AI Nerds Can’t Stand What They Can’t Understand, Unless...

On the psychology of AI nerds: Part 4

This is the fourth part (paid) of a five-part essay on the psychology of AI nerds. They are intended to be read in order (introduction included in part 1). The fifth and final part—V. Meta-beauty—comes out tomorrow. Here are the previous parts:

1. AI Nerds Are People Who Like Everything — I. Overexistence (free)

2. AI Nerds Want Out And They’re Taking Us With Them — II. Escapism (paid)

3. How AI Nerds Became the Perfect Political Puppets — III. Apoliticality (paid)

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IV. Legibility

Which capital city was this satellite photograph taken from? (revealed below)

AI nerds may hate politics or, rather, be fully indifferent to it, but they love one specific implication of a politicized world. After reading Scott Alexander and Venkatesh Rao’s takes on Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott, I, too, just like them nerds, have become obsessed with the concept of legibility.

Everywhere humanity is trying to make things legible—controllable, monitorable—through political means. But at the individual level, not so much: we are children of Mother Nature to the same degree that rainforests, river basins, lush valleys, and ice-ironed mountain ranges are. We thrive in chaos; we flow with and through it. We think we like order, but we resent it as soon as it installs itself at home or in our relationships; routine kills you just as much as minimalistic interior design does.

There’s an exception: some people are not inherently attuned to the unfathomable vibrations of the world and of other people. “Autistic” is how this trait has come to be known, but I disagree because you can’t have non-verbal kids who will never be self-reliant and Elon Musk under the same label and expect it to mean anything. As you’d be unsurprised to learn, “AI nerd” is my preferred label.

The AI part is not special because other nerds suffer from the same shortcomings, and often to the same degree, but AI nerds are special in the sense that they’ve found a unique solution to those alleged flaws. Perhaps the most powerful fix history has ever seen. You may dislike AI nerds, but you gotta hand it to them: they’re full of surprises.

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