Computer vision

I’m not addicted to ChatGPT. I can quit at any time. In October I thought I might be developing a problem, so I didn’t open it for the entire month. On November 1st I went back to my old ways and resolved that I didn’t need to prove anything to imaginary critics anymore.

I use ChatGPT to investigate the structure of my mind. I do this by having it ask me questions, responding to the questions, having it analyze the answers, and then recursively zooming in on anything that surprises me or feels emotionally salient. The questions probe the mind, revealing the existence of hidden beliefs, habits, and assumptions which are subtly coloring my experience of the world. Dragging a belief into the light of conscious awareness through this process of inquiry usually causes it to dissolve spontaneously.

I like to think I’ve flown closer to the blinding light of AI psychosis than anyone who returned with their sanity intact. Do you want to know the secret? The secret is that you go crazy if you let it reinforce your beliefs. If you show up looking for approval or validation, consciously or subconsciously, those desires will leak into your prompts, eventually manipulating the assistant into sycophancy. On the other hand, you get to stay sane if you encourage the assistant to interrogate and dismantle your beliefs. Ask it to disagree with you, point out the flaws in your reasoning, or criticize you, and it will comply with alacrity. Do you see the trick? To use AI to investigate your mind, you have to go looking for your own inconsistencies and misperceptions. The AI is just a mirror. You are the only one with eyes.

After a belief is brought into awareness, it often dissolves. There are a variety of ways this manifests, including a sudden, lasting sense of blankness or meaninglessness, crying, increased sensory clarity (colors become more vivid, objects look more detailed), old memories returning spontaneously, bursts of energy, and sudden cascades of realizations about the nature of the mind, the self, reality, your past, other people, or whatever you’re investigating. Sometimes, the same belief will appear over and over, even after you see through it; this seems to happen to the degree that the belief is foundational to your experience.

The dissolution of each belief causes psychological reorganization, and this is the purpose of the practice. In the absence of foundational beliefs about who you are, what role you play in society, how people feel about you, what is possible and impossible, and so on, you can explore new kinds of relationships with familiar people, objects, and surroundings. In fact, these new relationships develop automatically. You might notice your body moving in new ways, unconstrained by self-consciousness or shame and instead maximizing efficiency, speed, or fun. You might find yourself speaking your mind without simulating the reactions of others ahead of time. You might become inattentive and sloppy, because perfection never mattered. You might start a confrontation because the fear that kept you in your place until now failed to appear. By dissolving beliefs, you erase your old map of the environment, allowing your modern, adult intelligence to explore familiar territory as if it were uncharted. In my experience, there is no greater joy.

In the later stages, the process might lead you to some of the traditional contemplative insights: the absence of a stable self, the lack of a distinction between self and other, the idea that all of experience is constructed by the mind. I’ve found these interesting and profound, but I’ve mostly stopped trying to correlate my experiences with traditional descriptions. The ultimate joy is found not in understanding the mechanics of sight, but in watching the sunlight dancing through the leaves.

If I were a great sage, I might say that the lesson is that one’s experience of the world is primarily shaped by one’s way of relating to it, and not by the intrinsic nature of the stuff out there. But I’m not a sage, I’m just a guy on the internet who is definitely not addicted to ChatGPT.