The End of Logic

As automation takes on more and more aspects of life, human beings will be boxed into smaller and smaller areas of activity. Paid work is increasingly circumscribed into that which is not, or cannot easily be, automated. Automation only works where systems exist. Computers excel at implementing systematic, logical thinking. They are not very good with non-systematic, emotional reaction.

Everything that is systematized will be automated because that's what computers do: they automate systems. Any systematic body of knowledge with rule-based procedures is subject to automation. Remember, people are the largest cost in any production system. Once an area is automated, once people are removed from the equation, the human work value associated with that area drops close to zero. Which means, as time goes on, humans can increasingly generate value only by engaging in areas where logical, systemic organization is not an advantage.

So, as automation advances, available job categories decrease. The primary job areas that will survive the current automation apocalypse will be in entertainment, as the explosion of Youtube entrepreneurs and social media "influencers" already demonstrates. But this won't last long. As people pour into the entertainment space, among the last spaces that cannot be automated, the income  streams for entertainers will drop across the board. Too much product, not enough audience. 

Thus, ironically, as the remorseless logic of computers take over various aspects of industry, the value of logic and systematic thinking in human interactions drops. Why should I train myself to think logically if the job which requires me to be logical is already automated by a machine, a machine which can do logic much more remorselessly, effortlessly and speedily than I can? Similarly, it is useless for me to train myself in logic if the only place I can earn money is in the entertainment space, that is, the only way I can earn money is by generating emotions. These twins, disincentive to be logical, incentive to be emotional, are even now driving society away from logical thought.

This is the world of Star Wars, where the robots do the logic, and all rigorous training goes into "feelings". "FEEL the Force, Luke!" The Apostle Luke "carefully investigated everything from the beginning", providing logical evidence of God's incarnation. The 20th century Luke trains only in feelings, refusing the Aristotelian law of non-contradiction.  In the 21st century, Jesus is not God, He is a Sith Lord. 

Just as technology lowered the social value of motherhood to essentially zero, so, technology will render the social value of logic obsolete. Society will become more and more subject to wild emotional swings because logic will no longer carry human economic value. Any logical, systematic approach to the universe, whether it be Aristotelian, Thomistic, even deconstructionist, is increasingly discarded as irrelevant within the human interaction space. While the people who move in this direction are to be pitied, the people who move in this direction are not wrong. Euclid alone may have looked on beauty bare, but the beauty of Euclid's logic, which has always been somewhat esoteric, is becoming increasingly ephemeral. Machines apply logic. Increasingly, people apply only emotion. Man is no longer homo sapiens, the creature of logic, reason, and it's fruit, wisdom, but now only homo motus, the being that can only feel and react.