Too Plural For the Singularity

Chesney Hearst-writer, journalist, artist. speculative fiction, poetry, memoir. Querying my novella The Water Cycle. Faith, tech, and what it means to be human.

[Too Plural For the Singularity @tooplural]

I watched people change. At first it was exciting, progressive. With all partially morphing into 1’s and 0’s, flesh into pixels, calls into texts, long winded dispatches into numbered character tweets, speeches, shows into snippets and sound into bites, clips. Then  quicker and quicker, the chaotic rapidity of transitions blurred from the speed. All seemed more connected but then wires stretched farther and farther apart. No more real touching, simulated illusory feels. At first a novelty for many then a necessity for all.

A trade off, a bargain. Faustian some said.

-Life in Progress Journals, Chesney Hearst, circa 2016

[Too Plural For the Singularity @tooplural]

"What computers cannot do, at least not by any mechanism anyone has yet described, is create the inside of experience in a system that is, at bottom, processing information. No qualia."

Future Feelings
The value of qualia and the prospect of AGI for all.

https://t.co/UNfcImd2T9

[Too Plural For the Singularity @tooplural]

AI optimizes away the weight. But the weight is what makes it real.

[The MIT Press @mitpress.bsky.social @mitpress]

"Philosopher Brian Cantwell Smith argued that while AI can make ... decisions, judgment requires something else: human deliberation about how to apply ethical ideals under particular conditions, and grappling with others’ views about what is at stake." https://t.co/W6JTnT2rY8

[Too Plural For the Singularity @tooplural]

Studies show that Ireland’s government support of artists proved beneficial, returning €1.39 for every €1 invested. Here in America, a philosopher is literally writing the conscience of the most powerful AI system in the world, while our government funds are being shifted away from the humanities, the arts, and everything else that makes us human.

Jack of All Trades, Master of None, Though Oftentimes Better Than Master of One: Why defunding the arts may be the most expensive mistake we make in the age of AI. https://t.co/Ere0dWaAzd

[Too Plural For the Singularity @tooplural]

“The only guardrail left standing is the moral imagination of the person setting the direction, and that person is operating under venture capital timelines and the pressure of a geopolitical race with China.”

Claude on Speed:
As AI begins to outpace its own builders, even the most technical minds are reaching for philosophical terms to explain what they are seeing.

https://t.co/q86XbTr9aq

[Too Plural For the Singularity @tooplural]

“We have always wanted a mechanism. We have always wanted something we could operate, something that takes our input and delivers our desired output, something that responds to the correct technique with the correct result. The twig is just the newest version of a very old machine.”

God Is Not a Vending Machine https://t.co/2XgEHE3iqi

#Grief #Healing #Faith #Occult #Witchcraft #WishTwigs

[Too Plural For the Singularity @tooplural]

“Jack of all trades, master of none, though oftentimes better than master of one.”

People rarely ever quote the most recent second half of this. I think they should. It changes the meaning completely. Yay for multimodal thinking and interdisciplinary studies. From them beautiful tapestries are woven.”

[Too Plural For the Singularity @tooplural]

“Everybody is either a customer, a threat, or a variable to be managed, depending on who you ask.”

If They Watch, Keep Going

The rise of data centers may have less to do with computing power than with how much they want to see of you.

https://t.co/vMWrnSsklN

[Too Plural For the Singularity @tooplural]

This is one of the best pieces I’ve read on AI and what it costs us to be human. Tyler Austin Harper asks the right question and doesn’t flinch from the answer.

[The Atlantic @TheAtlantic]

Pope Leo and other Christian thinkers have captured the gravity of the AI revolution in a way that many secular thinkers have not, @Tyler_A_Harper argues. https://t.co/peimmklXj7

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

You are part of a story of love—that of the Lord for His people—which began before you and does not end with you. You are part of it as unique and necessary pieces. You are part of it so that you may kindle a light, even amid the dense patterns of darkness. #PastoralVisit #Naples https://t.co/1ho0ge1iyH

[Too Plural For the Singularity @tooplural]

I named my Substack, my X, and my website Too Plural for the Singularity because I believe, deep in my bones, that we cannot be flattened. No matter how powerful this technology becomes, humanity is too plural for any singularity to contain it. There are too many voices, too much beautiful mess, too many visions that refuse to resolve into one correct answer.

It is also a line spoken by one of my characters in #TheWaterCycle, my novella that is still looking for an agent.

I have been writing from that conviction for a while now, sometimes feeling like I was shouting into a very loud, very fast feed.

And then on May 25th #PopeLeoXIV released a 42,000 word encyclical #MagnificaHumanitas and used the word #plurality like it was the whole point. Because it is the whole point.

He said disarming AI means “restoring in it the plurality of human cultures,” making it debatable, refutable, and habitable. Not one voice, not one vision, not one optimized path through the maze, but many voices, many paths, many cultures, all of it together.

That is what I have been trying to say. That is what this whole project is about. Today it came together in a way I did not expect and could not have planned.

#Toopluralforthesingularity. Still.

God is good.

https://t.co/sKpdXNLzD9

[Too Plural For the Singularity @tooplural]

“Disarming AI does not mean renouncing technology, but preventing it from dominating the human. It means subtracting it from monopolies, making it debatable, refutable, and therefore habitable, restoring in it the #plurality of human cultures.”

#PopeLeoXIV, #MagnificaHumanitas

https://t.co/hVVt4XAk5q

[Too Plural For the Singularity @tooplural]

Google’s original motto was Don’t Be Evil. It was removed from the company’s code of conduct in 2018. Anthropic goes public in October.

When Good Intentions Go Public https://t.co/j6e14LnBHZ

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational, and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. #MagnificaHumanitas

[Too Plural For the Singularity @tooplural]

When you encode life into quantum states, what stays and what gets lost?

Oxford researchers just loaded a complete genome onto a quantum computer for the first time. Not a single reference genome… a pangenome. A map of variation across many individuals. A tangled maze where you’re trying to find the best path.

The science is significant. But the question underneath it is older than the science.

[University of Oxford @UniofOxford]

NEW: Oxford researchers have helped to achieve a world first: loading a complete genome onto a quantum computer. This makes an important step towards a future where quantum computing accelerates biological discovery.

Find out more ⬇️
https://t.co/5DROjxivgr

[Too Plural For the Singularity @tooplural]

There’s a difference between having a worldview… and attempting to create content.

[Too Plural For the Singularity @tooplural]

Abandonment, loss, death, grief, loneliness, dependence, reckoning, redemption, you cannot engineer yourself out of the cycle.