The looming doom & gloom

Fuck. I’m writing that ‘Fuck’ forreal this time.

I got on HN today (yes, I know it’s bad for the psyche - shame me), and saw the Gemini 1.5 news undercutting the more noteworthy Sora model from ClosedAI.

It indeed feels like some inflection point. Witnessing history but just, now.

I really want to feel optimistic and be excited but just can’t bring myself to. It’s an existential gut feeling of “oh shit”.

AA: But new jobs will be created! Ones that don’t even exist yet! Factories didn’t put everyone out of work.

Rat bastard… Yes, but industry did render many craftsmans’ work functionally obsolete. People that once enjoying making clothes or whatever went from doing so as an occupation (paid) doing so and feeling important (social validation), to losing both of those. Perhaps they regained the former through a secondary occupation, but the latter is lost to technology - forever. It rendered it a useless hobby, an inpractical career. Now the ouroboros of technological progress has come back for lunch, perhaps not even yet dessert. But it will again be making work that people once found fulfilling into hobbies, or economic DWL. Sure, a percent of a percent can skate by as craftsman, but it will leave more to search for meaning in a world increasingly hollow of such.

A weak, but vocal sentiment within me: I feel useless now.

I know that I am not, and won’t be, and even shouldn’t be bothered by my own perceived utility in the world. But it does hurt a little knowing that I should probably retreat from all sources of external (most notably social & economic) validation in order to perserve my sanity and inner serenity. But that isn’t an easy life. It can be nice to feel important by proxy of money or attention, but that is all but gone now - least it should be for those that wish to live life and not suffer through it.

To make no mention of ‘The Truth’ which is all but dead at this point. To believe anything almost anywhere is to be a sucker. Maybe it is nigh time to embrace Solipsism, and not the egocentric flavor - but the idea of nothing can be true outside ‘me own mind’.

Battling this looming doom and gloom is tough. Worse because it means to block out the gut feelings I always believed I shouldn’t ignore…