Lawrence Lessig posited that we’re all “pathetic dots,” shoved around by law, norms, markets and code. Pirkowski reckons these pulls go back to DNA: each layer hardens so something looser can grow on top, and each can either adapt or blow up.

Today that’s AI as solvent and protocols as crystal, each the other’s evil twin. All crystal and you’re a rock; all solvent and you’re cancer. David Bloomin and Emmett Shear bet we stay in the happy middle through relationships, not rules, earning slack as we go.

A rock and a hard place is just two things squeezing. Pull something every which way and no rule can sort it out, so it has to build a picture of the whole mess, itself included. Perhaps that need to resolve unresolvable tensions is what prods consciousness to emerge?