Once artificial intelligence matches our own, won’t they then design even better ai minds? Then better still, with accelerating pace? At worst, might… - David Brin

It had been different during his first year of graduate school, when he temporarily forsook physics to explore instead the realm of the senses. Applying logic to the late-blooming quandries of maturity, he had parsed the elements of encounter, banter, negotiation, and consummation, separating and solving the variables one by one until the problem—if not generally solved—did appear to have tractable special solutions.

Socrates, Plato, Jesus, Buddha and countless other mystics, in countless cultures, have preached the same thing — that we all exist amid a blur of uncertainty. That one can never know complete truth about physical reality via our senses alone. Much is made of the differences between their systems... Socrates teaching reason, Buddha urging meditation, and Jesus prescribing faith. But what they all had in common was far more important. Each of those sage-prophets worried that the power of human egotism tends to make us lie to ourselves, leading to error, hypocrisy, and all too often, the rationalization of evil actions.

On the other hand, there is so much hypocrisy among supposed free market champions! The 5,000 golf buddies in America’s smug CEO caste – plus their New Lord backers and Wall Street pals – claim to oppose central planning. But their circle-jerk connivings only shift it away from openly accountable civil servants into dark crypts that are secret, self-flattering and inherently stupid.