iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I've mostly "trained" Claude to stop glazing me as its default response but it still slips back into it. It's basically an unreliable employee who is very good at some important things but requires constant supervision and it tries to make up for its mistakes with obsequious praise.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

That said, my general impression of intelligence and sentience is that if octopi had evolved as highly social creatures, we might not have ended up the only highly technological civilization around here. But I read a lot of sci-fi lol

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I agree, especially re: that slope to eugenics. I’m just a layperson and writer who has always followed this stuff and didn’t expect we’d get to this point before we got to, maybe, flying cars or something more fun.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Also, thank you for helping me think through some things I've been gnawing at for a bit and wanting to write about. Not your intention but still helpful lol But all good!

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A dog thinks. This is an unremarkable fact. We also underestimate the intelligence and sentience, for some value of sentience, of other animals in the world (dolphins, whales, pigs, etc.). That doesn't make current AI sentient.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

So, yes, I believe sentience is required for thinking. I believe we should be prioritizing ourselves over something we haven't quite invented yet but are pretty fucking likely to do so in the near future. And, yes, that something may eventually be sentient as well. We're not ready for that.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I'm an atheist so I can't call on any higher power to justify our existence. I only know that we all have value and potential. I'd rather us not become a world of humans whose only aspiration is bland consumption.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Why should we be actively creating planned obsolescence for ourselves when we could be applying at least some semblance of thought and caution before careening down this path? Tech people snort derisively at these kinds of thoughts but that doesn't negate them.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

What is our role in life? What paths do we have to explore and grow if we create something that will always beat us to our dreams and goals?

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Maybe it's our scientific wonder and curiosity. But you've already gone to great pains to say how quickly we've already been outstripped by even today's relatively rudimentary AI (compared to what we already imagine and will likely create). So, that field will be ceded.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Maybe you would say it's our creativity and art. But we're told constantly that AI will do it better and we're flooded with AI "art" and tech bros are eagerly pushing AI creations over human. And maybe lots of people are willing to accept that.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

If everything we've achieved, from science to art to love and emotions, can be replicated and perpetuated by AI, what is our purpose? Consuming and reproducing? That would seem to be all that's left, at least from what I can tell from the perspective of the most enthusiastic AI boosters.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

If there is no intrinsic value in our humanity and we've created a machine (or process or what have you) that can replicate -- maybe even improve -- on every thing that we do or create or believe, then what is the point of human existence?

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Well, that's the $100,000 question, isn't it? And it gets to the question of why so many humans are so eager to erase ourselves from history. I can't answer that off the top of my head, despite thinking about it a lot, other than to say that there is and has to be some intrinsic value to humanity.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

That's fine! I don't think I'm arbitrary because I don't think sentience is necessarily limited to biology. I just don't believe AI as we know it now is anywhere near sentience. And we should be glad for that, at the moment.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Oh come on. This is what I mean by people pretending ChatGPT is Data on Star Trek. It's just not true. Does that preclude self-aware, conscious synthetic life in the future? No. Is that what we have no. Absolutely fucking not. Also, C-3PO is a terrible role model.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Fine, uniquely biological. I have no problem with that since humans are just one example of animals. Doesn't negate what I'm saying about anthropomorphizing mechanical processes.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

We both seem to agree on utility (at least in some cases). Where we differ is in the anthropomorphizing. I believe thinking is inextricably linked to consciousness. AI today is incredibly advanced computing and algorithms and all sorts of things beyond my training, but it's not thinking.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

And it is uselessly sycophantic because it has been programmed to be that way, not because it believes in my work or cares about my feelings. It was designed to give me that response. Which is why that response is not reasoned or real.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I’m sure I don’t use it like you. I use Claude for some of my real estate work, doing data analysis that I wouldn’t be able to do on my own. I refuse to use it for my writing work because it frankly sucks at it and is primarily a uselessly sycophantic editor.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

“Comprehension: the act or action of grasping with the intellect : UNDERSTANDING //children who have difficulty with comprehension of spoken language //What the artist actually needs is comprehension of his aims and ideals by men he respects … — H. L. Mencken” This doesn’t sound like today’s AI

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Also, I’m not saying only humans can. I’m saying I don’t AI is. At least right now. I tend to be in the camp that thinks we may be fucked when it actually does. But that’s a different thing, or at least later thing.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

What, other than gods, did humans believe was reasoning thousands of years ago? Or hundreds?

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I suppose because I don’t buy the metaphor of the human brain as a computer. Running code, even incredibly complex code that’s incomprehensible to most of us outside the field, isn’t human reasoning. It’s code.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

It’s not mimicking because it’s a cat with its own self interest interacting with the world around it. A cat has motivations, needs, and emotions (albeit non-human). AI doesn’t.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Just because AI is solving problems that are orders of magnitude more complex than the ones I ran through my TRS-80 Model III back in the day doesn’t make their work “reasoning” or “thinking” in the human sense that we define those terms. There’s a reason we’ve used terms like computing.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

When it’s presenting its output in conversational human form and encouraging users to interact with it as they would with a human being, it’s mimicking. Because it’s not human.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I mean, we have a rich tradition of human actors faking emotions (not to mention some of my ex boyfriends). This is not new territory. AI isn’t feeling emotions, no matter how much some people want to believe so.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

There’s a lot of stuff that AI can do that’s amazing and is going to do great things. I’d be a fool to say otherwise. But there are a lot of convos that need to be had, very fucking soon, about what it actually is and what lines we need to draw. Because it’s not without danger.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Not to be too obvious, but basic human emotion would be one place to start.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

That’s a different question, though yeah people don’t realize what’s happening and coming. God knows the thing I care about most, writing, is being decimated now. But there’s a deeper question about what “human capabilities” means. We’re gonna have to grapple with that to figure this shit out.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I don’t think it’s incomprehensible, I just think it’s wrong, in large part because people are mistaking Gen AI human mimicry output for human behavior. Our tendency to anthropomorphism isn’t doing us any favors with AI. ChatGPT sims a conversation and people think we’ve invented Lt. Cmdr. Data.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

That claim — "AIs are growing very human-like in capabilities" — is vast and incredibly up for grabs. I disagree, vehemently, because mimicry and speed in tasks doesn’t equate to human capabilities. But then you have to start defining “human capabilities.” Not a great argument to have in short form

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I almost gave up on The Blood of Dawnwalker because of its parry system (I suck at parrying). Then something clicked. A Gen X gamer's review of the new vampire RPG from the Witcher III creators — and a small victory for aging reflexes. #BloodOfDawnwalker #Witcher #gaming #RPG #vampires

open.substack.com

Review: The Blood of Dawnwalker

If at first I don’t succeed, die, die again: A Gen X gamer attempts to hone his fading reflexes in a new vampire adventure RPG

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The first time I saw someone die was on a tennis court. Reading Joan Didion’s memoir of her grief at the sudden death of her husband, John Dunne, sent me back to that teenage moment when I tried to comfort a woman who was losing her husband. #JoanDidion #grief #memoir #BookSky 💙📚

backhalfbugg.com

Tennis, Death, and Didion

Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking launched me into a new consideration of my own first experience with death

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Books & Bakes 2026 is a wrap. Twenty books, 6,867 pages, and $2,180 raised for Cake4Kids, way more than my first-year goal. Plus, I accidentally fell into a four-book rabbit hole of Dungeon Crawler Carl and I think you should join me there. #DungeonCrawlerCarl #BookSky 💙📚

backhalfbugg.com

Reading, Writing, and Dungeon Crawling

Books & Bakes: Crossing the finish line for my first annual read-a-thon benefiting Cake4Kids with the sci-fi satire Dungeon Crawler Carl

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Part of me doesn't want to make fun of how he looks because I'm the same age but also god, what a fucking graying, double-chinned, duplicitous choad. He is the amalgamation of all my shittiest frat brothers who outed me. God I fucking hate this guy.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I'm arguing on Threads (I know, my bad) w/ someone who claims to be the father of a trans kid who will be watching the show because "thousands of people who have worked on this project get paid and continue to get paid. I support the artists more than I despise her" which made my head explode

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

I think all the historical elision of Black people and slavery throughout the 19th and 20th centuries was willful. But in this specific case, it reads as very willful due to his examples of American "innocency" (Jefferson being a prime example)

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Find out more about Books & Bakes and make your pledge supporting Cake4Kids here:

seanbuggrealtor.com

Books and Bakes — Sean Bugg | REALTOR®

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

I suspect reading Reinhold Niebuhr won't set my search stats on fire but I'm glad I did — even if his willful blindness to America's race history is infuriating. Led me straight to James Baldwin though, so win-win. Plus a halftime Books & Bakes report. #JamesBaldwin #AmericanHistory #BookSky 💙📚

open.substack.com

The American Myth of Innocence

Books & Bakes: A halftime progress report and a frustrating experience with the invisibility of race in “The Irony of American History”

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Just absolute racist fucking bullshit. I’d like to say I can’t believe we’ve gotten to this pathetic point but, yeah, we’ve been on this trajectory for a while now.

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Reposted by Sean Bugg

The Onion @theonion.com · 07/08/2026

Black Homeowner Receives Higher Appraisal After Displaying Pictures Of Klan Members

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

I haven’t talked to my dad in years because he’s a homophobic asshole and I’m not in therapy, I just finally realized I didn’t fucking have to.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Books & Bakes is my summer read-a-thon benefiting Cake4Kids, which provides birthday cakes to at-risk and underserved kids. Find out more here: seanbuggrealtor.com/books-and-bakes

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Mike Flanagan's Carrie is already getting grief from some fans because the actress isn't "fat" or "ugly." I reread Stephen King's first novel for Books & Bakes. The actual text is more complicated than the criticism suggests. #StephenKing #horrorfiction #Carrie #BookSky 💙📚

backhalfbugg.com

Carrie, Stephen King, and the Politics of Fatness

Books & Bakes: The upcoming remake of King’s iconic first novel is raising new questions for fans about fidelity and adaptation

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Yeah, he once seemed cool and then turned out to be another Schumer-esque dude totally not up for the moment.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

I think he's might-as-well-be dead. But the insanity over all this - demanding people break into a hospital room and displaying a utter lack of knowledge about Kentucky - isn't helping.

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Sean Bugg @seanbugg.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Like every real estate agent, I have horror stories. But none quite like the one in Marisa Kashino’s dark comedy about the Washington real estate market, Best Offer Wins. It’s been called Gone Girl for real estate and that ain’t wrong. My latest review for Books & Bakes. #BookSky #realestate 💙📚

youtu.be

Gone Girl Goes House Hunting: Best Offer Wins | Books & Bakes

YouTube video by Sean Bugg

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