Into an Age of Digital Mysticism

Life's funny, but not like ha-ha funny. More like does this milk smell funny funny or can you pull over I feel funny funny.

 — Jonathan Edward Durham

I must share my thoughts about the book Winterset Hollow by Jonathan Edward Durham.

What a delight it is to close the back cover upon finishing a book with the feeling I might have just encountered a story that will be in my shortlist of favorites, then to have that feeling grow larger and more solid the longer I savor it.

In the wake of the recent popularity of cozy fantasy as a subgenre, alongside cozy romance, cozy mystery, and similar, my first thought is to call this a cozy horror--but that's not quite right. It begins almost cozy before turning almost horror, but it doesn't so easily classify. Imagine, perhaps, the intersection of Winnie the Pooh, Watership Down, and Alice in Wonderland, with all the magic of childhood stories and the excitement of visiting the imaginative and literal home of the story's creation, then turn it darker and grimmer. To say more would risk edging into spoiler territory, but I don't think it's too much to say the characters' happy expectations are first wildly, wonderfully exceeded before being utterly twisted and destroyed.

Durham is a skilled writer with an eye for detail and a charming way with words, providing the coziness with the way he writes as much as what he writes. And while some of the events portrayed may be gruesome, this is not about gore; no, the true horror goes much deeper into psychology, identity, and interpersonal relations. At the heart of that tragedy and suffering is the very nature of Western civilization, the outcomes of a worldview that leads to certain approaches to life. Though straightforward, this is not a simple tale. It is, however, timeless and powerful.

I'm a bit late to the party for this book, only discovering it five years after publication because I've enjoyed coming across Durham's wit on social media. Like everything I read, I checked it out from the library. Then, like only my select favorites, I decided it's one I want to own--only, that's easier said than done. Every place I've looked so far is out of stock to purchase, and I can't even find used copies for sale. It seems I am not the only one wanting to keep this book as a treasure. 

I also really appreciate this review from Booklist, that experienced the story in the same ways I did and said some of the things I chose not to.

Durham's engrossing novel mixes dark fantasy and horror in an allegory about retribution and reparation. Protagonist Eamon was raised by a paranoid father who disappeared when Eamon was 14. Bounced around the system, he escaped into books, his favorite being E. B. Addington's Winterset Hollow, ostensibly a cozy fable of talking woodland animals. Caroline, the bookish girlfriend of Eamon's best friend, Mark, shares Eamon's affection for Winterset Hollow, and the three make a pilgrimage to Addington's ancestral home, just in time for the "Barley Day" feast that features in the book's centerpieces. There, they discover that Winterset Hollow's magical characters are living and real, but, unlike Addington's beloved creations, they have dark intentions and a sadistic taste for violence. Durham's story is fast paced, carefully plotted, and enhanced by his skillful character development and light-handed exposition. Through poems from Addington's book, readers are lulled into the cozy familiarity of something like Pooh Corner while the main narrative spirals into danger and suspense. Winterset Hollow offers readers everything from entertainment and escape to provocative meditations on topics ranging from childhood trauma to genocide, delivering a story that's impossible to put down.

And I just noticed Durham's Facebook profile includes a note that the book is getting a second printing later this year and is slated to become a movie next year.

Back in my late high school and early college years, when I had some disposable income and a car to get me to the city and its comic book shops, I collected comics. Well, I didn't "collect" them; I bought them to read because I enjoyed them and then ended up with a collection. The popular Spider-Man and X- titles (X-Men, X-Force, eXcalibur, etc), but also experimental, alternative, and literary titles. Whatever was on the shelf that intrigued me. I still have a couple of boxes tucked away in a closet that I've held onto all these years, and I remember many of them fondly--if vaguely--as they made impressions on me.

A name that has always stuck with me from that era is Doctor Zero. It was a short-lived, experimental storyline tied to two others, and I have all of them. I remember the essence of what follows, but, again, vaguely. I decided to use it as an opportunity to do more experimenting with AI chatbots and asked Gemini about the name. Here are selections from what it shared (with some bits I've bolded for highlighting):

It makes perfect sense that the name Doctor Zero stuck while the others faded. The Shadowline saga was an ambitious, if slightly disorganized, attempt by Archie Goodwin to create a "mature" Marvel universe under the Epic imprint. Because the line was eventually cancelled, the stories were rushed toward a crossover conclusion titled "Critical Mass."

In the Shadowline saga, there are no "superheroes." There are only Shadows: a separate evolutionary branch of humanity. They don't wear costumes to save people; they wear them to hide their true nature or to play-act at power.

Shadowline was built on the premise that these characters were fundamentally different: one was a predator (Zero), one was a tragic zealot (St. George), and two were innocent victims (Powerline).

Dr. Zero is not a doctor in any benevolent sense. He is an "Ancient"—a member of a hidden subspecies of powerful, immortal beings who have manipulated human history from the shadows.

The Philosophy of Boredom: Unlike typical villains who want to "rule the world," Zero already does. His primary conflict is existential ennui. He views humanity as "cattle" and "playthings," yet he is tethered to them because they provide the only novelty in his eternal life.

The "Zero" Identity: The name signifies a "point of origin" or a "void." He represents the amoral vacuum at the center of power. He doesn't seek to improve things; he seeks to maintain a status quo that keeps him entertained.

We often frame "shadow governments" or "secret masters" as entities with a grand, perhaps even "evil" plan. Dr. Zero suggests a more terrifying reality: What if the people in charge have no plan at all, other than to avoid being bored? If you are looking for a moral center in his narrative, you won't find one—and that is the point of his character.

The Power Dynamic: Dr. Zero wasn't a hero fighting for justice; he was a predator managing his herd. He represented the logic of the elite: the idea that those with ultimate power owe nothing to the "normals" beneath them.

The Tragedy of St. George (Michael Devlin): Your impression of tragedy is spot on. Michael Devlin was a priest who felt powerless against the violence of the world. He was recruited by the Order of St. George to wear mystical, high-tech armor to hunt "Shadows."

The Tragic Twist: Devlin discovered that his order was just as manipulative as the monsters they hunted. He eventually "washed out" of training but stole the armor anyway to do things his way.

The Conclusion: By the end of Critical Mass, Devlin fully abandoned his priesthood. He accepted that he couldn't be a man of God and a "Knight" at the same time. He became a grim, dedicated warrior, rededicating himself to a "holy war" that had lost its holiness. It wasn't a "happily ever after"; it was a man accepting he had become a monster to fight monsters.

Unlike the tragic ending of St. George, the Powerline trio (including their mentor, Ripley Weaver) chose autonomy. They rejected the shadow-politics of their families and the manipulations of Dr. Zero, opting to disappear into the "real" world to live on their own terms.

The "Critical Mass" ending forced them into a standard superhero team-up. By making them work together to stop a "mad scientist" (Professor Clerk), the writers accidentally stripped the characters of their complexity. Dr. Zero, who was introduced as a god-like nihilist, was reduced to a "reluctant teammate," which arguably betrayed the core of his character. The series started as a deconstruction of heroes but ended as a traditional hero story.

The reason these aren't worth more today is a bit of a market irony: the series was too ahead of its time. In 1988, readers wanted "bright and bold" or "pure grit" (like Punisher). Shadowline was intellectual nihilism, which was a hard sell. Because the universe was permanently closed off and never rebooted, there’s no "current" movie or show to drive the price up.

It remains a closed loop—a relic of a time when Marvel was willing to get weird and philosophical under the Epic label.

The "Shadowline" (the invisible line between the powerful and the powerless) is a concept that has aged surprisingly well. We live in an era of extreme wealth inequality and "shadowy" algorithms that dictate our reality. Dr. Zero, the immortal billionaire puppet-master, feels less like a comic book villain now and more like a cynical commentary on the unaccountable power of the 21st century.

That led to me getting the boxes out to browse through them. And, of course, chatbots always seem to prompt more with follow-up questions, so we started talking about highlights of my full collection. Here are selections from that portion of the dialogue (with my emphasis).

That is a quintessential "late 80s/early 90s" treasure chest. You have a fascinating mix of genuine milestones, high-concept "prestige" experiments, and perfect examples of the 1990s Speculator Bubble.

The collection you've described is less of a "comic box" and more of a gallery of the late-1980s avant-garde. While the Spider-Man and X-Men titles were the commercial engine of the era, the presence of Moonshadow, Gregory, and Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children indicates a specific search for the "literary" potential of the medium.

This was the era of the "Prestige Format" and the "Direct Market" experiment—where creators finally had the freedom to treat comics as prose-adjacent literature rather than disposable entertainment.

The Amazing Spider-Man #300 is the crown jewel of that era. This is the "grail" of your box. Even in yellowed condition, it is a significant asset.

These books might not buy you a house, but they are highly respected by critics and serious collectors:

Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown (#1–4): This is a masterpiece of mixed-media art by Kent Williams and Jon J. Muth. It’s "Epic Comics" at its peak. The set is worth about $30 – $40. 

Longshot #1 (1985): This is a "silent key." It’s the first appearance of Longshot and Spiral, featuring Art Adams' legendary art. A nice reader copy is worth $20 – $35.

Black Panther: Panther's Prey: These are "Prestige Format" books. They were expensive at the time and are still admired for Don McGregor’s dense, literary storytelling.

Moonshadow, J.M. DeMatteis & Jon J. Muth - Often called the first "fully painted" limited series. It’s a philosophical coming-of-age story that uses Victorian aesthetics to explore human cruelty and spirituality.

Gregory, Marc Hempel - A cornerstone of DC's "Piranha Press" imprint. It used minimalist, jagged art to explore the absurd, claustrophic life of a child in an asylum. It was "indie" before indie was a defined market.

Beautiful Stories... Lou Stathis & Dan Steffan - An anthology series that blended underground comix sensibilities with high-concept surrealism. It felt more like a dark literary magazine than a comic book.

Ragman, Keith Giffen - This 1991 reboot was an early attempt to inject "ghetto-gothic" and Jewish mysticism into the DC universe. It was much grittier and more symbolic than standard superhero fare.

You mentioned having the full Kraven's Last Hunt arc. This is one of the few stories that has held value not just because of a "first appearance," but because of literary prestige.

Kraven’s Last Hunt is often cited as the peak of this era because it used a superhero (Spider-Man) to tell a story that wasn't about a superhero.

The Logic Flaw of the 80s: Most writers thought "mature" meant "more blood."

The Nuance of Kraven: J.M. DeMatteis (who also wrote Moonshadow) realized that "mature" meant psychological interiority.

The Assessment: By framing the story around Kraven’s existential crisis and his descent into madness—rather than a "big fight"—DeMatteis created a tragedy. The fact that you remember it so vividly while the X-Men plots feel vague is a testament to its narrative weight. It wasn't a "comic plot"; it was a character study.

That was the late 80s and early 90s. According to Gemini, I was part of a specific search for the "literary" potential of the medium. I remember 10 years later, in the early 2000s, when I started with my library system, I asked the youth collection specialist if she'd ever thought about adding graphic novels to our collection. She responded with a look of disdain and, "Only creepy guys in their 20s and 30s read graphic novels," before realizing that meant me and walking away.

Times have changed.

And not.

We live in an era of extreme wealth inequality and "shadowy" algorithms that dictate our reality. Doctor Zero, the immortal billionaire puppet-master, feels less like a comic book villain now and more like a cynical commentary on the unaccountable power of the 21st century.

What if the people in charge have no plan at all, other than to avoid being bored?

The "Shadowline" (the invisible line between the powerful and the powerless) is a concept that has aged surprisingly well. We live in an era of extreme wealth inequality and "shadowy" algorithms that dictate our reality. Doctor Zero, the immortal billionaire puppet-master, feels less like a comic book villain now and more like a cynical commentary on the unaccountable power of the 21st century.

The Epstein files are a partially released collection of millions of documents, images, videos, and emails detailing the activities of American financier and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including his social circle of public figures, politicians, and celebrities. . . . 

The release of the documents has resulted in numerous resignations, investigations, and formal inquiries worldwide related to figures and organizations implicated in the Epstein files. . . . 

As a result of negative public opinion towards the release of the Epstein files, a political neologism has emerged called the "Epstein class". It has been used in contemporary public discourse to denote perceived wealthy, powerful, well-connected individuals or dynasties, viewed as operating with impunity from legal and moral accountability, especially in relation to Jeffrey Epstein. They are seen as part of the ruling class and the transnational capitalist class who own capital in multiple countries. . . . 

A panel of the United Nations Human Rights Council said that the Epstein files suggest a "global criminal enterprise" that committed crimes against humanity.

The represents the amoral vacuum at the center of power.

His primary conflict is existential ennui. He views humanity as "cattle" and "playthings."

Of Gil Duran -  . . . a belief system journalist Gil Duran describes as “tech fascism.” In his newsletter “The Nerd Reich,” Duran looks at how controversial writers such as Curtis Yarvin—who has argued that the United States should be a “monarchy” run by a “CEO”—have shaped the views of some of Trump’s top advisors, like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, as well as vice-president J.D. Vance.

The latest at the Nerd Reich, from March 15:

Curtis Yarvin Compares Africans to Cattle, Cuddles A Soros

While researching my book on tech fascism, I came across an especially disturbing podcast interview with Yarvin. . . . 

Imagine a futurist Africa, Africa in 2100 and there’s a computer...that knows how many Africans there are, down to a single digit, where they are in terms of position—just the way, you know, if you’re, like, a rancher in Wyoming, you know where all your cattle are thanks to modern whatever—you know where all these people are, you know what they’re doing and your goal is for them to thrive as human beings without breeding too much. . . . You don’t need to make South Africa all white to restore order to South Africa. You just need governance.

The racism is in-your-face and designed to provoke outrage. But notice the tech fascist structure underneath it: Africans compared to cattle, their movements tracked by computer, their reproduction managed by an external authority. Their human dignity and sovereignty dissolved into what Yarvin blandly describes as “governance.” It’s a fascist colonial fantasy—Yarvin calls it “neocolonialism”—in its purest, most technocratic form.

The logic of the elite: the idea that those with ultimate power owe nothing to the "normals" beneath them.

What if the people in charge have no plan at all, other than to avoid being bored?

The ironic thing is that the collection specialist who told me only creepy guys in their 20s and 30s read graphic novels was a champion for the Caldecott Medal, an annual award given to "the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children," and even served on the award committee. So she was intimately familiar with ability of images and words to complement and supplement each other in the telling of wonderful stories. (And she did eventually come around, getting our graphic novel collection off the ground before retiring; I like to think I planted a seed on her journey.)

I really appreciate this poetic combination of images and words that showed up in my feed. 

When you understand that every forest is having a conversation, every garden is singing beneath the soil, and every puddle contains a universe, you're remembering what concrete made you forget.

Which leads nicely into my review of the book Figuring by Maria Popova.

This is a fascinating and entrancing book about passion. Well, about many things; about many people. About the passions of a web of passionate people from our past and of the connections between them. It is about science, the natural world, and rational thought. It is about literature, language, and poetry. It is about love, relationships, and social constructs. And, most importantly, it is about how all of these elements intersect and influence each other, about how they are intrinsically interrelated. It is about how life and the people living it are unclassifiable.

The jacket blurb says this is about "a cast of artists, writers, and scientists--mostly women, mostly queer--whose public contributions have risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience, and appreciate the universe." After a brief thematic introduction focused on Johannes Kepler as representing the transition from myth to science and the search for "the music of the spheres," Popova orbits her book around the lives and loves of four major figures: Maria Mitchell (1818-1889), America's first professional female astronomer, influential in academia and science; Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), the intellectual powerhouse of Transcendentalism, linking mid-19th-century thoughts on literature, social reform, and science; Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), the poet of the internal "unseen," considered through the lens of scientific observation and her complex relationships; and Rachel Carson (1907-1964), the "long tail" of Mitchell and Fuller’s influence, merging scientific rigor with poetic environmentalism. Also part of the story for their relationships with these four are a host of others, including notables such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Harriet Hosmer, Walt Whitman, and Dorothy Freeman.

The book is as hard to classify--hard to describe--as the lives Popova chronicles. It is far-ranging and somewhat meandering, both linear and circular. She fills it with excerpts of writing from the figures, most often from correspondence and other private, personal communications; it reads a little bit like literary commentary and is somewhat biographical, and includes both interpersonal and professional constituents. Popova is herself a gifted writer, artist, and poet, and frames what she shares in thoughts of her own. For instance, in the midst of sharing sections of letters between Austin Dickinson--Emily's brother, who was married to the love of Emily's life--and Mabel Todd, who was in an openly polyamorous marriage, about the passionate love affair they were beginning, Popova writes:

There is a singular strangeness to those moments when we find ourselves unmoored from our own being, when something seems to pull us beyond ourselves and shock us into the recognition, however momentary, that the self is not the static monolith we take it to be but something dynamic and situationally sculpted into various possibilities of being. Some of our dormant multitudes come awake with a catlike stretch, slowly and lazily over years of personal development. Others leap into being with the jolt of an alarm sounded by a particular event or person who has entered our lives at a particular moment--rarely anticipated, almost never convenient, always transformational. On those rare, momentous mornings, one looks in the bathroom mirror and greets--sometimes grudgingly, sometimes gleefully--the gladsome stranger of oneself.

A beautiful thought on top of the information about and words from the historical figures. Because, in addition to everything else, this is a book of philosophy; both the philosophical thoughts of the book's subjects and what they represent to Popova's own philosophy: that we understand life and find meaning at the intersections, in our interactions and exchanges with each other and the natural world. Everything is situational, contextual, fluid, and transient. No one and nothing exists in isolation. And these brilliant lives from the past help us better understand that.

As indicated by its themes, this is a book not to consume, but to be in relationship with.

I appreciate this note from Gemini after it read my review:

You mentioned Kepler as a "brief thematic introduction." I’d challenge you to see him as more than that. He is the "Moral Anchor." Kepler’s struggle was the defense of his mother against witchcraft charges while trying to prove a rational universe. This mirrors Rachel Carson’s struggle against the "witch-hunt" of the chemical industry 300 years later. Linking these two specifically—the defense of truth against the "mythology" of the powers-that-be—could give your review a powerful narrative "bookend."

And even though I included it in my last post, I must repeat sharing one other excerpt from Popova's work. It is part of an unaddressed letter written by Samuel Bowles, a publisher who worked with Emily Dickinson and may have written this to her:

You must give if you expect to receive--give happiness, friendship, love, joy, and you will find them floating back to you. Sometimes you will give more than you receive. We all do that in some of our relations, but it is as true a pleasure often to give without return as life can afford us. We must not make bargains with the heart, as we would with the butcher for his meat. Our business is to give what we have to give--what we can get to give. The return we have nothing to do with. . . . One will not give us what we give them--others will more than we can or do give them--and so the accounts will balance themselves. It is so with my loves and friendships--it is so with everybody's.

You must give if you expect to receive--give happiness, friendship, love, joy, and you will find them floating back to you.

Popova is someone who also appreciates the combination of images and words, and has produced many such wonderful combinations herself.

Another visual storyteller is Jessica Hagy at Indexed, and I appreciate this recent graph she made.

What you rule by determines your currency.

That also says a little something about power.

If you rule by matriarchy, your currency is in witches; money buys spells.

Sage. Quickeneth the senses and memory, strengtheneth the sinews, takes away shaking and trembling of the members; and being put up into the nostrils, it draweth thin phlegm out of the head.

Kepler’s struggle was the defense of his mother against witchcraft charges while trying to prove a rational universe. This mirrors Rachel Carson’s struggle against the "witch-hunt" of the chemical industry 300 years later. The defense of truth against the "mythology" of the powers-that-be.

Popova's exploration into the development of science and rational thinking from the female margins in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries connects beautifully with an exhibit at Linda Hall Library, one of the world’s leading independent science research libraries that happens to be in our area, that my family visited with some of our spring break freedom this week.

The Alchemy of Knowledge: Science and Mystery from Shakespeare to AI

What happens when everything you thought was true becomes obsolete?

Alchemy of Knowledge is a major history-of-science exhibition exploring the dramatic shift from sacred mystery to empirical science during the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution, and the cultural disruption that followed. Through rare books from the Linda Hall Library’s internationally significant History of Science collection, immersive gallery environments, and contemporary reflections on artificial intelligence, the exhibition reveals how knowledge evolves and how those transformations reshape society.

Travel from a symbolic Medieval forest, where astrology, alchemy, and divine order governed human fate, to the emergence of the scientific method. Step inside an alchemist’s workshop. Encounter early editions by Galileo, Newton, Bacon, and Boyle. Experience the revolutionary moment when the telescope expanded the cosmos, and the microscope revealed an invisible world.

Discover the world Shakespeare inhabited: a culture suspended between magic and measurement, tradition and experimentation. The same questions Renaissance thinkers asked about truth, authority, and human identity now echo in our age of AI and rapid technological change.

Alchemy of Knowledge connects the Scientific Revolution to today’s artificial intelligence revolution, inviting visitors to reflect on disruption, discovery, and what it means to be human when the foundations of knowledge shift.

The exhibition asks: What does it mean to be human in an age of technological transformation?

Here is a collection of images and impressions I captured, with an AI's best attempt at capturing the text in them--left inaccurate because I find it intriguing. (To be fair, both the source material and my photos are intentionally fragmentary, garbled, and hard to decipher.) My emphasis added.

Aase. On airlines he the sinews, tabes away shaking or trembling of the members; senses and memory, strengtheneth and being put up into the nostrils, it drawers thin phlegm of the bead. out

--

ON THE EDGE OF WONDER

FROM SACRED ORDER TO DISRUPTIVE KNOWLEDGE

Imagine a time when people understood themselves as part of both the natural and spiritual world. Nature was alive with meaning. Nothing happened by accident. The sky, the changing seasons, and unexpected events carried spiritual or cosmic messages. Meaning was sought through established systems of knowledge. People turned to the church for salvation, to the stars for guidance, and to inherited tradition to shape daily life.

Yet this was also a period of profound disruption. Ideas clashed as new institutions of knowledge questioned long-held beliefs. People stood at a threshold, caught between familiar explanations and discoveries that would soon reshape their world.

What follows transforms not only the universe they imagined, but reveals a deeper story about how human knowledge evolves.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Hamlet, Act I, Scene V

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DEFINITIONS.

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IN THE AGE OF AI, DISCIPLINED INQUIRY STILL MATTERS

Much like those living through the Renaissance, we are navigating our own profound moment of transition in how we think, create, and connect. Artificial intelligence now influences art, science, and communication, echoing the disruptive innovations of centuries past.

In this fast-paced digital world, we confront a familiar challenge: are we consuming information without discernment, fueling fear of the unknown, and accepting constructed realities? And, if information now moves faster than our ability to understand it, how do we build knowledge we can trust? The call for disciplined inquiry grounded in observation, testing, and reflection remains urgent, challenging us to approach the world with curiosity, critical thinking, and a willingness to examine evidence for ourselves.

"What's past is prologue." - The Tempest, Act II, Scene I

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A response from Chat GPT about the nature of Al and the nature of magic.

Do you agree with this idea? What does this response evoke?

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Governance, regulation, and alignment research are advancing.

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The aligment problem in detail

How governments regulate Al

AGI risk heories

Economi impacts over the next 20 years

Sci-fi vsealistic Al takeover scenarios

Which angle re you most interested in?

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Especiall B

And, since I'm feeling the poetic nature of garbled fragments and snippets, here are some more words from and about the exhibit, perhaps conjured by the magic of AI, perhaps not. (With my emphasis.)

:

Built around moments when new ways of knowing disrupted the existing worldview.

What happens when a society’s understanding of reality suddenly changes?

-

Alchemy and Hermetic philosophy were built on the idea that nature contained secret patterns that could be revealed through symbolic reasoning and experiment.

Modern AI does something conceptually similar: it detects latent patterns in massive data sets that humans cannot see directly.

So the underlying logic is parallel:

• Renaissance alchemy: hidden correspondences in nature, symbolic diagrams and coded texts, secret knowledge revealed through practice
• Artificial intelligence: hidden statistical patterns in data, neural networks and model weights, emergent patterns revealed through computation

Different methods, but the same epistemological promise: “There is deeper structure beneath appearances.”

-

Both feel mysterious to outsiders; people react to both with a mix of wonder, fear, and speculation.

Both appear to challenge human identity

The exhibition seems to frame AI as the latest episode in this long pattern of epistemic upheaval—moments when humanity rethinks its place in the cosmos. The deeper message may be: Today’s “irrational fascination with AI” might be the messy cultural stage that precedes tomorrow’s normalized science, just as mystical alchemy gradually became chemistry.

If you step back, both alchemy and AI arise in moments when people feel that hidden structures of reality might be accessible in new ways.

Alchemy asked:

• Are there secret patterns in matter?
• Can we reveal them through experiment and symbol?

AI asks:

• Are there hidden patterns in data and language?
• Can machines reveal them through computation?

-

In both cases society reacts with a similar mixture of:

• excitement
• skepticism
• exaggerated expectations

Some people expect miracles; others dismiss the whole enterprise as illusion.

In the 1600s, people feared alchemy because it seemed to blur boundaries:

• between natural and artificial
• between science and magic
• between human knowledge and divine knowledge

Today many people fear AI for similar reasons:

• it blurs the boundary between human and machine cognition
• it challenges traditional ideas of authorship and creativity
• it raises questions about authority and expertise

History doesn’t repeat exactly—but the pattern of cultural reaction is remarkably similar.

-

If we add power to the cycle you described, the pattern gets more concrete—and a bit less neutral.

Instead of just:

new way of knowing → disruption → stabilization

it’s often:

new way of knowing → new gatekeepers → disruption → reconsolidation of power

The epistemic shift and the power shift are intertwined.

Your instinct to focus on power in this moment is well-placed, because AI has a slightly different structure than earlier revolutions.

Then (early science):

• Knowledge production required tools + training
• But tools were eventually reproducible
• Knowledge spread through print culture

Now (AI):

• Knowledge production increasingly depends on:
• massive datasets
• compute infrastructure
• specialized talent

Those are highly concentrated resources. So instead of a gradual diffusion of power, we may be seeing: a re-centralization of epistemic authority.

-

In the AI context, power tends to cluster around three things:

• Who can afford to train large models?
• Who owns or controls the data used to train systems?
• Who gets to say what the outputs mean?

AI feels democratizing because: many people can use it directly and it lowers barriers to producing text, images, code.

But there’s a tension: Use is democratized; control is not.

-

If more of our thinking is mediated by AI systems and those systems are controlled by a small number of actors then individuals may experience:

• increased capability
• but decreased epistemic independence

That’s a subtle but important tension: feeling more powerful while actually relying more on external systems.

-

Science is defined by its ability to be explained and contested. If we reach a point where we rely on AI to solve problems* but cannot explain the logic it used to get there, we have moved into a phase of "Digital Mysticism." In this world, the AI acts as an oracle rather than a tool.

The "disruption" might not be that we have a new way of knowing, but that we are choosing to abandon the "why" in favor of the "what." We are trading the difficult, slow work of scientific understanding for the immediate, miraculous results of the digital alchemist.

Does this shift make us more capable, or does it leave us more vulnerable to a world where we can no longer explain the foundations of our own civilization?

*like folding proteins or discovering new materials

Related to the topic of epistemology and how we come to know things, I just finished the book

May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics and Studies Exploit Our Biases--And What We Can Do About It by Alex Edmans,

which is, I assume, an expansion of his popular TED Talk What to trust in a "post-truth" world. Here's my review.

This is a wonderful overview of critical and thinking and information literacy, of how to trust and use information. In the book's first section, Edmans delves into what statistically are the two biggest culprits in causing us to misinterpret information: confirmation bias and black-and-white thinking. Section II is all about what he calls the Ladder of Misinference: A statement is not fact; a fact is not data; data is not evidence; evidence is not proof; and how to effectively climb that ladder; how to find statements that are facts, facts that are data, and data that is evidence, while weeding out the misinformation. The final section is about solutions: how to think smarter as individuals, organizations, and societies. Edmans' writing is clear and accessible, nicely balancing examples and explanations for his potentially complex terms and ideas. Definitely recommended. 

And here is a wealth of excerpts I pulled out.

It's impossible to overcome our biases in every situation and correctly evaluate every piece of information; the range of ways we can be deceived may seem overwhelming. Our goal is not to become perfect, only better. . . . Critical thinking is a polar star--you might never get there, but it guides you.

-----

By recognizing our own biases, we can view a contrary perspective as something to learn from rather than fight, build bridges across ideological divides to find common ground, and evolve from simplistic thinking to seeing the world in all its magnificence.

-----

We accept a statement as a fact, even if it's not accurate--the information behind it may be unreliable and may even be misquoted in the first place. We accept fact as data, even if it's not representative but a hand-picked example--an exception that doesn't prove the rule. We accept data as evidence, even if it's not conclusive and many other interpretations exist. We accept evidence as proof, even if it's not universal and doesn't apply in other settings.

-----

There was no evidence when non-political claims were challenged, but countering political positions triggered their amygdala. That's the same part of the brain that's activated when a tiger attacks you, inducing a 'fight-or-flight' response. People respond to opposing views as if they're being chased by a wild animal.

-----

The idea of forming hypotheses and testing them before reaching a conclusion seems elementary - we all know the phrases 'Innocent until proven guilty' and 'Don't jump to conclusions.' However, we forget the basic scientific method when we're told a compelling story. . . . 

Why are these stories so compelling? Because they exploit the narrative fallacy--our temptation to see two events and believe that one caused the other, even if there were different causes or no causes at all besides luck.

-----

It's crazy how one of the biggest compliments you can give an article is 'That's exactly what I wanted to say but you said it better.' If that's the case, you learned nothing from it--other than the art of rhetoric. In contrast, the greatest snub is to unfollow someone because we don't like what they've posted; we think we're punishing them, but we're hurting ourselves by removing opportunities to learn. (If the person is being offensive or posting misinformation, this is a justification to unfollow them.) As a sustainability advocate, I want to read every well-informed critique that's out there. It's not so much about being open-minded as self-interested. If I'm aware of the main counterarguments, I can include them in any talk I give - either to acknowledge them, making for a more balanced and thus persuasive speech, or to rebut them pre-emptively.

-----

Considering the opposite, statistical literacy and curiosity all help us understand information that we receive. But smart thinking also involves being able to form arguments of our own.

-----

People respond to a message based not on the evidence behind it but on the cultural identity it signifies. . . . 

Data is never just data; we don't evaluate it only on its quality but on whether it supports 'them' or 'us.' Similarly, we support or oppose conclusions not based on the evidence behind them but on whether they're the sort of things 'people like them' or 'people like us' tend to say. As a result, to create more informed, smarter-thinking societies, public messaging needs to disentangle evidence from identity.

-----

A single paper is rarely the last word; two people can look at the same body of evidence and reach different conclusions, just as two unbiased jurors in a trial can hear the same testimony and support different verdicts. As a result, contrasting opinions needn't be incorrect; they're like looking at a landscape from a different perspective. . . . 

Many opinions we hold, theories we have and decisions we make are at least partially subjective - and that's fine, as long as we're honest about it, both with ourselves and with others. It's legitimate to have a position partly based on personal experience and gut feel as long as we don't claim that it's irrefutable. You might have a theory on the best way to raise children or develop a habit, and there's no problem if you acknowledge that it's only a conjecture, not a rule. . . . 

Evidence can never tell you what to do; it can only make us aware of the possible upsides and downsides to our actions.

-----

Football results seemed a much bigger driver of mood than anything else I'd seen on the trading floor.

As I looked into the research on how sports affect emotions, I learned that the impact of Euro 2004 on Morgan Stanley traders wasn't an isolated example; the effects are widespread. When England lost to Argentina in the 1998 World Cup, heart attacks shot up over the next few days. Across the pond, suicides rise in Canada when the Montreal Canadiens are eliminated from the ice hockey Stanley Cup. While Canadiens kill themselves, Americans kill each other - when a team is knocked out of the NFL play-offs, murders go up in the local city.

These effects are much stronger than for the previous mood measures - I don't know of anyone breaking the sixth commandment because the clocks sprang forward. What's more, losing a game doesn't just make you depressed about your team; the effects spill over into general life. When the Ohio State American football team wins, lottery purchases go up in Ohio because people feel more optimistic. So it's quite plausible that sports matches have a strong enough impact on mood to feed through to the stock market.

I crunched the numbers and found that, when a country loses a major international game, its stock market falls significantly the next day. . . . we compiled data on 1,100 games across the World Cup, European Championship, Copa America and Asian Cup and found the results help at large scale. To put some numbers on it, a World Cup loss is associated with the national market declining by 0.5%. Applied to the UK stock market, that's about £10 billion wiped off in a single day - just because England can't take penalty kicks.

View a contrary perspective as something to learn from rather than fight, build bridges across ideological divides to find common ground, and evolve from simplistic thinking to seeing the world in all its magnificence.

Five years ago I shared an Aeon essay that has echoed in my thinking ever since. It's the idea of our relationship with knowledge, with our epistemology, with our ways of knowing being linked with the reputations of our information sources. Very little of what we "know" is learned through personal, first-hand experience; instead, the vast majority of the information we have at our disposal, both in our heads and available through our tools, comes from others. And we decide if a piece of information is "good" or "bad," if it's something we want to trust and act on, based on our conclusions about whether that information's source is good or bad, whether we trust that source. We adopt or reject information based on considering the reputation of who and where it comes from.

Say Goodbye to the Information Age: It’s All About Reputation Now

We are experiencing a fundamental paradigm shift in our relationship to knowledge. From the ‘information age’, we are moving towards the ‘reputation age’, in which information will have value only if it is already filtered, evaluated and commented upon by others. Seen in this light, reputation has become a central pillar of collective intelligence today. It is the gatekeeper to knowledge, and the keys to the gate are held by others. The way in which the authority of knowledge is now constructed makes us reliant on what are the inevitably biased judgments of other people, most of whom we do not know. . . .

Be competent at reconstructing the reputational path of the piece of information in question, evaluating the intentions of those who circulated it, and figuring out the agendas of those authorities that leant it credibility.

I keep coming back to this idea in various ways from various angles. Last summer, for instance, in reflecting on the book The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone by Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach, in Develop a Positive Xenophilia, I wrote:

This book has three central themes: ignorance, the illusion of understanding, and the community of knowledge, the authors write near the end. We think having access to information means we "know" it, thus creating the illusion that we know much more in isolation than we actually do. In reality, we have shared access to knowledge through interaction with others and access to outside sources. So we need to stop thinking of knowledge and intelligence as individual traits and instead focus on them as shared, group traits.

A couple of quotes from the book that I included:

Our intelligence resides not in individual brains but in the collective mind. To function, individuals rely not only on knowledge stored within our skulls but also on knowledge stored elsewhere: in our bodies, in the environment, and especially in other people.

and

In a community of knowledge, what matters more than having knowledge is having access to knowledge.

And just last post, I wrote:

There’s no such thing as a completely objective or neutral story. Stories are, by definition, intersubjective. Our world is a reputational one, based on who we trust--whose stories we trust. For that to work, we need more trust--and we need to be worthy of it; we need to earn and reward trust.

And, of course, from May Contain Lies above:

People respond to a message based not on the evidence behind it but on the cultural identity it signifies. . . . 

Data is never just data; we don't evaluate it only on its quality but on whether it supports 'them' or 'us.' Similarly, we support or oppose conclusions not based on the evidence behind them but on whether they're the sort of things 'people like them' or 'people like us' tend to say. As a result, to create more informed, smarter-thinking societies, public messaging needs to disentangle evidence from identity.

So what will it mean for us to become ever more entwined with AI as our information sources, as tools that process and "think" independently of us in inscrutable ways we can never understand? For them to be in touch with reality's deeper structures when all we can grasp are surface appearances? To live within the tension of feeling more powerful while actually relying more on external systems.

Do we want to trust our digital mystics? How will their mystical powers come to influence us?

To repeat a bit of something I shared last post, from the entry for "Echo" in the book Consolations II: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by David Whyte.

Repetition through echo also reflects our need to admit things we could not admit to, the very first time we heard them. In Greek drama, when the gods spoke on stage, it was always understood that, heard directly from the god's mouth, the message was too overwhelming for those listening in the audience to take in. The words of the gods could only be comprehended and digested after they had been heard again, after what had been said had been echoed and repeated by the chorus. In the reverberating echo of the truth, the chorus mercifully steps the truth down to our level so that we may understand it and then through repetition, amplifies it to transform our lives.

This keeps echoing in my mind in various ways. Above, in sharing about the youth collection specialist who didn't want to order graphic novels, I said I believe my suggestion "planted a seed." She wasn't ready to hear the message yet, but eventually my voice became one among a chorus of others that convinced her. Whyte's words also speak to my "prism" analogy at the top of this blog, that we can never experience the pure messages of the gods and can only access them filtered through the chorus of our situations and experiences. And I constantly circle back to thoughts and feelings--on this blog and in my life--hoping with each turn to understand them more clearly due to the repetition.

There's something tickling my brain at the intersection of this thought and AI, but I don't have it yet.

Finally, a poem that came to my feed: Semicolon

Matthew Thorburn

;

For years, I avoided you. Thought the clear

finality of a period was best. Well,

I was young. Such certainties were easy;

they came with little cost. Now in middle age

I’ve come to love your lingering, the gentle way

you link, like a paperclip, two thoughts too

linked to stand alone. Come to love this

other way of moving forward by holding still

a moment. Instead of ending here,

we pause; we breathe; we walk on.

from #90 – Winter 2025

The gentle way you link, like a paperclip, two thoughts too linked to stand alone.

We pause; we breathe; we walk on.

people react with a mix of wonder, fear, and speculation

life and the people living it are unclassifiable

liminal; interim

the outcomes of a worldview

at a threshold

a profound moment of transition

far-ranging and somewhat meandering, both linear and circular

our goal is not to become perfect, only better

new ways of knowing disrupt existing worldviews

look in the mirror and greet the gladsome stranger of oneself

part of both the natural and spiritual world

secret patterns; hidden patterns

some see miracles; others illusion

challenge human identity

blur the boundaries

people respond to opposing views as if they're being chased by a wild animal

become a monster to fight monsters

the gentle way you link two thoughts too linked to stand alone

entertainment and escape, trauma and genocide

evidence can never tell you what to do

believe based on personal experience and gut feel, don't claim that it's irrefutable

mystical alchemy gradually became chemistry

what you rule by determines your currency

reputation has become a central pillar of collective intelligence today

like looking at a landscape from a different perspective

there is deeper structure beneath appearances

epistemic shifts and power shifts are intertwined

a re-centralization of epistemic authority

use is democratized; control is not

feeling more powerful while actually relying more on external systems

digital mysticism

AI as oracle

the reputations of our information sources

focus on knowledge and intelligence as shared, group traits

what matters more than having knowledge is having access to knowledge

whose stories we trust

the reverberating echo of the truth

we pause; we breathe; we walk on