Technology And Human Nature

Tuesday, 25 March 2025, 10:20 am
Opinion: Martin LeFevre - Meditations

There are two basic views about human nature. The first is that there is no such thing, because humans are limitlessly pliable creatures in whom the worst and the best traits coexist and are entirely malleable (conditioned and contingent).

The second view, derived from Christian theology, is that because of “original sin” humans are irredeemable except through the grace of God.

Though more people hold some version of the Christian worldview than they realize, to the degree they consciously or subconsciously believe that human nature is unchangeable, the Genesis view is at once passé, self-fulfilling and dead-ending.

With respect to the other “theory of human nature,” we’ve conducted an experiment over the last 20 years to find out whether humans are endlessly mutable, and therefore “human nature” doesn’t actually exist. The experiment is called “Facebook” and “social media.”

And while many intellectuals cling to the belief that social media proves that humans, especially young people, are completely conditionable creatures, the unintended experiment proves the opposite.

As a former technophile turned technophobe has said, to “maximize engagement,” online algorithms are set to “maximize anger, outrage, resentment, envy, fear and hatred. The worst passions. In all of us — you and me — not just in our ideological enemies.”

It’s self-evident that social media couldn’t maximize and manipulate “the worst passions” unless they were already present within us. Which is to say, unless they were a core aspect of human nature.

The unspoken and often unseen connotation when referring to human nature is whether one believes it is unchangeable or not. Those who believe in the mutability of humans deny the durability of human nature’s dark core. Those who believe in the immutability of human nature deny the possibility that man’s dark core can change.

The truth does not lie somewhere in between. It lies in the realization that human nature exists, and that its unfaced darkest aspects thoroughly dominate the current world, and are suffocating the human spirit in a miasma of despair.

The individual can protect himself and herself from evil by non-cumulatively learning from the darkness within oneself. In doing so, one is transforming human nature within oneself, and to some degree, in humankind as a whole. Radical change may not become evident in society for a century or two, or it may emerge next month, but thinking in terms of time and outcomes preclude it from occurring.

It’s generally believed that “online culture is not merely compensating for the real world, but outcompeting it.” Such a half-truth is blind to the fact that “online culture vs. the real world” has become a distinction without a difference.

Even so, commentators persist in such ideas as “the issue of rising misogyny among young boys is a poison that starts and ends with the influencers themselves.”

That worldview is a trifecta of denial. It denies the fact that there’s no longer a difference between online culture and the so-called real world. It denies the existence of the long-neglected dark side of human nature. And it denies how much man’s darkness has grown and come to dominate the world and human consciousness in recent years.

What social media has done, and what Ai will do on steroids if we continue on our present course, is accentuate and exacerbate the worst in human nature.

As Stephen Fry has compellingly written, Ai will, “like the petrol engine, amplify and expand our capabilities and transform our social structures and networks. It will change the way we work, assemble and communicate with each other. But does it change us?”

The answer clearly is no. Technology, from the Stone Age to the Digital Age, has not changed human nature. The difference now is that the rich soil of the human past, built up over the millennia for good and ill, has eroded beyond its capacity to grow humans as we used to be. The choice now is to grow into human beings, or become second-hand servants to our machines, while telling ourselves that we’re “augmented humans.”

It’s true, to a point, that “We are born, we breed and we die like any other life form and in the same way we have before the dawn of tools, language and history.” But it’s careless to say, “like any other life form.”

Man is unlike any other life form. The misuse of the evolution of symbolic thought has fragmented the Earth to the point that we stand on the precipice of any number climatic tipping points, as well as bringing about the Sixth Mass Extinction in the history of life on this planet.

Having created thought machines in our own image, we’re on the verge of “Ai of phenomenal and terrifying power that can far outperform us at logic, reasoning, calculation, sorting, categorizing and summarizing.”

That means without transforming human nature within ourselves, “Just as the horse and carriage was by the car, we will be left behind coughing in the dust.”

I use the lower case in writing about Ai because it isn’t true intelligence and never can be. Intelligence is completely distinct from cognition, knowledge and data. Intelligence is synonymous with wisdom. At one level it’s about the harmonious and equitable application of science and technology.

At a deeper level intelligence requires leaving space for setting aside technology when it’s not needed, and attending to the movement of thought and emotion in order that insight and understanding can flower within us as human beings.

It’s absurd to believe that Ai will be better and kinder than we are as humans. Ai will not bring about the techno-utopia the Silicon Valley bros promised anymore than social media has.

Ai will soon be superior to humans, but will always be inferior to human beings.

The crisis of man’s ancient, rapacious and warlike consciousness, which is one and the same with the dark core/web of human nature, has been building for centuries.

It has come to a head in our age. Can we make the leap and move through this terrible transition?

Martin LeFevre

lefevremartin77@gmail

Link – “AI: A Means to an End or a Means to Our End:

https://stephenfry.substack.com/p/ai-a-means-to-an-end-or-a-means-to

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Martin LeFevre - Meditations

Scoop Contributor

Martin LeFevre is a contemplative and philosopher.

His sui generis “Meditations” explore spiritual, philosophical and political questions relating to the polycrisis facing humanity.

lefevremartin77@gmail