Sajal Choudhary

Pluralistic: Economic probabilities for our grandchildren (03 Oct 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctoro

I'm talking about fiscal debt: the solar we didn't build, the carbon we emitted instead; the rail we didn't build, the wildly inefficient aviation we substituted; the walkable, livable, transit-oriented cities we didn't build, the car-choked disasters we built instead. Oligarchic opposition to universal healthcare left us sick, with un- or undertreated illnesses and missed opportunities for prevention that left us with overlapping, population-scale health crises. All of this is debt that must be repaid: we can't walk away from it through bankruptcy. We must build the transit, cities, and systems of care – the infrastructure – our species needs to carry on human civilization. We can't keep hitting snooze on this, lest we are finally awoken by seawater lapping at our pillows.

This on a day when I heard Bill Gates on the Decoder podcast talking about AI being the worst weapon we have ever created. And the world is gonna suck so bad.

All the leaves are gone.
What remains - red fruit on branches.
And light on bark.

The Good Thing About Hard Things - Cal Newport by Study Hacks

At first, the ChatGPT group performed better, which is not surprising because LLMs are good at solving math problems. But then the researchers turned off the chatbot. Not only did the AI group’s accuracy fall below the control group, but many participants in the AI group gave up and started skipping questions altogether.

There was a time not so far in the distant past when this was not true, i.e. LLMs were not good at math stuff.

Anyway not the point of the article. It’s this:

What is new, however, is the jaw-dropping speed of these impacts. We’re accustomed to slow-moving techno-cognition trends such as the negative effects of ubiquitous smartphone usage, which took years to emerge in the data.

With chatbots, the negative impact is immediate. The high generated by side-stepping mental effort using LLMs is so compelling that, with only a short exposure, hard thinking quickly becomes intolerable.

Finding moments,
In between bigger moments.
I breathe a little.

Dark outside still.
Blue light blinks incessantly.
Purple flowers bloom.

Goddess on stage,
Women dancing in a circle.
Snap a picture!

Temperature drops suddenly.
We are driving back home.
Something putters away.