PfU VI–VII: The Based and Meaningful
Posts from Underground: Part I, Chapters VI-VII
We sat together with Fyodor Mikhailovich the other day and wrote this anachronistic banger. Great collaboration, that one — he ASMR’d it into my ear, almost gently, coarsely though.
Previous posts from Underground: Pt. I Ch. I / Pt. I Ch. II / Pt. I Ch. III / Pt. I Ch. IV-V / …
VI
Oh, if only I did nothing purely out of laziness! God, how I’d respect myself then. I’d respect myself precisely because at least I’m capable of having laziness in me; at least there’d be one quality in me that seems positive, that I myself could be sure of. Question: who am I? Answer: an idler; now that would be pleasant to hear about myself. It means I’m positively defined, means there’s something to say about me. “An idler!” — that’s a title and calling, that’s a whole personal brand. No joke, it really is. Then I’d have my niche community by right and would occupy myself solely with continuously respecting myself. I knew a bloke who spent his whole life proud of his taste in craft IPAs. He considered this his positive virtue and never doubted himself. He died not just with a clear conscience but with a triumphant one, and he was absolutely right. And I would’ve chosen a personal brand for myself then: I’d be an idling alcoholic, but not a simple one — for example, one who appreciates everything based and meaningful. Fancy that, huh? It has been haunting me for ages. This “based and meaningful” really fucked me up at forty; but that’s at forty, whereas back then — oh, back then it would’ve been different! I would’ve immediately found myself the appropriate activity — namely: drinking to everything based and meaningful. I’d jump at every opportunity to first pour myself a drink, shed a tear into it, then down it to everything based and meaningful. I’d turn everything in the world into the based and meaningful; in the most disgusting, indisputable rubbish I’d find something based and meaningful. I’d become as weepy as a wet sponge. A based artist, for example, drops some work. Immediately I drink to the artist’s health, because I love everything based and meaningful. Some based writer posts a think piece about meaningful whatever. Immediately I drink to that “whatever”, because I love everything “based and meaningful”. I’d demand respect for this, I’d go after anyone who doesn’t show me respect. I’d live peacefully, die solemnly — now that’s lovely, absolutely lovely! And I would’ve grown myself such a beer belly then, constructed such a triple chin, developed such a red drinker’s nose that any passerby would say looking at me: “Now that’s a plus! Now that’s truly positive!” And say what you will, such recognition is pleasant to hear in our negative age, dear readers.
VII
But all that’s just beautiful cope. Oh, tell me, who was it who first came up with this, who first started preaching that man only does shit things because he doesn’t know his real interests; and that if you’d just enlighten him, open his eyes to his real, rational interests, man would immediately stop doing shit things, would immediately become good and noble, because, being enlightened and understanding what’s actually good for him, he’d see that doing good is optimal for him, and everyone knows that no one can knowingly act against what’s optimal for them, therefore, so to speak, by necessity he’d start doing good? Oh you sweet summer child! When has it ever been, first of all, throughout all these millennia, that man acted purely from optimising for himself? What about the millions of facts showing how people knowingly, that is fully understanding what metrics to optimise for, shoved all that aside and rushed down another path, taking risks, yoloing it, not forced by anyone or anything, but as if specifically rejecting the optimal path, and stubbornly, wilfully carved out another one, difficult, absurd, practically rawdogging it. Clearly this stubbornness and wilfulness was genuinely more pleasant to them than any optimisation... Optimisation! What even is optimisation? And do you dare to define with complete precision what exactly human metrics are? What if it turns out that optimal outcomes sometimes not only can, but even must consist precisely in wishing harm on oneself in certain cases, rather than what’s supposedly optimal? And if so, if this case is even possible, then the whole rule goes up in smoke. What do you think, do such cases exist? You’re laughing; laugh away, dear readers, but just answer this: have human metrics been calculated completely accurately? Aren’t there some that not only haven’t been quantified, but can’t be quantified at all? Because you lot, as far as I know, took your entire registry of human metrics on average from data analytics and economic models. What you’re optimising for is: wellbeing, wealth, freedom, security, and so on and so forth; so that a person who, for example, openly and knowingly went against this entire list would be, in your opinion, well yes and of course in mine too, a contrarian or completely mad, right? But here’s what’s striking: how does it happen that all these data scientists, thought leaders and effective altruists, when calculating what humans optimise for, constantly skip one metric? They don’t even account for it in the form it should be taken, and yet the entire calculation depends on it. It wouldn’t be such a disaster to take this one metric and add it to the spreadsheet. But the problem is that this paradoxical metric can’t be quantified, can’t be put on a spreadsheet.
I have a friend, for instance... Oh, dear readers! he’s your friend too; who, who isn’t friends with this guy! When about to do something, this guy will immediately lay out for you, eloquently and clearly, exactly how he has to act according to reason and logic. More than that: with proper passion he’ll go on about real, rational human metrics; he’ll mock the short-sighted idiots who understand neither what they’re optimising for nor what each metric actually means; and then — exactly fifteen minutes later, without any sudden external reason, but precisely because of something internal that’s stronger than all his metrics — he’ll do something completely different, that is, will obviously go against everything he just said: against reason, against all those optimisations, well, in a word, against everything... I should warn you that my friend is an archetypical figure, and therefore it’s rather hard to call him out for it. That’s just it, dear readers — doesn’t there actually exist something that’s more valuable to almost every person than their best metrics, or (not to break the logic) there’s one North Star metric (precisely the one that gets skipped, the one we just talked about), which trumps all other metrics and for which man, if necessary, is ready to go against all laws, that is, against reason, honour, security, wellbeing — in a word, against all these based and meaningful things, just to achieve this primary, North Star metric, which is dearest to him of all.
— Well, it’s still a metric though, — you interrupt me. — Hang on, we’ll explain further, and it’s not about semantics here, but that this metric is remarkable precisely because it breaks every fucking model and blows up every system the effective altruists build for humanity’s happiness. In a word, it fucks everything. But before I name this metric for you, I want to compromise myself personally and therefore boldly declare that all these beautiful systems, all these theories explaining to humanity its real, rational metrics so that it, necessarily striving to hit those metrics, would immediately become a better version of themselves, are, in my opinion, just mental gymnastics! Yes, mental gymnastics! Because to assert even this theory of improving all of humanity through a system of its own optimisation, well this is, in my opinion, almost the same as... well, to assert, for example, following Pinker, that from civilisation man becomes softer, therefore becomes less bloodthirsty and less capable of war. Logically it seems to work out for him. But man is so obsessed with systems and abstract models that he’s ready to deliberately cherry-pick the data, ready to look without seeing and hear without hearing, just to validate his model. That’s why I’m taking this example — because it’s too obvious an example. Just look around: blood flows like a river, and in such a cheerful way, like it’s champagne. There’s our whole twenty-first century for you, in which Steven Pinker lives, too. Take the Middle East — the juicy democracy dripping all over it. Take the UN — reads like an oxymoron. “The Global Order” — is it doom o’clock yet or are we still optimising? And what exactly does civilisation soften in us? Civilisation develops in man only more ways to get stimulated and... absolutely nothing more. And through the development of his dopamine palate, man might even reach the point where he’ll find pleasure in blood. This has already happened to him. Have you noticed that the most refined butchers have almost entirely been the most civilised types, compared to whom all these various Hitlers and ISIS jihadists sometimes can’t even compete, and if they don’t grab headlines as much as Nazis or terrorists, it’s precisely because they’re too common, too ordinary, we’ve scrolled past them. At the very least, civilisation has made man if not more bloodthirsty, then certainly worse, more disgustingly bloodthirsty than before. Before, he saw justice in bloodshed and with a clear conscience exterminated whoever needed exterminating; now though we consider bloodshed vile, we still engage in this vileness, and even more than before. Which is worse? — you decide.
They say Cleopatra (forgive the classic history example) loved sticking gold pins into her slaves’ breasts and found pleasure in their screams and writhing. You’ll say this was in relatively barbaric times; that even now times are barbaric; that even now (relatively speaking) pins are being stuck in; that even now man, though he’s sometimes learnt to see more clearly than in barbaric times, is still far from having learnt to act as reason and data indicate he should. But you’re still completely confident that he’ll definitely learn once certain old, bad habits pass and once rationality and science fully re-educate and properly direct human nature. You’re confident that then man himself will stop voluntarily making mistakes and, so to speak, won’t want to align his will with his rational interests even if he tried. Moreover: then, you say, science itself will teach man (though this is already a luxury, in my opinion) that he actually has no will or whims at all, never has, and that he himself is nothing more than something like a neural network or a piece of sophisticated if/else code; and that, on top of that, we have biology; so that everything he does isn’t done by his choice at all, but happens on its own, because biology. Therefore, we just need to crack the biology and man won’t have to answer for his actions anymore and life will be extraordinarily easy for him. All human actions will naturally be calculated then according to these laws, mathematically, like behavioural models where every choice is derived from data points from a database; or better yet, there’ll appear some highly moral and ethical behavioural prediction systems, in which everything will be so precisely calculated and mapped that there’ll be no more actions or uncertainty left in the world. Then — everyone of you says that — new economic systems will emerge, completely ready and also calculated with mathematical precision, so that in one instant all possible questions will disappear, specifically because they’ll all receive answers. Then we will achieve AGI. Then... Well, the blessed Singularity arrives.
Of course, there’s no guarantee (this is me talking now) that it won’t be, for example, boring as fuck (because what’s there to do when everything’s optimised by the algorithms), but at least everything will be extremely rational. Of course, boredom makes you do all sorts of things! Those pins were stuck in from boredom after all, but whatever, that’s fine. The bad thing is (still me talking) that we might actually welcome the pins then. Because man is stupid, phenomenally stupid. That is, he’s not actually stupid, but he’s so ungrateful you couldn’t find another like him if you tried. I, for example, wouldn’t be surprised at all if suddenly, out of nowhere, amidst all this future rationality, some guy radiating edgelord energy or, better said, a reactionary troll energy, turns up, puts his hands on his hips and says to us all: so here’s a thought, friends — what if we just nuke the AI god now, burn it all down, just so that all these machines can fuck off and we can live again by our own stupid will! That would be fine, but the annoying thing is he’ll definitely find followers: that’s how man is wired. And all this for the most trivial reason, which seemingly isn’t even worth mentioning: namely that man, always and everywhere, whoever he is, has loved acting as he wanted, and not at all as reason and optimisation commanded him; but you can want things that contradict that optimisation, and sometimes you definitely should (that’s my idea). One’s own free and independent desire, one’s own whim however wild it may be, one’s own fantasy, maxxed sometimes even to the point of madness — this is precisely that secret North Star metric, which isn’t quantifiable at all and because of which all systems and theories constantly blow the fuck up. And where did all these rationalists get the idea that man needs some normal, some virtuous desires? Why did they necessarily imagine that man necessarily needs rationally optimal desire? Man needs only independent desire, whatever that independence costs and wherever it leads. Well, and desire is fuck knows what...
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Actually I agree with so much, makes me a bit suspicious.