Meta Cog or Meat Cog? Show Us On The Internet
Part 3 of "The Will to Power Off": Nietzsche shows us how to resist A.I. enslavement
Creating — that is the great salvation from suffering, and life’s alleviation. But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra
The Apocalypse Is Always Now
From Ragnarok to Revelation, just about every civilization has some conception of a great world-ending conflict. A final battle that will separate the good from the bad, the humans from the unworthy. Conqueror from conquered. Living from dead.
One of those great realizations that occurred during the Medieval Era was that this battle isn’t happening at the end of time, it’s happening right now.
There is always a spiritual war going on. It defines the very being of those in the culture and gives meaning to their lives. Modernity by and large killed this notion by burying it under thick layers of irony and rational materialism.
Or did it?
Sensible atheists will laugh at stories about talking snakes and multi-headed world-swallowing dragons, then call upon the creator to smite the table corner that sprained his toe, “goddamnit!”
Someone trying to lose weight might taunt the Dark Lord after overcoming his struggle to buy a cinnamon roll and succumb to gluttony, “Not today, Satan!”
Of course, nobody is doing any of this seriously. Performative comedy for the self out of habit and convention.
But angels and devils, heroes and hydra, they have been how we get complex ideas across since before meme was a word. So whether we “believe” in it or not, the great spiritual war is still happening on the metaphysical plane, it just got upgraded.
It’s still us vs monsters, only the monsters are now Skynet and zombies.
AI is the Dividing Line
Here's what this all has to do with our series so far: while the mythological wars of old were supposedly going on all the time, some triggering event like the breaking of the Seven Seals or the death of Baldr occurs as a harbinger to the end of that age.
The advent of AI that can reproduce grunt-level writing and pictures, i.e. the work of scribes and artisans, is that herald for modern capitalism. Now, the question posed to all of us is which side of the divide we will fall on, those spirited enough to direct machines in the carrying out of their great projects, and those who wish to serve as mindless machines, aka “human capital.”
In other words, will you be AI’s master or its slave?
As mentioned in part 1, the aim of the grand project of industrialization was to get machines to do our labor, with people functioning as temporary stop gaps within that system.
The need for relatively equal parts labor and capital for much of production to happen was the reason why humans were able to unionize and demand basic workers’ rights along with somewhat dignified working conditions. As capital gradually began to replace more and more of the human functions required on the assembly line, blue collar humans began to lose their bargaining power.
Now, as capital in the form of AI is gradually replacing knowledge work like coding, finance, and marketing, the high perks formerly reserved for white collar work is also being cut back. Soon, free meals and in-office Cross-fit class will go the way of giant slides, first-class flying, and company cars for all but the C-Suite. Twitter will not be the last in Silicon Valley to drop its perks and if you think things are cushy now, ask an old adman what it was like to be a big agency art director in the 90s or an ibanker what life was like in the 80s. If his wife’s not around and his brain isn’t too addled by all the free cocaine from those years, he might tell you.
But What About Specialization and Free Trade?
I’m vastly oversimplifying of course, and many will point out the politicking that both pushed forward and pulled back this so-called “progress” towards full mechanization, pointing to the rise in human specialization and also the opening up of trade and borders to cheap labor.
My argument for the latter would be that cheap labor is basically only possible because the machines became more and more idiot-proof. With no disrespect to the developing world, but early assembly line machining took much more training and expertise than later models, which allowed for easy outsourcing to people who could be trained often with only a cursory understanding of their native languages.
As for the former, i.e. the move of labor towards more specialized “knowledge work,” I would say that this is what AI has come to replace. Quibbling about what truly constitutes “intelligence” and whether AI “has it” is like arguing whether machines are or are not “artificial labor” because they lack proper muscle anatomy.
What Kind of Cog Are You?
Functionally, if your job is mostly repetitive tasks that can be codified into a set of if/then statements with some room for adaptation and randomness thrown in, then you are a meat cog.
Like the Voodoo zombies of legend, meat cog jobs require workers to do a series of basic tasks that require little thinking. A zombie can follow a GPS from the bar to your house, it can stand behind a counter and take your fast food order, but nobody expects it to know where the secret underground after-hours club is or improvise a delicious off-menu burger you’ve never had before.
Just as metal cogs in a machine require grease and maintenance to keep running smoothly, meat cogs require benefits and fancy titles. And just like any cog in a machine, if there’s a cheaper, more resilient, more efficient version on the market, then it will be replaced.
This is why the department that deals with you is called “Human Resources” because you, like electricity or conveyor belts or photocopiers, are a resource.
On the other hand, no factory ever became 100% machine run. This is because machines are still incredibly stupid and will always require a human mind that can observe what’s happening outside of the narrow confines of the system of production outlined by processes and programming. These are people who possess the rational and creative skills to observe and solve problems machines cannot. They are the ones who can think above machine thinking. They are capable of metacognition, they are meta cogs.
Your goal, if you are to make Skynet your bitch, is first to become a meta cog.
How to Meta Cognate? First, develop good taste.
There are several roles within an organization that still cannot be replaced by machines. These roles don’t correspond to titles, nor can you get one from a series of college courses. Chances are, if what you do can be directly taught in school, it can be taught to AI.
Instead, the things machines still can’t do are far more subtle. They require things like insight, sensitivity, and decisiveness. In another word: taste.
Nearly all avenues will require some form of understanding how things work. One might be to grasp how you think, and how other people think.
And not just in a “look at the data and parse out what color people choose” way.
More like: uncover deep insights into human behavior to answer, “what underlying factor made them choose that color?”
Then create a process for getting said humans to behave the way you want them to, “how can we use that underlying factor to get them to choose us?”
If you can do this, then instead of a job dictated by AI, you’ll easily find ones where you dictate to it.
Thus far, AI has been great at games with clear rules like chess and go. It has been anywhere from mediocre to disastrous at unclear games like the stock market. This is because the rules that govern human behavior are ever-changing and require much more finesse to tap into.
Ignore the media which appeals to the common resentful meat cog: there’s a reason CEOs of major corporations garner the kind of wealth and even immunity from market trends and laws that they do. No, it isn’t because of their sex or race.
Nor is it purely some kind of tribal desire for a figurehead. They didn’t inherit their job, so why this figurehead?
It’s because they have what passes in their field for taste. It is this sense that allows them to give rousing mission statements or set inspiring goals or motivate the majority of their employees. Unlike the vast majority who see their job as doing, great leaders see their actions and interactions as a form of creating.
This also explains why nobody buys procedurally-generated AI art like NFTs for aesthetic reasons. Monetarily, it may be worth millions but spiritually, it is worthless.
Then Use Your Taste to Inform Your Creativity
The choice then, for those who can make it, is simple:
Continue to participate in an ever-shrinking pool of flesh-powered labor until you are finally “made obsolete”. Hopefully, you get enough welfare/universal basic income to survive past retirement age.
Refine your taste until you have an intuitive sense of where things in your chosen field are going, what problems will need solving, and how to hook people into your solution. Then use AI like any other tool to capitalize on it. This is true creativity, unlike what is flatteringly equated with “arts & crafts”, this is the kind companies and people will actually pay good money for.
It should be noted that many of the skills outlined above are no different from the very origins of the word, “game”, which was used to describe hunting and warfare simulations.
And thus we come full circle to Nietzsche, who saw in the Greeks an aristocracy that embodied the virtues of the warrior-hunter: a willingness to face what others will not and to carve a path where others fear to tread.
Finally, Transcend Capital and Become Superhuman: Maximize Your Potential
Today, the term “human capital” is slowly losing its meaning and coming apart again. When the vast majority of mental and physical labor jobs get taken by machines, the term will revert back to simply “capital” with the “human” distinction reserved for those who can think levels above the mechanical or artificial.
While meta cognitive jobs for humans aren’t going away anytime soon, it would be a great indictment of our civilization if all it did was allow for everyone to be meta cognitively employed.
Such an outcome would mean we had forgotten the true goal and final phase of the whole mechanized industrialization project, which was always to free the spirited and capable for pursuits higher than mere survival seeking, material buildup or pleasure maximization. Remember that most Greek noblemen left the management and profit-making of their estates to servants to pursue more meaningfully engaging lives.
It is this true freedom combined with the warrior ethos that produced great works of civic service, literature, science, philosophy, athletic performance, and art. In other words, leisure allowed for the time to find one’s passions and the training and tenacity to pursue it.
Nietzsche’s favorite people took whatever made them unique and used every resource to bring that forth and make them great.
This, regardless of where you end up on the divide, should also be your aim.
Never forget: AI was made to be servant, not sentient
Some pretty lofty goals, huh? To ground things before signing off, here’s one takeaway we should all start doing right now:
Commit to treating humans like humans and machines like machines.
A metal cog only looks like a friend to a meat cog because they are at the same level. Don’t succumb to one of humanity’s greatest follies—the tendency to fall in love with its own creation. It is the very definition of idolatry, and it is the path to societal madness and, ultimately, collapse.
There are plenty of people who could do with some compassion and kindness. Maybe there are some in your life that deserve some tough love and a kick in the pants. Don’t waste the humanity only you can give them on chatbots and algorithms.
Ignore the T-1000 pretending to be your mom.
Above all, let's not let AI as a tool of capitalists, relegate all of us to mere consumers.