psychology

Machines for breadth, human intuition for depth

Sean Monahan, co-founder of K-Hole and writer of the 8Ball newsletter, recently argued that, with the advent of AI, the human trend forecaster will become obsolete. I disagree. What I think will happen instead is that LLMs will raise the standards for our trend research. Machine and human

Instead, what I think we’re missing is a sense of imagination, creativity, and genuine curiosity. Without these elements, the act of research itself has lost its potency, our findings and interpretations reduced to a shallow performance, where the same ideas are recycled and repackaged in an endless feedback loop.

The industry of cultural futuregazing, once a niche subset of ‘coolhunters’ in the 90s, who began tracking street-born trends for brands, has evolved into a sprawling industry. This year alone, 135+ trend reports were published by tech companies, agencies and consultancies. Today, anyone with a TikTok account or Substack and a penchant for digital

“In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.”

A couple of years ago, Isaiah Taylor, the founder of nuclear company Valar Atomics, told me something that’s stuck in my head ever since:

There are only really three pillars to anything around us, as far as consumable goods. We've got energy, intelligence, and dexterity .

I would generalize “dexterity” to “action.” Everything we see around us, and

Creativity is built on basic foundational knowledge, as the brain has more building blocks to work with. Creativity is not just random ideas but novel ways to connect existing knowledge, new ways to solve more complex problems. Innovation requires creativity, which requires a foundation of basic knowledge ~ Make It Stick

Homo Sapiens (literally, “wise man”) are only “wise” because we redistribute most cognitive operations to others; we readily observe and copy the successful and can encode (most of) that knowledge for others to use. For example, if someone discovers how to grow corn, other humans watch the process and imitate their success; they do not waste

He encourages questioning what you read and taking the other side, even if you (or anyone you are around) doesn’t believe it. This isn’t to be contrarian for the sake of it but instead to push yourself into a friction-filled point of view outside of the bubble you may be in.