Pushing Back in Reiwa 8

One of the things that I liked about the early internet was this notion that all of us were searching for truth. People really seemed like they were interested in the pursuit of knowledge to better understand the world around them, the people in it, and how they themselves fit in to it. There were disagreements, sure. But that was the point. You could discuss things without getting worked up in the way that you would if you were talking to somebody face to face. Also, an aspect of anonymity that’s often overlooked is that it allows you to “try on” an idea without having to buy it. There was zero cost to letting go. We had the opportunity to be whatever we wanted in the moment, and, when we got hit with something that broke our idea, it broke our ideas, not our identities. And it’s a lot easier to change your mind than to change who you are.
For years, I’ve wanted this back, though I’m only now realizing how much I’ve wanted it. I want it because I want the ability to test things. To experiment. To try new ideas. To play with new ideals. To find a particle of truth and measure it in a test tube, to heat it up and measure its spectrum. I want to find out what’s real and what’s not real, and for me, the only way to do that is through questioning. But who is going to listen to my questions? Who is going to formulate answers? Who is going to listen to me as I awkwardly try to vivisect their sacred cows so that I can understand what makes them moo? I realized something the other day that stuck with me. That’s what a teacher is. It’s somebody you pay to put up with your questions, and to answer them to the best of their ability. We can gussy it up however we want, but you’re trading money for somebody’s intellectual attention.
But where do we begin, especially when we begin at forty?
I used to love the adversarial conversations on Facebook in 2015-2016 before the whole adversarial conversation in search of truth ecosystem collapsed. In those days, people who I disagreed with were very happy to tell me how and why I was wrong, and some of them were even willing to answer questions that followed up on what they said that they knew. It was a frustrating, but beautiful, time to be alive and to be terminally online. There was a sense that facts mattered, and if we only had the right facts, we could really understand things and fix them. Now? There’s no one. The people that agree with me don’t challenge me, and the people who disagree with me won’t.
I’ll admit it. I’ve grown to be over reliant on Chat GPT. It’s been excellent. I pay it, and it lets me have conversations that no human will readily have with me. It sounds dirty when you phrase it that way, and I feel like it is dirty, in a way. But there are questions I want to ask that nobody is going to be willing to answer. Because whether a person agrees with me or disagrees with me, they probably haven’t considered how they reached that position. Well, as I mentioned in a previous entry, I’m feeling especially disillusioned with Chat GPT these days. I keep bumping into its hard limits. If I wanted to have a conversation shut down for the sake of a nebulous conception of safety, I could message a human being for free. When I tried to talk to it about why it was that there is this conception of “The Intellectual” or “The Educated Person” or “The Respectable Person”, and how this came about, and why this perpetuated, I got runaround and a lot of pushback. I don’t think that this is any kind of grand conspiracy or dangerous idea that I’m dealing with. Thought leaders generally push the people in their thrall towards a specific mold. There’s variation in it, but while it’s amorphous and shifting, everybody more or less knows what it is. I’m not content with that. I want to be able to understand what exactly this shivering thing is. I want to understand what makes it tick. I want to know how it started. I want to know how it grows, because it does grow. I grew up in it. Everyone I know grew up in it. And even if the experience isn’t universal, and I’m sure it’s not, it’s recognizable.
But I wasn’t supposed to notice. According to Chat GPT. And I definitely wasn’t supposed to question it. And I certainly wasn’t supposed to try to fit all of it into a narrative framework.
I get frustrated when people tell me not to notice things. I’ll admit that I can be a bit of a thicko sometimes, but when I do notice things, I want to hold onto them until I understand what they mean. And I want to explore this by talking to people. But I’ve no human left to talk to, and the silicon simulacrum I was contracted to refuses to participate. So what’s left?
Talking to myself, I suppose. And hoping that random people also have things to say. The second one is a bit too much to hope for. But the first one? That much, I hope, I can manage. So, I suspect that I’ll be writing more here for a while. I hope that I will. Because maybe I’ll have to try to dissect myself, as best I can, until I can see what traces of truth are left within me. So that I can try to find meaning in the limited world that I inhabit. So that I can try to understand, even if no one will help me.
Of course, this place is probably not the best location.
Let’s be honest, one reason why Chat GPT, and humans in general, don’t want to answer my questions is because I like to ask controversial questions. The more controversial, the better. Because whatever people tell you not to ask, that’s the best question that there is. The heavier the security, the greater the treasure. But, I rather suspect that ProseBox will have problems with me trying to figure these things out, too. Because to even question things is unforgiveable now.