Treebeard Wakes Up
Amodei makes a perfect analogy. So let's see where it takes us.
The comparison Dario Amodei draws from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings — two Hobbits meeting a strange, ancient creature — looks compelling at first sight. But only when you actually read Treebeard's words does it become amazing. For the state is Treebeard: a huge, inert, slow, bearded… tree.
But he does not take the analogy further than their meeting itself, drawing the conclusion:
“The problem is that Treebeard operates at a very different speed than the Hobbits. It takes him a full day simply to say hello to another tree, so getting him and his peers to act fast enough is nearly impossible.”
Nearly impossible.
For in Tolkien’s world that is exactly what happens. The Leviathan wakes. The analogy would suggest the government, slowly, but wakes up and reorganises the field no matter what anyone else would want.
Spoilers for LOTR!
Let”s meet this creatively named tree monster creature!
1. Meeting the Government
When you meet the government, three things happen. You get criticised. You get threatened — Treebeard later admits he would have trodden on them, had he not heard their voices first — and then categorised. What does not happen is a discussion on why you are here, what your arguments could be for anything. Here is Treebeard’s voice.
“Not so hasty. And I am doing the asking. You are in my country. What are you, I wonder? I cannot place you. You do not seem to come in the old lists that I learned when I was young.”
2. Policy initiative
The Hobbits, naive as some of those creatures are, think they can convince the Leviathan that they are right during the journey they take together (not an unreasonable thought on content, as events later prove them right). After some chit-chat on catering and government philosophy, we hear Treebeard almost succombing
“I will stop it!” he boomed. “And you shall come with me. …Our roads go together — to Isengard!”
And the Hobbits are happy. Finally! The concur in good faith. Then things then suddenly change…
“Good! Good!” said Treebeard. “But I spoke hastily. We must not be hasty. I have become too hot. I must cool myself and think; for it is easier to shout stop than to do it.”
3. Legislation
Alas, we come to the hall of democracy, a multiethnic Parliament — the Entmoot, where the Ents will deliberate for three full days before reaching a decision. Typically, the Hobbits focus not on legislative content but on more easily identifiable trivia."
“They had expected to see a number of creatures as much like Treebeard as one hobbit is like another (at any rate to a stranger’s eye); and they were very much surprised to see nothing of the kind. The Ents were as different from one another as trees from trees: some as different as one tree is from another of the same name but quite different growth and history; and some as different as one tree-kind from another, as birch from beech, oak from fir.”
Of course, legislation itself is not to be undertaken lightly
I have told your names to the Entmoot, and they have seen you, and they have agreed that you are not Orcs, and that a new line shall be put in the old lists. We have got no further yet, but that is quick work for an Entmoot.”
4. Party politics
Fortunately, the Hobbits can have allies. A younger Ent, Quickbeam, who has a personal grudge against Saruman, supports their cause — though his contribution is mostly keeping them company, away from the tedious debates, where Treebeard has sent them.
*
What have we learned until now? The thesis Amodei offered. Government is slow, inefficient, bureaucratic.
But then… the Ents will make a decision.
5. Execution
The Ents will show their power. Creatures that needed three days to decide cover the march to Isengard in a single night, and what follows is not a battle but a demolition: Númenórean walls built to withstand armies are torn apart by hands accustomed to splitting stone over centuries, the work of minutes once the patience of millennia is cashed out at once. When one of their own burns, the assault turns into something even their hobbit allies describe like a natural disaster they were standing inside.
And what do the Hobbits do in the meantime? Cheer, mostly; offer a word of caution, sometimes; and just… enjoy their reduced competence. Their gradual disempowerment.
Because government, the slow, huge, bearded tree actually has teeth.
At least in this analogy.
One only wonders (or has already built a theory) as to why Amodei would have forgotten all of this it.