He really should have called it a "Minotaur" instead of a "reverse-centaur".
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2026
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AI really appeals to a fantasy that I think all of us have to some extent but that powerful people really have, of a world without people in it—because hell really is other people.
This. The AI industry is pushing super hard to make it work, to replace human workers. It's failing, as AI work is crappier than human work and costs way, way more than human work, but there's that Ayn Rand fantasy that the ownership class can just shut out the worker class and create an utopia.
I'm reminded of the car factory in which the upper management fired the striking workers assuming they could do the work themselves, only to find that the unskilled labor actually took skill.
I bet Elon or some other rich creep read Atlas Shrugged and thought it was profound lol
It's on a bunch of reading lists. In my early twenties I had a libertarian phase (cringe, I know, but I've evolved into a democratic socialist), and I saw it recommended several times on lists like "books every sovereign citizen should read" or shit like that.
I bought a copy but I got bored in the first twenty pages. Probably because I could already tell that the guy was a piece of shit but the book was trying to make him sound cunning, and that didn't jive with me. I've always hated big corporations, even before I realized socialism is actually good.
Thiel for sure thinks he's John Galt.
In the early 2010s, there was a lot of Ayn Rand fans in the Republican party. I think in the 2012 Republican Primary, the favorite book question either yielded Atlas Shrugged or the Reagan biography.
Eventually, as Steven Colbert would note in The Colbert Report, none of them were chosen, and the Republican party decided reluctantly to support Mitt Romney.
I'm constantly struck by the imagery of the giant warrior from Nausicaa. There is a timeline or a reality where this worked, but they couldn't help themselves. They woke the beast up the second it was even halfway possible and now it's tearing itself apart in self-destructive blasts because the whole thing was under-cooked (and probably the completely wrong direction to begin with).
If there's any consolation here it's that hopefully this has soured enough people on the idea that a second effort won't even get off the ground. I hope ...
That's a good movie!
No, hell is loneliness and that's what humanity gets if it goes down the Ai / dystopian route. We can see in China today how people are suffering from loneliness despite having tech to order food and items and having them delivered in hours.
cf. The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster, 1909.
It's insane that this was from 1909. Mind blowing. I should read the entire book...
'If you are looking for hell, ask the artist where it is. If you don't find the artist, you are already in hell.' -Avigdoor Pawsner
Personally I can and will ramble towards my cats about the intricacies of late Bronze Age trade networks in Central Italy. They slap me for it. I see no reason for human interactions given that I have honest counters to my pre-existing madness.
No one expects the sea peoples, not even your cats.
I couldn't get through Enshittification. It was like reading a reference book after the first half. That said, I look forward to this one.
I'm a simple man. I see Cory, I upvote. Then I read the text.
I like how Doctorow is taking guardianship for his language through no bullshit tolerance.
He talked about the book in his interview on Democracy Now! this morning too.
absolutely stunning to hear him talk, he is an exceptional man
My friend was blathering on about Cory Doctorow two decades ago and I knew the name, had maybe read a little bit. I was kind of annoyed how ofter he brought him up. Man did he come out ahead of me on that. This guy articulates the ills of society so well.
Reverse centaur? Lol? I need to come back to this later
centaur = brain of a man, speed of a horse.
reverse centaur = brain of a horse, speed of a man.
substitute horse with ai.
Good practical examples are the car driver vs the Amazon driver. When you drive a car, you go where you want, but at the superhuman speed of a car. The Amazon driver has a computer telling them where to go, how to drive there, and even cameras to watch if you drive according to Amazon's rules. The driver has become the extension of the computer, instead of the other way around. That's a reverse centaur.
Over a long enough distance, men can outrun a horse. Especially in heat.
Who’s in heat, the horse or the man?
I don't like where this is going, but I approve it.
I put on my harness and horse-ears hat...
Are you the mightiest horserer of the lands
Wherever it's going, we can measure it in Hands.
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I think the bigger question is why the man is running after a horse in heat. That is not how you make a centaur.
not with that attitude
Ooooh! I've got a thing for this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon
My friend runs it each year. His pictures are nuts
But with a horse brain?
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A centaur is a human that can do more than an ordinary person... A person plus a horse is able to do more. Making our tools work for us allows us to do more.
A reverse centaur is when our tools are using us instead. Rather than a driver using a computer to navigate more efficiently, Amazon drivers are more like computers that use humans as a component to drive more efficiently than the computer itself could. Not great for the human.
He published a transcript of a speech where he goes over a summary of the book that’s worth a read https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop-that-bubble/#u-washington
If you've read this post or kept up with his blog occasionally the book treads familiar grounds. I sill think it's worth the read to have a condensed version.
Doctorow guides you through understanding the AI bubble by proving you don't need to know the technical jargon or latest developments. All you need to have as a guiding framework is "what technology (actually) does and who it does it to."
You can also buy and download books / audiobooks from his website https://craphound.com/ some of them are pay as you want.
For those wondering, the ebooks for Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free, With a Little Help from My Friends, and Context are pay what you'd like.
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