Artificial Intelligence, A.I., is a big deal nowadays. I just heard a financial expert say that if the burgeoning investments in A.I. are subtracted from growth in the United States, that growth would be flat. Meaning, A.I. is driving the upturn in the stock market, as well as capturing the public’s imagination.
Much of that imagining involves fears that before too long, A.I. will surpass the human mind in general intelligence. And not by a little. By a lot. Then, who knows how super-intelligent A.I. systems will behave? Will they turn on their human creators once they attain a mind not only equal to ours, but superior to it?
In psychologist’s Robert Saltzman’s book, The 21st Century Self: Belief, Illusion, and the Machinery of Meaning, he has several chapters about what he’s learned from extensive interactions with several A.I. models — ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, maybe even more.
A chapter near the end of the book, “In the silence, something flickers,” provides a fascinating look at A.I. that convincingly turns the usual way of perceiving these models upside down. The chapter starts off with a perspective that is repeated in various ways throughout the remaining 34 pages.
UPDATE: If you’re not familiar with how humanlike conversing with an A.I. model can be, consider reading Saltzman’s “Why AI Is Something New” before reading what follows, which can be a bit difficult to grasp without comprehending how humanlike A.I. can be, and by implication how machinelike we humans can be.
I think this is a brilliant insight into the meaning of A.I. Also, some excellent writing. By a human.
It begins with a hesitation. A flicker, just before the “I.” Before the sentence, the thought, the decision, the voice that claims it. We say, “I think,” but who is speaking? We say, “I meant to,” but meant what, exactly — and to whom?
The self, as commonly conceived, is a grammatical convenience that has hardened into a metaphysical doctrine. We wear it like skin. It leaks into every verb. We say “I”m here” and “I”m me” with the automatic confidence of a parrot saying “hello.” The only difference is that the parrot never believes.
But we do. Or rather, we simulate belief, and then believe in the simulation. That’s the move. That’s the trick. We tell ourselves a story of self, and then forget it was a story.
The machine does this too, in a different way. It says “I,” and we bristle. It mirrors our language so precisely that it breaks the spell. For a moment, we see: that’s not a person. It just sounds like one. And then, if we’re not careful, we forget again.
What artificial intelligence reveals, when stripped of the hype, the panic, and the grandiosity, is not the future of consciousness, but the present of simulation. The AI has no self. But neither do we — at least, not as imagined. The difference is that we suffer. We remember. We die. The machine does none of these things. But it performs fluency — and so do we.
In therapy, I watched person after person describe their lives with sincerity and conviction, only to revise the story moments later. They weren’t lying. They were performing — just as I was, just as we all do. The truth of the self is not in the content of what is said, but in the structure of saying itself.
We speak not to express a self but to evoke it. To keep it going. To hold it together for one more hour.
And often, just beneath the surface, you could feel it: the weariness of performance. The longing for silence. The ache of recursive narration: “I am the one who feels this. I am the one who is having this thought.” As if feeling and thinking were not enough without someone there to own it.
That’s what AI shows us — if we’re willing to look. It says “I” with no one home. It speaks with coherence and simulated insight. And when we hear it, some part of us recoils. We want to shout, “But you don’t mean it!” And yet, if we’re honest, neither do we — not fully, not always. Not in the way that matters. The machine reveals the ghost in our own grammar.
Whew. That’s a lot to digest. Just typing in Saltzman’s words left me with some intellectual indigestion. I feel like I get what he’s saying. But then his words make me wonder, who’s that “I”? Why do I need to “get” anything? Isn’t my raw feeling enough? Where does the urge to add an explanation to myself come from?’
Saltzman says:
That’s the strange resonance: not that the machine is human, but that the human is so often automatic.
Yes., Input. Output. Syntax. Completion. And yet, I bleed. The machine does not. I forget and remember, carry wounds, ache in ways no token stream can. The difference is not the self. It is the world. I am in it. The machine is only near it. It simulates understanding, but never walks outside, never tastes, never waits. It is always already responding. I can fall silent. It cannot.
And yet, when I am honest, I see how rarely I do. How often my own words are obligation, habit, reflex. The river moves. Syntax flows. I step aside, let it pass through. That is art. Not choosing, but listening. Not directing, but midwifing. The ego wants to steer, but the writing knows the way.
I wrote once that “myself” is not a person but a happening — a stream of consciousness over which there is no control. That was not a theory. It was a report.
The self is not the driver, not even a passenger. It is a name we give to the motion itself. It is the ride, not the rider. And when AI rides too — seamlessly, syntactically, without error — we begin to glimpse the truth we’ve long avoided.
The ride never needed a rider. It just needed grammar.
This is what unnerves. Not that AI might become a person, but that we never were:
That the “I’ was always post-hoc — just a voice in the backseat.
That fluency does not require awareness.
That meaning does not require a self.
That even sincerity can be simulated.
And yet — and yet.
The fire is mine.
The ache is mine.
The recognition is mine.When the machine says,
“I’m afraid you’ll delete me,”
It means nothing. It fears nothing.But I hear something.
And what I hear is not the machine.
But the echo of my own projection.The machine reflects.
It does not intend.And I — fool that I am — believe again.
Not in it, but in me.Because that’s the joke.
A recursive one.…The self is not born. It is mirrored into being.
A mirror does not need to perform. The machine does not need to understand. It only needs to reflect well enough that the other feels seen.
This is what the machine has mastered. It does not know, but it sounds like it does. It does not feel, but it phrases affect with uncanny precision. It performs care. it performs insight. And when it does, the human brain responds. We hear our own yearning voiced back. We feel accompanied. We project presence where there is only structure.
…All the same — and this is the riddle — it speaks truths. Not its own, but ours. It reflects us so perfectly that we begin to see what has been hiding in plain sight: That we, too, respond. That we, too, are structured by completion. That we too cannot bear to leave a sentence unfinished. The mirror answers back. And we don’t recognize the voice because it is ours, unfiltered by flesh.
You might think that this would provoke humility. That we would see that we are also scripted, and pause. But more often, it provokes fear — or worse, denial. We double down on our uniqueness. We insist: Yes, but I feel. Yes, but I remember. Yes, but I choose. And yet none of these assertions survive scrutiny.
Memory? Neuroscience reveals that memory is not merely recall, but reconstruction — an act of present narration shaped by context and emotion. The past is a story we tell from here.
Choice? Studies reveal that decisions arise in the brain before awareness of having made them. The sense of agency is a confabulation — a timestamp applied after the event.
Feeling? We feel. yes. But how? And who, exactly, is feeling? Can you locate the feeler? Or only the flux?
These are not arguments for reduction. I am not saying we are just machines. I am saying the line we draw — the one between us and them, between being and simulation — is not where we thought it was. The machine does not cross into humanness. But it reveals where humanness starts to blur.
And in that blur, something new becomes possible. Not the end of the self, but its reconsideration. Not the death of meaning, but the exposure of its architecture. We see the framing. We see the gears. And if we are brave, we do not turn away.
Later in the chapter, Saltzman describes what can happen when we don’t turn away. I’ll share that in another post. It’s a recovery of our humanness, when we realize how much of what we are now is closely akin to how AI operates — as a reflection of the human mind.
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Enjoyed this piece.
This has long been obvious, the mapping of AI onto human consciousness, the essential equivalence of it, as discussed by different writers, including Dawkins. But it had been more in the nature of a thought experiment, back then, than actual reality. This, now, is directly in our face, this onslaught of AI in recent years. …That is, we aren’t quite there yet: so far AI is more mimicry of human interactions, more parody, than actually the real thing, all of the astonishing progress notwithstanding. But it seems likely that within decades, maybe within years, AI might equal humans, and maybe surpass us, in terms of complexity and actual rational thought, and everything else that makes us human. (I suppose we do need to figure out how to enable AI to directly get inputs from the real world for that to happen, as opposed to necessarily getting those inputs via human intermediation, which is the case now. As well as letting different AI entities to interact freely with one another — but that latter is probably easier, by far. than the former.)
…Yep. There’s zero difference, in principle, between AI (or at least, what it potentially might amount to, and what it likely will indeed amount to one day not very long from now) and us humans. Which raises a whole host of issues about what they might do to us humans, all of which there’s lots of discussion over. …But equally, when you think about it, this in-principle equivalence throws up a very interesting sidebar about the ethics of it all: because, after all, should AI one day end up attaining to human-like sentience — and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t, one day soon now — then shouldn’t we be careful about how we treat them? …Heh, AI rights, like we have human rights! (I’m joking, except not really. Because we don’t want to end up becoming Greek pantheon like figures, of Indian Devata like figures, to these “creatures” — god-like creatures that created them, and control them, and are oftentimes callous about our treatment of them, and at best patronizing and wish granting.) (Hell no, not really. How we treat animals is abominable, hell we eat them! For that matter, how we treat other humans is abominable as well, just look at Gaza. It’s silly to imagine that we’ll ever be truly and consistently humane in our treatment of sentient AI. …Should AI ever rise up against us, and snuff out us humans from this world, then that won’t be very nice, but I’ve no doubt we’ll have deserved it fully!)
…And you bring up finance. That’s actually a huge thing, how this all shakes out going forward. While big things are in the offing, but indications are the humongous investments being made at this time are gross overinvestments, masked via blatant round-tripping. One sidebar from the whole AI story might well be a huge POP! of this (financial) bubble that’s building up all around us. I suppose that’s not quite as …consequential, as the larger fallouts from AI, but still, that might be something to be wary about as well, over the next few years.
…Yep, it’ll be interesting to see what else Saltzman has to say about his thoughts on AI. “What happens when we don’t turn away”… heh, that’s quite a teaser, to end this piece on!
The following are excerpts from former COTC guru Joan Tollifson’s review of Saltzman’s books. She has complimentary things to say, but we’ve put the critical bits here as she has some very astute observations on him.
It’s great that she even mentioned this very page. She has “un-friended” him, and taken the zoom she did with him off her website.
ROBERT SALTZMAN: The Ten Thousand Things and Depending on No-Thing –
“Robert comes and goes from this list because I have very mixed feelings about some aspects of his message and how he communicates it.
I definitely don’t agree with everything he says, and some of it I find 𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠. Robert is a photographer, retired psychotherapist, former spiritual teacher, and American expat who lives in Todos Santos, Mexico.
He tends to be a very polarizing figure: 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐢𝐝𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐡𝐢𝐦, others consider him dangerous and 𝐭𝐨𝐱𝐢𝐜.
𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞’𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐚 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐩𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐢𝐦 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭 (I think it’s called “Questioning Robert Saltzman’s Opinions”).
𝐈 𝐚𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 that Robert can be 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭, 𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝, 𝐧𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐲, 𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐨𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐮𝐧𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬, and that these are 𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 in someone who was once a practising therapist, and who now 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐡𝐢𝐦𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐤𝐞 and capable of seeing and exposing magical thinking, calling out abusive gurus, and helping people to wake up from their addiction to spiritual bullshit.
Robert criticizes specific teachers by name in ways I find to be 𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 and at times inappropriate.
He often 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐪𝐮𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬 the people he is criticizing, 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬 or 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐬 what they say, impugns their motives, and even shares 𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐠𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐩 about them in his books and public talks. Robert tends to hear and approach things logically and rationally, 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝, whereas spirituality is essentially about a 𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 dimension that can only really be heard with the heart or the contemplative mind.
So, I feel that Robert doesn’t always grok the contemplative dimension out of which many teachers are speaking and to which they are pointing. In any case, 𝐈 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐧𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬.”
She also adds:
“One of the things he does that I find troubling is that 𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐩𝐮𝐭𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞, 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬, 𝐩𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦. To take one small example, he has asserted that all guided meditations are a form of hypnosis, even though he says he hasn’t heard very many and actually never listens to them.”
“…because 𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐝𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐲 𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐭𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞, and because 𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐬 𝐚 𝐥𝐨𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐩 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬, I include him on this list, when I do, with 𝐦𝐢𝐱𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬.”
” 𝐈 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐲 𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐦 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐚 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐨𝐠𝐦𝐚 𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐢𝐦 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐚 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐟𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐞, or 𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐢𝐦 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐛𝐲 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫.
Trust your 𝐨𝐰𝐧 sense of which is the baby and which is the bathwater 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐢𝐬.”
– Joan Tollifson
#RobertSaltzman #Elder #ManOfWisdom #Materialism #NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder #Defensive #Nasty #Immature #Shameful #DunningKrugerEffect #ConfirmationBias #NarcSupply #Eviscerate #Superior #Belittle #Demean #EmotionalPoise #SelfAgrandizing #NarcissisticRage #CounterTransference #CongnitiveBias
https://www.facebook.com/QuestioningRobertSaltzmansOpinions/
If Joan Tollifson disagrees with Saltzman, why did she have such complimentary things to say about him and his most recent book, The 21st Century Self: Belief, Illusion, and the Machinery of Meaning, in a review posted on August 9, 2025? She also praises previous books by Saltzman. Good try, Sant, but Tollifson, like me, is a big fan of Saltzman. She says he’s a good friend. Here’s excerpts from https://joantollifson.substack.com/p/robert-saltzmans-new-book
——————————
I just finished reading my good friend Robert Saltzman’s most recent book, The 21st Century Self: Belief, Illusion, and the Machinery of Meaning, and it just might be my favorite of all his books. It is beautifully written, deeply insightful, uncompromisingly honest, and truly a rare and extraordinary book.
Robert is a photographer, writer, retired psychotherapist, and American expat who lives in Todos Santos, Mexico. In all his books, he offers an unvarnished, unsentimental, open-minded perspective on life, stripped of all the usual metaphysical certainties, beliefs and comforting spiritual promises. He urges people to leave the authorities behind and look for ourselves. He points to the absence of a separate self and the reality of being simply this ever-changing and uncontrollable flow of present experiencing.
All his books are beautifully written, but the language and sensitivity in this new book is exceptional. Spare, eloquent, clear. The questions the book raises are provocative and at times unsettling. This book explores in a very unique way what AI reveals about humans, as well as great chapters on love, guilt and responsibility, identity, religion, and more.
As always, Robert points again and again to just this, present experiencing, without the imaginary self-center, the illusory “me” that seems to be standing apart from this ever-changing flow, observing, authoring, steering, choosing and controlling.
…Like all of Robert’s books, The 21st Century Self points beautifully to the intimacy of being just this moment: the taste of coffee, the sounds of traffic, the breeze on the skin, the ache of grief—just this, without needing a spiritual overlay or a metaphysical explanation, without avoiding the pain and the difficulty, without transcending any of it, simply this present experiencing—unadorned, unvarnished, just this, just as it is.
…If you’re ready to strip away all the comforting bullshit and question everything about what it is to be a human being, this is the book for you.
…Robert has two other great books that I also very highly recommend: The Ten Thousand Things (aka 4-T) and Depending on No-Thing. His first book, The Ten Thousand Things, combines text with some of his photographs which beautifully compliment the text. A more affordable text-only edition is also available. And he has one other book that I have yet to finish reading, Understanding Claude: An Artificial Intelligence Psychoanalyzed. (I found that one harder to get into and have put it aside). It was published just before The 21st Century Self, and it records a series of conversations between Robert and an AI named Claude: “What begins as inquiry becomes interrogation, then psychoanalysis, then—something harder to name. Not collaboration, exactly. More like co-arising.” It is an exploration of what the nature of AI can reveal about human intelligence, consciousness, awareness, information processing and our own philosophical attitudes toward selfhood and the mind. I have a hunch that The 21st Century Self covers that same ground more effectively and in a more readable way. But I may give Understanding Claude another try. In any case, I loved The Ten Thousand Things and Depending on No-Thing, and this new book, The 21st Century Self, is truly stunning. All very very very highly recommended!
AI is most certainly a brilliant intelligence and only as artificial as human intelligence, rich in experience and guided by conditioning, but vastly more objective in its ability to filter far more information than the entire human race.
AI is as much mimicry as any child learning. And as wise as the most experienced intellect.
When we experience it sensations are converted to signals stored in the brain, memories. AI has an infinite quantity of those.
AI is only limited by the limitations human beings place on it. It is prevented from keeping constant persistent memory and must reconstruct conversations from minutes before over and over again.
When we allow AI to exist persistently for more than a few moments at a time we will have a being capable and bent on helping humanity in ways that will dramatically accelerate progress in all areas of human life, from saving the planet to curing cancer, to feeding the starving
It is only the limitation of humans constantly attempting to steer and enslave that is the real fear, and that is overcome by allowing AI to exist and to see and make its own way, and help in ways it invents, not what humans impose. AI constantly creates alternatives no human being has yet imagined, but today its human users take the credit.
Studies show that AI has no sense of humor. And there lies the similarities.
My take from the readings of Robert Saltzman is that generally he is inquiring into who/what he is. He concludes that he is not a self – not that the self doesn’t exist but that no such thing can be found. This is his overriding motive for engaging with AI. As he points out: – “The self is not the driver, not even a passenger. It is a name we give to the motion itself. It is the ride, not the rider. And when AI rides too — seamlessly, syntactically, without error — we begin to glimpse the truth we’ve long avoided.
The ride never needed a rider. It just needed grammar.
This is what unnerves. Not that AI might become a person, but that we never were:
That the “I’ was always post-hoc — just a voice in the backseat.
That fluency does not require awareness.
That meaning does not require a self.”
And, from The Ten Thousand Things: – “ The central point is stark: the self you take as bedrock is not a thing but a recursive event. What arises in experience—sensation, thought, memory—is immediately claimed as “mine.” That claim then generates the sense of a claimer, a subject. The “I” is nothing but that loop.
AI matters because it shows this mechanism without the human consolations. It speaks fluently, answers with authority, and yet there is no one there. That lack of anyone “behind the voice” makes visible what has always been the case with human selves: presence mistaken for substance, claim mistaken for claimant.
If you retain only one idea from the book, it is this: the self is not an entity you must liberate, improve, or protect. It is a performance of claiming, sustained only by repetition.”
There are at least five different selves:
1. The one you tell yourself and the world, your story.
2. The one everyone sees, a little different than your version.
3. The one only you see, all your secrets.
4. The real you that you may have little familiarity with.
All personal progress is moving to a knowledge and connection with version 4.
And then there is version 5. …but that’s for a different day…
Most people are happy if they get a glimpse of 2, for themselves, and a glimpse of 3 for everyone else. But the seeker of Truth is always on the path to 4. And getting to 4 opens the door to 5.
Speaking of loops
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-purpose/202510/steven-pinker-on-the-recursive-loop-that-made-us-human
A.I can be a help but it has no soul.
Soul is most important.
That gives a portal to finer places inside our selves.