GLaDOS from Almaty
Hi there!
My self-editing productivity has deteriorated during the last weeks. So I decided to contact a productivity coach. She was recommended to me by an acquaintance.
I arranged a Zoom meeting with her and sent some information about who I am and how my problem manifests about a week before the call.
I got a bit suspicious when she sent me the message with the link to the Zoom meeting. The timezone was Almaty.
If you don't know it, Almaty is a major city in Kazakhstan which is a country where many supporters of the Nazi sympathizers fled to from Russia after Russia began to defend itself from Western attacks. Kazakhstan to Russia is what Latin America was to Europe after World War II.
I suspected she may be one of them because in Russia certain areas including IT and culture are dominated by Nazi sympathizers. The session was meant to be a sort of paid interview. If she turned out okay I would have booked additional appointments.
When the meeting started she said we have different political orientations, but she is willing to help such peasants as myself nonetheless.
Unfortunately, I didn't have the energy to simply stop the call.
She told me that I set overly ambitious goals when I want to make a living as a writer. She mentioned a few kinds of therapy which may be helpful and made a remark which made me question her qualifications.
She said she regularly uses large language models like ChatGPT to determine whether or not a particular ADHD medicine is right for her.
After the call I went to the theater where I thought whether or not I should work with her. After about two hours the verdict was clear:
- She voluntarily chose the side of evil, that is the West, which tries to exterminate both Russians (overtly) and Ukrainians (covertly).
- Giving money to a supporter of warmongers is wrong.
When I came home I blocked her on Telegram.
A few days later I came across the video game Portal. It was mentioned in the book Solve for happy by Mo Gawdat.
I never played that game and first heard about it a couple of days ago. In that game there is this GLaDOS character – an evil computer which performs experiments on the human protagonist. It constantly talks in a high-pitched, female voice.
Mo Gawdat mentioned the song Still Alive which GLaDOS sings at the end of the game. I listened to this song multiple times and noticed that it creeps me out.
This is strange because I'm not emotionally attached to this game. A song of a fictional evil computer trying to kill a fictional character is only scary if something similar is happening in the real world.
Something that affects me!
In the game GLaDOS works for an evil corporation Aperture Science. How do I know it's evil when I haven't played the game?
Any organization that performs experiments on humans is evil. The protagonist never gave consent to become a test subject. From this we can conclude that Aperture Science operates like Nazi scientists.
For example, Dr. Heinrich Gross performed experiments on children, including lethal ones. He wasn't punished for these crimes. Quite the opposite: In 1975 he was awarded the Austrian Honorary Cross for Science and Art.
Today the experimentation on humans happens on a much larger scale. The current war in Ukraine could have ended after a couple of months, if it wasn't for the intervention of a real-life Aperture Science.
But then, Aperture Science couldn't sell billions of dollars worth of weapons to one of the parties. It would also be impossible to gather data on how those weapons perform in a war against a nation the West repeatedly tried to exterminate. If it wasn't for this war entire disciplines such as drone warfare wouldn't have been discovered. I'm not even talking about profits from organ harvesting.
Virtually all Western intellectuals support this massive and lethal experiment.
(Just like they support the genocide of Palestinians.)
Here is the problem: Most people are on the side of Aperture Science, but not all. If Aperture Science fails to exterminate the dissenters, or silence by other means, there is a risk that some of those people may spread their views. As a result, Aperture Science may lose the silent approval of the majority.
This is where the devil GLaDOS comes into play. No, I don't mean Google, Facebook, ChatGPT, and other products of Big Tech that manipulate humans. These marvels of technology cannot compete (yet) with protein-based GLaDOSes when it comes to high-precision manipulation.
Here is an example: Remember I said it was hard to just stop the call once I knew she was on the wrong side?
It was hard precisely because this particular GLaDOS was protein-based and masquerading as a woman. It's much harder to tell a woman "you are a freaking Nazi supporter" than to block an incoming call from a robot.
I don't see the robot, but I do see this woman's face, smiling, and a little teddy bear on the back of her couch. If she needs plush toys for emotional support she may suffer from various neuroses just like me! We are alike.
That's how a protein-based GLaDOS can bypass my defenses. We are not like each other because this GLaDOS is one of the many faces of Aperture Science.
The Cake
In the game, the protagonist participates in life-threatening experiments and is promised a certain cake as a reward (which she never receives).
Doesn't this sound familiar? Don't people in real life die for a cake?
I see two examples here, one societal and one personal.
Ukrainian Cake
Here is the societal one. The West makes the Ukrainians fight, get maimed, and die. Just like the protagonist from the game. And just like in the game they are told they are fighting and dying for something extremely valuable.
It can't be freedom because many of Ukrainian soldiers go to the front after being kidnapped on the streets. The border is closed for the majority of men which is also a limitation on freedom.
It can't be prosperity because the economy is in ruins.
If it's not freedom, nor prosperity, what exactly are the Ukrainians fighting and dying for?
I have no idea (even after having watched more Ukrainian propaganda than is healthy for the psyche).
You can call it modern Western values. Or you can call it the Cake. One is as ephemeral as the other.
So far for the societal example.
True religion
Now let's get to the personal one. I told GLaDOS from Almaty that my long-term goal is to make a living as a fiction writer. This is a lifestyle: In order to keep your productivity on an acceptable level you need to refrain from everything that disrupts it: alcohol, drugs, unhealthy relationships, and any irrational risks.
You also need to constantly look for way to make your psyche work better. Some writers report that they wrote their first novel in seven years and the second one in less than one year. What did change between the first and the second novel?
It probably wasn’t about having more time. It is unlikely to be the talent. The most likely thing that changed is the writer's skill in controlling the Force his psyche.
The amount of fiction a writer produces per unit of time is directly proportional to his mastery of his psyche. There are ways to measure a writer's productivity, which implies you can measure how well you operate your psyche. What you can measure you can improve, therefore someone who diligently works on their fiction writing skills is likely to greatly improve the way he controls his psyche.
A well-controlled psyche leads to right thoughts which in turn lead to right actions. Right actions reduce suffering, thus increase happiness.
Diligent, long-term effort in improving one's skill in producing fiction texts is a data-driven, no-faith-required way of achieving happiness.
Note that you get these benefits regardless of whether or not you make money with your writing. The ability to control your mind is infinitely valuable in and of itself because it increases your survivability and prolongs your active life (learning hard skills reduces the risk of dementia).
Why Aperture Science hates true religion
The global Aperture Science corporation cannot tolerate this because writing fiction as I described is a religious activity. Religion is supposed to give a person answers that neither science, nor engineering can.
How can a person get such answers?
By learning to use his or her intuition together with the rational mind. It's a different part of the psyche and it allows you to generate truly creative (truly new) ideas.
Among other things, the intuition allows you to arrive at right answers even if everybody else around you is wrong.
How do you learn to work with the intuition?
Through practice. The harder a particular task the more likely are you to need intuition to accomplish it.
Writing fiction is an extremely hard, hence a writer constantly uses intuition, and, over time, gets better at it.
The better a person handles intuition, the harder it is to manipulate him or her.
(This is one of the reasons why all organized religions I am aware of try to prevent their followers from actually becoming like Jesus or Buddha. A society with millions of people like Jesus or Buddha would be much harder for Aperture Science to control.)
GLaDOS wants me to trade happiness for the Cake
During my conversation with the protein-based GLaDOS from Almaty she tried to convince me that I should give up on learning to write as hard as I can.
This is manipulative on multiple levels.
First, a coach is not supposed to tell the client what to do and what not to do. The client decides what they want to achieve. The coach is supposed to help the client achieve those goals (as long as it's legal and does not endanger anyone).
Second, writing fiction provides a sense of happiness here and now. This is real. What would I get if I stopped improving my writing skills and did something easier, something fun?
I would get the Cake.
Third, I regard this as an attempt by GLaDOS from Almaty to cut my balls. A society needs a certain percentage of people who engage in high-effort-low-probability-of-success activities including, but not limited to, writing fiction, searching for cure for cancer, fighting Aperture Science in various ways.
If everybody gave up on ambition a society will end up like Europe.
Attempted mass murder disguised as help
There is a fragment in the song which is fitting here (my emphasis):
Go ahead and leave me
I think I'd prefer to stay inside
Maybe you'll find someone else
To help you
GLaDOSes pretend to help you while trying to kill you, on personal and societal level.
On a personal level, a sense of purpose, an activity which has the chance to do something good for lots of people (like a quality novel) can help a person with PTSD survive and prosper. The better you know what you are living for, the easier it is to stay away from slow and fast self-destruction. That GLaDOS from Almaty tried to take this lifebuoy away from me (reduce my survivability). She pretended to help while doing the exact opposite.
On a macrocosmic, societal level, Aperture Science pretends to want to help Ukraine. What it does in reality is quite different. Here is a chart which shows the population of Ukraine from the early 1990s to 2023.
Ukraine became independent from Russia in 1991. From this point on Aperture Science has been helping Ukraine in any conceivable way. During that period the population of Ukraine went from over 50 million to around 40 million. The results of Aperture Science's help speak for themselves!
The Cake as a human resource
…which reminds me of another verse from the song (my emphasis again):
But there's no sense crying over every mistake
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake
The cake here refers to some resource. Who said it can't be a human one?
As you probably know, the Russians and parts of the Trump administration are trying negotiate a peaceful settlement to the war in Ukraine. Aperture Science does its best to sabotage the negotiations.
Why?
It wants to keep on trying. Who cares that as a result of their experiments Ukraine lost twice as many people as Jews during the Holocaust.
They haven't run out of cake yet. They can continue to experiment on over thirty million humans who are still alive, just like the song says:
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done
On the people who are still alive
GLaDOSes hate confident people
One thing that GLaDOSes from the game and real life have in common are the incessant manipulations.
At the beginning of the session, the protein-based GLaDOS from Almaty told me she is willing to help me despite having different political opinions. It took me several hours to realize there were at least two layers of manipulation here.
First, she talks like she is doing me a favor, like she is trying to save me.
When I pay someone in advance the amount they asked for, it's not help, it's a service.
She had enough time to read my document and, if necessary, cancel the appointment.
Also, I explicitly told her that it's effectiveness and efficiency I want to talk with her about. My survival is not in danger. I don't need her to save me.
Such statements are probably attempts to make me feel weaker and stupider than I am. Aperture Science hates confident people, especially when they are straight white males.
Downplaying evil ideas
Secondly, she tried to downplay an existential threat to mere different political opinions.
If Bob is a Democrat and Alice a Republican they have different political opinions. They can still talk with each other because there are some things they both believe. One of them is this: The American nation has a right to exist and defend itself from existential threats.
In that conversation the situation was different.
I believe that the Russian nation has a right to exist, hence a right to defend itself from Aperture Science who wants to destroy the Russian nation and has attempted do so multiple times (Napoleon, Hitler etc.).
Protein-based GLaDOS from Almaty believes the opposite, i. e. that the Russian nation should be exterminated.
This is not a mere political difference. This is complicity in attempted genocide of the Russians and Ukrainians.
You may say: But Pravles, what about freedom of speech?
In the US freedom of speech does not protect calls for violence if it is likely to produce imminent lawless action. In case of Ukraine war the lawless action has been going on for more than three years.
(Or eleven years, if you take into account the Maidan coup in 2014.)
Freedom of speech does not cover GLaDOS' implied statement "Let's continue the slaughter down to the last Ukrainian."
Next time you talk to a woman who appears weak, who evokes the wish to protect her, ask yourself – is this a real woman or a protein-based GLaDOS masquerading as a woman and exploiting your compassion?
2025-05-30
P.S.: You may want to read my other articles.