These are my influences in writing today:

Daniel Deutch — What is Computation? Does Nature Compute?

Don Idhe- Postphenomenology and Technoscience

Category Theory — Conceptual Mathematics — A First Introduction to Categories by Lawvere and Schanuel

Jaques Ellul — The Technological Society

Where do laws come from?

According to Peter Kingsley, they came from dream work and necromancy (talking to the dead) in Ancient Greece. That sounds fun.

Today, this is where laws come from. It looks boring.

https://pxhere.com/

Laws in the future will come from AI

Lawmakers in Costa Rica used ChatGPT to draft a law that regulates AI. This law comes complete with AI Hallucination (i.e., fake information). But this is something to consider: AIs draft and enforce laws.

But how often do we make new laws?

Pretty often, as it turns out.

Some comrades and I were reading the philosopher Murray Bookchin and trying to understand the local politics in our upstate New York City.

We looked through the agenda for the next meeting, and I saw something about a new leash law.

We need to have all our dogs on leashes in public spaces. This is a reasonable law.

This law is so granular and specific. It shows how we have so many laws to cover every aspect of life. A law is an answer to a civic disturbance or disagreement.

Do we have too many laws?

Early in his book, From Urbanization to Cities, Bookchin writes that the city’s rise was a tremendous technological advancement. It is an engine for humans to self-determine their futures and to become free. Although many live in cities, Bookchin calls this urbanization — not the dream of self-governance to enable self-determination.

Urbanization works on an economic level rather than a political level. I pay the city taxes, and the city does something for me, such as fixing roads, enforcing leash laws, etc.

For a city based on economic transactions, laws become equations: remuneration, retribution, and recompensation recipes. It is a massive computer to ensure no one is out of balance.

Is this Politics?

I did not see any alternative. This is politics, I thought.

For Bookchin, though, politics means spending the day discussing laws, like the ancient Athenians in the Agora.

Again, spending the day in the Agora discussing leash laws seems worse than being a line item in a political balance sheet.

Laws are Technology

Thinking about Jaques Ellul’s The Technological Society, all these laws are a technology to create an automated system for everyday living. When we make laws today, we create a machine.

But lawmaking can be different.

There are no leash laws

In Bookchin’s universe, or perhaps just my universe, when we create laws, they are not if-then rules: if you don’t keep your dog on a leash, you pay a fine.

Instead, the practice of law-making is discussed, and we don’t create ‘laws’ but agreed-upon customs, behaviors, and guidelines. This resembles circling, Nora Bateson’s Warm Data, and other modern practices that center conversation.

What if we break a ‘custom’?

Again, we bring it to the discussion. Punishment in this system is not part of creating a new custom, behavior, or guideline only if laws tightly coupled with enforcement can be subject to technological systems.

Yes, this is infeasible on a large scale.

AI and the Law

Human laws are not like natural laws. Although humans often behave mechanically, we can be free, but only if we act free or have the opportunity to work freely. We are starting to wonder where humans belong in a world that. AI can manage.

If AI makes and enforces laws, our laws will be based on economic or computational laws and Utilitarian values (the greatest good for the greatest number).

These are the laws of a technological and political system.

Laws that arise from consensus, as guidelines, not laws of nature, cannot be created by an AI.

Part 2

Question: Is Computation a law of nature or just another technology? Why does this matter?

If Computation is something we create, it has ideology; it comes out of social practices, and we can regulate and discuss Computation as we would any other human creation.

If Computation is a law of nature, like F=MA, our discussions take a different flavor. We can think more about how we interact with these laws and what these laws mean for us as humans, as part of an ecosystem and society.

Question: Is there something different about Computation than about previous technologies (like the wheel)?

Maybe that is because of where I sit, but technology has become part of almost every aspect of our lives in the US. Is this meaningful or not? Is this worth considering, or should I ignore it and be grateful I have a vacuum cleaner?

The Kardashev Scale and The Technological Society

This last question is about phase transition. Some laws are applicable in certain situations, like when water is ice (a solid), and some rules are applicable in certain conditions, like when water is steam (a gas).

The Kardashev scale is a way to group civilizations by how much energy they use, the power of a planet, a star, and a solar system. These are different phases of civilization.

In the technological society, I read Ellul as saying that when we have a critical mass of technologies (techniques), our society changes — we become a technological society. Everything is mediated through technology, just as someone who wears glasses has everything mediated through a lens.

How does technology shape our perception of reality?

What do we see when we look through a microscope or a telescope? And what do we see when we use dye to color transparent cells? How do we think about tools and technology that help us access phenomena outside the range of our normal perception?

This is where category theory comes in

That is a teaser

TLDR

Our perceptions are colored by the mediums in which we live. This can be the organizations, political structures, structural inequality, pollution, nurturing mentors, supportive friendships, and great art.

Today, we live in the medium of technology. This conditions everything else. To create laws, justice, ethics, equality, liberty, freedom, clean air, clean water, and no violence — we have to under what it means to live in a technological society.