LLM alignment problems, viewed through the lens of the Chinese Room, aren’t necessarily indicative of consciousness and much more like a very novel reflection of the asynchronicity of intentionality and actions we ourselves suffer. Ethics concern what we ought to do – furthermore, transcendental idealism, while often strawmanned as “tell the truth all the time”, offers a useful framework for thinking about alignment. “Can my acts be reconciled with the principles I profess in my heart?” We aren’t asked to behave; rather, we are asked to have reason and intentionality aligned with our behavior. A phrase in dating I’m rather partial to is “no one wakes up hoping not to meet their Prince Charming”. While I hope this phrase is true for all but the wed, it is often taken to some strange places. Much of contemporary dating advice tells us to abandon institutions designed around dating and to meet people in “the real world”. On the face of it, the advice sounds reasonable enough. The ways in which we interface with, say, dating apps are centered around incentives malaligned with their product. But the proposed remedy brings its own fog. We can never truly know another person’s alignment, any more than we can settle the question of machine consciousness (or lack thereof) simply by observing it. Despite this, we can look at the world from within the world and try to know the thing. While dating apps are deeply flawed in their outwardly apparent alignment, their purpose at least remains transparent. I would be subverting that purpose by using them solely to obtain free meals. In the same breath, it would be equally immoral for me to try and join a running group with the sole intention of finding a romantic partner. The problem is not the desire to find love in either setting – rather, it is the deception involved in presenting oneself as participating in a shared activity while secretly treating that activity, and the people gathered around it, as instruments for an unrelated end. We necessarily instrumentalize each other and our agencies by pursuing one another in any sense not outwardly and obviously transparent. There is, of course, an important distinction between having an ulterior motive and having multiple motives. Someone can go to a coffee shop for coffee and remain open to romance. Our intentions are rarely pure in the sense of being singular. The ethical question is whether our pursuits are compatible with the pursuits of others, and whether we can be honest in expressing as much. This becomes compoundingly impossible as you further fathom it. The difficulty is that this kind of instrumentalization is nearly unavoidable. Society is largely performative, and like any good actor, we succeed by disappearing into the role. We are expected to be ourselves, but only within the boundaries of a socially recognizable self. We find ourselves rehearsing social scripts and running purely on our synapses. To see the play in front of you and to purposely try to subvert the script to your advantage is sociopathic behavior. At the same time, there is consensual non-consent, the desire to be vulnerable, along with countless subtle non-verbal signals that we often miss with our imperfect perceptions, and that we sometimes choose to ignore on purpose. Institutionalization has the incentives to keep us playing our assigned parts. They reward legibility, predictability, and compliance. Capital then charges us for access to the conditions of our own participation, often returning little beyond the means to continue participating. The people who thrive in such systems tend to be the ones subverting its processes. Under the institution, we allow survival to masquerade as purpose. Modern industrial society has segregated us from our nature. This issue is not fixed by exploiting one another. Morality and love are what makes us human – dissolving them via hyperrationalism, where every interaction is quid pro quo, ameliorates the unconditional and familial kinship we share in race, community, and nation. Much of contemporary thought, especially online, has become aesthetic performance – larping. No amount of denying this lack of authenticity will stop the metronome of greater society. Perhaps even the search for authenticity is an invisible byproduct of the same institutions that make de-normification feel necessary. If society is organized around institutions and subverting those institutions is immoral, then the conventional answer is to meet someone in real life. But where exactly? If I go to a coffee shop looking for love rather than coffee, am I subverting its purpose? What about the grocery store, the gym, or a library? Regardless, this seems to be the day’s advice. Continuing the thought process, is the only ethical way to meet someone outside a dating app to encounter them by accident? Love then becomes like sleep – desiring it bars you from having it. The obvious paradox is that we can never step out of society, and by extension, the compromises society imposes upon us. In each institution, there are negotiated expectations that come with participating within it. You are misaligned when you engage with it with ulterior motives. So then we must subvert ourselves into performing the part of the absent-minded thing-doer doing everything but the thing that you cannot think of without delving into moral hazard. The pursuit itself corrupts it. Like the misaligned AI, a woman may demand honesty in a relationship while concealing her body count. Alignment, sincerity, authenticity, and performance all exist in bubbles of entanglement. A man should not have to find a context that justifies his existence – yet we are never free of context. We inherit a world we did not design, enter relationships with vague terms, and discover ourselves already implicated in systems we may never understand nor endorse. Simply, there is no ethical life under this framework. Today, any desire is to trespass.

Imagine you are a small girl or boy… It’s Sunday afternoon, and your father wants you to visit your old grandmother. You, of course, detest it. She’s old, senile, whatever. But then, if you have an old authoritarian father, he will tell you… “listen, I don’t care how you feel. Just do your duty. Go to your grandmother and behave there properly”. That’s perfect… because you will retain your… inner freedom. You will be furious at your father, but that’s good for your long-term freedom and so on. Now, what would a monster called the postmodern permissive father do? He would not give you an order, but he would tell you something like this: “You only go to visit your grandmother if you really want to. Just remember how much your grandmother loves you”. Now, a child is not an idiot, and he or she will know perfectly well what this order means. Beneath the appearance of a free choice, it gives you a much harsher choice. The order is not only that you must go and visit your grandmother, but that you must do it freely. You must really wish to visit your grandmother. ~Slavoj Žižek

Happy Halloween! 🎃👻