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400 years ago, Galileo and Descartes split the known world into things "out there" and things "in here" -- our experience of things: color, the sound of the cello, a thought, a conviction, an image. In the second half of the 20th century, the scientific community of the west began the momentous attempt to bring those two worlds together. They have not quite succeeded, but they have discovered that we are not remotely who we think we are. Bibliography Thomas Nagel, "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", The Philosophical Review 83:4 (1974)David Chalmers, "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness," Journal of Consciousness Studies 2:3 (1995)David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind (Oxford, 1996)Joseph Levine, "Materialism and Qualia: The Explanatory Gap," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 64 (1983)Ned Block, "On a Confusion About a Function of Consciousness," Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (1995)Philip Goff, Galileo's Error (Pantheon, 2019)René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641); The Passions of the Soul (1649)Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Little, Brown, 1991)Daniel Dennett, "The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity" (1992)Daniel Dennett, "Are We Explaining Consciousness Yet?", Cognition 79 (2001)Keith Frankish, "Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness," JCS 23:11–12 (2016)David Chalmers, "The Meta-Problem of Consciousness," JCS 25:9–10 (2018)Robert Wright, Why Buddhism Is True (Simon & Schuster, 2017)Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966)Alan Watts, Nature, Man and Woman (1958); The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951)Sam Harris, Waking Up (Simon & Schuster, 2014)Colin McGinn, "Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?", Mind 98:391 (1989)Colin McGinn, The Mysterious Flame (Basic, 1999)Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Matter (1927)Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1928)Galen Strawson, "Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism," JCS 13:10–11 (2006)Philip Goff, Consciousness and Fundamental Reality (Oxford, 2017)William James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. 1 (1890) Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos (Oxford, 2012)Erwin Schrödinger, What Is Life? / Mind and Matter (Cambridge, 1944/1958)Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson & Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind (MIT, 1991)Evan Thompson, Waking, Dreaming, Being (Columbia, 2015)C.G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (CW 9i, 1959) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We see throughout myth and fable that the hero does not just wake up and decide to leave everything behind. They are thrust into things. Gandalf shows up with a bunch of dwarves to wrest Bilbo from his dinner. Now may or may not be the time for your Hero’s Journey to start. But you may already hear the call to adventure. Whenever your time comes, I hope this episode helps you recognize it’s happening, and participate fully in it. Bibliography: Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand FacesJoseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, The Power of MythStephen Larsen and Robin Larsen, A Fire in the Mind: The Life of Joseph CampbellCJ Jung, Collected Works (translated by RFC Hull)Robert A Johnson Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal GrowthRobert A Johnson, Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the PsycheMarie-Louise von Franz, Projection and Re-Collection in Jungian Psychology: Reflections of the SoulEdward Edinger, Ego and ArchetypeJames Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in MidlifeJames Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of LifeMurray Stein, In Midlife: A Jungian PerspectiveConnie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human NatureIain McGhilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western WorldThe Matrix Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Modern cinema is chock full of Hero's Journeys. Today I cover 3 of my favorites, each more interesting and sophisticated than the last. We will actually see three variants on the Hero's Journey, with different details that we can relate to. This episode is not evidence that the Hero's Journey is bubbling up without the conscious attention of the screenwriters or directors, but instead my hope is that you will be able to engage with story and myth in a new, more powerful way. Movies include: The Star Wars Trilogy (Episodes IV, V, VI) Mad Max: Fury Road Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When you realize something is very wrong, that life is not all it was cracked up to be, that the meaning has been drained from the world, then you have heard the call to adventure. If you answer it, you begin the Hero's Journey. Joseph Campbell shows us how the Hero's Journey has been told in myth and legend across all cultures and times, as a roadmap to our very enlightenment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Silicon Eden, the loss of the immortality project means a collapse of meaning and a gaping hole where a value system used to be. Right now, the only good news is that you will be far from the first to go through this problem. Sources Eliot, T.S. The Waste Land. 1922.Eliot, Valerie, ed. The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts. 1971.ietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. 1882Kierkegaard, Søren The Sickness Unto Death. 1849.Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. 1942.Jung, Carl. "The Stages of Life," in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche (Collected Works, Vol. 8).Jaques, Elliott. "Death and the Mid-life Crisis." International Journal of Psychoanalysis 46 (1965): 502–514.Hollis, James. The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife. Inner City Books, 1993.Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. 1973.Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Everything you want is right at your fingertips. There is no struggle, nothing to accomplish. Can humans figure out how to just enjoy life as the pets of a superintelligence? Sources Plato. Republic, Book VII  Sukhumāla Sutta Russell, Bertrand. "In Praise of Idleness." 1932.  Keynes, John Maynard. "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren." 1930.  Susskind, Daniel. A World Without Work. Metropolitan Books, 2020.  Robinson, Terry E., and Kent C. Berridge. "The neural basis of drug craving: an incentive-sensitization theory of addiction." Brain Research Reviews 18(3), 1993, 247–291.  Robinson, Terry E., and Kent C. Berridge. "The Incentive-Sensitization Theory of Addiction 30 Years On." Annual Review of Psychology 76, 2025, 29–58. Berridge, Kent C., and Terry E. Robinson. "Liking, wanting, and the incentive-sensitization theory of addiction." American Psychologist 71, 2016, 670–679.  "A reward and incentive-sensitization perspective on compulsive use of social networking sites — Wanting but not liking predicts checking frequency and problematic use behavior." Addictive Behaviors 116, 2021, article 106808 Bostrom, Nicholas. "Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World." Ideapress Publishing, 2024. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Many people believe that in a the robo-communist future of superintelligent AI, humans will flourish: artists, scholars -- perhaps Burning Man 24/7. Human nature suggests a very different picture. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke ZarathustraBecker, Ernest. The Denial of Death.Bostrom, Nick. Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World. Ideapress, 2024Kosmyna, Nataliya, et al. "Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task." arXiv:2506.08872, 2025. MIT Media Lab.Stanković, Miloš, et al. "Comment on: Your Brain on ChatGPT." arXiv:2601.00856, 2026. Lee, Hao-Ping (Hank), Advait Sarkar, Lev Tankelevitch, Ian Drosos, Sean Rintel, Richard Banks, and Nicholas Wilson. "The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking." Proceedings of CHI 2025, Yokohama.Aguiar, Mark, Erik Hurst, and Loukas Karabarbounis. "Time Use during the Great Recession." American Economic Review 103(5), 2013, 1664–1696. Sleep and TV absorb the largest share of foregone work hours.Aguiar, Mark, and Erik Hurst. "Measuring Trends in Leisure: The Allocation of Time over Five Decades." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2007. Leisure up roughly 4–8 hrs/week, 1965–2003. Cowen, Tyler. "Human Life in a Post-AGI World." Talk at Google DeepMind, July 8, 2026. tylercowen.com. - Note Cowen disagrees significantly with me!National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2024 results. 12th-grade reading lowest ever reported, 10 points below 1992; 4th and 8th grade at early-1990s levels. Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), 2023 cycle, released Dec 2024 (NCES). Bone et al. "Reading for pleasure" trends from the American Time Use Survey, 2003–2023. iScience, August 2025.Aguiar, Mark, Mark Bils, Kerwin Kofi Charles, and Erik Hurst. "Leisure Luxuries and the Labor Supply of Young Men." Journal of Political Economy 129(2), 2021, 337–382.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we walk through some potential solutions to the fermi paradox, and then apply the now-likely reality that our own Von Neumann probes are probably only a few million years away from seeing most of the galaxy. What is out there waiting for them? What does our pending success mean for the likelihood of different fermi paradox hypotheses? Eric Jones, Los Alamos memo reconstructing Fermi's 1950 lunch remark (1985) Frank Drake, the Drake Equation (1961) Michael Hart, "An Explanation for the Absence of Extraterrestrials on Earth" (1975) Ian Crawford, Scientific American (July 2000) Frank Tipler, "Extraterrestrial Intelligent Beings Do Not Exist" (1980) Robin Hanson, "The Great Filter — Are We Almost Past It?" (1996) Vernor Vinge, "The Coming Technological Singularity" (1993) Robin Hanson, Daniel Martin, Calvin McCarter, Jonathan Paulson, "If Loud Aliens Explain Human Earliness, Quiet Aliens Are Also Rare" (2021) Peter Behroozi & Molly Peeples, MNRAS (2015) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The world is barreling towards disaster on many fronts. Crises include: climate change, depopulation, government debt, sagging welfare states, housing affordability, healthcare affordability, political polarization, government paralysis. By 2050 they will all be irrelevant, as will the structures trying to grapple with them. SOURCES: Kokotajlo, Daniel, et al. AI 2027. ai-2027.com.Kokotajlo, Daniel. "What 2026 Looks Like." 2021.Amodei, Dario. "Machines of Loving Grace." 2024.TechTimes. "OpenAI GPT-5 Biological Risk Classification." July 27, 2026.Axios. "The AI Titans' Biggest Private Fear." July 24, 2026.Center for a New American Security (CNAS). "AI and the Evolution of Biological National Security Risks." August 2024.AI Incident Reporting Act. 2026.AI Kill Switch Act. 2026.Schneier, Bruce. "AI Surveillance Is Being Supercharged." Schneier on Security, July 2026.DeepMind. "AlphaFold: Five Years of Impact." 2024.Bostrom, Nick. "The Superintelligent Will: Motivation and Instrumental Rationality in Advanced Artificial Agents." Minds and Machines, 2012.Bostrom, Nick. "Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Development." Utilitas, 2003.Vinge, Vernor. A Fire Upon the Deep. Tor Books, 1992.Freitas, Robert A., Jr. "A Self-Reproducing Interstellar Probe." Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, vol. 33 (1980): 251–264.Wikipedia. "Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894."Oxford Academic. Book chapter on William Crookes and the wheat-supply crisis (1898 address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science).Jevons, William Stanley. The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-Mines. Macmillan, 1865.Ricardo, David. "On Machinery." Chapter 31, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 3rd ed. John Murray, 1821.United Kingdom. Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration. 1904.Vinge, Vernor. "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era." 1993 ERRATA: Haber-Bosch synthesized fertilizer in 1909, not 1934Borlaug did not use transgenic methods; golden rice didI forgot to mention Scott Alexander at AI Futures; sorry, Scott!Hayek's "Price and Production" touches only briefly on epistemology; "The Use of Knowledge in Society" is a better source. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Matrix looks more and more like the perfect allegory for the modern age. States, corporations, social systems, and even ideas have a mind of their own, and they are hungry. By participating blindly and uncritically in these systems, we feed them, and they take over more and more of our lives. Sources: •     Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (1976) •     Earth.org / Environment+Energy Leader fast-fashion waste roundups (2025–26) •     Reed Hastings, Netflix earnings call / Summit LA17 remarks (2017) •     Tristan Harris, Senate testimony (2017) •     Dale & Krueger, NBER working paper (1999) / QJE (2002); follow-up NBER (2011) / Journal of Human Resources (2014)  •     ProPublica & *The Chronicle of Higher Education*, “The Newest College Admissions Ploy: Paying to Make Your Teen a 'Peer-Reviewed' Author,” May 2023. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over time, we have been able to cognize in totally novel ways. We have been able to teach these novel cognitions to our fellow humans. We can teach some of them to other great apes. We can teach dogs some language and concepts. We can't teach anything to rats. Today, your favorite podcasting primate contemplates what superintelligent AI could look like or mean. How can we relate to something that is 2x, 5x, 100x smarter than we are? How will it relate to us? SOURCES: Leslie, Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It (2014)Terrace, Nim Chimpsky research (Columbia, 1970s)McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary (2009) Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History (1949) Luria, Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations (Harvard University Press, 1976)Flynn & Weiss (2007) McGinn, "Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?", Mind 98 (1989) Nagel, "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974)Good, "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine," Advances in Computers vol. 6 (1965) Vinge, "The Coming Technological Singularity" (1993) Bostrom, Superintelligence (2014) Urban, "The AI Revolution" (Wait But Why, 2015) Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep (1992) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

[AUDIO FIXED!] Today we explore wisdom. Not the "don't put tomatoes in a fruit salad" kind. Serious business wisdom. It turns out, the wise tend to converge on understanding the world in a similar way. In the 20th century, philosophical titans saw this convergence. They look back to the original seers of wisdom and see in them parallels that run so deep, that upon deep contemplation of these philosophies, they found a "highest common factor," including among: Epicteus, Marcus Aurelius, and the StoicsPlato, and various Neoplatonists such as PlotinusSpinoza, SchopenhauerPossibly Hegel, Wittgenstein, though they are famously difficult to interpretJiddu KrishnamurtiLao Tzu, who authored the Tao Te ChingALso Chuang Tzu and Lieh TzuJewish philosophers such as Philo of AlexandriaSufi mystics of Islam, most famously Jalal al-Din RumiJesus of NazarethSt. PaulMeister Eckhart, the mystic Christian St. Jon of the CrossHinduism:The Sages of the UpanishadsAdi Shankara’s The Crest-Jewel of WisdomThe Bhagavad GitaThe BuddhaParticularly Zen masters who followedVarious SutrasThe Bardo Thodol It is the Perennial Philosophy. I call it the One Wisdom. Huxley called it the “Highest Common Factor” of universal truth. SOURCES Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. 1942. Huxley, Aldous. The Perennial Philosophy. Harper & Row, 1945. John of the Cross, St. Dark Night of the Soul (La noche oscura del alma). Jung, C. G. Letters, Volume 1: 1906–1950. Princeton University Press. Kahan, Dan. Identity-protective cognition research (cross-referenced, this project). Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (Liuzu Tan Jing). Polanyi, Michael. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. University of Chicago Press, 1958. Polanyi, Michael. The Tacit Dimension. Doubleday, 1966. Tolle, Eckhart. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. Dutton, 2005. Tao Te Ching (Laozi). Watts, Alan. Become What You Are. Shambhala, 1995 (essays, 1930s–1950s). Watts, Alan. The Wisdom of Insecurity. Pantheon, 1951. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. 1921. Wright, Robert. Why Buddhism Is True. Simon & Schuster, 2017. Xiangyan Zhixian — traditional Chan/Zen biographical account (Tang dynasty, c. 820–898). Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu), "On the Equality of Things" ("Discussion on Making All Things Equal"). Bible. Job 42:5–6; Luke 15:11–32 (KJV). Bhagavad Gita, 2.47. Ovid. Metamorphoses. McGilchrist, Iain. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. Yale University Press, 2009. Miles Kington. Quoted in The Independent (UK), Mar 28, 2003.  Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Pantheon, 1949 — "Freedom to Live," Stage 17.  Eckhart Tolle. The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. New World Library, 1997  Ramana Maharshi, quoted in Ram Dass, "Dying Is Absolutely Safe" Alan Watts, Become Who You Are.  Sam Harris, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion.  Dalai Lama & Paul Ekman, Emotional Awareness: Overcoming the Obstacles to Psychological Balance and Compassion. Times Books, 2008 Emmet Fox, The Sermon on the Mount Ernest Kurtz & Katherine Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection. Bantam Byron Katie, Loving What Is. Harmony, 2002.  Diana Chapman & Jim Dethmer (with Kaley Klemp), The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. 2014. Epictetus, Discourses / Enchiridion. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. Plato, Republic Plotinus, The Enneads. Spinoza, Ethics Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit.  Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known  Philo of Alexandria, On the Creation of the World.  1 Corinthians 1:20, 1:25, 3:19 — "the wisdom of the world is foolishness" John 14:6 — "I am the way, the truth, and the life."  Galatians 2:20 or 2 Corinthians 5:17 -- "in Christ" ERRATA: Heller, not Huxley, wrote Catch-22.Pauline, not Jesus, says "The wisdom of the world will be foolish..." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We explore the state of education just before the rise of AI, compare it to today, and extrapolate into the future. Sources Tyler Jagt, "My Students Can't Read," Chronicle of Higher Education, 2026. NAEP Long-Term Trend AssessmentPew Research, "Reading for fun has become less common," 2021.James S. Coleman et al., Equality of Educational Opportunity ("The Coleman Report"), US Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1966Kathryn Borman & Monique Dowling, Teachers College Record, 2010.Dan Goldhaber, "The Mystery of Good Teaching," Education Next, 2002 Steven Rivkin, Eric Hanushek & John Kain, teacher-effects study, Econometrica, 2005. Xitao Fan & Michael Chen, parental-involvement meta-analysis, Educational Psychology Review, 2001 World Bank, "Vietnam's Human Capital: Education Success and Future Challenges," 2020 (PISA science outperformance on low per-pupil spend). OECD, "Does Money Buy Strong Performance in PISA?", PISA in Focus No. 13, 2012 (no score/spending relationship above ~$35k cumulative per-student spend). NCES, Digest of Education Statistics 2023, Table 236.55 (US per-pupil spending, $6,873 → $17,495 real dollars, 1970-71 to 2020-21)Boston Globe, 2001 coverage of Harvard grading ("laughing stock of the Ivy League"; 91% of seniors graduating with honors). Harvard Crimson, Oct. 5, 2023 (~79-80% of 2020-21 grades in the A range)Anemona Hartocollis, "Harvard Students Skip Class and Still Get High Grades, Faculty Say," New York Times, Oct. 6, 2025. Gallup, confidence-in-higher-education tracking, July 2023 and July 2024 releases (57% in 2015 → 36% in 2023/24; Republican confidence ~56%→~19-20%, Democratic decline much smaller)Pew Research, Aug. 2019 (share saying colleges have a negative effect on the country, 26%→38%, 2012-2019, driven almost entirely by Republicans/leaners)Challenge Success (Stanford, Denise Pope), Fall 2018 surveyMark Galloway, cheating in advantaged-community schools, Ethics & Behavior, 2012Stacy Dale & Alan Krueger, "Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College," NBER WP 7322, Aug. 1999; Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2002. Follow-up: NBER WP 17159, Jun. 2011; Journal of Human Resources, 2014.ProPublica & The Chronicle of Higher Education, "The Newest College Admissions Ploy: Paying to Make Your Teen a 'Peer-Reviewed' Author," May 2023.Nataliya Kosmyna et al., "Your Brain on ChatGPT," MIT Media Lab, arXiv:2506.08872, 2025. Hao-Ping (Hank) Lee et al., "The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking," CHI 2025, peer-reviewed, n=319. Turnitin AI-detection data, 2023-2026 (>80% AI-written flags: ~3% early 2023 → ~15% early 2026).Inside Higher Ed / Generation Lab Student Voice survey, Aug. 2025Rose Horowitch, "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books," The Atlantic, Oct. 2024. "Hilarius Bookbinder," "The Average College Student Is Illiterate," Persuasion, Mar. 2025. Tyler Jagt, "My Students Can't Read," Chronicle of Higher Education, 2026. NAEP 2024 12th-grade reading assessment, released Sept. 2025 (lowest since assessment began). Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar & Ruyu Chen (Stanford Digital Economy Lab), "Canaries in the Coal Mine?," Nov. 2025, ADP payroll dataIndeed Hiring Lab, entry-level software postings2U, coding-bootcamp partnership shutdown, Dec. 2024.Southern New Hampshire University, bootcamp closure, 2023, citing AI adoption.World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report, 2023 & 2025 McKinsey Global Institute, "Skill Shift," 2018 Stefan Bauschard, "Education is a Wicked Problem in AI" Brian Miller, "Farewell, Peak Literacy, We Hardly Knew You," Front Porch Republic, Nov. 2023. James Marriott, The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society ERRATA: Obviously Daniel Kahneman wrote _Thinking Fast and Slow_, not Malcom GladwellI said that in 2024 the GOP did not have a platform; it was in fact 2020 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's amazing how useful illusion is for surviving in a cave, and staggering how destructive it is to our lives. The Buddha saw this 2500 years ago. Modern science sees it more clearly than ever. In this episode I did not even get into the Fundamental Attribution Error or the vast suite of cognitive biases and logical fallacies to which we are prone. But we are not doomed to live like this! SOURCES Yes, I read these! Brickman, Coates & Janoff-Bulman (1978), J. Personality & Social Psychology 36. Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness (2006)  Gazzaniga & LeDoux, The Integrated Mind (1978). Kurzban, Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind (2010) Wright, Why Buddhism Is True (2017)  Fadiman & Gruber, Your Symphony of Selves (2020)  Hunt, Marx, Lipson & Young (2018), J. Social & Clinical Psychology 37. Allcott, Braghieri, Eichmeyer & Gentzkow (2020), American Economic Review 110(3). Scitovsky, The Joyless Economy (1976). Wrigley & Schofield, The Population History of England 1541–1871 (1981) Killingsworth & Gilbert (2010), Science 330. Kasser, The High Price of Materialism (2002). Einstein–Born correspondence (1926); Bohr–Einstein debate. McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary (2009); McGilchrist Substack, Apr 2026 (Kastner 2024 paper). Mercier & Sperber, "Why Do Humans Reason?" (2011), Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Haidt, The Righteous Mind (2012)  Trivers, The Folly of Fools (2011) Kahan, "Ideology, Motivated Reasoning, and Cognitive Reflection" (2012) Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (1996); Dunbar, Duncan & Marriott (1997). Hardin & Higgins (1996); Higgins & Rholes (1978); Echterhoff, Higgins & Levine (2009), Perspectives on Psychological Science Kopietz et al. (2010), Social Cognition Festinger, When Prophecy Fails (1956). Plato, Apology 38a5–6; Republic Book VII (514a–520a) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As AI's capability grows, what once-human tasks will it be able to do, by when? What will those displaced humans do? We look to the automation revolutions of the past to see what the historical pattern has been, and explore in what ways AI is different that could change the pattern. The pattern will change. The implications are immense. Sources Brynjolfsson & McAfee, "Will Humans Go the Way of Horses?", Foreign Affairs (2015): https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/will-humans-go-way-horses U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Software Developers (SOC 15-1252): https://www.bls.gov/oes/2021/may/oes151252.htm · https://www.bls.gov/oes/2022/may/oes151252.htm · https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes151252.htm · Occupational Outlook Handbook: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm · Katja Grace et al., "Thousands of AI Authors on the Future of AI": https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.02843 · https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Thousands_of_AI_authors_on_the_future_of_AI.pdf Metaculus: "first general AI system" https://www.metaculus.com/questions/5121/ · "An AI Job Apocalypse?", Goldman Sachs Research, June 25, 2026: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/top-of-mind/an-ai-job-apocalypse ( Tyna Eloundou, Sam Manning, Pamela Mishkin, Daniel Rock, "GPTs are GPTs," Science 384 (2024): https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj0998 · Stanford Digital Economy Lab, "Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of AI" (Nov 2025): https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/app/uploads/2025/11/CanariesintheCoalMine_Nov25.pdf Maxim Massenkoff & Peter McCrory, "Labor Market Impacts of AI: A New Measure and Early Evidence," Anthropic (Mar 5, 2026): https://www.anthropic.com/research/labor-market-impacts ERRATA: Tom Brady did NOT win a ring after retirement; he had all 7 before he retiredI said Camus said there is "one true psychological problem;" he said "one true *philosophical* problem" Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.