'Drunk With Possibility' or 'Drunk With Power'?

Herodotus, Hemingway, and Human Intelligence VS. Government, Control-Freaks, and Artificial Intelligence

I was grateful to be the guest on this week’s episode of “The Jeff Macolino Podcast,” during which we took the “scenic route” to discussing Good Neighbor, Bad Citizen.

You can listen to the full podcast on Spotify, Apple, ListenNotes, Amazon and Podchaser.

The trip began with the us comparing our tastes in alcoholic beverages — Jeff enjoyed a whiskey during the show, while I had a craft-brewed stout beer — and then things got really interesting, playing off the alcohol theme!

We (enthusiastically!) considered a famous report by Herodotus, an ancient Greek thinker who observed that the Persians would debate the same point drunk and sober to see if their conclusions made sense under both conditions.

Jeff scaffolded with the (probably apocryphal) Ernest Hemingway line: “Write drunk, edit sober.”

I took that to a comparison of intelligence and hyperrationalism, and dug in to what “drunk” might really mean.

Intelligence and Rationalism are different — Intelligence and HYPERrationalism are practically opposites!

To the creative and problem-solving types, “drunk” indicates the deliberate lowering of mental inhibitions, which can be a very useful ability.

As I said:

Intelligence is open. … Hyperrationalism is closed; it contains a ton of information, but it can only bounce around in on itself.  There’s no way to get outside of it.

And so, to me, when I read this Herodotus quote, the drinking part of it aside, it’s “work through a problem with what you know, but then consider that there’s a better solution that you haven’t already encountered.”  So, do the thing that drops your inhibitions.

I think this is the difference between Artificial Intelligence and real, human intelligence.  I think Artificial Intelligence, for instance, is misnamed.  It’s really Artificial Hyperrationalism.  It can do nothing that hasn’t been fed to it.  If AI were really intelligence, it would be able to open its own door and then step outside of it.

But from what I’ve seen, it doesn’t do that yet.  It can process enormous amounts of information, but the only way new information gets in is if someone outside of it kicks down a door and shoves the new information into it.  And that’s not really intelligence.

And the problem I’ve observed is that most people can’t tell the difference.

And maybe that’s why the ancient Persians needed the alcohol to help.

Possibility, or power?

Another way to say it is that real intelligence is “drunk with possibility.”

Genuine anarchism is generally like this. Anarchists — who eschew imposed, hierarchical social order — must accept the spontaneous order of a decentralized society. We must relinquish the desire for coercive control over others.

This contrasts with a term you might’ve heard associated with government rulers: “drunk with power.” In this usage, the word “drunk” doesn’t refer to the lowering of obstacles to creativity, but to belligerent, control-freak behavior and the dulling of personal responsibility.

This possibility-vs.-power question is also present in the journey of those trying to learn from the life of Jesus.

As I wrote in Good Neighbor, Bad Citizen:

God is all-powerful and all-knowing, but not all-controlling. The urge to control is a human desire based on human psychological weakness; it is not a Divine characteristic.

Graphic designed by Sheryl Lynn Ludwig

A personal repentance

I recalled my own change — and took a shot at the government-school model, which fundamentally pushes “good citizen” hyperrational behavior — a little later in the podcast:

I used to be a very hyperrational person. I used to be very control-freaky.

…

Maybe it was going through a school system that rewarded people who could remember things and recall them very quickly, which is rote rationalization. So, I grew up with the capacity to be intelligent, but the thing that’s really praised is simply rote, hyperrational behavior. And it took a while for me to get out of that.

…

These things all went together for me:  becoming a deeper and better thinker;  becoming a better co-worker;  becoming a better neighbor myself;  and also growing in a genuine virtue of faith.  To me, they helped each other along, because they’re all using the same underlying good stuff, and they strengthen each other against the obstacles that each of them finds.

That’s a long way of saying that I had to start considering a lot of things drunk.

Drunk with possibility, though; not drunk with power.