Adversarial Digital Twins
Training Intellectuals to Better Answer the Heretic
My sense of injustice and desire to correct it is aroused when I see fundamentally kind and sound-thinking people get rhetorically1 abused by bad-faith actors — casuists and sophists. I do not deny the role of rhetoric in effective communication. But when this rhetoric is severed from love of knowledge and the desire to collaboratively discover and share truth, it becomes a tool of abuse.
To help these decent people rise and answer the heretic2, generative AI can be used in the creation of responsive digital twins3 of commentators and pundits who are the best examples of the behavior described above. This can be coupled with commentaries aimed to prime trainees to rapidly identify and counter abusive rhetoric wherever it may arise. Decent people, as a function of their decency, are generally not equipped to effectively deal with those who will rip into scoffing condescension, gish galloping, and barefaced lying at the barest prompting. To be effective in the coming years, intellectuals will need to be able to navigate the worsening ‘public conversation’ in order to rise above the fray and be heard. Rhetoric cannot be ignored if you are trying to reach people, and we need to adapt to the evolving landscape.
I often think about how advances in technology can service human intellectual and social life. I often think about how technology can be used to create more effective intellectuals at a faster rate, trained with novel tooling in the traditional subjects and competencies. And to be exceedingly explicit, I believe that training students is more important to me than equipping. One of my biggest criticisms of the use of technology to bolster intellectual life is that it becomes an end unto itself, grabbing the attention and vitally of students rather than enabling them to go off into the world and progress towards ambitious goals. I want to condition their intellects for the evolving world rather than hand them a tool that must be carried around and painstakingly looked after.
I will be its first customer.
In the classical sense.
R’ Elazar said: Be diligent in the study of the Torah; And know how to answer a heretic, And know before whom you toil, and that your employer is faithful, for He will pay you the reward of your labor. —Pirkei Avot 2:14