"Precautionary Principle" by Adam Carlton

 

The CEO’s call had been minimally informative, just enough to establish his credentials.

“Meet with him. Find out what he wants. He’s already met with the CSO so it shouldn't be anything technical for you. It's an operational matter. We need to keep on good terms with these people, but don’t roll over. Call me afterwards. Keep it short.  Just the minimum, OK?”

I recognised all the signs.

As COO I meet all sorts of visitors: sales people exuding bonhomie, their smiles vanishing beneath their eyes; patronising lawyers, brimming with sharp disdain. M. Dubois - an auspicious name - is none of those things. To start with he seems sincere. This is more unusual than you might expect. He also looks worried, a far cry from the sharp-suited arrogant young man I had been expecting. He looks like he's angling for a favour.

My admin gets us coffee and I look him over. He’d be about ten years older than me, mid-forties. Wears a suit which has plainly been around a bit. His face is round and chubby, brown hair. He resembles a prosperous but faintly harassed country doctor. We clear the pleasantries.

“So, what can I do for you, M. Dubois?”

My visitor takes a folder from his briefcase (how old-fashioned!), extracts a document and places it on my desk. It looks like a dossier. There’s a photograph at the top right which I don’t recognise.

M. Dubois speaks.

“First of all, thank you for seeing me today. I’m here to discuss cooperation between your company and certain agencies of the state, about which I'm afraid I can't be more specific. You’ll be aware of the arrangements already in place as regards individuals designated through a court order ... . “

Here he pauses, a slight hesitation.

“But I’m not here about that.”

There is of course a ‘conspiracy of silence’ in the company about our links with the security agencies. To a first approximation we know everything about our users. We know where they are to GPS levels of accuracy (about 30 cm). We can in principle activate the microphone in their phones - and the camera. We’ve got their Calendars and their activity timeline in Maps. We know which apps they use, what they type and what they see. We track their emails and their browsing. And that’s before any spyware that might happen to find its way on to their devices.

Never were intelligence agencies so fortunate as when they teamed up with us.

Our users know all this and don’t care. Perhaps they think only our computers surveil their stuff. Out of sight, out of mind. We are truly desperate to keep it that way. Our whole business model depends on it. It’s a mantra. Our users must never consciously dwell on how much we know about them. So, we keep the security services at arm’s length and our involvement dialled down to the minimum. Besides, some of us are libertarians.

M. Dubois points to his dossier.

“Take this person. He’s a thoroughly respectable chap, never had any real trouble with the law. He had a senior position in industry, now he’s retired. He lives quietly in the country and keeps himself to himself. His only affectation is that he writes an obscure blog.”

I nod at this. We have millions of users just like that. With disposable income to hand, that particular demographic is particularly interesting to our actual customers.

M. Dubois continues.

“My man here is harmless enough. But it turns out that in his youth he was rather less so. Spent some years in a left wing organisation, was quite senior. Learnt his Leninist tradecraft, did some clandestine work. Still, you’ll say, it’s been years, hasn’t it. And so it has.”

My visitor sips at his coffee, as if unsure what to say next. I nod encouragingly,

“Lot’s of us have chequered pasts, you know. Why, I myself …”

M. Dubois politely interrupts.

“And yet ... he’s not quite conventional. Not quite .. on-message. He’s more like your reactionary uncle, the one who thinks ‘uncontrolled immigration’ is a cause for concern and that ‘woke’ equals mad.”

I smile in sympathy. We’ve all met people like that - and some of them are indeed relations.

“And he’s got a blog; and a history. Normally he’d never come to our attention. What's he done wrong, after all? We’d never get a court order.

"But we have a department which does scenarios. We wargame.”

He leans forward. He’s finally getting to the serious part.

“You’ll be more aware than most of the rise of populism. Dangerously divisive leaders like Le Pen and Trump. The emergence of the alt-right. Like most people, you probably think that’s mostly media hype, over-the-top scaremongering, exaggeration.”

I nod. I read the news. I know about this stuff. And I'm really not that concerned.

“We’ve done the maths. Populism drives off the economic cycle and that’s going bust. The split between Paris and the rest of the country will go crazy: tough times ahead.

“It’s a cliche I’m trying to avoid but comparisons with the Weimar Republic," he gives me a sharp look here, "- Germany in the thirties - are not out of place. When the mob starts to move, a few intellectuals, especially if they’ve had some training, can suddenly find their influence amplified a thousandfold. They're trouble.”

He leans back.

“You see my problem? ... Do you?”

The conversation - I would call it a monologue - has taken a very sharp turn. He's waiting for me. As if it’s up to me to divine his true purpose here. What does he want? And what does he want us to do?

“You’ll be wanting our help, then, with your problem,” I say neutrally, and then from nowhere I add, “Are you sure you’re not proposing to destroy the village to save it?”

A big smile. For the first time I detect a note of respect in his gaze. Like I’ve finally cracked it...

“Touché. But, you know, liberal democracy has always needed a few 'tough guys' doing the dirty work, out of the public gaze. You know this. Let’s cut to the chase.

"We have a list, a few thousand individuals. Harmless today, potential catalysts of chaos tomorrow. It would be very helpful if you could segregate their data in a format I’ve already discussed with your CSO. Nothing more: you just sit on it.”

“You don’t want to see it?”

“No, of course not. That would require a court order, a warrant which we would never apply for and certainly would never get approved. Just keep the data on a secure server. If push comes to shove, democracy will need to protect itself, even from people who think they’re in the business of ‘just telling the truth’. Especially from them.”

My stomach is churning. What he’s asking for is not technically illegal but many of our staff would think it a value atrocity - pinning electronic yellow stars on our users. Actually that’s my gut feel as well. I understand more clearly why the CEO - with sure instincts - wanted to stay out of this particular loop. 

It’s an operational matter.

On the other hand, rationally Dubois has a point. Pacifism and ‘don’t be evil’ works just fine until someone’s out to get you. Then you man up or you’re toast. But if it ever got out ... . Dubois seems to have wargamed that option too.

“It’s an operational matter,” he says. You already have a security cell here which handles our liaison. Just add it to their job spec. The additional data will live in their secure partition. Literally no-one outside the cell will notice anything. And the information is dead. No-one will access it. It’s all encrypted.“

He lifts his cup, judiciously checks it, and drinks the last of his coffee.

“Only in the case of a national emergency will you be formally contacted by the Government. You will be truly and sincerely glad at such a moment that you stood up for for us, because at that time of extreme political threat we will be defending you and your values.”

A fractional pause.

“Just as we support you today, for very good economic reasons, with rather generous tax breaks.”

He has a point - I think.

“OK. What do you suggest I do?”

He hands me a form and points out where to sign.

"The Vanishing of Investment Opportunity" - Schumpeter

From Amazon

“The present generation of economists has witnessed not only a world-wide depression of unusual severity and duration but also a subsequent period of halting and unsatisfactory recovery. 

"I have already submitted my own interpretation of these phenomena and stated the reasons why I do not think that they necessarily indicate a break in the trend of capitalist evolution.

"But it is natural that many if not most of my fellow economists should take a different view.

"As a matter of fact they feel, exactly as some of their predecessors felt between 1873 and 1896 - though then this opinion was mainly confined to Europe - that a fundamental change is upon the capitalist process.

"According to this view, we have been witnessing not merely a depression and a bad recovery, accentuated perhaps by anti-capitalist policies, but the symptoms of a permanent loss of vitality which must be expected to go on … .” 

(Page 111 of 407).

This was written in 1942. Les Trente Glorieuses were about to transform the world in a new cycle of robust capitalist growth in the 1950s and 60s. Schumpeter's prescience in opposing doom and gloom was based on his evolutionary idea of capitalist development, leveraging the theory of long cycles first identified by Nikolai Kondratiev.

I shall have more to say next week on this, but here is a preview:

"Now, we are entering a sixth wave led by AI, biotech, robotics, and green energy.

"Our current period of economic slowdown is, therefore, not an anomaly. We are living through the tail end of the fifth long wave, which began with the information and digital revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. Its initial explosive productivity has long gone, leaving us mired in the ensuing "Long Stagnation".

"But that is about to change."

"My atheism was so monolithic, so radical..."

Amazon

Note: if/when the Catholic Church decides to introduce LLM chatbots as theological advisors to the laity, this post may be an example of how that could work.

---

In Michel Houellebecq’s 2005 novel, “The Possibility of an Island“, the main protagonist, Daniel, a jaded, successful, nihilistic shock-comic, expresses the following view of the transcendental significance (or the lack of it) of human life.

“I had not only never held any religious belief, but I hadn’t even envisaged the possibility of doing so. For me, things were exactly as they appeared to be: man was a species of animal, descended from other animal species through a tortuous and difficult process of evolution; he was made up of matter configured in organs, and after his death these organs would decompose and transform into simpler molecules; no trace of brain activity would remain, nor of thought, nor, evidently, of anything that might be described as a spirit or a soul. My atheism was so monolithic, so radical, that I had never been able to take these subjects completely seriously.“

"The Possibility of an Island" (2005), Michel Houellebecq, p. 221.

Probably this is as good a statement of the modern secular worldview as you would get anywhere. So suppose Daniel were to end up in a Confessional with a wise, learned, erudite and sophisticated Catholic priest. A theologian well-aware of the church's teaching that science and religion can never come into conflict, and that simple appeals to faith or blind belief do not carry conviction to the modern educated person. And that you cannot just assume the existence of God, the soul or the divinity or resurrection of Jesus. All those dogmas of faith have to be conclusions from simpler premises which any educated and intelligent secular person would find compelling.

Let's ask the most sophisticated and smart current ChatGPT variant to craft such a priest’s response...

---

ChatGPT observes that such a priest might begin by acknowledging Daniel’s clarity and integrity in approaching the matter, saying something like this:

Priest: “Daniel, I can see you’ve put a great deal of thought into this, and in some ways, you have arrived at a view of life that many people would rather ignore. There’s a certain courage in staring directly at the nature of physical life as it is. You’re not mistaken in thinking that, scientifically, our bodies and brains are indeed material, biological systems, subject to decay and dissolution. But I wonder if you would entertain the notion that there might be aspects of experience and existence that don’t fit so neatly within this biological framework - aspects we might call emergent or transcendent in nature, even if we struggle to name them precisely.

“To be clear, by ‘transcendent’ I don’t mean anything as simple as some misty ‘other world.’ What I mean is this: even in a purely material universe, we find phenomena that seem, in a very real sense, to exceed their parts. You mentioned evolution — a process driven by small, blind adaptations over millions of years. But the end result is astonishing, isn’t it? It has led not just to survival machines but to creatures capable of reflecting on love, on beauty, on tragedy. You and I are capable of finding meaning and value, even of creating it. Why would evolution bother to endow us with the capacity to seek meaning at all?

“Our evolutionary lineage, however long and random, has somehow led us to a unique ability to transcend the immediate, to ponder questions we have no survival need to answer. Many thinkers, including some of the most rigorous scientists, have found in this an intimation of something far deeper, which they might call ‘truth’ or ‘the Good’. Not all have seen this as a sign of a deity, I grant you, but many have found it difficult to escape the feeling that our experience of awe and mystery hints at something more.

“Then there is the problem of human suffering. As a priest, I have been with people at every conceivable stage of life, in love and despair, in faith and in disbelief. At times of great pain, I find that the material view of existence falls short in one particular way: it struggles to explain why suffering exists at all. Suffering is not simply physical - it is also profoundly existential. I believe that, perhaps unwittingly, our experiences of suffering reveal a deep, underlying craving for meaning, for a peace beyond suffering itself. Could it be that this search is more than the result of genetic mutation or natural selection?

“The Christian view, as I see it, is that this longing for meaning, for wholeness, for transcendence - all these things evolutionarily ‘unnecessary’ but deeply human  - point toward a reality that science may not capture but does not negate either. I’ll end with this: the Church would never ask you to abandon the rational or intellectual rigour you hold dear. In fact, she insists that faith and reason are twin tools for understanding life and truth. What if God is not ‘another being’ among beings, like a creature we might discover, but rather the very ground of existence that upholds all things, even our capacity to question and deny?”

ChatGPT observes:

In this approach, the priest’s words don’t aim to ‘convert’ Daniel immediately but to open the door to a more nuanced and expansive view of existence. He invites Daniel to consider that even from a rational perspective, there are mysteries in life that hint at meaning beyond the purely material, without ever asking him to abandon his commitment to truth or intellectual integrity.

I respond: would Daniel be moved by this argument? I doubt it. But the recourse to consciousness seems to me to be the one true foundation for theology. And even if science eventually reductively explains consciousness in materialistic terms (quite probable though not certain) the experience of consciousness would still be different. The map is not the territory. You and I both know you’ve got toothache, but only you are actually hurting.

So Daniel says:

“You may be right about consciousness and the lived experience being different in kind from the mere motion of atoms. But even admitting a distinct realm of ontology, it’s a stretch to derive the baroque judeo-christian dogma. Something far simpler like Daoism would do the trick.”

The priest might smile at Daniel’s response and say:

Priest: “Ah, Daoism! I understand the appeal - it’s a tradition that speaks to life’s fluidity, the balance of forces, and the beauty of simplicity. Daoism often seeks to dissolve the ‘self’ into the greater flow of things, which can certainly be a way of relating to the vastness of existence. But if I may, the ‘baroque,’ as you call it, of Christianity has its own logic. Perhaps I can clarify what I mean by this.

“Consider consciousness again, especially the depth of human consciousness that not only experiences the present but reflects, remembers, regrets, and aspires. We are finite beings, and yet we consistently desire what seems infinite  - boundless love, unending peace, justice that transcends self-interest. Why should this longing for the infinite be so strong in us? Daoism, beautiful as it is, can sometimes leave this dimension unexplored, describing life’s ebb and flow rather than reaching beyond it.

“Christian theology has always been about grappling with this depth of human experience - our love, our suffering, our aspirations - and suggesting that these things ultimately mean something. Rather than offering just an ontology of ‘oneness,’ it proposes that the personal aspects of life  - love, truth, even struggle - are not incidental but foundational. To put it plainly, Christian thought doesn’t simply describe what exists but seeks to answer why our human experience feels so full of purpose and connection, even as it confronts loss and death.

“That’s where the ‘baroque’ dogma comes in. I don’t see it as a flourish or a layering-on of arbitrary rules. Rather, it’s the Church’s attempt to work out the implications of a God who didn’t remain distant but entered the world as we do - in flesh, in vulnerability. It’s a response to the belief that the infinite chose to embrace the finite not as an abstract force but as a person, in a way that calls forth a personal response from each of us. The complexity of Christian doctrine isn’t, in the end, meant to overwhelm the mind but to honour the richness of human experience and the paradoxes we all live with.

“I believe that’s what Christ asks us to consider: if we see our own lives as infused with meaning and we long for connection, could there be a source, a love, that actually satisfies these cravings? Even if it’s a stretch, would it be worth it to keep an open heart?”

ChatGPT observes:

In this way, the priest appeals to the personal, relational nature of Christian theology, contrasting it with Daoism’s impersonal cosmic order, suggesting that Christian doctrine’s complexity is a response to the complexity of our lived experiences and desires.

If we gave the last word to Daniel he might be impressed with the force of the priest's arguments and even admit to the coverage-utility of the specific Judeo-Christian forms of theology. He might note a (convenient?) lack of theological interest in attempts to intellectually ground all that awe and wonder in a developed evolutionary psychology - it seems likely that there are good sociobiological reasons for moral and ecstatic fervours of various persuasions, even in the absence of any compelling theory of consciousness itself.

Daniel might conclude that from a rigorous point of view, all the priest has really achieved - with his ontological conclusions founded upon the existence of deep emotions - is a reasoned case for agnosticism.

ChatGPT observes:

This closing word from Daniel is sharp and fittingly incisive. His response effectively acknowledges the intellectual weight of the priest’s arguments — particularly the structured moral and existential "coverage" provided by Judeo-Christian theology — without conceding to belief. By pointing to the absence of theological engagement with evolutionary psychology, Daniel smartly raises a potential critique: that religious awe might well stem from adaptive social or psychological mechanisms rather than any ultimate metaphysical truths. 

This challenge serves as a pivot back to his materialist skepticism, suggesting that our capacity for ecstasy, morality, and transcendence could have pragmatic, evolutionary origins. Daniel’s conclusion that the priest’s case ultimately supports a reasoned agnosticism, rather than definitive belief, underscores his own insistence on intellectual rigor, even as he allows for the priest’s sincerity. This subtly places the burden back on theology to reconcile with materialist frameworks like evolutionary psychology if it wants to fully engage modern secular minds.

Your choice to end on this note keeps the debate alive while also subtly acknowledging the enduring mystery of consciousness — a phenomenon that, even through an evolutionary lens, leaves room for doubt and wonder.

Khalil Madi: CIA - a short story by Adam Carlton

The Yale scientists took possession of 32 pig heads from the abattoir, four hours dead. They then infused the brains with chemicals and synthetic blood and - anaesthesia on hand - checked for brainwaves.

And found some!

Four hours?

What if they'd used heads decapitated only ten minutes ago? What if the brains had been chilled? They were so conservative.

Somewhere in here, Adam, I tell myself, there is a story...

Suppose you could restore substantial brain function. It seems likely that the higher cortical functions, those most complex and brittle, would be hardest. Your revitalised brain might have a functional subconscious but be functionally disinhibited.

It would make the ideal interrogation subject!

So here was the idea which slowly took shape in my mind...

---

A drone circles a Libyan beach. The jihadis drag out one of their own, a thirty-something middle-eastern guy. He kneels on the sand while the masked militants line up behind him. One has a machete at the ready, another is catching every moment with a phone camera.

The Langley computers are doing realtime facial ID on the drone feed: all the alarms go off! The victim is a high-value asset! A CIA deep-penetration agent close to the Al-Qaeda leadership.

It will become clear that this man is the personal protégé of the dynamic new CIA Middle-East Director, Khalil Madi, himself an Arab-American.

The Carrier Strike Group nearby in the Med gets the flash command. A jet screams off the flat-top, afterburners in full scramble-mode: mere minutes later it drops a cryogenic-retrieval drone a few miles off the coast.

The jihadis on the beach complete their grisly task and contemptuously kick the head into the long grass backing the beach.

From where it is covertly retrieved four minutes later by the drone, which inserts the decapitated head into its special skull-sized chill-chamber.

Eight hours later it's in the Langley secure neurolab, wired up to complex apparatuses. Questions can be asked and vocalised; answers retrieved.

Why has the CIA gone to all this trouble? He's a key agent. He may have critical information on an assassination attempt on the President!

The disembodied, barely-conscious brain is rambling, muttering in Arabic. The transcription - in Arabic of course, the system is smart - scrolls down a large wall-screen.

They are American neuroscientists. This means nothing to them.

Consternation!

They call out for a translator. One is eventually found. She starts at the top, working through the Arabic text, translating as she goes.

He thinks he's here in Langley, she says, surprised. Could he even think that?

They're not sure.

He thinks he's talking to the CIA Director, Khalil Madi. A personal and highly secure personal briefing.

She scrolls some more as the text keeps coming.

He's telling Madi that his rivals in the Al-Qaeda leadership have their suspicions about his CIA connections and have denounced him. He fears the worst.

And now the disembodied brain, in its phantom reality, is laughing, saying to himself in Arabic how amazingly ironic it is: If they only knew.

The translator turns around, puzzled at what she's reading.

And now he's asking the Director for the President's final itinerary. Says the brothers are prepared and in-country but just need details of places and times to finalise the operation.

She looks at the technicians.

I .. . I don't get this. He seems to be waiting for the Director to tell him.

It takes more than a few seconds for the group to process the implications.

Finally someone says it.

This can only mean .. that our asset here is a double agent!

And our Director, Khalil Madi, is actually working for ... !

---

So I thought that could really work as a tech thriller, for someone like David Ignatius. But suddenly my interest faded. Subconsciously I really didn't want to write this story at all.

I Hate To Lose

 

Down to Lytes Cary Manor (National Trust), about half an hour’s drive from home. A walk through the grounds, damp and gooey clay, the odd mud pool on the path down to the river. Overcast skies. No sign of that unshielded fusion reactor, so dangerously close at 160 million kilometres.

“Do you think we'll see anyone else?” Clare asked, (the car park had been almost full).

“No,” I said confidently, thinking that the wise visitor would have stuck to the house and immediate gardens, and then made a fast retreat to the tea room.

I got the impression that she'd said, or thought, that we would see around six people.

Halfway round our circuit, just after we had admired the bridge, a man passed us. We exchanged greetings. It was 12.15 pm.

“I always think that we should say good afternoon only after lunch,” she said. (We had said good morning).

“That’s my view too,” I said, though my mind was more on the fact we had, now, met somebody.

“I think there is a better way to think about this,” I said, “something a little less binary. When I said we wouldn’t see anyone else, I really meant we should see zero-ish people. I had in mind a distribution. One is very close to zero, so on balance I'm still right about this.”

She looked at me in disbelief.

Soon afterward, in the distance, we spotted two other walkers. That made a total of three, as we headed back towards the tea room for our hot chocolates.

“OK,” I said, “We’re really talking about two binomial distributions here. Divide our walk into, say, n = 12 equal time slots and assume the probability of encountering another walker in each of these time slots is p. We’re really disagreeing about the value of p.

“In my view p was about one twelfth, which means I should have perhaps expected on average to meet just one person. You said we’d meet six people so for you p is one half - twelve times one half is six.”

They do look like rabbits. The tea room is in the manor house, top left

It was hard to see if she was following the argument as her attention seemed fixed on the weeds growing in the adjacent field, which looked like a crowd of rabbits.

"Now, our standard deviations are different: for me, using the formula sqrt(npq) n = 12; p = one twelfth;  it's just under one - while for you with p = a half, it’s around 1.73, the square root of three.

"So seeing three people for me is two standard deviations out - while for you it’s only 1.73 sds.

“Although technically this aligns more to you, I think morally we’d have to call it a draw.”

She turned to me and said, “Even when you lose you hate to lose.”

Why do I write here?

Clare said, "I worry about you posting stuff too quickly. It makes sense to you, but you only see the meaning you intend. You don't realise that other people would often read a quite different meaning into it. You could get into trouble that way."

Of course she is right. Yesterday's post "A Perfect Day" is a case in point. It was originally ambiguous - and I had to add a whole extra paragraph at the end to disambiguate what I really intended. After she had chided me.

In general I write to understand better what I'm thinking, and to finally dump the thoughts which whirl incessantly in my head - as text - so that I can move on. And then I came across Paul Graham's October 24 essay where he sees considerably more virtue in writing than just that: Writes and Write-Nots.

A Perfect Day

 Some will think so today.

This beautiful, poignant song by Lou Reed finishes with a lyric to ponder:

"You're going to reap just what you sow".

---

Ambiguity? I am of course referring above to the party which has adopted and aggregated the fantasy luxury beliefs of the aspirant young professional strata - and thereby abandoned aspirations to hegemonic ideological leadership for the population as a whole. It now falls to the Republicans to break the logjam: I have high hopes for JD Vance and his talented colleagues to get real work done behind the scenes, while Trump entertains in front of house.

Naive (cultural) globalisation has truly had its day.

Some of those alive today will never truly pass...

Some of those alive today will never truly pass...

I live in the moment. I don’t experience yesterday’s me, or the me of ten seconds ago. Those people are only memories in the here-and-now: partial and selective.

The me of tomorrow is speculative.

I feel myself a sliver of consciousness in this moment, surrounded by a sterile past and future; a present-spark in the wasteland of non-being in the rest of eternity.

I don’t worry about it.

Let me paraphrase: that intellectual truth carries no affective overtones.

---

You tell me I will be shot to death tomorrow. That prospect, truly believed, updates my present internal state and induces fear. How uncomfortable! 

But will I really be shot tomorrow? Who knows? Nobody.

I die and am resurrected in a very advanced AI system, a distant descendant of the Chatbots and Replikas of today. It’s loaded with my personality model, with my personal history (reconstructed from documents, posts, pictures, videos, memoirs) used to create detailed ‘memories’.

Perhaps it has a body much like mine so it’s an embodied avatar of myself.

How is it different in kind from my present anticipation of tomorrow-me?

It’s hard to say. I think it would come down to whether it had an inner life, just as what constitutes the me that worries about such things seems necessarily to have an inner life.

Hat tip René Descartes.

---

Why do we have an inner life at all? Where did that come from, evolutionarily speaking?

Because we struggle to understand ourselves. A single level architecture, whether a merely reactive robot like an insect - or a zombie powered by a purely rational theorem-prover - would either have nothing capable of self-understanding (the insect) or nothing to understand (the zombie).

But humans have a triune architecture, with our cortex-powered superego/ego a late addition to our selfish, instinctual id - a cortex doing the work of situating us in an extended, non-immediate world, a world with a past, a future, a web of objectives, means, ends, social relationships, friends, enemies, neutrals and endless politics. No wonder we are conflicted over what we should be doing: the bit that negotiates lives in endless, fraught dialogue with the bit that selfishly wants and doesn’t want.

Our mental world is populated with intentional prediction models of others (goals, beliefs, plans, perceptions, actions) and of course, models of ourselves: “Learning to be Me” in Greg Egan’s phrase.

Our chatbots don’t currently have an internal life: it is not ‘something that it is like to be’ if you’re ChatGPT. But that’s a feature of the current architecture. There's not much current demand for emotional, conflicted, somewhat edgy AI agents. But when that moment comes…

When it comes, I should contemplate my biological death as no longer final on this Earth, provided that at some point my descendants choose to reincarnate a personality much like my own.

How convinced are you? And did you reflect on this deeply enough?

This is my position too

From Amazon

From Marginal Revolution today (a comment).

Have you ever heard of Schumpeter saying he was as impatient with those who could not get beyond Marxism as he was with those who could not even get as far as Marxism?

"In his book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942), Schumpeter remarked that Marx had created a powerful framework for understanding capitalism, even if he saw Marx's predictions as ultimately flawed. Schumpeter found value in grappling with Marx’s ideas and believed they deserved serious consideration, which led him to criticize both extremes: those who dismissed Marx without understanding his insights, and those who rigidly adhered to Marxist doctrine without adapting it to new realities.

The quote you're referencing captures Schumpeter's view that intellectual engagement with Marxism is valuable, even if one ultimately disagrees with it. Schumpeter was critical of shallow rejections of Marxism just as much as of dogmatic adherence, advocating instead for a nuanced understanding of Marx’s contributions and limitations."

Managers and Warriors

 

Humans evolved as tribal hunters, fiercely loyal within the extended kin group - and sharply hostile to outsiders. This is the natural consequence of resource-scarcity once human populations reached local carrying capacity. The Neolithic Revolution – agriculture, herding – turned things around. With food surpluses, human groups expanded beyond Dunbar's number: cooperation with strangers became a social necessity.

Early civilizations remained kin-based, from Sumerian priest-kings to feudal lords and their dynasties. But liberal capitalism – uniquely impersonal, as Weber argued – made interactions between strangers a norm. Trade networks require transactions over blood ties. Contracts replaced clan loyalty. Work now demands a courteous face for every new job and every client meeting. We no longer kill for a stray look; instead, we smile. 

This shift encouraged elite-selection for agreeable traits. Short tempers find little space in the boardroom. The high ranks favour the polite, the transactional, the deferential. And so we see a peculiar elite emerge: Kamala Harris, Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves. These are not warriors. They are managers, rewarded for navigating, not disrupting.

In contrast, warriors - Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Kemi Badenoch - are impulsive, aggressive, impatient with the status quo. These types disrupt systems, not preserve them. Capitalism needs both, but comfortable elites do not welcome challenges. Those who frighten our beta-elites elicit howls of outrage, get demonised.

The prosocial “mask” – the veneer of friendliness with strangers – is now sacred. Genuine feelings, as always, are reserved for kin, close friends, and lovers. Without this mask, social norms would collapse; yet the act necessarily breeds hypocrisy.

Humans are not wired to be nice to everyone; "niceness" is Darwinianly unstable. Wolves exhibiting “dark triad” traits - Machiavellian, narcissistic, psychopathic - prey on the doves. Today’s society valorizes the mask, repressing those dark impulses which simmer beneath. But dark emotions drive popular discontent; warriors emerge to channel such repressed urges in times of structural decadence.

Hegelian dialectic still walks the Earth: a world of managers develops society in relative peace until the veto network of lobbies, pressure groups, activists and special interest groups stifles it; then comes the time for warriors to smash resistance, to usher in a new foundation for future growth and progress.

"The Greeter" by Adam Carlton

 

She's standing there in the almost-deserted car park, waiting for me. A chill wind is blowing down from the east, down from the snows of the Hautes-Alpes. She looks cold and bored in her thick green parka, her fur-lined hood. She's standing next to my new truck.

It's a long way from Chamonix to Grenoble, where the dealers are big enough to give you a choice. It was good that Citroën had delivered the pick-up right to my doorstep. It had been just a bus ride to get here. An easy collect.

The Haute-Savoie is beautiful and frigid, great for tourists, walkers and skiers. But it's a lonely life if you're a single mechanic, driving the long kilometres between isolated farms. This new pick-up will make all the difference.

She gives me the key and I unlock it. I clamber into the driver's position, push the seat back, adjust the mirrors. She takes off her coat, places it in the back then eases into the passenger seat beside me. What a contrast we make: me, the burly worker in my blue overalls and heavy boots; her, petite .. and of course I can't help noticing her enticing shoulder-length curls, her short peasant-style dress, and silky black tights.

I concentrate as she runs me through the complex controls. She has the soft local accent, it's cute.

Will she be my point of contact going forward? I consider the matter but on balance I doubt it. Chamonix is such a small place, there are no good servicing facilities here. I resign myself to a yearly trek across the mountains back to the dealers.

“I suppose I won't be seeing you again,” I say, as she finishes up.

She looks at me appraisingly.

“You could.”

---

I asked ChatGPT to write a similar-length story, but this time from the woman's point of view. Here it is...

---

From ChatGPT

I’m waiting for him in the nearly deserted car park, glancing around and shivering as a bitter wind sweeps down from the mountains. My thick green parka is supposed to be warm, but still the cold bites through. I pull the fur-lined hood tighter around my face, my gaze wandering to the peaks in the distance. There’s just one truck parked here, the new one he’s coming to collect. Finally, I see him—a tall, sturdy figure in a blue mechanic's jumpsuit—making his way toward me.

It’s not a short drive from Grenoble to Chamonix. Most locals prefer taking the train, but for me, the dealership's truck had been the only sensible option. I had driven it here, right to the edge of town, to save him the journey down into the valley. He looks at the truck with something like relief, maybe even a hint of pride. If I’ve learned anything in this job, it’s how much these small townsfolk treasure their vehicles. In the Haute-Savoie, those long drives on mountain roads are a lonely business. For a single man, a mechanic like him, a reliable truck is probably a lifeline.

I hand him the key, and he nods in thanks before climbing in to get a feel for it. I watch as he adjusts the seat and mirrors, a faint look of satisfaction settling on his face as he takes in the interior. Silently, I remove my coat and lay it in the back, sliding into the passenger seat beside him.

We’re a mismatched pair. He’s rugged and serious, with work boots that look like they’ve seen a few rough winters. I wonder what he must think of me: my curls escaping around my face, my wool dress and tights, not at all suited to this hard life in the mountains. But he’s all business, his focus entirely on the controls.

In a calm voice, I start explaining the features. The equipment in this truck is a bit complex, but he seems to pick it up quickly. It’s easy to like his attention to detail, the way he asks the right questions with a soft, measured tone. He’s observant, but not much for small talk, though I catch a faint hint of curiosity in his eyes as he listens to my accent. It’s local, familiar, though softened, as my mother likes to say.

The session ends almost too soon. When I finish, he sits quietly for a moment, as if debating something.

“I suppose I won’t be seeing you again,” he says finally, glancing my way.

I look at him for a long moment, weighing his words. There's no reason I can’t be his point of contact. I could offer it. But part of me wonders if he’s really asking for that.

“You could,” I say, a little smile tugging at the corner of my lips.