Wanted: Rational Humans
Even money-grubbing capitalists may come to appreciate philosophy in years to come.
Philosophers haven’t generally been renowned for their wealth and productivity, but could they be wealthy if they chose? There’s a great anecdote from Aristotle’s Politics that speaks directly to this point, about Thales, an ancient Greek philosopher who was mocked by his fellow citizens in Miletus, who saw him as kind of an unproductive bum. To prove that he was capable of “succeeding” by more traditional metrics, he studied the skies, and successfully predicted that the following year would enjoy an enormous olive harvest. Then, in the dead of winter when no one else was thinking about such things, he went around to owners of local olive presses, paying them for the right to use their presses the following fall. (Today I guess we’d term it a “call option” on the olive presses.) When the bumper crop rolled in, Thales controlled all the presses and made a killing.
The point wasn’t really that “philosophy makes you gobs of money.” I presume it was more like, “I could make gobs of money, but I don’t wanna.” Still, it’s a fun little story for thinking about philosophy and economics, and what philosophers might contribute to society, if and when they’re needed.
Following up on yesterday’s post on Christian philosophy, and why the modern world so desperately needs it, I thought I’d share a few essays from Law & Liberty, where I work as a Senior Editor, that to me provoke reflections on how crucial philosophy, and the liberal arts generally, really are. I do want us to have people like Thales, who mainly just contemplate the Truth. (As I admitted yesterday, I wanted to be one of those people!) But I think in many ways, technology is developing in ways that don’t undermine the value of human contemplation, but rather accentuate it. AI isn’t stealing our humanity; it’s calling on humans to be as human as they possibly can. (Ideally in a good way.)
The main argument is laid out in Spencer Klavan’s “AI in an Age of Humanity.” After reading that, I specially recommend Brent Orrell’s response, “Shaping the Humans Who Run the Machines.” It’s friendly to Klavan’s core argument, but develops a related point in an interesting way. Here’s a money quote:
The credentialing system was built on the assumption that codified knowledge was the scarce input and judgment was plentiful. Under AI, this priority reverses. Codified knowledge is now abundant, generated and recombined at a scale and speed no individual can match. Judgment has become the scarce input.
Will we reach a point where we realize we cannot make do without some philosophers?