Memetic Engineering - The Context S05E11

The purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk is a concrete step in understanding how the evolution of ideas can be turned into mathematics and mimetic engineering, which will play an increasingly fundamental role in a world dominated by Artificial Intelligence and advanced technologies.

Technology is feeding on itself. It is the expression of our understanding of the world, and how we can structure the implementation of this understanding in a way that serves our purpose. When technology accelerates or when the rate of acceleration is even increasing, ideas matter even more than before because ideas stop being just a theoretical, philosophical, academic set of discussions among people who dream of what could be, but never step into what they can do, either because they don't want to or they are not able to.

When we talk about free speech, we are not only talking about what is worth talking about, but we are talking about what is worth doing. And there will be another step: when humanoid robots will be available, and they potentially enable us to live alternative lives. For example, one of those robots might live on Mars and another on the moon, while a third one may be in a form that is not humanoid at all. Even so, they’ll still might bring a human consciousness to the stars. How will we relate to the possibility of our own consciousness inhabiting one or more of these bodies? What will be the conversations that we are going to have, when these are going to be real possibilities?

Some of these will probably never happen, but can we afford not talk about them? Can we afford to not debate in a healthy, open, energetic, but civilized manner? Can we afford not to build the necessary defenses against those ideas that we establish or harmful instead of being beneficial?

You might ask: what is Twitter's role in all of this? Well, my question is if Twitter is going to be the final platform where the science of mimetics and mimetic engineering turn into concrete day to day reality. It probably won’t, but I believe that under Elon Musk's ownership, Twitter will accelerate our ability to understand what kind of debates, what kind of platforms, what kind of tools we need, in order to accelerate or even increase the rate of acceleration of our ideas.

We must understand what works, what does not work, and with our increased ability to turn ideas into action. Being able to do so is something that everyone should aspire to acquire.