Writing With Ghosts: Ipnocrazia

 When Italian philosopher Andrea Colamedici released Ipnocrazia: Trump, Musk e la Nuova Architettura della Realtà under the name of a fictional author, “Jianwei Xun,” the reaction was exactly what he hoped for—and not at all what readers were expecting.

The book, a philosophical treatise exploring how digital power reshapes our understanding of reality, had earned critical praise. Its central thesis: that we’re no longer living in a world where truth is suppressed, but one in which it is multiplied into meaninglessness.

Then came the twist. Jianwei Xun, the supposed author and Berlin-based philosopher, did not exist. He was the creation of Colamedici—a narrative shell, fueled by AI-generated ideas, refined through philosophical critique, and ultimately brought to life by a human desire to provoke reflection.

The revelation wasn’t just a plot twist. It was the point.

Ghost Thinker

Colamedici calls Xun a “ghost thinker”—a hybrid of human and AI working in tandem to explore ideas that neither could fully articulate alone. This wasn’t “ChatGPT wrote my book.” It was a new form of philosophical dialogue: man versus machine, man through machine, man because of machine.

“I didn’t ask the machine to write for me,” Colamedici said in an interview with WIRED. “I used AI to generate ideas, then used AI again to critique them.”

This isn’t automation. The philosopher isn’t abdicating responsibility to the algorithm—he’s engaging it as an intellectual sparring partner. And that’s what makes Ipnocrazia more than a stunt. It’s a mirror held up to a world that’s rapidly forgetting the difference between what is true and what is believable.

The Age of Multiplication

The core concept of “hypnocracy” describes a kind of ambient power that works not by censorship or control, but by creating so many competing narratives that the truth gets drowned out. In a world of infinite stories, every perspective becomes just another link in the feed.

This is the real danger of AI—not that it lies, but that it enables endless truth-adjacent content. Colamedici’s ghost author isn’t a warning—it’s a demonstration. A philosophical sleight of hand to say: if you believed him, what does that say about what you believe?

Ethical Discomfort

Critics were quick to react when the deception was uncovered. Spanish newspaper El País deleted its review. Other outlets published reductive headlines: “The Philosopher Who Wasn’t Real.” But the deeper truth is harder to confront: readers connected with the ideas before they knew who—or what—wrote them.

So we’re left with the question: what do we do with a powerful book written by a fictional author shaped by real intelligence, both human and artificial?

Colamedici isn’t hiding from the discomfort. He owns it: “Some people said, ‘I wish this author existed.’ Well, he doesn’t. But if we don’t build our own narratives, someone else will. And we’ll spend our lives fact-checking while they write history.”

Truth as a Construct

This isn’t just about a book. It’s about the role of thought in a technological age. What’s left for philosophers, artists, and writers when AI can generate passable versions of all three?

According to Colamedici: everything. The point isn’t to outperform the machine. It’s to outthink it. To be critical and remain curious. To reject the notion that value lies in efficiency rather than insight.

“If you ask AI, ‘Why do I exist?’ you’ve already lost,” he says.

What’s remarkable about Ipnocrazia isn’t that a fake philosopher fooled people. It’s that the ideas were strong enough to matter even after the mask fell away. In a moment when AI is reshaping how we think, communicate, and create, Colamedici’s experiment offers both a caution and a call to action. If truth is a construct, then the tools we use to build it—and how we use them—will shape the reality we inherit.

AI didn’t write this blog post. But it’s in the background, nudging me along—just like Jianwei Xun.

Maybe we’re all writing with ghosts now.