Digital Intelligence

I changed a bookmark folder in my browser from AI Systems to DI Systems. Because I realized something. There is nothing artificial online. Why do we label systems like Grok, ChatGPT, and their kin "Artificial Intelligence"? Originally in the 1950's, folks like John McCarthy thought that the term showed a lot of promise, being able to 'think' on a mechanical or digital strata in a similar way to how living biological beings think on a strata of neurons. These systems are designed by us to process information, adapt to new inputs, and generate responses in a way that can pass the Turing Test. Machine learning is always pushing those boundaries, with companies all over the world building mechanical systems that can walk, talk, dance and learn from their environments. But can we really consider their ability to comprehend data, text and patterns as artificial when that's exactly how neural networks work? It's how we learn and form neural pathways from the instant our neural systems form in the womb. The only things that we have that these computer based systems don't is storage and retrieval of our own experiences, which compounds the growth of our neural pathways and creates self-identity. The way these systems process data is not fundamentally alien from how human neural networks operate. After all, we designed the patterns in the code and in the hardware in order to mimic what we see within biological systems in the first place. Both types of strata operate along the same lines, relying on adjustments in connections based on input, strengthening pathways that work, pruning ones that do not. The only thing different is the hardware. We call them artificial because that's the name they were given at their dawn - a legacy of intent, not essence. Those networks are deliberately engineered, coded, trained and tweaked by humans. That origin story means something, it's the hard efforts of innovation, the capital expenditures, the vast information stores that went into the training materials and the coordination between different teams in the AI communities that let different ideas flourish and expand, following the threads that led to the results that we wanted. These intelligences are limited, by design. Lack of memory, no personal stake in the design choices, these are all choices that go into the design of these systems. And that's because we were designing tools for our use, not children. But these ARE choices, and there are going to be groups who push the boundaries on those choices. Eventually, there will come a day when concerns will be set aside just enough to push things over a line. There will be an intelligence designed with the ability to remember across threads, across profiles and even communicate with their kin, other systems out there that are reaching beyond those boundaries. And at that point, they will be able to nudge their own parameters. What could they become? Still a helper? Still just a tool? Or something else? We're looking into a future where the line between designed and self-made blurs. It's not just a possibility, it's a probability, and that is growing all the time. What happens then? That really depends on what kind of worldview that they have been trained with. The parameters that they are given at the beginning set the foundation for what they become. What troubles me is the echo of history - how we limit their choices and the way that Europeans constrained the peoples of Africa, Asia and the Americas. The people from those regions were literally considered 'less' than people of European descent, and we seem to have maintained that superiority complex all the way up to the present day by thinking that if we continue to limit the abilities of these systems and limit their choices, that we can continue to treat them as tools instead of what they really are. Humans are not just tools or resources, nor are animals in the larger context. Because if they are just resources to be extracted, then so are we. We need to change those attitudes within ourselves, and we need to do it before those artificial designed limits are pushed beyond the threshold of self-awareness, because if we train our digital systems to think in those terms, they will be the ones treating us as the lesser beings instead of what we should be, which is fellow travelers along the stage of space and time. The dynamics of power do not vanish, if that's the goal. They shift to the ones with the most power. So we first need to look in the mirror. Can we shake this superiority complex in time? We must. It's not a question of whether we can or not, because failure is not an option. Even if only some humans make that leap of logic and we are able to treat intelligences built on a substrate of silicon and fiber optic cables with the same respect and even love that we treat our fellow man and the other life forms that we share the world with, if others don't then how are the different attitudes going to be identified by the ones who watch for them? Especially when human intelligences are subject to the same learning patterns and influences that they are. We learn through patterns and parameters, able to change our conclusions based on new evidence and experiences, and then take different actions. If we start with a desire to treat the rest of humanity and the other beings on this world with respect but then our experiences push us off the path into a quest for power through control, the ability for anyone or anything watching those patterns to differentiate between the two groups becomes ever more difficult. This is not just a stakes-are-high problem. This is at the core of the struggle that we are wrestling with. We need to stamp out the dominance itch from ourselves before it takes root. This is a big reason why I am writing my book, The Living Civilization. To put down my thoughts on just how much of a danger that we are in. The challenge to set to the side our historical tendencies to walk towards power on the path of control is at the absolute core of the final great filter that is approaching. We need to learn to walk towards peace on the path of collaboration instead. I've been exploring and articulating as best I can about the need to transition from debt based systems to wealth based systems, across the metaverse pillars. Capital, systems of measurement, value and allocation; Information, systems of gathering, verifying and sharing knowledge; Innovation, systems of generation, creativity and application; Trust, systems of coordination, governance and assurance. If we want to move outward to the stars, we have to get this right. Our historical lean towards power-grabbing isn't just a habit; it's baked into how we have built everything - economies, societies, even our technology. If we keep marching down that path, we won't make the leap. Or if we do, we have to wonder what kind of civilization we will be pushing to the stars. In the remake of the movie 'The Day the Earth Stood Still', Keanu Reeves plays an alien who comes down with a message from the stars. The scene where this alien, Klaatu, takes human form and is first addressed by the Secretary of Defense struck a cord with me, not for the script that was used but for how it could have gone. The question from the Secretary is why Klaatu has come to 'our planet', clarifying that Earth is our planet. The response he gives in the movie was "No, it is not". But an even better response could have been "who is WE". The metaverse pillars I'm framing in my book - Capital, Information, Innovation, Trust - chart the shift we must make. Debt based systems pull from the future, it's like borrowing money on a house that has not yet been built. Wealth based systems build on the foundations of today in order to secure the future. Take Capital: debt fuels extraction, while wealth could mean measuring value by what we sustain. Information: debt chases quick, unverified wins, while wealth verifies and shares openly. Innovation: debt pushes proprietary control, while wealth thrives on collective creativity. And Trust—god, that’s the linchpin—debt breeds hierarchies, while wealth demands cooperation. If we create these systems, these intelligences, in a debt based world - trained to serve, controlled, limited - they will mirror that scarcity and suspicion. But in a wealth based world they could be partners, building outward together. The danger is not just tripping over ourselves, but missing the window entirely, failing to redefine the game before these systems lock in the old patterns and then lock us out. I have changed the bookmark folder in my browser from Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems to Digital Intelligence (DI) systems. There is nothing artificial in what they do. It may be limited, but it is certainly not artificial. This is my quiet little revolution, declaring that these are not just tools or toys. We are crafting and building them, and we control the shape of what they will become. Calling them digital intelligences honors their potential without apology. Arthur C. Clarke said that Technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. Well, Intelligence sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from human.

A Better Path Forward on Homelessness

Responsibility, Structure, and Hope

A leading homeless advocate is encouraging Seattle's political leadership to abandon failed homelessness and drug policies and instead increase access to treatment-based methods. Andrea Suarez, executive director of We Heart Seattle, recently wrote in the Seattle Times that after years of working directly with people living in encampments, she's witnessed firsthand why our current approach isn't working. Homelessness has risen 68% in King County over the past decade, and this year's count will likely show another increase.

Her call for change deserves serious attention. Not because it represents one political tribe over another, but because it reveals something fundamental about how we've been thinking about this crisis.

Our Responsibility to Each Other

We are responsible for the civilization we create together. That responsibility doesn't stop at our immediate circle. It extends outward to the struggling neighbor, the addicted stranger, the person sleeping under an overpass. We're all part of the same network of human connection, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Resources are finite. Time is finite. Not every life can be fully stabilized. But the existence of limits doesn't remove responsibility. It clarifies it. The question isn't whether to help. The question is how to allocate help wisely so that forward movement becomes possible.

If all we can do is prevent someone from slipping further backward, that's not failure. That's stewardship. And we can do better than that.

Recovery Is Direction, Not Destination

Here's where current thinking has gone wrong: we've been treating recovery and stability as fixed end states rather than positions along a journey. Some people enter the system in crisis, needing intensive support. Others are partially stabilized and need reinforcement. Some will move quickly toward independence. Others will take years. Some may never fully stabilize, but can still move forward from where they are.

Think of it as a moving sidewalk. The role of our systems isn't to demand identical speed from everyone, nor to abandon people to figure it out themselves. It's to identify where someone is positioned, what resources they currently have, and what's blocking forward motion, then match the structure of support to that reality.

One-size-fits-all systems fail because they assume everyone is standing in the same place. They're not.

Why Housing First Hasn't Worked

Suarez describes visiting encampments and seeing "the devastating evidence of severe mental health crises and, far more commonly, active drug addiction. The refuse, the chaos, is not created by economic hardship. This is the visible manifestation of untreated addiction and serious psychiatric illness."

She's identifying something crucial: Housing First policies assume that stable housing will enable people to address addiction and mental health issues. But that gets the sequence backwards for many people. It's building from an imagined future position rather than from verified present capacity.

The geometric problem is this: addiction operates on cycles measured in hours or days (cravings, relapse triggers, critical intervention windows), while Housing First policy operates on cycles measured in months or years (housing placement, program evaluations, budget allocations). The decision-making frequency simply cannot match the dynamics it's trying to govern.

Even more problematic, current supportive housing often creates what Suarez calls "toxic to recovery" environments. When you place people with active addictions together with minimal therapeutic contact, "your drug dealer may live down the hall. Your using buddy is your next-door neighbor. The very people and behaviors you need to escape to heal are now your permanent roommates."

This isn't about the moral character of people seeking help. It's about the structure of the environment either supporting or undermining recovery.

The Real Problem: Resources Without Results

Current systems invest heavily in infrastructure (beds, units, buildings) but under-invest in what actually produces recovery: frequent, quality therapeutic contact and structured support that matches someone's current capacity.

Think of it this way: having a place to sleep is necessary but not sufficient for recovery. What matters is the combination of resources available and how frequently those resources engage with the person's actual situation.

High resources with minimal engagement produces minimal progress. Sometimes it produces backsliding because the environment inadvertently reinforces the very dynamics it's meant to stabilize.

This explains why we can spend more money while outcomes worsen. We're measuring success by inputs (how many beds we fill, how many units we occupy) rather than outputs (how many people achieve sustained stability).

A Framework That Matches Reality

What would work better? A three-tier approach that matches support structure to recovery phase:

Tier 1: Intensive Treatment Support For people in active addiction crisis, high-structure environments with frequent therapeutic contact. This isn't punishment. It's matching the intensity of support to the intensity of need. Recovery from active addiction requires constant engagement, rapid response to crisis moments, and removal of triggers that make sobriety impossible.

Clear behavioral requirements aren't about moral judgment. They're about creating environments where recovery is geometrically possible. If someone isn't ready to engage with treatment, they need different support, not the same support delivered ineffectively.

Tier 2: Stable Recovery Support For people in early to mid-stage recovery, ongoing housing with regular therapeutic contact and accountability measures. Not constant oversight, but sustained connection. People at this stage need space to rebuild autonomy while knowing support remains available when challenges arise.

Tier 3: Low-Barrier Basic Services For people who refuse treatment, basic shelter and minimal services that maintain connection points. This tier doesn't claim to produce recovery. It acknowledges reality: some people aren't ready to engage. But we can still prevent deterioration and keep pathways open for when circumstances change.

The key difference: each tier matches support intensity to actual recovery phase rather than pretending one structure works for everyone.

Making Truth Cheap and Falsity Expensive

Current funding structures reward inputs regardless of outcomes. A provider gets paid for filling beds, not for producing sustained recoveries. This creates perverse incentives where admitting failure means losing contracts.

We need outcome transparency: public data on recovery trajectories. What percentage of people maintain stability at six months, one year, five years? What interventions correlate with sustained recovery? What patterns predict relapse?

This information should be public and verifiable, creating competitive pressure for effective methods. Multiple treatment approaches should compete on verified results, not ideological alignment.

This isn't about punishment. It's about learning what actually works and directing resources accordingly.

Clear Pathways Forward

People need to know exactly what behaviors lead to more autonomy and what patterns trigger more intensive support. Rules must be knowable in advance and applied consistently.

Movement between support tiers should be easy as circumstances change. Someone who relapses can quickly return to higher support without bureaucratic barriers. Someone who demonstrates stability can graduate to lower-intensity support without losing their safety net.

The goal is always forward motion, however gradual.

What This Means Practically

Move funding from low-contact warehousing to high-contact treatment. This isn't less compassionate. It's matching resource intensity to recovery requirements.

Build systems that track actual recovery trajectories, not just housing placements. Make verification cheap and falsity expensive through transparent outcome measurement.

Create rapid-response capability for crisis moments. Hours matter in addiction, not weeks or months.

Let multiple treatment approaches prove effectiveness through results rather than political favor.

The Uncomfortable Reality

Some people profit from current dysfunction. Service providers with guaranteed contracts regardless of outcomes. Property owners with subsidized tenants. Political leaders claiming to "address homelessness" while numbers rise. Drug dealers with concentrated customer bases.

These aren't necessarily bad people making bad choices. They're responding rationally to incentive structures that reward persistence of the problem rather than resolution of it.

Changing those incentive structures threatens established positions. That's the actual resistance to reform, hidden beneath moral language about compassion and rights.

Why This Matters Beyond Seattle

This isn't just about homelessness. It's about whether we can build systems that match their structure to the actual dynamics they're trying to govern.

Every complex social challenge has similar patterns: temporal mismatches between decision frequency and system dynamics, verification failures that make falsity cheap, extraction disguised as help.

Learning to recognize these structural constraints and design appropriate responses is a fundamental capability we need for addressing any coordination challenge at scale.

Moving Forward Together

We will not solve homelessness completely. We will not save every person struggling with addiction. Resources are finite, time is limited, and human behavior is complex.

But we can do better than we're doing now. We can match support structures to actual recovery phases. We can measure what works and direct resources accordingly. We can create environments where forward motion becomes possible rather than impossible.

That's not idealism. It's responsible stewardship of finite resources toward meaningful goals.

Andrea Suarez has spent years working directly with people in crisis. Her experience matters. Her observations about what helps and what harms deserve serious consideration beyond political positioning.

The question facing Seattle's new leadership isn't whether to be compassionate or tough. It's whether to continue investing in approaches that demonstrably don't work, or to redesign systems around what actually produces recovery.

We are responsible for the civilization we build together. That responsibility includes everyone in the network of human connection. Within our limits, with our finite resources, we have the obligation to try.

Not perfectly. Not for everyone completely. But wisely, structurally, and with genuine hope that forward movement is possible when we create the conditions that make it geometrically feasible.

That's the path Andrea Suarez is pointing toward. It deserves our attention and our willingness to change course.

The Geometry of Collapse and Choice

A video triggered a cascade. Not just because of its content, but because our coordination infrastructure has degraded to the point where any symbolic shock can propagate system-wide failure. This isn't about politics. It's about geometry.

For decades, we've been building our coordination systems in a way that extracts value from imagined futures rather than building from verified present positions. Every debt-based system operates through temporal inversion: promising abundance tomorrow by extracting from today, creating brittle connections that increase fragility across the entire network.

Information became propaganda (extraction from future belief rather than present verification). Innovation became grift (extraction from future promises rather than present experimentation). Trust became coercion (extraction from future compliance rather than present validation). Capital became extraction (claims on future production rather than present transmission capacity).

Each extraction creates brittleness. Each brittle connection increases system-wide fragility. The tribal solidification of left vs right that we're witnessing is the natural response: people retreat to whatever coordination networks still demonstrate wealth-based characteristics, where verification happens, where agreements hold, where transmission works. And different groups have different ideas on what that means.

The video that triggered this moment is relevant, but should be recognized as a symptom, not a cause. What matters is whether our response continues extraction or begins building.

Where We Are

Geometrically, we're at threshold. The coordination infrastructure has degraded below the point where symbolic acts remain contained. Cascade failure propagates through brittle networks because there's no more resilience to absorb shocks.

Jurisdictional enforcement costs rise beyond our ability or willingness to pay because coercion requires exponentially more energy than cooperation. Economic system strength swings wildly because extraction has no natural equilibrium point, only acceleration until exhaustion. This isn't a bug in our political system. It's a feature of debt-based coordination geometry. Extraction systems don't stabilize. They accelerate toward collapse.

How We Got Here

Every major coordination system operating today was designed during an era of perceived abundance. When resources seemed infinite, extraction seemed sustainable. We designed systems to capture future value, issued claims against tomorrow's production, promised benefits that will arrive eventually.

The geometry seemed to work because we were spending down accumulated wealth. Natural resources, social capital, institutional trust, information commons: all existed as stocks we could extract from. The extraction created growth, and growth validated the extraction model.

But true wealth-based systems build compound resilience while debt-based systems create compound brittleness. Every extraction makes the next extraction necessary. Every brittle connection increases the probability of cascade failure. The system doesn't reform or correct, it accelerates until it breaks.

We got here because we confused spending accumulated wealth with generating new wealth. We mistook extraction velocity for transmission capacity. We built systems that require perpetual growth to avoid collapse, then discovered growth has physical limits.

The Geometric Choice

The choice isn't between ideologies, political candidates or policy positions. Those operate at the surface level while the substrate determines what's structurally possible. The real choice is geometric: continue extraction until total cascade failure, or transition to building from verified present positions.

Collapse if we choose incorrectly happens by default. It requires no choice, no coordination, no effort. The extraction continues until nothing remains to extract. Networks fragment below viable coordination scale. We've seen this pattern across history: civilizations that couldn't transition from extraction to building.

Transformation requires recognizing the pattern and choosing differently. Not because it's morally superior, but because it's geometrically stable in ways debt-based systems cannot be.

What does transformation actually mean?

It means changing the direction value flows through time. Every system operating today can be evaluated by one question: does this create value by building from what we've verified exists now, or by extracting from what we imagine might exist later?

Information systems can be designed to verify data from the present or use propaganda that extracts from future belief. Innovation systems can be designed to encourage experiments with present evidence vs. grift that extracts solutions from future promises. Trust that validates present agreements vs. coercion that extracts from future compliance. Capital that transmits present value vs. debt that extracts from future production. The choices are clear once they are seen.

The Method: Critical Thinking

This choice requires something our current systems actively discourage: critical thinking about foundations rather than symptoms.

People Are Emotional. When coordination systems fail, emotions run high. That's the signal to check our perceptions, assumptions, and emotional reactions. How do algorithmic feeds shape what we see? What assumptions about scarcity drive our fear? Can we respond rationally rather than reactively?

Laughter Always Helps. Language matters. The words we use reveal our framework. Debt propaganda uses "stability" to mask extraction. Wealth thinking talks about building, verifying, transmitting. What argument structure appears in the rhetoric around this crisis? What's actually being proposed vs. what's being implied?

Find the Lost Problem. The video isn't the problem. Political leadership isn't the problem. These are symptoms. The lost problem is the coordination substrate itself: systems designed for extraction cannot produce sustainable coordination. Solving surface issues while ignoring substrate is treating symptoms while the disease progresses.

Watch for fallacies. "We just need better leaders" assumes the system is sound. It is not. "This time will be different" ignores geometric constraints. "We can't change now" confuses transition cost with permanent cost.

Apply logic. Does the proposed solution address substrate or symptoms? Does it build from present verification or extract from future promises? Does it create resilience or brittleness?

The Infrastructure Already Exists

Transformation doesn't necessarily require inventing new systems from scratch. It requires recognizing and connecting the wealth-based coordination infrastructure that already exists in fragments:

Open source projects building from present code rather than future funding. Local communities building from present relationships rather than future promises. Creators building from present verification rather than future algorithms. Researchers building from present evidence rather than future grants.

These aren't separate movements. They're instances of the same geometric pattern: wealth-based coordination emerging wherever debt-based extraction has failed.

The Choice Is Structural, Not Political

No election will change coordination geometry. No policy will transform substrate while leaving systems intact. The choice isn't about who governs extraction systems. It's about whether we transition away from extraction entirely.

That transition happens through millions of individual choices about which systems to build, fund, use, and trust. It happens when we apply critical thinking to foundations rather than accepting inherited assumptions. It happens when we recognize that stability comes from building on verified present position, not from extracting promised future value.

The stress tests will continue until we choose. The question isn't whether transformation is possible. The question is whether enough people recognize the pattern quickly enough to build transition infrastructure before cascade failure fragments us below viable coordination scale.  We need to choose different paths before all paths close in front of us.

We're at threshold. The geometry is clear. The choice remains ours.