Tolstoy, Amodei, and Machines of Loving Grace

Why do men stupefy themselves?

Tolstoy asked and answered the question of alcohol consumption by painting the picture of man as fundamentally conflicted: a fallen angel with nobility in his soul, and a scrabbling caveman, toiling just to stay alive. When the noble and saintly man considers his real circumstances, and the squalor and work he must endure, it is only through numbing his very being that he can live with himself. That man’s conduct and his conscience are in constant friction, and the bottle is his means of refuge.

As drinking has declined and been replaced by a different kind of numbing agent (drinking away the evening and scrolling it away feel remarkably familiar), the human psyche continues to be soothed.

I was reflecting on Amodei’s essay on the future of AI and what it would mean for the human race to be economically irrelevant (wholly supplanted by AI). His positive take was that there are a raft of activities people take part in where they have no comparative advantage over machines — they swim and hike and paint and cook for the sheer pleasure of it.

Obviously this is true, but a life of pure leisure? Combined with some of his earlier points on the potential for biological immortality, an unending life of pure leisure?

Does that break us free from Tolstoy’s condition? We are no longer the scrabbling caveman, trading away parcels of our precious divinity for shelter and warmth. We are instead free to live as exalted noble beings, responding only to the callings of that divine conscience.

I suspect not.

What is it to be human without striving? The idle rich offer us a (largely cautionary) example. Freed from the caveman’s toils, they are more likely to become drinkers, gamblers, and seekers of ever more exotic distractions (and destructions), than to ascend to some higher plane of happiness (Tolstoy, a leisured landowner himself, knew this well). Those who do find happiness seem to do so through new means of toil — whether through physical, intellectual, or benevolent striving.

If it is the friction between our conscience and our conduct that leads men to stupefy themselves, then in a world of pure leisure, idleness is the conduct. How would our consciences cope — screaming “do something worthwhile” — in a world where nothing needs doing?

Perhaps I simply lack the imagination to picture a future without meaningful striving. In an endless future where all toil is wholly unnecessary — a future I think is a distinct possibility — I believe that we’ll need ever stronger sedatives, digital or otherwise, to keep ourselves sane.