This is a great article! The ending advice about action over identity reminds me a lot of what the last phyciatrist was saying way back when and it’s very refreshing and good to hear that wisdom again!
They way we train ourselves is the same way we most commonly train our animals, which is through a predominately negative-reinforcement model rather than a +R one. Which is loss aversion. We do it because we believe in original sin, in punishment, in our own innate un-enoughness and supposed evil base nature as situated in christianity/puritanism/capitalism and the assumed natural greed of humans so often used as justification for it. Etc. etc. But we are not evil and we are not bad, at our cores. We turn toward the sun.
Part I is interesting, I didn't know that there were some empirical discrepancies found to the Prospect Theory model, I've always thought it to be a leading contender for an alternative to the (obviously false) closed form utility function paradigm in Microeconomics
Part III is missing the message of hope: with everyone looking to optimize their image of a thing, one can much easier get what they want in the real world by promising someone else get public credit for it. And more broadly, there is simply much less competition for scarce physical goods and visceral experiences.
This was fantastic. I’ve raised the abstract v. concrete goal with younger friends in college, and I’m increasingly surprised by the degree of status chasing that I see playing out among folks I mentor. As a young person myself, I unfortunately believe that the majority of young adults will truly be caught out in the rain — myself probably included in some ways, although I’m doing what I can to plan ahead based on what I’m really good at.
AEI’s Brent Orrell has some good research on workforce skill-gap projections. What kinds of high-human interaction jobs do you see the 22 year olds of 2030 occupying? Anything manual that AI hasn’t yet achieved i.e. ice cream scooping etc? Or will there still be demand for high-end art brokers, real estate agents, actors, and anything that requires exceptional ‘people skills’ and subject matter / market-specific expertise?
I just finished this and your "AGI Isn't for happy people" essay. And I think a huge piece missing from your projections of how AGI will irreversibly change the structure of life is that our natural resources actually cannot support a world in which the majority of jobs are replaced by AGI, and I don't believe that humans would stand by letting cooling centers take the lion's share in a water war, you know? Humans can't live in a system wherein capital is their only means of survival, and then have the means of gaining capital taken from them, and then just stagnate and be content with being stuck stupid and poor -- and yet you haven't explored the idea of a violent anti-capitalist revolution as one key hiccup in the AGI future. Loved your writing, genuinely curious if you have considered these points!
5 months sounds long. But in reality you haven’t changed or progressed that much from the beginning of the year.
Because you are not courageous enough. You let the fear of suffering win over you. Realize that the fear of suffering is your enemy and suffering is your friend because it brings transformation.
I first noticed the emergence of part III in 2015. Hall & Oates were playing at a large music festival in Atlanta, and when they started playing one of their most popular songs, lots of people cheered, but not many danced! Tbf, H&O were mainly popular in the 80s, but if you like the music, why wouldn't you dance?
It’s been going on for longer than that. Christian Lander mentioned “not dancing at concerts” in Stuff White People Like and that book came out in 2008.
Great title and I’d like to add that death is inevitable.
This is a great article! The ending advice about action over identity reminds me a lot of what the last phyciatrist was saying way back when and it’s very refreshing and good to hear that wisdom again!
They way we train ourselves is the same way we most commonly train our animals, which is through a predominately negative-reinforcement model rather than a +R one. Which is loss aversion. We do it because we believe in original sin, in punishment, in our own innate un-enoughness and supposed evil base nature as situated in christianity/puritanism/capitalism and the assumed natural greed of humans so often used as justification for it. Etc. etc. But we are not evil and we are not bad, at our cores. We turn toward the sun.
What if I just don't care.
I love most of your writing, but II is way off
https://philomaticalgorhythms.substack.com/p/psa-ai-will-not-take-your-job-and
Part I is interesting, I didn't know that there were some empirical discrepancies found to the Prospect Theory model, I've always thought it to be a leading contender for an alternative to the (obviously false) closed form utility function paradigm in Microeconomics
Part III is missing the message of hope: with everyone looking to optimize their image of a thing, one can much easier get what they want in the real world by promising someone else get public credit for it. And more broadly, there is simply much less competition for scarce physical goods and visceral experiences.
This was fantastic. I’ve raised the abstract v. concrete goal with younger friends in college, and I’m increasingly surprised by the degree of status chasing that I see playing out among folks I mentor. As a young person myself, I unfortunately believe that the majority of young adults will truly be caught out in the rain — myself probably included in some ways, although I’m doing what I can to plan ahead based on what I’m really good at.
AEI’s Brent Orrell has some good research on workforce skill-gap projections. What kinds of high-human interaction jobs do you see the 22 year olds of 2030 occupying? Anything manual that AI hasn’t yet achieved i.e. ice cream scooping etc? Or will there still be demand for high-end art brokers, real estate agents, actors, and anything that requires exceptional ‘people skills’ and subject matter / market-specific expertise?
Will be subscribing.
I just finished this and your "AGI Isn't for happy people" essay. And I think a huge piece missing from your projections of how AGI will irreversibly change the structure of life is that our natural resources actually cannot support a world in which the majority of jobs are replaced by AGI, and I don't believe that humans would stand by letting cooling centers take the lion's share in a water war, you know? Humans can't live in a system wherein capital is their only means of survival, and then have the means of gaining capital taken from them, and then just stagnate and be content with being stuck stupid and poor -- and yet you haven't explored the idea of a violent anti-capitalist revolution as one key hiccup in the AGI future. Loved your writing, genuinely curious if you have considered these points!
5 months sounds long. But in reality you haven’t changed or progressed that much from the beginning of the year.
Because you are not courageous enough. You let the fear of suffering win over you. Realize that the fear of suffering is your enemy and suffering is your friend because it brings transformation.
I first noticed the emergence of part III in 2015. Hall & Oates were playing at a large music festival in Atlanta, and when they started playing one of their most popular songs, lots of people cheered, but not many danced! Tbf, H&O were mainly popular in the 80s, but if you like the music, why wouldn't you dance?
It’s been going on for longer than that. Christian Lander mentioned “not dancing at concerts” in Stuff White People Like and that book came out in 2008.