This represents my thoughts today. They’re different from what I thought a year ago. They’re different from what I’ll think in a year. Let people change their minds.
AI water usage is overblown. If you think AI uses a lot of water, I encourage you to look into how much water Netflix uses. Or the California almond crop.
Lots of people really hate AI and they’re leaning into “but it’s using all the water” as a form of propaganda because the numbers sound really big if you don’t report them with context.
AI power usage is… Not overblown, exactly. Data centers use a lot of power. But again, compare it to something like YouTube. And if you’re still upset, realize this is a failing of our society to be able to build new power generation capacity, not a failing of the miracles of our modern world for needing power.
AI did steal basically all of the creative output of collective humanity. I agree. A better society would come up with a way to compensate the creators. This has happened before, and likely will happen again. That doesn’t make it right and I’m not going to defend it, but I think I can’t quite bring myself to be fully upset about it (even as I’m impacted by it) because we’re in good company.
I don’t have much say in what happens. I have near infinite say in how I choose to feel about it. Being angry has almost never been a useful state. Accepting that which I cannot change and learning to use the new tools has measurably and drastically improved my life. Your mileage may vary.
AI can, but that doesn’t mean you have to. Let it do the work in places where you’d rather not, so that you can spend more time where joy is sparked.
Do you like writing words? Then keep doing it. Find the parts of writing you didn’t like, and ask the AI to help you. AI is a better editor than I am. I still write all of my blog posts the human way, but I often ask Claude to take a look before I post them, and it finds all sorts of typos.
Do you like writing code? Great, lots of AI code lives in the realm of “good enough,” but there are places that need better than that. Write the fundamental primitives the AI will go on to orchestrate.
Do you like writing test coverage? I can’t imagine it myself, and I’ve never met the developer who thought this was the fun part of the job. Let the AI do it. Or, if you truly do find this part satisfying, write good, comprehensive, fast tests. There’s a place for this.
Some of the smartest people I know have proposed some potential outcomes for AI that sound like the wildest science fiction. I think the probability of those outcomes is not zero, but I don’t think they’re as inevitable as sometimes reported.
Full disclosure for those who know me well. I’ll sometimes start with a provocative statement and all the reasons I know I shouldn’t do something only to arrive at: “but YOLO here we go anyway!”
This time, I think, that’s not the destination. This isn’t me secretly explaining why I’m going to start a MUD in the Year of our Holy Gashapon, 2026. Probably. Maybe. Almost certainly.
But First, I Digress
I like people. Here we must start before all else, because otherwise it might start to sound like I’m a misanthrope. I really truly do like people. I like chatting with my friends. I enjoy whiling away the hours in pleasant company.
Not everything has to be immediate or predictable. Defend slowness when it serves a purpose, silence when it speaks and difference when evocative. Beauty is not just a means of escape; it is, above all, an invocation.
I’m going to start living on minimum wage. Sort of. Not really. It’s complicated.
Some types of sophistication won’t make you enjoy the object more, they’ll make you enjoy it less. For example, wine snobs don’t enjoy wine twice as much as you, they’re more keenly aware of how most wine isn’t good enough. Avoid sophistication that diminishes your enjoyment.
There’s basically two parts to a budget. There’s the part where you track things, and the part where you use it to make decisions. I’m decent at the first part. Awful at the second.
Oslo is, without a doubt, my favorite country in all of Europe. It manages to feel expansive without feeling big. Cozy but not confined. The people were, without exception, warm, kind, and welcoming in a way that many other European countries were not.
It’s the kind of place I’d like to imagine I could aspire to live in, and perhaps some day be worthy of.
Not gonna lie, when I find someone who’s weirder than me in the ways I want to be weird I get a little jealous but like in a crush-y way? Like let’s be friends, but also enemies. Frenemies. I will make you soup and steal your soul and you will fill my house with spiders and we’ll be besties.
Inscribed on
Operating at the very top of the game, for any value of game, necessitates a single-minded devotion to the exclusion of all other interests or hobbies.
The reason most of the people who are the best at something love doing it is because it’s to the exclusion of all else.
Inscribed on
Me: “You’re Darmok, I’m Jalad, and together we are at Tanagra.”
