Brandon Marcus

An essay is not the process of translating a fully-formed idea into words on a page; it is the process of discovering and testing an idea by challenging it with form, syntax, structure. The friction between idea and ability that AI evangelists promise to eradicate is not a problem suffered by a disadvantaged few. It’s the fundamental condition of... See more

The real question, then: is writing a product or an art ? Obviously, it can be either, and is often both; it’s probably most like a vast product-art spectrum, with most writing falling somewhere in the middle. I’m a firm believer in the idea that labour has value and deserves to be compensated, so it’s not that I think “real” artists should forgo... See more

So I do think this characteristic of the internet can be harnessed in a positive direction, but it starts with affordances, which is the psychological term for something that makes it easier to do something else. And we have platforms designing their affordances for negativity to spread by targeting high arousal, engagement, emotions. Humans follow... See more

Like it or not, therefore, the proper aim of philosophy is to make sense of how the intersection between the mind and the external world yields up what we call “reality”.

We are judging them as failed public documents, when in fact they are private and mostly disposable records of our stream of consciousness.

Yet this is not merely a matter of bad messaging on the tech industry’s part, either. That second key plank of the AI narrative, again, broadcast directly by the CEOs themselves—that it will take everyone’s jobs—is not simply dismissible. It’s the selling point. Investors don’t ultimately much care whether OpenAI renders software sentient; they... See more

Here’s the mechanism more precisely. When AI automates commodity production, prices in that sector fall. That raises real income. If the goods and services people want more of as they get richer lie disproportionately in the relational sector, demand shifts in that direction. Baumol’s cost disease then amplifies the result: if the relational sector... See more

But the economic logic goes beyond art. It extends to any category where the human element is integral to the value: teachers, nurses, therapists, childcare workers, trainers, hospitality, clergy, guides, and many forms of local services. In all of these cases the human being is not just an input into the production process. Their judgment,... See more

René Girard called it mimetic desire : the idea that we don’t desire objects only for their intrinsic properties, but because other people desire them as well. We want what others want, and we want it even more when they can’t have it—for status, social capital, reputation, etc. Desire is not just a relationship between a person and an object; it... See more