Seth Godin believes you aren't real.
Seth Godin defends eliminative materialism in his blog today:
Artificial intelligence is a problem, then, because we can see the code and thus proof that there’s no little person inside.
So when computers beat us at chess, we said, “that’s not artificial intelligence, that’s simply dumb code that can solve a problem.”
Long time readers will recall that one of my key claims here is as follows:
The more we look to AI to understand ourselves, the more we see ourselves in AI.
Artificial Intelligence concerns far more than “building machines that think like people”.
What Seth Godin encapsulates here is the more wide-ranging consequence. Once you can build machines that appear to think, act, and behave like human beings, in part, the difference between the human person and the machine shrinks to zero.
If you’re new around here, or want a refresher, start here:
Seth Godin has fallen for the brainless-machine hype.
The insight that might be helpful is this: We don’t have a little person inside of us.
None of us do.
We’re simply code, all the way down, just like ChatGPT.
It’s not that we’re now discovering a new sort of magic. It’s that the old sort of magic was always an illusion.
Well then. Since we’ve resolved 2000+ years of deep and unsettled philosophical debate.
The “new magic” dates back to (at least) the 17th century. The old magic persists despite the best efforts of creative materialists and nihilists to stamp it out.
If you wonder why I get so tired of this, here’s why. This dime-store philosophy is everywhere.
Should you care? That depends on what you want to think about this existence of yours.
If you're "simply code", then every feeling, every thought, every experience, belief, or desire you ever had, will have, or could have, is no different from the parade of rocks skipping down the side of a mountain.
It's all behavior governed by natural laws, heading nowhere, for no reason at all.
Your life happens to you, and what you thought was you is the scratching noise emitted by a faulty air conditioner.
You’re a passive consequence of the events happening to you. No agency, no freedom, no difference made according to whether you act or don’t.
This is a bleak, empty, and ultimately nihilistic view of existence. Yes, you're here, and you can choose how you respond to that, but it doesn't matter. You aren’t doing anything. It’s just happening.
You can storm the horizon and climb the tallest peaks and build all the empires you want, and the result is neither different nor better than the slob who sits in the dirt soiling himself.
This ugliness appears over and over from our "thought leaders", who insist on reminding you that you are pointless and everything you do lacks meaning.
The intention, I guess, is to motivate you to be your bestest and most unique self. Why worry about things you can’t control, be your best true self girl!
The result is leaching away the beliefs and the experiences of meaning that could make any of it worth caring about. If there’s no point, there’s no point.
Choose carefully when imbibing your existential verities.
-Matt