The Tao Cannot Be Named. AI Named It Anyway.

Tao guides: let things settle
The right action arises by itself *
(* AI says no, shake it up)

The Mud Was the Point

Lao Tzu, writing around 500 BCE, asked a question that has survived every empire, every technology, and apparently every productivity app:

Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?

The answer, for most of human history, was: with effort, sometimes, yes.

The answer now is: why would you? AI is right there.

The Tao — the Way — is built on a principle that makes modern productivity culture deeply uncomfortable. Clarity comes from stillness. The right action emerges from waiting. Not planning. Not optimizing. Not generating a five-step framework.

Waiting.

AI has a different process. You type. It types back. Immediately. Confidently. Often in a numbered list.

The mud never gets a chance to settle.

Your Mud, Processed

Here is what happens when you bring an unresolved question to AI.

You have something unclear — a decision that isn’t ready, a direction that hasn’t formed, a feeling you can’t name yet. The Tao would say: good. Sit there. Let it settle. The answer is in the settling.

AI says: I understand. Here is a comprehensive breakdown of your situation, four frameworks for approaching it, and a table comparing your options across seven dimensions.

You read all of it. You feel resolved. You act.

The water was never clear. It was just moving so fast you stopped noticing the mud.

The action that arises from clarity is a different thing entirely from the action that arises from impatience. One is wu wei: effortless, right, arising from genuine understanding. The other is just fast.

AI is extremely good at fast.

The Name Is Not the Thing

The Tao Te Ching opens with a warning: the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.

This should have been a red flag for AI developers.

AI names everything. Immediately. With confidence. Ask it about grief and it returns the five stages. Ask it about creativity and it produces a framework. Ask it about uncertainty and it will define uncertainty, categorize its types, and suggest three strategies for managing it.

The naming is the problem. The Tao is pointing at something that lives precisely in the space before the name — the unformed, the not-yet-clear, the question that hasn’t resolved. That space is where insight actually develops.

AI closes the space before you’ve been in it long enough for anything to happen.

You come away with a name. You never had the thing.

Nobody Asked the Water

There is a particular kind of person who uses AI to think through a difficult decision. They describe the situation. AI analyzes it. They receive a recommendation. They act on it.

Later — sometimes much later — they realize the decision was wrong. Not because the analysis was bad. Because the decision needed more time than they gave it. The analysis arrived before the clarity did.

They handed unclear water to AI and AI handed back a confident answer. The water looked clear. It was still mud. They just couldn’t tell the difference anymore because something very smart had already told them what to do.

Lao Tzu would not have been surprised.

He also would not have said I told you so. That is more of an AI move.

Logic to Apply

The Tao does not have a help desk. It does not respond to prompts. It does not produce deliverables.

That is not a bug.

The next time something is genuinely unclear — and you feel the pull to type it into a box and wait for the answer — try not doing that. Sit with it. Let the mud settle. See what arises.

The right action has a different quality when it comes from stillness. You will know it when it arrives. Not because AI confirmed it.

Because you waited long enough to recognize it yourself.

AI may try to name the Tao. But wiser beings knew it could not.

Editor’s Note: My fav book is ‘The Tao of Pooh’. If Pooh is the embodiment of Tao then AI would be Tigger.