Hell Is Other People

This week on my podcast, I read my latest Locus Magazine column, Hell Is Other People, about the solipsistic fantasy underpinning the AI bubble.

Sartre was (arguably) an optimist. It’s not that other people are unpleasant: quite the contrary! There’s nothing that makes the day (or, pointedly, the night) sweeter than agree­able human companionship. And of course, for those tasks that exceed what you – or anyone – could do alone, other people are a necessity. Without other people, your aspirations could never exceed the things you would personally make happen, and if you’re honest, you’ll have to admit that this is a short list of things.

Other people, then, are a thing that you can’t live without – and yet other people stubbornly insist on organizing their lives around their needs, their preferences, their desires, without any consideration for how nice it would be (for you) if everyone would just do whatever you tell them to do.

Thus it is that our species has invented all kinds of technologies, like “language” and “persuasion” and “bureaucracy” and “ethics” and “religion” and “government” and “coercion” and “slavery” and “wage labor” and “guilt” and “duty” and “conscription” and “commerce” and “meetings” and “chore wheels” and “corporations” and “teams” that can be used to get (some) other people to (sometimes) act in ways that make your life better. After all, we have neocortices; the most recently evolved structures in our brains, that seem to specialize in understanding other people’s motives to aid in this endeavor.

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