Spock Syndrome

Author's Note: There's a reason why the technocrats think that control of the future should be in their hands. In my Libertarian past, I might have agreed. Here's why I don't.

I’m sure it came as a surprise to many to see the tech elites surrounding Donald Trump when he was sworn in for the second time. Many might have thought that they should stay in their proverbial lanes, especially since what happened during the first Trump election. This article isn’t about Donald Trump, though. And, despite the title, it’s an article of hope. But to get to that hope, we have to distill our beliefs from reality.

Generally, the idea of a technocracy is fundamentally sound. The idea that we make our decisions based on dispassionate evidence as opposed to impassioned pleas gives many of us our own special kind of hope. And, given the exponential rise in tech, we often consider this a desirable outcome. This is why it must have come as some surprise that the likely technocrats sided with the fascists. That’s because what a lot of us fell into is the same trap that I fell into as a child, and one that I call: Spock Syndrome.

If you, like me, and like many Americans, fell in love with Star Trek as a child, then you know who Spock is: that lovable half-Vulcan who left his civilization, one based on the alleged purity of logic, to join the human world on James T. Kirk’s starship Enterprise. In so very many of the episodes and movies, the real winner of the day is Spock, who applies his reason to the situations, and the crew and ship come out better for it. Other aliens, those led by their emotions, like the Klingons, or like Khan from the Wrath of Khan, are often defeated by reason and logic, despite the fact that Kirk is anything but reasonable.

I was impressed by this and strove to be able to make decisions like that. I leaned heavily into logic and reason, and that sort of set me on my course to become an engineer. And, like many, I decided that technocracy wouldn’t be the worst thing. But, like my fleeting interest in Libertarianism, which fell apart the moment I discovered that it was rooted in Objectivism (look up what that means), I began to realize something was off. But what?

The problem with technocracy is that technology is morality-agnostic. A bomb doesn’t care who it blows up. Infamously, the IBM machines used in Germany in World War 2 didn’t care that Nazis were using them to track the alleged “undesirables” either. This means that technological advancement is completely unrelated to any moral foundation.

Continuing the analogy, Kirk is humanity and the moral compass in Star Trek. He’s the human in the mix, and the moral compass to Spock’s cold logic. The truth is that some moral obligation must temper Spock’s cold reason, because…logic, the foundation of technological advancement, like advancement itself, has no underlying morality. To think otherwise is self-deception.

I learned about this in a logic course, but it seemed so fundamentally obvious that I glossed past it. Consider the expression: “this sentence is a lie.” (Bear with me here, because this ties back.) If we interpret that expression, then we’ve stumbled into a logical contradiction. If the sentence is in fact a lie, then the sentence would be false. If the sentence is not a lie, then it would also be false, because the sentence couldn’t be a lie and not a lie at the same time. Simple, but it’s one example of how logic, and therefore its derivative technology, has no fundamental underlying morality. After all, it is morality that dictates that we care about the truth.

So, expecting something like a technocracy to be the savior of humanity, despite the technologists who would tell you otherwise, is ludicrous. Once we see that, we must look at the technologists and ask: why would they then be interested in running the world?

The answer is the same for them as for any other group attempting to seek power: people always crave power. It’s just that simple, and that’s the lens through which we should see all running for power. Anyone claiming to have the silver bullet to “save humanity” is wrong. But fundamentally, we all know this.

And we keep reaching for silver bullets because building and maintaining society is hard. It’s hard considering complex systems and the outcomes of those complex systems. And not all of us are up to the challenge: not a judgment, but a fact. I did say this was hopeful, though, so where’s the hope?

The hope is in this: technology still bends to the morality of the general public. We see the sleeping giant of America waking up now, and realizing that we’ve let the technologists play without a leash for far too long. They’ve decided to take over, and just like anyone else who has tried to take over anything, are attempting to install a fascist government to keep themselves on top in perpetuity. This has little to do with what’s good for America and everything to do with what’s good for themselves.

Let’s just say that people who are doing things in the interest of the masses have little need for billionaire bunkers to protect themselves from the rest of society.

No tool can oppress people who have tasted freedom. This is the hopeful part: we, Americans, and citizens of the world, outnumber the technocrats billions to one. There is no world in which their chosen future can become real. So…technology will not save us, but we will save ourselves. And as we do, we must remember that any morality we have to bring ourselves. Logic can’t do it, reason can’t do it.

Nobody can decide on the morality but us.

But we can decide it.