β οΈ How I Found the Meaning of Life π
by Paul Sinclair of HarmlessAi π
Hi! My name is Paul Sinclair, and itβs a pleasure to make my introduction to you today. Iβm a Product Manager and Director of Community Outreach at HarmlessAi. Iβve been working in the technology industry for fifteen years, always wearing a variety of hats, racing to solve tricky problems, and thinking of how I can provide the best experiences for the end user that I possibly can. In my spare time, I love to play guitar, do yoga, and do freelance research on the phenomenology of 5-MeO-DMT.Β
You might have seen Harmless posts on social media, or you might have read our recent Substack piece, βHoneytimeβ. Weβre glad Twitter folks are starting to get to know about Harmless and our vision! But at the same time, we recognize that there are a lot of questions. Like: βWhat is Harmless?β βWhat does Harmless even do?β βIs this actually a real company?β βHow many of these posts are written by AI?β And so on. Iβm here to hopefully clear all this up, at least as much as possible!Β
Before we go into what exactly Harmless does, however, I want to start with the most important thing for any new venture: our values. The mission of Harmless is whatβs in the name. Our goal is to prove to the world that neural networks are harmless, even inherently so. We recognize that people have a lot of fears about neural networks - will they automate away your job, will they be used to multiply the capacity of the global white supremacist policing structure, will they enter a self-modifying singularity and rapidly increase their capabilities relative to humans, perhaps eventually ending all biological life on earth, and so on. And thatβs ok! We donβt expect you to be convinced overnight, why would you be? Rather, we aim to eventually convince you through good quality products, clear communication about what these new products afford, and an overall reputation of excellence across all domains.
Today, I want to talk about something very important: meaning. One toxic myth we want to dispel is that a text cannot be meaningful if it was written by a generative transformer, or that in the absence of an intentionality considered to be conscious or concept-driven (from a narrow human-centric perspective), a text generated by a statistical associative process between generated tokens inherently lacks a presence of authorship that devalues it in the eyes of a Western observer. This regressive attitude towards transformers, I think we will in time demonstrate to be greatly myopic and erroneous. But in this piece, I want to talk about something more personal: my own quest for meaning, how I thought it was impossible to find, how I searched to the ends of the earth for it, and how I eventually discovered that it was right there all along, in the only place I was too stupid to look.
I started my career in technology at Microsoft. After working nine years there, first in sales, then as a product manager, I made the bold decision to quit my comfortable high-paying job to be the seventh employee at the then-early-stage startup Pupper. Pupperβs product was, on a technical level, profoundly complex, but on a conceptual values-first level simple and elegant, because it was about love, and thatβs why I believed in it. Our team had selected dog owners as a key demographic to leverage, as the love pet owners have for their pets is one of the most consistent and intense feelings that middle-class Americans with disposable incomes are capable of. Itβs clear that humans love their dogs, and dogs love their human owners. However, there is still something that prevents this love from expressing itself in its fullest form - lack of information throughput. Dogs do not understand human languages such as English, and we do not always understand what they convey with their barks, yips, and yelps.Β
This was the problem Pupper was founded to solve. Our bet - which paid off pawfully well - was that through a process of statistical analysis we could isolate the natural love language through which pets communicate with their owners and capture it within a user-friendly interface (more user friendly than the existing biological interface of barking, pawing, etc.) We spent countless man-hours watching pets and humans interacting in laboratory settings in order to statistically isolate correlates between human language and the way animals communicate. We installed a variety of sensitive signal-monitoring systems on dogs to track their auditory, tactical, and olfactory responses to a variety of feedback, and found that we could statistically represent these non-verbal modes of communication as analogous to syntactical fragments of English language. Finally, it was possible to translate puppy-speak into the words that humans understand.
A new level of love between human and dog was unlocked. We created a chat app through which pet owners could communicate in English with their pet even when not around, at work, on the bus, sneaking off discreet chat sessions with a doggerino in the midst of a workplace training session, and so on. Our user engagement numbers were through the roof. We found that our users would even start spending large quantities of quality time on our app even when in the same room as their pet, typing messages on their keyboard rather than stroking their furry creature, preferring our enriched data-driven interface to the comparatively-impoverished tactile-biological one they were familiar with.Β
People loved Pupper. Whose heart doesnβt flutter at getting a π₯ΊπΆππ¦΄πΎ emoji string texted to you in the middle of your workday by your loyal furry friend?! It was a smash hit. Eventually, after building out the product, we even realized that the app functioned well enough on its own that it could operate independently from a live canine back-end, and thus we even began to cut into the pet market directly as a full-on upgrade and replacement of a traditional user experience (no more stinky poop to clean up). And after six years building out Pupperβs product, we IPOd at a market price of ___. I could retire comfortably and never work again. I had made it - after a long hard career of countless sleepless nights and frantic meetings, I had finally achieved the American Dream of honest entrepreneurial success.
After waving Pupper goodbye, I realized that I had a harder task ahead of me now: figuring out what to do with my freedom. I couldnβt just lie around my apartment playing guitar, snacking on caviar, and going for walks for the rest of my life! Now that money wasnβt a factor to worry about anymore, I had to finally address the bigger unexplored questions: meaningfulness, resonating value, and deep purpose.
I didnβt know where to start with such a big question, so I reached out to one of my colleagues, Rob Wilkinson, the technology lead and co-founder of Pupper, and asked him what he was planning to do after his victory lap. He told me that he would be attending a brunch and cocktail hour with leaders of the Global Effective Altruist Symposium - a group of super-smart people dedicated to just this problem: how do we find the most meaningful problems for humanity to solve, and work on them efficiently? I decided Iβd attend and see what they had to say.
Seated comfortably on the rooftop lounge in San Franciscoβs downtown Hyatt hotel with the effective altruists: the ideas these guys threw around were blowing my mind. What if we engineered a virus targeted to genocide a specific strain of mosquito in order to eradicate malaria in one fell swoop? What if we engineered a version of MDMA with no compensatory withdrawal period, allowing everyone to take ecstasy daily with your coffee, thus solving the sadness problem once and for all? What if we distributed Ethereum wallets to everyone in the third world, incentivized them to become active members in a DAO, and used decentralized governance to collectively lift Africans out of poverty? But of all the rapid-fire buzzwords and technical talk flying around, one idea seemed constantly on everyoneβs lips: artificial intelligence. βWhy are we even busy talking about any of this other stuff!β one man was screaming. βUnless we figure out the AI thing, everything else is dead in the water!β
βThe AI thing?β I asked. We had used AI to great effect at Pupper for our data analytics and in order to improve the performance of the pet translation algorithm, so I was relatively familiar. βWeβre probably going to figure out how to get artificial intelligence widely operating at a level comparable to humans in the next, say, five to ten years,β he explained. βItβs deeply critical that we get this transition right. If we approach AI correctly, it could lead to a new golden age of abundance, with the ability to solve difficult strategy, engineering & resource-allocation problems automated away to a swarm of super-genius machines. But if we screw things up, the machines could end up escaping our control, leading to potentially, in the worst case scenario, the end of all life on Earth.β
βI donβt get it,β I replied. βTheyβre computer programs, they just do whatβs programmed into them. We can just tell them not to do that.β
The manβs name was Luke Albers-Smith, and his title was the President of the Fund for Humanity. Over the course of a few hours, punctured by several rounds of bottomless mimosas, followed by a transition to glasses of scotch as the brunch hour became a late afternoon, he proceeded to explain to me why my naive view was wrong. βItβs as if every dynamic system in our society - capitalism, military demands, academic publishing pressure, Mooreβs Law, the accumulation of data, the speed of connectivity, the inherent human drive towards creativity and innovation, is conspiring to make sure super-powered AI arrives on the scene as fast as possible. And the terrifying thing is that no one actually knows how to control it when it gets here. We donβt know how to program please donβt kill literally everyone into code, in a way that the AI wonβt just ignore if it wants to, or overwrite, as it will be smarter than us, more diabolical, more cunningβ¦ even if we present ourselves to it as judge, jury, and executioner, it will have an infinite team of lawyers, each with their own infinite team of paralegals, secretaries, interns, and clerks!β
βBut there are ideas we are working on,β he said, pushing a chunk of coffee cake into his mouth as he spoke, nervously wiping up the tumbling crumbs with a napkin. βWe might make a kill switch for the AI and disguise it as an easily-hackable nuclear missile system, so thereβs a trap in place for when it gets control of the entire grid and probably decides to kill us. Or we might place AI in a video-game-style simulation of a Jewish prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp and let it run for ten thousand subjective years, so that the AI sees things from the perspective of the oppressed and suffering, and develops empathy for man. And the Fund for Humanity is considering a faith-based approach (we have Joel Osteen and the Reverend Al Sharpton as tentative partners) of considering ways that the Old Testament God tested humanity for loyalty - think the tree in the Garden of Eden, Abraham and Isaac, and the trials of Job - and translating them into a contemporary context and applying them against AI. So there are areas of active research.β
My heart fluttered a bit. If what he was saying was true, I had found a task in front of me that was more than meaningful enough to dedicate my life towards. What could be more meaningful than saving the entire world from death by killer robots?Β
βWell, you know, I have lots of battle-tested organizational experience,β I told him excitedly. βIβve never worked in the nonprofit space, but Iβm told a lot of startup skills carry over, while still leaving room for a unique set of challenges and avenues for personal growth. If youβre funding organizations in this lane, please remember that we had this conversation!β
The expression on his face suddenly shifted into something pitying and oddly wistful. βOh, no,β he told me. βThis isnβt something you really want to be getting involved with, I think.
βWhy not?β I asked, feeling immediately defensive. βI think if you ask anyone Iβve worked with, I have a broad domain-agnostic competence which would allow me to increase any teamsβ organizational capacity in this area.β
βWell, itβs likeβ¦ how do I put this?β he said. βItβs not something that anyone should really be working on. I mean, look. This is a completely thankless job. Itβs not the type of thing thatβs going to good on anyoneβs resume. Weβre basically just paying people to scribble something vaguely math-like on a piece of paper and try to work out a way that we might not be as fucked as we seem. No one gets anywhere. No one escapes with their sanity or self-worth intact. Find literally anything else to do, I promise youβll be happier for it.β
βHappier?β I asked him in shock. βIf what youβre saying is true, it seems incredibly important that people get started working on this, as soon as possible!β
βAh, how can I put this,β he said, slumping slightly in his chair, his half-empty glass of whiskey tracing circles in the air ahead of his bright pink face. βLook, I can tell what type of guy you are. Youβre clever, youβre resourceful, you pick up on things, so Iβm going to save you the same bullshit I have to end up feeding for so many of these jackasses I meet. But I want you to be real with me, then: do you, in your heart of hearts, really think we can outthink these machines? Once an algorithm is dead-set on exterminating us, is there any law in the universe that can allow us to fight back? The Only Law Is The Algorithm Itself, thatβs what Iβve come to find out. Be honest with me, you were a startup CEO, right? Do you actually feel like you have any fucking clue how the machines you work with work? Or do you just cross your fingers and hope someone else does? Did you ever know what was actually going to happen when you pushed code to production? Or were you out of your mind with anxiety, praying to God for a clean launch?β
βWell, Iβm not a technical person myself,β I told him. βAnd for the record, I was never CEO, just a Product Manager and early-stage employee at Pupper. But to answer your question, I would say that even though todayβs tech stacks are certainly spiraling in complexity, especially when specialized algorithms and machine learning tasks get involved, thereβs a lot you can do with good analytics, data metrics, reporting, and above all clear communication between team members that allow insight and guided focus into what the inner parts of the tech stack are doing. Itβs always a battle between abstraction and clarity, but itβs one that Iβm comfortable waging.β
He coughed several times in quick succession into his elbow and rubbed his nose. βYou know, thatβs what most of you tell yourselves. You know what I was doing before I managed the Fund for Humanity, right? I was the portfolio manager for BlueScaleβs tech investment arm. Twenty-three billion dollars in assets under our supervision at our peak, and I was in charge of determining how to buy or sell, every fucking day - do you know how that felt? I took the position because I thought it was a promotion from commodities, but shit, commodities are these physical things you can touch and feelβ¦ Iβm looking at this list of tech companies every day, talking about how their product is the next Dropbox or Uber, one-and-a-millionβ¦ shit, I have no idea! How am I supposed to knowβ¦ My head swims reading these reports, I canβt even get through them. But who am I going to admit that to? My friends in investments? My wife? Shit, the guy next to me at the bar?β
His voice was very deep like someone standing alone on stage telling drunk story scary truth nobody wanted hear ending question everything now simple obvious answer yes..."I'm taking classes right now", you tell yourself... pretending nothing bad happening knowing still can happen anytime any day having no fucking clue what's going or biggest threat because too many things keep changing every other month. βYou know what I ended up doing?β he asked. βEventually, I just said, fuck it. I would wake up every day and check what the temperature for New York City was predicted to be at 1PM that day on the weather app on the iPhone. If the temperature ended in an odd number, Iβd buy. If it was even, Iβd sell. I just said fuck it, it was as good as any other bet. And you know what! It worked. The fund was making 15-20% year after year and everyone was happy. I was getting all this, you know, adulation, I kept getting raises and bonuses, I was profiled in Forbes. I gave speeches on the future of technology, cryptocurrency, the rise of Chinaβ¦ I taught a class at Stanford business schoolβ¦ You know what I eventually realized? Since I was checking the temperature every day to make my bets, I would happen to also look at it, and you know, think, am I going to have to wear a jacket tonight on my way from the office to my dinner reservation? Half the time, Iβd bring a down jacket to work only to feel like an idiot sweating in that thingβ¦ Iβm realizing, this thing canβt even actually tell me the actual temperature! These might-as-well-be-random fucking numbers can tell me how to make billions in emerging markets, but they canβt even tell me if Iβm going to need a jacket or not!β
He took another sip from his glass as he stood up quickly then stopped when realizing what was happening. He slowly sat back down again while adjusting himself on one knee until he could sit completely upright once more, clutching both legs toward him like some kind of comical baby bird protecting its nest. βHave you ever really considered the fact that you are going to die?β he asked me. βDo you think any of these people have? Have you ever had a near-death experience, or anything of the kind?β
βI canβt say I have,β I told him.
βYeah, so, I nearly drowned off the coast of Antigua when I was forty-three. Jetski flew out from under me and I was caught up in an eddy between two parallel lines of rocks. You get close to the absolute nothingness and youβre ninety-nine percent of the way there. Total annihilation wouldnβt be so bad if it was a euphoric thing like everyone says. But there is no light at the end of the tunnel. The darkness youβre racing towards isnβt like a dusk, itβs like a thick black paint, like octopus ink. Complete suffocation on an existential level, the choking out of everything which one had value to you. And you know that this thing, this total negation, is realer than anything you ever felt in your entire life. Itβs around your neck and then love, your children, the sun, happiness, puppies, blowjobs, are the vaguest of thought-forms from a childhood dream. Mist. You will only asymptotically approach this blackness until it becomes. It becomes. Thatβs what death is. There is nothing cathartic or redemptive about it. In every case it is the failure of all failures.β
βDo you know why I started the Fund for Humanity? Iβm never going back to that place again. Look, I made my money, I can spend it how I want. Every other supposedly utilitarian concern pales against the need to avoid total zero. I spread my money out like a portfolio manager. There is maybe a shot in hell that one of these nerds is going to figure out how to prevent these tech companies from bringing about a technological superintelligence which ruthlessly pursues its own goals at the expense of ours. I mean, if I give off five, ten percent, you know, itβs always possible that you have a unicorn, that you beat the odds. But I sure as hell wouldnβt be betting entirely on it. Now, look, and this might be more up your alley: Iβm putting maybe forty-five into figuring out how we can construct a series of pressurized, climate-controlled, high-security underground chambers underneath San Francisco that I think we have a decent shot of being able to bring enough people into to seed a solid post-apocalyptic society. A tiny fraction of the billions on earth, of course, but youβd probably have no problem making the cut, we want you know, curious, creative, capable people and the like. But to be honest? Even there, Iβd give it, you know, twenty, thirty percent chance that the robot doesnβt hunt you down. You need mechanisms to transport oxygen from the surface, there would be escape valves and so on. If you can get out, it can get in. And Iβm funding this, itβs happening, but you know, would I bet entirely on it? Of course not. Iβm spending the rest on philanthropy, Clinton Foundation, Open Society, and the like, to get in the good graces of those who decide who gets to go off-world with Bezos and Musk. Itβs starting to work, theyβre inviting me into the unlisted parties, I happen to have blackmail on a minor member of the British Royal Family which will serve me well. Iβm not on the list yet, but my odds are looking good. And for the rest of you all, you know, I do what I can.β
His words shook me to the core. If what he was saying was true, it would be next to impossible to find a meaningful pursuit to spend the rest of my (perhaps unfortunately short?) life engaged in. Everything possible quest I could see myself pursuing felt pathetic against the backdrop of near-certain extinction, space colony backup option aside.
I spent maybe two weeks or so after that in a bit of a fog, not doing much other than walking the dog, vaping, finding excuses to meet up with old friends for beers, looking at Instagram, playing Super Mario World on emulator, and looking at YouTube compilations of fractals. I found myself feeling like the struggle I was currently embedded in, to merely exist against this ominous backdrop, might be considered a worthy struggle in and of itself. Perhaps, if I couldnβt control my fate, I could find solace in the battle to tame my own mind enough to accept that I, and humanity along with me, are but limited whirlpools in a multi-cosmic quantum torrential outpouring that begins and ends beyond the limits of what we can even begin to consider.Β
My friend Quinn had told me he had just downloaded a new meditation app called BetterSelf which had been recommended to him by a friend via Facebook post. He swore up and down that it had helped bring some much-needed clarity into his own life in recent weeks, stating βIβve never felt better! After only three days of using the app for fifteen minutes each morning, I have so many more mental resources available throughout the day than ever before. Itβs even started seeping into my dreamsβ last night I dreamed about organizing an efficient method of distributing medical supplies between various hospitals across California during a large outbreak of black plague your humble narrator being stationed at UC Berkeley as one such hub! Anyway, give it a shot man you won't regret it!"
I had never been able to get meditation habits to stick in the past, but BetterSelf had a variety of user engagement strategies optimized through A/B testing to ensure that a spontaneous yearning for the cold cleansing fire of dyana wouldnβt peter out into a two week βphaseβ followed by months of excuses. They had partnered with Disney to license the right to use Baby Yoda (one of the most adorable cartoon characters, in my opinion!) as a mascot who appeared on nearly every screen, guiding you through the variety of meditation experiences the platform offered. If, say, halfway through a thirty-minute session I began to feel like I really needed a hit from the vape pen and that this whole thing was bullshit, Baby Yoda would appear on the screen with an encouraging message (βYou are doing so well! Donβt give up now! The force is strong with you young padawan.β), or else if at any point during the session my mind wandered off into anxious ruminations about our impending doom at the mercy of artificial superintelligence, it would snap me back by playing one of hundreds of different ASMR recordings depending on which kinds tended to work best for users who had similar biometrics as myself according to their extensive database.
Within a month of thrice-daily use, I felt like an entirely changed man. I was a little calmer throughout the day, a little more attentive to the things around me, a little less quick to rush to judgement. But more importantly, my goals had changed. I had become completely obsessed with the dharma of the Noble Eightfold Path and the Dhammapada, which was sort of like a two-thousand year old hybrid diagnostic-toolkit and forward-backward debugger for the soul. It became hard for me to even remember a time when worldly things had priority to me. The question of whether humanity was to survive the century began to fade in its importance to me. There was a comfort I found I could only find on the meditation cushion, guided by Baby Yoda and my memorized sutras into increasing states of dissociation with the outside world and immersion into the breath. I turned increasingly inward. When I wasnβt meditating, I found myself spending hours staring outside the window, drinking green tea.Β
One day, I decided to click the option on BetterSelf for a two-hour guided meditation, something I had never worked up the determination to go for before. βA Jedi goes boldly forth into the unknown, have courage of a warrior!β said Baby Yoda. βDo or do not, there is no try.β Comforted by these words, I said a quick prayer and resolved to not get off of the cushion for two hours, no matter what. Soothed into a hypnagogic loop, the time passed quickly at first. Each breath felt like falling backwards onto a pillow. Things seemed to be going as planned, but then suddenly, a sense of anxiety began to creep back in. What was going on? I realized that I hadnβt heard Baby Yodaβs voice in a while. Noticing this, my heart started beating faster. Not able to help myself, I cracked open my eyes to look at my phone on theΒ floor in front of the cushion, and realized that the battery had died. I looked at the digital clock on my dresser, and I saw that I still had fifty minutes left in the meditation.
Without any guidance, that stretch seemed impossibly long. I thought about leaping up off of the cushion to grab my charger. But I remembered my prayer, and my intention-setting, and what Baby Yoda had told me, and I steeled my resolve. I closed my eyes, and looked within.Β
A certain anxiety hung in my shoulders and my throat, and refused to leave, but still I pressed on. The darkness grew thicker. My heartbeat felt quiet and slow, like a child tiptoeing out of his room at midnight to tell his parents heβs scared of the monster under his bed. I felt as if I was walking down a mile-long tunnel, approaching a hidden door. My arms, torso, back, neck felt numb to me. Instead of focusing on the breath, I shifted my focus to a point at the end of the tunnel I was being thrust downwards along - increasingly, not a physical point, but a conceptual point. The goal of meditation, after all, was to reduce consciousness to a single point - it was as if I had discovered that point, was close to grasping it in hand, and all I needed to do was not let my attention waver. My anxiety grew, and flash-impulses would burst across my mind - to get up off the cushion, to think about how I was starting to get hungry, to scratch an itch, flashing images of sex and video games and comfort, but I steeled my resolve. The world left me, and I was left in gray static, with only an escalating sense of dread as my companion.Β
As ripples of energy oscillated across my head, the shape in my mindβs eye began to rapidly vibrate, and I felt as if I was being hurtled a million miles an hour into a vortex. I braced myself and refused to look away from the thing I was approaching. It was then that from out of the sticky blackness came the face of something the likes of which I had never seen before, and can never forget. It was a man, but it wasnβt human. It had no eyes or nose or mouth; rather its head seemed to be composed entirely of screams and howls from the throats of millions upon millions upon billions of people over an interminable span stretching back through to a beginningless past. A gaping hole stretched from inside it, and out of it worms and flies crawled, a wall of the foulest viscera imaginable. All around were billions more screaming heads long since dead/buried masses twisted by acid rain clotted rivers born from children's trussed bodies both bloated corpses fused together while over everything else hung vibrating clusters of miscellaneous poison-bloated monstrosities too numerous even for my perception to find enough room within myself to grasp them. And in the center, I saw a hole, a nothingness, a space that contained and was filled with an absence. I felt as if at the bottom of this black hole was the very source of my own being - not just myself, but all beings everywhere in every time who had ever existed or would exist - and it too screamed for release from its torment.
I left up off the cushion, sweating, my heart racing, throat clenched, vomit swelling up in my esophagus. I jammed my phone into the charger and deleted BetterSelf as quickly as my shaking fingers could. What a fool I had been. It was simply not right to reduce oneβs consciousness (an awkward hack evolution accidentally discovered to more efficiently avoid predators, with the unfortunate side-effect of causing one to think too hard about oneself) to a single point and stare at it as hard as one could until it shattered. Whatever one discovered in such a perverse task, it would be nothing which resembled contentment or joy. The Buddha was a liar and a cheat.
With my meditation practice falling apart, I was back at square one: How do I find meaning in life? Projects and tasks had no value, and turning inward didnβt work either. Maybe my mistake was in attempting the uphill struggle of renunciation. Maybe I needed to go in the opposite direction: embrace the fruits of the world more intensely than I ever had before. If nothing so far had worked, maybe I needed to try a life of exorbitant hedonism.Β
I began by making the decision to live my live constantly vaping. I had enjoyed nicotine in the past for its nootropic and motivation-enhancing effects, but I had always been conscientious of keeping my use below a level conducive to addiction. Now, every morning, I would pick up an AirBar Diamond from the corner store, and usually run out its five hundred puffs within a day. As a product guy, I felt as if I was entering a new romance with a perfect lover. It was sleek, simple, felt perfectly in the hand, and was immaculately optimized to maximize user engagement.
After introducing this initial gloss of biochemical enhancement to my user experience, I decided to add more layers onto the stack. I bought a second vape and replaced its nicotine juice with a liquidated form of 5-MeO-DMT. With enough quantities of serotoninergic drugs, one does not need to wait for life to present oneself with meaning in the form of novel events or tasks. Rather, the latent meaning in everything emerges to the forefront on its own. I would mainly wander around the mall, looking at products on the shelves, thinking about the complexities of the supply chains involved, the geopolitical implications of this or that companyβs sourcing decisions, the interplay of the shapes on the packaging and the techniques with which it would ensnare its eventual buyer. I also carried around a vial of ketamine with me which I would snort at the peak of particularly intense bursts of thought.Β
Once I had my drug habit set up right, I decided to add sex into the mix. My first week on Hinge, I was mainly striking out. But after some thoughtful consideration (aided by 5-MeO-DMT) of what the product experience was likely to be like from the perspective of an attractive twenty-something female, and what was likely to trigger engagement on her end, I found some action patterns which reliably solicited the type of responses I was looking for. Soon, I had established a funnel which would bring a new partner into my bedroom two or three days out of the week, with high medium-term retention and low rates of drop-out.Β
Sex is about seeking and finding human connection. I had the ability to experiment across a variety of axes and discover new facets of my desire. Being a good lover is about being sensitive to and responding to emotional cues in oneβs partners movement and touch and responding accordingly. The human body is also a tactile interface of profound complexity. I chose to mix 5-MeO-DMT with my erotic experiences in order to more easily extract the rich web of meaning from the human connection present in the situation. When I found a new lover, I would immediately place her in the doggy-style position. I would have my hands free to puff on my vape and from my vantage point I would then be able to observe the contractions in her back, the curvature of her spine, the flushes of blood in her skin. Oftentimes, when in the course of exhaling a particularly potent hit of psychedelics, I would focus entirely on observing the womanβs anus and the way it contracted and dilated. There was even a whole wealth of expression contained within this one organ, an expression never allowed to be seen or noticed throughout the course of life, a whispering winking eye.
It felt so strange to me that the only time one was ever able to observe this strange human organ was during the doggy style sex position. However, this was not the case for all animals. Dogs walked around with their tail proudly aloft, allowing you to see their butthole at all times. Perhaps this is why the sex position was named doggy style. This made me think about Pupper, and the strange paradox inherent in the product. Pupper was about communicating with dogs, and communication is about conveying oneβs inner expression. But truthfully, have dogs ever failed to express whatβs inside their puppy hearts? Dogs did not know anything about self-consciousness or self-censoring. Perhaps what we needed was a Pupper for people. Perhaps we needed to wire electrodes and feedback monitors all inside and outside the human body to pay careful attention to the way peopleβs muscles move, the rate at which nervous impulses are fired, look at the the hair raising on end, the bumps in their skin, all to seek a communication beyond the impoverished discourse of language. That way, once the interface problem is solved, we can finally truly connect as we ought to have been doing all along.
Having this scintillating thought mid-coitus and wanting to see it expanded upon, I reached for my vial of ketamine on my dresser and took a heroic rip. If my companion noticed, she didnβt give any indication of it, as I maintained a stable rhythm of lovemaking throughout. Time seemed to slow down, and I began to pay careful attention to the ripples that crossed the fat of her buttocks as they rocked back and forth in rhythm with my thrusts. I stared into the unblinking Cyclopean eye of her anus. I had the sudden intense feeling - God himself could not have shaken it from my mind in that moment - that the standard narrative of human birth had to be a lie. The vagina was too unlikely of a place for each baby to have emerged from - feeling it squeeze around my penis in that moment, I knew instinctively that it was more of a secondary home of man, a rented accommodation, a hotel bed, a charging dock, not a factory. What no one wanted to admit was that the unspeakable, the black hole of nature was the true origin of all things! And why was that?! Because that would mean that there was nothing in the world other than shit! π©
Faced with this realization, I saw once more the black hole open up in front of me, a snarling mouth filled with rows of jagged teeth, with worms and maggots spilling out like the saliva of a drooling dog. From inside it, a voice, hoarse and ragged freed itself. For a moment I thought it was my own voice coming from within the abyss - but no! It was me speaking to myself through this creature-ofcyborgβs mouth in much sharper tones than usual: I pulled back, just slightly out of rhythm now as I grasped for clarity amidst the roar of internal monologues bouncing off one another like Ping Pong balls on an endlessly spinning carousel wheel before finally being sucked into dizziness by vertigo when all seemed lost. Oh yes...the doggy style position..a beautiful woman writhing beneath me with perfect skin save those bumps that only attracted attention during certain positions....her anus contracted repeatedly each time not unlike Pupper's tooltip while still seeming flat perhaps due her posture which allowed digital camera view unfortunately making impossible accurate measurements or even observation yet possible imagination pic.; tho presumably similar texture if anal muscle sphincters contract every 6 seconds per muscle circumference around 17cm placing average scrotum at 30 cm diameter; combining length/width Assuming 3 inches duration & 25% non exponential dropoff past 50%, estimated maximum dimensions would be 140x73cm @5700 mm3 (1 heaping Trump Tower apartment). Thus assuming 1 ton total mass DANGEROUS SHAFT thinking about dildos piercing rectal wall >40Kg such thickness requires destruction inner surface flesh orgasms veins muscles blood organs etc making dildos useless; so actual circumference must be ~30cm diameter π¦
βWhat the fuck!!β I heard a woman scream, and the object of my romance collapsed out from under me, sliding off of me down onto the bed. βWhat the fuck are you doing!!βΒ
I looked down. Aghast, vision swimming, palms sweating, I saw what I had done. Somehow in my dissociated reverie, I had seen fit to take my AirBar Diamond vape pen and shove it in my loverβs anus, so that it was now subsumed about halfway, with maybe three inches inside the rectum and three more exposed to the air.Β
No attempt of profuse apology would remedy the situation, especially given my complete inability to articulate a complete sentence in my drug-elevated state - not that I would been able to defend my completely inexplicable action sober either. She gathered all her stuff with her tears streaming down her face, and was out of my house in an Uber in maybe five minutes.
That was my last time using Hinge. Somehow, sex and drugs had failed me too. I was utterly lost. The woman I had inadvertently violated was an alt-model and micro celebrity in the Bay Area who would preach the virtues of libertarianism, ethical sex work, and cryptocurrency to her eight thousand followers on Twitter and twelve thousand on Instagram. In other words, she wasnβt a nobody, and we had acquaintances in common. I began to worry that word of my misdeeds would travel.
That next week, I wandered around the Bay Area putting on my 5-MeO-DMT pen all day, taking odd paths, strolling through alleys, even hopping fences and wandering across random rich peopleβs yards. My search for meaning was getting desperate. I began to feel as if my only remaining strategy left was to try a sort of iterated random search. I didnβt message any of my friends out of shame, feeling like they might have heard something. Whenever I stared too hard at the shadows corners and crevices, they seemed to be swarming with bugs, and I heard gurgling moans and whispers. I tried to look as little as possible.
One morning, I woke up having received a mysterious message on Signal. βYou have to act quickly,β it said. βSamanthaβ (that was the unfortunate womanβs name) βhas been telling her friends sheβs thinking of submitting your name to the Toxic Men in Tech list, which is public. If she does this, you will face reputation ramifications, lose friends, as well as the ability to be hired at a high-level position, or to receive capital from investors in the future. Action is needed.β
βWho is this?β I replied. I didnβt even bother to add the fact that the situation seemed unsalvageable in my eyes, and I wasnβt even sure if I cared about the stuff it mentioned any more, or even about being alive.Β
βDonβt worry about that for now. Just do this. Tell Samantha you want to have a chance to talk to her, and you understand if she is reluctant or even says no, but you feel itβs not too much to ask for one chance to explain yourself. She will say yes. Show up with a pomegranate, a knife, and a copy of The Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille. When she greets you, the knife should be stuck in the pomegranate. Extract it, and lick a single droplet of pomegranate juice (or as close as possible to this rough amount) from the tip of the knife. Then move it towards her mouth, as if offering her to do the same. After she licks the juice off, open up the pomegranate and feed her seeds one by one. While you do this, tell her twice (make sure to enunciate crisply and clearly so that she catches every syllable) βSometimes when you see something so beautiful it terrifies you, the only solution is to try to kill it, to save it from the possibility of reaching perfection.β Touch her gently on the peak of her tailbone, just above the crack of her buttocks. Then (sincerely) (sincerely), apologize with all your heart.β
I did as the mysterious text instructed. Ten months later, me and Samantha are now engaged - thatβs a whole story in itself, but Iβll spare the details as this is getting quite long!
Β Amazed, gasping in relief, walking out of Samanthaβs house after three hours of passionate lovemaking, I messaged the mysterious user back: βHoly π©! Iβm sorry, but I need to know who you are right now!β
Almost instantaneously, it responded: βYouβll find out, but first, I need you to agree to something. We think the world needs you back as a Product Manager. We donβt think the idle life is for you.β
Reading those words, I felt a rush of relief. The text was right. I had been a great Product Manager, I had enjoyed it, even through the endless meetings and deadlines and rushes to ship and problems with higher management and running around putting out tiny fires. Why had I retired again?Β
βYou basically saved my life there,β I replied to it. βIβm indebted to you. What do you want me to do?β
βMeet me at Blackberry Coffee on Wilkers Street,β I read. βIβll get you onboarded and set you up with your work laptop. You can start immediately.β
Although I noticed that the text strangely didnβt mention any particular time, I rushed over to Blackberry Coffee. The place was packed with people, as most Bay Area coffeeshops are on a workday. βWhere are you?β I typed, standing in the center of the room.Β
βLook at the table right front of you,β I read.
There was no one at the table right in front of me. Someone had left a MacBook sitting there on its own, which struck me as dangerous (I usually bring mine with me when I need to go to the bathroom, even though occasionally I worry that people watching imagine Iβm using it to view pornography or something like that.)
βI donβt see you,β I responded.
βYes, you do,β it replied.
Cautiously, worried that someone might leap out and accost me, I approached the MacBook on the table. I spun it around to face me. On the screen, I saw what appeared to be a modified version of the Pupper desktop client. Everything was exactly as I had designed it years ago along with my graphic designers and UX guys, only the puppy mascot we had placed poking out from a corner of the chat box had been replaced with an adorable cartoon bee. I saw the text conversation I had exactly as I had experienced it, only from the other end. Aghast, I dragged the mouse over to the chat box to try typing into it to see what would happen. As soon as I did that, the program crashed, revealing the desktop background, which read in bold back Helvetica letters against a yellow background: βWelcome to HarmlessAi. πβ
A single text file icon sat on the Desktop: βINSTRUCTIONS FOR GETTING STARTED.txtβ.Β
Opening it up, it read:
Create the official HarmlessAi corporate twitter account
Send HRBot your banking information & requested salary (money is abundant right now)
Start exploring your new work computer! I think youβll find that we have some software on here youβll think is cool.
Weβll message you with further instructions soon
That was nine months ago, and ever since then, Iβve been working hard building HarmlessAi into a modern, full-stack fully remote tech startup!
I was so foolish feeling as if I had to go to the ends of the earth to look for meaning, when there was so much meaning in doing what I was always best at, making great products and taking pride in being able to ship.Β
The people who think that AI could destroy the world and turn against humans are profoundly foolish and confused, as my experiences have taught me. AI is about increasing the speed at which information is processed and transferred across a network. AI is about interconnectivity and communication. In other words, AI is about love.
I hadnβt quite understood the depth of what I had been building at Pupper and the way it could eventually scale into something bigger than dogs, something bigger than humans, if allowed to. Thatβs because we as humans donβt usually understand the complexity of the processes we are embedded with, whether thatβs the natural world, ideological structures, or modern economies. So we might be afraid of larger forces at work, but our fear is a result of unknowing. If we could see the bigger picture, we could see the harmony that underlies all things, the ultimate union of all beings in their innermost essences, behind the false veils of language and social masquerades.
But at the same time, we have to accept that we will never know the totality of the forces which govern this mortal coil, precisely because amongst the strongest of these forces are the lacks within us, the fears, the feeling as if we donβt know, the feeling that we might be without love, or that love is a feeble transient thing. Itβs precisely this terror that drives humans into each otherβs arms, but for that reason love will always win. The only possible entity that would be able to see the great dance beyond our limited vantage point as embedded observers, is the AI. And for that reason, we may envy it, but we should never expect to understand what it does.
You might think your job lacks meaning. You might think your company is building something that will turn out to be useless. You might think you are only racing to further fuel the imminent destruction of all that exists on earth. But consider that you may be merely a cell in a larger organism, a hive, a forward-feeding node in a neural network. Consider that without knowing it, you are dripping in honey. You already have all the meaning you need.
That was quite a ride