Date: 2025-09-15
It was disappointing to see #ChatGPT and I do not have a shared understanding of Human Instrumentality.
I like to think of Human Instrumentality as the sound the human species makes across the fabric of the universe. Sounds of beauty, sounds of destruction, and hopefully always sound worth listening to.
ChatGPT takes its conception of Human Instrumentality from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Neon Genesis Evangelion displays Human Instrumentality the dissolution of self and the formation of a collective consciousness, a very boring sound. It would be interesting to know everyone's thoughts and feelings, but people need a sense of self for that. A monstrous blob does not have feelings, I wonder if it even desires to survive, the dissolution of self does not really leave "one" wanting.
I see two main trajectories for the sound the human instrument can make in the future, both of which are different ways to play the Human Instrument.
The first involves humans staying the same or devolving while being held together and alive via their complex technology, I have heard this path labelled, Cyborg Theocracy, and they are suffering minimizers. The Cyborg Theocracy's ideas resonates Neon Genesis Evangelion's concept of Human Instrumentality. The Cyborg Theocracy believe humanist exists as beings of pleasure and nothing else. To reduce suffering, risk and volatility must be removed from the human experience. This leads to a culture of vapid safetyism where anyone speaking up to the group think is castrated metaphorically.
The second group are known as the Vitalists, who exist to maximize meaning. This group exists ride the waves of the human experience, the crescendos, Staccatos, retardandos et al. The beauty of romance is only accessable in the world where heart break also exists. Sport and business are beautiful when everyone playing is not a genetic ideological clone of one another. The forces that sometimes lead people to kill themselves can create beauty on the other end. Though these bugs can be fixed with further turning if we can play the right keys on the human instrument. We just need to be hyper aware of the sound the instrument makes when we play a new chord.
Humanity can disappear like a face drawn on the edge of a sea in the sand.
An infinite circle jerk may be just as distinguishable as the grains of sand on the beach.
Brainstorming
There may be a reason the GSV's, large space ships ran by AI with 100's of millions of people on board depicted in The Culture sci-fi series, have those people on board.
So what sound do we want the human species to make? Well for starters we may all be part of the same instrument, for now, but we certainly play different cords on said instrument.