A Reply To Critics

What would the critics do about violent men?

One focus of TannyTalk has been the article series which proposes that a human experience quite close to the long dreamed of world peace would be possible in a world without men. The purpose of this article is to offer a response to critics of the “world without men” proposal.

Critics? What critics?

Well, ok, so the “world without men” idea that’s presented on TannyTalk doesn’t have many real critics yet, defined as intelligent people offering a thoughtful response.

Instead, so far it’s been mostly the usual goofy gotcha gang who read a headline, or a maybe as much as paragraph and a half, and then start screaming things like “GENOCIDE!!!” Yup, I’ve been banned by forum mods who didn’t bother to read even the post they were banning me for, or they would have seen I’ve said nothing at all about killing anybody. Welcome to the Internutz.

Those who could offer an intelligent response to the “world without men” proposal have so far completely ignored the topic where ever I might introduce it, presumably because they consider the idea too wacky to merit their attention.

Ok intellectual elites, fair enough, but I’ve got to ask…

What’s Your Solution?

A casual dismissal of the “world without men” idea might be based on an assumption that there is some better, more reasonable and realistic way to achieve world peace. Ok, that sounds good. Like what? What’s your plan elites?

Or, a dismissal of the “world without men” idea might be based on a notion that we don’t need to achieve world peace. So what’s the plan in this case? Is it the intention of elites that we should provide violent men with ever more, ever larger powers at an accelerating pace, and that will work out well somehow?

Another possibility is that intellectual elites don’t wish to get publicly involved in any idea that’s as far outside the group consensus as the “world without men” concept. After all, one doesn’t run a successful intellectual career by rebranding oneself as a crackpot, sinking one’s professional reputation, and making most readers in one’s peer group angry. Never mind about intellectual inquiry aimed at the biggest threat to the modern world, because thinking big and risking being wrong is bad for business?

And then of course there is the “off topic” defense, the “above it all” defense, the “don’t have time for this” defense, the “change the topic from the post to the poster” defense, the “I have a PhD and you should be impressed” defense, and the “bury them in a mountain of big fancy words” defense.

There are a lot of places to hide when one doesn’t wish to engage inconvenient ideas.

As example, if one were to raise the topic of world peace on a blog about say, the future of AI, readers might say that world peace is off topic. That sounds reasonable at first, until you realize that if we don’t achieve world peace, there probably isn’t going to be much of a future for AI.

What usually happens with any unconventional idea is that, to the degree it is engaged at all, the focus of critics is almost always on “here’s why that won’t work”. Critics love to create long lists of problems for somebody else to solve. And then they like to walk away, because walking away liberates them from having to present and defend a counter proposal.

Vladimir Putin, a single violent man who has on his own destroyed the peace of Europe, already has big pile of nukes. And now we’re going to give him AI. Oh, and genetic engineering too. And the 21st century is still young. What other tools of mass chaos will the knowledge explosion being handing such violent men over the coming 75 years?

So what are intellectual elites, those who seemingly claim to be the brightest minds among us, planning on doing about this escalating threat to everything we hold dear?

Ok, sure, a “world without men” proposal could indeed be a bad idea. That may very well be the case. Maybe we should ignore this concept. We could try that.

And do what instead?

Hello? Elites, are you there?

Would one of those elites who casually ignore the “world without men” idea with a lazy wave of their hand please step up on the stage and tell us what their plan is to avoid ever more ruthless civilization threatening carnage like we see today in Ukraine?

Hello elites! Anybody home?

Is This The Plan From Elites?

I hope I’m wrong about this.

But I’m guessing the plan elites have for addressing the marriage between violent men and an accelerating knowledge explosion is to ignore it, and hope that we don’t notice. Just like they typically do with nuclear weapons.

Starting to notice here elites. Starting to notice.

I didn’t arrive at the “world without men” idea because I hate men. It happened because I came to realize that in the 21st century world peace is no longer optional. Reaching world peace has become a do or die mission. And I don’t see another way to get there.

So elites, give us another way to get there please.

Or join the 21st century, and start talking about how we should go about doing that which must be done.