Defending Daniel and Korean Drama
A few weeks ago, I read this post at Futurism and I found it unfair and it’s bothered me ever since.
It’s 2026. AI is everywhere, and frankly, humans have had it too good for far too long. For the world’s corporations — the movers and shakers of the global economy, as it’s currently organized — it’s well past time to leave us flesh bags behind.
That, at least, seems to be the contention of Daniel Miessler, an outspoken cybersecurity engineer and AI booster. In a rambling post on his personal blog, Miessler takes the position that human workers are already obsolete, so the best thing we can do is accept it and fall in line with the AI revolution.
This post’s characterization doesn’t sound like the Daniel I know at all. He’s affable and industrious. If I were in SF or he in NYC, I’d try to catch up over dinner. I know where he grew up. I know him to be thoughtful and fair-minded. But these last few years have been strange; maybe Daniel had amended his views.
To my relief, the content did not show scary signs of some toxic form of “red pilling.” The only conclusion to make then is that the Futurism article is straw-manning Daniel’s post into the post that Futurism wants to write against, versus what’s actually there.
And perhaps even worse, in the piece’s call for emotional reaction, it distracts from the all-too-real relationship between management and labor that Daniel is trying to share to help folks be ready for the future.
I read these posts a week or so after seeing No Other Choice, the latest Korean income inequality drama (à la Parasite) from Park Chan-wook (Oldboy). The movie did a wonderful job demonstrating Daniel’s point — seagull-flapping of the Futurism article aside.
The TV Shows That Predicted Now 2: "Mr Show" Careless Tech Naifs
In the second season episode of Mr. Show, “If You’re Going to Write a Comedy Scene, You’re Going to Have Some Rat Feces in There,” we are introduced to idealistic, blissfully happy, tech naïf “Gregory Sniper” as played by David Cross.
Where ideas can hang out and do whatever
TV Shows That Predicted Now, No. 1: The Prisoner, "The General," and AI
Every day, millions of people ask an AI system a question they don’t know the answer to, receive a fluent and confident response, and move on — having learned nothing except the most dangerous thing possible – the answer.
Patrick McGoohan explained and filmed this dangerous world in the 1967 episode of The Prisoner called The General.
In the episode, what McGoohan warns us against is the risk of answers – even correct ones – sans context. Ultimately for historians, lawyers, and programmers the context is the learning, the correct tokens: words, phrases, citations, syntactically valid code, the epistemic byproduct. If the byproduct becomes the measure of success, then the generated answers are stunningly vacuous, and we shall drown in the mere specious simulacrum of understanding.