Poison Fruit
The Hunters in the Snow
Hunger is a primal thing.
Regulated by the ancient hypothalamus, it slices through the brain indifferent to the rationalizations of the conscious mind. It cannot be reasoned with; it accepts only surrender or utter defiance.
I have grown to know hunger intimately.
Collegiate lightweight rowers must weigh an average of 155 pounds. But we weigh-in the day before the race itself. This window means that it’s possible to cut around fifteen pounds over 72 hours, step on the scale, and then gain it all back overnight.
In fact, because size and strength directly correlate with boat speed, this is not only a possible strategy but the optimal one. The ideal lightweight rower is too heavy and too tall. His performance is limited only by how much he is willing to suffer in advance of the weigh-in.
In an effort to win this optimization game, I have learned to sit with an empty stomach. I have memorized the calories of every item in the dining hall and taken final exams with sweat-soaked trash bags stuffed under my clothes. I have forced the primal voices of hunger and thirst to bow to goals far greater than the satisfaction of the flesh.
But to suffer in this way is now a conscious choice. The ingenuity of technology has solved the sensation of hunger: prescriptions for GLP-1s agonists have increased nearly 600% over six years. 1 in 8 Americans have tried them. In parallel, language models have emerged as an Ozempic for the mind. They’ve solved the struggle of thought itself, allowing one to leave behind the agonizing friction of learning in favor of a narcotic flow of surface-level knowledge.
Technology first gave man dominion over nature, and then dominion over other men. It now promises to give him dominion over himself. But this offer is a poison fruit, for if taken thoughtlessly, what it gives in control it takes in agency.
To carelessly submit the body to a GLP-1 or the mind to an LLM is to give up the jagged, vivid highs and lows of struggle in exchange for a sort of grey smoothness. A hyper-optimized, strongly convex blob of human experience that yields neither deep desire nor true satisfaction.
Technology is a scalar operator on human agency. The choice of sign relies on both the user and the technologist. The GLP-1 that saves a diabetic’s life collapses the action space of an otherwise healthy person. The LLM that allows a mathematician to solve an open Erdős problem robs an undergraduate of their ability to work through difficult ideas and ask meaningful questions. As we tear closer and closer to the 21st century technocapital singularity, these dualities will only become more extreme: AI-enabled BCIs will grant unprecedented agency to the disabled, but will inevitably and consensually turn millions of people into purely mimetic p-zombies.
To quote my good friend Isaac Clayton: “technology can either invade every aspect of our lives, removing agency, or exist as a silent facilitator through which individuals can live more fully. [...] Agency is nothing but an illusion if choices lead to the same consequence or produce uncorrelated outcomes. Agency implies consequence.”
Along with suppressing hunger, GLP-1s are increasingly shown to reduce sexual desire, risk-taking impulse, and nearly all other forms of pleasure-seeking. These behaviors and instincts are the forces that destroy us. They’re also the forces that drive us to love and act and dream. They’re the reason that we live.
Technology that removes the possibility of suffering removes the choice of suffering. It may leave the illusion that one has mastered their body or conquered an idea, but mastery without struggle, without choice, is nothing.
I think the future belongs to those who refuse to cede their agency.
I think it belongs to those who allow their empty stomachs to gnaw them to the bone, who tackle impenetrable abstractions with only pen and paper, who, through the agony of the hunt and the ecstasy of the feast, reach a true and conscious sovereignty.
Jesus fasted for forty days before beginning his ministry. Andrew Wiles labored for seven years before proving Fermat's Last Theorem. If you cannot conquer hunger, how will you conquer worlds?
I have nothing to say except that you are an amazing writer. Beautiful and real. Keep at it.
Great stuff.