Welcome to the first installment of my revamped newsletter. In a move to simplify my whole process of writing and podcast, and to cut down on unnecessarily expensive tools for hosting and distributing both, I've switched things up. I redesigned my website. I'm still writing essays and still sending out podcasts, but this newsletter won't be each of those as they go out. Instead, it's going to be a no-more-than-weekly affair where I'll round up what I've written and what I've podcasted since the last one, and also drop some links to interesting stuff I've read. And I'll give a sneak peek at what's coming up on ReImagining Liberty.
Important note: As a subscriber to my mailing list, you’ll keep getting this newsletter right here, with nothing to do on your end. That said, I’ve moved the primary home of the newsletter to my Patreon. I’d encourage you to switch to getting it there. You’ll get not just the newsletter, but occasional bonuses, as well. (And, because I pay for this older newsletter host based on how many subscribers I have, while Patreon is free for me, switching reduces my bills, too, which I quite appreciate.) All you need to do is head over to my Patreon page and click “Join for free.” Then scroll down to the bottom of this email and unsubscribe from this version. Thank you!
New Essay
A lot of people are worried that the economic incentives of AI will crowd out the market for new art. If I'm a company that used to hire people to write basic copy, or to produce art for my marketing materials, and I can instead now pay ChatGPT $20 a month to produce as much of that as I could ever want, why wouldn't I switch over, save a bundle of money, and get a faster turnaround to boot? And if AI eating the market for human artists and writers starts there, what limits it? Will it eventually destroy the ability of any artist or creator—outside of maybe a handle at the very height of celebrity—to earn a living? I don't believe this is an unreasonable concern. The argument against it is that AI produces crap, and not just crap, but unoriginal crap. No one wants unoriginal crap, so people will continue to pay for original good stuff. In "AI and the Threat of Nostalgia Culture," I reframe this worry in the context of our nostalgia-drenched cultural landscape. It seems all a lot of people want is for the past to be endlessly remixed in nostalgic (and thus comforting) ways, and one thing AI is good at is remixing the frozen culture of its training data. So what can we do? Read it here.
New ReImagining Liberty Podcast
It's difficult to be optimistic about liberalism's future. Certainly in the short to medium term. We're in an acute period of democratic backsliding and authoritarian ascendency. The opposition party, or at least its leadership, has been largely supine in response. A backlash is rising, but it's an open question whether it'll be enough, and soon enough, to make a difference.
But it's also not a time to give up all hope. There is a backlash. The current regime is deeply unpopular. And a ton of Americans—and people around the world watching what's happening to America—are rediscovering the value of liberal principles and values.
My returning guest today is Andy Craig, a Fellow in Liberalism at the Institute for Humane Studies. We discuss the blitzkrieg of lawlessness in the first six months of this new Trump administration and why so many Democratic lawmakers have failed to respond to it with seriousness and urgency. But we also talk about the way forward, and how liberalism—true and radical liberalism—can chart that course.
Listen to my conversation with Andy. (And Patreon supporters can listen ad-free.)
What I'm Reading
I've been rereading the comic book Transmetropolitan (Amazon | Bookshop.org) The last time was probably 20 years ago, and I don't know that I ever read the whole thing. When I was reading it, I'd have called it my favorite comic book ever. Rereading it, I still feel the same. Transmetropolitan is a story of cyberpunk journalism, political activism, and why cities are the greatest places on earth. This is the comic that launched a thousand (probably more) blogging and journalism careers, because it's a story of how telling a good story, both true and compelling, can change the world. A lot of it is frightfully prescient, both in its exploration of the cultural impacts of technologies, and in its understanding of where politics is headed. But it also, in retrospect, comes off as naive about utility of a scandalous story to bring down the powerful. Transmetropolitan's writer has turned out to be a pretty wretched guy, but death of the author it—or just get it from your local library—and read it anyway. It's very good.
I'm about two-thirds of the way through science and tech journalist Adam Becker's More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity (Amazon | Bookshop.org). It tells the story of the less reputable corners of the Effective Altruism community, the (many) disreputable corners of the rationalist community, and the strain of reactionary racism that runs through too much of Silicon Valley VC and founder culture. I still prefer Elizabeth Sandifer's brilliant Neoreaction a Basilisk (Amazon | Bookshop.org) as a deep dive into the philosophies motivating this weird intellectual world—mostly on account of its philosophical depth and Sandifer's dazzling prose—but for people want something a little less heady and more like a long-form magazine article in its easy-going-down-ness, More Everything Forever is (so far, at least) top-notch.
Upcoming on ReImagining Liberty
Next week, I'm recording with Ted Underwood, a professor of English and information sciences at the University of Illinois. We'll be discussing a new essay he published on how AI technologies can help us better map and understand cultures and cultural differences. It includes this intriguing—and very ReImagining Liberty—argument about how, if they can play this role, they can potentially boost pluralism. (And, in line with the philosophy of liberalism I've developed on the show, liberalism along with it.)
“A new ability to map and explore different modes of reasoning” may initially sound less useful than a super-intelligence that just produces the right answer to our problems. And, look, I’m not suggesting that mapping culture is the only upside of AI. Drug discovery sounds great too! But if you believe human conflict is our most important and durable problem, then a technology that could improve human self-understanding might eventually outweigh a million new drugs.
I don’t mean that language models will eliminate conflict. I said above that conflict is a load-bearing part of society. And language models are likely to be used as ideological weapons—just as pamphlets were, after printing made them possible. But an ideological weapon that can be quizzed and compared to other ideologies implies a level of putting-cards-on-the-table beyond what we often get in practice now. There is at least a chance, as we have seen with Grok, that people who try to lie with an interactive model will end up exposing their own dishonest habits of thought.
Stick around for that. And I hope you enjoyed this first issue of my relaunched newsletter.