Dystopian World, Fight for Freedom

Let us imagine for a moment that the government forces all citizens to deposit a DNA sample to be used to search for potential criminal acts! Let us imagine that for a similar or for any other reason, the same government would collect digital fingerprints or other personal characteristics that would allow someone to identify you with a very high probability!

What would you say? How would you react? You would most probably rebel before resigning.

There would of course be a number of good reasons to ask the population to register. Indeed, in a world in which dying has become a sickness to cure and the quest for eternity the ultimate competition for the immensely rich, identifying precisely the culprits of any misbehavior would support this ultimate objective. As a matter of fact, the first few steps to implement eternal life on earth consist mostly in establishing standardized, optimized ways of living that maximize the survival rate by minimizing risks.

Driving too fast, eating too much or of the wrong food, not exercising at all as well as exercising too much or at the wrong moment has to be punished, not merely by giving a fine, even a large one, no. It has to be punished by excluding the perpetrator from society. This extreme solution can be realized quite easily and is currently implemented in China for example, by excluding misbehaving people from the credit system and thus preventing them to acquire property.

To realize that properly, you would of course rely on the control systems that are surrounding us more and more and on artificial intelligence systems that would replace our disappearing well-behaved manners. As parental and societal necessary guidance is about to disappear, implementing libertarian paternalism supported by artificial intelligence is becoming a must.

Libertarian paternalism is the idea that it is both possible and legitimate for private and public institutions to affect behavior while also respecting freedom of choice, as well as the implementation of that idea. The term was coined by behavioral economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein in a 2003 article in the American Economic Review. The authors …propose that libertarian paternalism is paternalism in the sense that “it tries to influence choices in a way that will make choosers better off, as judged by themselves”.

Our watch will tell us what to eat and when to train, and our phone will propose to use the most suitable activities and make sure that any misbehavior is recorded and transferred “to whom it may concern”.

In that context, it is fascinating to see that one of the spearheads of this brave new world, Sam Altman, one of the founders of Openai, the master of “artificial intelligence”, is proposing anybody have his/her iris scanned to establish a unique worldwide proof of identification.

Worldcoin is an open source protocol, or system, created to help give everyone access to the global economy. It’s designed to be decentralized, meaning that ultimately its supervision and decision making will rest with its community of users.

The people and organizations supporting Worldcoin are developing the tools that work together to help it achieve its mission. These include:

World ID — a privacy-preserving digital identity designed to help solve many important, identity-based challenges including proving an individual’s unique personhood

Worldcoin Token — the first token to be globally and freely distributed to people, for both utility and future governance, just for being a unique individual

World App — a fully self custodial app that enables payment, purchases and transfers globally using the Worldcoin token, digital assets, stablecoins and traditional currencies

Importantly, Worldcoin — through World ID’s unique digital identity — can play an important role in demonstrating humanness in an online world populated with increasingly advanced artificial intelligence.

Sure enough, he is one of the players in the quest for eternity.

He has chucked a lot of cash at Retro Biosciences. He has spent $180 million in the company, which touts the lofty goal of extending “the healthy human lifespan by ten years.” According to Retro’s strategy statement, it aims to do so by finding and demonstrating anti-aging mechanisms in non-human mammals and then translate those scientific strategies to humans.

At first sight, Worldcoin’s objective seems to be commendable. Identity theft is one of the main issues of an interconnected world, isn't it? Additionally, Worldcoin supports its“believers” by donating them some cryptocurrency. Who would refuse?

This solution is supposed to make sure that “artificial intelligence” future powers will not be in a position to pretend to be human and impersonate us. Well, that is the issue with artificial intelligence. If one day it surpasses human intelligence, we will not be able to keep the devil in its box. Indeed, an artificial intelligence system with these capabilities will be capable of developing solutions we cannot think of to deprive us of our humanity.

To conclude, I would strongly suggest refraining from registering in a central system that may one day not act in your best interest. The application is currently not available in the US for good reasons.

For more on the subject, you can check my essay:

I look forward to reading your comments.