For me, being our best selves is about the compassion we show to each other in the moment of embarrassment. It is about resisting the temptation to hide the truth, but also about resisting the temptation to be disgusted or dismissive. It is about finding within ourselves an ability to honestly declare, “You are naked, sir, and damn you look fine!”
Unless you are using "honestly" in a very unusual way, this describes people as incapable of being their best selves unless the guy is so photogenic as to look fine even in embarrassing situations.
I was going to object, but on second thought that seems pretty accurate.
I find chess an interesting case—potentially a canary in the coal mine—for anticipating technology impacts. I think this graph tells a story:
Elo ratings measure skill and the top Elo ratings measure social advance. Humanity as a whole has been improving at chess over the years, but the slope appears nearly flat when compared to that for computers. It looks like a plateau, a limit on how good we can get without assistance from machines.
For a while there, chess grandmasters were considered geniuses. We thought they were good at chess. Yet there is a sense in which they played well only relative to other barbaric chess players. At this point, anyone can play chess at the highest level by obeying advice generated from opens source software, and anyone who tries to be a grandmaster without obeying a machine seems as foolish as someone who tries to drive well without wearing their glasses.
The fable of the emperor's new clothes tells of a tailor who claimed to make a beautiful magical garment visible only to those who are fit for their station. Everyone remarked how beautiful it was. Actually, no one could see it, but they didn't want to be considered unfit for their station. The sycophancy over the garment was so encouraging that the emperor decided to wear it on a parade. All the people ooohed and aaawed until a child blurted out, "Why is he naked?"
What we called chess grandmasters could have been like emperors on parade in that embarrassment could result from acknowledging that efforts at mastery without chess machines would someday be considered naive. But the impact of AI on chess could eventually repeat for many other kinds of behavior. We may find that none of us was ever a truly good writer, a beautiful model, a brilliant researcher, a competent therapist or parent. We could find that our self-esteem was built entirely upon comparison to other underachievers.
For me, being our best selves is about the compassion we show to each other in the moment of embarrassment. It is about resisting the temptation to hide the truth, but also about resisting the temptation to be disgusted or dismissive. It is about finding within ourselves an ability to honestly declare, "You are naked, sir, and damn you look fine!"
Some of the future is out of our control. Those who actually build better AI will deserve recognition for their achievement, but better AI may be inevitable. What shall always remain in our control is how kind we are while the inevitable unfolds.