We differ, yes, including in abilities, circumstances, and dispositions. We do not start on a level playing field and we do not end on a level playing filed. However far too much weight is given to where we are when we start compared to where we go from there.
Between two untrained fighters, one may very well have been born with an advantage over the other. Train one of them, either one, and any advantages they were born with become insignificant compared to the clear advantage offered by the training. After they are both trained, maybe the one who’d started weaker will be the stronger fighter, or maybe the one who started stronger will be the stronger fighter, one can’t predict this based on the relatively minor difference in their starting circumstances. (You may however be able to predict which will be stronger based on their beliefs about who is stronger. Convince them the other is stronger and they will be more likely to lose.)
The advantages some groups have over others are the advantages that those groups have cultivated over an extended period of time. We have limited time and resources and none of us will be able to achieve equal mastery to every other one of us. Some will have spent our lives becoming better at math, others at music, others at medicine, etc. If you were born with minor advantages in one area, it may inspire you to pursue mastery of that area, but it’s the pursuit and not the birth that produces that mastery. Nobody’s born a master of anything.
The natural starting divisions between us pale in comparison to the divisions we place upon ourselves in our bigotry. The colour of our skin divides us far less than racism, our genders divide us far less than sexism, our religious membership divides us far less than religious intolerance, etc. Our society loves to divide people based on intelligence or emotional capacities, because these are invisible factors, and we can just make excuses by pretending that we’re smarter or they’re smarter when in fact we don’t know their IQ. I hate being othered for being intelligent when in fact my IQ is fairly close to average and even quite low in some areas, and anyway it doesn’t make as big of a difference as people pretend it does.
I’m not saying that there aren’t natural divisions between us. I’m saying that the additional divisions we create between ourselves are much worse, so let’s recognise that we’re all humans who started somewhere.
I’m not saying it’s a meritocracy. I’m saying that if we tell people to to believe that they are inherently lesser, they will probably lose. I am not saying that if they believe in themselves that they will probably win. If “winning” means coming out on top, then we will all probably lose regardless. What is fairness? I’ve never grasped the meaning of the word.
I do agree with the last sentence though, to an extent. In fact, that’s the core theme of my favourite super hero, Lex Luthor. But again, the whole point of what we’re saying here isn’t that people shouldn’t be allowed to use AI, but that misusing AI constitutes a failure to fully leverage the tools at our disposal. Nobody naturally knows how to program. I’ve been studying it off and on for years and I’m still not sure I can say that I really know how to program. Yet, I keep studying. I’ll probably leverage AI at some point, but I want to be cautious that I don’t set myself backwards by doing so, and I’m worried about future generations of programmers doing that as well, because I’m going to have to rely on the code they build. I want them to excel. That’s why I criticise the use of AI, lest by its misuse it prevents people interested in coding from really learning to code. It’s not to say that there aren’t ways of using AI right, but if we’re to sort the effective from the ineffective ways, then we must be critical. It’s by being critical that we refine the tools so that everyone can have the best tools. I’m a free market distributist, so I want access to the means of production to be as widely distributed across as many individuals as we can.
I mentioned Lex Luthor. He’s always cutting corners to try to catch up to Superman, to try and prove that he can be just as great of a saviour to the humanity he loves even though he wasn’t gifted with such an unfair advantage. In cutting corners, in pushing everything beyond its limits, he pushes situations to breaking points and Superman has to intervene and prevent the disasters. Luthor thinks Superman is just trying to keep him down, sabotaging the competition, and so he antagonises Superman, gets under his skin, enrages him, and they waste much of their lives fighting one another. But around the end of many versions of Superman history, Lex Luthor tends to finally step out from under the shadow of Superman one way or another and just becomes a hero in his own right. Maybe it’s because he kills Superman and his envy is finally satiated enough for him to step back and see the bigger picture (DCUO), maybe it’s because he gives up fighting Superman when there arises a threat to humanity that’s bigger than either of them (SM Animated Series), maybe it’s because Superman pretends to have died so that Luthor can have space to live out the rest of his life as the hero of humanity he always wanted to be (SM Red Son). One way or another, when he stops trying to be better at Superman at doing what he believes in and instead just does what he believes in as best as he can, he turns from a villain into a hero. Once he does that, he leverages his tools to seize every advantage, using his strengths and making up for his weaknesses, but no he longer over leverages them to the breaking point.
I suppose this is what you mean by ‘the tyranny of tools.’
I would say, as illustrated by the Lex Luthor fiction, the need to create the next tool exists in both the human and in humanity, but it is in humanity that it becomes twisted from a manifestation of our being into a cut-throat conflict.
But now I’m shifting topics and this comment is already verbose enough.
