TL;DR — It’s mildly interesting that a famous artistic married couple in the 1800s was on opposite sides of the doomer/boomer dichotomy, in a way that feels surprisingly contemporary in relation to AI discourse.
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a mediocre book wrapped around one small and dazzling idea. What if a scientist thoughtlessly invented something huge, and then not even a full second after the invention finally worked, realized that he’d made a huge mistake and ran away?
The idea cuts away a lot of unnecessary realism (how difficult it is to invent something, how rare moral epiphanies are, how people stick to bad projects because of sunk costs, how hard it is to forecast badness) to boil down to a single scene the whole moral question around science: what happens when a scientist invents something BAD?
In Frankenstein, the scientist runs away in horror. And then a whole bunch of tedious gothic melodrama happens and some people get hurt but none of that really matters. The book isn’t famous for what happens in the Arctic expedition sideplot or the ‘spying on people in a cottage’ sideplot. It is famous because the scientist ran away in horror.
It is easy to imagine why the question of science being bad was in vogue at the time. Science was in the air. Mills and machines were in use. Children were in factories. Aldini was using electricity to induce twitches in corpses. Luddites were up in arms. Several million smallpox vaccines had gone into arms. The famous GDP chart was initiating the launch sequence.
But Mary Shelley wasn’t the only Shelley writing a book with Prometheus in the title and a reference to Paradise Lost on the first page. A mere two years after Mary Shelley published her book, her husband published Prometheus Unbound.
The title is a reference to Greek playwright Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound. In that play, Greek god Prometheus finds out Zeus is planning to kill the human race, so he goes behind Zeus’s back and gives humans not only fire, but also skills like writing, math, and agriculture. Zeus is mad and he punishes Prometheus by tying him to a mountain and torturing him, but eventually they reconcile.
Percy Shelley rewrites the Greek ending to give Prometheus his heroic due. In his version, Prometheus doesn’t reconcile with Zeus. No, Zeus is a tyrant, and reconciling with him would defile Prometheus. Instead, Shelley has Zeus be deposed, so that Prometheus can be freed while remaining unrepentant. And mankind, now ruled by a kind and just ruler, blossoms:
The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless, Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king Over himself; just, gentle, wise: but man Passionless; no, yet free from guilt or pain
These are opposing visions of what happens when mankind gets knowledge that gives it godlike powers. In Mary Shelley’s doomer vision, the person who uses this power regrets it immediately, and suffers because of it for the rest of his life. In Percy Shelley’s boomer vision, the person who gives mankind this power never regrets it, and eventually lives to see his actions result in utopia on Earth. Two hundred years later, on the eve of transformative AI, both their visions are still live.
Thanks for sharing. I’ve been thinking about Frankenstein a lot recently and I hadn’t read Percy Shelley’s work.
Arguably, the scientist ran away in horror before the work was done. There’s a plot line that gets cut from a lot of adaptations where the creature kills someone and a servant girl gets blamed. Frankenstein knew it was likely the monster yet says nothing, allowing the girl to be executed for the murder.
In the book, there’s surprisingly little time spent on the creation of the creature, he does it quickly and unthinkingly as a student. Whereas the lab scenes are the main event in movie adaptations.
Perhaps helpful context about Mary and Percy Shelley:
A year before writing the short story that became Frankenstein, the Shelleys’ first daughter died at 10 days old. Mary reported having recurring dreams of rubbing the cold baby by the fire until it lived—she was 17.
Percy was a radical advocating for free love, atheism, republicanism and vegetarianism. Values which Mary shared. His father cut him off because of these values and he had to escape to continental Europe to avoid creditors.
Mary was pregnant when Percy’s wife back in England gave birth to his second child. Mary and Percy got married after his first wife drowned herself in the Serpentine.
Mary would have an additional 3 children with Percy. One died of malaria at 3, one died in infancy and the final survived into adulthood.
Percy died at 29 in a poorly prepared-for boating accident.
TL;DR — It’s mildly interesting that a famous artistic married couple in the 1800s was on opposite sides of the doomer/boomer dichotomy, in a way that feels surprisingly contemporary in relation to AI discourse.
(A better formatted version of this is here.)
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a mediocre book wrapped around one small and dazzling idea. What if a scientist thoughtlessly invented something huge, and then not even a full second after the invention finally worked, realized that he’d made a huge mistake and ran away?
The idea cuts away a lot of unnecessary realism (how difficult it is to invent something, how rare moral epiphanies are, how people stick to bad projects because of sunk costs, how hard it is to forecast badness) to boil down to a single scene the whole moral question around science: what happens when a scientist invents something BAD?
In Frankenstein, the scientist runs away in horror. And then a whole bunch of tedious gothic melodrama happens and some people get hurt but none of that really matters. The book isn’t famous for what happens in the Arctic expedition sideplot or the ‘spying on people in a cottage’ sideplot. It is famous because the scientist ran away in horror.
It is easy to imagine why the question of science being bad was in vogue at the time. Science was in the air. Mills and machines were in use. Children were in factories. Aldini was using electricity to induce twitches in corpses. Luddites were up in arms. Several million smallpox vaccines had gone into arms. The famous GDP chart was initiating the launch sequence.
But Mary Shelley wasn’t the only Shelley writing a book with Prometheus in the title and a reference to Paradise Lost on the first page. A mere two years after Mary Shelley published her book, her husband published Prometheus Unbound.
The title is a reference to Greek playwright Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound. In that play, Greek god Prometheus finds out Zeus is planning to kill the human race, so he goes behind Zeus’s back and gives humans not only fire, but also skills like writing, math, and agriculture. Zeus is mad and he punishes Prometheus by tying him to a mountain and torturing him, but eventually they reconcile.
Percy Shelley rewrites the Greek ending to give Prometheus his heroic due. In his version, Prometheus doesn’t reconcile with Zeus. No, Zeus is a tyrant, and reconciling with him would defile Prometheus. Instead, Shelley has Zeus be deposed, so that Prometheus can be freed while remaining unrepentant. And mankind, now ruled by a kind and just ruler, blossoms:
These are opposing visions of what happens when mankind gets knowledge that gives it godlike powers. In Mary Shelley’s doomer vision, the person who uses this power regrets it immediately, and suffers because of it for the rest of his life. In Percy Shelley’s boomer vision, the person who gives mankind this power never regrets it, and eventually lives to see his actions result in utopia on Earth. Two hundred years later, on the eve of transformative AI, both their visions are still live.
Thanks for sharing. I’ve been thinking about Frankenstein a lot recently and I hadn’t read Percy Shelley’s work.
Arguably, the scientist ran away in horror before the work was done. There’s a plot line that gets cut from a lot of adaptations where the creature kills someone and a servant girl gets blamed. Frankenstein knew it was likely the monster yet says nothing, allowing the girl to be executed for the murder.
In the book, there’s surprisingly little time spent on the creation of the creature, he does it quickly and unthinkingly as a student. Whereas the lab scenes are the main event in movie adaptations.
Perhaps helpful context about Mary and Percy Shelley:
A year before writing the short story that became Frankenstein, the Shelleys’ first daughter died at 10 days old. Mary reported having recurring dreams of rubbing the cold baby by the fire until it lived—she was 17.
Percy was a radical advocating for free love, atheism, republicanism and vegetarianism. Values which Mary shared. His father cut him off because of these values and he had to escape to continental Europe to avoid creditors.
Mary was pregnant when Percy’s wife back in England gave birth to his second child. Mary and Percy got married after his first wife drowned herself in the Serpentine.
Mary would have an additional 3 children with Percy. One died of malaria at 3, one died in infancy and the final survived into adulthood.
Percy died at 29 in a poorly prepared-for boating accident.