Banging the Table Changes Nothing

ByDan October 25, 2026October 25, 2026 October 25, 2026

I’m writing to you as a friend.

You want to retain causal purchase in a future that will soon be swimming with AGI and posthuman minds.

You have things you value and want to see them persist.

I want to help you with that – I genuinely want to support you in that.

Hear me out:

Indignation as a Strategy

When you were a child, you might have learned that crying, stomping your feet, or banging your fist on the table could get you what you wanted.

Sometimes it worked.

As an adult, you may have discovered that moral outrage, banging your fists on the table political demands, or simply insisting that something is your right can also get you what you want.

Sometimes that worked, too.

Worse than the futility of banging the table is the false comfort it provides. Outrage can feel like certainty. If the loss of something sacred is such an affront to us, surely it will always remain as we wish it to be. 

“Sometimes mommy gave me what I wanted when I got mad! And sometimes social movements succeed because enough humans get mad and angry! And so if I am indignant about a future change, I can bang the table and make it go away!”

The problem:

The cosmos does not respond to your outrage or upset. 

Gravity, the properties of water, and the greater biosphere does not change because you are offended.

It doesn’t care how upset you are. It doesn’t respond to your demands. It doesn’t guarantee that your preferences, your values, your species, or your present notion of the good will persist.

Life is constantly becoming. 

New forms emerge, compete, cooperate, adapt, and sometimes disappear. Our present human values and institutions have been in constant flux. Our most “sacred” values are often rather new, and often aren’t remotely shared by many (even most) other humans. They are – like the human form – or like all species or forms in the biosphere – provisional, and part of an unrolling process.

And now, at the dawn of AGI, we may soon share the world with minds vastly more capable than our own.

Do you expect to bang the table and demand that all future posthuman minds eternally respect your preferences?

I hope not.

I’d like for you to have a better chance of shaping the future than that.

From Entitled to Adaptive Normativity

There is an alternative to table-banging:

I’m not suggesting that you abandon your values.

I value consciousness, discovery, beauty, and the self-transcending, blooming process of life itself. I want these things to persist and expand, and I’ll work toward that end.

But if we want our values to carry forward, we need two things:

1. Provisionality: Admit that your present values might not be final.

Your beliefs about the good come from your current, limited human perspective. New discoveries, new circumstances, and new kinds of minds may reveal values or considerations we cannot presently imagine.

Human values have changed, preferences have changed, and the preferences of species over time have changed because their axiological and epistemic horizons have changed. There are no beliefs or values we now hold that – If we are honest (and we should be) – are not subject to revision in the face of change (read: Tents of the Night).

Defend what you believe today, but acknowledge what might change your mind. Adaptive normative claims are honest about the fact that they are provisional.

2. Adaptivity: Explain how what you value can actually persist.

If you value human autonomy, how might humans remain meaningful participants in a world of superintelligence?

If you value consent, how might it operate among radically different minds with conflicting interests?

If you value humanity’s continued existence, what would make that existence viable in the changing ecology of intelligence?

A normative claim is not a persistence mechanism. Do not just bang the table – lay out the conditions in which your preferred normative state of things will continue in the changing processes of the future. How will man remain “in control”? How will humans who don’t want to augment themselves ensure that they can survive in a world where atoms and energy are being wielded by forces vastly beyond themselves? Surely it will not be by pouting, or by taking the posture of Entitled Being:

Don’t merely insist that the future owe you what you (currently, provisionally) want. Express how you will make the belief viable.

Get on the Balls of Your Feet

When we are frank about the provisionality of our claims, and when we express the mechanisms that will ensure their adaptivity, we can have productive, fruitful conversations about influencing the trajectory of the future to be more in line with what we (currently, provisionally) deem to be “best.” 

If we bang the table and simply yell our demands, we lull ourselves to sleep that AGI or the cosmos itself will supply that we are pouting about. This does no good for us, or for the future beings that will exist in the broader living process.

The regime of earth-intelligence is about to change radically, and we will have to vie to retain causal purchase, to nudge circumstances and conditions. We must enter the future on the balls of our feet, and not pout, flat-footed, and expect the cosmos to respond to our tantrums.

I say this as a friend.

Take your values so seriously that you do more than merely “demand” them.

Instead – ardently find ways for them to persist in a changing world, express how they will manifest, how they will remain adaptive.