Errant Code:
Remembering the Future of Universal Basic Income (UBI)
The Dawn of Tools
Once upon a time, our species worked from the rising of the sun to its setting. Then Homo habilis got clever and started making tools that increased the efficiency of that work. Each new tool, sampled from the space of all possible tools, made it a bit easier to sample other tools. This process continued apace, interrupted and punctuated though it sometimes was during war.
Our tribal instinct and desire to protect ourselves led us to create greater and more powerful tools—ones we never needed to sample. We would have been better off if they had remained obscured to us in the far reaches of the universe of all possible objects.
Soon, our tools gave us the ability to accelerate the rate of technological breakthroughs. One got the sense with each passing day that some new, possibly world-changing advance would be made.
The Rise of Coding and Its Errors
We learned to code and learned about coding errors. Then, we started running a script with a particular kind of error: </> innovation=progress. if a [progress.is.good] then b [more.progress.is.better]. therefore run c [evolutionary algorithm aimed at optimization]> optimize.us. The inevitability of automation was the optimizing output that we fell in love with. automation=progress=good. therefore automation=good
Those in love with and in control of the optimizing algorithm, knowing full well that automation would cause massive amounts of unemployment, continued as though it were as certain as gravity. They were sure, in an odd, almost teleological sense, that it had always been leading up to this. So they implemented their technological vision.
Printing Gold
It did create vastly new opportunities for people. Wealth like we had never witnessed before on the stage of human history was almost immediate. The problematic error in the code that kept being ignored was runaway inequality. There was more wealth than ever, but it was concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people.
Automate the truck drivers' jobs. "They want to do something more meaningful anyway. They want to become software engineers or surgeons, we're sure of it," they pontificated.
The Universalist Party and Universal Basic Income
So the very same people who created the massive problem of unemployment through running errant code, came up with a patchwork solution. "Vote us into office and we will distribute to you, like monarchs of the past, a kind of coin called universal basic income." And so the people, unemployed and destitute as they were, feeling they had little choice and less to lose, took them up on the offer.
The Universalist Party won in overwhelming fashion. Like the disruptive technologies that preceded it, the Universalist Party seemed to come out of nowhere. They were Silicon Valley executives and venture capitalists who had struck it rich in the tech boom. They had great ideas, at first. But before long, the people grew restless and full of resentment.
The Emergence of the HI-Q and LI-Q
There were all of these new rules and regulations placed upon them. Speech codes, thought codes, dress codes. Health codes. Sex codes. The Universalist Party and its income distribution took on a religious fervor. There were true believers, converts, and unfortunately, heretics.
And because the Universalist Party was ruled by a class of beings on the ascendancy—those with extremely high IQ, the HIQ, they passed on their wealth and technological advantages to their genetically well-endowed offspring. Each one of their children won the genetic lottery many times over. They were orders of magnitude smarter than the voting class, the low IQ (LIQ).
The HIQ continued to optimize for intelligence, not realizing emotion and empathy were missing from their code. So they grew tired of the constant sniveling of the LIQ and couldn't understand why they weren't more grateful than they were.
Cognitive Tax
At the moment that all elected positions were held by the HIQ, they called for a conference to discuss the future of humanity. The HIQ knew that intelligence wasn't infinitely scalable and recognized that each incremental gain cost more and more money. That is why they devised the LIQ tax. In its infant stages, the LIQ tax was nothing more than a tax on their universal basic income.
But the HIQ studied the problem and found that the LIQ weren't creating enough positive returns to warrant future payments. It was simple utilitarian calculations and the LIQ could no longer contribute meaningfully to the economy and possibly the world.
But the LIQ had traded their trades for the promise of a universal basic income—not as though they really had a choice in the matter. And now any job that did exist was beyond cognitively demanding. For a normal LIQ to even communicate with a HIQ, it required that one be on the level with Von Neumann.
Sure, the HIQ could condescend to their level, like someone who's bilingual being able to speak their own language and that of the person with whom they speak. HIQ could speak the language of the needy voters, but the LIQ could not understand the differential-equation-like chatter of their superiors.
And that is when the final scheme to end all schemes was perpetuated. The HIQ had put together a team of their finest minds and algorithms to explore thought itself. With much effort and some time, they did discover its origins in the brain and its neural circuitry. They had finally done it. They applied for and granted themselves a patent for thought itself.
The LIQ remembered their distant ancestors and how they were taught that if someone discovered a place already inhabited by people, then it wasn't a true discovery at all. The LIQ also held to the idea that it was a grievous stain on all people who subjugated others and possessed their land. The occasional heretic would chirp that you couldn't steal from natives who had no concept of owning property. As it turned out in many ages, heretical ideas had externalities that could have never been imagined. This lingering form of blasphemy was the linchpin.
One HIQ overheard the ridiculous heresy being spouted in the digital sphere and hatched a failsafe plan. The HIQ had an emergency conference and quickly accepted the motion brought forward. From that moment forward, everyone would pay the government for the ability to think thoughts. The government owned the patent for thought and demanded that all citizens pay their cognitive tax.
The LIQ brought litigation against their government and stated that they had always been thinking people. They had always thought. But the cases were denied on the basis that the LIQ, though they did indeed think, did not have a concept for owning thought until the HIQ established it. Still, the litigation raged on, case after case denied, until one LIQ, the unfair beneficiary of the genetic lottery, brought a particularly cogent and persuasive case against the state.
So moved by the LIQ arguments, the HIQ court of appeals did grant the fact that LIQ had been thinking all of their lives, as had their ancestors. Therefore it was determined that all LIQ owed their government taxes extending back to their conception. It was also decided in that case that LIQ needed to make reparations for all of the free thinking their ancestors had done.
Most of the wealth throughout history, that is until fairly recent times, had been created by the cognitive output of the LIQ. On top of the universal basic income taxes that they owed, they now owed a cognitive tax and a reparative tax. In this economic environment, it became too costly for LIQ families to have children because children think many things, and are therefore taxed at higher rates.
After only two decades, all of the LIQ were moved to their own settlement where they eventually ceased to exist. This was all that could be uncovered of their story. The rest was just errant code.
The Cost of Thought
Because when thinking is subtracted from the "cogito ergo sum" equation, the difference is devastating. In order not to think, they were forced not to exist. Even the thought of reproduction was too costly. By the end, it was too expensive to try to forget about love, hope, and faith. The LIQ learned, which also cost them, that actively forgetting was a cognitively demanding task, and especially so with these bedrocks of human existence.
But there was one last turn of the screw. The HIQ saw that a trend was beginning to emerge. Rather than continuing to pay what to the LIQ seemed the exorbitant taxes, they started committing suicide en masse. Since there was already a death tax, the HIQ passed a new law that made thinking of one’s own death the most expensive tax in history. But since the government was so interested in helping the LIQ people, they offered a steep discount to those who opted into the thought sanitation program.
Through the application of proprietary biotechnology, HIQ could ensure that their poor underlings never had a thought of self-harm again. No more suicidal ideation! There was even a guarantee, backed by government bonds, that no HIQ would ever even dream of self-harm, let alone commit such a heinous act. But the LIQ couldn’t read the fine print. It was intentionally structured to read like an obscure academic text, which is to say it was long, arcane, and unapproachable.
Tucked into that voluminous fine print was a consent to treat which explained how the process of sanitization worked. The HIQ could be certain that no thoughts of self-harm could originate in a LIQ because they were chemically lobotomized.
The (im)Moral of the Story
The moral of this story is to read the fine print before it’s too late.
# The inevitability of automation was the optimizing output that we fell in love with.
For those who want it expressed like code:
# We learned to code and learned about coding errors.
# Then, we started running a script with a particular kind of error:
def innovation_progress():
progress = True
if progress == True:
more_progress = True
else:
more_progress = False
return more_progress
def optimize_us():
automation = innovation_progress()
if automation == True:
return "Good"
else:
return "Bad"
# The inevitability of automation was the optimizing output that we fell in love with.