TODAY. A world run by 11 year-old boys?

They can be delightful people, full of fun, curiosity, competitiveness and inventiveness. They come up with the bright ideas, sometimes daring and a bit risky, but always interesting.

Neuroscience tells us that the part of the brain, the frontal lobe, that deals with judgement and inhibition, develops fully only later in the male , – up to nearly age 30 – compared to, in females, a lot earlier. Also the male brain is, by and large, better at focussing on one thing, as compared with the female, where the electric impulses dart around the brain – considering various aspects.

These differences must have been useful in the past, when sabretooth tigers were a big danger – the larger, less inhibited young male person being more likely to rush out and fight this predator. Less useful now, when the danger is other aggressive male persons.

Which brings me to my thought. I was looking at this picture of Sam Altman – of ChatGPT fame. He’s actually 38, but he’s got that bright-eyed 11 year-old boyish look.

In fact, I reckon that they all do – Elon Musk, Bill Gates – and the rest of the billionaire tech entrepreneurs. Gee – they’re brilliantly clever, and daring, and wow! – they do great stuff, and a lot of it brings us a lot of benefits.

And they’re a lot more fun than boring old fogies, people like Ralph Nader, who warned about automobile safety, and nuclear danger.

AND YET … AND YET ……

Sam Altman is enthused about Artificial Intelligence – needing an orgy of electricity. But no worry – nuclear fusion will solve that! (only nuclear fusion is many decades away).

They all seem to love nuclear energy, and endless AI, and rockets to Mars – and all that wow stuff. Things like nuclear waste apparently are not that important, nor are ideas like energy conservation to address global heating, nor the growth of devastating weaponry – in space as well as on Earth, nor the consequences of all this for the environment, the fragile ecosystem that supports our species, as well as all those other species such as the insects, that don’t matter.

The world’s leaders seem to hang on every word from these guys. I think they are making a big mistake.

I postulate that the tech billionaires had such fun when they were 11, that they never left that persona behind. Inside, they are still 11. The super- confidence, the risk-taking, the narrow brain focus – it’s all still there.

Meanwhile, ordinary mortals, and that includes women with their more generalised thinking, are pondering about the climate, biodiversity, the environment, wars, the heritage for our grandchildren. I think that we need to listen more to ordinary mortals, more likely to be co-operative rather than competitive, and to men like boring old Ralph Nader, who is older than 11 inside.

March 28, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina's notes