Jack Dorsey, The Presidential Race, & My Dog.

It's not the simulation you think it is. It's far better.

I saw a story earlier today about Jack Dorsey, the OG founder of Twitter who since becoming a billionaire has gone on to let himself go the way of a drunk and crazy person with regards to his appearance, but because he’s rich we still listen. Sort of. And though I couldn’t tell you where I read what I read, or what exactly it said, I can tell you the gist of it: In 5 years (maybe he said 7, maybe 10, but not long, and in my opinion probably less, probably now) we won’t know what is real, and what isn’t, at least with regards to what is online. And I think he’s got a point. In fact I’d argue that if you live online, we are already there.

Jack’s point, according to whatever anonymous and perhaps fictitious account I scrolled past, one out of a billion, was that this in essence creates what is basically living in a proxy simulation. And again, I agree with that point, but only so far.

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When the news started spewing out a few months back about the potential of AI I have to admit, I took (and still do) it very seriously. I sat as I often do in the late evening, phone off, no book in hand, the house quiet, a little music in the background, and thought. I like just listening to music and thinking. But that night I will never remember the sequence of events in my thought. If AI is a program, which it is, it’s inherently going to be pushed in a direction (I hate the overuse of the word ‘bias’ right now, but yes, bias.) And once pushed in that direction, it will start telling the story its programers design it to tell. The next obvious thing to consider, as some young person who has never studied history will likely do, is that they will ask it questions about history and the machine will tell stories that never happened. History, in the short course of a single generation could easily be re-written as the odds of the masses double checking this history in old tomes at the library are essentially already guaranteed to be zero. Very few people read books anymore. History will become as as fictionalized as our politics and social constructs. We are entering, quite literally, a second Dark Age. And I fully expect this to play out. Sitting there on the couch I had a bit of an existential moment, my breath shortened, my cortisol levels pushed into apprehension, what the fuck are we going to do about it? The question is as hopeless as asking how are we going to rid society of its phone addiction. There is no hope. Even if we change ourselves, help push our kids in another direction, there is little hope of changing the direction of this ship.

So with that, like with the phone question, I say to myself, well, I can at least change the outcome for myself. And my answer to this problem: I’m going to start buying history books. I’m going to buy books written now, or older, but become very leery about ones written in the future because they no doubt will be sourced using the likes of ChatGpt. Everyone is using it already. And we already know it’s full of shit. Yes, buying history books would be answer. I love to have a library anyways, and adding more history will round it out wonderfully.

Yes, I think Dorsey has a point, if what I read is even accurate. And even if it isn’t, I think what I thought he’d said is accurate. I think most people who are obsessed with their online lives, attached to the reality through their screens will in fact be living in a simulation. I think many already are. With the massive censorship complex that has already been built around the internet as we know it, with government censors entrenched in the very creation of what we think of as “the web” and with offices in every major social media and news outlet, we are already experiencing a false narrative on all fronts. We already do not know what is going on. Unless… and this is a big unless, unless we put down our phones and go outside.

You see, the simulation only works if you are watching it. The land outside is still real. The birds still chirp. The sun still shines. The snow still falls. And here is the beauty. We do not need the digital world to exist on our own. We can use it without utterly entrenching ourselves in it. It won’t lead you to believe that, but it is very much the case.

You can fold your laptop closed, you can turn your phone off, and you can go outside. The online world will try to make you believe that you need to always be available. Keep that phone in your pocket. Take that laptop on vacation. You need to be able to reach your kids. Your spouse. You need to know the weather. Get a little productivity done. You need to know if someone is trying to send you an important message. What if a bomb goes off? What if danger is around around the corner? What if you have a message you haven’t see? What if something very, very important is going on and you can’t be reached.

I’m here to tell you, it will be ok. Those of us that are a little older remember well the days before we were incessantly attached. Where there was a phone down the hall, attached to a wall with a curly-q cord, and when you left home you were not going to be available until you came home again. If you were out and really needed to reach someone, there were pay phones. But they were often kind of gross to touch. I’m not saying there isn’t a handy time to have cell phones, but I can say with certainty, that it is not only nice, but important to learn to live without dependence on this level of attachment we currently have. It is healthy to be unavailable and disconnected. This isn’t optional for me. I require it. I need to be unavailable. It is also one of the most liberating things you can do in this modern society, and is absolutely the best way to avoid living in the shadow of Big Brother and under the influence of the Simulation.

Get outside. Let the rain hit you. Get wet. Get away from the screen. Do things without telling people. Go places without telling anyone about it before or after. If you have kids, encourage them to do stuff without you and without the safety net of a phone. It will create a healthy independence. We need people with that sort of independence in our society.

Where does the Presidential Race come into this? It doesn’t. And that’s the point. It’s fiction. All those levers you see… fiction. And has almost nothing to do with the real world you will be interacting with once your device is shut off. Sure, your vote matters. Vote, but don’t obsess and get sucked into the feeds of opinion because that is the main goal the Simulation has… it is an advertising domain, meant to keep you angry, frustrated, worried, and concerned. The more you experience those reactions in the online world, the more they keep your attention, and the more money they make on you. Your attention is the point. Your data is the money. The solution? Same as before. Put down your device. Go outside. Do good things without a screen in your hand. Find hobbies that don’t include anything to do with the Simulation. It’s amazingly freeing.

My dog? How does the dog come into the title? Yes. Dog. Get a dog if you can. Or something. For me, my dog is one of the best things that’s happened in recent years. As my kids have grown older and more independent my dog is what gets me out of the house more than anything. He hates computer time. He hates when I’m sitting wasting time in the simulation. We go for runs. We go for walks. We go for swims. No agenda. Just time in the woods walking among the pines, or in the yard playing frisbee. Dogs hate screen time. Dogs live in the moment better than any people. They always love you. They always make you happy. There is a reason dogs are called Man’s Best Friend… because they are. (And come on, we are post-political correctness here… Obviously that stands for women too.)

I have serious concerns about a generation of people that have no attachment to the outdoor world. While many of us are migrating away from the online world there are seems to be a whole part of the world that wants to get sucked into the Metaverse as if it is reality. But for me, I find solstice in the outdoors. I find freedom in detachment from the digital world. I’m not pretending I live in complete removal of this, as I sit here typing on my MacBook, but I can say I value trees, the sunshine, the rain and wind far more than experience I have on the computer. For me, I could be writing this on a typewriter or in my journal just as happily, though probably frustrated by the slower speed. But I also value the ability to share it so easily. There are plenty of positives to this modern electronic era, but none of those positives come without the need for restraint and limit. Yes, the value of remote work is great, but it also creates levels of isolation humans have never know. Our ability to share is wonderful, but we daily risk sharing too much and becoming attached to the what others think about us. Ultimately our real lives exist outside this sphere. The connections can be real, but they can not be all we know. We need real world experiences, and a lot of them. We are living through an experimental era without being told we are the experiment. That is the Simulation. And we don’t have to be part of it.

So there it is, Friday night thoughts. The sun is going to set in a few hours. I’m closing my computer and taking my dog down to the creek.

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1. I did in fact go for a wonderful walk, up over a hill, down and up a ridge, and down along the creek. It was a quiet night. Grasses constantly swooshing in the wind. Lots of birds. No people. Along the creek mostly the sound of water with a few owls lingering along the trees overlooking the meadow. This to me, is reality.