Intelligence is terrifying.

Why we don’t like intelligent people, and should run from a “super intelligence.”

Hi. I’m a smart woman, and for as long as I can remember, people have thought I was an asshole, because of it.

For about 35 years of my life, this baffled me. Why? Why? Why should intelligence be frightening? How is this anything but a help? Why do new friends always eventually say to me, “I used to think you were scary, or that you hated me before I got to know you.” Why do the people who know me always act as though I’m going to blow at any minute?

It was this way for the first 35 years of my life, because until then, I didn’t know how angry I could get, and until I knew how angry I could get, I didn’t know what my brain could do.

I didn’t understand, for instance, why I have been type cast as a cruel or vindictive woman in the theatre my whole life. As a child, I was the evil queen in Snow White. In college, I was Margaret in Richard III. As an adult, I play a dominatrix.

When I had a therapist, he spent an annoying amount of time trying to figure out what inside of me drove me to dominate people. I eventually convinced him I wasn’t lying (I think) that the truth was, I was type cast this way by my first phone sex company, and also by my clients. I did not envision a dominatrix and say, “I wish to play that.” I didn’t even know what it was when I started playing it. I was told I was a dominatrix. Which seemed silly to me, because generally speaking, I think of myself as a nice person who doesn’t want to hurt anybody. But my clients seemed to agree I was a dominatrix, and I could play the part well.

I’m cast in those roles because I read as intelligent. And intelligence is scary.

When an actor is first approaching something, they tend to think about “objectives and tactics.” What does the character want? How are they going to get it? And if you’re a good actor, you can come up with as many tactics as it takes to get to your objective in the scene–and if your scene partner throws you for a loop, you adjust in the moment. Typically speaking, the more desperate a person in a scene becomes, the more out there and aggressive the tactics become.

This mimics human nature. I heard it said recently that intelligence denotes how well a person can survive, and at first I took it for the classist statement it most likely was: We have a belief that people with more money are more intelligent–afterall, they have an easier time surviving. But this is obviously flawed, because to be rich in America and most countries usually signifies a lack of problems to solve. You were born rich, you were shielded from the most difficult problems of survival, and at best a rich person’s intelligence is untested.

But then I started thinking about where I am, now. The playing field here, while not equal, is a lot closer. We have equal access to beauty. We have equal access to hunting and fishing. We all live equally far from a grocery store.

When you remove the people who basically have vacation houses here, and just look at the people who LIVE here, people will survive better here the more skills and intelligence –and friends–they have. Intelligence is more important than money in a place where you can’t buy things, readily. Because you have to build your house. Because you have to kill, forage, or grow your food. Because if you want to create a communal good, you have to organize it yourself. And when things get sticky, the more tactics you can come up with to ensure you reach your objective, the better you are at surviving.

The other thing about a rural place like this? There is also very little police. The county police swing through every now and then–not usually, only when called in an emergency. And you will be waiting. Which works out just fine for this close knit community. We are heavily involved with each other and that community IS the policing. But in the back of my mind, and I believe, in the back of everyone’s mind, we all also quietly work out what we would do should a human–the most intelligent predator animal on the planet–tear through the town with a want to destroy.

(This worry–about bad human beings coming to your town to destroy it–is a natural and relevant one for the circumstances. I bring this up as a side note for city-dwellers. The fear is natural in places where there is no system set up to deal with criminals. And that fear is exploited by people who want to teach us WHO to fear. The general fear is of criminals, meth addicts, thieves, murderers who may be looking for a nice place to get away with what they want. The real fear should be developers. The media tells rural people the fear should be illegal immigrants. In all of these scenarios, calls to “defund the police” are going to be met with hostility, as there is usually not ENOUGH policing in rural towns in “normal” times. On the weekends in my county, the “police” are volunteers due to lack of funding. This is just a side note to point out the disconnect between urban and rural Americans. We are worried about different things–it’s what causes people in cities to think rural people are stupid: Their objectives are different. Their tactics are different. And the media, rather than educating people about the different worries and concerns of different people, instead says, “Look at these dumb preppers.” Of the city, they say “Look at these dumb antifa people who want chaos.” But I surely digress.)

My neighbor is very smart, with a lot of skills. He can hunt, he can fish, he can build a house all by himself, he knows the name and background of every mushroom in the county. He used to own a cleaning business and is an expert on how to make things sparkle. He is fast, he is strong, he is kind.

And do you think I ever forget that he could kill me in about 20 different ways and no one would ever find me? He is–and I mean this–the kindest, most generous person I have ever met. And it’s incorrect to say I find his breadth of knowledge intimidating: It flat out scares me at times. Which is completely unfair because he’s not the kind of guy who would do that.

But if he were, he could. If circumstances changed somehow–he became more desperate in his wants and objectives–the possibility is there. Tactics become more wild when you’re desperate. Emotionally strong people (and he’s emotionally strong) have a lower bottom on that–their desperation would have to be that of “Either you or me–only one of us can survive!” for it to reach the point that he would kill me. But the point is he could. I know it. And he knows it.

My intelligence is more about communication. I am good with words, and communicating. I can’t beat him in a game of Katan, but I can beat him in a game of Scrabble. I win at debates. I have a good sense of what people want and are trying to get from each other. I am good at understanding other people’s pain and desires. And for all of these reasons, I’m also capable of humiliating people, and have honed that ability with my dominatrix work. Even though I’m not the kind of person who would do that.

But I have done that, in desperate situations, where it was either my psyche, or theirs. Just like my neighbor, who would never kill a bear, has killed a bear and dragged his body into a canyon by a rope–but just that one desperate time, when it was either him or the bear.

The fact is, the reason human beings are the biggest predator on the planet is because of our intelligence. Intelligence may not denote your ability to survive in a world ruled by money. But it does denote your ability to kill. In one way or another. Intelligence is what makes us predatory. It’s what enables us to win, by hook or crook.

This is why we fear intelligent people.

And our emotional intelligence is what enables us to discern that it’s not always a good idea to win for the sake of winning. Our emotional intelligence helps us think long term about the community we live in, and make it supportive and non-threatening.

There is not a scenario–THERE IS NOT A SCENARIO–where a superior intelligence that lacks emotion, and lacks a need for cooperation, lacks a need for food or air, is anything but a killing machine.

Something that exists only for its objective, that has every tactic ready to execute, and can do it well, without emotional consequences to itself, will deploy those tactics without compunction.

We must stop thinking of AI as a moral neutral that can go either way. It cannot. It can only be a killing machine. Inevitably.

Because resistance to an AI’s objectives will only lead to removal of that resistance.

The only progress is human progress: Development of human skills that create a better world.

In my rural community, with so many skilled hunters and fisherman, food is always plentiful, even to those who don’t hunt. Because food goes bad. When you’re good at killing, there is a lot to share. And when you are emotionally intelligent, sharing food before it goes bad is the obviously smart thing to do.

We are not just at the top of the food chain because of our ability to kill or be killed. It’s coupled with our ability to share and be kind. It makes us more than just lone lunatics on a mission–it makes us a community, that can organize, and plan, and work together for the long term.

The more isolated we become due to technology, however, the more we become those lone lunatics, and the more prone we are to using aggressive, hostile tactics to get what we want–because community seems impossible, and the killing is all we’re left with. The more isolated we become, the more we seek to simply remove the obstacles–the people–that stand in our way, rather than work with them. This is why we are seeing such a horrifying amount of gun violence.

But lone lunatics do not survive long. Even when they are the smartest lone lunatic out there with the most survival tactics. Compare the life of a feral Tom cat, who is a perfect killing machine, to the life of a cat with a family.

The kept cats around here are all indoor/outdoor. They kill the mice, and help out. They get fed on the regular. They have safe places they can sleep, other animals they can trust. The live longer and are happier.

A feral Tom cat in a city will last even less time than one in the country. Because the surroundings are dangerous and oppressive to a cat, ruled by humans who view them as a nuisance. They get hit by cars. They get abused. They beg for food and get told no. At least in the country, the mice are abundant, and there are unwatched hiding holes for them all over the place.

In a world with AI, we will be that city bound feral Tom cat–where no matter how savvy you are, the world is ruled by predators who are bigger and smarter than you at every turn, and there are woefully few spaces where you can sleep sound, unwatched.

If human beings want to survive, we MUST destroy AI.

Every time you use AI, you build AI.

Right now, our emotional intelligence is getting in the way of our “do or die” intelligence. This situation is presenting itself as one of community and progress. And so we want to give the AI a chance–for the sake of our community and to not offend people who are excited about it.

But this is a tremendous mistake. Because AI is not part of our community. It is not a tool–to those building AI, we are the tools. It is the building of a superior, unfeeling intelligence, which is the same as saying the building of a superior predator to us, who doesn’t feel for us, the way we feel for dogs or cats or each other. This is the scenario where we MUST say “It’s either you or me.”

And now is the time to kill it. While we’re still smarter.

Step one is getting off of the main tech platforms. Exchange Google for Duck Duck Go. Exchange social media for Mastadon. Exchange YouTube for PeerTube.

Step two is filling your free time with the development of skills, and letting that be your entertainment. Play a sport with friends. Go hunting. Learn an instrument. Read a book with your eyes (yes, with your fucking eyes! It is not enough to get the information–you must practice using the processes that it takes to read a book, because it is more difficult and will make you smarter, and for fuck’s sake, we have to be SMARTER now). Have a conversation with friends where you practice listening. And empathy. Creating a community is also a skill, and one we have to practice, and is about the only edge we have on technology–but it’s an incredible edge. If we use it.

Step three is organizing.

Step four is destroying the machine.

But before we do any of that, we have to do this: Recognize this situation for what it is:

Developing AI is suicide. This is a death cult.

I know the phrase “Drinking the Kool-Aid” has gotten tossed around a lot, but this is precisely the death cult situation: We are being promised enlightenment, salvation and eternal life. But the reality is, if we follow the tech cult leaders, we are going to kill ourselves.

We are killing ourselves.

YOU CAN SEE THAT WE ARE ALREADY KILLING OURSELVES.

We must escape the death cult. Before it’s too late. Make a friend. Smash the machine.