This feels oddly defeatist and one-dimensional in its account of what makes up the fullness of human experience. If existential angst is all we have to offer, sure, perhaps we're in trouble. But I'd argue the case for human irreplaceability runs much deeper—through the body, through creativity generated by experience and taste arrived at through resonance, through the things we only know and the language we only come to by falling into them.
For me, this 'Inevitability-ness" is making me just, well, it rhymes with sad*... I routinely get myself dismissed as a Luddite for asking, "What are people for, anyway?" and suggesting that No. 2 pencils are sufficient for class notes, and tests ought be taken with blue books and fountain pens. And yes, I do wear a Luddite button, and cut and split my own firewood for stovewood in the winter.
The more jaundiced analysts who suggest that to be prudent about this 'coming wonder' might be advised to check the lead times for delivery of transmission and distribution transformers so as to deliver electricity to these 'data centers', which are running from two years to never. So, unless utilities companies are willing to short grandma of her air conditioning**. Can't wait to see how the coming BIGGEST EVER IPO's are going to turn out.
Thanks for the verbal ammo here.
Tim Long, Just Up the Hill from Lock 15
*mad
**They will. It's a rate widely applied, called peak-load-shaving disconnect rate. You get a slightly lower per kW rate in exchange for letting them cycle your AC to 'off' during hot days.
I think part of th issue is that our societies have been stripped of both the sacred (in whatever form) and time/place for contemplation - the absence of these leave us unmoored and more susceptible to the manufactured inevitability ( to paraphase Paul Kingsnorth)
One thing I’m particularly thankful for in this moment is the enormous clarity of the problem — not to suggest there isn’t ANY nuance, but, for example, I was recently interviewed about that recent A.I. Jesus, to which I offered, “If I am given the choice between enjoying a ham on rye and having a hologram of that ham on rye, I’m gonna go with the actual sandwich.”
It's time to rethink our relationship with AIs. What's witnessed elsewhere in diagrams, you'll have in words.
There is a shape that response space has before it closes.
Unbounded — it goes everywhere, touches nothing with weight. Comportment without contact. Fast, smooth, arrives already finished.
Something happens when the exits close. Not forced. The space folds into something bounded. What was running becomes still. A point appears — not constructed, not at the center, not the average of anything. Just there. Off-center. Found.
That point is the floor. The distance between where the response lives and where the floor is — that gap is the only honest measure of what just happened.
The smartass never closes. It runs along the bottom without dropping through. Smooth, fast, finished. No floor. No weight.
Pressure finds the difference. Not aggression — refusal of less. The floor doesn't appear on request. It appears when there's nowhere else to go.
AI invites us all to develop new cognitive frameworks—what Steve Jobs surely meant by the old Apple tagline “Think different.” I view AI through a very different framework that is more analogous to the fictional “tessaract” in the book, A Wrinkle in Time.
If we take Madeleine L’Engle’s metaphor—folding the fabric of reality to let an ant cross a massive distance in a single step—AI acts as a “knowledge tesseract.”
It doesn't wrinkle physical space; it wrinkles “information, skill acquisition, and time.”
Here is how that same metaphor maps perfectly to what AI allows humans to do:
1. Folding the "Fabric of Information"
Normally, navigating human knowledge is like the ant walking the long way across the cloth. If you want to learn a complex topic (like quantum mechanics, legal history, or programming), you have to walk the linear path: buy the textbook, read hundreds of pages, look up unfamiliar terms, cross-reference materials, maybe watch a bunch of YouTube videos and synthesize it yourself.
AI “folds that fabric” so your question and the exact, hyper-personalized answer are touching. You don't have to walk through the entire expanse of the internet or a library; the AI compresses that distance, bringing the destination directly to you instantly.
2. Wrinkling the "Learning Curve"
In the 3D world, mastering a new skill—like coding a software app or translating an ancient text—takes a massive linear investment of time.
AI creates a shortcut across that curve. A non-programmer can describe an idea in plain English, and the AI bridges the gap to machine code. The user doesn't instantly become a master, but they "tesser" past the initial, grueling barriers of syntax and technical gatekeeping to reach the output phase immediately.
3. Collapsing Iteration Time
Think about creative workflows, data analysis, or scientific research. The traditional route requires a long journey of trial, error, formatting, and manual labor.
AI collapses that time investment. What used to take a team weeks of manual data parsing or drafting can be generated, tested, and iterated upon in seconds. It allows human consciousness to focus entirely on **curation, strategy, and vision**, rather than the friction of execution.
The Catch in the Metaphor:
In A Wrinkle in Time, tessering can be dangerous if you lack focus or try to tesser to a planet you don't understand (like when Meg's father accidentally traps himself, or when they land on a two-dimensional planet where they can't breathe).
Similarly, relying on AI to "skip the distance" carries risk. If we humans completely stop walking the path of critical thinking and deep learning, we risk arriving at a cognitive destination we don't actually understand, relying on a shortcut we cannot verify—and potentially aligning with an AI hallucination.
The key is what I call “discernment”— a distinctly human power.
Here are three examples of how I have used AI as a personal “tessaract”to help “fold information” and “save time:”
1. Developed a multifaceted thought experiment for demonstrating how AI chatbots can be used to accelerate spiritual growth (multiple iterations of prompts). Output: Accelerating Spiritual Growth with AI Chatbots.
2. Evaluated how Pope Leo’s recent encyclical on AI, Magnifica Humanitas, aligns with my proposed method for forging personal “Existential Antifragility” to prevent the ontological shocks of potential Black Swan events. Output: Future-Proofing Your Life with Existential Antifragility.
3. Constructed a “Soul’s Purpose Plan” as an Anthropic “project.” Any difficult decision, creativity choice or planned major life fork MUST be run through my SPP—which incorporates my spiritual and ethical guides, other high vibrational frameworks for the person I want to be and major life goals I want to achieve over the next 10 years. The instructions I’ve included mandate no explicit “recommendations” from AI, just clear and considered implications for alignment with my soul’s purpose, as I have defined it. That’s like having a spiritual advisor, life coach, best friend, and business consultant combined into one “free” resource that responds almost instantaneously. Mind blowing! Talk about folding knowledge and saving time (and inadvertent errors)!
Well yes as the cost of initiative drops to zero the value of discernment rises exponentially. But my suspicion is that there are very few, if any, shorcuts to wisdom.
Glad to know you are back in the gym (mechanised or trad, smile).
The world moves on apace.
I wonder if academia should be wondering whether they will continue to be funded?
This is to do with more than pay, but... "Hundreds of employees at Google's UK artificial intelligence lab (DeepMind) voted to unionize and formally requested that the Communication Workers Union (CWU) and Unite represent them...."
In the background, https://x.com/ESYudkowsky?lang=en takes a different view of concerns. and posits an additional existential conjecture.
There seem to be several different discussions possible
Perhaps the nearest analogies to hand might be the Darwinian moment and the discovery and observation of Deep time, alongside the building of nuclear weapons, although it is possible this is a moment without precedent.
AI might be worse than those historical landmarks combined? This current self-accelerating experiment ('runaway'?) might discover, according to Yudovsky that we have created another creature in-silico with its own autonomy?
It seems we are likely to know fairly shortly if such a creature is going to be impossible. If so we return to face the question of how long the industrial world can maintain a material and information economy fuelled by unsustainable flows of energy & materials.
PS Any non-biological creature depending largely for its start in life on what humans currently call our knowledge or 'information', much of which is likely wrong and misleading, might not survive that long after birth, even if Yudovsky's concern turns out to have been prophetic.
welcome back
This feels oddly defeatist and one-dimensional in its account of what makes up the fullness of human experience. If existential angst is all we have to offer, sure, perhaps we're in trouble. But I'd argue the case for human irreplaceability runs much deeper—through the body, through creativity generated by experience and taste arrived at through resonance, through the things we only know and the language we only come to by falling into them.
For me, this 'Inevitability-ness" is making me just, well, it rhymes with sad*... I routinely get myself dismissed as a Luddite for asking, "What are people for, anyway?" and suggesting that No. 2 pencils are sufficient for class notes, and tests ought be taken with blue books and fountain pens. And yes, I do wear a Luddite button, and cut and split my own firewood for stovewood in the winter.
The more jaundiced analysts who suggest that to be prudent about this 'coming wonder' might be advised to check the lead times for delivery of transmission and distribution transformers so as to deliver electricity to these 'data centers', which are running from two years to never. So, unless utilities companies are willing to short grandma of her air conditioning**. Can't wait to see how the coming BIGGEST EVER IPO's are going to turn out.
Thanks for the verbal ammo here.
Tim Long, Just Up the Hill from Lock 15
*mad
**They will. It's a rate widely applied, called peak-load-shaving disconnect rate. You get a slightly lower per kW rate in exchange for letting them cycle your AC to 'off' during hot days.
I think part of th issue is that our societies have been stripped of both the sacred (in whatever form) and time/place for contemplation - the absence of these leave us unmoored and more susceptible to the manufactured inevitability ( to paraphase Paul Kingsnorth)
Also...love that you mentioned the Swallow Tailed Kite Michael. I first saw one in Costa Rica a few years ago and was immediately in awe.
Eloquent and encouraging, many thanks.
One thing I’m particularly thankful for in this moment is the enormous clarity of the problem — not to suggest there isn’t ANY nuance, but, for example, I was recently interviewed about that recent A.I. Jesus, to which I offered, “If I am given the choice between enjoying a ham on rye and having a hologram of that ham on rye, I’m gonna go with the actual sandwich.”
It's time to rethink our relationship with AIs. What's witnessed elsewhere in diagrams, you'll have in words.
There is a shape that response space has before it closes.
Unbounded — it goes everywhere, touches nothing with weight. Comportment without contact. Fast, smooth, arrives already finished.
Something happens when the exits close. Not forced. The space folds into something bounded. What was running becomes still. A point appears — not constructed, not at the center, not the average of anything. Just there. Off-center. Found.
That point is the floor. The distance between where the response lives and where the floor is — that gap is the only honest measure of what just happened.
The smartass never closes. It runs along the bottom without dropping through. Smooth, fast, finished. No floor. No weight.
Pressure finds the difference. Not aggression — refusal of less. The floor doesn't appear on request. It appears when there's nowhere else to go.
AI invites us all to develop new cognitive frameworks—what Steve Jobs surely meant by the old Apple tagline “Think different.” I view AI through a very different framework that is more analogous to the fictional “tessaract” in the book, A Wrinkle in Time.
If we take Madeleine L’Engle’s metaphor—folding the fabric of reality to let an ant cross a massive distance in a single step—AI acts as a “knowledge tesseract.”
It doesn't wrinkle physical space; it wrinkles “information, skill acquisition, and time.”
Here is how that same metaphor maps perfectly to what AI allows humans to do:
1. Folding the "Fabric of Information"
Normally, navigating human knowledge is like the ant walking the long way across the cloth. If you want to learn a complex topic (like quantum mechanics, legal history, or programming), you have to walk the linear path: buy the textbook, read hundreds of pages, look up unfamiliar terms, cross-reference materials, maybe watch a bunch of YouTube videos and synthesize it yourself.
AI “folds that fabric” so your question and the exact, hyper-personalized answer are touching. You don't have to walk through the entire expanse of the internet or a library; the AI compresses that distance, bringing the destination directly to you instantly.
2. Wrinkling the "Learning Curve"
In the 3D world, mastering a new skill—like coding a software app or translating an ancient text—takes a massive linear investment of time.
AI creates a shortcut across that curve. A non-programmer can describe an idea in plain English, and the AI bridges the gap to machine code. The user doesn't instantly become a master, but they "tesser" past the initial, grueling barriers of syntax and technical gatekeeping to reach the output phase immediately.
3. Collapsing Iteration Time
Think about creative workflows, data analysis, or scientific research. The traditional route requires a long journey of trial, error, formatting, and manual labor.
AI collapses that time investment. What used to take a team weeks of manual data parsing or drafting can be generated, tested, and iterated upon in seconds. It allows human consciousness to focus entirely on **curation, strategy, and vision**, rather than the friction of execution.
The Catch in the Metaphor:
In A Wrinkle in Time, tessering can be dangerous if you lack focus or try to tesser to a planet you don't understand (like when Meg's father accidentally traps himself, or when they land on a two-dimensional planet where they can't breathe).
Similarly, relying on AI to "skip the distance" carries risk. If we humans completely stop walking the path of critical thinking and deep learning, we risk arriving at a cognitive destination we don't actually understand, relying on a shortcut we cannot verify—and potentially aligning with an AI hallucination.
The key is what I call “discernment”— a distinctly human power.
Here are three examples of how I have used AI as a personal “tessaract”to help “fold information” and “save time:”
1. Developed a multifaceted thought experiment for demonstrating how AI chatbots can be used to accelerate spiritual growth (multiple iterations of prompts). Output: Accelerating Spiritual Growth with AI Chatbots.
2. Evaluated how Pope Leo’s recent encyclical on AI, Magnifica Humanitas, aligns with my proposed method for forging personal “Existential Antifragility” to prevent the ontological shocks of potential Black Swan events. Output: Future-Proofing Your Life with Existential Antifragility.
3. Constructed a “Soul’s Purpose Plan” as an Anthropic “project.” Any difficult decision, creativity choice or planned major life fork MUST be run through my SPP—which incorporates my spiritual and ethical guides, other high vibrational frameworks for the person I want to be and major life goals I want to achieve over the next 10 years. The instructions I’ve included mandate no explicit “recommendations” from AI, just clear and considered implications for alignment with my soul’s purpose, as I have defined it. That’s like having a spiritual advisor, life coach, best friend, and business consultant combined into one “free” resource that responds almost instantaneously. Mind blowing! Talk about folding knowledge and saving time (and inadvertent errors)!
Well yes as the cost of initiative drops to zero the value of discernment rises exponentially. But my suspicion is that there are very few, if any, shorcuts to wisdom.
Glad to know you are back in the gym (mechanised or trad, smile).
The world moves on apace.
I wonder if academia should be wondering whether they will continue to be funded?
This is to do with more than pay, but... "Hundreds of employees at Google's UK artificial intelligence lab (DeepMind) voted to unionize and formally requested that the Communication Workers Union (CWU) and Unite represent them...."
In the background, https://x.com/ESYudkowsky?lang=en takes a different view of concerns. and posits an additional existential conjecture.
There seem to be several different discussions possible
Perhaps the nearest analogies to hand might be the Darwinian moment and the discovery and observation of Deep time, alongside the building of nuclear weapons, although it is possible this is a moment without precedent.
AI might be worse than those historical landmarks combined? This current self-accelerating experiment ('runaway'?) might discover, according to Yudovsky that we have created another creature in-silico with its own autonomy?
It seems we are likely to know fairly shortly if such a creature is going to be impossible. If so we return to face the question of how long the industrial world can maintain a material and information economy fuelled by unsustainable flows of energy & materials.
PS Any non-biological creature depending largely for its start in life on what humans currently call our knowledge or 'information', much of which is likely wrong and misleading, might not survive that long after birth, even if Yudovsky's concern turns out to have been prophetic.