Lights in the sky
On John Stuart Mill, aurora photos on social media, and why human thinking will always be a little different than what we can program computers to do
The remarkable aurora event visible over much of North America has presented a rare opportunity for a massive population on our continent to share in an extraordinary experience with no effort required (beyond stepping outdoors). People went outside in droves, then flocked to social media to share their photos.
John Stuart Mill wrote that “Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.” This event is a perfect illustration of Mill’s point.
■ There is a whole industrial complex in ascendance today that is built around taking people out of things like decision loops and review processes. In a handful of cases, it may be because computers can do a fundamentally better and more reliable job. Automation has been around for ages because it promises to reduce errors and deliver consistency, and when it works, it makes life better for people.
■ But there are other cases where the sense is that computers are fundamentally better “thinkers” than people. The aurora experience, though, drives home precisely why that’s a faulty assumption.
■ To appreciate an aurora requires some characteristics that are special to humans: A sense of time (for most of us, it doesn’t happen very often), a sense of perspective (it’s very, very big and we are comparatively very, very small), and a sense of fragility and mortality (it doesn’t take long staring up at the stars to start wondering how we even came to exist).
■ None of these can be imbued into a digital computer. The human capacity for wonder and awe should be treated as the precious gift it is. No computer is going to be moved by an image of an aurora. It can’t. That’s our thing, and it’s best enjoyed in company with others.
