Organic Thinking: The Philosopher's Salon
Right now, we're on a plane that has been hijacked by 5-10 really smart but misanthropic people. They have a lot of money. They have made a long series of good decisions in their lives, and now they're in a position where their influence is hundreds of multiples larger/bigger than that of comparably smart, but less moneyed people.
So we're all on this plane. We are headed for disaster. The hijackers are piloting the plane straight toward a mountaintop. It's pretty clear to those of us on the plane who are paying attention that this is not an ideal flightpath. We're thinking, 'If our goal is to survive, I feel like we would be better off flying the plane toward a tarmac instead of a mountain.'
But the people hijacking the plane don't have a particular interest in ensuring we survive. Rather, they've been told they'll receive riches beyond their imagination if they pilot this plane right into the broadside of a mountain. So that's what they're going to do.
They have some naive machinations about ensuring their own survival in the face of obvious disaster, but they haven't totally ironed it out just yet. They perhaps believe they can figure it out when they get there. They are mostly focused on the riches.
This is the situation we find ourselves in, more or less. We are plunging unstoppably toward doom. We might survive, but even if we do, we will certainly be badly maimed.
In our case, rather than barreling toward bodily injury or death, we are heading straight toward crippling passivity, unchallenged psuedo-intellectualism, and the lowest discomfort tolerance of any living species. This is what we'll be dealing with if we fully outsource thinking and effort to AI.
Each of these afflictions are mentally, spiritually, and morally injurious, and they'll kneecap the human race if left unchecked. And so far, it's looking like this will all go on unchecked.
The perverse incentive of the last few decades
It's pretty easy to see how we got here. The great unseating of humanity as the world's most cognitively capable entity is the result of comfort and convenience becoming our primary win conditions.
This was a perverse incentive: we sought to make our lives easier, and in doing so, we have processed the 'living' part right out of our experience of life.
You have probably noticed people talking a lot lately about the negative consequences of AI on the human experience. Many are sick of hearing about it, which is fair, but I think we should probably all be talking/thinking about this as much as we can.
It is a big deal. While anti-intellectualism, passive consumption, and Wall-E-ification have been on the rise for a while, we're obviously accelerating toward a kind of escape velocity thanks to AI. As much as I sympathize with those who are annoyed at yet another think piece about the negative impacts of AI on human culture, it's also one of the more consequential ethical dilemmas of our time.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of some highly valuable, productive things that have been damaged or destroyed in our pursuit of an easier/more convenient life:
These aren't minor virtues. They are integral to the development of character, critical thinking, imagination, creativity, and problem solving skills, which are crucial both for the maintenance of a functioning society and the experience of a worthwhile-seeming life.
While the technological advancements of the past 100 years or so have yielded massive, undeniable quality of life improvements, everything is a trade-off. So yes, things that were once unreasonably hard are now much easier, which is net-good in many many cases, but we've also succumbed to the Diderot effect at scale (but for offloading effort rather than consuming things.)
You could argue our reaching this point was inevitable, and many have. Historically, as humans, we don't know when to stop and we are bad at collective action.
To that, I say: so what? Inevitable or not, here we are. I think we should try to do something about it. If you want to fatally resign to becoming unthinking, passive zombies who do nothing but consume, that's your prerogative. I don't.
Rerum Novarum
Pope Leo XIV's encyclical letter, Magnifica Humanitas, is making the rounds right now in tech circles. It's interesting but not totally surprising that tech people are taking a letter from the Catholic Church so seriously: Catholicism is experiencing a resurgence, for one, but also, lifelong theologians are scholars at their core and the Catholic Church, like any other religious institution, does have a deep history of serious intellectual work.
I am not a follower (or a particularly big fan) of any organized religion. That said, there are several truly moving excerpts, and overall, there's a ton of value in what the Vatican published here.
An abbreviated TL;DR of some of the concepts in this paper that relate to my essay:
- While technology itself is not "a force antagonistic to humanity", it can obviously be wielded in ways that have both positive and negative effects on the lives of others. The idea that anyone who is concerned about AI is a luddite is an unreasonably simplistic and dismissive viewpoint.
- The privatization of the most disruptive and powerful technology ever created runs counter to our interests as a species. Regulations help us prioritize collective action, even if it's somewhat stifling or inconvenient at the node-level.
- When things are private, they're also hard to understand, challenge, govern, or control. Private companies are afforded the leniency to make decisions without full public transparency. It's pretty easy to see how this could be bad if the technology these private companies are developing have large-scale implications for the future of humanity.
- We need to finally decide that innovation and progress should be done in service of the common good, rather than in service of progress for progress's sake, or narrow 'upgrades' that often exacerbate rather than resolve inequalities. Basically, we need to decide if we care about the fate of humanity and the life experience of our fellow man. If we do, then we need to change our incentive structures.
- We need to remember that there is intrinsic value to being human. Many proponents of blind AI development have rationalized mass dehumanization, including their own dehumanization. They have reduced the value of humanity down to its intelligence, its usefulness, or its ability to create economic value. Intelligence and usefulness have their place, but they are simply one of thousands or millions of attributes that make humanity worthwhile.
There's a ton more here and I highly recommend reading it. It is easy to skim over the religious stuff or take it as allegory if you, like me, aren't especially interested in it.
He notes that, in life, there will always be rerum novarum, or "new things". We'll never truly have a handle on everything, and there will always be a new challenge. It is our humanitarian duty to face these new things with rationality, fairness, courage, and a deep sense of responsibility for the wellbeing of our fellow man, current and future.
This letter instructs us to "not be afraid to get our hands dirty on the construction site of our time". In other words, we should not passively accept new governing terms for our lives that we believe are unacceptable.
IMO, the common refrain that "AGI is inevitable" or that AI becoming the predominant source of economic value creation is inevitable is propaganda. Yes, humans have certain tendencies. But we are not animals hostage to our lower impulses. We do have the capacity to cooperate and reason. We are not respecting this capacity, nor are we using it to our advantage.
If someone says these new terms are 'inevitable', we should regard that person or institution with skepticism.
We should ask: does this person or institution have a profit motive? Would they benefit in some way if this future came to fruition? If the answer is yes, take it with a grain of salt. When we pretend a certain outcome is 'inevitable', all we're doing is ensuring that it is inevitable. This rhetoric is a choice, and often a deliberate manipulation.
Another thing I want to add: I recently had a conversation with the head of finance at my company about how she's thinking about financial models in the age of AI and all the volatility this has wrought on our market. She said the biggest thing she's had to learn in the past few years is that there does come a time when reliance on historicals is bad. Sometimes, the market has changed so much, and the rate of change looks so foreign, that historicals simply are not that useful, and futuristic probabilities are much more helpful.
I think this is generally applicable. A lot of people have pushed back on any attempt to be more deliberate about how we develop AI by saying that humans have never, in their entire history, demonstrated an ability to act against their short-term interests in favor of their long-term well-being.
Whether this is actually true or not is subject to intense debate (look at nuclear energy and weapons, for example.) But I think debating this misses the point.
Saying we shouldn't try to prioritize our long-term interests over our short-term interests because we've never done it before is needlessly defeatist. It makes no sense whatsoever. We are thinking about our future, after all. We should look at the past when it serves us and disregard it when it limits us IMO.
How to proceed
Collective action is ideal, but it's also:
- Slow
- Beyond the control of the individual by definition
But I think this is one of those situations where both collective and individual action would behoove the individual. It's not either/or.
While pushing for collective action and making decisions in the interests of the common good, I personally will also be deliberately nurturing my own humanity as often as I can.
Specifically, I will be engaging in activities that introduce boredom, strain, silence, waiting, and simple but challenging manual tasks into my daily life. I will do this to develop my ability to be patient, tolerate discomfort, and do hard things in the same way I develop my physical health.
I believe this will not only give me a competitive advantage over time, but it is also a moral imperative for me. I am not religious, as I've said, but I believe the full spectrum of human experiences have intrinsic merit. I enjoy being human, and I seek the fullest human experience I can get. I want to reduce suffering, of course, but I do not believe mild discomfort or strain constitute suffering. I think they constitute the fundamental friction that makes growth possible, and distinguishes life from death.
The Philosopher's Salon
To this end, I am starting a salon. This salon is designed to foster intellectual exploration, philosophical and ethical debate, tolerance, creativity, imagination, and social enrichment. There is an application to join, just to ensure all are participating in good faith. Consider it a boxing club, but for what may soon, in a coming dystopia, be called 'organic thinking', or 'organic decision-making'. We'll consider ethical, philosophical, economic, artistic and mathematical questions. It'll be an interdisciplinary cult of exploration, akin to the Free Masons (but without the irrational pearl-clutching about women. I think their inability to mingle with the opposite sex is a immature and self-limiting.)
Here's how I'm thinking of structuring it/if you want to start your own, feel free to borrow the vague outline I've got so far here:
Keep it small & set a price for entry: I think 8 to 15 people seems perfect. Big enough so it's not awkward but small enough so everyone feels some pressure to participate. Re: cost of entry. This does not have to be monetary, and I personally am not going to make it monetary. It'll be basically some codified rule for expectations of behavior, and if you don't meet the standard, you'd 'fail out' or no longer be able to participate. Ex: if we're all reading a certain book before a certain date, and you don't do it, you're done. There have to be stakes, or things will devolve.
Ground the discussion in a common basis: Relatedly, participants would be required to read some source material on a regular basis to support discussions. This could be primary texts in philosophy and ethics, novels, essays, etc.
Ban external validation: By necessity, this would be a secret organization, like AA or fight club. If you post about it on LinkedIn or X, you are out. It must be the case that no one can record meetings and post them or otherwise attempt to get clout or capitalize off membership. Obviously intellectual exploration does make you better at your job, or give rise to interesting topics for essays you can publish on your blog, but leveraging the group itself for personal gain is strictly prohibited.
Related - Keep Ego At Bay: No optimizing for how things look or how you come off, or it's ruined. The goal of the group is to rummage around in the dusty neglected attic of knowledge and truth and share what you find there, not to be the smartest in the room.
Make it sacred: Like going to mass or Shabbat, participation must occur at the same time same place every week, no exceptions apart from things you'd call out of work for.
Know that being wrong is as valuable as being right: There must be no shame in being wrong — even completely wrong! — or it will not work. People will not share their true opinions for fear of being laughed out of the room. Having the ability to change your mind in the face of better data is a marker of intellectual honesty, and above all else this group is about intellectual honesty. If you are wrong, you are part of the effort to uncover what is right, and you are encouraging those with an opposing view to helpfully parse the rationale for their beliefs.
Email me if interested: mrmarket@kindasortastudio.com
My group will be small obviously (8-15) but I perhaps naively think it'd be relatively simple to stand up other groups.