Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

‘Buzz bombs’ were hardly something the British public thought could be associated with ‘democratic progress’ 80 years ago. In fact, they were the exact opposite—viewed as the evil tools of the Nazi regime who terrorized people in British cities, particularly London. But how times change! Modern day drones are now hailed as something ‘wonderful’; drones now allow democratic high-tech nations to punish the more primitive ‘non-democratic’ nations such as Russia and Iran.²⁰

 Of course, the V2 bomb wasn’t a modern-day drone controlled by AI. Nevertheless, the similarities are startling. According to one website, the drones of the world wars’ combat robots date back nearly 100 years.²¹

Schadenfreude

‘Backward’ Russia, unable to make its own up-to-date drones, has bought drones from another country capable of producing such ‘high-tech’ weapons, namely, the ‘evil-axis’²² country, Iran.

I don’t intend to attempt to give an in-depth analysis of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. However, even the most casual observer can see how many western politicians seem to be ‘enjoying’ it. The English do not seem to have a word for this, but it has something to do with the German word ‘schadenfreude’. This refers to the pleasure derived by someone from the misfortune of another. In our context, this is also coupled to a certain kind of arrogance and smugness regarding the West’s so-called feeling of ‘superiority’. 

In other words, the media is full of reports of the incapability of the Russian forces.²³ However, where will all this schadenfreude, arrogance, and smugness end? Will Russia fall to pieces and say they are sorry? This seems very unlikely. We have many instances in history where an overbearing victor served to sow the seeds of future conflicts. ‘The Treaty of Versailles’²⁴ established the foundation for World War Two, at least according to some research.²⁵

Supercomputers

For the time being, I will leave off from this topic of discussion, as this is a case of ‘wait-and-see’. I don’t intend to be a ‘Nostradamus’,²⁶ that is, a ‘futurist’ ha ha; as the futurists usually get it all wrong. No one has yet built a ‘supercomputer’ that can predict the future.

Man may have built a computer, such as AlphaZero,²⁷ that can predict the ‘future’ of a chess game. A chess board has 64 squares and 32 pieces, and there are various rules for how the pieces are allowed to move. Where does that leave ‘the board of human life in the universe’? How many squares and pieces are there altogether? And how many rules? It is a relatively ‘simple’ operation (although complex) to program a computer with the rules and moves of a chess game.

However, in the case of the ‘human world,’ no one has oversight of ‘the board of life’, the ‘pieces’, the ‘moves’, and so on. I am not saying that this is an impossible task, but it is obviously, from a common sense point of view, something that lies far into the future. 

²⁰ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-62225830

21 https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-drones-of-the-world-wars-d30490d9f328

²² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_evil

²³ ‘Russia’s underperforming military capability may be key to its downfall’ by Jack Watling. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/18/russia-military-underperforming-ukraine 18 Sept. 2022.

²⁴ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles

²⁵ https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.517.5246&rep=rep1&type=pdf#:~:text=The%20effects%20of%20the%20Treaty,by%20the%20Treaty%20of%20Versailles.

²⁶ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostradamus

²⁷ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaZero