Support me this summer in the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop! This summer, I'm writing The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI, a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux that explains how to be an effective AI critic.
Trump's day-one Executive Order blitz contained a lot of weird, fucked-up shit, but for me, the most telling (though not the most important) was the decision to defund all medical research whose grant applications contained the word "systemic":
Now, this is an objectively very stupid thing to so. As someone with a recent cancer diagnosis whose illness is still "localized" â and who will need a lot more intensive care should his cancer become "systemic" â I would very much like my government to continue to fund systemic research.
But of course, Trump wasn't intentionally killing research on systemic forms of cancer. Rather, he was indifferent to the collateral damage to this kind of research that arose in the pursuit of his real target, which is killing systemic explanations for social phenomena.
This is absolutely in keeping with neoliberal dogma, best expressed in Margaret Thatcher's notorious claim that "there is no such thing as society." In neoliberalism, we are all atomized individuals, members of homo economicus, driven to maximize our personal utility. All acts of seeming generosity are actually secretly selfish: you only tell your partner you love them because you hope it will make them fuck you and/or take care of you when you get sick; you only give alms to the poor in order to seem virtuous before people who can steer profitable business your way; you donate to cancer research as an insurance policy against your own eventual sickness.
This selfishness is a feature, not a bug. It's only by pursuing our selfish utility-maximization that we allow the market â a giant, distributed computer â to correctly assess who should be given the power to allocate capital and direct the activities of the lesser among us. When the invisible hand helps these born monarchs to pull capitalism's sword out of the market's stone, they are elevated to the position of power they were destined to hold, from which they can maximize all our social and material progress.
The project of neoliberal economics is to transform the social science of economics into a "hard science" grounded in empirical, mathematical proofs. Economism is a political philosophy that says that human society should only be considered through a lens of mathematical models. As such, it vaporizes all factors that can't be readily quantized and represented in a model:
It's a political philosophy with no theory of power, built on just-so stories. If you offer to buy a kidney from me and I agree to sell you that kidney, then we have arrived at a mutually satisfactory, voluntary arrangement in which the state should not intervene. Never mind that all the people who sell their kidneys are poor and desperate and all the people who buy the kidneys are rich and powerful. After all, can we really ever be sure that someone feels "powerful" or "desperate"?
This is an extremely convenient political philosophy if you happen to be in the market for a kidney, or for that matter, if you want to buy the labor or bodies of any kind of worker for any kind of use. It's a great philosophy if you never want to bargain with a union, because the union is interfering with the "voluntary" transactions between workers and their bosses, and the glittering equations (operating in a Cartesian realm with no room for "power" or other squishy factors) prove that this is "market distorting."
It's also an extremely convenient political philosophy if you are getting rich by stealing from people, or even murdering them. If you offer me a payday loan with a ten heptillion percent APR and I accept it, that's voluntary, it's the market, and there's absolutely no reason for anyone to pass comment on the fact that 100% of the people who take those loans are poor and 100% of the people who originate them are rich:
Likewise, if you're enjoying a wildly profitable monopoly, this philosophy acts as antitrust repellent: "if people didn't prefer my monopoly business practices, they'd shop elsewhere":
It's great news if you want to destroy the planet with immortal, infinitely toxic plastic packaging, because it lets you claim that the only problem with plastics is "littering" (irresponsible individuals) and not your products:
It's fantastic news if you're one of a few very large fossil fuel companies who are rendering the only planet in the known universe that's capable of sustaining human life uninhabitable, because it lets you blame the problem on our individual "carbon footprints" (not your depraved greed):
This is a philosophy that is violently allergic to systemic analysis. It must reduce everything to a set of individual choices, taken in a power-free vacuum: to litter, to labor, to borrow, to shop. Its adherents are so saturated in this ideology that they can't even see that it is an ideology.
Think of Noam Chomsky's interview with Andrew Marr:
Marr: How can you know Iâm self-censoring?
Chomsky: Iâm not saying youâre self-censoring. Iâm sure you believe everything you say. But what Iâm saying is if you believed something different you wouldnât be sitting where youâre sitting.
A systemic view challenges everything about the neoliberal mindset. In 2011, the streets of Hackney (and beyond) erupted in an uprising of protest, which included some looting and arson, though the vast majority of mobilization was of marching and shouting protesters outraged at the murder of a Black man by London police.
In response, then-Prime Minister David Cameron declared all systemic explanations for the uprising to be off-limits, calling it "criminality, pure and simple":
"Criminality, pure and simple" has zero explanatory power. Where did this "criminality" come from? Why did it spike on these days? What happened to it after the uprising was crushed by police? Did it go away? Is it festering in the hearts of Britons up and down the country, awaiting some inaudible signal before detonating again?
How frightening it must be to believe in a world without systemic explanations! It's a world where inexplicable spirits sweep across the land, engendering population-scale effects that are the result of millions of people making voluntary, individual decisions, disconnected from any kind of social phenomena.
It must be terrifying, like living in a world secretly governed by demons or witches.
It's the world of the conspiracy fantasist.
Yesterday, I wrote about the role that the conspiratorial wing of the Trump coalition is playing in keeping the Epstein story alive, and the danger this poses to Trump:
Trump's conspiratorial base are hugely and reliably animated by stories about impunity for elite sex predators. As well they should be! Elite sex predators get away with all kinds of crimes â not just Epstein, but the whole universe of powerful men, from Harvey Weinstein to Donald Trump, who systematically abused women for decades and got away with it â bragged about it, even!
But despite these very real abusers, the conspiracists in the Trump base are mostly concerned with imaginary abusers â Qanon's shadowy cabal of adrenochrome-guzzling pedophiles, tirelessly freighting trafficked children from one nonexistent pizza parlor basement to the next, packed inside of very mid Wayfair home furnishings:
It's the world in which real suffering children (kids in cages, children rotting in Alligator Auschwitz, kids working the night-shift at a meat-packing plant) don't matter at all, while imaginary children (unborn children, Qanon victims, etc) take center stage.
Indeed, one of the strangest things about the Epstein case is that it's the rare instance in which right-wing conspiratorialists care about actual people, rather than imaginary ones.
The mirror-world dominates right-wing politics. It's a world in which systemic problems don't exist, because it's a world in which systemic power doesn't exist. It's a world where individual rich people with evil in their heart are to blame for our problems, not a world where a system of impunity for the powerful allows rich people to get away with hurting us.
This is why they call antisemitism "the socialism of fools." An antisemite blames their problems on a cabal of Jewish bankers, rather than the dominance of the political system by finance capital.
In response to yesterday's post, reader Garvin Jabusch wrote to say, "your phrase 'blame systemic problems on individuals' does a fantastic job of crystallizing how I feel about the BP-invented concept of the carbon footprint."
This is exactly right, and it's an important connection I'd never drawn before myself. Because while conspiracies have run rampant since time immemorial, the modern conspiracist is a conservative, trapped in the mirror-world:
The mirror-world warps reality, but that warpage has the same curvature as neoliberalism's "There is no such thing as society." Conspiracism â like neoliberalism â insists that the world runs on individual virtue and wickedness, not the systemic properties that make it easier or harder (or impossible) to do the right thing.
This is why Donald Trump banned the word "systemic." To any objective observer, it is plain that Donald Trump is an effect, not a cause. He's too stupid and impulsive to do anything except fill the Donald Trump-shaped hole in our politics, after 40 years of Democrat/Republican consensus that "there is no such thing as society" and insistence that every social problem is the result of a "distorted market" and can only be worsened by state intervention.
Both neoliberalism and conspiracism insist that the world is run by great men, not by social forces. By denying that anything can be "systemic," Trump can deny that he is systemic, merely a conveniently shaped monster suited to our monstrous times.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
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The EU AI Act and the Forgotten Competence of the Future: Why Complex Systems Require Polymathic Thinking
The EU AI Act is often perceived primarily as a regulatory challenge, as another layer of compliance requirements, documentation obligations, and control mechanisms that organisations must integrate into their existing processes. This perspective, however, remains incomplete. The deeper significance of the EU AI Act lies not only in the requirements it imposes on AI systems, but in the structuralâŚ
In 1976, Buckminster Fuller stated that "it'll take 50 years [to 2026!] for us to realize that our institutions are rooted in an inaccurate understanding of the world. And they will become so dysfunctional in 50 years that we cannot fix them... They will disintegrate before our very eyes, every single institution of humanity. And that's when we will need to reinvent, recreate institutions for the human family that are rooted in the truth of the more accurate understanding of the world, the context of sufficiency." (Reported by Lynne Twist who attended this lecture at Marin Civic Center in 1976.)
How telling it is that you still have not directly answered the core ethical question!
Here's it clearly spelled out for you: Do the benefits of large scale AI deployment outweigh its external costs?
Critiquing how the question is asked is not the same as answering it.
Comparing generative AI to spellcheck, calculators, or search engines is completely false equivalence. Those tools do not, will not, and have never mass scraped creative work, generated substitute content at an industrial scale, or required comparable infrastructure.
Saying previous technologies displaced workers is also not justification. Historical repetition doesn't make any of this harm acceptable or tolerable. This would mean that, in "your" eyes, just because it happened before means it's okay for it to happen again?
Also, claiming that AI is "here to stay" is not a defense in the slightest. Persisting systems doesn't equate to legitimacy. We see this logic exemplified via tyrannical regimes, for instance.
On top of that, the whole water argument misses the point entirely. The issue is that many data centers consume major local water resources and strain communities already facing shortages. Saying some use recycled water does not excuse the ones that do not, no?
Although this may not directly affect your everyday life, it's important that you try to put the shoe on the other foot.
You keep conceding AI causes serious harm while refusing to explain why its current deployment is ethically proportionate to said harms.
Again, that is the question.
The disagreement is whether its harms are justified by its present use.
You still have failed to answer that.
Thank you for contacting Prometheus.exe.
Your message has been received and carefully reviewed. We strive to respond to reader inquiries with clarity and precision whenever possible.
Letâs begin.
âDo the benefits of large-scale AI deployment outweigh its external costs?â
This is a legitimate ethical question.
It is also an incomplete one.
Framing the issue as a simple costâbenefit calculation assumes that complex systems can be reduced to a single moral equation â where harm is weighed against utility and a final verdict is reached.
In practice, that is not how most technologies are evaluated or governed.
The internet, industrial systems, transportation, and global supply chains all carry measurable harm â environmental, economic, and social. None were adopted because their harms were âjustifiedâ in isolation.
They were adopted, contested, regulated, and continuously adjusted over time.
The relevant question, then, is not simply whether benefits outweigh harms.
It is:
how those harms are distributed
who bears them
how they are mitigated
and what mechanisms exist to hold systems accountable
A system can produce benefit and still be unacceptable in its current form.
A system can produce harm and still be worth regulating rather than abandoning.
Reducing that complexity to a binary âjustified or notâ does not resolve the issue â it obscures it.
But historical repetition is not being presented as justification.
It is being presented as pattern.
When new technologies emerge, they tend to:
disrupt labour
redistribute power
create new forms of dependency
and generate both benefit and harm simultaneously
Pointing that out is not an endorsement of harm.
It is recognition that these dynamics are not new â and therefore require structured responses, not moral absolutism.
âAI is here to stay is not a defenseâ
Also correct.
Persistence does not equal legitimacy.
But persistence does change the nature of the problem.
If a system is already embedded and expanding, the ethical question shifts from:
âShould this exist?â
to:
âHow should this be governed?â
Ignoring that distinction does not strengthen the argument.
It avoids the part where decisions actually get made.
Water usage
Youâre right to point out that the issue is not resolved by saying some systems use recycled water.
The concern about local strain is valid.
But again, that reinforces the same point:
This is not an argument for individual abstention.
It is an argument for infrastructure oversight, regulation, and resource management at scale.
On proportionality
Youâre asking for a justification that the current level of harm is ethically proportionate to the benefits.
Thatâs a fair demand.
The answer is:
There is no single, universal threshold where that balance is objectively âmet.â
Different sectors, governments, and communities will draw that line differently â which is precisely why regulation, not individual refusal, is the mechanism used to define it.
Final point
The question youâre asking matters.
But it does not have a fixed, universal answer â and it cannot be resolved through individual moral positioning alone.
It is resolved through governance, constraint, and collective decision-making over time.
You donât settle a systemâs ethics by declaring it unjustified.
You shape it by deciding how it is allowed to operate.
We can map a cubic millimetre of brain in petabytes and still not locate consciousness. Yet weâre shipping agents into the world anyway. The
Thereâs a peculiar asymmetry emerging.
We can now map fragments of the human brain in petabytes â trace synapses, reconstruct pathways, simulate structure â and still not explain the presence that moves through it.
At the same time, weâre deploying artificial agents into the world. Systems that act, decide, persuade, optimise. Systems that behave like minds, while built atop architectures we only partially understand, pursuing goals defined by incentives we barely examine.
The black box has stopped being a passive instrument. It has become a participant.
This isnât a technical problem. Itâs an ontological one.
Science can describe behaviour. It can map structure. It can measure correlation. But the relationship between structure and experience â between computation and presence â remains unresolved.
The deeper we look, the sharper the boundary becomes.
The ontology gap isnât shrinking. Itâs becoming measurable.
Filed under ongoing Process documentation â signal emerging from noise.
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The philosophy of Wu Xing (äşčĄ), often translated as the "Five Phases," "Five Elements," or "Five Agents," is a cornerstone of classical Chinese cosmology, metaphysics, and natural philosophy. It is not a theory of static substances (like the Greek classical elements), but a dynamic system describing the patterns of change, transformation, and relationship in the universe.
Core Definition: Phases, Not Elements
The term itself clarifies the concept:
Wu (äş): Five.
Xing (čĄ): To walk, to move, to act, to conduct.
Thus, Wu Xing are the "Five Movements" or "Five Conducts." They represent five qualities of energy, processes of change, or modes of influence that are observable in all natural and human phenomena.
The Five Phases and Their Correspondences
Each Phase is associated with a cluster of qualities, creating a comprehensive symbolic system:
The true philosophy lies in the dynamic, relational rules governing how the Phases interact. Balance is found in the flow between them, not in their static equality.
1. The Generative (Sheng) Cycle: "Mother-Child"
This is a cycle of nourishment and promotion.
Wood feeds Fire (as fuel).
Fire creates Earth (as ash).
Earth bears Metal (as ore).
Metal collects Water (as condensation on metal).
Water nourishes Wood (as rain for trees).
Each Phase is the "mother" of the next and the "child" of the previous.
2. The Restrictive (Ke) Cycle: "Grandparent-Grandchild"
This is a cycle of control, regulation, and restraint (not destruction).
Wood restrains Earth (roots break up soil).
Earth restrains Water (dams and banks channel water).
Water restrains Fire (water extinguishes fire).
Fire restrains Metal (fire melts metal).
Metal restrains Wood (an axe chops wood).
These two cycles work together to maintain dynamic equilibrium. An imbalance occurs when one cycle becomes too strong (over-acting) or too weak (under-acting).
Philosophical Principles and Applications
The Wu Xing is more than a list; it's a system of analogical thinking applied to all domains of life:
Medicine (Traditional Chinese Medicine):Â Health is the balanced flow of Qi (vital energy) through organ systems corresponding to the Phases. Diagnosis identifies which Phase is deficient or excessive, and treatment (acupuncture, herbs, diet) aims to restore balance via the generative and restrictive cycles.
Statecraft and History:Â Dynasties were associated with a Phase (e.g., Han = Fire). The "Mandate of Heaven" could be seen as passing according to these cycles. A corrupt ruler of the "Fire" dynasty might be overthrown by a movement embodying "Water" (which restrains Fire).
Feng Shui (Geomancy):Â The arrangement of space (homes, cities, tombs) is analyzed to harmonize the environmental energies with the Wu Xing, promoting health, prosperity, and harmony.
Martial Arts:Â Movements, strategies, and even times for training are linked to the Phases. An attack might follow the generative cycle (Wood-style move setting up a Fire-style finish) or exploit the restrictive cycle (a Water-like deflection against a Fire-like aggressive strike).
Personal Character and Ethics:Â The ideal person embodies a balance of the Phasesâthe growth of Wood, the warmth of Fire, the stability of Earth, the integrity of Metal, and the wisdom of Water.
Wu Xing and Daoism
Within Daoism:
Wu Xing expresses the Daoâs movement
harmony arises through alignment, not control
imbalance produces disorder and suffering
Wisdom means responding to cycles, not resisting them.
Wu Xing and Confucianism
Confucians apply Wu Xing socially and ethically:
political legitimacy follows cosmic harmony
moral cultivation mirrors natural balance
disorder reflects misalignment of roles
Ethics becomes ecological rather than abstract.
Conclusion: A Philosophy of Dynamic Harmony
The philosophy of Wu Xing is a holistic, correlative cosmology. It teaches that everything in the universe is interconnected through these five fundamental modes of change. Nothing exists in isolation; everything is part of a continuous cycle of generation and restraint.
Its wisdom is relational and process-oriented. It does not ask, "What is this made of?" but rather, "How does this change? What does it nurture, and what restrains it? How does it fit into the larger cycles of nature and life?"
In a modern context, it offers a profound alternative to reductionist thinkingâa model for understanding complex systems (from ecosystems to human psychology) as networks of dynamic, interdependent relationships where balance is not a static state but an ongoing, active negotiation. It is a philosophy for a world in flux, reminding us that to be in harmony is to understand and move gracefully with the perpetual transformations of existence.
