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Try Our Best

I must admit, I’ve been feeling a little doomy recently.

Like everybody else, I have no idea what is about to happen. But more importantly, I’ll admit that I have no idea what is going on either. But I do know how I feel, and in turn, I know how those feelings make me act. That has to count for something.

At the time of writing, we are about thirty hours from finding out whether the current global settlement is still to be or not. Whilst I am sleeping; the mad king of an unravelling empire will decide if he steps another rung up the escalation ladder. If he does, there’s no way back down. When I wake up on Tuesday morning, the decision will have been made. The direction of our lives; for the rest of our lives; will be set either way.

It seems strange to think that the story of my own individual, personal problems right now is wrapped up in geopolitical and world historical events. But of course they are. They always have been. It’s just that at certain moments, the seam between the two becomes a bit more visible.

I’ve written before that when things become unreadable, one must learn how to feel. Not because feeling offers certainty, but because certainty is unavailable. Feeling is not a theory of history, it’s not analysis. But it is one way of orienting oneself inside of the confusion. One way of staying human when the world becomes unreal.

The post-Covid world is still hurtling towards us along the tunnel; close enough now to make out the shape of the thing. I have been shocked by the tone and the reporting in the media here in the UK about what that thing is. As someone who was a teenager when the planes hit the towers, another time when the seam was a bit more visible. I’ve watched the current atmosphere gathering over the whole of my adult life. The most coherent story that the people who gathered those clouds are telling us about the future (and the present) has slipped away from them, and towards the stories people have been telling themselves for a while.

Global pandemics, oil wars, crack down on freedoms over terrorism, useless politicians; both national and international, institutions so ideologically captured they can no longer perceive that the story is a dream. Fires and floods, climate, drone war, smartphones, ubiquitous solar, battery storage. The list goes on. None of this is especially shocking or surprising. This is the texture of the near future I grew up with. The Cyberpunk weather forecast the culture wrote for itself.

Meanwhile, for the last decade the hologram has continued to force-feed culture stories of superheroes and exceptional individuals coming to save the day. But out here in the real world, nobody is coming. The politicians and the government; are not here for us, and are not particularly interested in being here either. No rational and pragmatic decisions are being made, and haven’t been since about 2008.

That, I think, is part of the deeper horror I feel. Not simply that things are bad, but that the inherited forms of modernity no longer seem capable of even recognising the nature of the moment they, and by extension we, are in.

The liberal nation-state is, among other things, the story it tells about itself. A social technology held together by newspapers, mass literacy, and the shared imaginary of ‘the nation’, a more or less hegemonic information environment. And has been for four hundred years, give or take. But the conditions that made that story possible have been eroded, if not blasted apart, by the information age. The interfaces have changed, and that has changed the psychic weather. The idea of “the public” has changed too. The old settlement is unwinding either way.

I’m not sure how long that unwinding is going to take. Five years, maybe? Maybe more. But it seems impossible to believe, standing where we are, that the current arrangement can meaningfully hold.

And yet, despite all this, in the main I remain optimistic about the medium term. Not because I think things will resolve cleanly, and not because I think we are on the verge of some redemptive turn, but because history does not stop. New habits, new forms of life, new ways of organising and being together always emerge. The problem is that there is an enormous amount of struggle between here and there.

Everything depends on the extent to which those in power can accept that things are unwinding. Or whether they cling on while the gyre circulates ever faster and faster. Full of velocity and friction. A system overshooting itself.

For those us born in the 1980’s and after; the so called digital natives and citizens of the internet, culture and personalities formed inside one world, are now being forced to build in another. The next ten years, for families and neighbours and towns, and whole countries, things are going to be extremely difficult. I’m not convinced much of the post 2008 condition; culturally, politically, is going to be much use.

In some ways, the last 23 days have been a catalyst for the small gestures that make a difference to me; spring cleaning and decluttering, emptying drawers, wiping down surfaces, processing accumulated stacks of paper, and tidying. Sorting and clearing out. A feathering of the nest, driven by the desire to put one’s house in order.

So what is one supposed to do? Not much, apart from tidying ones room? Nothing can really be done at the level or scale of the problem, or in any kind of register that the people still telling old stories demand.

But one can make habitat. One can clear a desk, sort the papers, wipe the surfaces, and make room. One can refuse the false drama of omniscience. One can resist being ridden by the worst moods of the machine. One can learn how to feel. One can pay attention to family, neighbours, friends, and the real texture of ordinary life.

We need to try our best.

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Marco had some really nice things to say about his appearance on the show, his blog is fantastic check it out.

Last week I had a lot of fun being interviewed by Jay Springett of Experience.Computer. Jay runs a truly unique podcast, focused specifically on an activity that I feel people should do and share more: “curious introspection”, or the careful examination of what your consciousness and perception are like and feel like from the inside. I care about it so much that I maintain a living list of my and others’ introspective descriptions.

The moment you start reading/listening to this kind of mental spelunking you realize how deep, varied, and mysterious it all is. We (including our scientists) have only scratched the surface in our understanding of these matters.

On The Blog

Huge week for new posts this week. Put out about 15k worth of words on the blog this week over 4 posts. It’s all indexed and linked from the post below. basically summarising the last 5 years of thinking; both independently and professionally, about software environments and tecno-social systems as worlds.

When a language model is given tools and set to work on a task, it wakes up inside a world.

These three essays are about what the shape of that world might be, and why it matters more than most people building agents currently assume.

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Put out experience.computer
• Edited and posted the Worlds posts above
• Had a long and very cool call with Japan about bunraku pupperty, ai agents, hatsune miku and the state of Vtubers/virtual idols in 2026.
• Started sorting out ‘my financial affairs’ lol such a long job. Want to get my tax return done super early.

Terminal Access

This is a very good essay directly tackling the “Stochastic Parrot” framing of LLMs, and how almost all the claims in the original paper were false even at the time of writing. It’s a must read, or article to send to the people in your life who are still clinging to this understanding.

Perhaps the most influential single paper on the public perception of LLMs is On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?. It is, however, a bit of a mash-up, and credibly seems like it should have been at least two papers. One of those papers raises many valid concerns about the ethical implications and impacts of AI training and use. Another makes the claim in the title, that an LLM is a “stochastic parrot” operating “without any reference to meaning.”

That core claim is either irrelevant or completely wrong in every detail, both in how it is commonly understood and in its technical assertions. It hamstrings AI ethics as a field, providing a veneer of technical justification for ignoring many problems.

Reading

I’m currently reading Impromptu Man: J.L. Moreno and the Origins of Psychodrama, Encounter Culture, and the Social Network by Jonathan D. Moreno. And when I find a good spot to and i’m feeling more sleepy, i’m switching over to The Heart of Prayer by Rupert Spira. It’s giving me weird dreams.

I hope to finish some of these books before Tchaikovsky’s Children of Strife drops in audiobook next week.

Funkot (Genre)

No specific track to recommend this week, as I’ve just been listening to hours and hours of the Indonesian genre: Funkot. It’s basically 190-220bpm house music thats been made with the default sound banks found on on Yamaha and Casio keyboards.

And on to of that… people… line dance to it?

Everything about this is amazing.

Remember Kids:

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë