NIGHT WAS FALLING, AND Rick had finished his sessions on God and sense of self. Since there was such close alignment between those two subjects and brain plasticity, he felt he should finish the day on the topic.

“Within the other information provided with this transmission, you’ll understand our physiology and how our mentality is driven mostly by events and experiences outside of our own personal selves. Instead of explaining any of that in detail, I’ll focus instead on what I consider to be two interrelated components of life that engender the greatest positive products of humankind, but also the most horrific and negative ones.”

“Brain plasticity is both wonderful and terrifying. Wonderful because it allows us to adapt to our environments, but terrifying because it is so susceptible to emotional or even logical appeals to humanity’s basest instincts.”

“We discovered our amazing brain plasticity in the early part of this century as our emerging social networks became wildly effective in swaying public opinion. Such networks were devoid of any sense of responsibility for the content vomited forth, and they constantly claimed innocence that they were simply the unbiased conduit of human conversations and ideas.”

“However, those networks utilized algorithms to manipulate the human essence. The networks became the mechanisms for anybody with enough savvy to push their self-gratifying, self-aggrandizing, and self-enriching stories into the minds of the vulnerable.”

“Because humans cannot discern intent from content, and I emphasize ‘discern intent from content,’ humanity has been led down countless destructive paths of entropy due to such networks. Their algorithms are fairly simple: push content that binds the viewer more tightly to the narrative and therefore the network. Intent is never evaluated in the algorithm, only eye-catching content. It’s the only thing that matters.”

“I call it the multilevel marketing machine of social media. The corrupt wizards at the top of the pyramid puke their divisive or limited-inclusive content. Those without a proper sense of self, implying almost everybody, are attracted to that content which is typically the most titillating, outrageous, exclusive, and emotionally gratifying. Predictably, consumers became slovenly adherents, begging to consume more. Foolish ants slurping boron-baited sugar water.”

“Social media was initially so novel to our minds that it took humans considerable time to assess its influence and the damage it was causing. When we did figure it out, it was far too late to act.”

“Again, predictably, those in control of the conduit soon controlled the message. This enriched their enormously lined pocketbooks even further. And in these final days of humankind, there is duplicitous, unanimous, unquestioning surrender to the AI monsters in charge of those conduits. They are the unseen gods who administer and filter the messages to manipulate our minds.”

“These networks are monolithic, vertically integrated machines, backed by algorithms of AI systems, owning the devices to push the messages, the conduits or paths for the messages, and the messages themselves. No antitrust laws, as antiquated as they are these days, could possibly cut through the maze of such complex control infrastructures. And even if it had the capacity, our judiciary is such a patsy for the oligarchs that it’s useless to try. Besides, you can’t expect any entity and its beneficiaries to fairly police themselves.”

“I should avoid getting started on the judiciary again. That’s a topic for a long and sorrowful session, if I’m given the time. In short, what was once a coequal branch of government grew bastardized and perverted.”

“So many things have corrupted these institutions: anti-aging tech enabling lifetime judicial appointments that may extend into eternity; subordination of human and constitutional rights to corporations, AI, and military; and extreme powers vested into the presidency, which has now morphed into the technocracy and oligarchies.”

“There’s more, but the ultimate outcome was decided in the earlier part of this century. Too much power in the executive. Ability to super-stack the judiciary and create a terminally unfair imbalance. Too much control in the hands of the few. I blame the writhing maggots from those early decades of this century who led what was a great country, founded on great ideals, to the path of autocracy, corruption, and oligarchic tyranny. But I deviate, as usual.”

“Back to the dynamic of instant, constant gratification. Even I was drawn to the endorphin releases that occurred as I consumed social media that confirmed my biases. Even I was easily angered by the inane, the unbelievable, the spectator sport of watching the valuable norms we held onto become eroded, word by word, hour by hour, segment by segment, barrage by barrage, narrative by narrative.”

“The rapid-fire pelleting of information overwhelmed my senses. My innocent mind absorbed these messages like a sponge falling into its first ocean. I did not realize I had absorbed too much, and the poisonous water I consumed was only exchanged in that ocean by pernicious waters of adjacent seas. I was thrown asunder in the waves and currents, moving from one anger or bias confirmation point to another, then another, wherever the demagogue or autocrat of the moment and his AI minions conspired to lead my vulnerable mind.”

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“The media was constantly blaring in my eyes, ears, and fingertips. My cellphone became my connection into the ether, and I felt unwhole without that fix. Then, at some point of clarity and good fortune, the hormonal effect from anger and pleasure endorphins began to desensitize me. The constant propaganda from whatever source burdened me, weighing heavy on my shoulders. Finally, I recognized the intention behind the content.”

“I needed quiet to understand that the content, whether confirming my biases or in stark contrast to them, was tailored by the AI gods and their handlers to control me and others. Once I heard the quiet beyond the noise, something native within me rebelled. I’d no longer tolerate these ever-present narratives the AI beast attempted to force into my mind.”

“Concurrently, this realization coincided with my path of martial arts. I awoke to the thought that I did not want my life to be controlled by any AI or autocratic system or corrupt personas. I was worth more than this and should shut off the barrage. Resist the nudging to the next AI-directed path. I should take respite to evaluate the content. To understand how plastic my mind was, and how susceptible I was to the addictive and subtle drugs of contrived coercion, desensitization, and hyper-sensitization.”

“Content became the drug, intended to get us all hooked, and it was provided freely. Who can argue with ‘free,’ right? At first, the content’s purpose was to sell advertisements and enrich the moguls behind the algorithms. But as the third decade of the century started, intentions became less clear, less precise. One could not readily discern the content from the commercial from the political or morality ad. The marketing arms of these companies and political parties set out to purposely confound the audience. Meanwhile, the controlling entities used their AI systems to further consolidate global power.”

“Our previous belief constructs were corrupted. Forget what your parents told you or how they influenced your own morality. The nudging barrage was always there to redirect you, to incrementally and imperceptibly change your belief constructs for the benefit of unseen others who were actively tugging at the puppet strings above your head.”

“The barrage was so persistent. So effective. Incremental changes were always painted with rationalization, a justification for moving you from what you considered your own sense of morality. The barrage was designed to persuade you, recognizing you were eminently persuadable and with a weak sense of discernment at best. Soon, your belief constructs changed because the continuous stream of vomit confused the vague memory of who you may have been at one time in the past.”

“Why stick with old constructs when your social or media network has informed you of new ones that are seemingly rational, even if they may not be entirely fair or equitable? You might forgive the inequities and hatefulness and entitled beliefs to gain the advantages of being a member of that larger group of believers who reinforced each other in their righteous scripts. Besides, if so many others believed in the construct being promoted, then your original beliefs must have been jaded from the start. Your mind required this modification to get you right with the world and the marketing cohort in which you were placed.”

“You’d lose any sense of self; any individuality that you may have had. Your sense of what was right had given in to the comfortable, dogmatic, easy, and repetitive. It’s difficult and painful to be discerning, but so easy and pleasurable to be part of that self-righteous, self-confirming group.”

“But as usual, I digress too much from my intended purpose, so I should summarize. Your society crawls along for eons. Not much happens. Then there’s a lift in the curve of technology, and that lift amplifies itself. It’s the classic elliptic or infinity curve, where technology has an inflection point. Its inertia escalates and scales closer to infinity.

Concurrently as those changes occur, social structures cannot keep pace. In other words, there is a Moore’s Law for technologies, but no Moore’s Law for mores, norms, and standards. A deadly imbalance ensues as these two trajectories become juxtaposed. I mentioned this previously, but it begs for further discussion.”

“For the sake of a spoken visual, assume time is on the x-axis and the y-axis indicates the degree of advancement. For a long period, technological prowess and societal progress moved along our x-axis of time correspondingly. Our social progress, plodding along at a snail’s pace, was in sync with the often imperceptible rise of technology.”

“Then we hit an inflection point where technological prowess rocketed up the y-axis. That inflection point is our exponential Moore’s Law moment. With each passing minute, technology advances faster and faster to the absolute vertical. In contrast, society’s norms and values continue at their plodding pace, moving concurrently along the x-axis of time with technology.”

“Instead of rising along the vertical y-axis with technology, however, our norms and values arguably declined. Our society is now heaving and repulsing at the rate of change and the dichotomy of the two lines on the graph.”

“What might be a sign of your own inflection point? Perhaps it’s the first time you had the technical ability to instantly annihilate your species. A buildup of nuclear arms. Poisonous nerve agents. Democratization of gene manipulation. Plagues of nanorobotics. Manipulation of your climate. Sentient AI that preys on your innate weaknesses. These are some of ours. What are yours?”

“Our cascade of apocalyptic technological horrors continues to grow rapidly in these final stages. Our society, though, is too inept to understand it is happening.”

“Societal changes are ultimately outgunned and outpaced by technical prowess. At the conclusion of that down-sloping societal line is death of the species. In other words, the bacteria have had their day. They’ve reached the edge of the petri dish and all the nutrients in the agar media are spent.”

“This planet is our petri dish, and such is our circumstance. I have no great wisdom on how to survive these final ticks of the clock for the two disparate but coincided curves. They both exist in time until one no longer exists. Then both fall to the zero state, which is on our imminent horizon.”

“Given that you have received my signal, you are also very likely to be nearing this catastrophic divergence of short duration. Should you slow the pace of technology to avoid this cataclysmic end? Should you advance your societal curve by whatever means necessary? You must determine this for yourselves. For now, please consider it another warning. I have no wisdom to impart otherwise."