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Analects

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Digital Architecture

stuff On our digital personhood

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Control the water, control the people. Today’s water is energy, social media, infrastructure. We’re coerced through convenience, not malice. There are many vectors for control—we don’t need to hand them over.

Hydraulic Despotism

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If you control the water, you control the people: Karl Wittfogel’s theory of hydraulic civilisations gives us a tidy little insight I think is worth extracting. Today ‘water’ is many things: water, electricity, social media and it has some interesting implications. There are some better theories to get after this insight of ours, but better doesn’t mean interesting, and none sound nearly as sexy as Hydraulic Despotism. So I’m going to bring it back.
Control the water, control the people. Today’s water is energy, social media, infrastructure. We’re coerced through convenience, not malice. There are many vectors for control—we don’t need to hand them over.
Check it out

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connection digital-architecture on-being-fruitful on-culture on-ethics on-leadership on-politics-and-power wealth-architecture collective-architecture thought-architecture

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Human reasoning isn’t flawed, it’s a social tool we use in the wrong places. It’s about sharing and evaluating intuitive claims, not generating rational ones. AI is fundamentally this but crippled: without the grounded intuitions and social friction that makes it work.

AI Hallucination is just Man-Guessing

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One time I was out drinking with some Swedish folks and they told me about the word killgissa. It means something like ‘man-guessing’, referring to when you sound like you know what you’re talking about but you’re actually just guessing. I reckon AI hallucination is just man-guessing, but on your behalf. To explain, I first have to convince you that human reason isn’t actually that reasonable. With any luck it’ll make you better at managing your own processes of reason and your AIs. Let’s see.
Human reasoning isn’t flawed, it’s a social tool we use in the wrong places. It’s about sharing and evaluating intuitive claims, not generating rational ones. AI is fundamentally this but crippled: without the grounded intuitions and social friction that makes it work.
Check it out

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betterment digital-architecture on-being-fruitful on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture thought-architecture wealth-architecture

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AI has human-like output, but a very different environment and different <em>values</em> for than environment, and until all three align, they will never <em>actually</em> be human-like.

AI is never human-like

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People treat lots of stuff like they treat humans. AI is one of them. We talk about how human-like they are. How long until their ‘intelligence’ is like our intelligence. How long until they start doing human things, like murdering their competitors. Things like this. But AI isn’t even approaching human-like. In two very fundamental ways. And until those things change, they’ll continue to be completely incomprehensible to us.
AI has human-like output, but a very different environment and different values for than environment, and until all three align, they will never actually be human-like.
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betterment digital-architecture on-the-nature-of-things on-thinking-and-reasoning thought-architecture

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Social media use probably isn’t the problem. Social media use is probably just the most obvious manifestation of lots of problems. And in fact, social media could probably be a solution. It’s up to you.

It's not social media, life is just worse

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It has been pretty trendy for the last little while to notice that mental health problems are on the rise, and also social media use is on the rise, and so probably mental health problems are on the rise because social media is an attention sucking monster. But research on the topic doesn’t seem to find any obvious connection between the two. Lots of people are talking about this now, so I will run you through the ‘social media isn’t actually that bad’ thing then give you some other things to stress about instead.
Social media use probably isn’t the problem. Social media use is probably just the most obvious manifestation of lots of problems. And in fact, social media could probably be a solution. It’s up to you.
Check it out

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digital-architecture gratification on-(un)happiness on-aesthetics on-culture on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture

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AI alarmism thrives on speculative, worst-case scenarios, but our understanding of AI’s fundamentally alien nature and the complex forms of consciousness make me suspect that less stressful alternatives are equally plausible.

AI isn't that scary

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As a brain scientist, people often level questions at me about how worried we should be about the ‘rise of AI’. AIs are brain-like things, I study brains, people think I might have some ideas. I’m not really an AI person. But I do have some ideas, and since it keeps coming up, I thought I’d write them down. I’ll give you my usual counterpoints to the alarmist talking points. Then I’ll spend a bit of time talking about why I’m particularly not that worried about AI trying to kill us, from the perspective of someone who studies the brain.
AI alarmism thrives on speculative, worst-case scenarios, but our understanding of AI’s fundamentally alien nature and the complex forms of consciousness make me suspect that less stressful alternatives are equally plausible.
Check it out

filed under:

betterment digital-architecture on-(un)happiness on-the-nature-of-things on-thinking-and-reasoning thought-architecture
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