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The Real Inflection Point
Our world is changing forever, but not in the way most people imagine
Look at any news article today and you’ll see claims about how artificial intelligence (AI) will change everything, how it will be more radical than the invention of electricity or the personal computer, how millions of jobs will vanish, and how one day soon sentient AI overlords will control the world — or at least make it easier for AI Nigerian scammer bots to bilk the credulous out of their savings.
In reality, technology is indeed driving fundamental social change, only not in the way boosters and doom-mongers alike imagine.
To understand what’s really happening we need to understand a few basic truths, the first of which is that tyranny has been the default option for large-scale societies since the largely accidental development of agriculture at the end of the last Ice Age which enabled ever-larger conurbations of people and ultimately spelled the end for most hunter-gatherer societies. As we’re a group species we naturally form herds that coalesce around a single leader. Anyone who believes otherwise needs to explain why a hierarchical pyramid with a single individual at the apex is the norm for every type of organization across recorded history. And no, it’s not “the patriarchy” and more than it’s “the patriarchy” that causes…
