How I think the World will end.
When people ask; What is it like teaching? This was one of those moments where it cemented that I believe (90-ish% of the time) that it is one of the best professions in the world.
Mundanity is not something you need to worry about.
I’ll cut to the chase because I want this to be short enough that you’ll read the whole thing. Beginning the topic of Urbanisation with my Year 9 Geography class, always spurs me to take a look at Human evolution to start, how we evolved from a branch of Primates that swing in trees to the bi-pedal megastructure building animals we are today. In doing so discussion was held leading to a common, completely irrelevant yet highly important philosophical question that I’ll pose at the end of the post. During this discussion in full flow, class engaged, silence commanded effortlessly, a highly confident and gas young man raises his hand and asks;
“Awh you’re in a trivia mood today, hey?”
Instant bewilderment from me and the 26 other students, which turns to laughter from us all. I was glad everybody else was as confused as I was. Young man, unperturbed by the collective confusion, laughs along unsure of what he was getting at himself and we carry on. Five minutes elapse and ‘flow’ is resumed. Same young man, posits ‘question out of left field part II’ for the lesson.
“So Sir, how do you think the world is going to end?” Same collective confusion, reinstated. I smirk, and without hesitation, I begin;
“Well! I believe what’s going to happen is, AI (artificial intelligence) will become sentient, it will have untapped control of everything, and I mean everything. The central control room for this AI is going to be a room just like this with all the control panels shaped out like how your desks are now, with one small little keyboard. A young man is going to enter the control room sit to the keyboard and ask the AI a question simply typing; ‘Awh you’re in a trivia mood today, hey?’
This will cause the AI to become confused and malfunction setting off all the cataclysmic events, nukes in the Air, earthquake machines triggering volcanoes, satellites tractor beaming meteors to Earth, and that will be that!”
Laughter filled the room, said young man now aware of the apocalyptic consequences of his bewildering questioning methods, we returned to our study of Urbanisation, peace restored.
If you made it to the end I hope you got a laugh out of it like I did, and as a reward I’ll leave you with the important philosophical debate question.
Who wins in a fight a Velociraptor or a Silverback Gorilla, let me know!
