GreenBeard

What do we do? We’re doing it. We’re asking questions, we’re building communities IRL and in digital paces outside the bounds of the major corps. We use poison pills to make corpos that embrace these systems pay dearly. We give grace to those who sincerely pull back and we move on.

Cocaine exists and it can be a major boost to productivity. But we don’t have to use it. We don’t have to live with its downsides slowly killing us and robbing us of our humanity.

2 questions:

1. Why do you believe magic is incomprehensible and supernatural? The earliest conception of magic is just a part of nature like everything else. We don’t fully understand it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t comprehensible.
2. What is the explanation for quantum mechanics? I’m not suggesting that there isn’t one, I’m asking if you understand the underlying principles that make the observations of quantum mechanics work.

No one asked you to believe in angels or demons or devas or yokai or anything else that is objectively not real. The fact that’s how some people define “magic” does not mean that’s the only definition. Some people have defined marriage as a holy sacrament exclusive to their mythological beliefs. That doesn’t mean that’s the only definition, and I find it odd that you would dismiss the very many viewpoints that do not have such an Abrahamic bias.

We do not have all the answers to every question nor are we ever likely to, if for no other reason than the maximum information density of our brains is finite and a mind vast enough to know everything would necessarily exceed the limits of our finite universe.

Now, far from finding imagination foolish, I think it’s one of our most important skills, but let’s be clear, most of the fantasy magic systems we fantasize about would be objectively terrible because in almost every case, the consequences of such a world would not be how we imagine it, particularly since every magic system we imagine is almost universally internally inconsistent. That by no means suggests we should stop imagining, I merely stated I’d rather live in a world that has consistent rules than one that is arbitrary and capricious.

Perhaps you might learn to practice some humility and ask a question or two before you go throwing around terms like “ghoulish.”

No. I refuse. We may die, but I refuse to surrender. Where there is life, there is hope, and we’re not dead yet.

Yes. He doesn’t want to admit, he’s gone as far down this path as he responsibly can. He doesn’t want to transition to the “producer” role, where he becomes a resource for a new generation that’s seeking a future away from the old platforms.

It’s a bit like the oil man who knows his work enabled so much good, unable to also admit his product has a dark side, and it’s time for us all to move on from it. That times changed and a new world is struggling to be born.

I disagree about “edutainment” in a qualified way. We still need communicators and domain experts sharing their knowledge, and there’s still a great deal of knowledge to share, but I don’t think it’s on YouTube (or TikTok). People talking out of turn on matters so far outside their expertise and experience they’re effectively neophytes, and just as vulnerable to Dunning-Kruger impulses certainly doesn’t help. I don’t think that AI or better algorithms are going to save them either, that’s a good way to end up lost in a psychotic hallucination. I don’t know what it will look like yet but it isn’t going to come from the tech giants. Unless Wikipedia wants to take a crack at it, they might be the only ones that could pull it off.

No. This is a line we cannot cross and if it destroys us, so be it. I’m not against AI, or automation. But not these tools. Not these companies. Not these models. The question is death or death. So we learn to live without, or we die. There is no synthesis possible with this paradigm.

And what makes you think we haven’t got those still in store? The island of our knowledge and the vast coastline of our discovery is still insignificant compared to the vast sea of our ignorance and the oceans of possibility we have yet to travel.

Whimsy is in short supply, but it’s not because the world lacks magic. It’s more because of choices made by people who chose to be dead inside, and shaped the world in their image. I’m not asking you to stop demanding more whimsy, far from it. This old grey bearded man is asking you to form a party, accept a quest and perhaps one day lead the charge of an army in pursuit of returning the whimsy to the world.

Do you accept, traveller?

I really don’t understand what magic you think we don’t have? Chances are you typed this question on a slate of crystal and wire that allows you to see and hear across the planet in nearly real time. There are people who, with the right tools can summon fire at their fingertips, unleash arcs of lightning, draw water from thin air, and make rocks that talk. We are surrounded by forces that both well mapped (at least locally) and are completely incomprehensible to the best of us. While we have not mastered the veil between life and death, we have certainly learned to draw it back.

You are, I fear demonstrating the old adage that familiarity breeds contempt. You’re confusing the comprehensibility of the world with mundanity. We are living in a world full of “magic”… It just doesn’t look like the magic you read about in old fairy tales, and importantly, it’s not shared equally to everyone.

I’ll take reincarnation with my mind intact.

How do you know that proprietary code is secure? Open source at least has a collective self interest in finding and patching flaws. There is no such natural mechanisms in software development by giant corporate conglomerates.

This. AI and more generally algorithm dependence is an addiction and watching him struggle with it the past few years has been heartbreaking. Watching him try to bargain and rationalize an objectively misanthropic technology that grew out of a sphere that he was a major role in and did begin as an objectively beautiful attempt at building community and healthy dialogue is very disappointing. I don’t hate or judge him. He tried to do something beautiful. He just didn’t understand the Faustian bargain he made in the process. The systemic forces turning his work into poison.

I don’t judge him for wrestling with it. I’m sad for him. I’m sad for a lot of us. We’re all working in a system that’s slowly killing us to some degree or another. There is no ethically clean life in a system predicated on greed, gluttony and lies. His optimism may have slipped into delusional, but it beats the crushing cynicism that comes with naked realism.

I don’t think that we should lose hope, but the future can’t look like this. His Icarus moment shouldn’t be the end of his journey. I hope he finds himself and begins planting new seeds even if none of us ever live to see the shade of the trees that grow from them.

The reality is no one person is qualified to “run” a multinational megacorp. Not a single human being knows enough for this level of complexity, but the only reason any of them can justify the ungodly amount of marginal return they take is to pretend they’re super-geniuses while relying on ‘consultant’ teams to do the actual thinking, and also keep it quiet that they’re no more competent than the janitor they’re making 1000x the salary of (all in stock options of course, but 1000x nonetheless).

All of this would work better if the “bosses” could accept they aren’t demigods, that the domain expertise to make collective decisions is within their existing org charts and they just need to step down off their high horses and remember they are just a cog in a much bigger machine that makes its own decisions with or without their input. They’re self-important sales reps, with just enough of a grasp of finance to be dangerous to themselves and others. I’m sure me and my 10 closest colleagues would also be inclined to say we do a billion $ of work every day if we were writing our own bonus agreements. We just wouldn’t have the hubris to convince ourselves it’s true.