mind that each of these Americans acted to dismember everything that we depend upon.

…the faith with which
so many materialistic natural scientists rest content nowadays,
the faith in a world that
is supposed to have its equivalent and its measure
in human thought
and human valuations
a “world of truth”
that can be mastered completely and forever
with the aid of
our square little reason.

What?
Do we really want to permit existence
to be degraded for us like this
—reduced to a mere exercise
for a calculator and
an indoor diversion for mathematicians?

Above all,
one should not wish
to divest existence
of its rich ambiguity:
that is a dictate of good taste, gentlemen.
the taste of reverence for everything
that lies beyond your horizon.

–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 5, Section 373 by Friedrich Nietzsche