The Prince of This World’s tools will never dismantle the Prince of This World’s house.
Charlie Warzel and Matteo Wong:
What’s undeniable is that we’re all living in a world where the whims and desires of wealthy and powerful men create uncertain, unstable conditions for everyone else. Although no other major chatbot has gone ballistic in the same ways as Grok, any one of them could be subtly tweaked to promote a given viewpoint over another, or to quietly manipulate users toward whatever purpose. Likewise, any major creator of AI models unwittingly [AJ: or wittingly] instills biases in its chatbots that are then difficult to expunge. Every user of mainstream AI or social media is subject to a calculus that they have no control over.
So maybe don’t use mainstream AI or social media?
I’m still adding to my anarchist notebook — and will, I hope, be doing so for the next 20 years or so. Make that 30.
Six years ago, after watching my circle of friends surrender one too many evenings to insurance wrangling and doctor portals and DMV confusion, I emailed them a proposal: Come over next Tuesday. Grab a six pack. And bring your bills, your credit-card statements, your school forms, the streaming services you need to unsubscribe from, the airline miles you need to manage, the expenses app you need to figure out. I’d be throwing the lamest party ever.
At the heart of this party was a truth that has gone under-acknowledged in recent years: We’re all sinking. We’re sinking into a quicksand of tiny, dumb administrative tasks. It is the most tedious quicksand imaginable.
So true. Too true to be good.
My son pointed me to this, and said that it’s the definitive version of this song — one of the most vital rock ‘n’ roll songs. He’s right. And essential to the greatness here is the incomparable Roy Bittan. ♫
Here’s another point-and-shoot shot, from two years later, at Cheakamus Lake. One of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited, and not widely known outside of B.C.
Nothing special about this picture, which was taken with a Sony Cybershot in November 2004 — but I remember the circumstances very well: This was taken on Mount Seymour. Less than half-an-hour before taking this picture I was in downtown Vancouver, where the temperature was 55º. When I got out of my car and started walking around in the ice and snow I felt that I had been teleported to a different region.
I have no evangelical trauma story. While I am genuinely sorry for those who do have trauma stories, I come up short when scanning my own experience in evangelicalism for cults of personality, charismatic grifters, or spiritual abuse. I am keenly aware such things happen, because the algorithms that deliberately amplify such occasions won’t let them escape anyone’s notice. But my lived reality of “evangelicalism” (I’ll explain what I mean by this below) was in practice not flashy unfaithfulness but unflashy faithfulness. This is not the stuff from which bestsellers are wrought.
I wrote about a curious phrase in The Brothers Karamazov.
From an anthropological study by Polly W. Wiessner:
Control of fire and the capacity for cooking led to major anatomical and residential changes for early humans, starting more than a million years ago. However, little is known about what transpired when the day was extended by firelight. Data from the Ju/’hoan hunter-gatherers of southern Africa show major differences between day and night talk. Day talk centered on practicalities and sanctioning gossip; firelit activities centered on conversations that evoked the imagination, helped people remember and understand others in their external networks, healed rifts of the day, and conveyed information about cultural institutions that generate regularity of behavior and corresponding trust. Appetites for firelit settings for intimate conversations and for evening stories remain with us today.
I spend a lot of time reading the arguments of my nonfiction writer friends and admirees — peers in policy, academia, journalism — and I am plenty often convinced by them in the usual way. I am convinced by their logic and by their evidentiary appeals. I desperately need that persuasion as nourishment, and I seek out minds much sharper and more skilled than my own. I need a steady diet of their ideas to think with. I’m acutely aware of my limitations.
But I don’t really long to join these writers in that kind of persuasion, to have that form of something to say…. I want to be convincing about what it feels like to be a human being.
SAME.
The story of Pandora’s box isn’t about closing it. AI music is already a part of the technological landscape we live in; however, it won’t dominate that landscape forever. In fact, I would suggest its dominance may be very brief indeed.
Why? Cause it sucks.
I’m not going to link to the fully generative AI “country” song that supposedly topped a Billboard chart recently, cause I don’t want to give it any more clicks. Let’s just assume it’s as bad as you imagine, cause in fact it’s worse. As is most everything that AI churns out. It’s beyond imagination because it doesn’t come from one.
♫
I wrote a post about how, in late 1941, both Dorothy L. Sayers and W. H. Auden decided to retell the story of Jesus.
Can AI tell us anything meaningful about Bob Dylan’s songs? | Aeon Essays:
One theme steadily rises over the entire course [of Dylan’s career as a songwriter]: time. Its persistent ascent through the decades aligns intuitively with Dylan’s own aging and increasing preoccupation with legacy, and the passage of years.
♫
Kingsnorth knows full well that this hermit’s path is closed to most of his readers, just as he knows that he himself is no purist. He acknowledges that he makes his living off The Machine as a Substacker: “Even we romantic Luddites are doing much of our lamenting on the internet.” What is most provocative about Against the Machine is not Kingsnorth’s diagnosis of modernity but his insistence that, if you are troubled by a culture of no limits, you can still take some stands, even if they’re only small ones: Shun the chatbots and don’t engage with AI unless you have no choice. Lose the smartphone and “bring your children up to understand that the blue light is as dangerous as cocaine.” Seek out wild places and remember that your body is not made to be hacked or optimized but to connect you to the earth beneath your feet. Touch grass, quite literally, and do your best to connect with other people who want to do the same.
Via Steven Heller
