…The problem with the clinical, psychological idea of a narcissistic personality disorder is that the narcissists aren’t really self-obsessed; they’re obsessed with how they appear to others. The clinical narcissist doesn’t love themselves as they are; they want to love themselves, but can never live up to the image of themselves that would be worthy of that love and need other people to do this for them. When Narcissus stared at himself in that pool; that’s not what he was really doing. He literally fell in love with himself, as he was, as he appeared to himself…

The point I’m making here is that a lot of the hype around “thinking machines” and artificial intelligence seems to be Team Descartes, ignoring that he got it really, really wrong when it comes to what it means “to be.” To that end, one of the amazing and disturbing things about living in the world today is the word “algorithm” has made its way into so many places. Most people know what algorithms do. An algorithm probably decided that you would be reading this post (or not) based on whether the words in it triggered some key words that suggested it might be interesting to you, and so it popped up in your social feed or search engine results or whatever. Algorithms decide what you see, watch, read; they steer you toward what to buy and where to invest, they decide how much to charge you for insurance, how to win baseball games, prosecute wars, catch welfare and tax cheats; and even whether you’re an efficient enough worker not to get fired.

But an algorithm is just a complicated mathematical model…

I am a very sensitive person. I am so sensitive I once punched someone in the face for calling me sensitive (more on that later). I have been bullied, harassed, ridiculed, threatened, and stigmatized—both as a child (for things I’ll get into in a moment) and as an adult (mostly for writing things like this). Being sensitive is a touchy subject if you’ll forgive the terrible pun; it might make a short list of things that people find desirable in a friend or a mate, but it might also make one an object of ridicule and even hatred today…