Once upon a time, in the ancient kingdom of Lydia, a shepherd called Gyges found a magic ring, which, when rotated on his finger, made him invisible. So, Gyges walked unseen into the royal palace, seduced the queen, murdered the king, and installed himself as ruler. If you were to discover such a ring or another device that granted you exorbitant power, Socrates asked, would it be wise to use it to do or get whatever you want?
Mark Zuckerberg’s recent announcement of some fabulous digital metaverse awaiting humanity gives new pertinence to Socrates’ answer: People should renounce excessive power and, in particular, any device capable of granting too many of our wishes.
Was Socrates right? Would reasonable people renounce the ring? Should they? Socrates’ own disciples were not convinced.
Plato reports that they expected almost everyone to succumb to the temptation, pretty much as Gyges had. But could this be because Gyges’ ring was not powerful, and thus not scary, enough?
Might a device far more powerful than a ring that merely makes us invisible cause us to shudder at the thought of using it, as Socrates recommended? If so, what would such a device do? The ring allowed Gyges to overcome rivals physically, thus removing several constraints impeding his desires. But, while invisibility allowed Gyges to murder the King’s guards, it went nowhere near removing all of Gyges’ constraints. What if there were a gadget, let’s call it the Freedom Device, that removed every constraint stopping us from doing whatever we want? What would a constraint-free existence be like once this Freedom Device was activated? We would be able to fly like birds, travel to other galaxies in an instant, and perform feats experienced within the universes designed by talented video game developers. But that would not be enough. One of the harshest constraints is time: It forces us to forego reading a book while swimming in the sea or watching a play. So, to remove all constraints, our theoretical Freedom Device should also allow for infinite, concurrent experience. Still, one final constraint, perhaps the most perplexing, would remain: other people.
It is not hard to imagine Zuckerberg salivating at the thought of such a device. It would be the ultimate version of the “metaverse” into which he has said he wants to immerse Facebook’s two billion-plus users. I can imagine him letting us sample a cornucopia of pleasures for an instant, free of charge, just enough to crave more, at which point he would charge users accordingly. Every nanosecond of immersion in this multiverse would produce enormous multiple pleasures – for which he would charge us again and again.
Excessive power is counterproductive, even self-defeating, because we crave interaction with other minds that we cannot control, even while craving to control them. When others do what we do not want them to do, we feel disappointed, angry, or sad. But the moment we controlled them fully, their consent would give us no pleasure, and their approval would not boost our self-esteem.
Learning to appreciate that control is an illusion is hard, especially when we are prepared to sacrifice almost everything, to pay any price, to control others. But if we are to stop others – Zuckerberg, for example – from controlling us, it is a lesson we must learn. Socrates was keen to warn us against yielding to the temptation of the magical ring, pointing to Gyges’ unhappiness. Today, with techno-feudalism and various immersive metaverses in the pipeline, his warning is more relevant than ever. As in ancient Athens, our tricky task is to empower the demos without succumbing to the lure of power. Copyright, Project Syndicate 2021
Yanis Varoufakis, a former finance minister of Greece, is leader of the MeRA25 party and Professor of Economics at the University of Athens.
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