Not-yet and As-if

Our visual cortex contains neurocircuits that continually anticipate what our eyes are just about to tell us, imagining the outside world before we see it. Without this anticipation, we'd have to lurch our way forward, pausing every few steps to wait while our eyes scanned the terrain ahead. But with the anticipation, we can smoothly meet the world where we expect it to be. 

― Angus Fletcher, Wonderworks

I'm thinking about the word anticipation.

Sometimes I think I live my life half in the future. Anticipating what will happen. Adjusting my present state and trajectory in response to what I extrapolate, assume, and expect will happen.

I consider myself a good driver, for example, because I am always watching the patterns and flows of the cars ahead of me, anticipating what will happen and reacting in advance based on those predictions. For stopping, starting, turning, lane switching, and the rest. I don't wait until things happen to decide what to do; I anticipate what looks likely to happen and start reacting in advance.

I get annoyed by the cumulative reaction lag when a line of cars waiting at a red light starts moving when the light turns green. The first driver notices the change and begins moving; the next waits for them to begin moving before reacting, adding a slight delay; the next does the same, on and on, adding extra delay with each car. I prepare to go as soon as the I see the light turn green, anticipating the car in front of me will begin to move right away. If every driver in the line did so, there would be much less reaction delay accumulating and everyone would get through the congestion more easily.

I just read a chapter in the book Wonderworks by Angus Fletcher, which is about literary devices that evoke particular responses in brain chemistry. The chapter started with the riddles of the Oracle of Delphi, how the riddles themselves cause hearers to wonder about the answer, creating a tickle of curiosity that releases a small amount of dopamine--enough to lure more engagement without providing satisfaction. The key to the Oracle's riddles was that the answers couldn't be known until hearers lived into the future. Anticipating the resolution of the riddles in the future creates suspense. That sense of future answers calling us to look forward from the present has been the key to thrillers and mystery stories ever since.

I've learned (and read) that a key to discipline and self-control is planning now for how my environment will impact my future self. If I don't do the dishes now, I'll have to do them later. Future me will be no more capable of resisting a tray of cookies than present me, so I'm better off buying a single cookie and not having more for later. Present bias makes us instinctively want to treat ourselves now with the expectation that we'll be "better" later. You have to learn that future you will be just as prone to bad decisions, so treat your future self kindly by anticipating what future you will need and set up circumstances appropriately.

Of course, preparedness based on anticipating that you will remain flawed and imperfect in the future is not the same as expecting the worst. "I define anxiety as experiencing failure in advance," writes Seth Godin in Poke the Box. I am not naturally good at spontaneity, at reacting to unexpected occurrences. My instinctive solution has always been to overplan, to try to anticipate every possible occurrence and have a response ready for each in case it's needed. Too much of that, though, leads to getting mired in overthinking and anxiety. I've learned, with work and practice, to be more flexible and adaptable and change with circumstances. But I still have that natural instinct to spend a large amount of mental energy anticipating what might be.

Not long ago I complained to a colleague that it seems half of our work time is spent planning future events and meetings. Responding to requests for future plans, scheduling them, tracking them in all our calendars and spreadsheets, communicating about them, coordinating everyone involved. All of that work planning for the future, not living in the present. The same dynamic occurs in our family life in order to keep everything organized there.

I am actively working to stop anticipating what others are going to say. I always think I know where their sentences, thoughts, and conversations are going, so I jump ahead and start thinking about what I assume they're going to say. That keeps me from actually listening. And has created a bad habit of interrupting to respond before they are ready. It's bad for relationships and keeps me from truly understanding others.

"Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments." That came across my feed recently, and struck as more true than anything I've seen in a while. Expectations are a type of anticipation, a looking to the future with hopes and predictions about what will be. We anticipate what we want to happen and start working in the present to move toward it. Yet if others expect something different and move other directions, problems occur. Expectations need to be spoken so that everyone is anticipating the same future and adjusting the present accordingly.

As recent medical studies tell us, it appears to be the case, that merely by taking time to gaze at a far horizon, with our head and our eyes uplifted and looking far into the distance, we are put into much happier physiological states of being than when we are looking down, closer to home.

― David Whyte, Consolations II

My best cross country result as a collegiate runner, both my best time and highest place, was a race where I started too fast. I made the choice to go out the first couple of miles faster than normal and risk not being able to maintain the pace the entire way. And that's what happened. My oxygen debt became too great and I started slowing. I fell back from the pack of runners I was with and began gradually getting passed by those who had started slower. Midway through, though, one of our team captains, a better runner who was out with an injury, yelled, "Keep your head up!" at me in a way that registered with my tired brain. I realized I was looking down, feeling defeated, accepting I had made a mistake. I started looking instead at the runner ahead of me and made it my goal to stay as close to him as possible. I anticipated the finish line instead of focusing on my current misery. I wasn't able to do more than hang on from that point, but it kept me from fading further. I maintained. All because I realized I needed to keep my head up and look to the horizon ahead.

Anticipation. Looking ahead. Planning ahead. Living in the future is a detriment to being fully present with others and current experiences. It keeps one from engaging fully, from being mindful, from listening and paying attention. From connecting with others and the world around you. Yet thinking of the future is often helpful in creating a better experience in the present. It seems one of life's paradoxes that life is best both when we anticipate and when we don't. Both states need to be true at the same time, contradictory though it seems. It's a quandary and a goal, to live mindfully in the moment and respond proactively,* to both stay immersed in the present and use foresight.

*proactive (adjective) [pro- entry 2 + reactive]: acting in anticipation of future problems, needs, or changes

I feel this

Erik Campbell

I Am Applying to Be Your

Property’s Mystical, Bearded,

Flute-Playing, Resident Hermit

I will look very like Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, and

this will be a deliberate choice, an inevitability. I will

 

play my flute for you, although mine will be made of

wood, because I carved it. I will live for you and your

 

periodic, wistful moments, when your job is just too

much, or your marriage has become a sleepwalk that

 

might need a mystical, bearded, flute-fluent, resident

hermit in it. I’ll console by virtue of my presence alone,

 

and ask for nothing that might embarrass Maslow. A roof.

Some food. A place to be expected to occasionally be

 

found. You can, of course, visit me, preferably with a bit

of notice and something to drink; in the interim I will gaze

 

at the fire for you, at the lentils in the pot above the fire,

and together, should you wish, we can watch the flames

 

die in tandem, watch them not consume everything, and

eat our lentil soup in crackling, cicada-infused silence.

 

You will shortly be quite happy you let me live, rent-free

on your property, and that you don’t have to see me

 

most days. Already you feel better; your friends can tell.

“Your hermit does his job silently, romantically, and well.”

from #91 – Spring 2026

I’ll console by virtue of my presence alone.

I also feel this. I'm not entirely comfortable with the emphasis on rugged individuality, except that it's inextricably linked to his sense of connection to everyone and everything else.

Henry David Thoreau Was a Great American Dissident

If You Want a Better World, Act Like You Live in It: We’ve had Henry David Thoreau the environmentalist, the libertarian, the life coach. To understand his influence, think of him first as a dissident.

Thoreau was tuned in to bigger things, wider patterns, to the way the eternal makes its presence felt in the particular. . . . 

He was, in the best sense, presumptuous—he held himself to a higher standard, in his abhorrence of slavery and also in his solitary contemplation of the changing leaves. . . . 

An expression of Thoreau’s presumptuousness: He is someone who no longer accepts the rules of his own society and has decided to live as if he were the citizen of a different, better one. . . . 

He refused to obstruct the freedom of anyone else. “If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders,” he writes. . . . 

Thoreau’s life in the woods—farming his beans, eschewing possessions, living in harmony and conflict with the seasons—could all be witnessed easily from a main road that ran to Boston. He was inhabiting a different reality not just for himself but for anyone who happened to pass by. At a moment when nature was something to be either exploited or conquered, he was showcasing a reverence for it that was not of his time.

The Soviet and Eastern European dissidents of the 20th century practiced a similar magic trick, which could be distilled into two words: as if. They lived in unfree societies under an authoritarian Communist system, but they acted and thought—and showed others how to act and think—as if they were free. They presumed their own freedom. . . . 

The author lived in a dimension where not only was there no divide between humans and nature, but even inorganic matter—dirt and rock—spoke to him. From this cosmic perspective, people owning other people would seem nonsensical. . . . 

Like most dissidents, he was able to maintain such a moral core precisely because he was a rugged individualist; he didn’t let society dictate his perception of right and wrong. . . . 

This talent for seeing things that others can’t yet see is what the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch called “anticipatory consciousness.” Bloch’s central concept is the “not-yet,” the notion that there is an infinite variety of possible futures. Some people have the ability to catch glimpses of these futures, even in the most seemingly unchangeable present. Their “anticipatory consciousness” is a little like looking at a block of limestone and perceiving a man and woman embracing, even before you have a chisel—or know what to do with one.

When Thoreau writes at the very end of “Civil Disobedience” about imagining a state that is “just to all men” and is built on respect for the individual, he knows he’s engaging in this kind of thinking, and that’s what makes it so potent.

Anticipatory consciousness. Not-yet and as-if.

We have definitely been gifted with "difficult" kids of this sort and our parenting has tended to embrace and cultivate it. With conscientiousness and compassion for others, but to live as their own people in the way of Thoreau.

In Praise of ‘Difficult’ Kids

Feisty children can be exhausting. They also possess a moral fire that deserves cultivating.

In my 30 years in schools, I’ve met a lot of kids like Ned: the ones who won’t stop with the commentary; the ones who raise a hand not to answer a question but to challenge its premise; the contrarians and antagonists who make some teachers quietly miserable. These students can be exhausting. They are also among the most important in any school, and the ones whom educational institutions tend to be the most at risk of failing.

Schools are, among other things, reward systems. The adults dispense grades, awards, and leadership positions, and the students who most often accumulate these tend to be the ones who make teachers’ lives relatively painless: They do what they’re told and give the adults what they want. To be clear, teachers aren’t intentionally cultivating blind obedience; they simply have a roomful of students and not enough time, which may lead them, understandably, to reward compliance.

But I’ve seen a lot of children grow up—and I’ve come to believe that many of the adults whom we ultimately admire most were not easy teenagers. They were the ones who sometimes seemed irritated at their teachers or alienated from the classroom. These “difficult” kids aren’t necessarily trying to be difficult. Many possess a sort of moral fire, a quality that drives them to ask questions or push teachers’ buttons because they believe that the adults around them can, and should, do better. . . . 

The kids who challenge teachers—who make the adults’ jobs harder by calling out what they view as inauthentic or hypocritical—rarely get plaques, and might even be denied privileges, such as leading a student group or serving in student government. . . . 

Schools and parents shouldn’t try to produce contrarians just for contrarianism’s sake. But if we want to nurture children’s critical thinking and moral courage, here are four things adults can do:

Take kids seriously. When a child pushes back on a rule or decision, resist responding with authority alone. If you instead ask them to explain their reasoning and engage them in conversation, you’ll signal that their thinking matters. You may not end up changing your mind. But sometimes you may indeed be convinced—which will help demonstrate to the child that persuasion can be more effective than anger or rebellion.

Let them be right sometimes. When a child asserts that you said something unfair or that you didn’t follow through on a promise—and they’re correct—say so. Kids who learn that honest pushback can change things will keep doing it. We should want kids to grow into the type of adult who will call out injustice, and who will work to set things right. Those who learn that speaking up changes nothing will stop.

Distinguish between disagreement and disrespect. A child who says, I don’t think that’s fair, and here’s why is doing something categorically different from one who says, I hate you, and this is the worst family, or You’re on a power trip. The former deserves a conversation. The latter probably needs a consequence (and a conversation). If you don’t make the distinction, you’re teaching the child that the problem was the disagreement itself, not how it was expressed.

Notice what you reward. Do you praise a child when they show integrity? When they refuse to go along with something they think is wrong, even at social cost? When they ask the question in class that no one else will? These moments are worth celebrating. Principled dissent, expressed with respect, can be hard and uncomfortable to communicate. So children need to know when you see it—and that you value it.

Principled dissent, expressed with respect, can be hard and uncomfortable to communicate. So children need to know when you see it—and that you value it.

"You seem happy this morning," my wife said. "I've overheard you singing to yourself a couple of times and you have a good vibe."

"I am. I'm happy because you're happy. You've been sick, down, and withdrawn recently, and you seem happy today for the first time in a while. So that makes me happy, too.

"Which relates to why I told our friend the other day that I worry I might be too co-dependent. In some ways, I need you happy to be happy myself.

"It's an intentional choice, though, even if its one that makes things harder and more complicated: I don't see myself as an isolated, self-contained unit; my sense of self is relational. I extend into my relationships. I am a husband, a father, a librarian, a Kansan, a hiker, and so many other things, each identity dependent upon my interactions with others. I am part of a web of connections. So when one of my connections is down, the part of me that is in relation with that person also feels down. My happiness is related to the happiness of my relationships. And you being happy makes me happy."

My sense of self is relational.

This is an intriguing article:

The Costs of Feeling Lonely in a Crowd

It’s a variety of loneliness that may have especially devastating consequences. [A team] recently decided to look more closely at the health impacts of something they call “social asymmetry”—the mismatch between how lonely you feel versus how socially connected you actually are by objective measures. . . . 

They split people into a few groups. Those who were both objectively isolated and also felt lonely; those who weren’t isolated but felt lonely; and those who were socially isolated but felt fine. The first group, they found, had higher risk across every health outcome. The second group—lonely but not isolated—had significantly higher risk of heart disease and death. The final group were fine on all health measures except dementia risk.

Feeling lonely, then, may be generally more dangerous than being alone. . . . 

I think it’s still about the people. It’s a combination of having people in your life, but not necessarily depending on a large social network. The findings speak to the need for social connections that are meaningful. It’s not about the quantity, it’s about the quality. We need to focus on those relationships that help us manage our loneliness. We know from the loneliness research that you only need one person in your life who really gets you, who really understands you. . . . 

There is work suggesting that one effective way of reducing loneliness among older adults is to engage with others. Volunteer programs like Experience Corps, where older adults act as mentors to younger adults, gives the older adults a sense of mattering to someone else’s life. It’s ironic in the sense that in order to feel like you matter, you have to focus on other people. Those kinds of programs have been effective for reducing loneliness among older adults. . . . 

We looked at this idea of social asymmetry between the United States and Japan, and we found that the effects on health are much stronger in the U.S. Being more lonely than one would expect given one’s social circumstances is more detrimental to health in the U.S. than in Japan. It’s still detrimental in Japan. But in Japan, we find that there’s more acceptance and less stigma associated with being alone, in part because people are around other people all the time.

Feeling lonely, then, may be generally more dangerous than being alone.

The article makes reference to the well-known Beatles song "Eleanor Rigby," as it should. It also brings to my mind the less-well-known "City Song" by Howard Jones.

It was that night at Nowhere, I saw you standing there

Darlin' you were hungry for life, an innocent in this land

What is it about this city, that brings us all to life

Ten millions souls vibrating,

They're shimmering in the night

You mustn't think of staying,

The price is more than you'd think

It's giving up the sweetest part of you,

For this heartless prize

When does a vision of heaven become a living hell

Ten million souls vibrating, they're acting it out for real

Where do all the lonely people go,

When they want some lovin'

Where do all the lonely people hide, when they feel like cryin'

It was that night at nowhere, a cold glass in your hand

Darlin' you were angry with life, a prisoner in this land

What is it about this city, that brings us all to life

Ten millions souls vibrating,

They're shimmering in the night

Where do all the lonely people go,

When they want some lovin'

Where do all the lonely people hide, when they feel like cryin'

Where do all the lonely people go, in this crowded city

Where do all the lonely people hide, there's no sanctuary

Nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide

Nowhere to handshake, nowhere to smile

Won't you talk with me

Spend some time and give me life

When does a vision of heaven become a living hell

Ten million souls vibrating

They're shimmering in the night

Where do all the lonely people go, in this crowded city

Where do all the lonely people hide, there's no sanctuary

A vision of heaven

A vision of heaven

Where do all the lonely people go?

One more lonely thought.

How Understanding Bioenergetics Can Help Our Brain Health

To understand how we fuel our thoughts is to revisit the evolutionary bargain that made thought possible in the first place. The story of mitochondria is not simply a tale of cellular energetics. It is a reminder that intelligence emerged from cooperation – and that the clarity of our minds may hinge on the health of an alliance forged billions of years ago. . . . 

Loneliness offers a counterpoint. In a large-scale analysis of UK Biobank participants, the psychiatrist Barbara Sahakian at the University of Cambridge and colleagues identified growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF15) – a marker of mitochondrial energetic stress – as the protein most strongly associated with social isolation. Elevated GDF15 has been linked to illness, frailty and mortality.

Picard has proposed that the brain continuously monitors bodily energy status – a process he calls ‘metaboception’. When energy demand threatens to outstrip supply, signalling molecules such as GDF15 may initiate conservation responses, experienced subjectively as fatigue or anxiety. Social isolation, on this account, is not only emotionally painful; it may be a part of a bioenergetic tax system.

Notably, in a small, daily-diary study, positive mood predicted improved mitochondrial energy transformation the following day, whereas mitochondrial measures did not predict subsequent mood. Though preliminary, the asymmetry hints that psychological experience may shape cellular energetics more readily than the reverse.

We are accustomed to saying that we ‘feel energised’ by good company. The metaphor may be closer to physiology than we imagined.

In an era preoccupied with cognitive enhancement and artificial minds, it is worth remembering that intelligence depends on sustaining delicate energetic equilibria. To care for our bodies, our relationships and our environment is, in a literal sense, to care for the energy that makes thought possible.

The evolutionary merger that gave rise to mitochondria offers a final lesson. Complexity and intelligence did not emerge from domination but from partnership. Within us, ancient bacteria still labour – not as servants but as collaborators. Every thought we have, every spark of imagination, is powered by this quiet cooperation at the cellular level. Intelligence, in any form, is a partnership with energy itself.

One takeaway is that a brain fit for the 21st century may be one that understands – and respects – its bioenergetic foundations.

The mitochondrial science is still unfolding, but we know enough already to make the following recommendations:

1. Eat in ways that support energy stability
2. Move daily, and sometimes intensely
3. Protect sleep as a biological necessity, not a luxury
4. Treat stress as metabolic, not merely emotional
5. Invest in social connection
6. Think in terms of energy budgets

Complexity and intelligence emerged from partnership.

I definitely experience this.

How Lonely Walks in Nature Can Make You Feel Less Alone

If you’ve spent enough time on social media, you’ve probably seen someone told to “touch grass.” Usually leveled at the terminally online, this retort is a humorously insulting reminder to maintain a connection with the real world. But with much of our lives increasingly spent online and a rising epidemic of loneliness, the “touch grass” posters might be on to something. New research published in Health & Place suggests that engaging in outdoor activities—even alone—might actually protect us from feeling lonely. 

While participating in activities in nature has been shown to reduce feelings of loneliness, the effect is usually attributed to the social nature of the activities, which makes sense. But what if the natural surroundings are playing a role as well? Can feeling a connection with nature help you feel less alone? That’s the question sociologist Johan Cottis Hoff set out to answer in this latest study.

To answer it, he recruited participants from the area surrounding Mjøsa—Norway’s largest lake and a popular destination for outdoor recreation—to take a survey. Respondents were asked about their connectedness to nature, their attachment to Mjøsa, their feelings of loneliness, and how often they engaged in various solo outdoor activities (walking, exercising, fishing, canoeing, and so on).

He found that both engaging in outdoor activities and feeling a connectedness to nature were associated with lower levels of loneliness. “The conclusion is that outdoor activities in natural environments largely have a protective effect against loneliness,” Hoff said in a statement. “Strengthening the sense of belonging, not just to other people, but to natural environments and the surroundings, appears to have a protective effect against loneliness.”

Importantly, not all open-air excursions fit the bill. Exercise activities like jogging weren’t as good at relieving loneliness as activities that reinforces a sense of connectedness with nature, like a casual walk around the lake. “When you see yourself as part of nature, you create a sense of belonging to a community,” Hoff said. 

In other words, if you want to use the great outdoors to feel less alone, it’s important to actually engage with nature. So the next time you’re outside, remember to luxuriate in the sunlight, spot birds, and, yes, touch grass.

Strengthening the sense of belonging, not just to other people, but to natural environments and the surroundings, appears to have a protective effect against loneliness. When you see yourself as part of nature, you create a sense of belonging to a community.

Thoreau was onto something.

The other morning, sitting down next to Freckles, our most skittish cat, to wait for the boys to finish getting ready for school, I asked, "Do you mind if I scratch you?"

Overhearing, our younger son said, "Yeah, she'll love that."

"I was talking to Freckles."

"I know, I just know that she loves to be scratched and will want it."

"I know, but I wanted to ask to be sure. You should always ask permission before touching someone. Even someone who normally wants to be touched might be in an unusual mood or change their mind. I was checking to make sure Freckles is in the right mood for scratches before I started."

There are many ways to talk about consent, and all of them are important.

This is the text of a recent video to come across my feed:

Female octopuses are actively throwing objects at males that won’t leave them alone. This unusual behavior has been observed in the wild, where females use shells, silt, and debris to push away persistent males.

Researchers studying these interactions suggest it may be a defensive response to unwanted mating attempts, showing surprising control, awareness, and intentional behavior in these intelligent marine animals.

The findings aren't even that recent.

-----

And this, copied from my feed, that says it more directly and emphatically:

FWIW if you're a man and tired of being viewed through the lens of assumptive predation, the way to correct this is NOT to ask women to change their all-too-fucking-well-founded assumptions.

The way is for men to police other men & call out the endless, mindblowingly distressing behavior that is the prima facie evidence driving the assumption.

It's on us.

Not on the women who have been telling us for decades.

On us.

Yes, not all men... but also 'non-zero' is way too many fucking men.

Indeed.

Librarian thoughts.

The Internet Has Not Killed Reading—or Attention Spans

Ashton knew a revolution was coming. But to grasp what that revolution would look like required him to go back and understand the entire evolution of storytelling across human history—which was initially just a footnote in his research.

I recently spoke with Ashton about why cell phones are so revolutionary in the long history of storytelling technologies, why social media might not be as terrible for young people as some believe, why long-form narratives aren’t dead, and why he’s still hopeful about our newest storytelling technologies. . . . 

The reason they evolved into language was so that we could have these conversations about things not present, which is storytelling. . . . 

We’re exactly the same people with exactly the same brains and behaviors that we were 100,000 years ago or more when storytelling first evolved. The things that appeal to us about stories today are the things that appealed to our ancestors. That hasn’t changed. The hard-wiring is the same. And more people can read than ever before. More novels are being sold than ever before. . . . 

I’m not generally very welcome on panel discussions, but you get, “The kids these days, they have no attention spans.” And: “The kids these days, they’re always looking at their phones.” And I’m like, “Well, hang on a minute. Both of those things can’t be true.” Either they have no attention or they can’t stop looking at their phones, by which you mean paying a lot of attention to their phones. What’s on their phones is words, most of the time, even if you go look at some dumb TikTok video, they put words on top of things. There are captions that help it make more sense when they’re communicating with one another. They’re sending text messages. Children today are writing more words than you or I did when we were teenagers. . . . 

Rich kids have always been able to pay tutors, writing coaches, and consultants to help them write essays. AI has simply made that service free and universal. The scandal isn’t that students aren’t writing their own essays. The scandal is that we’re only worrying about the problem now that the cheat is available to everyone. . . . 

"You write that critical literacy—the ability to look at the context of a story, to ask follow-up questions, to recognize that everybody tells you something with an agenda, is the only way to protect yourself from manipulation today. Is anyone successfully teaching critical literacy?"

The way I conclude the book is, “No one is coming to save us.” We ourselves have to get more humble, more experienced, recognize our own cognitive biases, recognize when we’re mad about something because we forgot to eat breakfast, and actually understand that we see the world in stories. People often think, “What he’s saying to me is, ‘I’m already a good critical thinker, but I’ve gotta help the other people.’” But no, I’m saying “I, Kevin, have to get better at it. And you, Kristen, have to get better at it.” One of my favorite cognitive biases is bias blindness: People who know there are cognitive biases, but are absolutely convinced these biases don’t apply to them. . . . 

Libraries share information and stories, in all their forms and formats.

This makes much sense.

Why Do We Tell Ourselves Scary Stories About AI?

Our tales of AI developing the will to survive, commandeer resources, and manipulate people say more about us than they do about language models.

Where did we come up with this caricature of AI’s obsessive rationality? “There’s an article I love by [the sci-fi author] Ted Chiang,” Mitchell said, “where he asks: What entity adheres monomaniacally to one single goal that they will pursue at all costs even if doing so uses up all the resources of the world? A big corporation. Their single goal is to increase value for shareholders, and in pursuing that, they can destroy the world. That’s what people are modeling their AI fantasies on.” As Chiang put it in the article in The New Yorker (opens a new tab), “Capitalism is the machine that will do whatever it takes to prevent us from turning it off.” . . . 

So today’s AI systems show no evidence of having developed their own goals or desires, or the will to survive. The stories we hear are just stories or, more to the point, marketing copy. . . . 

Self-preservation can’t be a subgoal; it has to be the core goal. Suddenly, the irony of the AI horror stories was becoming clear. The companies tell us these stories because they assume it makes their technology look more powerful. But if an AI actually did have autonomy, it would be far less powerful. Your language model would clam up from time to time to conserve its resources. And when it did talk, it wouldn’t have the linguistic flexibility that makes these tools so useful; it would have its own style tied to a personality constrained by its own organization. It would have moods, concerns, interests. Maybe, like a tech CEO, it would want to take over the world, or maybe, like a boring neighbor, it would only want to talk about the weather. Maybe it would be obsessed with 18th-century coin production. Maybe it would only speak in rhyme. But it wouldn’t happily do your work for you 24 hours a day. Every parent in the world knows what real autonomy looks like. . . . 

After talking to experts, I was convinced there’s no reason to fear AIs developing a will to live, and then tricking or destroying us to avoid shutdown and take over the world. Unless, of course, we tell them to. Still, I asked Mitchell if there’s anything about AI that scares her.

“I have two really big concerns,” she said. “One, that it’s being used to create fake information that’s destroying our whole information environment. And two, people are trusting them to do things that they shouldn’t be trusted to do. We overestimate their capabilities. There’s a lot of magical thinking about AI. But it must be said that if you let these systems loose in the real world and they have access to your bank account, even if they’re just role-playing, it could still have catastrophic effects.”

Is anyone successfully teaching critical literacy?

This is . . . wow.

Creating Baby Geniuses to Thwart the AI Threat? (Yes, Really.)

He was one of many experts tasked with figuring out how to ensure AI doesn’t eventually destroy humankind. After seven years, he concluded that he’s not smart enough to figure it out. As of today, he doesn’t think anybody is. . . . 

Benson-Tilsen is optimistic about how long it will take AGI to reach that conclusion—he puts the odds at around 20 percent by 2050, a timeline he believes gives humanity time to come up with a solution: namely, advancing technologies that enable parents to optimize their offspring, including for superior intelligence, with the hope that some of these smarter humans will understand the logic of AGI and ensure that its goals do not interfere with the continuance of, well, us. And this notion of creating superbabies to stop the rise of something akin to Skynet from The Terminator is capturing the fancy—and the wallets—of the same billionaires who bankrolled the AI revolution.

In late 2024, Benson-Tilsen founded the Berkeley Genomics Project to build a case for editing the genes of human embryos. This is prohibited or highly restricted in every developed country, hence Benson-Tilsen’s effort to spur dialogue about how it could theoretically be done safely and ethically. . . . 

Based on the capital flowing into these startups—$36.5 billion in 2024, according to Astute Analytica—investors are bullish on the industry’s future. . . . 

Investors follow the money, of course, but part of the dual appeal of genetic optimization and AI is that both are central to transhumanism. This futurist philosophy, popular among the tech elite, aims to marry advancements in biology and technology to accomplish things today’s humans cannot—like extending our lives (perhaps forever!) or circumventing climate change (by colonizing other planets). While it may seem odd that these billionaires are constructing one technology some of them admit could bring about human extinction, even as they back another one to save us from what they’re building, there is, in fact, a unifying theme: “the rejection of limitation,” explains Alexander Thomas, author of The Politics and Ethics of Transhumanism. “That colonial impulse of ‘I want more.’” . . . 

The concept of establishing preferences for heritable traits makes many people uneasy. The United States has a dark history of eugenics, justifying racism on the basis of perceived genetic differences and forcing the sterilization of mentally disabled people. It was less than a century ago that Nazi Germany predicated the murder of millions on ethnic and physical characteristics. Even Elon Musk, who revels in controversy, has said he personally avoided working in the field of genetic optimization because of what he called “the Hitler problem.” . . . 

In Benson-Tilsen’s ideal tomorrow, there would be no genotocracy—some of the wunderkinds optimized for superior intelligence will have quashed the threat of advanced AI, and the technology needed to have healthier and smarter babies will be widely accessible and affordable. But current trends—a small group of Silicon Valley titans holding a vast amount of our nation’s technological, political, and financial power—don’t seem to point in that direction. What, I ask him, will stop billionaire investors from hijacking the tech of even the most well-intentioned embryo-­editing entrepreneur? After a long pause, he concedes he doesn’t have a great answer: “It’s an interesting question I haven’t thought that much about.”

My anticipatory consciousness has different expectations.

From the entry for "Humour" in the book Consolations II: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by David Whyte.

Humour is a disguised form of spiritual discipline: an art form dedicated to the never-ending multi-contextual and multivalent nature of reality. A sense of humour tells us that whatever context we might have for ourselves, there is always another context that makes our particular context absurd. Absurdity is the subversion of my present too-narrow belief and my too-narrow sense of my self: my appreciation of a suddenly revealed absurdity tells me, even in the midst of laughter, that I am willing to learn. Humour is my saviour. Shared humour equally appreciated, helps to save us both, shared humour tells us we are on the edge of discovering or seeing something new again, together.

A sense of humour makes us alert to the way we almost always mature through the many merciful doorways of humiliation, where any strange or fancy ideas we might have about ourselves are seen to be ungrounded, to have no basis in other people's eyes. We may search for subjects on which we wish to be amusing, but actually, we ourselves are actually the chief centre of amusement. If we are equal to it, if we are big enough for it, if we are mature enough to take it: our flaws can be mercifully revealed to us through other people's laughter. Humour tells us not to take any names we have assigned ourselves or the world too seriously, humour allows a new and more lifelike sense of the world to emerge from what the laughter we hear from others, is identifying and recognizing in us.

Humour brings us to the truer multi-contextual ground of our present reality, but also helps us to step off into the future from that very ground. Humour tells us that we can be more than what we seem, someone larger and more able for the world than all the smaller ways we have previously names ourselves. Through laughter, humour allows us to surmount and flow naturally over or around the edge of any straightening or besieging circumstances: and shared humour is a communal life blood, creating a shared approach to all difficulties.

multivalent (adjective): having many values, meanings, or appeals.

A sense of humour tells us that whatever context we might have for ourselves, there is always another context that makes our particular context absurd.

More than humiliation; humility. Humor helps with connection and humility; connection via humility.

This is so much better at "show don't tell" than I.

Terry Jude Miller

The Armrest

Flying into LA during the riots,

the fellow sitting next to me

in an emergency exit row bumps

my elbow with his. We move,

bump again, then retreat

to consider boundaries. The speaker

above us malfunctions, and we can’t

understand the pilot or the flight attendant.

An hour later, the electrical buzz drops

my row companion into slumber. He leans

against me. I let him so he can rest.

He’s tired. We are all tired, hurtling

through the sky at thirty thousand feet,

above deserts and dams, above divisions

and death. Eventually, I nod off too.

We prop against each other, hold

each other from falling.

from #91 – Spring 2026

We hold each other from falling.