Part 2! Hopefully all of you have finished your PreReqs for the class and stand ready for the first real meat of the subject. Here, we’ll take a look into the motivations of a man who has never had an itch he couldn’t reach, an Illuminati charter member, Fantastic Four leader, super genius, champion of the Pro-Registers, and all around nice guy, Mr. Fantastic!

Reed Richards, the smartest man in the Marvel world, claimed choosing the right side of the war boiled down to math. He was able to find a way to quantify human response, social momentum, and, in general, how the people of the country would react. Richards claims it was that the math what made him do it. He used his math to discern that the only course of action that would save the world from superheroes run amuck would be the SHRA with a certainty between 98% and 99%. He stayed focused on those numbers during his darkest hours, after Sue and Johnny defect, after Ben moves to France temporarily, and even when the gulag is built. I, too, can find solace in the unerring consistency of numbers. Richards takes it a step further by finding a way to distance his morals from his actions. In other words, “It might have done a bad thing, but the numbers told me it was a better thing.”

I’m going to get this out of the way here; I love math and numbers, sure as shootin’ (surprised?). However, I also view most sociology as junk science. To sum up why, here is one my all time favorite quotes, and I quote, “There are three kinds of lies; lies, damned lies, and statistics”. Quantifying human life is exactly the aim of statistics like this and the problem that the pro-registers have to contend with. I mean, it seems like a large number of Americans gave up their safety specifically for that freedom. Not to mention our justice system is set up the way it is because we would rather set a criminal free than imprison an innocent man (not to imply that it works 100% of the time, but that is the goal).

There was a thought experiment passed between my nerdier friends and me: What if there was a machine that was able to quantify the social situation (as Richards has apparently done in during CW), what authority would we give to it? Would we be comfortable relying on it for guidance in a situation? One note we found was that if you turn to it for big matters, you’ll turn to it for the smaller ones as well, and vice-versa. To say “Well, it seems like war is imminent, we should consult it” means that at some point you decided it is better at making decisions than a person. If we can turn to it when we don’t know what else to do, we will. If accurate, we’ll turn to it sooner, especially if it claims that if we had known what it had known sooner, we would be in a better position. We’ll eventually come to rely on it for all decision making. I’m not crazy about slippery slope arguments, but this one I have seen play out a lot. I’m looking at you, college-kids-using-the-internet-to-do-crosswords.

It seems like something valuable is lost when we do this. More importantly, it seems like we are relying on it for safety. This is what is most upsetting. In most AI-robot-gone-crazy, sci-fi movies, the computers turn on humanity because they discover that man’s greatest threat is man. For our own safety, it puts us in pens and runs our lives. The reason machines can’t be trusted to run humanity is because we don’t know how to accurately tell a machine when our rights to be alive are lesser than our rights to freedom, or art, or virtue, or whatever intangible. Every nation has a history where they fight to gain, not just protect. I’m not referring solely to expanding empires but also basic human freedoms. It seems like Americans at least recognize that slavery is not something that humans should endure for the sake of life. Freedom was the reason we left the nationality of England. Not even freedom from slavery, just freedom to rule ourselves as we saw fit. Freedom from a foreign nation telling us how to live. A machine that returns “forfeiting rights for all to save the lives of some” has a fundamental flaw from the onset.

Anyone who has actually read that issue of CW will probably retort that Reed’s math indicates the death of ALL people, not just 1% of Americans. It is interesting, then, that Dr. Doom who knows, knows, after seeing hundreds of thousands of futures, that there exists only one in which men survive, are free of war, free of disease, and even flourish. He knows it’s the one in which he rules with a vibranium fist. It’s even shown that this goes beyond just delusion and narcissism because not only does he know it, but the panther god of Wakanda has seen it as well. This is the sort of evidence that must be sufficient to Reed Richards and, while it requires no math, if he were to work the problem out anyway, it would surely lead him to the same conclusion (as long as the math is correct). Yet, he opposes Victor Von Doom at every single step. His family joins in on taking Doom down. His friends join in. There are huge super groups formed just to make sure Doom never gets that opportunity. They send him to Hell for Pete’s sake!

I’m calling BS on Richards. I’m calling it on all the people who turn to oppression for the sake of safety and use junk math to hide behind. There are many things greater than life. There are many things worth dying for. There are even some things worth killing for. To say that the math made him do it is, at best, the recourse of a man who would rather cower from making a harder choice and distance himself from his impotence. “The math made me do it”. Screw you, doctor! Numbers like that tell you whatever you want to hear. For them to say “Turn your back on your wife and best friends” and you follow it makes me doubt your heroics and your wisdom. Whew… calming down now…

Please don’t think me ignorant. I mean, I know life is good. It is, in fact, inherently good. It cannot, however, be the greatest good since it is not the sort of thing that we can have forever. We all lose it at some point. Wisdom, love, beauty, courage; these are a few things that are at least as good as life. It’s an easy thought experiment. If you had to trade even one of these things for life, what would life even look like afterwards? Give up wisdom, and you’re a bad computer surrounded by other, lousy computers or humorless fools. Give up love and all you have is apathy or hatred. Give up beauty and all that’s left is ugliness. If all that exists in the world is the ugly, terrible horrors… well, such things have lead to suicide. Give up courage and your life is spent huddled in a cave, hoping anything stronger than you walks away without noticing and everything weaker than you must be killed before they can grow stronger than you. In these cases, I have to say, IMHO, give me death. If there is no beauty, no wisdom, no love, not even courage all that will be left will be fear and shame. Eventually, you’ll get death anyway. Might as well give life a shot to be good while it lasts.

This in no way indicates my side in the Civil War. I understand, and indeed call for, the accountability of the super powered. I also regard the right to privacy as American necessity and, more importantly, forced registration of its citizens as the frightening first step before wiping out that people group. Where I stand is yet to come. My point in this post is to separate intelligence and wisdom. All the statistical data and equation crunching in the world can only answer the questions you ask it. It takes wisdom to know how to ask the right question and courage to stand firm. Blame the math all you want, but cowardly fool crouched behind pretty numbers is still a cowardly fool.

:::Catchy sign off:::!