Technology
The Man Who Was Thursday
Smart people in society used to worry that people in classes lower than theirs would become monsters through osmosis by hanging around people who were already monsters.
Other than self-aware parents, I don’t know of any smart person, in an elite position of power in our society, in my day right now, who worries too much about that kind of influence anymore. Heck, we applaud people who may be of questionable character and give them attention and trust, based on the fact that they might be able to move an algorithm to “influence” some audience member’s behavior.
The lack of worry–and the presence of social applause–might be part of the reason that it appears as though there are more monsters, with larger microphones, around as of late.
The Water vs. The Rock
Getting rid of distractions is the easy part.
Delete the app on your phone.
Close the door to your office.
“Mute” the notifications on your phone.
Stop answering emails.
Not one of those things is hard. What is hard is committing to not reinstalling the app, opening the door to your office, “unmuting” the notifications on your phone, or answering the emails.
Commitment takes willpower, and the modern world is designed to drain us of that thing. The thing that neuroscientists can’t find in the brain, and that psychologists say doesn’t exist in the mind, but which every algorithm relies on wearing down, one interruption, one notification, one dopamine-driven impulse at a time.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The rock stops getting eroded by the water first by being moved away from the water source, and then by building up a tougher, thicker layer of sediment.
Messing With The Clocks
The original reasons for instituting a time change with the clocks may have been stated as being for farmers and agricultural producers to get more done. . However, in the United States, we have passed through the practical reasons for time changes and now are into the more insidious reasons. . Controlling a population is about more than just about launching marketing or propaganda efforts to change minds. It’s also about changing behaviors that people do.
30 Year Technology Adoption Cycles
The Model T was in production for over 19 years.
Sales of color TV sets took 15 to 20 years to surpass sales of black and white TV sets, which took 10 to 15 years to move from being a luxury product to being a home staple.
Outdoor sanitation (that’s toilets, kids) was still a thing in many rural areas into the 1980s. In the United States.
Full-scale Internet adoption has taken 15 to 20 years and still isn’t complete in many places.
LLM adoption and the adoption of the outputs from LLMs (even the ones that we goggle at right now) will take 15 to 30 years to accomplish full cultural adoption.
Both the AI-Doomer and the AI Accelerationist alike need to slow their roll, hold their horses, and wait for the bubble generated by OpenAI being massively overleveraged to burst and for all of the current frothing at the mouth to come back to earth.
Cringe
The era we live in requires us to separate sincerity from what is commonly referred to as “cringe.”
“Cringe” is the emotional reaction of people whose temperament is oriented toward epistemic cynicism, nihilism, and the despair of the typically, perpetually Very Online doomer.
Sincerity is hard to find when the words people write, the videos they consume, and the images and memes they create become substitutes for emotional engagement with other real people.
Olestra, GLP-1's, Nietzsche, and the Continued Search for a Chemical Solution to Human Nature
Two things occur to me:
1). People in online popular culture no longer talk about “body positivity” now that GLP-1 drugs are readily available and have proven to be somewhat effective. However, I remember the coming and going of Olestra, so I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
2). There is never going to be a chemical solution to the pile of psychological, emotional, and spiritual factors that cause the differing disorders, pathologies, habits, tendencies, and tics that humans experience as a result of living in a fallen world.
Of course, I am trade-off positive rather than solution positive, because the abyss of human nature is as deep and dark as the abyss Nietzsche rhapsodized about in his various mad warnings.
Amygdalas Running Amoke
The story of technological adoption is a story of change. It’s also a story of amygdalas running amok, forgetting history, appeals to authority, and grifters and hustlers. It always “works out,” and the path of working it out is always hard, bumpy, and unpredictable. We can’t wish that journey away.