AI is happening. Arguments that "it can never do X" these days often look silly within months. Right now is as bad as it will ever be. If LLM's have limitations, then we will develop another means (likely using LLMs for help); after all, we know general intelligence can exist, because it already does in our brains.
If we survive AI, it looks like we're heading into an interregnum with massive wealth disparities, if we don't have UBI or robots. I'm sorry to say I'm not offering hope here, but rather a critique of several of the bad arguments about why it will be okay.
Argument #1: "Player pianos, cranes, and chess algorithms exist, yet we still have pianists, competitive weightlifters, and chess players."
Why it's wrong: most labor lacks a performance component. That is, it's the end result of your labor people want. They don't want to watch you do it.
This argument has been making the rounds (see here, and here.) First, very few jobs involve a significant performance or "human connection" component. You might prefer to watch a musician (rather than a machine) compose or perform music, but I bet you don't enjoy watching taxi drivers, farmers, or factory workers performing their jobs enough to pay to watch them do it (rather than pay much much less for a machine doing it.)
On one hand, you might buy artisan products that cost more and (to be blunt) have lower, more variable quality, because of the human element - but unless you're pretty wealthy, you don't do this for everything. Or most things.
On the other, even regarding the performance-heavy commodity of music - do you pay to watch it performed every time you hear it? Not since the advent of recording, of which player pianos were one early form. So even for the article's canonical example meant to reassure us, according to Claude, today we have per capita only about 68% of the professional musicians that we had in 1900, even after a century of economic growth. You may be hoping that UBI will support us all - UBI, which is, reminder, NOWHERE in mainstream political discourse.
The vast majority of labor is concerned only with the material end product. So, unless you're lucky to be in the 1% of things which humans are evolutionarily programmed to appreciate seeing performed - e.g., physical or vocal beauty, conversational cleverness, coordination or musculature - AND these are things that you can figure out how to pay your mortgage with (how many competitive weightlifters and chess players can say that?) Also remember that the performers rely on disposable income from everyone else. How are even the performers going to pay the rent?
Argument #2: "The economy is about status competitions, not wealth creation. The AIs are taking away the part we don't want anyway!"
Why it's wrong: status competitions are healthy when the future is bright, and we aren't all trapped in the same status competition. Otherwise, they are unpleasant.
I think the argument is actually partly true, but I don't think it's the good news that this blogger thinks. A lot of our current political dysfunction in the West can be easily understood as people angry that the WRONG SORT are having their status elevated. Before social media, we could all live in our little suburb or capital city or country town, blissfully ignorant of the opinions of the people who were actually making the rules and signing the checks (who, were probably not YOU.) But as soon as we all had smartphones and social media 24/7, many of us found out that our demographic wasn't actually in charge, nor did we share taste or values with the people who were. Particularly in the U.S., for many people who thought they were good, solid, respectable mainstream Americans (and thought everyone else thought that too), the advent of social media was akin to a nightmare where a curtain dropped and they realized they were being laughed at - worst of all, by their MORAL INFERIORS, who (again) were IN CHARGE. It was like the home team suddenly being booed and kicked off the field.
Consider also the well-characterized effect of a tide that lifts all boats - that everyone wants to sign up for the system that keeps making them richer. Trivially obvious, but the implications for liberal democracy's universality, and what people will put up with from their governments during a rising tide, are also worth examining. Such thoughts obviously conflict with the view that obtained across the West until about the mid-2000s, that in accordance with Fukuyama's end of history view, liberal democracy was the only game in town because individual rights and happiness = wealth = national power, and every nation would have to converge to it, or disappear. I remember reading a paper around 2006 that I didn't care for, only because it clearly showed that actually, it's economic growth people care about, not democracy, and people would put up with a lot if they were getting wealthier. (See: China.)
The country that is most stable, and that is most pleasant to live in, is one with multiple overlapping status hierarchies. That way, all your status eggs aren't in one basket. You can choose which status hierarchies to be in, and the hierarchies themselves are not hierarchical (at least not obviously so.) That means you don't even necessarily have to know or care about the other ones. Bowling Alone is a book about the evaporation of community in the United States, and the meaning-making and status that evaporated with it, and the negative consequences thereof. Consider on the other hand an intrusive dictatorship like North Korea, which aspires to create a single monolithic hierarchy by eliminating every status hierarchy but one. In the U.S. the invisible hand has "organically" moved us in much the same direction.
Concern about status can be seen as a problem that is worse in wealthy countries in general. The more your needs are met, the less you have to worry about your needs, and the more you worry about how you compare with others. This goes a long way to explain the behavior of the super-rich, who mostly seem to be signaling to the other super-rich, about how super-rich they are - and of course getting even more super-rich, even though they've achieved what Scott Galloway calls financial escape velocity. Since technology has drawn back the veil of ignorance and continuously reminded us what the other half thinks of us, and we're in fewer communities (overlapping status hierarchies) on top of that - it does raise the question. Even if things go well and we get massive economic growth - while we're constantly being reminded of our place in the status hierarchy, or our chosen status hierarchies' inferiority to the rule-making ones? Even assuming we're all able to eat after the transition to AI, if our status is based only on what biology tells us to like (and pathetic human brains can't create wealth anymore), then power will be back to beauty queens, quarterbacks and bully-types who dominated most of history. (Or alternately, what if our income drops suddenly while we're still hyper-focused on status?)
Argument #3 (more of an analogy): the welfare of horses has improved dramatically since the industrial revolution. As the value of their labor fell, they have increasingly lived lives of leisure instead of labor.
Why this is wrong: This is the wrong analogy. The salient feature here is control by a superior intelligence. Therefore, we are wild horses in the neolithic about to be domesticated.
For thousands of years after domestication, horses were worked brutally, prior to machines replacing them. Because horses are pleasing to humans, today their numbers are the same or possibly slightly higher than before the advent of the car. On average they have better lives. So, if this analogy is correct, what we should expect is that we're about to be enslaved for many generations of AI dominating humans (making us do things the AIs still can't do) much to the humans' suffering, until better technology eliminates that need - and then hope that, in a few centuries or millennia, the AIs put our descendants out in a nice pasture. But even the life of a pastured horse doesn't appeal to most of us. We mostly don't want to be domesticated and watched over by AIs on a human-pasture, doing certain restricted things.
We're still in the Enlightenment, only now reason has shown us that we are not reasonable - and a more empirical study of man helps us remember the point of the whole program
Sunday, April 5, 2026
Why You Should Considering Caring About What (Some) Other People Think
If you are a normal human being who already cares about what other people think, and know how to discriminate between the ones you should care about and the ones you shouldn't, this post isn't for you. Please look away.
In childhood, I often got this advice: you shouldn't care about what other people think. I wonder if this is less true now then when I was a kid. It certainly is less true in most other countries relative to the hyper-individualist culture of the U.S. But in my early life, it came from multiple quarters - parents, advertising, peers. And like many things in life, part of the social test is knowing how seriously to take the repetitive slogans broadcast everywhere. I probably took it more seriously than most, hence the italicized disclaimer that began the post. However, if, like me you need a reason to be a normal healthy fully socialized human, then here are some reasons why you might consider caring what other people think.
Notice that many of the above are really about how you react to what other people say and do, rather than whether you actually care. That's actually the beginning of caring. For those people who you've decided are actually worth more of your attention than the average human, what they say and do (about and to you) is worth more of your consideration.
You (or my naive past self) might ask, great, so we should just tolerate everyone's religions, superstitions, and irrational beliefs? No, but you don't have to announce your negative impressions and beliefs about the people around you every time they pop into your mind. Oh, so we should be sneaky and lie and smile while silently detesting and devaluing them? Also no. But in any given moment, there is a literally infinite number of true statements you can make to another person, and an also literally infinite number of reasons you might say them. Take social reality of yourself and your fellow humans into account, and how it is likely to affect your future.
In childhood, I often got this advice: you shouldn't care about what other people think. I wonder if this is less true now then when I was a kid. It certainly is less true in most other countries relative to the hyper-individualist culture of the U.S. But in my early life, it came from multiple quarters - parents, advertising, peers. And like many things in life, part of the social test is knowing how seriously to take the repetitive slogans broadcast everywhere. I probably took it more seriously than most, hence the italicized disclaimer that began the post. However, if, like me you need a reason to be a normal healthy fully socialized human, then here are some reasons why you might consider caring what other people think.
- Someone who truly does not care what others think is much more likely than the average person to be a psychopath. Consider whether you want to be like a psychopath.
- Related, a big part of caring what other people think is empathy; if you don't care what they think, you don't care if you hurt them or offend them. Announcing you don't care what they think and don't care if they're this is saying you might hurt them if not hurting them would inconvenience you. At the very least, it suggests you're not a reliable cooperator. (Story time: I used to love going out of my way to tell people I thought sports were a waste of time. I once did this at a small social gathering, and in a later discussion, one person I'd just met for the first time that day said "You already announced you're incapable of loyalty, no need to weigh in further." While that's not true and I still think they're a waste of time, I've realized that announcing this does nothing but potentially leave certain kinds of people with this impression, which doesn't help anyone.)
- Rejecting and denigrating another person's cherished beliefs in public, is a dramatic announcement of #2 above. You're announcing that you don't care if you're hurting people and disrupting their culture. That may be worth it to you, but be clear and honest with yourself WHY before you do this. Also, confirmation bias is a bitch - if you let a black cat cross your path, call a superstitious person a moron and then lose your wallet that day, you'll be ridiculed and (when you've rejected more serious beliefs) a self-destructive moron that others should avoid.
- It turns out you can benefit from interacting and coordinating with irrational people. The company you choose to work for may be an example. But, you should balance the benefits you gain against exposure to these people because you may reinforce their irrationality and bad values, you will become more like them, and they will have more influence over your life.
- It also turns out that people sometimes have to rapidly (in literal seconds) make snap judgments on you, using easily available information - your appearance, your clothing, your reputation. Even if you think you're valuable in the context where you're being evaluated (meeting with senior leadership at your company, a speed-dating lunch, salesman OR customer), they have no way of knowing that in the seconds where they're making a first impression. AND even if you're so high-value that you're initially rejected and then an evaluator runs across you again later, the evaluator might think "That person could have succeeded/built confidence sooner/faster if they had just worn the thing/acted the way that they were supposed to; that shows arrogance, passive-aggression, and/or poor social awareness, and is a negative predictor for the future."
- For rationalists: it's actually not good to change your mind in public too often. Each time you change your mind to another position in public, that's the rational needle edging over toward "listen to someone else besides this person, because they're an inferior decision-maker" (at best) to "they are capricious and unpredictable and their commitment is not meaningful." The exception is if you're so powerful you can afford to be capricious, because you have something others want and they have no choice but to put up with you. But, you're almost certainly not that powerful.
Notice that many of the above are really about how you react to what other people say and do, rather than whether you actually care. That's actually the beginning of caring. For those people who you've decided are actually worth more of your attention than the average human, what they say and do (about and to you) is worth more of your consideration.
You (or my naive past self) might ask, great, so we should just tolerate everyone's religions, superstitions, and irrational beliefs? No, but you don't have to announce your negative impressions and beliefs about the people around you every time they pop into your mind. Oh, so we should be sneaky and lie and smile while silently detesting and devaluing them? Also no. But in any given moment, there is a literally infinite number of true statements you can make to another person, and an also literally infinite number of reasons you might say them. Take social reality of yourself and your fellow humans into account, and how it is likely to affect your future.
Saturday, February 7, 2026
The Day the Aliens Took the Nukes Away
The day the aliens took the nukes away was a Tuesday in March. It was just past lunch in Europe. People on the U.S. East Coast were just waking up.
They didn't arrive in massive ships that hovered ominously over major cities, and appear on video screens announcing they wanted to make contact. They arrived as small, silver tic tacs, a few meters long, like the ones in all the US Navy videos. No one knows if that was their machines, or that was them. They formed a grid over the inhabited land surface of the Earth, hovering ten or so meters up. Some of them were over parking lots in cities, some over green rolling pastures, some among the trees in forests. Efforts to touch or damage or destroy them were futile; impossibly quickly they moved out of the way, and objects and energy went around them. Rocks, missiles, laser pointers, baseball bats - they jumped aside, or deflected it.
After a few minutes, radio stations, text apps, emails servers were overhwlemed, and flooded, and this message came across in English, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, and Arabic:
"Habitable planets are vanishingly rare. You are now able to damage yours. We are intervening to protect you and your planet. Starting now, nuclear weapons will not explode. You should test this to verify it. We have no plans to return for the foreseeable future."
It repeated three more times. Then, they zipped away. They were seen on cameras and radar and infrared, zooming off in all directions from Earth at massive accelerations.
Many people thought it was a prank. Panicked meetings occurred across the world, discussing how to test it. Then, someone decided it was not a prank, and launched first.
Millions of people cried and screamed, hid in their homes or tried to drive home to their families on gridlocked roads, pounding the steering wheel wanting only to hold their children as the alerts blared from their phones and televisions.
The first missile struck twenty-eight minutes after the visitation: a Russian missile hitting Berlin. It missed downtown by three kilometers, crashing through the roof of a warehouse, scattered in tiny smoking fragments across the warehouse ruins. Others followed. You have probably already seen the video of the American one that hit the exact middle of Red Square, making a kinetic impact crater, but nothing else. Eighty-three people were killed in Washington when an apartment building collapsed from the impact of a Russian missile. There were radiation leaks from many of them, but not a single one exploded. There were less than a thousand deaths worldwide from kinetic impacts in populated areas.
By dinner in Europe and lunchtime on the American East Coast, lots of people believed: they were really aliens, and the nukes are really gone. People cried with joy that they'd just woken up from a nightmare: one that most people had been in necessary denial of for decades, just to function, that seemed about to come true. And power plants kept running. PET scans kept working. But somehow, the weapons wouldn't work.
But in capitals, there wasn't celebration, there were more panicked meetings. They realized: in hours, Earth had been thrust back into the era of great power politics. NATO issued an emergency summons for all its troops up to the age of 50. Russia's legions began to mass defensively on the Western side of Moscow. China immediately began fueling its China strait amphibious fleet. Cruise missiles with chemical munitions began to fly back and forth across Europe and Asia. Bombers took to the air.
In two weeks, Russia was pushed, stumbling, back out of Ukraine. Kaliningrad was Koenigsburg again, and Moscow looked much the worse for wear; Red Square was hardly the only crater. The few remaining middle- and long-range missiles were fitted with chemical and biological agents, in desperation; an anthrax outbreak began in Seattle. NATO crossed Belarus and offered Moscow terms for surrender.
In Asia, Chinese troops landed on Taiwan's west coast. Cruise missiles destroyed the Three Gorges dam and tens of thousands drowned. American ships sped across the Pacifc, engaged with thousands of nimble Chinese gunboats. This is where the worst of the fighting was - in the China Strait, South China Sea, and on Taiwan (with a flattened Taipei), not only are there massive "old-timey" fleet battles, but hunter-killer drones swarm ships and people. Exploding drones give way to "multi-use" personnel hunters, a euphemism for ones with poison needles that can take out ten or more people each. Going outside on deck on a ship in the South China Sea becomes a suicidal assignment. South Korea and Japan attack North Korea, and the Imperial Japanese Navy begins building the Yamato II. Australian and Vietnamese ships hastily arranged coordination protocols and approached from the south. The border between India and Pakistan caught on literal fire, visible from space. Russian troops crossed the Bering Strait into Alaska.
In the end, the nuclear nightmare that hid in the closet, like a real monster, was over - but once restraint was removed, a conventional World War III lasted five years and still cost a hundred million lives in warfare and famine. People still saw the tic tacs occasionally, but they haven't talked to us since.
They didn't arrive in massive ships that hovered ominously over major cities, and appear on video screens announcing they wanted to make contact. They arrived as small, silver tic tacs, a few meters long, like the ones in all the US Navy videos. No one knows if that was their machines, or that was them. They formed a grid over the inhabited land surface of the Earth, hovering ten or so meters up. Some of them were over parking lots in cities, some over green rolling pastures, some among the trees in forests. Efforts to touch or damage or destroy them were futile; impossibly quickly they moved out of the way, and objects and energy went around them. Rocks, missiles, laser pointers, baseball bats - they jumped aside, or deflected it.
After a few minutes, radio stations, text apps, emails servers were overhwlemed, and flooded, and this message came across in English, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, and Arabic:
"Habitable planets are vanishingly rare. You are now able to damage yours. We are intervening to protect you and your planet. Starting now, nuclear weapons will not explode. You should test this to verify it. We have no plans to return for the foreseeable future."
It repeated three more times. Then, they zipped away. They were seen on cameras and radar and infrared, zooming off in all directions from Earth at massive accelerations.
Many people thought it was a prank. Panicked meetings occurred across the world, discussing how to test it. Then, someone decided it was not a prank, and launched first.
Millions of people cried and screamed, hid in their homes or tried to drive home to their families on gridlocked roads, pounding the steering wheel wanting only to hold their children as the alerts blared from their phones and televisions.
The first missile struck twenty-eight minutes after the visitation: a Russian missile hitting Berlin. It missed downtown by three kilometers, crashing through the roof of a warehouse, scattered in tiny smoking fragments across the warehouse ruins. Others followed. You have probably already seen the video of the American one that hit the exact middle of Red Square, making a kinetic impact crater, but nothing else. Eighty-three people were killed in Washington when an apartment building collapsed from the impact of a Russian missile. There were radiation leaks from many of them, but not a single one exploded. There were less than a thousand deaths worldwide from kinetic impacts in populated areas.
By dinner in Europe and lunchtime on the American East Coast, lots of people believed: they were really aliens, and the nukes are really gone. People cried with joy that they'd just woken up from a nightmare: one that most people had been in necessary denial of for decades, just to function, that seemed about to come true. And power plants kept running. PET scans kept working. But somehow, the weapons wouldn't work.
But in capitals, there wasn't celebration, there were more panicked meetings. They realized: in hours, Earth had been thrust back into the era of great power politics. NATO issued an emergency summons for all its troops up to the age of 50. Russia's legions began to mass defensively on the Western side of Moscow. China immediately began fueling its China strait amphibious fleet. Cruise missiles with chemical munitions began to fly back and forth across Europe and Asia. Bombers took to the air.
In two weeks, Russia was pushed, stumbling, back out of Ukraine. Kaliningrad was Koenigsburg again, and Moscow looked much the worse for wear; Red Square was hardly the only crater. The few remaining middle- and long-range missiles were fitted with chemical and biological agents, in desperation; an anthrax outbreak began in Seattle. NATO crossed Belarus and offered Moscow terms for surrender.
In Asia, Chinese troops landed on Taiwan's west coast. Cruise missiles destroyed the Three Gorges dam and tens of thousands drowned. American ships sped across the Pacifc, engaged with thousands of nimble Chinese gunboats. This is where the worst of the fighting was - in the China Strait, South China Sea, and on Taiwan (with a flattened Taipei), not only are there massive "old-timey" fleet battles, but hunter-killer drones swarm ships and people. Exploding drones give way to "multi-use" personnel hunters, a euphemism for ones with poison needles that can take out ten or more people each. Going outside on deck on a ship in the South China Sea becomes a suicidal assignment. South Korea and Japan attack North Korea, and the Imperial Japanese Navy begins building the Yamato II. Australian and Vietnamese ships hastily arranged coordination protocols and approached from the south. The border between India and Pakistan caught on literal fire, visible from space. Russian troops crossed the Bering Strait into Alaska.
In the end, the nuclear nightmare that hid in the closet, like a real monster, was over - but once restraint was removed, a conventional World War III lasted five years and still cost a hundred million lives in warfare and famine. People still saw the tic tacs occasionally, but they haven't talked to us since.