five quotes (5.8.26)
five things I read in the first week of may
A fundamental aspect of Disney World is its predictability and consistency. Why go to Disney World, or take a Disney cruise, instead of flying to, say, Italy or Japan? It’s “easier.” “I knew, based on brand alone, that whatever I did,” Wolfe writes, “was probably going to be pretty high quality.” At Disney World, you’re treated like “royalty.” It’s clean and safe; everyone “[speaks] English and use[s] American dollars.” The most you have to do is open your wallet and swipe your credit card. As Wolfe puts it: “When I sat on a bench or waited in a queue for my favorite ride, I didn’t have to work to find happiness in the same way that I had to work to find it in my real life.” Disney World is like a liminal space where time doesn’t exist and you can surrender all real-world responsibilities. It is a place where you can live an “effortless existence.”
—Veronica Clarke, “A Whole New World” (First Things)
Clarke’s article is a review of a book about “Disney adults,” that much-maligned constituency. I deeply resonated with this paragraph because one of the loveliest things about travel is serendipity; this idea that we can and ought and should be able to control over experience and maximize its memorability is a disease of modernity. Some of the best experiences most of us have in life are the unstructured, unplanned, and unprepared moments of absolute beauty and delight. Shortly after college, I was visiting a friend in New York. We were out for drinks with a group of his coworkers. We left one bar, and while people smoked cigarettes on the sidewalk (OK, including me. When in Rome. . .), two of the girls in the group, who were from Lebanon, noticed that the restaurant next door was Lebanese. We went in, were treated to a feast, smoked hookah, and I may have belly-danced with a Lebanese women (maybe). The night was pure magic and purely spontaneous. Allow spontaneity, people, even if it includes some inevitable downsides.
Economics is the study of decision-making under constraints, i.e., scarcity. If advanced AI brings material abundance—if machines can produce many if not all forms of human production at very low marginal cost—does economics become irrelevant? No, we will still have scarcity, but the kind of scarcity that matters will change. Ultimately the answer to any question about the future economics of advanced AI begins with identifying what becomes scarce. After answering that question, the rest of the analysis is pretty straightforward. In this essay I’m going to explore what becomes scarce when automation can replicate many if not all human production, and what that may mean for the types of jobs that emerge.
—Alex Imas, “What Will Be Scarce?” (Newsletter)
Fascinating article. I don’t know if Imas’s predictions will bear out, but I like his framework. Sometimes, technologies disrupt things in predictable ways, but usually we can’t foresee everything that will shake out. The kind of scarcity Imas predicts is that of the human variety, jobs that are relational and defy technological incursion. I think he’s right. As we have debated AI use and efficiency and things like that at my school, one of the subtle alarms in my mind has been, “What if having your kids taught by a flesh-and-blood, fallible subject expert is actually going to be an enormous flex in the future?” As schools face a demographic cliff and the temptation to outsource instruction to AI and adaptive programs, part of me wonders if the pen-and-paper crowd won’t have a huge moment.
The pattern is visible in almost every earnest Christian household. Boys are formed around a coherent set of virtues: responsibility, deference to authority, moral seriousness, and reputation management. Pastors and parents, motivated by genuine love, channel young men toward careers that signal stability and respectability. Law, medicine, ministry, corporate management. These are honorable vocations, but they share a defining feature. They are low-variance paths inside existing systems, not launching pads for building new ones. A young man who lands a comfortable, well-paying job with good benefits and a respected title is celebrated in these communities as a success. What rarely gets asked is whether he is a builder, a founder, or a leader in any substantive sense, or simply a well-compensated follower operating inside an institution someone else had the courage to create. Getting a safe, respectable job is not leadership. It is the appearance of it, and evangelical culture has spent generations treating the appearance as the substance.
—Anthony Bradley, “Evangelicals Don’t Produce Leaders. They Produce “Cubicle Men.”” (Newsletter)
I struggle with articles like this and Aaron Renn’s framework around building an elite. I think it is good to have committed Christians in positions of power and influence, but it is also a strange goal. I know I have said this before, but one of the most grounding things I do every year is walk students through 1 Corinthians. There, Paul tells Christians that God delights to take the weak in the world to shame the strong and those who are not to bring to nothing those who are. The Church is not supposed to work like the world. We are supposed to think about power differently. Encouraging Christians to go into law, medicine, and ministry (wild examples, by the way) is all well and good. Promote justice, heal the sick, and preach the Word. I feel like our Lord told us to do those things more than he instructed us to climb the power ladder.
Approved last December by the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents, the college is the first academic division created at UW–Madison in over 40 years. The new unit will include existing UW degree programs in computer sciences, data science, statistics, library science, and information science.
The university plans to hire 50 new faculty members for the AI college in the upcoming years who will create new courses, certificates, majors, and degree programs involving AI technology and related issues involving the ethics and risks of artificial intelligence. Many of those new faculty will hold joint appointments in departments across the institution. In addition to the private philanthropy, the university intends to provide more than $50 million in annual investment to support the college.
—Michael T. Nietzel, “University Of Wisconsin Receives $100 Million For Its New AI College” (Forbes)
I don’t have a lot to offer in response. I found this interesting. In some ways, this feels like a bit of a cynical effort to glom onto the AI hype. My guess is that a lot of this work is already being done in the regular Comp-Sci classes, but “AI” is sexier than “Computer Science” as a label. However, that’s a lot of money if this is only a marketing ploy. And, hey, hiring 50 people in academia is a good thing.
But what is clear is that there are always trade-offs to dampening a signal. And too often, we default to whatever feels easier in the moment, not realizing the capacities we’re detraining or letting go.
Let’s start with the minor ones. It might not feel like a big deal to listen to a podcast on a run or always have music playing. But what happens is that you lose one of the most valuable skills in running: the ability to listen to your body. Your ability to pace by feel declines. Instead of being like the seasoned vet who can lock into a pace by listening to your breathing and feeling your legs turn over, you’re lost without that external marker guiding you.
—Steve Magness and Brad Stulberg, “The Hidden Cost of Comfort” (The Growth Equation)
I have thought about this a lot. I do a lot of my winter running on a treadmill, usually with a television show or a movie on in the background. My body sort of sinks into a rhythm and I pay little attention to how I am feeling, with most of my attention diverted to the screen. Sometimes, this is nice. “Wow, five miles already!” Sometimes, it prevents me from actually being in the moment. I look forward to the warmer months and outdoor trail runs up and down mountains. There is no time for distraction; I am totally committed to my body’s movement in those moments. And it’s great.