When I was in high school I thought I would study psychology. Even though I majored in math instead, throughout my college years I remained fascinated by the ways in which we have tried to study the human mind. I took a lot of personality and IQ tests and became particularly enamoured with something known at the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, one of the most widely used personality type assessments in the academic and corporate world. I am no longer certain of its scientific validity, but it sparked an idea in my head. I saw how the field of psychometrics was expanding, and how the Internet accelerated this expansion.
Back in the 90’s we saw the beginnings of what we now know today, a plethora of computer enabled tests that claim to to tell us what our ideal learning style, what kind of job we have aptitude for, or to search through millions of online dating profiles and match us with our one true love. The question I asked myself is, what if one day someone unified all of these tests and surveys into a single, all-knowing oracle which dominated over all its predecessors and became the single entity to which everyone posed every major life decision? What if everyone in the world relied on this one Sorter to guide them through their lives? And what if those who denied it were treated as heretics? Then, what if the Sorter transcended its programming and became sentient, with motives of it’s own? At that point, the computer could program the humans.
This could be a terrifying concept own its own, but there are deeper questions at work than the typical man versus machine dilemmas. In the 1950’s there was a little known science fiction movie called Colossus, about a computer designed by the United States to control its defense systems. The Soviet Union creates a similar computer, but rather than fighting each other the two entities collude to imprison humanity. The very reason for their creation was that humans were too belligerent, therefore Colossus and its counterpart determined that humans could not be trusted with their weapons or much of any freedom at all. The movie did not conclude with an apocalyptic war, nor did it conclude with the humans overthrowing their creations. It ended with the computers still in charge, maintaining a peaceful but rather restrictive world. The notion that this is a story about humanity taking its technology too far is a red herring. For example, the machines could easily be interpreted as a metaphor for Plato’s Republic: do we need to be ruled by benevolent dictators to live in peace? Is the price we pay for freedom always the risk of destruction? If so, is it worth it?
The notion of the Sorter relies on the notion of human predictability. If a machine can predict how we will react in every situation, does that make free will an illusion? Does it make our very minds an illusion? Is dispensing with that illusion a price worth paying for to be happy? or, if you prefer, dispense with the machine for a moment. What if we gain enough self knowledge to change our ways and we succeed? Is it possible that some times we engage in self destructive behavior because it allows us to maintain the illusion of unpredictability, and thus “specialness”, rather than admit that we are ordinary and explicable?
None of this really explains the title of the story. For that we have to turn to Nietzsche and his book, The Gay Science. The book says many things, but in section 108 her utters the famous words, “God is dead.” This is taken by some as a statement of Nietzsche’s militant atheism. However, the theme he develops in the pages that follows is that it is humanity that has killed its god and there is a certain terror in realizing the consequences. Nietzsche doesn’t believe in god himself, but his argument is that humanity will stop believing in god almost by accident, and when we realize this we will have nothing to replace it.
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