If Your Money Makes More Money Than You, What Do We Need You For?

Not that I want to get drawn into the fetid muck of popular culture, but Charlie Sheen recently mentioned that most people's brains could not handle being on Charlie Sheen.

Bullshit.

Charlie Sheen?

Judging from what I've heard from him, I'd be able to parallel process about forty Charlie Sheens on my brain. Charlie Sheen's brain on John Kurman; however, would rapidly become a superheated plasma of colliding near-light-speed particles, resulting in a Crab Nebula explosion, fatally irradiating dozens of unfortunates around him. In other words, Sorry Charlie. You are not as hot as you think you are. I know literally hundreds of people that are smarter and more talented than what we see in Hollywood. It's just that they ain't as pretty... and goddamn, Charlie. You are starting to make Larry King look healthy.

I often have difficulties composing essays. It is not because I have nothing to say, or no subject matter to write about. Quite the opposite. I usually have too many things to write about, and this blender of a brain of mine really doesn't help matters at all. It also doesn't help to write down reminders, because usually the summary ends up being "Note to self: Write about how it's all just a bunch of bullshit".

I want to comment again about IBM's Watson, and it's real, ultimate impact upon society.

IBM's Watson's Avatar

Cut to the chase.

Once Watson is implemented as a real expert system in dozens of professional occupations, you will see the final revenge fantasy of the working class hero. When bankers, doctors, lawyers, financial analysts, corporate executives, and engineers are standing in the breadline, because their jobs have been automated, they will receive no sympathies from the regular folks. Finally, the Eschaton of Marxism, the End Times of that particular religion, will be realized. The dictatorship of the proletariat, always assumed to be far in the future, will be here.

This was aptly put in the movie "The Incredibles", when Syndrome/Buddy Pine/Incrediboy states "And when I'm old and I've had my fun, I'll sell my inventions so everyone can be superheroes! Everyone can be super! And when everyone's super, no-one will be".


Welcome to the club, schmucks. You are just another expendable cog, fucker. Give up your pretense to exceptionalism, because, guess what, any talents you possess are now only marginally greater than other people's, when compared to a hypercomputer. Because, honestly, I have no doubt whatsoever that a chimpanzee brain, loaded down with the appropriate software, will easily out perform any of today's professionals. Reason being, most people's "expertise" is just being exposed to enough examples - and a hell of a lot of luck (often confused with skill). And with the computer's brute force ability to hold trillions of examples, several million human brains worth of examples, there really is no contest.

For the past hundred, two hundred years, there are has been a battle between capital and labor. Capital has won due to the anomaly of history here in America - of an embarrassing wealth of untapped resources, land, and cheap labor. Capital (the upper classes), with the Social Darwinist/Manifest Destiny conceit, has been able to deceive itself into thinking the carrying capacity of the economic environment is infinite, and that Capital's (the upper classes') "genius" of continual and remarkable growth is purely one of superior talent and divine providence, when it is hardly any of the sort. It's the case of a lucky bacterium being dropped into an empty Petri dish of plenty.

This country was built upon a steady supply of cheap labor and untapped resources.

It's going to be fun to what happens when brains and intellect are now the cheap exploitable labor, if you, that is,  have a funny idea of what "fun" is.