The Implosion of Reality
Hillary Clinton and Satan Walk Into a Bar. Part Sixteen.
Do you believe in reality? Let’s find out.
Do you exist? Do you think, therefore you are?
If so, you very probably believe in reality.
But, of course, you might not believe that you, or the electronic device on which you are reading this, actually exists. You might, for example, believe, as The Matrix speculated, that you are being blue-pilled into thinking that you actually exist, when you actually don’t.
Or, you might be an old-school Neoplatonist, believing that some kind of demiurge is hornswoggling you into believing that you have a separate existence from The One, who/which is all that exists, and not you, and not your electronic device.
Or, you might be Woke, believing along with the late, lamented Michel Foucault, that all knowledge is actually power-knowledge, so that maybe even the belief that you actually exist is a power trip foisted upon you by Donald Trump, and that therefore believing that you exist is actually sliding down the slippery slope of MAGA, and it’s only a matter of time you will be wearing a red baseball cap and buying a Tesla.
Okay. I get it. You might not actually believe that you exist. Hey, believe what you want. It’s still a free country, or used to be.
But this Substack post is for those folks who actually believe that they do exist, and what the late and sometimes lamented Ayn Rand once said, “Existence Exists.”
Therefore you now believe that reality is a real thing, and that allows me to discuss the implosion of reality.
So what is implosion? It’s like an explosion, but the opposite. In an explosion everything blows every whichway, maybe even to Kingdom Come, and you can’t find all the pieces.
In an implosion everything collapses into a hole or a ball or a dot, or a subatomic particle, or something else weird, and you can’t find all the pieces because they are all gummed up in the weird thing.
So, what made me consider the implosion of reality, which I’m writing about right now?
Two podcasts to which I listened this morning.
The first was about government regulation in the USA. The second was about artificial intelligence. Do you want me to post links to these podcasts? I might. Later. But let’s look at US government regulation first.
The podcast claimed that over 2 trillion US dollars are wasted because of vast over-regulation. Per year? I don’t remember, but I do remember wasted. And who, then can keep track of all those regulations?
Well, there are lawyers out there who try. And politicians who decide whether to vote for or against more regulations. And CEO’s who have to make decisions about keeping their businesses in business in the face of such regulations.
But the “bottom line” as the CEO’s are supposed to be thinking about (do they really? Is there really a “bottom line”?) is that the impact of government regulation on reality is so vast as to be a kind of implosion: a hole, a ball, a dot, a weird thing. Can any human keep up with government regulation enough to be able to grasp the reality of the situation?
And that makes it easy to segue into the second podcast, which is about machines (computers) replacing the humans when it comes to dealing with regulations and all the other horse puckey.
That’s right. Here’s the can. There are worms inside. I’m about to open the can, and there they are, writhing and squirming.
The worms:
Government by “Artificial Intelligence.”
Yup. There it is. I said it.
It’s probably happening already. Hey, Joe Biden had an autopen which signed all kinds of stuff. Was Joe Biden’s autopen controlled entirely by humans, or were there bots and AI’s and high-tech stuff involved deciding what to sign or not sign? Your guess is as good as mine. Assuming that you actually exist.
So, will the whole world eventually be ruled by bots, with minimal human intervention? I’m guessing that there are folks out there working on making that happen.
In my sci-fi-like fantasies, I’m imagining three competing bot complexes each trying to rule the world:
The People’s Republic of China
The USA
The Davos/UN/EU/“International Community” Globalists
But, let’s face it. That’s science fiction. You know, like flying cars. Have you taken a ride in a flying car recently? Of course not.
But I, me, who actually believe that I exist, also believes that reality is imploding, pretty much as I just explained.
So, what about the podcasts? I should be able to find links to the podcasts to which I listened this morning. I’ll try to find those links and post them below.
If I can. But I might not be able to find those links. Reality is imploding, right?