The Open Society and It's Enemies

Editor's note: We all know IBM is operating in China. If IBM is operating in China does that mean IBM is providing China with AI technology especially microprocessor technology that China will at some point dominate? The philosopher Karl Popper who is mentioned in this partially republished essay on AI was the mentor of George Soros until Popper's death in 1994. It would seem Popper's writings on science and his extreme rational outlook on the world was all corrupted when science became a religion supercharged with money. It shouldn't be surprising that George Soros is loaded up on tech stocks developing AI technology. 

IBM will stop hiring for jobs that could be performed by an AI
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"You are not allowed to think for yourself, peasant", says the Blob.

A short experiment conducted on a long car ride: trying to find one well-known quote using several modern AI chat bots.

By Sasha Latypova | May 11, 2024

During a recent long haul drive in the beautiful American West, my husband and I ran a non-scientific test of large language models (LLMs), aka artificial intelligence or AI. The objective of this study was to find good references for this quote:

"Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it."

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The exact quote comes from Karl Popper’s book “The Open Society and Its Enemies” vol 1. Popper discusses one of the famous historical texts describing the functioning of a democratic society - Pericles’s Funeral Oration, as recounted by an ancient Greek historian Thucydides, in his work “History of the Peloponnesian War” dating back 2500 years to 431 BC. This work covers decades of the war between Sparta and Athens which resulted in the downfall of the Athenian empire. There is some controversy as to whether the work is an authentic documentary of the war, or whether it is a work of literature, and if so, whether it is really by Thucydides or a much later creation. I am personally inclined to think that it is a work of literature, inspired by a real war. I am currently half-way through the 600-page book, where hundreds of men are mentioned, often the names of their fathers are also included. So far, all names are unique! That is simply not possible, if the book is a documentary material based on real people. Whichever way, it is a monumental book on politics, democracy, empires and war.

Pericles's Funeral Oration is a public speech by an Athenian statesman at the public funeral for soldiers killed in the 1st year of the war. It was written down by a Thucydides allegedly from memory. The exact text of the speech varies among different textbooks and publications. Thucydides himself explained that the speeches were written the way he thought that should have been delivered. Translation from ancient Greek to modern English is apparently very challenging.

Most (even academic) websites don't provide the full text of the speech, and only refer to Pericles giving the speech for fallen soldiers. I should point out that I don’t use Goggle for search, I use Brave or Duck Duck Go, however, I noticed that their quality deteriorated in the past couple of years. Nevertheless, using a non-Google for standard internet search, I found a couple of websites that claimed to provide the full text of the speech, but somehow all of them managed to omit the sentence in which Pericles says that regular citizens in Athenian democratic society are fully cable of evaluating the state policy (and, by implication, correct it if necessary).

Note: yes, I know that the Athenians practiced slavery and slaves (and women) were excluded from the democratic process. This does not affect the point of Pericles’s speech. In fact, Socrates took this point further by saying that slaves were capable of being educated enough to have reasonable judgement. He said nothing about women…

I found the difficulty using search engines very troubling. Here is the only website I was ultimately able to find where the statement about the ability of regular citizens to judge public policy was included in the full text of the speech.

Clearly, the quote goes against the dictatorial, technocratic approach to government. For any just society to function well, the citizens should be able to engage in policy making and in policy corrections. Without this, we have no ability to influence the institutions that force us to fund them and claim to exist for our own good, safety, health, education and so forth. Pericles’s quote and the entire speech has been referenced by countless politicians, in many speeches, some almost entirely plagiarizing him, especially around the early to mid-part of the 20th century.

Hence came this little experiment using several Large Language Models.

First, let's try Google AI:

Google Search correctly identifies that the quote is by Pericles that appears in the The Open Society and It's Enemies by Karl Popper (1966). There is a warning that Google is now automatically applying an AI overview and 'AI overviews are experimental'.

Google immediately explains, without being asked, that people (the citizens) are stupid, and their judgments on policies are not rigorous or rational. Instead, they are emotional idiots. It further provides context on how the stupid and emotional citizenry should evaluate the ingenious policies of their masters:

Next is Google Gemini: a Short Answer

Google Gemini further adds the context that the original source is likely Pericles’s Funeral Oration. I guess that there is less gaslighting here because people have been mercilessly mocking Gemini for its incessant harassment with left-wing ideals. However, as we saw from above, they seem to have moved the wokeness to their primary search engine:

Please go to substack to continue reading.

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Related:

Clarification: Peace means "war" and merchants of peace means "merchants of war"