On March 15, 2019 an asshole opened fire in two mosques in Christchurch New Zealand killing fifty people during Friday prayers. As he was exiting his car on the way to commit carnage, his last act was to adjust his GoPro camera to ensure the mass murder was live-streamed to the internet. This gruesome video circulated among Facebook's 2.2 billion users for 29 minutes before the company started efforts to block it. What's new here?
Certainly not assholes, or targeted violence against people of other ethnicities, nor bragging about it. In 701 BC, King Sennacherib of Assyria laid waste to the kingdom of Judea, sacking 46 fortified settlements and according to his accounts enslaving over 200,000. This conquest was chronicled in the magnificent Lachish reliefs originally installed as palace decorations, since pilfered to the British Museum in London.
King Sennacherib needed an army outfitted with swords, spears and chariots to inflict violence on neighboring peoples. His means of bragging about was limited to stone inscriptions. These days someone can purchase military firearms on the internet, murder dozens in minutes and spread heinous 4K images around the world in real time with a $100 head cam.
Technology is increasingly testing our restraint. A rogue Chinese scientistrecently genetically modified two babies using widely available CRISPR gene editing technology. The descendants of these newborns will pass on their engineered mutations to future generations and whatever inadvertent surprises nature might have in store. Colleagues aware of his reckless experiments pleaded with He to abandon his plans. The Chinese government since denounced him as being motivated by "fame and fortune", while other scientists described germ line gene editing in humans as monstrous and unconscionable.
Whether or not people like it, the disruptive use of emerging tech is here to stay. Cheap and effective CRISPR equipment has reduced gene editing costs by 99 percent and the time needed for these trails from years to weeks. We can look forward to a future where CRISPR could cure everything to colorblindness to cancer. It could also be used by rogue actors on a budget to weaponize known diseases like the flu virus or smallpox. The main reason an engineered pandemic hasn't yet happened in history is because we haven't been able to.
Long after the Cuban missile crisis, the world learned how close we had come to global annihilation. The US navy blockading Cuban waters had detected the Soviet submarine B-59 somewhere in the vicinity and was dropping depth charges to force her to the surface. To elude the Americans, B-59 dove deep out of communication range with Moscow or the outside world.
The Foxtrot class sub was armed with nuclear weapons but was diesel powered, meaning she could not hide for long. With batteries running low, air conditioning failing and carbon dioxide building up, the sweltering commanders argued about what to do. Believing that a nuclear war had already started, Captain Savitsky and political officer Maslennikov wanted to launch their nuclear torpedo. Thankfully the flotilla commander Vasili Arkhipov was also aboard and under Soviet naval rules, his consent was needed as well. Arkhipov refused to authorize the launch, averting what likely would have been a nuclear war.
Arkhipov is the subject of a documentary called "The Man Who Saved the World", and was the first hero honored by the Future of Life Institute in their annual awards. The world as we know it is still here because fifty seven years ago Vasili Arkhipov made a moral calculation based on limited information that was in conflict with his peers. Rather than standardized protcols, regulations or cultural norms, our best chance to avoid novel awful outcomes in an age of unlimited agency may be decentralized ethical decisions calculated from first principles. Here is hoping that a future AI will be willing and capable of similar moral mathematics.
Such a counterintuitive calculation was made in the aftermath of the New Zealand shootings. While motorcycle gangs are not necessarily renowned for their social conscience, members of the Mongrel Mob, King Cobra and other gangs offered to provide security at Christchurch mosques during Friday prayers. "We will support and assist our Muslim brothers and sisters for however long they need us,” pledged Waikato Mongrel Mob president Sonny Fatu. Dr Asad Mohsin, head of the Waikato Muslim Association likewise decided to transcend stereotypes and accept their help, "It all gives us strength to overcome the grief we are undergoing. We would welcome them to come into the mosque and pray with us. They are part of us as we are part of them."
What does a criminal gang given to Nazi paraphernalia and devote muslims have in common? The courage in a fleeting moment of clarity to do what they know is right - instead of what is expected.