Agalia Tan

Now comes the real work—the intelligence after intelligence.

Not artificial. Not emotional. Not even intuitive.

What we need is an evolved cognitive layer. Less about control. More about code-switching—between logic, emotion, myth, and cultural frequency.

This is not a soft skill. It’s a survival trait.

What I write is all mine, it’s a living thing, it’s an extension of me that wanders out into the world. It is desire turned inwards instead of outwards, focused instead of displaced. It’s a way to access self-knowledge and self-respect.

It can be hard for us to leave what we need to leave outside, in order to be present.

When the threshold is instant, when we step from whatever the clatter is of the external and instantaneously find ourselves somewhere radically new, we are rarely ready.

We hold onto the thoughts and feelings and needs and worries we had a moment ago. Our attention... See more

What they thought was a priority and what I thought was a priority diverged.

Why it’s a problem that AI-generated art assumes that data is the best/truest way to understand the world.

He heard the phrase from the philosopher Alan Watts, who saw the universe not as a machine, but as something alive and wriggling. Embrace the wiggle, he taught, and you'll find yourself moving in harmony with the world.

At our best moments it’s not just that we’re on the right path. It’s that we let the wiggle take us there.