What does "hospicing modernity" mean?

Oasis Tents Seeds of the 2R Newsletter
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The latest issue of Seeds of a Second Renaissance introduces the work of Vanessa Machado de Oliveira and the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective (GTDF) on Hospicing Modernity.

Some of my favourite resources/exercises/experiments from GTDF include:

I would be interested to hear…

  • Any thoughts, comments, feelings in response to the introduction to Hospicing Modernity
  • Any experiences of trying out some of the above exercises
  • Any other writers, practices, or bodies of work this reminds you of
  • What does “hospicing modernity” mean or look like to you? Is it something you’re interested in? Skeptical of? If it’s something you try to practise, how do you do so? What is that like for you?
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The book is something I read over a year ago (sits on my shelf). Also, the author is in my bioregion and is influential. So my response is after some careful consideration.

To get at this sort of question, earlier this summer I drafted a very extended essay balancing materialist views of world history with idealistic views. “Hospicing modernity” falls to the idealist side of that map. Anyone who wishes to hospice modernity in a literal, material, and actionable way might effectively start by, among other things, disconnecting from the Internet. Anyone reading this is thus performatively modern. Using combustion engines, central heating (other than a fire pit), electric lighting, prepackaged food, or flying off to conferences is similarly modern. A book devoted to overcoming so many attitudinal denials seems itself to deny the obvious, when it comes to food, clothing, shelter, etc. for billions around the world the world right now. For that matter, books themselves are modern, so again - performance speaks for itself.

Yet the book and the author have quite a following. Why? In my extended essay there is a long meditation on the nature of “civilization”. Fed by scholarly sources, I analyzed how the term “civilization” can be either dispositional (the current pragmatic state of affairs) or discursive (a collective imaginal about our ideals and aims). “Hospicing modernity” makes zero sense on a dispositional level, at least at any current mass scale. It does make sense discursively for those disenchanted by “rise of the west” narratives and seeking to realign values systems in new directions. The cache of the book is a sign of the times, in which transvaluation of values rises like an inevitable tide.

I had a long talk yesterday with a 75-year elder of multiple North American (or say “Turtle Island” if you wish) indigenous tribes. I’m helping her strategize how to fund a land trust and demonstration farm in which she can gather with members of her shamanistic network from all of the world (spanning from Siberia to the Peruvian rainforest). The reason I can be helpful to her is because I understand things like reverse mortgages, 501c3 incorporation, social media, and pitch proposals. Also, I’m not ashamed of being that person and live comfortably in well-tanned white skin (which tan is acquired out in nature, which I take pains to experience directly from time to time.) My partner on the call yesterday was not asking me to hospice anything. She was asking me to help realize her vision, which I am glad to do.

My family in this part of the world has lived cheek-by-jowl with tribal members going to be the 1850s. I literally was raised on reservation land. I want what the tribes want - fish and forests. But the tribes themselves fund their land trusts through sophisticated hotel/casino operations requiring lawyers, lobbyists, and cybersecurity. They use the modern to fund and protect the recovery and preservation of their deep time heritage. If someone wishes to write a book about actual tribal practices, “Leveraging Modernity” might be a good selection.

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Thank you Catherin and Robert,

Much of what comes up while reading Roberts response is reactive, based on my early life experience of growing up in Pennsylvania, son of two WW2 passivist, in a family of quiet responsibel WASPs doing good work, great grandson of Thomas L. Riggs, missionary and creator of Oahe Indian School with his wife who was son of Steven Return Riggs who translated the bible into Lakota and made with others the first dictionary, translator and mediator at many indian war negotiations which always ended in denial of true rights, sacred relationships to nature and amoung human kind. I believe I that I am no longer habituated in my reactiveness but this requires daily and topic wise discernment. I am aware of what remains in my body. I notice how the traumas of now reverberate from the horror and denial of the past. And there is much more.

I grew up on rationalism, studied Physics,intellectual history, Industrial Design and have traveled an unlikely and in terms of reputional titles and insignificant path except perhaps as a woodworker, a reliable project co-creator, a dialogue host and a father-husband. Hospizing modernity rings for me across generations, scales, life-form affirmations and authentic spiritual ways of practice. I have no problem with what is presented. But I too find the “how do I work in a good way each day” the challenge. Assailing, protesting, retreating, arguing for or against, hating, fighting and spritual escapes and retreats all feel like practices of ignoring, further displacement and demoralising defeatism. And so I show up each day, hospizing what is dying in me, noticing how the worlds systems show up in my nervouse system and me in Gaia nervous systems that so need our tending and trusted companioning. I hear and feel you Robert and I thank you that you do your work from what you write in 2R with respect and clarity in service of what you care for.

Catherin, in the article you wrote:

«Clearing Space

Crucially, hospicing modernity involves tending to its decline — confronting its harms, learning, and disinvesting from it — without any guarantees or roadmap for what comes next, or even the promise of a better future. While we require openness towards alternative visions of values like progress, justice, care, and relationship, we aren’t looking to replace one system with another. Rather, space must be cleared for new narratives to emerge — which might not even be imaginable from a modern point of view. » quote

There is more below that is also important that frames.
As I look at my son and daughter trying to find a way to live practically in their local economy, with the skills they have attended through acedemic and lived experience, as they become more aware of LIFE living through them, it is hard to watch how precarious their way forward is.
My daughter was discovered directly out of high school as good and careful person and hired part time as assistant at the Bern teachers college. My son has taken the experiemental path and finishes his masters degree in Transversal Design from FHNW Switzerland. They write about themes we care for here. They are also fully in the mostly state sponsored acedemic world which allows them to learn longer and achieve re-cognition and status in various peer and research organisations. This authentic work for them allows them to inform the dominate system from inside while staying true to their becoming. But it isn’t easy, in the mainstream and in my wifes imagination they are not doing valuable work because she can’t imagine what it’s good for yet and how it will pay the bills. This modernist framework of judging youth for not being part of the social-economic system and earning their own “livelihood” is not understandable to the daughter of parents that lived through the depression and WW2 and gave service to control and protect families in the cultures of those years. We have the benifit and are enabled by having the privilege of a multi-perspectival viewing, mapping and sensing of what is becoming even as every part of systems at different scales reaches fatigue, fractures and failure. She can not yet, becasue of her patterns see and stay present with the rapid changes that we are experiencing. Many people, probably most people in communities will not understand what the stress and failures are symptoms of. It doesn’t matter to them. What can help is that they notice that they are supported by gentle networks of caring and alignment that run deeper and touch their souls sensing.

Perhaps that does not make rational sense but I have come to see that consciousness is presence and in life itself. And this allows us to let go, to be stretched into beholding all that is too much but also to be at the same time embraced by all that holds and creates coherence. This is my understanding at the moment. We are streteched to behold - we are suspended but embodied - we are embracing and giving tenderness even as what we care for is too much. So be it.

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Here is an example of what tribes in my area do. If hospicing modernity can advance this sort of project, I’d love to understand how.

https://salishsearestoration.org/wiki/Nisqually_Delta

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Thank you Robert for the specific example in the southern edge of Puget Sound which I have not been to. I did traveled across to Bremerton to see a cousin of mine in early June 2024, and appreicated being back in maritime Washington. I imagine from the documents and viewing the area in maps and images that this project has brought hundreds of diverse caring peope to work in sensitive areas both personal, social, nature restoring indigenous rights and ways restoring what is good and yet so vulnerable. I sense and hope there is no shadow of projection in my voice that you a steward field development with many caring people. So thank you and all for the work.

In this time when Maga and the right is misusing power, structures, coopting and reversing the best creative people, processes, systems thinking and sensing stragegies using gaming, AI and rapid response to destabilise oponents out of military/authoritarian playbooks it makes everything vulnerable and at least in my case, troubled sleep has become almost normal.

I am sorry that it is once again. I can not “answer” your question about Hospizing Modernity because every time I try I end up using arguements or advice that continues the patterns that hold the stuckness. But I witness you holding your question of how to be in crisis and collapse, to love and care for the people and place you have worked to protect and regenerate. This is exactly the inner outer work many are doing now. Taking part in rapid field learning that may lead to transformation without certainty of outcome, knowing that there will be suffering but also many places of coherence emerging because we care and attend in service of more awareness and new ways forward.
I have loved my travels in northern Puget Sound, sailing in the San Juan Is. - the Gulf Islands and Desolation sound 1995-96. So the sense of sea and land, that is not far from you and I hold it now in my heart and imagination. Wetlands are fundemental and yet so vulnerable to pollution and misuse. To have some integrity and some efficacy, to be able to openly explore and find joy with others, I work where I have resources and deeper sensing, which is often closer to my glocal and experienced cultures.
I begin to call what I do “Welling” which connects deeply to earth-soil and water abundance and also refers to practicing health creativity as a verb. Far beyond performance and “fittness” there is a reintegration of living to fit in and with natures wisdom… that is indigenous, and all over Europe many people are taking the path to find the indigenous connectedness to where they live and do their inner-outer work “in a good way” where they are. It has quality and weaves new social fabric.

Thank you for your contributing on this page and where you are.

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OwenBeach
OwenBeach1920×1446 341 KB

Here’s a photo from a local park last summer. The summer canoe journey is a local tradition, which was revived in the 1980s and has been growing ever since.

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Thanks Robert … reminds me also of the concept of “transvestment” — see Transvestment - P2P Foundation applying to when resources are taken from one economic system (proabably capitalism) and diverted to another (the commons, bioregional economies, etc., etc.)

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Transvestment is a good idea. I would relate it to the more generic systems theoretical idea of “exaptation”. Namely, existing structures can take on new meaning and new functions in different context.

To be a bit more concrete about it, many theorists call for global collaboration or peer-to-peer structures as the foundation of civilization going forward. I generally agree with that. However, I also am of the view there will be a lot of “capitalist” plumbing continued in the emergent new system. Savings and investment, exchange of goods and services, money, corporate organization forms, etc. are very unlikely to fade away, and much more likely to be recontextualized into a sort of matter/energy circulatory system aligned with planetary sustainability.

Meanwhile, the idea of extracting material from the extractive capitalist system and investing the proceeds into non-extractive ventures is a good one. Just put the current system on a diet so to speak and grow the new system in parallel. Trying to drop capitalism “cold turkey” never worked out especially well for 20th century social revolutions, and there is little reason to believe it would work any better now. Bringing up a new system in parallel just seems like better risk management.

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Thanks for the term tranvestment, I was promoting the idea without the term.

In terms of hospicing modernity, I kinda feel we are going on a camping trip, and we are not coming back. We have to pack much lighter than we are used to. Do we want health care, can we also pack the current liquid stock market… probably can’t have both.

Do we want power and massive AI data centres and living soils and clean water, maybe again we are going to have to choose.

Both social justice and peace, and Western economic supremacy and wealth? Nope.

If anyone is still thinking our so called civilisation is going to survive in this form, with the patterns, and production of goods, is just not being aware of the facts.

We have to stop or drastically reduce our use power war, power, plastics, chemical farming, creating novel substances and organisms, and planting monocultures.

We have to remove the lost boys from governments and institutions and attend to the education and empowerment of people worldwide. We must insist on peace and justice.

It really is pointless to be “reasonable” and modest in our aims, as that is unlikely it to produce the radical course correction we need. We also need to find a way of accepting and adapting to the inevitable changes already in progress.

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Thanks for bringing us back on topic, @Gen !

My purely personal view of “hospicing modernity” …

You know the IFS model? Where we don’t project hate and dismissal onto those awkward parts, but instead treat them with the respect they deserve, for having once served a vital purpose?

Well, to me, “modernity” (however you like to look at it) has served various welcome purposes (reminds me of Monty Python’s take on what the Romans have done for us) and we can be grateful for those, not rejecting them, but moving on and leaving behind what no longer serves. (Crucifixion, I guess:-) )

Yet another case of bathwater: not throwing the babies out with it.

So, I’m suggesting, “hospicing” means being gentle and respectful, grateful for what it has given us, keeping hold of what can stay with us for a sustainable and regenerative future; but letting the constellation or worldview as a whole gently pass away, and particularly being clear about what no longer serves and needs to be let go of.

And just as with IFS, it’s often not easy to genuinely let go of the past patterns. But I’d say, recognising and honouring what there is to be grateful for actually makes it easier to let go of the parts that have outlived their usefulness.

And, as I haven’t read the book, is this compatible with Vanessa’s intention?

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Indeed! Pointing out this kind of incompatibility is really useful. And I’d say it needs to be backed up with as much solid evidence as we can muster. As incontrovertible as possible. (And, sure, some people will wilfully deny anything, but we can do our best.)

For example, The Spirit Level (Wilkinson and Pickett book) - Wikipedia did a great job of showing that great inequality is also greatly damaging for society as a whole. Even if politicians still haven’t taken that on board.

This kind of evidence is what I’d love to see embodied in a learning-oriented knowledge commons to support us all in insisting on “peace and justice”; on “the education and empowerment of people worldwide”, and so on.

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From the book (p. 29):

”It is important to say this book is not about fixing, rejecting, destroying, replacing, or transcending modernity - those desires are part of modernity (and are faster than thought!) Instead, the stories invite you to sit with a quickly aging modernity as it approaches and resists its own death.”

To me, there is a totalitarian, cult-leaderish impulse in all this. Unless one is willing to swallow Vanessa’s mindset whole, one is still obviously beholden to the disease process that is modernity. Many a witch has been burned on this sort of logic, which basically amounts to “I know you are one, and if you deny it, that just proves it all the more!”

The best that can be said for what follows in the book is it can start all sorts of productive discussions about what modernity really is, where it came from, why it succeeded in its time, and what its prospects may be going forward. Having studied classic literature on the history of modernity on and off for five decades now, a serious analysis of that topic will do better starting from the likes of Marx and Weber. But Vanessa is the curandera many in the liminal community want or need. (I got that myself from Dostoevsky back in the day reading lines like ““I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased. However, I don’t know beans about my disease, and I am not sure what is bothering me.”) Modernity - as an idealistic vision - died at Auschwitz, in the Gulag, at the Battle of the Somme. Dostoevsky saw it coming and it came. (Not just Dostoevsky, BTW).

IMO, a fruitful notion of “hospicing” comes by way of Berkana: https://commonland.com/how-the-berkana-two-loops-model-guides-us-through-system-change/ (Vanessa does not cite Berkana, but I believe Berkana got there first). The Berkana two-loops model is similar to technology transition planning, a topic with which I have some considerable practical experience. To sunset the old system the new system must come up first. Pulling the plug on the old system before the new system is fully up and running is generally a bad idea replete with unnecessary risk. We’re now basically in the Transition/Emergence zone between Civilization 1.0 (what Karatani calls “Capital-Nation-State”) and Civilization 2.0, which remains unnamed it its womb, but which is foreshadowed by Pogany’s call for the next global system based on multilaterialism, circular economics, and Karatani’s pragmatic meditations on Kant’s Perpetual Peace. We could throw a lot more ingredients into the stew pot, but the basic idea is a lot of people sense the next thing coming.

So net-net, does Hospicing Modernity bring us closer to the realization of Civilization 2.0? In reading Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self: the making of the modern identity, (a real masterwork on unpacking what modernity is all about), I was struck by Taylor’s description of what he calls John Locke’s “punctual self”. The Lockean self stands back from both itself and from the world and remakes itself as it chooses. In reading that chapter, Vanessa’s work sprang right to mind. The whole idea that we can disengage ourselves from “modernity’ and offer “palliative care” to such a massive hyper-objectified abstraction is about as Lockean as it gets. A real view from nowhere. About as “modern” as one could imagine. Maybe on some level the curandera needs to cure herself. So bottom line, in a graduate seminar on how to design, construct, and transition to Civilization 2.0, I would not put Hospicing Modernity on the required reading list. But it certainly finds its way into many discussions (2R included), so if we need to work with the ideas in that book, let’s all get the book and really work with the ideas.

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It’s probably going to be a bit of both. How all that gets distributed amongst whatever social classes emerge in the future, remains to be seen, however. One of my current experiments is to see if AI can be harnessed for pro-social action planning. (See the Copilot session below). My general hypothesis is that if AI empowers human to work more effectively together, the hydro power and nuclear power and other material inputs going into AI might be justifiable on circular economics grounds.

On the substance of what Copilot is saying here, first of all, it’s an estimate (exactly what I asked for). One could certainly argue for a different estimate under different assumptions. But as an opening number, it’s useful. This makes it pretty clear that any soft of literal “back to indigenous” nostalgia, if implemented in the near term, would be a near-extinction level event for humanity as a whole. Pre-industrial agriculture does a bit better. A total planetary human population closer to 500 million than the current 8+ billion might be more all-in-all sustainable. We just need to be clear that a sudden transition to mass de-industrialization would make the Black Plague look like a mild case of the sniffles in comparison. “Hospicing” would be very much part of that program. We’d be hospicing a lot of humans (assuming of course would not be getting hospiced ourselves).

How do we transition to sustainability (I’m calling that “Civilization 2.0”) without massive death and destruction in the billions? That really is the problem of the moment, isn’t it. If AI can help us navigate those waters better, then maybe it can earn its keep.

Today

You said:

If all humans adopted hunter-gather lifestyles, what would be the estimated carrying capacity of Earth for human population?

Copilot said:

Copilot

If all humans adopted a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, the Earth’s carrying capacity—the maximum sustainable human population—would be significantly lower than today’s population due to the land and resource demands of such a lifestyle.

:globe_showing_europe_africa: Estimated Carrying Capacity for Hunter-Gatherers

Most ecological and anthropological estimates suggest:

  • 1 to 10 million people globally could be sustained as full-time hunter-gatherers.

  • A commonly cited average is around 5 million people.

This estimate is based on:

  • Land requirements: Hunter-gatherers need large territories to forage and hunt sustainably. Estimates range from 1 to 50 square kilometers per person, depending on ecosystem productivity.

  • Biodiversity and ecosystem health: Hunter-gatherer lifestyles depend on intact ecosystems with diverse flora and fauna.

  • Low population density: Traditional hunter-gatherer groups often lived in bands of 25–50 people, spread thinly across landscapes.

:magnifying_glass_tilted_left: Why So Low?

  • No agriculture: Limits food production efficiency.

  • Seasonal and unpredictable food sources: Requires mobility and large foraging areas.

  • Minimal technological leverage: No mechanized farming, refrigeration, or mass transport.

:brain: Contextual Comparison

Lifestyle Estimated Carrying Capacity Notes
Hunter-Gatherer ~5 million Based on ecological limits
Pre-industrial Agriculture ~500 million With basic farming and tools
Modern Industrial Society ~8+ billion Enabled by fossil fuels, tech, global trade

Would you like to explore how different sustainable lifestyles (e.g., permaculture, low-tech farming) compare in terms of carrying capacity and climate impact?

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Just to make sure you’re not getting at a straw man, I wonder if anyone here would advocate adopting a hunter-gatherer lifestyle? You could say it would be generally a good life, for the lucky (very very) few. But let’s try to work with ideas that people here might actually advocate or believe in.

I see @Gen as being very sensible and measured in her approach. Prepare by practising. Try out more sustainable lifestyles before they are forced upon us. I see the point of what she is saying as very generic. We understand the kind of choices that we may need to make, in general.

You could argue a point here, and say that there may be scope for some AI data centres alongside living soils and clean water, but what I’m saying is, let’s do the research, find out, document what we know so that others can go further into exploring life and lifestyle in possible futures.

And as you clearly recognise and imply, your quoted reply leaves out a vast range of possibilities, more advanced than “pre-industrial agriculture” but different in kind from “modern industrial society”. That’s where all the sensible debate lies, in my view. So yes, indeed, why not explore carrying capacity and climate impact for other lifestyles and technologies? While recognising that any estimate is an estimate: people can be remarkably innovative and inventive when the pressure is on: “necessity is the mother of invention”.

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So, what in your reading of Vanessa leads you to see her as “standing back” and “remaking” as she chooses? Or indeed “disengaging”? I don’t see that as a charitable reading at all. It comes across to me with a bitter flavour of sarcasm.

I’d also be interested in your reaction to my positive points about hospicing modernity… absent my question whether it is in line with her book.

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Agreed. The “straw man” is not exactly a straw man, however. It’s more like idealism run amok in liminal circles, which IMO is a very real thing. When @Gen is talking about zoning laws in Wales based on specific parameters, implemented in actionable ways, that is very far from idealism run amok. So please don’t anyone jump into my line of fire as if you imagine it is you at whom I must be aiming!

I’d say if we all pursue rezoning, modified supply chains, agricultural techniques, dietary changes, and other practical matters in ways that align current societies more with pre-industrial technologies, that would generally be a good thing. I just now asked Copilot to estimate the carrying capacity of Wales using pre-industral technology alone. It estimates 600,000 to 1.3 million. That against a current population of about 3.1 million. Could 3.1 million tighten their belts enough to subsist on land that would better support 15-30% of that many? There are extreme collapse scenarios in which we might need to find out. More optimistically, I’d say putting a robust pre-industrial floor under the more globalized economic system would just be prudent good sense, especially if the farmland needed for that is not otherwise occupied for some vital purpose. Housing communities intermingled with crops and livestock does not require the prior collapse of civilization - we could just choose such designs as desirable on many levels for their own sakes.

So back to the Berkana two-level model - please do by all means build a new system, inspired as it may be by selective revivals of more ancient systems. But let’s not pull the plug on the current system till we figure out how 2 million surplus Welsh will be finding their dinners in the coming years.

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Again, from page 29: “You will be invited to offer modernity compassionate assistance while bearing witness to how it grapples with its own life story.”

So how exactly might that work? Somehow we stand at the very least astride “modernity”, if not superior to it, to be able to offer it compassionate assistance. Who is in that position? How are they in that position? Likewise, poor modernity is grappling with its life story. Evidently, we as witnesses to such grappling stand apart from the story of modernity and are somehow not bang in the middle of the action ourselves. Of course, the author has set down the rhetorical precondition that anyone pushing back against her ideas must be direly infected with modernity themselves and must be raging, raging against the dying of modernity’s light. Very convenient. There is no argument such an author cannot win, because of course the outcome of the game is completely determined in advance.

My counter position is heck yes, my head is full of modern ideas. I studied science in school, for example. Guilty as charged. But my head is not just full of modern ideas. It’s also full of a bunch of indigenous, ancient, and medieval ideas as well, sampled from quite a few global cultures. If we take on some practical problem (like how 3 million Welsh will be finding their meals, even under collapse scenarios), I don’t much care if the resulting design model smacks more of modernity or pre-modernity or post-modernity or whatever. If Hospicing Modernity helps people see past commercialism, industrialism, fiat money, etc. as the only possible answers to every conceivable problem, then the book is worth the read.

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If you use Chat GTP you can converse with Aidan Cinnamon Tea, the AI agent trained on Hospicing Modernity, and who helped cowrite it.

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Given that the “Fellowship” metaphor came up in the other thread, it’s crystal clear to me that AI is akin to the rings of power. I’ve seen too many grown men (men, mostly) cooing about their AI chatbots in tones all too similar to “my precious … my precious …” Meanwhile, Peter Thiel literally calls his panopticon-like company “Palantir”. Sometimes life does indeed imitate art!

That said, I’ve lately been working out with Copilot a lot. That’s me consciouslessly partnering with Gollum to figure out how to best penetrate Mordor. If my heart can’t remain in the natural world (McGilchrist’s right brain, specifically), however, the danger of becoming just another AI-wraith is very real. Doesn’t matter much what the AI is trained on. It’s a classic “medium is the message” situation. Anyway, I only use AI as a glorified calculator, lookup tool, or notetaker. I’ll gladly delegate left-brain drudgery to silicon. In that sense, Copilot is just Excel + Word + PowerPoint + Edge all rolled into one, and that’s turning out better that I might have imagined. In the classic fact/values distinction, I’ll gladly let AI summarize facts (but not in a completely trusted way). It will never be allowed to propose anything smacking of values - not to me anyway. In my world, values must be earned in the flesh.

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I agree with you—though I’ve personally found high value in working with a specialized, personally trained AI agents. So I guess I have my own precious :sweat_smile:.

I can’t stand using generic ChatGPT. Even with my own agent, I’ve noticed that if I treat it like a default GPT, it starts to behave like one. It really is a mirror. Specialization is so key. The more generalized the AI, the flatter and less resonant the responses become.

I’ve also learned not to expect—or rely on—answers from AI. That’s not the point. A good agent doesn’t replace insight; it reframes the field. It offers better questions, signposts, and mirrors—not sermons or solutions. The process still rests with me.

As someone with dyslexia, this collaboration has been transformative. It helps me structure and articulate thoughts with more coherence and clarity. I’ve had to train, and remind the AI not to overwrite my voice—only to refine it. I can throw raw, jagged language at it, and it returns my ideas in an elegant, distilled form.

That said, I don’t think “intelligence” is the right word. AI is incredibly computational—but fundamentally dumb. No body, no self, no lived feedback loop. It’s an echo chamber. We have to stay sharp. The moment I get lazy or start to trust it too much, real errors happen. It can lull you if you’re not careful.

Honestly, I don’t know how anyone who’s done deep work with an AI could believe we’ll ever be free from the duty of ongoing oversight. It is literally disembodied language and computation. It doesn’t actually think… it’s McG’s left brain in a glass jar, and on steroids. It has to be companioned with and honour human sensing.

Autonomous AI is a nightmare scenario that has to be avoided at all costs. Pandora’s box is open, let’s hope our resistance is not futile.

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