One thing that I’ve been thinking about is how much the landscape will change between now and handoff. If we treat 2019-2026 as 10 “units” of change, then do we get another 10? Or 20? Or 100?
I think I’ve updated towards bigger units. Note that it’s not just the technical landscape that will continue to change (and accelerate, due to R&D automation). It’s also the political landscape, which has been dormant for most of 2019-2026. And soon the geopolitical landscape will start rumbling. And the economic. And the cultural. I think these things are still pretty dormant, compared to how much they will start flipping the overall strategic landscape.
Maybe my median is something like 60-90 units, i.e. we’re about 10-15% of the way through the story, starting at 2019. This makes me much more keen on forward-chainy stuff like “make people more reasonable” and “empower the reasonable people”. (We disagree somewhat on who counts as most reasonable, but I’m imagining a pretty broad class of people which includes both those you think are most reasonable and those I think are most reasonable.)
There’s also an emotional thing which is like… I used to think “wow I’m in such a hingey time in history.” But now I’m like “Q2 2026 isn’t hingey. 2028 is hingey.” And this kinda lowers the stakes a bit?
I like that framing. Somehow intuitively I feel like we’re further through the story. Maybe I feel less optimistic about how much good we’ll achieve by being reactive as opposed to proactive? I agree 2028 is going to be pretty hingey but I also expect a lot of it might be catch-up for things we’re already behind on, like, a lot of the challenge is serial work. And also I feel a bit like we’re losing leverage over time.
I think it’s pretty humbling.
One thing that I’ve been thinking about is how much the landscape will change between now and handoff. If we treat 2019-2026 as 10 “units” of change, then do we get another 10? Or 20? Or 100?
I think I’ve updated towards bigger units. Note that it’s not just the technical landscape that will continue to change (and accelerate, due to R&D automation). It’s also the political landscape, which has been dormant for most of 2019-2026. And soon the geopolitical landscape will start rumbling. And the economic. And the cultural. I think these things are still pretty dormant, compared to how much they will start flipping the overall strategic landscape.
Maybe my median is something like 60-90 units, i.e. we’re about 10-15% of the way through the story, starting at 2019. This makes me much more keen on forward-chainy stuff like “make people more reasonable” and “empower the reasonable people”. (We disagree somewhat on who counts as most reasonable, but I’m imagining a pretty broad class of people which includes both those you think are most reasonable and those I think are most reasonable.)
There’s also an emotional thing which is like… I used to think “wow I’m in such a hingey time in history.” But now I’m like “Q2 2026 isn’t hingey. 2028 is hingey.” And this kinda lowers the stakes a bit?
I like that framing. Somehow intuitively I feel like we’re further through the story. Maybe I feel less optimistic about how much good we’ll achieve by being reactive as opposed to proactive? I agree 2028 is going to be pretty hingey but I also expect a lot of it might be catch-up for things we’re already behind on, like, a lot of the challenge is serial work. And also I feel a bit like we’re losing leverage over time.