We should do a collaborated reading/reflection on the work I just discovered by Nathaniel Hawthorne that I did not till yesterday know existed called "The Celestial Railroad."
"The Celestial Railroad" is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1843, serving as a satirical allegory inspired by John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. It critiques modern society's tendency to prioritize convenience and materialism over spiritual integrity.
The narrator dreams of a journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, following the path of Christian from Bunyan’s work. Unlike Bunyan’s arduous pilgrimage, this journey is modernized with a railroad, symbolizing technological progress and superficial ease. The train, operated by Mr. Smooth-it-away, promises a quick, comfortable trip, attracting passengers who avoid the hardships of the traditional pilgrimage. Along the way, the narrator observes stops like the Hill Difficulty, now bypassed, and Vanity Fair, a bustling hub of worldly pleasures. Key figures from The Pilgrim's Progress, like Evangelist, warn against the deceptive ease of the railroad, but passengers dismiss them. At the journey’s end, the train stops short of the Celestial City, and passengers must cross a dark river. Mr. Smooth-it-away reveals himself as a demon, and many passengers drown or fail to reach the city. The narrator awakens, realizing the railroad represents a false path to salvation, emphasizing that true spiritual growth requires effort and faith, not shortcuts.
The Celestial Railroad is a great story - it isn't really about technological progress at all - its about comfortable, superficial Christianity that embraces social respectability, moral compromise, and spiritual shortcuts, offering the promise of salvation without the cost of repentance, struggle, or personal transformation. It's a faith conformed to the spirit of the age rather than to the cross of Christ. It's about spiritual shortcuts, not technological shortcuts.
That makes sense. I’ve not read it. But of course - that doesn’t mean we can’t extend the allegory to include a modern twist - which I think seems particularly applicable in the context of this article.
Lucas- Thanks so much for sending this. I read through it and it sparked a potential response in a longer post. I am open to the idea that ChatGPT could super charge some capabilities and help persons advance forward. One thing that this does make me think of is the fact that these sorts of modern technological revolutions often lead to economic and other forms of polarization. For example, the current digital economy has concentrated major economic returns to those with credentials and cognitive skills and has largely left others behind. I suspect ChatGPT if it actually as benefits for the users they will be heavily concentrated within a select group of highly gifted people. They will become super-efficient cyborgs while the rest of us will be illiterate and unable to form coherent sentences. I am reminded of an interview between Tyler Cowan and Jonathan Haidt. Cowan was arguing that social media is an amazing way to connect brilliant teen scientists. But, I kept thinking "Yes, and all of the other teens get cat videos, TikTok, porn and depression." Not sure what the answer would be but may work it out in an essay. I am convinced enough that it is harming me that I shut down my ChatGPT account.
Grant - Great piece here with great guiding questions. I agree with you that AI is especially concerning in the realm of education and what human capabilities it forecloses and atrophies. Your guiding questions are like a vital update to the questions Neil Postman and Wendell Berry suggest we ask regarding any new technology. Thanks for your work!
Josh- Yes, I rely extensively on Berry and Postman for this lecture. In fact, I have my students read Berry's "Why I am not going to buy a computer" in advance of the class discussion.
Also reminded me of Ivan Illich's _Tools for Conviviality_. Reading this post, I recalled a saying I heard a long time ago: "God gave man tools; the devil gave him machines." I wish I could recall who said that.
I consider the externalities of the reel mower vs the power mower: noise, smell, hauling gas, spilling it, etc. And think of all those frightened birds and other wildlife.
There’s another important question here: why are students bothering to work so hard to get admitted to elite colleges just to have a machine do all their work for them? Obviously a devaluation of education that we could even consider simply skipping writing and studying in exchange for putting a prompt in The Paper Machine.
I don’t think the answer’s a huge mystery—the value of a degree has long been disconnected from the value of an education—but I do think it illustrates a lot of *why* we’re willing to give up these capacities in the first place. Most people aren’t that worried about learning to reason and express themselves: these are, at most, tools to prove yourself worthy.
Patrick- This is quite right. Higher education is largely a credential factory. Students give us $100k+ in exchange we offer them the opportunity to meet their upper-middle class consumption expectations. "Education" has very little to do with it. Too cynical?
Wonderful essay. I'm already thinking about ways I can "work around" students' inevitable pull toward using AI to complete their assignments next semester. The seven "human capabilities" you list here seems like a good place to start. I'm trying to think of ways to break those activities away from the "final paper product," so that if they choose to use AI to write the final draft, they might still have undergone the processes that develop their own human capabilities. I'm definitely saving this essay to share with my students next semester, so they can follow the reasoning behind my teaching decisions regarding these issues. Thanks so much!
Reading old mainstream books (I think of, say, Graves' "I, Claudius" or Vidal's "Julian") one is struck by how they were geared to a population that must be 15-20 points higher than it is currently. Part of it is from the ongoing population replacement with lower IQ on average non-whites and the concurrent dumbing down of social discourse that results from it. However, a major part is that if technology increases efficiency, the trade-off is that one has to wrestle less and less with the uncertainty that surrounds so-called knowledge - just go on CIA-controlled Wikipedia for the force-fed slop answer (designed to subtly make you a weaker slave). It seems like the final result of this process is either going to be "Idiocracy" or the obese humans in "Wall-E", with thinking itself outsourced to machines - if human civilization continues, anyway.
Also, I associate use of the em dash (i.e. — , versus the shorter dash -) with AI use, it's the easiest giveaway because it uses it constantly, and whenever I see it I think the piece was written by AI. Not saying you did that here, but that would be a bit ironic if so.
Thanks so much for reading. I did write this piece but yes would be ironic. Funny, I actually just read an article this very morning that said that em dashes are signs of AI use. May revert to single dash for this reason. Do you think we should stop using em dashes for this reason?
As a follow-up, we are in a bit of a pickle because em dash is the proper usage in certain cases. In your sentence above, "It seems like the final result of this process is either going to be "Idiocracy" or the obese humans in "Wall-E", with thinking itself outsourced to machines - if human civilization continues, anyway." I think it would have been most appropriate to use em dash rather than single dash. Do we change our writing in response?
This essay crystallized a few thoughts that have been floating around in my head but which I hadn’t been able to pin down.
In furnituremaking, a wave of new, relatively low cost tools has made some techniques readily accessible which previously required manual dexterity and creative thought / toolmaking. On the one hand, I want to welcome anyone who wants to make something. The creative act is what we need more of.
On the other hand, I share the same reservations. Even if come up with my own design but hand over all the cutting and fitting to a machine that faithfully makes real what was just in my head… I have lost something and become dependent on someone or something else.
Relying on a CNC machine feels fundamentally different than, say, a table saw with a fence because the CNC seems farther removed from the hand skills of cutting to a line. The table saw replaces manual effort with electrical power but is not so fundamentally different that what we would do with hand tools.
I had been thinking of AI adoption along the lines of “how many shoulders do you want to stand on”, but that never seemed to capture the loss that I believe we take on when we hand over the reins. Your essay captured that and clarified it.
I’m going to noodle on this a bit more. There is something in this train of thought.
Very good essay. I think that you are right, workers won't be replaced by AI, they will be replaced by workers who can collaborate with AI. And unfortunately, you are right that like social media - the people who are able to wisely extend and strengthen their capabilities (the bicyclists) will be far fewer than the people who outsource their own capabilities and potential to the device. I find AI to be a terrific and useful critic that has caused me to rewrite many documents more times than I would have previously. It is also a good junior research assistant. At work, we aggressively train the staff in the use of AI and at this point it remains comically obvious when people are leveraging to good effect and when people are foolishly trying to get it to do their work for them - this is especially true when the person uses AI to generate their own work and is too lazy to proofread it before submitting it. We have considered an AI disclosure policy - simply an acknowledgement on internal work products regarding where and how AI was used.
I raised similar questions during a team meeting at work last week, in which data scientists were discussing adoption of AI in their work. It dumbfounds me how asking people to think of how the use of AI has the capacity to shape us or the (hard earned) culture of our team could be met with such blank stares, and that people are so willing to potentially undermine the formation they have put in to become skilled data scientists. There is a complete inability to evaluate usage of this tool other than the "objective metric" of efficiency.
Any thoughts on how we can get people to ask the right questions when they have already graduated college and aren't required to by a syllabus?
Hi Grant, I happened to write a pro-chat essay on the very same day. I think you and I exist within much the same value system, so you might find it interesting to read:
Interesting article until the last line. Good luck keeping your kids away from ChatGPT and alike. Think of all the screens - computers, smartphones, TVs, cars. Add to this schools, libraries, friends houses. It is all just too pervasive.
Grant,
We should do a collaborated reading/reflection on the work I just discovered by Nathaniel Hawthorne that I did not till yesterday know existed called "The Celestial Railroad."
"The Celestial Railroad" is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1843, serving as a satirical allegory inspired by John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. It critiques modern society's tendency to prioritize convenience and materialism over spiritual integrity.
The narrator dreams of a journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, following the path of Christian from Bunyan’s work. Unlike Bunyan’s arduous pilgrimage, this journey is modernized with a railroad, symbolizing technological progress and superficial ease. The train, operated by Mr. Smooth-it-away, promises a quick, comfortable trip, attracting passengers who avoid the hardships of the traditional pilgrimage. Along the way, the narrator observes stops like the Hill Difficulty, now bypassed, and Vanity Fair, a bustling hub of worldly pleasures. Key figures from The Pilgrim's Progress, like Evangelist, warn against the deceptive ease of the railroad, but passengers dismiss them. At the journey’s end, the train stops short of the Celestial City, and passengers must cross a dark river. Mr. Smooth-it-away reveals himself as a demon, and many passengers drown or fail to reach the city. The narrator awakens, realizing the railroad represents a false path to salvation, emphasizing that true spiritual growth requires effort and faith, not shortcuts.
Have you ever read this?
The Celestial Railroad is a great story - it isn't really about technological progress at all - its about comfortable, superficial Christianity that embraces social respectability, moral compromise, and spiritual shortcuts, offering the promise of salvation without the cost of repentance, struggle, or personal transformation. It's a faith conformed to the spirit of the age rather than to the cross of Christ. It's about spiritual shortcuts, not technological shortcuts.
That makes sense. I’ve not read it. But of course - that doesn’t mean we can’t extend the allegory to include a modern twist - which I think seems particularly applicable in the context of this article.
I’m not sure that they are not deeply intertwined—spiritual/technological shortcuts
!!! Never heard of this story Brandon and will try and get my hands on it promptly.
I have not. Let's chat. Worth a review like the one we did of Henry and the Great Society?
Kevin- I'm always shocked by how little very smart people have thought this through. Or very credentialed people anyway.
Lucas- Thanks so much for sending this. I read through it and it sparked a potential response in a longer post. I am open to the idea that ChatGPT could super charge some capabilities and help persons advance forward. One thing that this does make me think of is the fact that these sorts of modern technological revolutions often lead to economic and other forms of polarization. For example, the current digital economy has concentrated major economic returns to those with credentials and cognitive skills and has largely left others behind. I suspect ChatGPT if it actually as benefits for the users they will be heavily concentrated within a select group of highly gifted people. They will become super-efficient cyborgs while the rest of us will be illiterate and unable to form coherent sentences. I am reminded of an interview between Tyler Cowan and Jonathan Haidt. Cowan was arguing that social media is an amazing way to connect brilliant teen scientists. But, I kept thinking "Yes, and all of the other teens get cat videos, TikTok, porn and depression." Not sure what the answer would be but may work it out in an essay. I am convinced enough that it is harming me that I shut down my ChatGPT account.
Grant - Great piece here with great guiding questions. I agree with you that AI is especially concerning in the realm of education and what human capabilities it forecloses and atrophies. Your guiding questions are like a vital update to the questions Neil Postman and Wendell Berry suggest we ask regarding any new technology. Thanks for your work!
Josh- Yes, I rely extensively on Berry and Postman for this lecture. In fact, I have my students read Berry's "Why I am not going to buy a computer" in advance of the class discussion.
Also reminded me of Ivan Illich's _Tools for Conviviality_. Reading this post, I recalled a saying I heard a long time ago: "God gave man tools; the devil gave him machines." I wish I could recall who said that.
I'd love to be a student in your class!
It's a fun class. I can send you the reading list if interested.
Yes, I'd love that!
I consider the externalities of the reel mower vs the power mower: noise, smell, hauling gas, spilling it, etc. And think of all those frightened birds and other wildlife.
There’s another important question here: why are students bothering to work so hard to get admitted to elite colleges just to have a machine do all their work for them? Obviously a devaluation of education that we could even consider simply skipping writing and studying in exchange for putting a prompt in The Paper Machine.
I don’t think the answer’s a huge mystery—the value of a degree has long been disconnected from the value of an education—but I do think it illustrates a lot of *why* we’re willing to give up these capacities in the first place. Most people aren’t that worried about learning to reason and express themselves: these are, at most, tools to prove yourself worthy.
Patrick- This is quite right. Higher education is largely a credential factory. Students give us $100k+ in exchange we offer them the opportunity to meet their upper-middle class consumption expectations. "Education" has very little to do with it. Too cynical?
Maybe not cynical enough: with the current hiring market, not sure it’ll actually let them meet those consumption expectations.
That's a good point. Though in the health sciences, where I am located, the ROI is still solid.
Wonderful essay. I'm already thinking about ways I can "work around" students' inevitable pull toward using AI to complete their assignments next semester. The seven "human capabilities" you list here seems like a good place to start. I'm trying to think of ways to break those activities away from the "final paper product," so that if they choose to use AI to write the final draft, they might still have undergone the processes that develop their own human capabilities. I'm definitely saving this essay to share with my students next semester, so they can follow the reasoning behind my teaching decisions regarding these issues. Thanks so much!
Danny- So glad that you appreciated it. Would love to hear back to get a sense of what your students thought of the argument.
Reading old mainstream books (I think of, say, Graves' "I, Claudius" or Vidal's "Julian") one is struck by how they were geared to a population that must be 15-20 points higher than it is currently. Part of it is from the ongoing population replacement with lower IQ on average non-whites and the concurrent dumbing down of social discourse that results from it. However, a major part is that if technology increases efficiency, the trade-off is that one has to wrestle less and less with the uncertainty that surrounds so-called knowledge - just go on CIA-controlled Wikipedia for the force-fed slop answer (designed to subtly make you a weaker slave). It seems like the final result of this process is either going to be "Idiocracy" or the obese humans in "Wall-E", with thinking itself outsourced to machines - if human civilization continues, anyway.
Also, I associate use of the em dash (i.e. — , versus the shorter dash -) with AI use, it's the easiest giveaway because it uses it constantly, and whenever I see it I think the piece was written by AI. Not saying you did that here, but that would be a bit ironic if so.
Thanks so much for reading. I did write this piece but yes would be ironic. Funny, I actually just read an article this very morning that said that em dashes are signs of AI use. May revert to single dash for this reason. Do you think we should stop using em dashes for this reason?
As a follow-up, we are in a bit of a pickle because em dash is the proper usage in certain cases. In your sentence above, "It seems like the final result of this process is either going to be "Idiocracy" or the obese humans in "Wall-E", with thinking itself outsourced to machines - if human civilization continues, anyway." I think it would have been most appropriate to use em dash rather than single dash. Do we change our writing in response?
No, continue with proper usage! Contorting ourselves so that we will not sound like machines imitating us leads into a quagmire that we cannot outrun.
That's my inclination as well
This essay crystallized a few thoughts that have been floating around in my head but which I hadn’t been able to pin down.
In furnituremaking, a wave of new, relatively low cost tools has made some techniques readily accessible which previously required manual dexterity and creative thought / toolmaking. On the one hand, I want to welcome anyone who wants to make something. The creative act is what we need more of.
On the other hand, I share the same reservations. Even if come up with my own design but hand over all the cutting and fitting to a machine that faithfully makes real what was just in my head… I have lost something and become dependent on someone or something else.
Relying on a CNC machine feels fundamentally different than, say, a table saw with a fence because the CNC seems farther removed from the hand skills of cutting to a line. The table saw replaces manual effort with electrical power but is not so fundamentally different that what we would do with hand tools.
I had been thinking of AI adoption along the lines of “how many shoulders do you want to stand on”, but that never seemed to capture the loss that I believe we take on when we hand over the reins. Your essay captured that and clarified it.
I’m going to noodle on this a bit more. There is something in this train of thought.
Very good essay. I think that you are right, workers won't be replaced by AI, they will be replaced by workers who can collaborate with AI. And unfortunately, you are right that like social media - the people who are able to wisely extend and strengthen their capabilities (the bicyclists) will be far fewer than the people who outsource their own capabilities and potential to the device. I find AI to be a terrific and useful critic that has caused me to rewrite many documents more times than I would have previously. It is also a good junior research assistant. At work, we aggressively train the staff in the use of AI and at this point it remains comically obvious when people are leveraging to good effect and when people are foolishly trying to get it to do their work for them - this is especially true when the person uses AI to generate their own work and is too lazy to proofread it before submitting it. We have considered an AI disclosure policy - simply an acknowledgement on internal work products regarding where and how AI was used.
Tom- do you unleash AI at your office with optimism or fear?
I raised similar questions during a team meeting at work last week, in which data scientists were discussing adoption of AI in their work. It dumbfounds me how asking people to think of how the use of AI has the capacity to shape us or the (hard earned) culture of our team could be met with such blank stares, and that people are so willing to potentially undermine the formation they have put in to become skilled data scientists. There is a complete inability to evaluate usage of this tool other than the "objective metric" of efficiency.
Any thoughts on how we can get people to ask the right questions when they have already graduated college and aren't required to by a syllabus?
Hi Grant, I happened to write a pro-chat essay on the very same day. I think you and I exist within much the same value system, so you might find it interesting to read:
https://open.substack.com/pub/makinglight/p/in-which-i-vigorously-defend-the?r=7no6d&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Very well and clearly argued, and a good presentation of an important question.
Thanks!
Thanks Jay! Grateful for your participation in the Substack.
Interesting article until the last line. Good luck keeping your kids away from ChatGPT and alike. Think of all the screens - computers, smartphones, TVs, cars. Add to this schools, libraries, friends houses. It is all just too pervasive.
Tye- We're trying our best. Fighting the good fight.
Whack a mole! It’s exhausting and not sustainable. First social now chat.
I hear you Tye. But I am committed to remain hopeful for my children. So I am consciously choosing to pursue the good despite the odds.
Here, here, Grant!