{
    "byline": null,
    "charset": "UTF-8",
    "dir": null,
    "excerpt": "I wrote this in a week in which several things happened. First of all, Thomas Ptacek's article My AI skeptic friends are all nuts was brought to my attention again, and I was annoyed by the sheer detachment of it from any perspectives that I hold. Secondly, Bibi and Trump repeatedly bombed Iran, largely, it seems, because of the vibes of the thing. Finally, I encountered some truly, spectacularly bad takes on Bluesky, of the \"you are technically correct but Jesus Christ\" variety. All of these situations had one thing in common: they have people seemingly making decisions as to how to act that are completely untethered from reality. This got me thinking: we encounter a lot of detachment from reality these days, and it seems to be at the core of our lot of problems. People lying habitually and shamelessly, dunces being placed in a position of real power over experts, people in high positions making deeply stupid decisions... people act as they are unconstrained by materiality, consequences or the laws of physics. This essay aims to figure out why.",
    "lang": null,
    "length": 31030,
    "publishedTime": null,
    "siteName": null,
    "title": "Coding in a material world"
}