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.

I Could Never Be a Delivery Driver

Today one of the boys was ready for school before the other, and in an astounding twist he actually went outside to wait as I asked instead of hanging around to distract his brother. When we joined him a few minutes later, he was posing in front of the car, looking at his reflection clarified by the fresh morning light. He was above the rear tire, near the small triangular window, where there were many angles and curves to create interesting distortions. He was laughing at the way his face and arms were twisted and stretched.

"Come look at me!" he said.

I started to say, "We won't be able to see exactly what you see, because to do that we need to have our eyes where your eyes are. If you move to let us look, your reflection will move with you. If we look from near you, our different perspective will change everything." I started to say that, but didn't need to.

His brother switched places with him. "Whoa, I have three sets of eyes."

"No, you're not looking from the right spot. I saw . . . "

A moment later when we were in the car, I told them they had just embodied a wonderful metaphor for interpersonal interactions. You can never see exactly what another person sees because you will always be in a different location, and that distinct perspective means you will see things differently. Even when you try to look from where they're looking so you can see what they see, it is difficult to get exactly the same position and perspective.

A bit later, after I had dropped them at school and was driving to work, another interesting thought struck me. I was on a busy, main road divided into five lanes: one in each direction for through traffic, a middle turning lane between them, and two generously spaced bike lanes at the edges. There was a car pulled to the side of the road where it shouldn't have been, blocking the bike lane and bordering the driving lane too closely. Someone was walking from the nearest house to the driver's door. I saw from his clothes he had just dropped an Amazon package, and I thought, "I could never work as a delivery driver."

I am annoyed every time I see a delivery vehicle pulled to the side of a road. Annoyed, because they are almost always stopped in such a way that they impede the flow of traffic. It seems the authorities--and we as a society--have decided it is permissible for delivery drivers to put their own convenience ahead of the general welfare. We value speed, efficiency, comfort and consumption so much we allow them to be exempt from traffic laws. I am annoyed not because it slows me down personally and not on principle that rules are being broken, I am annoyed because I see those rules as guidelines for successfully interacting with each other. They help us enact awareness of others and of our impact on them. We agree on these traffic laws, agree to follow them, because they help us be considerate and cooperative. So when delivery vehicles don't follow those rules, when they single out their own needs ahead of the common good, they are opting out of consideration and cooperation.

That's not the kind of person I want to be, so that's a job I could never work.

The thought brings to mind an interaction I had last week with a library patron. It was a mom wanting help finding books that would appeal to her teen daughters yet also not have content that would conflict with their family's values. It's a common issue that almost all parents struggle with in some way. I was called in to help. We sat down together to clarify what they were looking for and I showed her tools and search strategies to help them find books that would work. It was a good interaction that I would consider a success; I believe she went away satisfied with what she'd learned and happy with my patron service.

Though she had one prominent thought intermingled with her satisfaction throughout the interaction, and it remained as a frustration at the end: "Why can't this be easier?" She was frustrated that the types of books she was looking for are lumped in with all the rest of the fiction. That she had to cross-reference with lists, reviews, parent advisory websites, and similar to gain insight into the contents of books and their appropriateness to her needs. To be clear, she didn't want a specific genre or a topic that would be contained in a subject heading--she was concerned with the nature of the stories, with how they were told--so there is no easy way to do a catch-all search for what she was after. It's not hard to find what she wanted, it's just not a simple, one-step process. It takes a bit of time and effort.

"I don't understand why you can't just pull these books out and have them on different shelves as a separate category." She said a version of that quite a few times. "It shouldn't have to be this hard." I assured her it is simply the process of finding books of any nature, that it is the same for everyone. If you're looking for something specific, you have to do the work of looking for it regardless of what that "something" is. We have all sorts of books that appeal to many different types of people, all living side-by-side on the shelves, and it's always a process to find the right sort of book for each type of person. And it doesn't work well to try to have special sections because no book categorizes cleanly and clearly and because each reader brings a unique mix of interests and needs. Books cross genre and topic boundaries; people individually define genres and topics. Still, even at the end, "It would be so much easier if you just pulled out the ones I want and created a special section."

I walked away from the interaction with two thoughts. First, she wanted the world to cater to her and her needs. She wanted everything adjusted to suit her so that she didn't have to adjust to situations and surroundings. She wanted to single out her own needs ahead of the common good, to opt out of consideration and cooperation.

Second, I felt that the discussion we'd just had was a great metaphor for living in a pluralistic, democratic society. We don't--or at least shouldn't--live our lives in special sections, only interacting with those who are the same. We have too much diversity for that. Just like books, people don't categorize cleanly and clearly; we each have a unique mix of identities, experiences, interests, and needs. And we're all interfiled, all mixed together. We don't (shouldn't) cater to one particular type or group, and if you want to find people you resonate with then you have to dive in and do a bit of searching with different strategies and tools. And that's the way it should be, with no particular type privileged above the rest. That's what it means to value diversity and equality.

I'm still pondering the metaphorical possibilities hinted at in this essay. Why everything is gray.

How the Modern World Turned Gray (and Why Color May Be Coming Back)

America is anything but monochrome. It contains multitudes of cultures, climates, and landscapes, and people who disagree, loudly and publicly, about nearly everything. So why, when Americans need a tin of house paint, do they so often reach for the neutral shelf? Why does the average house in this great and varied nation look like it’s been dipped in a vat of Resigned Indifference®? . . . 

The shift was slow but steady, and its cumulative effect was massive. By the late 20th century, grayscale had colonized and dominated a wide range of object categories. To a large extent, this desaturation is a byproduct of mass production. Industrial manufacturing favors repeatability. Neutral tones are easier to standardize, less likely to clash, and more globally marketable than a particular shade of tangerine, which may sell brilliantly in Seville but offend everyone in Seoul. . . . 

The logic behind this near-total surrender is once again financial. Car paint production is expensive, and unusual colors reduce the chance that a vehicle will be sold. So manufacturers rationalize their palettes to a dozen safe tones per model, max. Large institutional buyers — rental companies, fleet operators — reinforce that conservative streak, because they too must eventually bulk-sell whatever they bulk-buy. The result? A self-reinforcing cycle of blandness.

A similar calculus applies to houses and house paints. As any estate agent will tell you, neutral colors maximize the resale value of your house because they offend the fewest buyers. There may well be a future home owner out there who shares your passion for aubergine — but betting on them being in the market precisely when you’re selling is a pretty big gamble, and with one of the most expensive assets you’re ever likely to own.

And so the houses of America, and much of the world, are painted in Agreeable Gray, Mindful Gray, Accessible Beige, and their many relatives from the neutral shelf. Note what these names actually signal: not This is who I am, but Please, don’t mind me. Agreeable Gray — the top choice in Alabama, Arizona, and the Carolinas — doesn’t so much describe a color as a social posture. . . . 

So this is where practicality, resale values, and modernist ideology have gotten us: to a material world that is so drained of color that it might depress the hell out of even Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier.

Interestingly, studies suggest there’s something to that colloquial association between gray and depression. Researchers at the University of Manchester tested healthy volunteers, people with anxiety, and people with depression, asking each to choose a color that represents their current mood. Yellow dominated among healthy subjects. Among both anxious and depressed participants, gray monopolized the top spots — with participants describing it as representing “a dark state of mind, a colorless and monotonous life, gloom, misery or a disinterest in life.” The researchers cited previous studies that found depressed people tend to describe life as “monochromatic” or as having “lost its color.”

Desaturation is a byproduct of mass production.

Can a mass of people be desaturated?

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

Guilt is not something we need to get over, guilt is where we need to go.

Guilt is the first doorway to our foundational vulnerability and eventually our compassion, where we stand in trepidation at our ability to hurt others, and always in that ability, afraid therefore, that we are not worthy to enter and not worthy of understanding or being understood. . . . 

In guilt is the unrecognized, instinctual, ultimate first step to self-compassion, refusing to let us proceed whole-heartedly, and with a free heart, without including everything and everyone in our understanding.

I alluded to privilege above, and people made aware of their privilege often feel guilt. Getting mired in guilt, resenting it, is a bad thing. But it's the first step in accepting responsibility and making change. Guilt is where we need to go.

A meme recently crossed my feed. It didn't land with me entirely and I'm not sure I endorse the entire message, but I was particularly struck by theological statement, the idea of trying to get people into heaven rather than heaven into people.

A fundamental flaw of the modern church is its primary goal to get people into heaven rather than heaven into people, thereby creating a superficial religious culture that believe they will be saved after death, but do not truly abide by the divine guidance embodied by the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

A good fifteen years ago I wrote here about my theology being focused on the present much more than future. The afterlife is a source of hope for those whose lives know only despair, that even if they can't imagine their lives ever improving they have something more to keep them moving; but it was never supposed to be about just waiting contently or resignedly for a reward. The Lord's Prayer includes the plea for everything to be on earth as it is in heaven. The goal is not to wait for heaven but to try to actualize it as much as possible here and now. We should do things that bring perfect relationships into the present.

This thought weaves its way into many of my posts--the one I link to above is merely a representative sample. But I don't believe I've ever encountered (or used) that particular turn of phrase before: the goal is to get heaven into people. I like it.

A couple of quick quotes from books I just read.

Miga was itchy in her brain.

It was the worst kind of itch--the kind you can't scratch and yet everything seems to irritate it further.

― Rachel Hartman, Among Ghosts

I can relate to the feeling of having an itchy brain.

Stories are not a simple recounting of events. They are not a thorough reporting of moments over a given period of time. Stories are the crafted representation of events that are related in such a way to demonstrate change over time in the life of the teller.

― Matthew Dicks, Storyworthy

Stories demonstrate change over time.

I was born in the latter part of 1971. I too was class of '89. I was playing D&D in 1983. My spouse and I finally just finished watching all of Stranger Things. And I still regret selling my Deities & Demigods book.

We watched the show when it was new along with everyone else, but for some reason got away from it in the middle of season 3 and never got back. So recently we restarted the series and watched it to the end, finishing it the other night.

"The main Stranger Things characters (Mike, Will, Lucas, Dustin, Eleven, and Max) were mostly born in 1971, making them 12 years old during the season 1 events in November 1983."

I've always felt strongly connected to the group because of our similarities and shared experiences. The same pop culture. My small town was in Kansas instead of Indiana, but similar. I was also mocked for playing D&D and having nerdy inclinations.

I have always appreciated how much mythology I learned from reading the game's manual for gods and god-like figures, Deities & Demigods. Many pantheons from cultures and mythologies around the world. Greek, Roman, Norse, Egyptian gods and many others. When I was finishing college I decided for a bit to try to sell some of the stuff from the boxes I was having to lug around every time I moved, and I got rid of that book. I regretted it pretty quickly and have ever since. Particularly that night, because the book also included the stats, information, and story of Vecna.

I do still have the Ravenloft  book featuring the vampire Strahd, which is the campaign the group is finishing in their final scene.

And many years later, as an adult librarian, I found a new group of friends to play D&D with. We had a years-long campaign. My character was Degolar the bard, who specialized in sorcerer-like magic at higher levels. One of his proudest moments near the end was when he freed a party member whose brain had been dominated by a mind flayer. Degolar used the charm magic of his music to dominate his teammate even more effectively than the baddie. He managed to out-flay the flayer.

This article fascinates me. And resonates. I love experiencing a flow state, and I seem to find that most often when I am creating, when I'm writing or crafting. I've also written many times that hiking and trail running are my favorite forms of meditation. My mind is most at ease (least itchy) when my body is in motion.

How a Small Shop in Kyoto Connects Mastery with Meditation

Today, meditation is something we do outside of work. We download apps. We schedule sessions with therapists. We carve out time to steady our minds because our days rarely allow for it naturally. Behavioral health has become a booming industry.

This is not an accident.

We live in a time when very few people are allowed — or encouraged — to pursue mastery in a deep, patient sense. Work has become fragmented. Attention is constantly interrupted. Success is measured in metrics and outputs rather than quality or depth. We bounce between tasks, inboxes, and platforms, rarely staying with any one thing long enough to become truly good at it.

And so we seek meditation as a corrective — a counterbalance — a way to reclaim focus in an environment that seems designed to fracture it. . . . 

We often treat focus as a personality trait, or meditation as a wellness accessory. But focus is structural. It emerges when we design our lives and work around fewer, more meaningful pursuits. It appears when we allow ourselves to stay with something long enough for depth to replace novelty.

The tragedy of modern work is not that we ask too much of people — it’s that we ask too little of their attention. We keep people busy but not engaged. Productive but not absorbed. In doing so, we deprive them of one of mastery’s great rewards: the feeling of being fully present in what you’re doing. . . . 

First: Slow down — not everywhere, but somewhere

Slowness doesn’t need to be universal to be effective. You don’t need to slow every part of your life. But you do need at least one domain where speed isn’t the primary metric — one place where you allow yourself to work deliberately, without racing to the next thing. This might be how you write emails. How you prepare for meetings. How you think through a problem before responding. The activity itself matters less than the permission to resist haste. Slowness creates space for attention. And attention is the soil in which mastery grows.

Second: Focus on something worthy — even if it’s small

Not every pursuit needs to be world-changing to matter. The craftsman at Kaikado isn’t reinventing the tea caddy or building a world-conquering app. He’s refining a process, again and again. You can bring this same mindset to something as ordinary as an email. Write it clearly and thoughtfully. Or apply it to a presentation, a report, or a conversation — anything. When you treat small tasks as worthy of care, they become something more valuable for both you and the recipient. They stop being obstacles to clear and become practices to engage with.

Third: Try to get a little better every day

Mastery isn’t dramatic, and it’s rarely noticed until it’s felt. It accumulates through marginal gains that are nearly invisible in the moment. The craftsman I met didn’t expect to be great anytime soon. He expected to be better — over many years.

This is far more sustainable than chasing constant excellence or overnight success. Improvement compounds. Over weeks, months, and years, it reshapes how you think and what becomes possible. Given a steady object of focus, the mind settles. The noise recedes. The work becomes its own reward.

We often assume that peace comes from escape — from stepping away from work and responsibility. But sometimes it comes from the opposite direction: from leaning in, narrowing our focus, and committing to doing one thing well for a very long time.

Mastery, it turns out, may be one of the oldest — and most underrated — forms of meditation we have.

These are ideas not simply for healthier moments, minds, and individuals, but for interactions, relationships, and structures.

There is much in this article related to the previous one, applied structurally.

What 1,000-Year-Old Companies Know about Resilience

For too long, we’ve been sold a version of resilience that looks like a solitary figure bracing against a gale. And as our world grows more volatile, that version of endurance is no longer working; it’s leading to burnout — not durability.

The following exploration of long-lived systems is designed to help you unlearn the myth of the rugged individual — and to move the conversation away from how we “tough it out” and toward how we design lives, businesses, and communities that are inherently built to endure. . . . 

We treat resilience as a character trait. But in the real world, over long horizons, resilience behaves much more like the defining property of an ecosystem.

Think of a forest. A forest isn’t resilient because each individual tree is “tough.” A forest is resilient because it is an interconnected web. If one tree is attacked by pests, it sends chemical signals through the fungal network in the soil to warn its neighbors. If a clearing opens up, the surrounding trees race to fill the gap. The system has redundancy. It has slack.

In business, we have spent the past 40 years trying to eliminate slack. We worship efficiency. We want “just-in-time” supply chains and “lean” headcounts. But efficiency is the enemy of resilience. If you optimize a system for a perfectly sunny day, that system will inevitably shatter the moment it starts to rain.

If we want to fix our understanding of resilience, we have to stop looking at the individual hero and start looking at the architecture of the system. Based on my research into these thousand-year-old outliers, I’ve noticed three specific patterns where we’ve lost our way — and how we can find it again. . . . 

1. The fallacy of the human cost . . . 

A fundamental rule of social systems: Trust is a structural asset. . . . 

Enduring organizations treat people as a form of capital to be preserved, not a variable expense to be managed. They understand that when a crisis hits, you don’t survive because of your balance sheet; you survive because your people are willing to close ranks and solve the problem.

2. The trap of hockey-stick growth . . . 

Growth that outpaces a system’s ability to absorb it is a form of pathology. . . . 

Fast growth creates fragility. . . . 

The long-lived companies I studied grow at what I call “natural speed.” They expand at a pace that allows their internal capabilities to keep up with their external complexity. They don’t want to be the biggest; they want to be the most “coherent.” Coherence is the ability of an organization to coordinate its actions under stress. If you are coherent, you can pivot. If you are only “big” and “fast,” you usually just crash. . . . 

3. The discipline of the unfinished . . . 

The third and perhaps most counterintuitive lesson: the importance of continuous maintenance. . . . 

The secret to longevity is to practice maintenance when things are going well. . . . 

Resilient organizations use their good times to pressure-test their assumptions. They go looking for micro-fractures while they still have the cash and the psychological bandwidth to fix them. They treat maintenance as a form of “organizational exercise” — it’s uncomfortable and easy to skip, but it’s the only thing that builds the underlying strength necessary to survive a system-level rupture. . . . 

Resilience is not a solo sport. It is a collective achievement. It is the result of thousands of small, unglamorous decisions made over decades — decisions to be a little less efficient, a little more human, and a lot more patient. We don’t fix resilience by making individuals tougher. We fix it by building systems that are worth saving.

Look to structures and systems. It is a collective achievement.

Related to the design of structures and systems, this is a really excellent article about the structure of human-AI interactions.

The Hidden Value in the Human-AI Arrangement

There are three publications that saw past this [computation-consciousness] binary more than 50 years ago: Douglas Engelbart’s “Augmenting Human Intellect,” J.C.R. Licklider’s “Man-Computer Symbiosis” and Ted Nelson’s “Computer Lib/Dream Machines.” Each envisioned computational structures designed to deepen rather than bypass human thought, and asked precisely the question that Seth’s framework cannot reach: What emerges when human capability and computational power are arranged to compound rather than to substitute? The field that claims to augment human capability has, it seems, not read the work that defines what augmentation means.

When a human works with an AI system — when a radiologist reads scans with a diagnostic tool, when an analyst constructs a financial model with a computational partner, when an architect tests structural variations with a generative system — something emerges that exists in neither participant. It is not consciousness. The machine does not feel anything. But it is not mere computation, either. It is enacted intelligence: situated, distributed, directional and irreducible to either party. . . . 

Experts across the consciousness domain have demonstrated that cognition is distributed across people, tools and environments; that intelligent action is not the execution of prior plans, but a continuous response to unfolding situations; and that the mind extends beyond the skull into the tools and technologies it couples with. These are not marginal positions. They represent the dominant movement in contemporary cognitive science. . . . 

If cognition is distributed, enacted and extended, then the relevant unit of analysis is not the individual brain (biological or artificial), but rather the configuration in which intelligence operates. The question is not whether the machine is conscious. The question is what the configuration produces — and whether we are preserving or destroying the conditions under which it produces well. . . . 

In a randomized clinical trial . . . physicians who were given access to GPT-4 alongside conventional diagnostic resources were no more accurate in their diagnoses than physicians without it — even as GPT-4 alone outperformed both groups by more than 15%. The same AI. The same clinical task. No significantly measurable benefit — because the arrangement was naive: The technology was bolted onto existing workflows with no designed interaction, no structured dialogue, no preservation of the clinician’s independent reasoning.

When the collaboration was redesigned — requiring clinician and AI to generate independent assessments, then structuring a dialogue that surfaced disagreements and held the clinician’s reasoning in the loop — diagnostic accuracy rose from 75% without AI to 82 to 85% with the collaborative AI. The difference was not in the data. It was in the quality of the human-AI arrangement: whether the human’s judgment was preserved, amplified and compounded by the collaboration, or bypassed, flattened and ultimately eroded. . . . 

When the system was tailored to the expert’s cognitive style — structuring authority, workflows and incentives to preserve expert judgement — on average, client meetings rose more than 40% and sales rose 16%. When the same system was imposed without regard for how the human thinks, sales fell about 20% below the no-AI baseline. Worse than no AI at all. . . . 

For tasks requiring the kind of judgment that AI processes without possessing, AI-assisted consultants performed significantly worse than those working alone. The technology did not fail. The arrangement did. When humans deferred to computational fluency on tasks where human judgment was needed most, the collaboration became a liability. . . . 

The question is whether the configuration preserves the conditions under which human judgment remains active, directional and capable of intervening when the system drifts.

The absence of consciousness in AI is not merely a philosophical finding. It is a design condition with measurable economic consequences. It means that every human-AI system must be architected to preserve the human’s capacity for meaning-making, judgment and coherence-holding.

The mythology of automation: the belief that removing the human from the loop is always an efficiency gain. That judgment is a cost to be eliminated. That capability is a fixed input rather than a compounding asset. That the purpose of AI is to perform tasks currently performed by people, only faster and cheaper. . . . 

The first Industrial Revolution produced what economists call “Engels’ Pause,” a period where output per worker grew by 46% while wages rose by a mere 12%. The Second Industrial Revolution, dominated by enabling technologies, produced broadly shared prosperity. The third, dominated by replacing technologies, has coincided with stagnant wages and rising inequality. The pattern is not technological but institutional: When societies build frameworks for augmentation, wealth distributes; when they default to automation, it concentrates. . . . 

The object-oriented question — What is AI? — is comfortable, containable and philosophically rewarding. The relational question — What does the human-AI arrangement produce, and under what conditions does it produce well? — is uncomfortable, uncontainable and demands that we reorganize our metrics, our institutions and our conception of value itself.

We need to build institutions capable of recognizing where the value lies — not inside the machine, not inside the human skull, but in the arrangement between them. In the conditions under which judgment compounds. In the quality of attention that sustains coherence across discontinuous interactions. In the human capacity to project meaning, test it against reality and revise it under constraint. In the irreducibly relational intelligence that emerges when humans and machines coordinate with shared orientation. . . . 

The more urgent mythology is not the fantasy of conscious machines. It is the quiet, pervasive, economically devastating assumption that human presence in the loop is a cost rather than the source of compounding value. That capability is consumed rather than cultivated. That the point of intelligence is to eliminate the need for judgment rather than to deepen its exercise.

The goal should be not automation, but augmentation. A relationship, an interaction, an exchange.

Something emerges that exists in neither participant.

Daniel Pink posted on Facebook:

This recent study by a neurologist will drastically change how you think about burnout. (The "cure" is surprisingly physical.)

Stress isn't what breaks the brain. Rumination is. The brain can handle intense pressure. But it struggles with endless loops of unprocessed thought.

The study showed brain scans of two people: one after a crisis; one after a day of overthinking. The crisis brain was activated but intact. The overthinking brain looked foggy, fatigued.

The body recovers from adrenaline relatively quickly. It does not recover quickly from mental spinning. That's one reason you can sleep eight or nine hours and still feel depleted.

The study described a young doctor who felt exhausted despite 9 hours of sleep. Tracking showed she spent about 70% of her day in micro-worry: replaying conversations; rehearsing outcomes; planning 50 steps ahead.

Her brain never reached true rest mode. She never got a break. Rumination is stress without resolution.

The antidote? Interrupt the loop with the body. Anything that brings the nervous system into the present gives the brain a chance to reset.

Here's the 5-minute nervous system circuit breakers:

• cold water on the face;
• long exhales or humming;
• stairs or squats;
• shake out arms and legs;
• press feet into the ground, feel your weight;
• look around, name 5 things you see;
• hand on heart + belly, slow breath.

The final message: burnout isn't a psychological failure. It's a neurological backlog. We don't collapse because we feel too much. We collapse because we never stop processing.

Clarity starts in the body before it becomes mental. Your brain needs interruption. Take 5 minutes to shift the state. Take 5 minutes to come home.

Rumination (itchiness) breaks the brain. Physical presence (mindfulness, embodiment, flow, mastery) breaks rumination.

A couple of poems from the book A Rhythm of Prayer: A Collection of Meditations for Renewal, ed. by Sarah Bessey.

A Prayer to Learn to

Love the World Again

by Sarah Bessey

God of herons and heartbreak,

teach us to love the world again.

Teach us to love extravagantly

knowing it may

(it will) break our hearts

and teach us that it is worth it.

God of pandemics and suffering ones,

teach us to love the world again.

God of loneliness and longing,

of bushfires and wilderness,

of soup kitchens and border towns,

of snowfall and children,

teach us to love the world again.

Amen.

-----

The Lantern

and the

Wildflower

by Kaitlin Curtice

If only I could give you

the gift of Adventure.

If only I could box her up

for you,

that big red bow on top,

glimmering.

But this cannot be.

Adventure is not given or earned.

She is a breath that is prayed.

A force that is found,

found in the soul of everyone

and everything.

But maybe, just maybe,

if I cannot box her up for you,

I can at least point you

in her direction.

Maybe, at least,

I can tell you where I saw her last,

what I prayed when I was alone,

waiting in a forest under the pine trees,

waiting for her to appear.

Maybe that will be

your Beginning.

You see, I didn’t learn for a long time.

For years, as soon as I began

searching,

I hid behind fear,

all the while,

Adventure waiting for me

with a lantern and wildflower.

All that time, I only wanted

pictures of her,

without knowing her presence,

her warmth,

her smell.

But when I met her,

I found myself.

When I prayed,

I found God.

If only I could teach you

not to be afraid.

If only I could tell you

that it’s okay if you don’t

have words left

to pray.

If only I could point you

towards that lantern

and that wildflower.

If only I could show you

the way to God.

But God cannot be given or earned.

No, God is found.

So, in that soul of yours,

there is the greatest opportunity.

You.

The world.

Breath and prayer embodied.

Everything sacred.

These things would never fit

into a box

with a big red bow on top,

glimmering.

Everything is sacred. Herons and heartbreak, lanterns and wildflowers. Love extravagantly, knowing it will hurt. Love everything.

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

Horizons are everywhere: both inside and outside of what only feels like our sense of self. The edge between what I think is me and what I think is you is as much a horizon as any line of mountains or that far dark line on the distant ocean. Horizon is the line between what we think we know and what we do not know, between what we think we see and do not see: horizons mark the threshold between the world that I inhabit and the one that seems to wait for me, between a world I can almost understand and what lies beyond the imagination of my present life. Horizons are creative, disturbing, invitational edges just by the fact that they exist. . . . 

Horizons are invitational edges between what is familiar and what must be imagined. . . . 

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, most likely into a screen. . . . 

Bringing what lives below the horizon of my inner understanding into conversation with what lies beyond the limits of what I can understand in the outer world is the foundation for what we have always called mystical experience. In that meeting, all horizons start to move and disappear, any static sense of self needing an equally static world fades away and I experience the act of seeing and hearing as both a way I am shaping the world and a way I am being shaped by it at one and the same time. When the unknown inside me is put into conversation with the unknown that lies beyond the horizon outside me I experience a physical sense of radiance that I find I have always carried with me, emerging from below the horizon of my understanding. When inner and outer horizons meet and more importantly, when what they have hidden until now, meet, I walk in new pastures, I come fully alive, I walk, both alone and completely accompanied in friendship, by every corner of creation.

Horizons are creative, disturbing, invitational edges just by the fact that they exist.

Something came across my feed lately, something that felt both familiar and forgotten. I think maybe I had this on a poster in high school or college, but that sense is vague. I haven't thought about it for a long time, but am glad it found me again.

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

by Max Ehrmann ©1927

Desiderata is Latin for "things desired."

you can never see exactly what another person sees

they help us be considerate and cooperative

no particular type privileged above the rest

anything but monochrome

desaturation is a byproduct of mass production

include everything and everyone in our understanding

do things that bring perfect relationships into the present

the feeling of having an itchy brain

stories demonstrate change over time

out-flay the mind flayer

focus is structural

the feeling of being fully present in what you’re doing

the noise recedes

a forest is resilient because it is an interconnected web

trust is a structural asset

they want to be the most “coherent.”

It is a collective achievement

something emerges that exists in neither participant

situated, distributed, directional and irreducible to either party

the mind extends beyond the skull

the arrangement between them

the overthinking brain looked foggy, fatigued

endless loops of unprocessed thought

we collapse because we never stop processing

adventure with a lantern and wildflower.

everything is sacred; herons and heartbreak, lanterns and wildflowers

love extravagantly, knowing it will hurt; love everything.

horizons are creative, disturbing, invitational edges

look to the horizon to bring it closer