The Intractability of Mythology

We (humans) take on a willful blindness that must accompany mythologies for them to arise and exist, and which come from what might be called "the immortality function". I believe all life has this at the base of it's functioning, it's what gives life it's robust intractability during the confidence phase of a lifespan, i.e. the birth and growth of a life. And life begins to release this intractability at and during the denouement phase of life, which can proceed with immediacy into sudden death, or a more gradual release into "old age".

I believe this is what Freud meant when he began using the term "death instinct" conjoined with the more common term life instinct. He saw that biological matter has a growth phase and a dissolution phase, and extrapolated that to all biology. It's probable then that even a biome (Earth) has these two phases, which in the terms of human consciousness is an incredibly long time, beginning, it is thought, 3.7 billion years ago. From that one thing we can see biology can have an immense quality of durability, at least in the singular case of our own biome.

But do we "own" it, or does it own us? The confidence imbued by the (unconscious) mythology of immortality has us believe we technological humans owns Earth's biome to do with as we see fit through the agency of technology, which seems likely to be equally creative and destructive. 

But in the context of the immortality myth, it is only the creative we can easily admit to. And this can be said to be the hubristic aspect of we humans in the context of the "life instinct" phase.

But do we need to be worried about this? In this aspect we humans can be said to be as unconsciously "stupid" as all the lower species, not different on some level than a plague of locusts. Resources are plentiful, we consume them, and reproduce until resources are sparse, then population collapses, and then the macro life/death cycle begins again.

We have an immediate example staring us in the face right now with the huge additional energy requirements of the artificial intelligence build-out. Do we even know how much additional energy will be required for this in proportion to the existing global energy requirements of humanity?

Whether we have a calculation for that or not, as a single point of reference a rack of traditional servers in a data center runs on 7 kilowatts of electricity, while a rack of AI servers (with increased processing power) uses 30-100 kilowatts. And the global AI server build out is only just beginning. How much energy will eventually be required just for AI servers compared to the total energy requirement for technological earth as existed pre-AI?

Since global energy consumption only goes up, it's probably safe to assume whatever energy "efficiencies" are created by AI will be substantially subsumed by the total AI energy burn. Whatever the total cost to ecology and biology will be, we can be pretty sure that calculation, if it does exist (and early estimates probably do), will not be Trumpeted from the roof tops.

Meanwhile the ecologically minded among us are concerned with the reduction of total energy burn, it is thought to be the only saving grace for the continuance of durable and happy life on Earth. The energy burn of AI will apparently be so large they will not be met with green alternatives, and the only sources with that level of efficiency are uranium and fossil fuel.

I've always thought of technology as a double edged blade of equal sharpness. But since total energy burn and consequent destruction of ecology continues moving in the direction of MORE, I am wondering about Freud's death instinct in the context of the progression of technology. Will there be a tipping point into denouement? Are we there, have we passed it already?

It's impossible to know. What we might assume however is the plot line is significantly progressed at this point.