Cold Reactor | rtemis rho

I'm going to be real: I think Mountainhead is about capitalism. In the context of the album, "the mountain" is capitalist society, and the way it has been built is shaping and destroying our world. Unfortunately, when I really read into these lyrics, I find it much easier to connect it to both the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, and generative AI. So I guess that's the reading I have here. Enjoy.

So we built the mountain
By digging an almighty hole
And on our backs, we carried every rock and stone
But now, the hole is deeper
Than anybody ever planned
And we're blocking out the sun

I believe in life and terror
You believe in killing time
By the fingertips, I'm hanging on

Sorry, Satan, but I can't do this evil on my own
I haven't left the house in nearly thirty thousand days

I sent you the image of a little yellow face
To tell you that I'm sad about the emptiness that's all around me

And I can't stop the ringing in your ears
When everything we love becomes a picture of a simulation

It wakes me in the middle of the night
I love you like an atom bomb, but I've become a cold reactor

So dark, the supermarket
Some of us stayed in the pit
Because it felt so comfortable to dwell below

We made the mountain bigger
Though we had forgotten why
It's a dream I'm in with you

In the night, the sword is hanging
Far above the head of man
Can you see the steel is glittering?

Sorry, Satan, but I can't do this evil on my own
I haven't left the house in nearly thirty thousand days
I sent you the image of a little yellow face
To tell you that I'm sad about the emptiness that's all around me

And I can't stop the ringing in your ears
When everything we love becomes a picture of a simulation
It wakes me in the middle of the night
I love you like an atom bomb, but I've become a cold reactor

And maybe I'll go missing in the rain
If God is in the mountain, he won't answer me a single question
Like, "Why does everybody feel the same?"
The slow degeneration and the crying out, "Oh, Lord, have mercy"

A few snide commentators, like those at Trashfuture, have described companies building AI as "attempting to build God." This makes sense given the amount of fearmongering that some of those same companies have engaged in when talking about the singularity, or the awesome power of true general AI once it is developed. I haven't seen the face of God yet.

"Why does everybody feel the same" evokes both the emotions during the pandemic and the general malaise that has followed it.

The "slow degeneration" refers to the ways that AI output degrades as generated output is fed back into it. There are lots of complicated reasons for this, but the end result is that the output gets significantly worse. Given there's no way to automatically separate AI-generated content from human-created information, and given the amount of AI-generated information on the internet, it's almost impossible to reverse this process.

Just look into my jet-electric eyes
And see a blue reflection of a world inside a black dimension

It wakes me in the middle of the night
I love you like an atom bomb, but I've become a cold reactor
Now you're gonna see what's underneath

I'm sorry, Satan
Sorry, Satan, and I can't stop the ringing in your ears
When everything we love becomes a picture of a simulation
It wakes me in the middle of the night
I love you like an atom bomb, but I've become a cold reactor