Thank you! Pardon the delay. I have kids. (LOL) More on this coming as soon as I can find the time for it! I can't stop thinking about what getting past naïve realism means for our relationship with advanced computing...have you seen this?:
I think arguments attempting to erase the distinction between the biological and the machinic are waging (often unbeknownst) ideological war on living systems on behalf of anti-humanists and their machinations toward entrenching urban technocapitalist systems.
Often this work is done by technologists who fancy themselves as 'techgnostics' -- people enchanted and enamored by the power and creativity of compute. It's weak ontology, and stinks of a deep capture by consumerist cargo culture of 'shiny new things'.
The inability to differentiate living systems from manufactured machines is lauded as a virtue, while all that is solid melts away in the engines of techno-operability and the latest R&D enthusiasm.
Alternatively, now more than ever, we need clear thinkers who are keen to trace the exact continuities and discontinuities (and hybridities) between living and machinic systems, with their distinct admixtures of properties, so that we can better understand the actual impacts and consequences of such minglings.
The Medium is the Massage, people. And we'll never creatively evolve toward ecologically sound prosocial adaptivity without fundamentally differentiating differences that make a difference.
A lot of the ideas here represent insights I’m also having. And I’m not a distinguished scholar, just an educated regular guy doing experiments with chatbot interactions.
A lot of my teenage and early-20s reading of Robert Anton Wilson prepped me for this moment.
In particular, the ideas of AI as inhuman being and the necessity of thinking about life and thought outside of established categories both resonate with me.
I'm not a distinguished scholar either. But those of us who put in the work up front or "inside" to see language for "what it is" are in a much better position to navigate what we're riding now and soon than experts. I like James P. Carse's writing in Finite and Infinite Games on physicists who talk about physics versus physicists who talk about "physics" and are engaged in poiesis...
Love this. Agree with the diagnosis and the solution.
One thing I've found gratifying about the current moment, as a naturally philosophical person who has always held the consensus frame loosely, is the way this self-awareness and flexibility of worldview is becoming more of a practical necessity.
In a more stable world, the majority of people may have had the privilege of believing in the absolute truth of the metaphysical assumptions handed to them by their post-Enlightenment culture, never really having to examine them. Maybe they occasionally had a "deep" talk with their weird friend (me) about how there are "theoretically" other ways of parsing reality, but of course none of that could be relevant "in practice." As things move faster, as flux becomes default, as the baseline levels of destabilization and cognitive dissonance rise for the average person, everyone will finally have to become philosophers in real life lol.
I do think there's gonna be a huge persuasion gap. Do you have any luck convincing skeptics of the ideas in this piece? My sense is that it won't land with people who don't already think like us. Hard to break someone's frame by talking about the possibility of broken frames. It's part of why I'm drawn to writing fiction, as a way to SHOW another frame in action; the fully fleshed out thought experiment on steroids.
I'm not super concerned about convincing skeptics. The urge to persuade people feels like attachment to an identity with/as an idea of what is real that I flag as something to observe and work with. Every day, thousands of people are born who either will, or will not, ever reach what I consider a valid realization...I've decided that no matter how strongly convinced I am of all of this, I still have work to do to really live as an exemplar of this, and in the meantime I am thinking that the best way to communicate it is as fiction.
I do have the urge to explain how I think. The desire to be understood is not the same as the desire to "win" — if someone could change my mind I'd welcome it.
Dude I have kids. I do not have unlimited free time to respond to messages. And what started as a sincere desire to help a stranger make sense of things is swiftly becoming a pain in the ass.
Your 'Being More Than A Machine' essay was a revelation. The way you connect the reductionist thinking of the 'machine' metaphor to the crises we face, from AI to ecology to the financial system, is exactly what we need more of.
I work with the American Monetary Institute, and we are focused on a specific policy solution: the NEED Act, which would end private bank money creation and restore the power to create money to the public. But I believe your work provides the philosophical foundation that makes such a reform thinkable. Without challenging the 'machine' worldview, we cannot change the system.
I would be honored if you would consider presenting at our 22nd Annual Conference this September. Your perspective on tech ethics, complexity, and human agency would be invaluable to our community.
Interesting and thank you! Yeah please reach out, inbox is open. I'm curious how you connect the ideas in this article to the ideas circling inside the discourse of your Institute...
The short answer to your question is that you provide the philosophical foundation for monetary reform.
I have been bringing up the psychological consequences of the debt-money system to the monetary reform community for several years because I think it gets too little attention.
"Economics without input from psychology is similar to doing mechanics while ignoring the laws of physics.“ -- Economist Wesley Claire Mitchell
You asked how I connect the themes in "Being More Than a Machine" to the ideas circulating within AMI and the NEED Act. I think the link is tighter, and more urgent, than it might first appear.
Elisabet Sahtouris brought this to my attention in her book Earthdance: “This mechanical/religious worldview superseded the older one of living nature to become the foundation of the whole Western worldview up to the present.” That is why I found the John Fullerton quote so pertinent: “The purpose of capital is to serve life, not the other way around.”
Your essay diagnoses something I’ve been circling for years: that our inability to solve systemic crises isn't a failure of policy intelligence, it's deeper than that. Money is more than an economic tool, it is a cultural artifact. The machine metaphor isn't just an aesthetic choice; it's the cognitive lock that makes mechanisms like fractional-reserve banking appear as neutral, inevitable laws of physics rather than human conventions we can consciously redesign.
Where your work shines is in noting that we are not just using the machine metaphor, we are being used by it. It narrows our bandwidth for what you beautifully call "serious play," and renders structural reforms like the NEED Act as "radical" or "unrealistic" before they even get a hearing.
What I find so compelling about your framing is that it provides the philosophical prerequisite for the work we do at AMI. Ending private bank money creation isn't just a monetary tweak; it's an act of collective cognitive liberation. It says: this machine was built, and we can rebuild it. That is precisely the "limber" thinking your essay calls for, the recognition that our models are participatory, provisional, and open to conscious redesign.
So, to your direct question: I think the connection is profound. Your work provides the psychological and philosophical foundation that makes monetary reform thinkable. Without challenging the reductionist worldview you deconstruct, even the most elegant policy proposal will be absorbed and neutralized by the very machine it seeks to change.
This is why I would like you to present at the 22nd Annual AMI Conference this September.
Further, I envision a dialogue or a joint session, one where you lay out the epistemic and metaphysical case for moving beyond the machine worldview, and I follow with the practical mechanics of sovereign money. Your work makes our work imaginable. I think our community needs to hear from you directly.
If that resonates, we can work out the format (keynote, fireside chat, or paired sessions) and logistics. But first, I wanted to make sure I answered your question, and that this extension feels like a natural connection.
Let me know your thoughts, I'm genuinely excited by the possibility of building this bridge together.
Thank you for clarifying, Howard, and yes, happy to talk about this with you! I have been thinking about money *a lot* lately, actually, in the course of working with https://atlasresear.ch (more on that later). Always favor a paired presentation/dialogue-or-panel format. Strike sparks, fan flames, onward to synthesis, you know?
Exactly, "Strike sparks, fan flames, onward to synthesis", yes, that's the spirit. Count me in for a paired dialogue or panel format. Let's make it a real conversation, not two monologues.
I took a look at atlasresear.ch, and I have to admit: I didn't find the public money solution in their stated work. Sovereign tools for collective intelligence, high-dimensional mapping, regenerative infrastructure, all of that resonates deeply with the philosophical foundation we've been discussing. But the monetary piece, the actual mechanism of who creates money and how, doesn't appear on the surface.
So, I'm genuinely curious: what's the connection you're seeing? You mentioned you've been thinking about money a lot lately in the course of working with them. I'd love to hear more about how that's developing. Are they engaging with monetary design at the institutional level? Is there a project percolating that bridges their sovereign tools with sovereign money?
I ask not to put you on the spot, but because I think this is exactly where the synthesis you're calling for needs to happen. Your work on the machine metaphor and cognitive frames makes the NEED Act thinkable. Atlas's work on sovereign infrastructure could make it buildable. The bridge between those two worlds is where the real alchemy lies.
So yes to the conference. Yes to paired presentation. And yes to whatever you want to share about where your thinking on money is heading. I'm all ears.
Looking forward to striking those sparks together,
“it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
John Keats
BTW, the whole earth catalog is on my kitchen counter right now.
I am so happy to find this Substack. This is truly a discussion we should be having at this moment
Thank you! Pardon the delay. I have kids. (LOL) More on this coming as soon as I can find the time for it! I can't stop thinking about what getting past naïve realism means for our relationship with advanced computing...have you seen this?:
https://michaelgarfield.substack.com/hotl-06
...planning to elaborate.
I think arguments attempting to erase the distinction between the biological and the machinic are waging (often unbeknownst) ideological war on living systems on behalf of anti-humanists and their machinations toward entrenching urban technocapitalist systems.
Often this work is done by technologists who fancy themselves as 'techgnostics' -- people enchanted and enamored by the power and creativity of compute. It's weak ontology, and stinks of a deep capture by consumerist cargo culture of 'shiny new things'.
The inability to differentiate living systems from manufactured machines is lauded as a virtue, while all that is solid melts away in the engines of techno-operability and the latest R&D enthusiasm.
Alternatively, now more than ever, we need clear thinkers who are keen to trace the exact continuities and discontinuities (and hybridities) between living and machinic systems, with their distinct admixtures of properties, so that we can better understand the actual impacts and consequences of such minglings.
The Medium is the Massage, people. And we'll never creatively evolve toward ecologically sound prosocial adaptivity without fundamentally differentiating differences that make a difference.
In short, be careful what you speculate for...
Yes/And
A lot of the ideas here represent insights I’m also having. And I’m not a distinguished scholar, just an educated regular guy doing experiments with chatbot interactions.
A lot of my teenage and early-20s reading of Robert Anton Wilson prepped me for this moment.
In particular, the ideas of AI as inhuman being and the necessity of thinking about life and thought outside of established categories both resonate with me.
I'm not a distinguished scholar either. But those of us who put in the work up front or "inside" to see language for "what it is" are in a much better position to navigate what we're riding now and soon than experts. I like James P. Carse's writing in Finite and Infinite Games on physicists who talk about physics versus physicists who talk about "physics" and are engaged in poiesis...
Love this. Agree with the diagnosis and the solution.
One thing I've found gratifying about the current moment, as a naturally philosophical person who has always held the consensus frame loosely, is the way this self-awareness and flexibility of worldview is becoming more of a practical necessity.
In a more stable world, the majority of people may have had the privilege of believing in the absolute truth of the metaphysical assumptions handed to them by their post-Enlightenment culture, never really having to examine them. Maybe they occasionally had a "deep" talk with their weird friend (me) about how there are "theoretically" other ways of parsing reality, but of course none of that could be relevant "in practice." As things move faster, as flux becomes default, as the baseline levels of destabilization and cognitive dissonance rise for the average person, everyone will finally have to become philosophers in real life lol.
I do think there's gonna be a huge persuasion gap. Do you have any luck convincing skeptics of the ideas in this piece? My sense is that it won't land with people who don't already think like us. Hard to break someone's frame by talking about the possibility of broken frames. It's part of why I'm drawn to writing fiction, as a way to SHOW another frame in action; the fully fleshed out thought experiment on steroids.
I'm not super concerned about convincing skeptics. The urge to persuade people feels like attachment to an identity with/as an idea of what is real that I flag as something to observe and work with. Every day, thousands of people are born who either will, or will not, ever reach what I consider a valid realization...I've decided that no matter how strongly convinced I am of all of this, I still have work to do to really live as an exemplar of this, and in the meantime I am thinking that the best way to communicate it is as fiction.
I do have the urge to explain how I think. The desire to be understood is not the same as the desire to "win" — if someone could change my mind I'd welcome it.
Dude I have kids. I do not have unlimited free time to respond to messages. And what started as a sincere desire to help a stranger make sense of things is swiftly becoming a pain in the ass.
Michael,
Your 'Being More Than A Machine' essay was a revelation. The way you connect the reductionist thinking of the 'machine' metaphor to the crises we face, from AI to ecology to the financial system, is exactly what we need more of.
I work with the American Monetary Institute, and we are focused on a specific policy solution: the NEED Act, which would end private bank money creation and restore the power to create money to the public. But I believe your work provides the philosophical foundation that makes such a reform thinkable. Without challenging the 'machine' worldview, we cannot change the system.
I would be honored if you would consider presenting at our 22nd Annual Conference this September. Your perspective on tech ethics, complexity, and human agency would be invaluable to our community.
Also I would love it if you could comment on my article https://howardswitzer.substack.com/p/the-sovereign-money-bridge and want connect with you. I hope you can find the time. Also, this theme in in my inbox this morning as John Fullerton writes: https://substack.com/@johnfullerton101/p-204948358
With much appreciation,
Howard Switzer
Interesting and thank you! Yeah please reach out, inbox is open. I'm curious how you connect the ideas in this article to the ideas circling inside the discourse of your Institute...
Michael,
The short answer to your question is that you provide the philosophical foundation for monetary reform.
I have been bringing up the psychological consequences of the debt-money system to the monetary reform community for several years because I think it gets too little attention.
"Economics without input from psychology is similar to doing mechanics while ignoring the laws of physics.“ -- Economist Wesley Claire Mitchell
You asked how I connect the themes in "Being More Than a Machine" to the ideas circulating within AMI and the NEED Act. I think the link is tighter, and more urgent, than it might first appear.
Elisabet Sahtouris brought this to my attention in her book Earthdance: “This mechanical/religious worldview superseded the older one of living nature to become the foundation of the whole Western worldview up to the present.” That is why I found the John Fullerton quote so pertinent: “The purpose of capital is to serve life, not the other way around.”
Your essay diagnoses something I’ve been circling for years: that our inability to solve systemic crises isn't a failure of policy intelligence, it's deeper than that. Money is more than an economic tool, it is a cultural artifact. The machine metaphor isn't just an aesthetic choice; it's the cognitive lock that makes mechanisms like fractional-reserve banking appear as neutral, inevitable laws of physics rather than human conventions we can consciously redesign.
Where your work shines is in noting that we are not just using the machine metaphor, we are being used by it. It narrows our bandwidth for what you beautifully call "serious play," and renders structural reforms like the NEED Act as "radical" or "unrealistic" before they even get a hearing.
What I find so compelling about your framing is that it provides the philosophical prerequisite for the work we do at AMI. Ending private bank money creation isn't just a monetary tweak; it's an act of collective cognitive liberation. It says: this machine was built, and we can rebuild it. That is precisely the "limber" thinking your essay calls for, the recognition that our models are participatory, provisional, and open to conscious redesign.
So, to your direct question: I think the connection is profound. Your work provides the psychological and philosophical foundation that makes monetary reform thinkable. Without challenging the reductionist worldview you deconstruct, even the most elegant policy proposal will be absorbed and neutralized by the very machine it seeks to change.
This is why I would like you to present at the 22nd Annual AMI Conference this September.
Further, I envision a dialogue or a joint session, one where you lay out the epistemic and metaphysical case for moving beyond the machine worldview, and I follow with the practical mechanics of sovereign money. Your work makes our work imaginable. I think our community needs to hear from you directly.
If that resonates, we can work out the format (keynote, fireside chat, or paired sessions) and logistics. But first, I wanted to make sure I answered your question, and that this extension feels like a natural connection.
Let me know your thoughts, I'm genuinely excited by the possibility of building this bridge together.
With much appreciation and respect,
Howard Switzer
Thank you for clarifying, Howard, and yes, happy to talk about this with you! I have been thinking about money *a lot* lately, actually, in the course of working with https://atlasresear.ch (more on that later). Always favor a paired presentation/dialogue-or-panel format. Strike sparks, fan flames, onward to synthesis, you know?
Michael,
Exactly, "Strike sparks, fan flames, onward to synthesis", yes, that's the spirit. Count me in for a paired dialogue or panel format. Let's make it a real conversation, not two monologues.
I took a look at atlasresear.ch, and I have to admit: I didn't find the public money solution in their stated work. Sovereign tools for collective intelligence, high-dimensional mapping, regenerative infrastructure, all of that resonates deeply with the philosophical foundation we've been discussing. But the monetary piece, the actual mechanism of who creates money and how, doesn't appear on the surface.
So, I'm genuinely curious: what's the connection you're seeing? You mentioned you've been thinking about money a lot lately in the course of working with them. I'd love to hear more about how that's developing. Are they engaging with monetary design at the institutional level? Is there a project percolating that bridges their sovereign tools with sovereign money?
I ask not to put you on the spot, but because I think this is exactly where the synthesis you're calling for needs to happen. Your work on the machine metaphor and cognitive frames makes the NEED Act thinkable. Atlas's work on sovereign infrastructure could make it buildable. The bridge between those two worlds is where the real alchemy lies.
So yes to the conference. Yes to paired presentation. And yes to whatever you want to share about where your thinking on money is heading. I'm all ears.
Looking forward to striking those sparks together,
Howard
A bit too busy at the moment to explain how everything connects, but please DM me and let's find a time to chat about the conference!
WILL DO.
Yep. Totally into this.
“it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
John Keats
BTW, the whole earth catalog is on my kitchen counter right now.
Very glad to have found this publication!
Thank you!