If AI leads to an era of abundance, then the economic system has to change. The system it transitions to and what that transition looks like will need to be fought for, and I imagine it’ll be done better in some places than others. Yet I think the parallel existential question of meaning in this world is one that is inherently optimistic. Humans decide meaning, it is not something imposed on us or taken away by the existence of something else.
Like most of us I go back and forth between sheer optimism and fear for the future that AI may usher in. Recently I started vibe coding a fun video game with my ten year old. The experience is different than my work because it’s been such a joy to basically have a personal genie in a bottle help me make some personal art with a loved one regardless of either of our skill sets. The concept the author of this post is arguing now resonates with me more than it would have a few weeks ago. The sheer surface area that AI can create in our intellectual life is limitless and needs humans to explore. There can never be enough of us in that sense. Whether it’s as validators or creators.
I think the most realistic analogy I can think of is the financial sector. A few large banks/hedge funds blow up due to unregulated greed/ambition, damage is socialized, regulations are put in place, and then chipped away at over a few years and everyones back to where they started.
Ten years ago, around the time Instagram started allowing influencers to monetize their posts, I remember thinking that the bar for “selling out” had suddenly been drastically lowered. In the past, companies had to weigh a lot of factors before selling out, usually for millions of dollars. Now, an individual gig worker may, out of economic necessity, have to sell out for $500.
As people become brands—or aspire to become brands—every meaningful aspect of life, from intimate family moments to vacations, is pushed toward commodification and monetization. The craving for fame becomes intertwined with that process, with each reinforcing the other. And when you're a modern equivalent to a hunter and gatherer, there's little time or (incentive) to step back and reflect on the system that led you and your cohort to this bleak place.
I think you're conflating productivity growth with distribution. Technology increased wealth, but whether workers shared in those gains depended heavily on bargaining power and institutions.
One of the better comments I've heard is from philosopher Bernardo Kastrup: if you build a computationally perfect simulation of a human kidney on your computer, no one expects it to start producing urine on your desk.
There should also be a counter article titled the real cost of NOT owning a home. At least in the macro sense, there are consequences for a generation spanning the global that is willing but unable to afford to purchase a home.
I’ve disabled YouTube recommendations does anyone have a good resource for discovering things based on interest or even better a one time dump of some form of my recent watch history?
I interned at a few places like this when I was younger, and in my current role I used to visit a fair number customer sites like these. I agree, it was less creepy than it was oppressive. I think the kids might call it an NPC vibe you just got. Definitely an urge to want to get out as soon as possible to get some fresh air and natural light.
Beautiful. I recently saw a youtube video [1] on radical neighboring that really inspired me. Led me to another book on the gift economy [2]. All which to say, I now always bake two loaves of bread. One I keep for the family, the other I give away.
I’m not sure where we go from here. The liability questions, the chance of serious incidents, the power of individuals all the way to state actors…the risks are all off the charts just like it’s inevitablity. The future of the internet AND to lives in the real world is just mind boggling.
A very powerful meditation practice is called self-inquiry. One version of it is after you calm your mind down (say with breath meditation) you look for where u think u r. Wherever that is, ask yourself if that’s where u r, what is looking at it? Keep going, don’t intellectualize it, and keep looking.
lol yeah at first I was annoyed that they seem to be applying pressure on people without the history feature cause they certainly kept recommending videos to me even though I had that feature off. But a few weeks ago, the screens are all blank imploring me to turn on the history, but I actually quite like it. No more youtube doom scrolling on my phone.
If you enter in a US city, another takeaway from the rendered table is that U.S. living standards (measured economically) continued to improve for some time after the 1970s despite weak wage growth largely because *more households relied on two earners instead of one*. While productivity kept rising, the gains were increasingly captured at the top and not shared with the workers. Of course that buffer is now long gone, but wages haven't kept up.
From the de-industrialization of a country, the privatization of previously public goods, subsidization of the wealthy by everyone else, the decoupling of national wealth from labor, I mean we can go on and on. And lest you think I’m partisan, both parties are complicit, but this is hardly an American phenomenon.
The root cause of our issues is the economic austerity imposed on the public causing disaffection of the masses. Dividing this public and redirecting this anger against each other and scapegoats leads to what you refer to.
After not logging into Twitter for years I logged back in because I wanted to follow some posts regarding some breaking news. Omg the amount of garbage and fake videos and pictures was overwhelming. My guess is bot content is now so realistic and engagement manipulation is so sophisticated from even a few years ago that people will disengage even more.
It’s interesting—playing devil’s advocate on the purse example, I’m not sure I’d actually call that meaningful. It’s certainly a kind and thoughtful gift, but meaningful?
What if meaning isn’t only about the relationship or the recipient’s satisfaction, but also about what the gift costs the giver in terms of personal value? In the yard-sale case, the purse may be rare to the mom, but it’s essentially cheap and disposable to the giver. Nothing important was surrendered.
By contrast, giving something you personally prize—or investing yourself in a way that reflects what you value—seems to carry a different kind of meaning. I’m not claiming effort alone creates meaning, but that the giver’s valuation of what’s given might be a missing dimension in this framework
I’m not claiming CEOs are legally required to chase every conceivable revenue dollar or that they’d lose a lawsuit if they don’t. Corporate law doesn’t work that way, and no serious person thinks it does.
What does exist is a well-understood governance and incentive regime: boards evaluate CEOs on long-term shareholder value, compensation is tied to financial performance, and strategic restraint has to be justified in those terms. That doesn’t require lawsuits, and it doesn’t require explicit mandates. It’s how large public companies are run.
The fact that Apple could charge 50% and chooses not to doesn’t refute this — it just shows that extraction is constrained by regulation, backlash, and platform risk. But once those constraints weaken, dominant platforms reliably increase extraction. That’s an empirical pattern, not a legal theory.