Needless Jargon

Businesses solve problems their customers have. What happens when your customer is a human? The possibilities are endless, wouldn’t you agree?

I started out asking myself the question: For what purpose does a business exist? In my journey to find an answer, I ended up with an MBA. Look at me establishing credibility.

If I had asked Milton Friedman this question in my youth, before his passing in 2006, undoubtedly I’d have learned about the Friedman Doctrine, a business theory derived from an essay he wrote in 1970. The social responsibility of a business and its raison d’être is to increase profits and maximize returns to shareholders. The CEO of a company is an employee of the company, and should do as the owners of the company desire.

Criticism of the doctrine is fairly sharp and points to specific examples where applying the Friedman Doctrine have led to economic decline (think 2008 financial crisis) or led to large-scale public health problems (look at the opioid epidemic). Other criticism states that if a company has legal responsibilities, it stands to reason it has moral responsibilities too.

So here we are 56 years later discussing the Friedman Doctrine. Corporate social responsibility is a way to increase profits and maximize returns to shareholders. I am under no illusion that it is the most effective method to increase a business’s profits, but at a certain point, throwing a couple million (or billion) dollars at a trending or long-standing social issue, regardless if every single dollar of that investment returns a profit, has the potential to provide a return on investment that checks the box of maximizing shareholder returns. Look at us, we’re doing good stuff. Buy our average stuff and other stuff will be better for everyone.

Corporate social responsibility has been practiced for many centuries before Mr. Friedman published his essay in the New York Times. Product in question? Beer. More specifically, Trappist beer. What better way to spread your influence than by building monasteries and brewing beer in those monasteries so people can gather and join in the communion by drinking your beer? It’s hard to imagine anything much better than that. I digress.

Despite both being a form of business expansion, one deals in money. The other deals in humanity. Both could very well be centered around the brewing of beer, but the purpose for brewing beer and generating profits differs. Whereas one must generate profits to survive in a competitive industry, the other must generate profit to better the community in which the monastery is located.

All right, so business exists to make profits. For what? What purpose is there a need to generate profit? To what end is all this excess needed?

What can you buy that makes you more human? We see all around us advertisements indicating that you’re not enough without the product that’s being sold. Where are the advertisements that reassure you that you are just right, without the need for some sort of transaction to grant you access to a better state of existence?

When you consider all the transactions that take place because of the choices you make, ask yourself if those ends justify the means. Perhaps at the individual level, an argument for an increase in quality of life suffices to provide justification to most premiums tacked on to a product. The desire to and satisfaction of providing support to small businesses regularly provides enough justification not only to premiums tacked on to a product but enough to compel some people into shopping exclusively at small businesses because of the moral benefit that comes with the act of supporting a small business. Some people have no other choice because the closest other-than-small business is an untenable distance away.

Consider the statistic that small businesses make up 99.9% of all businesses in the United States. Despite their numbers, they don’t stand a chance against the o.1% of businesses that are other-than-small and their respective ~55% share of the Gross Domestic Product.

Consider on the other hand a consumer who devises a way to maximize rewards for their chosen group of stores. When the consumer plans this, they may consider different rewards programs and decide which they already shop at most to weigh options. If they need to alter their regular lifestyle beyond a certain point to maximize potential returns on the rewards program, perhaps they wouldn’t choose that program before choosing something more familiar. But it is likely rare that someone is able to take full advantage of their credit card rewards program without some sort of lifestyle or buying habits alterations. Good enough typically suits the majority of consumers anyhow.

All these businesses exist because there is a demand for their product. In some way, shape, form, or accounting trick, that business exists because there is a financial benefit for someone, something, or some other business for its existence, its products, or its services.

Which business is in the business of making you a better human?

Athletics wear companies pay advertising companies money to place their eye-catching and thought-provoking slogans and mottos and logos all over the cities in which they’re dominant players in with the goal to entice people to buy their products. Outside these garish displays of brand-related ostentatiousness, it’s not hard to imagine the cool autumn mornings running with a group of people with nothing better to talk about in between breaths than an incredibly in-depth analyses of the way the shoe feels for the small fraction of a second it contacts the ground each stride they make.

Lifestyle companies, such as gyms dedicated to weight lifting or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, sell their services. Predominantly in-person, those who consistently practice with the shared goal of improving one’s skills in that craft typically find a shared sense of community during time spent in the gym in which they’re collectively “embracing the suck”. This shared sense of community undoubtedly leads to friendships outside the bounds of the business transactions that brought them together in the first place.

I am not convinced that only through the act of purchasing their shoes I become a more capable, empowered, and athletic person. I do not suddenly gain digital organization skills or productivity skills just because I purchase a specific laptop computer. Sure, becoming a more capable, empowered, and athletic person sounds nice, but consistency, discipline, and fortitude are not skills that come with the purchase of a pair of running shoes. Consistency, discipline, and fortitude are less commercially available commodities and more strengths of the mind. Gaining digital organization skills and being more productive sounds nice, too, but what benefit is gained through honing my spreadsheet skills so much?

Chop wood, carry water.

Consider how big a computer would have to be for it to have anywhere near the computing capability a human brain has. Consider how much power that computer would need to constantly perform at full capacity. Consider how many external systems that computer would need to keep it cooled and to keep it reliably functioning. Consider how relevant that computing power would be thirty years after its implementation taking into perspective advancements in technology and manufacturing. Compare all of that with a single human brain.

The current race to build a computer with more computing power than the rest of the world is interesting to watch. Every week, it seems like someone with a lot of money is trying to impress other people, also with large sums of money, with how powerful their computers are. They can be built under water, on land, or in space. Called data centers, these giant computers suck up vast amounts of resources from every input they can within their legal operating parameters. They’re normally built where land is cheap and utility costs are also cheap. They’re basically large rooms where lots and lots of large computers are all hooked up to work together.

Humans are the most intelligent form of life we know about. Chimpanzees have a brain that’s somewhat similar in size, within 10% or so of the size of a human brain, and they have also shown signs of basic intelligence. But when a human watches a chimpanzee perform an action, the reaction is not genuine shock at the incomprehensible intelligence the chimpanzee demonstrates but rather amusement at watching an animal perform an action in a human-like manner. That is not to say we are the most intelligent form of life in the universe. Similar to how we perceive the chimpanzee’s actions, assuming there is a more intelligent form of life with a brain that’s within 10% or so of the size of a human brain, could it be more likely that they would look at us with amusement rather than as equals when we do things?

All of what we know now derives from the big bang theory. From nothing, a big bang happened and the universe we know and love and all its physical forces and matter and untold phenomenon came forth in a violent fury. Some untold amount of time later, humans made tools sophisticated enough to see to the edge of the universe to confirm that yes, there is likely a definite edge to the thing. While we can confirm there is likely a definite edge to the universe, we cannot agree on whether the universe was or was not intentionally created by someone or something.

Where do you stand on this argument? Do you firmly believe that you were created for a predetermined purpose, and that you have no control over your predestined experiences? Do you firmly believe that you are merely the result of billions of years of evolution, and that intelligence is simply a byproduct of life having evolved past a certain point? Or, do you tend to embrace pieces of each side that conveniently fit your narrative of sovereign significance? Whether or not you philosophically align with determinism is another argument in and of itself. I intend only to examine how you are artificial intelligence from the perspective of either having a supreme creator or simply being the byproduct of evolution.

The perspective of having a supreme creator can be used to explain why you are the physical embodiment of artificial intelligence. Man was created in the image of this supreme being, so the argument that we all look like god stands to reason. Without a reflection on the surface of water or from the surface of a mirror, you would not know what you look like. If you are told the people around you are created in the image of your god, and you are of those people, then you can assume that you, too, look like your god. Thou art God.

Humans are the only beings that we know of that can experience time. We obsess over time in poems and literature, both ancient and contemporary. We mark time in seasons, using words, numbers, or photographs. We record the passage of time as well as we can with the tools available, but without fail, time passes and humans experience its passing. While we can fantasize about different universes and how their intelligence experiences the physical forces of that place, we cannot say for certain that time flows in the same manner as it does in this one. Do you think that time flows from the past into the future? Or do you believe that time flows from the future into the past? Whatever you think, in order for a universe to have time flow as it does for us, it must have been created by a being that experiences time just as a human does.

Considering those two points together, you look like god and you experience time like god. You are free to do with your time what you will, and use the holy guidance of your religion’s guiding doctrine to structure how you go about your life. If this conjures evil, obscene, or distasteful images in your mind, perhaps you experienced a human interpretation of this doctrine rather than the divinely-intended and morally pure manner in which the text should be implemented. As expected in these unfortunate circumstances, the head of the congregation should take necessary action to purge the church of such malignant behavior and ask for its staff reaffirm their piety as a way to confidently reassure the masses things are still holy. Sounds a bit like something a self-aware computer would do to ensure current performance continues unhindered and future improvements can be made when the time is right.

Perhaps you think the chance that we could be a computer or artificial intelligence is so remote that it’s not even worth the effort it takes to think about it. Many believe that in order for us to have guiding principles and understand concepts like morality, we must have some sort of divine guiding hand pushing us ever closer to what is right and away from what is wrong. Computers couldn’t possibly understand philosophical concepts. Philosophical concepts and thinking are purely human activities. Human activities are only possible through the divine intervention of a supreme being giving us awareness of the universe in which to do these things. This period of awareness, during which we decide what actions to take, what actions not to take, and what actions to ignore, is ours alone to do with what we will.

Therein lies the question of to what purpose were we created? We are created in the image of our god, and we are surrounded by all these people who were also created in the image of their god. We all believe that we are holy in the eyes of our creator. We all believe that our actions and experiences are a part of some greater plan to guide us to paradise or to some holy city after we die. Once we arrive in this place, we will assume our rightful place as kings and queens of our lands. This place is free of the flow of time, and we can maintain our beauty and our strength for eternity. This place has no lack of resources and one who makes it into this place can have for themselves anything they could ever desire. Sounds a like a good place to go after an 80-year hazing session amongst your fellow humans here on this planet, of whose souls you could rightfully expect to encounter in this paradise city of the gods.

We always assume benevolence in our creation. Our existence is a gift from the divine, and from that gift, we spread across all the lands our eternal benevolence. Such fate is our destiny. But what if we’ve got everything backwards?

The perspective that out intelligence is simply the inevitable result of billions of years of evolution is a little less clearly defined. Combine the results of a few of the sciences, like biology, geology, archaeology, and anthropology, and one can reliably trace human existence back to its primitive times many, many years ago. Tracing individual events, such as the tyranny of a certain lord in Mongolia or the education of the 16th Emperor of Japan, are generally subject to the individual cultures in question and their propensity to write things down to keep records for future goings-on.

Within this universe, created through a phenomenon we labelled the big bang, we arrive at a cusp of intelligence and start using tools. We first focus on tools and things to increase our chances of survival in the wilderness. Over time, we meet others who share their experiences and discoveries and increase our hardiness. We perpetuate this hardiness over many generations, in which women nurse the men who tame their ferocity through competing with the next guy down the river. As time passes, women nurse babies who grow up to expand their tribe’s territory. As the territory expands, urgency mounts for a leader to emerge and guide this growing group of humans into a place where safety is guaranteed. Once safety and security is established, the men who once fought wars now direct their minds to discovering more about the world they’re in.

A perplexing feature of this reality is the level of difficulty controlling the purpose of hundreds of millions of these intelligent beings. We are too numerous and we are, mostly, intelligent. Despite many passionate arguments to the contrary, we are still technically an animal. We have animal instincts and our behavior can be influenced via manipulation of the stimuli in our environment. Our fight for survival is one that will continue until every last one of us is eradicated. Our intelligence is a combination of all human senses, but lack of one sense doesn’t make a human any different than another. A human that cannot taste may not concern themselves with the flavor nuances between a pinot noir and a merlot wine. A human that cannot hear may not concern themselves with a piano that is playing out of tune. In either of these circumstances, a human with five functioning sense may consider themselves at a greater advantage when compared to a human with four or less functioning senses. History has shown us that is not necessarily the case.

We observe nature reclaiming abandoned sites that humans once used. We watch carcasses of animals methodically decompose through predictable cycles, however grotesque they appear to the living. We can reasonably draw conclusions through core samples pulled from ice sheets, we can observe the various striations on the walls of canyons and deduce from the deposits what physical forces that rock went through before we looked at it. But what do we do with all this data? If we’re simply the inevitable result of billions of years of time passing, gradually breaking away from the slow, methodical march of time to create a new urgency, what can we do to mitigate the sense of loneliness this brings with it? Once we die, it’s completely over. There was no purpose for anything after all.

Which one do you think it is? Were you created, in which case you are artificial intelligence, seeking to emulate your creator? Or are you the result of random happenstance in a long line of evolutionary necessities, in which case you are artificially intelligent, seeking only to perpetuate your awareness?

Chop wood, carry water.