Mood. Oct 10 2024
Hi! My primary goal is escaping the box. In daily life I must grapple with university classes, shopping lists, parental expectations, solitude and friendships, faulty electronics, and a messy room.
I wake up and the to-do waterline is so high that my bed is bobbing up and down and water is lurching out the window. I jump off the mattress and instantly sink to the bottom; sunlight hits the water in diffuse rays and from down under it's beautiful.
But it's the box. No one can see me: if a historian were to stumble upon records of my life, they would conclude I had "just lived"—the graph of my outputs would not look bizarre in a way that would cause a data scientist to pause.
He returned library books only slightly late. Not a ripple on the pond from him.
Most people have no idea what's coming. Many of my friends never tried ChatGPT. Those who did never thought to compare their experience in December 2022 with their experience now. Nor have they thought of checking what industry leaders think of this progression—and whether they predict future progression too.
This ensures that they steer well clear of the Plot. Also colloquially known as "What is Actually Going On," and "Your Best Option Given Normal Life isn't Available". They're in the box and don't even know it.
Everyone is, save for a select few. From the inside it definitely feels bigger than a "select few" ; but Earth has 8 billion potential players! Those select few have had to draft entire edifices of work to grow their numbers. The reason it's hard to do that is because everyone thinks it's Insane—which is understandable. All of human history is converging into a needle-sized point, which isn't normal.
AI is a deliberate attempt at the last invention. Either AI designs all your next inventions so you don't have to, or you're not around anymore to invent.
Small teams can go very far, and the task isn't as difficult as it seems or seemed. Scaling laws working this well with AI was not an expected development. They will succeed sooner or later, probably within your lifetime.
If you're not paying attention to AI, you're probably not part of the Plot. If you think another issue has more relevance, please email me at croissanthology [at] gmail.com because I'm curious.
Escaping the box—feeling sane, alive, relevant, important—means joining the Plot. That's why I blew 12 bucks on a domain name. I will not be consistent here, and writing will often have a mediocre, hastily improvised quality to it. I binged through an entire season of Archer before finally building up the courage to finish my damned About page. I am not exactly (yet) made of such stuff that heroes are made of. But at least I'll have a pinky—or perhaps a small toe—outside the box.