There’s one point you make that I’d dare to quibble with. It’s your assertion that “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, far from demonstrating multipolarity, arguably revealed how dependent even large states remain on dollar-denominated systems and Western technology supply chains.”

This is a two-edged sword. Joe Biden believed that the dependence was vital and existential. Russia’s resilience proves that supply chain dependence is a fundamental reality to be reckoned with for any nation. But the ruble was not reduced to rubble. The financial infrastructure of what was presented as the foundation of the “rules-based order” could be bypassed even when faced with the most severe sanctions.

I would see that as proof that this has become a transitional period. There’s no need for the existing system to be crippled and discarded. But if it fails to impose its iron law, wouldn’t it be fair to say that something else could and probably should emerge, not to challenge it but to function as an alternative?

I’d like to return to another issue with Mohan’s argument. He makes a valid point when he asserts that “the forces supporting the United States’ assertive unilateralism extend beyond Trump. An American foreign policy establishment accustomed to the ease of unilateral action will likely continue to pursue it no matter who is in the White House.”

It seems to me to be true and false at the same time. It’s patently false for a simple reason. He correctly observes that “the foreign policy establishment” in Washington continues to act as if the world is unipolar “no matter who is in the White House.” But he assumes that a possibly mistaken belief shared within the US “deep state” reflects reality. The blob obviously has an interest in maintaining that belief and act as if the world had not changed. But I would push this a little further and maintain that if the exercise of apparent unilateral power is conducted “shorn of responsibilities,” as Mohan asserts, it could be taken as proof that the key to its past success, soft power, has vanished. That should mean that in the real world, the longer the unipolar illusion persists as a working hypothesis within the Beltway, the more quickly will its force diminish. Either through erosion or conflict. I would thus point out that Mohan’s reasoning neglects one of the most obvious variables. Am I wrong?

In Part 1, I suggested that this kind of discussion could constitute a model to be used in classrooms. Chatbots are ideally designed to work as sparring partners to experiment alternative hypotheses concerning any area of study. Like any human voice, the notions a chatbot expresses may be partial, partisan, imperfectly informed and incomplete. But of course, large language models (LLMs) have access to resources that border on the infinite. Whatever question we choose to explore, we can enrich our understanding by sharing our quest for understanding with a chatbot.

Meaning is achieved by comparing ways of understanding observed phenomena. It produces empirical knowledge. The instruction in received ideas or preformatted knowledge connects us with our social milieu and serves to scaffold our shared culture. Much of traditional teaching, including in the hard sciences, is about repeating and often indoctrinating received ideas. Indoctrination is not in itself bad or suspect. It only becomes so when it isolates itself from both empirical reality and contrasting interpretations.

Every culture finds multiple ways to inculcate preformatted ideas that serve to define the contours of that culture. But ideas are like three-dimensional forms that, unless they are smoothly spherical, have mass and weight. They possess a variety of surfaces we can look at and touch. In any real historical context, those surfaces, depending on how they are composed or in which direction they happen to be oriented, will contain, reflect or combine with different orders of reality. All living cultures produce artifacts that direct attention to those surfaces. Over time and with the changing light, including the light provided by new ways of seeing, thinking members of the culture seek to reinterpret and rebalance our collective understanding of how these phenomena cohere. Our schools are theoretically designed to stimulate that search for coherence. LLMs have recently joined the debate.

Dialogue builds culture and creates dynamic understanding. Because chatbots are capable of engaging in dialogue, we should look carefully at the role they can play as powerful educational tools. Not because they give access to the truth, but because they permit us to express and refine our own voices.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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