Giving the Finger.

People who read in this space with some regularity--and while it's surprising to me, there are many of them--know that my favorite living writer is the historian, Robert Caro. Caro's won two Pulitzers and two National Book Awards. His legion of fans are waiting for him, he'll be 90 at the end of this month, to finish the long-awaited fifth volume of his magnum opus on Lyndon Johnson.

There are many with fingers-crossed and a place reserved on their night-tables, hoping Caro finishes this book before the planet is finished with him. Many in my circles anticipate this volume like "normal" people await Taylor Swift's latest or something by Bad Bunny.

In Caro's short book, "Working," which was published about ten years ago to slake the thirst of his fans as they wait for LBJ Five, Caro told a story that I thought about just a moment or two ago when I realized I was in post-arrears for the upcoming week of blogposts. Caro tells about a writing professor he had at Princeton, professor Blackmur.

Caro writes, “We met to discuss a short story I had written in his creative writing course at Princeton. We had to write a short story every two weeks, and I was always doing mine at the very last minute…Yet Professor Blackmur was, as I recall, complimentary about my work, and I thought I was fooling him about the amount of preparation and effort I had put into it.

"At that final meeting, however, after first saying something generous about my writing, he added: 'But you’re never going to achieve what you want to, Mr. Caro, if you don’t stop thinking with your fingers.'"

With the rise of AI in all its forms from text to image generation--to providing answers to just about anything, we've actually seen the rise of something I'll call (and with hubris I hope it catches on) "microwave thinking."

Just as we have a machine that can use waves to manipulate molecules in such a way as to synthetically cook things, or at least heat them, we now have various software that can do the same with writing and pictures.

In other words, we have entire "ecosystems" that allow us push-button creativity--that permit us to "think with our fingers." As if there is no liability in such un-restrained-by-thought-and-editing creativity.

Or as Andy Kessler writes in the "Wall Street Collaborationist," 

"We’re awash in a world of deceptions and misdirection, by those creating illusions to distract from the truth. Don’t fall for it.

"AI promoters tout an endgame of artificial general intelligence from their cool sounding “hyperscaler” facilities (formerly called data centers). With large language models hitting a wall, we get Zuckerberg  saying in July, “Meta’s vision is to bring personal superintelligence to everyone.” What’s next? Wicked smart?

"Close. “Introducing GPT-5,” said an August OpenAI press release. “With built-in thinking.” My mind wanders to Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker,” juggling imagination, judgment and problem solving. Nah. AI is still statistical pattern matching. OpenAI’s “thinking” means running statistical loops. Still amazing, but not intelligent—I think....

"On an agreement with China for the U.S. version of social media and twerking app TikTok, President Trump declared, we’re going to have “American investors.” These include ... AI investment firm MGX, which... is based in the United Arab Emirates and is backed by the Abu Dhabi royal family. Not American apple pie.

"In 2020, Tesla rolled out a beta version of its Full Self Driving autonomous driving feature. It came with the warning: “It may do the wrong thing at the worst time, so you must always keep your hands on the wheel.” So, it isn’t “Full” or “Self Driving.” ...Last year the name changed to “Full Self Driving (Supervised),” which is funny but also tragic as it still has problems with railroad crossings.

"I could go on. Airlines boast their on-time arrival statistics, but then your flight arrives 45 minutes early and you realize all schedules are padded. California talks up its “zero emission” vehicle regulations, but more than zero emissions come from power plants that charge the cars. Cuba is a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council, and so are Sudan, China and Algeria.

"All these illusionary names are what tort lawyers call attractive nuisances, enticing but dangerous. Stay skeptical, my friend."

Yes, I am a grumpy old man. And have been since I was a grumpy young man. But it seems to me that more and more thinking with our fingers or microwave thinking is now in more and more places. 

What's worse, because we have been brain-washed by trillions of dollars worth of pro-AI propaganda, we no longer even question the things we should be howling at the moon about. The lack of nuance. The lack of humanity. The lack of interesting and non-cliche detail. Most of all the complete lack of taste.

When an entire world thinks with its fingers, governments are run by grifters, as is business, as is everything. Fair is foul. War is peace. Inequality is equal. Hatred is normalized.

Thinking with your fingers is no substitute for...
what's it called?...

...thinking.