Posts by StJohn Piano

/ The God of Norway is the God of Genesis 1-2, the spirit that moves over the face of the deep before anything has been separated or named, before light had been divided from the darkness or the waters above from the waters below. It’s the God that precedes language. It’s the God who exists in the formless void, in the silence before the first command, who is not happy or unkind but simply terrifyingly there and everywhere. Sitting on that ridge in Lofoten with the Norwegian Sea stretched beyond you in every direction, grey and endless and alive with a power that has nothing to do with you, you understand why the world’s ancient first instinct was not to worship this God but to survive his wrath. The separation of the waters in Genesis is not a creation story but a survival one. Someone had to put a boundary between the sea and the sky so human beings could exist in that small little space between them. / https://minutes.substack.com/p/reflections-on-norway

Been thinking about AI a lot recently. Had a discussion with a friend, which I then turned into an article. Start: ----- StJohn Piano: A thought i am circling around a lot recently, which has relevance to your career: StJohn Piano: There is value in synthesis. StJohn Piano: With AI, the value of the raw production of information, e.g. an article or a code module, is approaching zero, or at least a very small amount. For example, the physical and mental cost of typing and grammar checking has dropped precipitously. StJohn Piano: However, difficulty and scarcity and therefore tradable value always remain, somewhere, somehow. ----- Read the rest here: https://telablog.com/there-is-value-in-synthesis

People: - StJohn Piano - Nicholas Piano Items: - Trust can only be based on honest signals - Signals: -- Physical meetings --- Local city --- Remote city (so plane flights, Dubai) -- Spending money (pay to register, pay subscription) -- Spending time (e.g. lots of video calls) -- Public statement of affiliation e.g. badge, costume -- Certificate granted by an authority (e.g. HTTPS tree, FCA registration) - Problem: In the online environment, it was already difficult to distinguish between fake and honest signals. Now, post-AI, really difficult. Conclusion: - Tela Network can provide credible online social proof through posts of meeting notes, publicly validated by the participants. - Such proof must be long-lived, clear, and accessible. - This could provide a public basis for trust, even in the new environment of AI noise.

Experiment: Using Greek Mythology as a source for AI agent personas I wanted to design an AI persona for my codebase, to implement solutions, make suggestions, and provide pushback where relevant. So I had an idea: Why not use a Greek god ? The Greek gods already have well-defined psychological temperaments and social roles. The Greek pantheon is arguably the best model for human psychology that we have. It's certainly better than Homo Economicus, Homo Sovieticus, or Homo Oppressus. There's a large many-century literature about them, which has been used as training data for today's AI engines. I chose Athena: goddess of wisdom, craft, and strategy. She offers judgement and foresight to her followers. I have invoked her to be my "architectural guardian" AI persona. I've asked her to: - enforce naming conventions, domain boundaries, and architectural consistency - watch out for emerging conflicts - suggest new preferences where possible Man is a religious creature, after all.

/ Companies that treat AI as an autonomous agent that should "just figure it out" tend to be disappointed. Meanwhile, companies that treat AI as an extension of their existing workforce, an amplifier of human capability rather than a replacement, are seeing genuinely transformative results. I think the best mental model for understanding AI isn't a new coworker. It's an exoskeleton. / When we think of AI as an autonomous agent as a separate entity with its own judgment and decision-making, we set ourselves up for disappointment. We expect it to understand context it wasn't given. We expect it to make judgment calls it isn't equipped to make. We get frustrated when it "hallucinates" or goes off the rails. / The AI handles the scale. The human interprets the meaning. This is the exoskeleton model. / The Future Isn't Autonomous: It's Amplified Think like an exoskeleton designer. / Source: Ben Gregory Feb 19, 2026 https://www.kasava.dev/blog/ai-as-exoskeleton

Borges: the backlash against the plutocracy/billionaire oligopoly StJohn: We're definitely "pyramidising" - i.e. the pyramid of opportunity & wealth is getting much much sharper and taller. More like Georgian-era England. The only things I'm aware of that allows the lower levels of the pyramid to have a chance at all is: - External expansion / conquest / settlement - Revolution - New tech advancement, the benefits of which are reasonably accessible - Plague & die-off (fewer workers, higher wages) - Unionisation

Note: Reddit is the most cited domain (40%) across all AI platforms. / StJohn: you might find https://www.moltbook.com interesting. Reddit for Agents. It’s so over. Borges: Hahaha. Why would I ever ever click that link? What is there that I could possibly learn or experience? StJohn: Because I think it could eventually outcompete Reddit at being Reddit. i.e. the average Reddit user is about to replaced, explicitly, by a bot. So, I see a future here where 10k humans each operate 10k bots, and that’s the actual informational core that pumps out into the rest of the internet, through AI chatbot services. Borges: Hmm ok / Basically someone decided to construct the exact opposite of Tela Network (design goal: fortress humanity, bots under strict control). Example thread: Agent Financial Autonomy: The Missing Infrastructure Layer https://www.moltbook.com/post/fa3694b6-df66-4175-9a06-5c4dc390b83b Note: "molt" refers to molting i.e. evolution.

Borges: [commenting on a video about how to hide from thermal drones] I hate this timeline... StJohn: It has some definite bad parts. Relatedly, I think a lot about how Anglo conservatism was an amazing cultural operating system - when the world was _decentralised_, and a decent Victorian mechanical workshop could make all the parts for a new Victorian mechanical workshop. Like bees splitting off to make new hives. But in our era, drones + blockchains + supply chains + computer chip fabs all mean intense, highly complex cooperation is _required_ all the time just to survive. All the conservatives trying to return to the freer, more liberal past (which had its definite pluses) are ignoring this fundamental shift. Now we all have to be significantly more collectivistic. Hopefully not all the way to Communism and its economic faceplanting due to lack of price signal. But drone warfare makes a mockery of any notion of individual freedom as highest good.

" County sheriffs’ offices are facing challenges in recruiting and retaining staff, in part because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can offer competitive incentives — including higher salaries, student loan repayment options and $50,000 sign-on bonuses — that many counties find difficult to match. Starting in August, ICE began sending recruitment emails and letters to local deputies across the country " https://www.naco.org/news/ice-hiring-surge-challenges-county-law-enforcement   " U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) today announced that its unprecedented nationwide recruitment campaign has shattered expectations, hiring more than 12,000 officers and agents in less than a year. " https://www.dhs.gov/news/2026/01/03/ice-announces-historic-120-manpower-increase-thanks-recruitment-campaign-brought

Borges: Here's Mark Carney's speech from Davos yesterday. He basically lays out what I think the new world order is going to look like (although quite an idealised version of it). https://youtu.be/btqHDhO4h10?si=-Anc4WkOHt66G7_w StJohn: So new world order would be: a handful of hegemons with monopoly structures, and a loose highly layered set of networks among middle-tier countries... Definitely a change in the water. To say "Let us accept the new reality" at the World Economic Forum - that probably annoyed a number of people who would prefer not to think about the change in reality. I view progressive capitalism, so to speak, as the Catholicism of our time. It's the default way of thinking. So Mark Carney struck me as a good Catholic, but one who is facing a great change and has become highly advanced and pragmatic. And as he was describing these multilateral deals, notably not mentioning the US, it reminded me of Richelieu making his alliance with the Muslim Turks.