iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Michael Garfield

Edgardo Block @edgardoblock.eurosky.social · 29/11/2025

This read from @michaelgarfield.bsky.social unsettled me when I first came across it in 2020. Keeps on aging really well michaelgarfield.medium.com/the-future-i...

michaelgarfield.medium.com

The Future is Indistinguishable from Magic

How to Live in the Future Part 8

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

Maybe something like "for a large class of Markov decision processes q-function is exponentially difficult to compute even when the reward function is not" = "pragmatics has one up on causal theory building" or "we're not getting rid of the induction problem"

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

The story of #SimCity is the story of the world we live in—of the entanglement of computing, entertainment, design, & governance. And where it succeeded—and failed—teaches us how to navigate maps that become territories... @chaimg.bsky.social on #HumansOnTheLoop: michaelgarfield.substack.com/p/h-23

michaelgarfield.substack.com

Chaim Gingold on Building Sim City & Simulation as Discourse

We live in abstractions. What makes some better than others?

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Thinking a/b an AI-enriched world that actually benefits humans & how it'll help us explore, not just get tube-fed by algorithms. Here's my talk from @divintelligence.bsky.social on how complex systems science & game design inspired me to imagine this future: michaelgarfield.substack.com/p/foraging

michaelgarfield.substack.com

🌿 Foraging in High-Dimensional Data

My talk from the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute 2025 on how we can draw from thinking in complex systems science and game design to heal our relationship to the Web.

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

Beautiful, and very well-timed. Reactionary preservation of the status quo is not enough. Conviction must be met with action. Are we afraid to dream of better futures? There is such a thing as good ambition. youtu.be/sJjODY-PyJY?...

youtu.be

This is Hollywood's Liberal Fantasy, and it's Falling Apart

YouTube video by Like Stories of Old

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Reposted by Michael Garfield

Chenoe Hart @chenoehart.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

I’m not quite sure what to think about this conceptual, aesthetic and philosophical exploration of crab-ness, but it reminds me of how Le Corbusier was inspired to pioneer the development of brutalist architecture after looking at a crab shell.

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Reposted by Michael Garfield

crAsh @crashbanzai.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

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Reposted by Michael Garfield

Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 08/07/2025

this rules

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

Have we considered the problem isn't impending loss of jobs but existing loss of availability for meaningful work because of jobs

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

The long-awaited (first draft written *last AUGUST*) debut at @aeon.co is here! Probably my most comprehensive and audacious statement on human-technology evolution published anywhere to date. Detours through sci-fi, memeology, military and natural history, and more.

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

John Lilly's Reality Protocols, 1977, reproduced in Diana Reed Slattery’s Xenolinguistics, 2015, Chapter 5: Reality Reviewed (which alone is worth the price of the book)

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

William Irwin Thompson, Passages About Earth (1973) p151

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

Jamming with Cadell Last on self-actualization and transformation in our age of magical technologies — how to live in a future of hyper-social neuroplasticity, a an argument for culture to the social systems that only perceive measurable value. #HumansOnTheLoop michaelgarfield.substack.com/p/h-18

michaelgarfield.substack.com

Self-Actualization in the Global Brain with Cadell Last of Philosophy Portal

A guide to staying human and becoming ungovernable in the midst of the Singularity

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

If you’re attached to “being more than a machine”, consider that the difference between you and a next-token prediction algorithm might be 4B years of improv practice. Then again, it’s very hard to pivot from a story that you think you are. Part Two: michaelgarfield.substack.com/p/hotl-10

michaelgarfield.substack.com

☯ Why Should "I Contain Multitudes"?

On making peace with paradox as we turn and face the strangeness of AI.

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Crack-Up” in Esquire (1936) Part one of a new series on containing paradox: michaelgarfield.substack.com/p/hotl-09

michaelgarfield.substack.com

🦋 What Is "Being More Than A Machine"?

On perspectives on perspectives, and why it matters to tech ethics.

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Reposted by Michael Garfield

Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Determinism, Causality + Emergence in the Mesoscale At Babel Blog is a summary of subthreads on implications for causality, determinism + emergence of spacetime, potentially following from the intersection of Wheeler’s it from bit, Jim’s common now and my work. jessicaflack.wordpress.com/blog/

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

Fish rot from the head, but a snake eats from the tail up to keep the prey breathing and avoid getting bitten. This is a political analogy.

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

"Science hides a not-knowing in a knowing." New ep of #HumansOnTheLoop on #ScaleTheory and the tension between colonialism and mysticism in #science and #philosophy, the #magic of #computers, the #embodiment of information, and the wickedness of #complexsystems: michaelgarfield.substack.com/h-15

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

🙏🏼 Big thanks to everyone for their praise of my new single! It's always a gambit to release intellectual psych-folk about trippy futurism and complexity but it's also a pretty vacant niche and it's what I love to do. Hope you like it too! michaelgarfield.substack.com/p/the-big-ma...

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

"In the shift from a consumptive economy to a contemplative one...jobs will disappear as a source of our identity. The job as a configuration is an industrial concept. The Dark Age and Medieval monk did not have a job; he had a vocation, a calling." – William Irwin Thompson

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Just finished Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch Trilogy. Incredible! Who else has read this? I want to riff with someone eloquent about the world building on my show.

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Reposted by Michael Garfield

Max @maxbittker.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

Visualize every book on earth as a single zoomable bookshelf, colored by archival status, with direct download links: phiresky.github.io/isbn-visuali...

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

📯Okay, I'm coining it: The Metacrisis needs Metasolutions, approaches that ask if we're solving the right problem in the first place. You've got more answers than you want; what you need is better questions.

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Members Hangout TODAY 3/15 @ 3 pm MT! Find the others and let's make culture. michaelgarfield.substack.com/p/hangout-31...

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

Shel Silverstein wrote a poem about ChatGPT in 1981

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

Some things never change, or can be treated as if this is the case within any reasonable expectation of a lifespan. People love to focus on the change but natural historians see constancy in natural process and it's arguably far more helpful to define what solid ground we have to stand on.

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

"Money is like fertiliser. When spread around, things grow; when it's hoarded, it stinks." - John Densmore

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Reposted by Michael Garfield

Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

FULL KEYNOTE -- me + Guy K at SXSW on why privacy is a fundamental guarantor of a gorgeous, good life (not an absence, not a vacuum, not abstract). And how AI threatens privacy. And why Signal is so special and why you should use & love & support it ❤️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyH7...

youtube.com

The State of Personal Online Security and Confidentiality | SXSW LIVE

YouTube video by SXSW

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Come on, paleontologists! It's RIGHT THERE

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Reposted by Michael Garfield

Riane Eisler, Center for Partnership Systems @rianeeisler-cps.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

It is entirely possible to quantify the value of unpaid domestic labor as a percentage of GDP. Countries around the globe have been doing it for decades, most recently India. In the US its value ranges between 10% to 60% of GDP. www.ndtvprofit.com/economy-fina...

ndtvprofit.com

Women's Day 2025: Shadow Economic Value Of Unpaid Labour Nearly 17% Of GDP

Domestic workers' payment should match the value of the labour they provide and they should have working conditions that also reflect the same, says economist Mitali Nikore.

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

I just read Crichton's posthumously published Micro while laid out with a fever. The timing was perfect for meditating on the horrors of the very small. It's a book that says the loud part quiet and the quiet part loud. But maybe it's an artifact of scaling... michaelgarfield.substack.com/p/micro

michaelgarfield.substack.com

🕷️ Terror & Wonder Above & Below: Michael Crichton & Richard Preston's Micro

A book that says the loud part quiet and the quiet part loud. But maybe it's an artifact of scaling...

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

If you care about radical innovation, abstain from premature ontological closure! Superb conversation on epistemic classism, misplaced and politically-motivated skepticism, and the biggest barrier to a truly omnivorous investigation of reality beyond our models. open.spotify.com/episode/6KSu...

open.spotify.com

Special Release: Poltergeists, Fairies, Skeptics, and the Managerial Class

Weird Studies · Episode

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Can't stop thinking about making (both good and bad) externalities more obvious

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

Request for perspectives: How does informed consent plays into interspecies collaboration? Talking to animals with AI seems amazing and very close but how can we responsibly involve them in human society when we can't even make informed decisions ourselves in a dark forest of dark patterns?

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

Funny to think that we might not have elephants today if it were not for plastics “taking the teeth” out of the ivory trade for billiard balls. Technology is always more than we intend. My friend Sara Phinn Huntley on the history of plastics: dreamseedvr.substack.com/p/the-double...

dreamseedvr.substack.com

The Double-Edged Plastic Sword

The brief history of a modern material revolution and it's ecological crisis, plastics' impact on humanities evolution.

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

I'm starting to field myself out as a tax-deductible consultant for wise tech startups. Yellow teaming, ideation, community dev, comms, and creative are all areas of special interest in the event I can helpfully apply my research, and there is plenty of space for public strategic partnership.

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Michael Garfield @michaelgarfield.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

"When the ordinary and reputable accounts are not persuasive, it is necessary to try those that are more out of the way and not scorn them but literally to chant over ourselves the charms of the ancients and use every means to bring the truth to test." – Plutarch (920 BC, trans. Cherniss & Helmbold)

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