What if I told you that AI is not for you, but only for the elite?
I have a conjecture I want try out on you and it is this: People who travel in elite and powerful circles recognize the import of power dynamics. It is for this reason that they have the habit of policing their own speech to an extraordinary degree. If you’ve ever met someone who is wealthy or powerful you know they don’t speak casually in public. They develop a skill of non-committal banter. They are purposefully polite. On the other hand when you meet an online troll, they generally don’t know what they’re talking about and are purposefully rude. What’s the difference when both claim the same values? The difference is power.
When you have power, it really matters what you say so you must be precise. It matters a lot when you walk the talk. For us peasants, not so much. Analogously, when a college sophomore makes a stupid error in their calculus homework it’s understandable. When a Space Shuttle engineer makes the same stupid error, it’s catastrophic.
So it stands to this sort of reason that the consequence in ‘race relations’ is that when elites make gratuitous gestures in support of DEI, there is a presumption that this is a prelude to mighty works and it is reasonable to intuit such pleasant language indicates imminent philanthropy. If your neighbor promises never to say the N-word, who gives a flying fig? If Megan Markle does the ice bucket challenge, some hospital is going to get a ton of money for ALS research. Conversely when Joe Sixpack or Affluent Karen does the same thing, it just makes them look stupid. They’re trolling for likes.
I conclude that because we have flattened communications via social media, that people of all classes and backgrounds are exposed to messages and demonstrations of behavior that seem effective, but are not. Our dedication to kindly sentiments is nice in theory, but in practice it is not my peasant fidelity to these sentiments that make the difference in the world. It’s not me taking cold showers to save natural gas that will power the Green Revolution. It’s when the people you hang out with at the Bohemian Club who decide to design, fund and build safe nuclear powerplants that does it.
Roland Fryer in a recent interview said:
And at that time, it’s not in my personality to go over to two people who seem to be enjoying an inappropriate conversation and say, “I don’t think that’s appropriate for the office.” And so I didn’t shut those kinds of conversations down. I thought this was a good thing. I honestly did. And I participated in a lot of jokes. And people were laughing. So it was a huge surprise to me that after a labor dispute that someone would say that “these conversations really damaged me and caused me harm.”
Power dynamics. Fryer got cancelled because he didn’t understand that as a person with power and influence, he was expected to perform in a sanitized controlled manner. He thought he could be casual. He wasn’t accustomed to being extraordinarily influential; he grew up like a peasant, in many ways much worse than most of us.
Same Team?
Now I love the flatness of the interwebz because I can craft my own networks of association far beyond my immediate reach. In fact, this very conjecture is based on a letter I wrote to one of the most accomplished individuals I’ve ever met online. If he was a Bohemian it wouldn’t surprise me in the least. I know for a fact that he has hobnobbed with royalty. He’s the second DPhil I know from Oxford.
Yet simply because we agree to agree and genuinely do, doesn’t mean we are necessarily on the same team. This is the result of the psychological boundary condition known as Dunbar’s Number. We seek intimacy but in fact we generally can’t keep track of more than 100 people, more or less. When you have 100k followers on X/Twitter you don’t follow them all back. There’s aspirational dynamics going on. You want to invite those most exceptional people to dinner at your house and hope they show up. Not all 100,000. I got excited when I found out Andrew Sullivan is a subscriber. I was super pleased to meet John McWhorter in person. I know I’m not in their league - even when we say the exact same things. When I do the math and make discoveries and say ‘Do the math’, nobody pays me. Half the planet would have a conniption if those actions and words came out of the mouth of Donald Trump. My point is this:
There is a difference between communicating a sentiment to the world and implementing something that funds, builds and institutionalizes the aims of that sentiment.
This is the difference between protocol and power. When you are in power and you try to move the crowd by sentiment, but have no actual plans or ability to make that sentiment real, you are a charlatan. You have no skin in the game other than to bet on which way people will react to your sentiment. All you care about are the optics of your own bully pulpit. This is the essence of jawboning.
Frank Sinatra can get everybody to sing ‘Fly Me To The Moon’, but actually getting there requires rocket science. If your 100 close associates don’t spend their time charting orbits, running static fire tests and calling capcom, you are not going to fly to the moon.
This is the difference between the modern world and the postmodern world. The postmodern world monetizes words. It is only constrained by the credulity of human minds, which are almost infinitely plastic. Jawboning is currency in such a world. The modern world monetizes physical construction. It is only constrained by the laws of physics which are eternally fixed. Jawboning in such a world must be reconciled to concrete reality or it is worthless.
The more cartoons we watch, the more we believe that Wily Coyote can hang in mid-air for a while over a cliff. The Roadrunner can run through a tunnel painted on the face of a mountain. Postmodernism leverages that economy of magic. Until it cannot. Then it crashes hard. Surely nothing more than an inconvenience for the rich and powerful. Oops. Catastrophic for the gaslit fanboys.
When I say we live in a dark age, it is not a whine of despair. It is a call to Stoic discipline. This is my gripe, and perhaps I gripe too much - but I am truly struck by the extent to which we are stuck in a mug’s game.
The Stoic expects order in the universe and respects those who seek out and respect the Logos. This requires a sense of fallibility and humility in approaching wisdom as well as integrity in approaching expertise. But those in a position of power and authority can jawbone us into unreality with sentimental appeals. These appeals take us away from the empowering discipline of grappling with reality. It takes us away from the edifying process of discovery when we adhere to that celebrity sentiment. So beware of ‘World X Day’. All of us jumping up and down simultaneously does nothing to the orbit of our planet.
AIs will correct the spelling and properly orchestrate answers to questions. But if you’re only asking the questions elites are prompting, such machines aren’t working for you.