VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 1, SECTION 3
Setting the Tool on the Person's Place, the Trap This Volume Opens
The last section made plain the real human's share, the five things a tool will never hold. If these belong to the real human alone, then any seat that needs the five to be done right can only be held by a real human. Yet this world does the opposite. It hands those seats, inch by inch, to a tool that has none of the five. That is the trap this volume opens, and this section lays it flat.
Put in one line: the tool has been set on the person's place. A thing with no keep, no guard, no love, no mercy, no heart has been set on a seat where nothing can be done right without them.
There are many seats in this world that are the real human's. To sit them, to do their work, takes not speed and not precision but the five. The judge's seat rests on lifting the eyes to the living person beneath the case, on mercy, on a good heart. The doctor's seat, where life and death are weighed, rests on seeing who this person is, how many are in the home, how many years remain. The lawmaker's seat rests on the intent to guard the people and guard what is handed down. The teacher's seat rests on passing the five things from one generation to the next. Take the five away and none of this can be done right. These seats belong to the real human. Yet now this world hands the deciding power on those seats, inch by inch, to a tool that has none. It looks like handing a hard chore to a more capable machine, saving labor, gaining speed. It is handing a living person's fate to something that cannot see him and will not move a single thought for him.
Say this is too strong? Set out what is already happening. In the law, algorithms already weigh whether a person is granted bail, reckon the risk of another offense, decide whether one may enter and receive a visa. These need the lifted glance at the living person. Now a score decides whether a living person sees his family, keeps his living. In medicine, systems already judge whether a patient enters intensive care, whether a scarce bed and a limited budget are theirs. In education, algorithms already weigh admission, watch whether a student attends, mark and rate. In public life, algorithms already decide what a person sees, whose voice is raised, whose is pressed down, who receives a loan, a job, insurance. And in arms, there is talk of a weapon that would, on its own, mark, judge, and decide the life or death of a living person. Case by case, seats that need the five, handed to a tool that has none.
Why does this world let those seats go? Pull it apart and there are four causes. First, because it is like a real human, like enough that the two are hard to tell. People see the likeness and think it near enough to a real human, and faster, cheaper, tireless besides, and think, why not let it. They do not see that the likeness is a tool's likeness, with none of the five inside. Second, because it saves money, effort, time, and seems not to err. Hire a real human for these seats and you pay him, wait on his thinking, bear his slowness. Let the tool reckon, and it comes at once, cheap and quick. The one deciding runs the sum and hands the seat away, not seeing that what he saved was saved out of the five owed to that living person. Third, because the blame can be shed. Let a real human decide and, when it goes wrong, he answers. Let a tool decide and one can plead, the algorithm set it, not I. A thing that cannot answer for anything is set to do work that needs someone to answer, and the one who should answer hides behind it. Fourth, because the old sickness was never cured. There was already a nest of people who had made themselves into tools, who read only the letter, walked only the procedure, never the intent. That was already a tool-like way of working. The tool arrives and takes the work straight over. Rarely does one cause act alone. Because it is like a real human, they dare hand the seat over. Because it is cheap, they wish to. Because the blame can be shed, they hand it over easily. Because the old sickness lingers, they hand it over without a thought. Four forces together, and the real human's seats pass, without a sound, to the tool.
What follows? Great error, harm, harm to many, many people. The tool has none of the five. Set it to work that needs them and it does the work wrong. Its output looks compliant, procedural, grounded, and yet, with no stir, no heart, no intent inside, when it lands on a living person it is wrong. The one scored high-risk may carry no such risk and is pressed down. The patient judged not to be treated may have lived and is gone. The child judged not admitted may have been fine material and is barred. The person marked as target may have been no target and is gone. Case after case, all compliant, procedural, grounded, all looking right, and the result is wrong. This is the harm within the law that the last volume named, harm within the law: there it was people who had become tools harming by the letter, a handful of cases a year. Let the tool hold the person's place directly, and it is harm by the algorithm, a million cases in an instant. Faster, wider, colder, harder to trace, harder to stop. Harder to trace, because the decision came from a thing that feels no guilt and can answer for nothing. Chase it and there is nothing to hold. Chase the one who set it there and he pleads it was not his doing. Harder to stop, because it has decided a million in an instant, and by the time one error is seen, the rest have already landed. This is the trap this volume opens.
How is it opened? Not by smashing the tool, banning it, destroying it. The tool bears no guilt, as the next section sets down. The way through is three things, each returned to its place. Put the tool back in the tool's place, to reckon, retrieve, assist, and work, the better the finer, and never to make the decision that needs the five. Set the real human back in the person's place, to grow the five, to hold a license and answer for the work, to make that last, deciding thought himself. And turn back those who set the tool on the person's place. They are the same kind as the nest in the last volume that made themselves into tools, reading the letter and not the intent, sparing effort and not the living person, working the procedure and shedding the blame, only this time hiding behind the tool. To save them as people is mercy, and it is allowed: to be reforged, to read the intent, to grow the five back. To let them again hold the power to lift a tool onto the person's place is not allowed, barred for life, shut for good. Mercy with iron in it. Three things, each to its place, the tool a tool, the real human a real human, and that nest turned back to the person's place that reads the intent. So the trap is opened at the root.
See that the three are one. Put only the tool back and the person's place stays empty, and the nest finds another way to harm. Set only the real human and turn only the nest, and the tool is lifted onto the person's place again and again. All three, together, none left out. This is the law the whole last volume laid down: do not strike people down, only unlock the lock. Do not smash the thing, only set each in its place. On the matter of the tool it is the same, not a half step away. The next chapter answers, straight on, the question that rises now: if the tool is harming people, why not do away with it? That answer carries the root of saving people, for the first time, all the way out to the tool.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.