Flushing Out the Fabulists
Tech often brings out fantasies and grifts — we need to move beyond them
The history of science and tech is at some level a history of fabulists — people who imbued new technologies with magical powers of one sort or another, and others who dethroned the magicians and seers with empirical evidence. Now, physicists are actively asking if freewill is an illusion, and if the laws of physics are so deterministic that our consciousnesses are themselves an illusion.
Now, we’re using technology to make new forms of what looks like consciousness to reassert some magic into our world.
Information technology and religion merged early on, with “book religions” expanded by the printing press, which itself spread rapidly largely because the Catholic church printed and sold indulgences to absolve believers of sin — for a price.
With money on the table, there was a good reason to build or buy a printing press.
But the fabulism of indulgences didn’t last. Fortunately, the technology was general use.
We may be living through a similar period when it comes to digital technologies, with fabulists making money and adoption while the larger world seeks general use to solve problems or expand human capabilities.
As we wrestle LLMs to the ground, we seem to be turning a corner as three related trends emerge:
- The fantasies are being identified and deconstructed
- Practical applications and sensible approaches are starting to emerge
- They are not as grand as the fabulists wanted us to believe, no surprise
- The general use purpose of LLMs and GAI is being questioned at a fundamental level
- One great new source about AI sense-making is a podcast by Catharina Doria, an excellent AI debunker who made her mark on Instagram and is now moving over to podcasting.
That doesn’t mean we aren’t in danger of allowing fabulists to wreck things. Their ability to shift agency away, to spin fantasies, and to hide behind ideologies creates a lot of risk.
It all hurts science and scholarship, because the fabulists also hide the specifics of their technologies inside a black box of beliefs and make claims that don’t stand up to scrutiny. And the flood of information they are producing is shutting down legitimate scientific data, discourse, and distribution as fabulism seeks dominance.
We discuss all of this, and more.
We also share our “Discoveries of the Week,” including the egopantis.
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