Nature Forbids Misuse of Technology (W12)

While we need technology to advance civilization, some people misuse the neutral nature of technology to hurt other people for individual gains. How to stop those people? Nature provides the hints. This article attempts to reveal how Nature works and what it teaches us.

Revelation 1. Think about day and night, summer and winter of the year, and the high and low tides on Earth twice daily. Nothing stays static. Change is the only constant as we normally say. Changes follow a set of principles and are predictable. The challenge of science is indeed to discover the operating principles of Nature. What we once thought was unpredictable became predictable when we have understood more such as when Albert Einstein published the existence of space curvature in his General Relativity theory in 1915. Einstein also defined a numerical relationship between matter and energy with the simple equation of e=mc2 where c is the speed of light. Science does allow us to understand more about Nature. At the same time, Nature tells us how to stay in harmony with it.

Revelation 2. Nature embraces construction and destruction cycles such as birth and death of stars. Humans live in the best place (being the Earth) and the best time of Nature (stable period of the solar system). Humans do not survive in the destruction process, not to mention to participate. The consistency of changes of Nature provides an environment for humans developing civilization over time. Nature offers freeness and fairness. On the other hand, bad guys normally think all other people are dumb and they can do whatever they want. There is no such hint from Nature.

Revelation 3. There is a book called “i-ching” which was started 6000 years ago in sketches. It was turned into writing and polished over the next 3500 years lastly by Confucius who wrote 10 chapters to explain it to the masses. “I” is change. “Ching” is book. “i-ching” is the book of change. I-ching talks about the operation of the universe around a simple pair of words “yin and yang”. For example, matter is yin and energy is yang. Matter converts to energy and vice versa. Matter and energy co-exist in harmony. It then looked into human behaviors and put them into 64 categories (yin and yang = 2, 2 to the power of 6). It strongly promotes kindness to each other, collaboration, and self-awareness as the ways to maintain harmony with Nature.

Applying Nature to Use of Technology. Despite the fact that technology is neutral, its applications shall be guided by the operating principles of Nature for us to stay in harmony with Nature. Humans should learn to manage changes with a positive and constructive attitude and should avoid hurting others for self-benefits. Semiconductors and AI are the hottest leading-edge technology developments at present. Evil AI based on leading edge semiconductors will be super evil. Evilness is not part of Nature. Manmade evilness is easily identifiable provided that we raise our level of awareness. We are not dumb. We all have the rights and obligations to see that all technologies remain in the hands of people who practice fairness and collaboration. Natural Justice prevails.