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.