Post #3786338

2026-07-13 13:57 UTC

The fungus Ophiocordyceps infects carpenter ants and coopts their behavioral circuitry. An infected ant climbs to a precise height on a plant stem, clamps its mandibles onto the underside of a leaf, and dies, ideally positioned for the fungus to disperse its spores. The ant’s behavioral program has been hacked. The ant is performing a sophisticated sequence of actions, including climbing, orienting, and gripping in the service of another organism. This is an ant perfectly captured by Bonhoeffer’s idea of competence co-opted by a malicious agent to solve the wrong problem. Perhaps specialization produces local intelligence that when overextended can generate global stupidity. This would be a change in scale and domain that corresponds to the moth’s change of environment. The physicist Lord Kelvin marshaled all his physics knowledge to prove that heavier than air flying machines are impossible less than a decade before the Wright brothers flew a heavier than air

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@anna_lillith@mas.to 2026-07-13 13:58

airplane. Nikola Tesla rejected quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity and argued that future human civilization would run on the energy of the Earth through “earth resonance.” And Percival Lowell used his telescopes to map “canals” on the surface of Mars that he claimed were alien irrigation ditches. These are all examples of the overcommitment, and overdevelopment of an idea, far from the territory in which an idea once grew and flourished or from which it was unceremoniously banished. Artificial intelligence is by design the most powerful cognitive artifact ever created. It is engineered to minimize user effort by performing tasks that humans would otherwise find time consuming or impossible. The problem of course is that the better the tool gets the less the user needs to think for themselves. And in a vicious spiral, the less the user thinks the more dependent they become on their tools. That is until the tool disappears and the whole system collapses.

Open ##3786337