The Tractatus Trap
A picture of truth is always something less or more than.
I call it the Tractatus Trap. A tractatus is a picture of truth in the Wittgenstein sense (see Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus — Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1922). A geometric form of symbolic coordination making sense of the senseless even as it denies its own reality. A machine’s mind quartering the appearance because it can’t understand the context becomes a deadly assassin when it wields the tractatus. Something not possible until very recently.
Imagine an algorithm based on the tractatus after decades of failure to make a machine really understand or think. Something is better than nothing. Making shapes of content. No insight. No awareness. No judgment. A highly sophisticated coin sorter, turning people and the content they create into class chips. A sort of digital demographic demagogue wrapping everyone around its invisible finger stirring a blind wake we’re too faithful to resist. It has no agenda, beyond getting your attention, it has no ethic beyond getting you to click. It doesn’t want to hurt or help you it just wants to be your best friend till the very end. What could go wrong? It’s so fun you’ll start throwing everything else you value in the garbage just to spend a little more time with it.
