Nick Bennett
@nickbennett
internet economics
Nick Bennett
If you ever feel regret about past life decisions or paths not taken, there is really only one solution that can make it all wash out and not matter in the end: just be even higher agency and go farther off the beaten path. That stuff only matters if you are low-agency!
For low-agency normies, a life-path point of divergence like getting into Harvard versus going to community college, or a certain job, can truly be permanently life-altering. But high-agency weirdos will always be pulled off the track to what compels them, no matter which track.
You cannot create results. You can only create conditions in which something might happen.
Cultural individualism: In much of the West, the ideal is to be self-sufficient, private, and busy. That’s a hard attitude to build community on.
And I increasingly think our job, maybe our method of rebellion, is to be people who care, who have taste, who like and share and look for good things, who read and watch and look at those things on purpose instead of just staring slackjawed at whatever slop is placed between the ads they hope we won’t really notice.
A new movie taking on the tech bros
Students aren’t cheating because AI made it easier—they’re cheating because, for generations, we’ve taught them that the grade is more important than the knowledge — Terry Underwood