5 posts
AI industrialises reasoning — but reasoning without understanding is just well-formed noise. Meaning is not in the symbols; it is in the recognition-and-enforcement structure that makes symbols bite on reality. Remove that structure, and civilisation loses the capacity to tell whether it is still thinking.
We used to tell machines what to do. Now they interpret what we mean. The core challenge of modern programming isn't controlling execution — it's preventing systems from redefining meaning.
Programming was never just about telling machines what to do — it was a response to ambiguity. As AI lowers the barrier to generating software, the real question isn't who can code, but who understands what the code does.
The Enlightenment made reasoning the foundation of authority. AI seems to industrialise it. What anchors legitimacy when thinking is no longer scarce?