I agree. We have learned so much historically from correspondence. In the online world content can be edited and altered. Physical correspondence may become more reliable.
Cursive writing is huge for the active brain. Writing and thinking about what you are writing is a wonderful way to REMEMBER....even remembering is going extinct. I learned cursive as a child but mostly print letters on the Christmas Cards I send out. The only time of year I find myself writing/printing. My kids are learning both as home schoolers.
What a beautiful piece. And the rewards for staying human are endless and exhilarating. People seem to really respond well to vulnerability and effort-it’s remarkable at this point in time. Thanks!
Love your work sir, you make me want to be more human, even despite I'm gen Z and all my friends seem to be unaware of all this (I've shown to many the Anxious Generation but they seem to not care) and I end up feeling alone and disconnected in the deepest way... I say to myself it's worth it. Eventually, I hope, I'll find people like me who are awake in terms of recognizing the dangers posed first by social media and then AI...
I am a senior who has been blessed to remain outside the norm. I mention it, in that every generation has many who follow and a few who stray from the path of convention. My whole life I have struggled as to why I am. It doesn’t matter, I realize, as I have had a great life doing me and all the bumpy things that make me human. Celebrate you.
your words prompt my memory back to the day when my father asked for a recommendation from the gentleman selling him cigars "But is it a good cigar?" my father enquired. With a despondent look on his face, the cigar man replied "many people smoke it, Sir" :-)
Hands to paper creates serotonin, the wellness hormone. Screens create cortisol, stress. Reading and turning the pages of a real book gave, and added the healthy, pleasure of touch- producing serotonin.
Being a human remains super special, particularly now in the age of Ai. If you don't think so, watch Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot video on YouTube. Then think of this simple fact. So far as anyone knows, the only life in the entire cosmos is on Earth. And humans are the pinnacle of evolutionary change on the only planet that we know harbors life of any kind.
By the way, Ai cannot write like this human, cannot compose this human's music, cannot draw this human's sketch, cannot know this human's thoughts. Take heart fellow humans; Ai is but a machine, a tool for use by humans.
There's such an intrinsic beauty in the panoply that is the human experience...the soul fluttering highs and the quaking and debilitating lows. It's all worth it...every single wretched, euphoric second is absolutely worth the price of admission.
I try having this conversation with my 15 year old daughter on the regular only to have her want to push back and recede deeper into the soulless monoculture. I think I'm going to print this out and leave it on her pillow.
Bravo! For the record, the writing in this piece is unmistakably better than anything an AI could produce. People act like AI is brilliant literary genius, it’s not, it’s mechanized, predictable slop, and in fact any book pulled off a 19th century shelf is better.
I’ve noticed how much better it is to read something clearly written by a human. I see the same, omniscient narrator writing everything now, so when I see rough edges or personal stories that AI can’t fake, it makes the writing genuinely more appealing. Let’s all be human.
Love this. You can be powerful and so helpful with your knowing. Thank you for taking the time to list all of the ways AI can be intelligently managed for great ends.
An older friend is wavering between "older tendencies" or owning the fulfilling truths that are arriving later in their life, the way forward. You are a light and know the ways forward. Thank you.
I’m always grateful for quality dialogue. That’s one of the real gifts of a space like Substack (other platforms are terribly negative) are it still makes room for thoughtful exchange. And to your point, the fact that you had to recreate an account just to leave a comment is a pretty good reminder that technology is far from perfect, even when it’s well intentioned. 😉
This was a Reply to Nikolas Bayuk's share. He gave a lengthy wonderful response to my questioning, but the Substack system wants me to recreate a new account just to reply at his spot. Hope he has a chance to read my appreciative response written here above.
How many science fiction novels focus on the few who resist the majority, often ending up isolated but in community, living 'the old way' until some type of revolution arch takes over with the story. I believe in this thesis- it may take effort to remain human, reading paper books, writing handwritten notes, writing my own imperfect substack blogs to get ideas out and refined, but the effort keeps us human.
Indeed. It is also an opportunity for humanistic and liberal arts education. After a short stride through the desert, it will become the gold standard for becoming an adult once again. After all, we still add and subtract by the age of 8 well into the era of calculators.
Let your inner child, the eight year old who finds mystery & magic everywhere, bloosom. It will grow stinkweeds & thorns and flowers and ruffled edges and cause frowny faces but also mirth and smiles.
Great sentiment except (I guess here's me willing to offend), you WANT to say things that bother people and you WANT to offend...that feels childish - it invites people to get pleasure from bothering and offending, including directed at you...I would think the better approach might be to say and act as you think best, despite bothering or offending...if you want to be heard or achieve a goal, to put that out there feels like you are putting roadblocks/inviting someone to put them in your own path instead of encountering whatever comes.
Good essay but also very sad. Makes me appreciate how blessed I am (as a GenXer) to have grown up in a world without the internet, and then to have become an adult long before social media was a thing. I would never even think of having an AI write something for me and it’s hard even to fathom that someone would.
I think about handwriting as a subversive tool in the future. I might be wrong but I think the physical act of pen to paper is significant for humans.
I think letter writing needs to be brought back before it goes extinct.
I agree. We have learned so much historically from correspondence. In the online world content can be edited and altered. Physical correspondence may become more reliable.
Cursive writing is huge for the active brain. Writing and thinking about what you are writing is a wonderful way to REMEMBER....even remembering is going extinct. I learned cursive as a child but mostly print letters on the Christmas Cards I send out. The only time of year I find myself writing/printing. My kids are learning both as home schoolers.
I'm very much an outlier at work because I take handwritten notes in meetings rather than relying on an AI assistant.
YES!!!!!
What a beautiful piece. And the rewards for staying human are endless and exhilarating. People seem to really respond well to vulnerability and effort-it’s remarkable at this point in time. Thanks!
I’ve never used Ai. I wouldn’t even know how to. I’m a composer and apparently it’s coming for us now too.
I went to see some flamenco a few years ago in Spain. An old village in the hills of Andalusia.
Wonderful guitarists and dancers. One woman probs in her mid sixties dancing beautifully with such passion.
She suddenly stopped and her fingers were splayed like a fan.
The guitarist followed her. And there was a brief silence.
He looked at her intensely.
Then, she moved a single finger and he started again and she danced on.
It was breathtaking.
I park dead centre of these moments when life is kind enough to present them to me.
Love your work sir, you make me want to be more human, even despite I'm gen Z and all my friends seem to be unaware of all this (I've shown to many the Anxious Generation but they seem to not care) and I end up feeling alone and disconnected in the deepest way... I say to myself it's worth it. Eventually, I hope, I'll find people like me who are awake in terms of recognizing the dangers posed first by social media and then AI...
This article is by Freya India, not by Dr.Haidt. Not that it changes the essence of what we are discussino now, but i thought I d note.
I am a senior who has been blessed to remain outside the norm. I mention it, in that every generation has many who follow and a few who stray from the path of convention. My whole life I have struggled as to why I am. It doesn’t matter, I realize, as I have had a great life doing me and all the bumpy things that make me human. Celebrate you.
your words prompt my memory back to the day when my father asked for a recommendation from the gentleman selling him cigars "But is it a good cigar?" my father enquired. With a despondent look on his face, the cigar man replied "many people smoke it, Sir" :-)
Hands to paper creates serotonin, the wellness hormone. Screens create cortisol, stress. Reading and turning the pages of a real book gave, and added the healthy, pleasure of touch- producing serotonin.
Being a human remains super special, particularly now in the age of Ai. If you don't think so, watch Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot video on YouTube. Then think of this simple fact. So far as anyone knows, the only life in the entire cosmos is on Earth. And humans are the pinnacle of evolutionary change on the only planet that we know harbors life of any kind.
By the way, Ai cannot write like this human, cannot compose this human's music, cannot draw this human's sketch, cannot know this human's thoughts. Take heart fellow humans; Ai is but a machine, a tool for use by humans.
There's such an intrinsic beauty in the panoply that is the human experience...the soul fluttering highs and the quaking and debilitating lows. It's all worth it...every single wretched, euphoric second is absolutely worth the price of admission.
I try having this conversation with my 15 year old daughter on the regular only to have her want to push back and recede deeper into the soulless monoculture. I think I'm going to print this out and leave it on her pillow.
Thank you for such a beautiful piece.
Bravo! For the record, the writing in this piece is unmistakably better than anything an AI could produce. People act like AI is brilliant literary genius, it’s not, it’s mechanized, predictable slop, and in fact any book pulled off a 19th century shelf is better.
I’ve noticed how much better it is to read something clearly written by a human. I see the same, omniscient narrator writing everything now, so when I see rough edges or personal stories that AI can’t fake, it makes the writing genuinely more appealing. Let’s all be human.
Love this. You can be powerful and so helpful with your knowing. Thank you for taking the time to list all of the ways AI can be intelligently managed for great ends.
An older friend is wavering between "older tendencies" or owning the fulfilling truths that are arriving later in their life, the way forward. You are a light and know the ways forward. Thank you.
I’m always grateful for quality dialogue. That’s one of the real gifts of a space like Substack (other platforms are terribly negative) are it still makes room for thoughtful exchange. And to your point, the fact that you had to recreate an account just to leave a comment is a pretty good reminder that technology is far from perfect, even when it’s well intentioned. 😉
Write/right on! Thanks.
Forgot to say, I snap-shotted your full answers to my initial questions.
This was a Reply to Nikolas Bayuk's share. He gave a lengthy wonderful response to my questioning, but the Substack system wants me to recreate a new account just to reply at his spot. Hope he has a chance to read my appreciative response written here above.
How many science fiction novels focus on the few who resist the majority, often ending up isolated but in community, living 'the old way' until some type of revolution arch takes over with the story. I believe in this thesis- it may take effort to remain human, reading paper books, writing handwritten notes, writing my own imperfect substack blogs to get ideas out and refined, but the effort keeps us human.
💙"Why learn to draw, why practice guitar"? -- b/c only living human YOU can experience that process!🌱
Indeed. It is also an opportunity for humanistic and liberal arts education. After a short stride through the desert, it will become the gold standard for becoming an adult once again. After all, we still add and subtract by the age of 8 well into the era of calculators.
Let your inner child, the eight year old who finds mystery & magic everywhere, bloosom. It will grow stinkweeds & thorns and flowers and ruffled edges and cause frowny faces but also mirth and smiles.
Great sentiment except (I guess here's me willing to offend), you WANT to say things that bother people and you WANT to offend...that feels childish - it invites people to get pleasure from bothering and offending, including directed at you...I would think the better approach might be to say and act as you think best, despite bothering or offending...if you want to be heard or achieve a goal, to put that out there feels like you are putting roadblocks/inviting someone to put them in your own path instead of encountering whatever comes.
Flies...vinegar/honey; discretion>valor; etc etc
Good essay but also very sad. Makes me appreciate how blessed I am (as a GenXer) to have grown up in a world without the internet, and then to have become an adult long before social media was a thing. I would never even think of having an AI write something for me and it’s hard even to fathom that someone would.