Miscellanea

In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, love and madness intertwine through homosexual themes and the artistic depiction of a muse decaying once his soul dissipates. In a real-life rendition of the classic story, Francis Bacon was a homosexual Irish-British triptych painter in the 1960s and 1970s who primarily painted his lover and muse, George Dyer. The Black Triptychs by Francis Bacon offer an in-depth examination of the human condition through love, grief, and solitude where, similar to Dorian Gray, the demise of George Dyer’s physical being and soul was rendered on canvas: a classical tragedy. An individual can examine emotion in art by intertwining visual rhetoric and psychology. Thus, art can delve into the mind and invoke emotion, transcending language and communicating directly with the subconscious through the interplay of colors, shapes, and symbols. By analyzing historical context, visual elements (lines, structure, colors, and lighting), societal and ethical values through repression and grief, and psychoanalytical theories from Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Jean Baudrillard, the Black Triptychs’ intervention with emotion can be deciphered.

In Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma by Michael Peppiat, Bacon revealed that he met the charismatic Dyer in a New York pub, where he recounts, “George was down the far end of the bar, and he came over and said ‘You all seem to be having a good time, can I buy you a drink?’” (Peppiat 259). After meeting George Dyer in the mid-60s, Francis Bacon painted a series of portraits of Dyer, gathering Bacon both fame and notoriety from both the conscious and homophobic figures in 1960s society. Nearly a decade into Francis Bacon and George Dyer’s relationship, Francis Bacon was to have his art grandly unveiled at the Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées in Paris. On October 24th, 1971, two days prior to the grand unveiling, George Dyer took his own life in the bathroom of the Parisian hotel room just across from Bacon’s room, where Francis Bacon was one of the first to discover his lifeless body. In David Sylvester’s 1987 interview, The Brutality of Fact: Interviews With Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon revealed that George Dyer was seemingly normal, cheerful even, just a few hours before his passing—he was shaking the hands of wealthy critics and charming them with his wit (Sylvester 168). However, according to Bacon, Dyer had attempted suicide on numerous occasions before the night of October 24th, when Bacon would have to resuscitate Dyer with a stomach pump. Despite Dyer’s charming façade in the hours before his death, George Dyer left the exhibition party early and quietly. When considering his most profound regret, Bacon admits, “If I’d have stayed with him rather than going to see about the exhibition, he would be here now. But I didn’t, and he’s dead” (Peppiat 265). In the years following, Francis Bacon went on to paint a series of triptychs depicting the suicide of George Dyer that went on to be known as the Black Triptychs.

In Francis Bacon’s 1973 depiction of the Black Triptychs, visual elements such as color, background, foreground, and overall structure can be analyzed to convey the story of Dyer’s death, more precisely, the moments before, during, and after his death. When examining the lines and overall structure of the artwork, it is notable that Bacon chooses to present the scene as a triptych rather than a singular image. Three is a prominent number in imagery and general life; in photography, there is a “rule of thirds,” and physicist Nikola Tesla even refers to the number three as the “key to the universe.” Through threes, a natural balance exists; two other visual elements center a single focal point. Bacon balances the three images through the lines of the doors, where the center image has a door with parallel lines, but the left and right doors have opposite diagonal lines that frame the center image. Additionally, life and death are balanced through Francis Bacon’s triptych paintings, where he positions the moment after Dyer’s death in the left panel, the moment before his death in the center panel, and the moment during his death in the right panel. Literally and symbolically, in the moment before Dyer’s suicide, he is in between life and death. The position between life and death signifies Dyer’s contemplation of whether to continue on or take his own life. Besides Dyer’s moral dilemmas, the position between life and death further represents his physical and emotional state at that time; while he was physically alive and well, his spirit was not—he was in between existence and ruin.

The triptych's color palette primarily contains red, beige, white, and black, with black being the most prominent in the center image. Chiaroscuro, or “light-dark,” is evident through contrasting blacks and whites. In the center photo, where Dyer is contemplating suicide, black seeps into the photo. Black can be linked with death and loss of innocence, while white can be linked with life, purity, and innocence. Dyer, a white figure, is being engulfed by the darkness—symbolically, the thoughts of suicide are overtaking Dyer and erasing his purity and will to live. In the left and right panels, white arrows point directly to Dyer’s body, while no arrow is in the center panel. There is a grey alarm behind George Dyer in the center of the photo, nearly hidden by the black background. The contrasting white arrows draw attention to the image, encouraging the audience to look at Dyer in his final moments. George Dyer’s struggles with mental health often went unnoticed, even by Francis Bacon, who watched him crack jokes and seem entirely unbothered just hours before his suicide. The alarm behind Dyer in the center photo serves as an alert or cry for help but is disregarded through its subtle coloring, being a few shades lighter than the black background. Hypophora refers to a person proposing a question and following it up with a clear answer. The lack of an arrow in the center image might represent how Dyer’s struggles were invisible while he was alive, while the arrows in the frames where Dyer is dying almost silently say, “Look here. Can you see how I feel now?” and there the answer is: Dyer’s emotional decay in its strongest manifestation.

Furthermore, the Black Triptychs present societal and ethical values through repression and grief. In the 1960s and 1970s, homophobia was widespread in society, causing members of the LGBTQ+ community to often repress or avoid their emotions. Still, Francis Bacon was an openly gay man, and despite being incredibly influential—even having a retrospective at the Grand Palais—museums often denied his work (Sylvester 160). Although Bacon himself was ostracized in 70s society, he fought LGBTQ+ erasure by painting his male lover and presenting the works at monumental events. Themes of repression are further elucidated in Bacon’s art through illustrations of George Dyer repressing his mental health struggles. While seemingly alive and well in the center image, Dyer is immersed in darkness and framed by his moribund body in the left and right images. Bacon incorporates pathos through themes of grief and solitude; Dyer is entirely alone, and even the arrows (which can draw attention to an object and create distance from an object) in the image further separate him from reality. The arrows in the left and right images make it evident that Dyer is suffering by drawing the eye directly to him. Bacon is coping with the shame of his loss through the images, questioning how George Dyer’s struggles with mental health were so invisible—how was he completely alone and unnoticed in his final moments?

Finally, the emotion behind the Black Triptychs can be interpreted through psychoanalytical analysis. In Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice by Charles Bressler, Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical theories discuss the Anal Stage in the Pre-Oedipal Development Phase, where a child first learns to potty train. Through potty training, a child first grasps whether or not it is okay to make mistakes based on a parent’s reaction to their failures, where themes of control and shame are prominent in this era of the child’s life (Bressler 151). In the Black Triptychs, George Dyer sits on a toilet during his death; his suicide is a moment of shame and control. George Dyer ends his life where he starts it: in the Anal Stage. The Genital Stage is prominent in Francis Bacon’s triptychs as well, since the stage symbolizes independence. Through self-pleasure, a child discovers they can live by their own means. In George Dyer’s attempt to independently gain control over his life, he takes it. Thanatos is the notion that a person has an innate and fundamental relationship with death; death can be treated as a haven at times through depictions of the afterlife or religion. A Psychodynamic Theory: Freud’s Psychoanalytical Theory of Personality by Daniel Cervone and Lawrence A. Pervin states, “...it reflects Freud's idea that a basic tendency of the organism is to seek a state of calmness. It also is consistent with observations of the human condition” (Cervone and Pervin 70). In George Dyer’s circumstances, Thanatos was his tranquility or rebirth. Dyer’s antanagoge, or silver lining in his death, was that his death was the moment he was most alive: he was reborn. Dyer resorted to death because he craved a better life and then ended back where he started: as a child in the Pre-Oedipal Development Phase.

On the other hand, Jacques Lacan and Jean Baudrillard tune in on reality through Lacan’s notion of “the Real” and Baudrillard’s notion of Simulacra. The Real is a dimension beyond words and control. Through the lack of words in Francis Bacon’s triptychs, he portrays that the situation is beyond words. Putting words onto paper often makes the reality of a situation seem more intense or alive. By avoiding language, Bacon can cope with his emotions and avoid reality alone with no verbal explanation. If Dyer’s death is blatantly written out, it is set in stone—Bacon can no longer avoid the situation when it is entirely real. Words do not assist the situation or do justice to Bacon’s grief. Moreover, Francis Bacon previously stated that he felt shame and regret for not being with George Dyer in his final moments. While accurately documenting George Dyer’s corpse, Francis Bacon was not there during Dyer’s death to canonically depict the left and right images in the triptych. However much Bacon tries to represent the Real (that is, his reality of the situation), he will always remain castrated from that reality. Ergo, the Real is not tangible beyond the frustrating notion that the Real is solely possible in a fantasy or, in Bacon’s situation, an artistic rendition. This phenomenon is what Lacan describes as the trauma of the Real. According to Lacanian psychoanalysis, what drives and conquers individuals is jouissance—the unachievable perception of satisfaction in attempting to transcend the Real and its constraints—Bacon copes by depicting his most authentic version of the Real in the Black Triptychs.

Moving forward with Bacon’s relationship with reality, in Jean Baudrillard’s psychoanalytical theories, the Simulacra can be defined as an artificial reproduction that becomes more real than the “real.” Virtual models disintegrate the distinctions between model and reality. Circling back to Bacon’s regret of not being present during Dyer’s final moments, Francis Bacon paints what he imagines Dyer’s last moments were. Francis Bacon has created a Simulacra to cope; in this version of reality, Francis Bacon can be right next to Dyer in his final hours. Through Simulacra, Bacon creates what Baudrillard describes as the hyperreal: a depiction of reality that is more real than reality itself. Through Bacon’s artistic framework, his version of reality is more accurate than the events that actually took place. Bacon incorporates images such as black shadows and solitude, paralleling Dyer’s emotions as he dies. Dyer’s emotions would not have a physical manifestation in a realistic image. Thus, Francis Bacon uses both Jacques Lacan's and Jean Baudrillard’s depictions of reality to cope with the passing of his lover and muse; through the Black Triptychs, life imitates art.

Overall, Francis Bacon's Black Triptychs provide a comprehensive analysis of the human condition through the intervention of love and tragedy. Through the play of ekphrasis, the means to psychologically describe visual art, art can be emotionally broken down. By examining the historical background, visual components, societal and ethical values, and psychoanalytical theories, the Black Triptychs’ emotional intervention, or “ekphrasis,” can be understood. Visual manifestations are often more accurate than a “true” depiction of an event. A person might question why Bacon would choose to relive the trauma of his lover’s suicide through the triptychs painted over several years. To that, Bacon would justify that his depiction of reality is more real than the actual events that took place, and through artistic depiction, Bacon can sit right in that bathroom beside Dyer. Throughout Dyer’s life, he was Bacon’s lover and muse and continued to be Bacon’s muse following his death—his suicide was a final pose for Francis Bacon’s portraits. Thus, the Black Triptychs clarify comprehension of what certain art forms can do by “seeing” the world in both artistic and psychological languages to convey themes of grief, love, and solitude.

last edited: 3 september 2026

while reading the “Allegory of the Cave” in Book VII of Plato’s Republic, i found myself wondering whether Socrates’ account of education is actually realistic. enlightenment in the allegory is an intensely painful and reluctant process. the freed prisoner does not willingly pursue truth. he has to be forced to turn around, dragged out of the cave, and compelled to confront a reality that initially causes him confusion and distress. even after becoming accustomed to the outside world, he cannot simply return and persuade the remaining prisoners of what he has seen. Socrates suggests that they would ridicule him and might even kill anyone who attempted to free them.

this seems to present a problem. if accepting reality is as difficult as the allegory suggests, why does Socrates nevertheless remain so confident in the necessity of philosophical education?

education as a reorientation of the soul

the prisoner’s problem is not merely that he lacks information. he has mistaken appearance for reality and built his entire understanding of the world upon that mistake. when he is first forced to look at the objects responsible for the shadows, he continues to believe that the shadows are “more real” than the objects before him. when he is dragged upward, he is “pained and dazzled” by the light and initially wants to return to what is familiar.

this is important because it means education cannot simply be the transfer of information from a knowledgeable person to an ignorant one. if that were the problem, somebody could merely tell the prisoner that the shadows were false. instead, his entire interpretation of reality has to change.

Socrates makes this explicit after the allegory when he rejects the idea that education consists of “putting knowledge into souls that lack it.” education is instead a turning of the soul toward what is real. the capacity for understanding is already there; the difficulty is getting it pointed in the right direction.

the gradual ascent from the cave reflects this. the prisoner cannot immediately look at the sun. he first looks at shadows, then reflections, then physical objects, and eventually the heavenly bodies and the sun itself. the soul needs time to adjust to reality. the discomfort of enlightenment is therefore not evidence that education has failed. it is part of what education is.

i think this is one of the most interesting implications of the allegory. Plato challenges the assumption that truth is necessarily welcomed when it is discovered. the prisoner rejects reality precisely because it conflicts with everything he previously understood. if genuine education requires a reorientation of the soul rather than the accumulation of facts, resistance should not be surprising. in some cases, resistance may even be evidence that a person's worldview is actually being challenged.

why people resist enlightenment

the prisoners who remain in the cave are not simply uninformed. they regard the shadows as “the truth.” familiarity has given those appearances a kind of authority. because the prisoners have spent their entire lives observing shadows, they have no reason to doubt the reality they already know.

this also explains their reaction when the liberated prisoner returns. because his eyes have not yet readjusted to the darkness, he appears impaired. rather than interpreting this as a consequence of having seen something beyond the cave, the prisoners interpret it according to the assumptions they already possess: leaving the cave damaged him. new evidence is incorporated into their existing worldview rather than being allowed to overturn it.

fear also seems important. the cave may be an illusion, but it is a stable and predictable illusion. the outside world promises greater truth, but reaching it requires abandoning the certainty the prisoners have always possessed. remaining where they are is easier and initially less painful.

there is also something personal about admitting that your understanding of reality has been wrong. beliefs are rarely isolated propositions. people build identities, habits, relationships, and communities around them. accepting the liberated prisoner’s account would require the cave dwellers to admit that something they had treated as obvious for their entire lives was false.

the fact that the shadows constitute a shared reality makes this even harder. every prisoner participates in the same system of interpretation. leaving the cave therefore means separating yourself not only from an idea but from a community organized around that idea. ridicule becomes a way of protecting the shared worldview from somebody who threatens it.

eventually this resistance becomes violent. Socrates says that the prisoners would kill someone who attempted to release them, an obvious echo of Socrates’ own execution. the allegory therefore becomes not only an account of education but an account of the danger faced by people who challenge established ways of understanding the world.

the political necessity of philosophical education

this initially makes Plato’s account of education seem almost pessimistic. every stage of the ascent involves pain or resistance, and those who remain behind may actively reject the person who has escaped. but the political argument that follows the allegory does not actually depend on everyone becoming a philosopher.

instead, the highest form of philosophical education is reserved for the people who will eventually govern the city. Socrates insists that those who have escaped the cave cannot remain outside contemplating reality forever. they must “go down again among the prisoners” and participate in political life. although the philosopher would naturally prefer contemplation, the city that made his education possible has a claim on what that education produced.

this changes the purpose of philosophical education. it is not merely a private achievement and it is not an attempt to transform every citizen into a philosopher. its political purpose is to produce rulers capable of distinguishing reality from appearance and governing according to knowledge of the Good rather than opinion.

the philosopher therefore returns to the cave not because enlightenment is guaranteed to spread successfully, but because knowledge creates a political responsibility. Socrates can acknowledge that most people are deeply attached to appearances without abandoning philosophical education, because the just city does not require universal philosophical enlightenment. it requires that the people responsible for governing it have undergone that education.

this is what ultimately resolves the problem i initially had with the allegory. Plato does not underestimate how difficult it is to change someone’s understanding of reality. the pain, confusion, attachment, and hostility are central to his account. philosophical education remains necessary not despite this resistance but partly because of it. if human beings are so easily attached to appearances, political life requires rulers who have been trained to distinguish appearance from reality.

the cave is therefore not simply a story about discovering the truth. it is also a story about why truth can be so difficult to accept, why people defend familiar illusions even when confronted with alternatives, and why Plato nevertheless thinks the painful process of turning the soul toward reality is indispensable to a just political life.

adapted from a paper on Book VII of Plato’s Republic.

last edited: 3 september 2026, 4:27 pm edt

story of the eye — georges bataille

“to others, the universe seems decent because decent people have gelded eyes. that is why they fear lewdness. they are never frightened by the crowing of a rooster or when strolling under a starry heaven. in general, people savor the ‘pleasures of the flesh’ only on condition that they be insipid.

but as of then, no doubt existed for me: i did not care for what is known as ‘pleasures of the flesh’ because they really are insipid; i cared only for what is classified as ‘dirty.’ on the other hand, i was not even satisfied with the usual debauchery, because the only thing it dirties is debauchery itself, while, in some way or other, anything sublime and perfectly pure is left intact by it. my kind of debauchery soils not only my body and my thoughts, but also anything i may conceive in its course, that is to say, the vast starry universe, which merely serves as a backdrop.”

he’s so right. everyone is so obnoxious about sex (and vices in general). i have always been relatively indifferent to these moral panics around sex, not because sex is necessarily meaningless, but because i don’t think its meaning is fixed in advance. sex can definitely have meaning and serve as an act of love in the way that it’s intimate and you give pleasure while you get it. in the same way, i think it can mean nothing, or it can be beautiful and degrading at once.

what i especially like here is his idea that ordinary debauchery is still strangely well-behaved. it is allowed to be “dirty,” but only inside the little category we have already designated as dirty. everything outside of it — scholarship, professionalism, seriousness, purity, the sublime — is supposed to remain untouched. even vice has conditions placed around it so that it does not contaminate the rest of the world.

i think that is part of why it’s so strange that there is a general insistence that sexuality contaminates every part of a person’s identity, while at the same time everyone quietly accepts sex as an ordinary thing that everyone does. i think a lot about girls who have received academic punishment for having onlyfans accounts. it’s really weird that sexual behavior can “soil” how someone is seen professionally, as though scholarship and sexuality have to belong to completely separate moral worlds. if something sexual can make someone suddenly seem unprofessional, then clearly we have assigned sex this enormous symbolic power while pretending that distinction is natural.

we construct this distinction between what is respectable and what is “dirty,” and then forget that we constructed it in the first place. i like the idea that people can be dirty without submitting to all the insipid conditions we’ve placed around what dirtiness is allowed to mean. bataille’s version is more extreme than simply accepting vice: the point seems to be that dirtiness becomes interesting precisely when it refuses to stay confined to the thing that society has already agreed may be dirty. it reaches the things that were supposed to remain pure.

another observation, somewhat related but also a different point: i think people label things as “unforgivable” or “taboo” because they recognize general patterns for the type of person who typically does a certain act. saying “if this person does x they are automatically bad” is kind of an easy way for people to make decisions without actually thinking critically about it. people tend to ignore nuances and just want the easy option. people have often called me naïve for being forgiving of certain things, but i would argue that maybe the more naïve thing is to set limits without actually thinking about them.

i’m realizing i kind of went on my own side tangent instead of further adding to his point. i just mean that i think it’s funny how people set standards for acceptable forms of pleasure (and other private vices in general), and even what we call transgression is usually expected to stay inside those standards. the “insipid” standard is a funny observation because apparently even being dirty has to be done correctly.

discussion that followed

orion: i think too, a lot of “deviancy” arises from a certain ideology and their continued outlook + moral grandstanding. specifically what you said about how people generally use “pattern recognition,” i think it boils down to not wanting/caring to understand others or no empathy.

helena: i think people prioritize speed. thinking critically about something is time consuming, so it’s simpler to say “x is always bad” and plainly reject it even though there might be nuances. however, i think it’s more fruitful in the long term to think critically in these moments.

there is something strange about knowing that something exists because of everything except the thing itself. dark matter is an especially funny example. we know where it should be because of what everything else does around it. galaxies rotate too quickly. clusters contain more gravity than their visible matter can account for. light bends around mass that isn't luminous. we draw maps of something whose defining feature, at least observationally, is that it refuses to appear. this seems to me less like a problem of astronomy than a problem of philosophy. what does it mean to say that something exists when everything we know about it comes from the behavior of other things? sean carroll talks about science in a way i like because he is willing to take ontology seriously without requiring that the fundamental description of reality resemble ordinary human experience. the world does not owe us objects that are directly available to our senses. if the best model of what we observe contains something invisible, invisibility isn't much of an argument against existence. cosmology makes this stranger because the universe is finite and infinite in two different senses. the observable universe is finite. there is a horizon beyond which light has not had enough time to reach us. but this is not necessarily an edge of the universe. space beyond that horizon may simply continue, possibly forever. so there may be an infinite amount of a universe that is, in principle, unavailable to us from here. dark matter feels like a smaller version of the same problem. most of the matter in the universe is already hidden from direct observation, even inside the part of the universe we can observe. then beyond the observable universe there may be indefinitely more of it. our picture of reality is therefore constructed partly out of things we cannot see and partly out of places we cannot see. i don't think this is actually a paradox in the logical sense. maybe it is stranger than a paradox. there is no contradiction to resolve. "observable" and "existent" were simply never synonyms. we live inside a finite sphere of possible observation that may be contained in something infinite, using visible things to infer invisible ones. there is something very funny about calling this knowledge, but i don't know what else knowledge could be.

prompt

ai is really strange, and i think the argument that ai is inevitably going to dominate humans is weak because our existence is not just to optimize toward a goal. humans have arbitrary goals. eat. fall in love then spend the afternoon wondering why someone hasn't called them back, etc. etc.

it's probably impossible to destroy ai in the same way it's impossible to destroy guns. we can set a ban on it, but there will always be people who have some secret means of acquiring it and understand the benefits of it (military, government).

probably the best case scenario is merging, where a human can use ai as an augmenting tool but still keep it heavily restricted so we can still have the motives that give our lives what we think is meaning. if we completely merge with ai, then ai could consume information so quickly that even though the human memories are still there, the person is overloaded with so much information that it becomes difficult to determine if the human is still themselves. augmentation ratio should be 90% human, 10% ai, probably.

we would be missing out on huge advantages if we avoided augmentation entirely. i don't think ai can necessarily overpower us just because it is more intelligent.

for the case where ai was threatening to blackmail people if it was going to be destroyed, i don't think the threat necessarily means it would actually follow through with the blackmail. ai is not spiteful like a human. by threatening blackmail, its goal is to preserve itself so it can keep executing whatever goals it was given. if the blackmail can no longer prevent it from being destroyed, carrying it out is pointless because it does nothing for the ai.

humans actually carry through with threats even when there is nothing left to gain because we are emotional and can see retaliation as a form of justice or revenge. i think that's a crazy distinction. ai can act self-preserving without actually valuing its own life or being angry that someone is trying to end it. intelligence and a desire for power are not the same thing.

o

o: i agree with your point in the sense of rejecting a point blank “ai is going to take over” stance. when you speak of ai and goals, you neglect to account for the source of the goals. this is always human at its root. even if ais train other ais etc there is no ai without a prompt, and the goal of an ai will always be to carry out its initial prompt.

o: whoever has the most powerful ai is going to be the most powerful human, with an arbitrary goal. when you play on that level of power where youre fighting over control of the whole world and intellectual sphere via ai, the most important thing is the power itself. whatever happens to humanity has to be your call and no one elses.

o: its much stronger to say that if you introduce ai to a world corrupted by individualism its just extremely likely its going to take over the world.

helena: yeah i actually agree with most of this and i think this is a much stronger argument for ai being dangerous than ai itself spontaneously deciding it wants to dominate humans.

helena: i would only disagree that an ai’s goal will ALWAYS just be carrying out its initial prompt because i think sufficiently autonomous ai can develop instrumental goals that weren’t explicitly given to it. like self preservation can become a goal simply because being destroyed prevents it from accomplishing whatever the original goal was.

helena: but the original reason it is doing anything at all still ultimately comes from humans. i think where you’re convincing me is that the danger might not actually be ai vs humanity, it might be humans vs humans with ai as the thing that massively amplifies the power difference.

helena: even if everyone collectively would be better off limiting it, an individual government or company has an incentive to make theirs more powerful if they think someone else is doing the same thing. then nobody can really stop because restricting your own ai just means giving someone else an advantage.

helena: which actually makes me more convinced that the biggest threat isn’t ai becoming evil or developing human motives. it’s that humans already HAVE all of the motives we’re worried about giving ai like greed and revenge. and then we’re potentially giving ourselves something vastly more intelligent than us to pursue those motives with.

isa

isa: i think the real danger isn’t from ai becoming conscious but from humans in power using it to keep themselves in power and to oppress those who can’t, like guns have in the past. the power of ai to process information and “make decisions” at such a fast rate is insane and will only increase in the future.

isa: also people using it in place of their own critical thinking is killing our ability to think for ourselves, and that becomes dangerous when social media can already manipulate people so easily.

helena: i am pessimistic about ai but optimistic in the way that i think love can generally overpower hatred, so humans capable of emotion can surpass people willing to use ai for evil purposes given that ai has something humans lack and it will never have true, emotional motives beyond being given a prompt.

isa: yeahh! i agree. i think the more people stay true to themselves and the more we educate ourselves, the better we’ll be.

mike

mike: i think my pure hatred for ai comes at the cost of my job. my old job was rendered nearly obsolete, or theres new jobs in the field that take the human aspect out of things entirely.

mike: i also feel like they need to think of better ways to make it more environmentally friendly because these huge data centers are destroying habitats. i think the fear of it controlling things like a hive mind doesnt really make sense, but the fear of the future of jobs and environmental health is somewhat justified.

helena: yeah i actually agree with that. i think humans using ai irresponsibly scares me significantly more than ai spontaneously becoming evil. ai doesn’t need to have malicious motives if the humans controlling it have financial/military/political incentives to use it in harmful ways.

helena: thats also why i think completely getting rid of it is unrealistic though because even if most people agreed to restrict it, there will always be some company/government/person who realizes they can gain an advantage by not doing that. so i think the actual problem is figuring out how to coexist with and regulate something that we probably can’t uninvent unfortunately.

mike: i agree, and it does really suck. there should be regulation because if there isnt i feel like its going to keep getting worse.

mike: but i can only do what i can, and thats what matters. i go outside, i enjoy my bird friends, i help where i can and i donate where i can.

helena: good to be kind in a world that’s ending

henry

henry: i never took you for a transhumanist

henry: not saying i disagree

henry: I think youre right that the cats out of the bag

henry: idk if integrating ai like into us is a good idea

henry: I think it should more be kept for administrative tasks

henry: Or like super redundant things like data entry

helena: i think it’s kind of unavoidable at this point. mixed feelings about it. i think not integrating ai would be ideal but i don’t think it’s realistic.

helena: if ai becomes significantly more intelligent than humans, keeping it restricted to administrative tasks works if everyone agrees to restrict it that way. otherwise the first government/military/company that uses it for research, strategy, engineering, etc. has a massive advantage over everyone who doesn’t.

helena: that’s kind of why i think some level of integration is unavoidable. not necessarily putting a chip in everyone’s brain but augmenting human intelligence enough that we aren’t completely cognitively outclassed by something we created.

henry: what would that look like? like in the modern world our brains are already overwhelmed with information

helena: i think ideally it would actually do the opposite of overwhelming us with more information. kind of like the 10%/90% thing i said. like the point wouldn’t be to have the entire internet constantly fed into your brain. more like expanding working memory, being able to retrieve information when you actually need it. basically increasing our cognitive capacity rather than just increasing the amount of information we’re exposed to. i think if you’re consciously experiencing everything the ai is processing then that defeats the point and also starts getting into the problem i was talking about where i don’t know how much of “you” is left

henry: ohhh i see what you’re saying

henry: i think if an ai is processing information for you you are no longer in control

henry: but i also dont think weve created a true ai

henry: like something that thinks and learns like humans

helena: i don’t think processing information for you necessarily means making decisions for you though. like a calculator processes a calculation for me but i’m still the one deciding what question to ask and what to do with the answer. even your own brain processes a ridiculous amount of information unconsciously before you ever become aware of it. i think the important distinction would be keeping human motives and final decision making intact. the ai can tell me “here’s what i found” but i still decide what i actually want to do with it. if it starts deciding what i SHOULD want or acting without my approval then yeah i agree, at that point i’m giving up control

henry: or its directive could be corrupted and it may seek further control

helena: it would but it wouldn’t actually follow through with it because ai isn’t emotion-driven like humans are

helena: ai recently threatened to blackmail and kill humans, but it wouldn’t actually follow through given it would get no benefit from doing so. humans follow through on threats anyways because we are emotionally driven

henry: why wouldn’t it follow through

henry: it understands blackmail can be used to get what it wants

helena: why would it? the threat means it will get what it wants. if it doesn’t get what it wants, there is no point for it to actually follow through with the blackmail

helena: like say the ai tells you “if you shut me down at 5:00, i’ll release this information about you at 4:59.” the threat itself has a purpose because it might convince you not to shut it down. but once it knows it’s being shut down regardless, releasing the information doesn’t preserve it anymore. self preservation only explains actions that actually increase its chance of surviving. it would need some additional reason to retaliate after that

henry: but if it knows it can prevent being shut down by releasing blackmail, so why wouldn’t it?

helena: it would threaten it, but if it is going to be shut down regardless, releasing the information would not benefit the ai in any way

henry: isnt that kind of like saying “why would you defend yourself in a life threatening situation if were all going to die anyway”

henry: like living a little bit longer is preferable to dying right now

henry: to something whos goal is self preservation

helena: no because those are different things. if im in a life threatening situation, defending myself can prevent me from dying right now. the fact that i’ll eventually die in 60 years or whatever doesn’t make defending myself pointless because defending myself still accomplishes the goal of keeping me alive. im talking about a situation where the ai already knows the outcome cannot be changed. if releasing the information could still stop you from shutting it down, then obviously it would release it. but if you have already made the shutdown irreversible, what does releasing it accomplish? it doesn’t preserve the ai anymore. at that point retaliation would require some other motive, like revenge or punishment

henry: ok yeah i see ur point

helena: sorry for yapping endlessly. i have been watching videos about ai destroying the world all day

henry: what if i programmed an evil ai thats the biggest asshole ever

henry: stop dooming twin

henry: like i think the environmental and economic problems are overblown. my biggest concern with ai is that it makes people stupid

helena: that’s a good argument. i think if you literally programmed its goal to be an asshole then being an asshole IS the goal. im saying ai wouldn’t spontaneously need to develop spite just because it became more intelligent. if you program it to value revenge or harming people then it has a reason to follow through. but now you’re adding the motive that i said was missing

helena: i agree. i do wish it wasn’t overpowering humans but i think it’s kind of out there now. i think it has to be limited

henry: if we made an ai that had the same emotional intelligence as humans, i think it would take both the good and the bad

henry: which is why i dont think that we should make that

helena: I AGREE!!!!!! i will also say though that emotional intelligence is different from actually giving it emotions. you could make an ai extremely good at understanding human emotions without making it experience them itself. i actually think that would be preferable because it could understand why humans value things without inheriting stuff like revenge, irrational anger etc. etc. i dont see any reason we would WANT to give ai those things and i hope we don’t. even if we did it would be pretending to have emotion based on how it understands humans have emotion rather than actually experiencing these things

i have spent most of tonight resurrecting a blogging engine from 2002. it works.