Do you enjoy food? Are you one of the self-proclaimed foodies, just like me?
But what do we truly understand about how this food arrived at our table?
The question isn't merely about the logistics of farm-to-table; it's about the fundamental knowledge—or lack thereof—of the very produce that graces our tables. How does spinach flourish? What soil nourishes it, what climate cherishes it, and what waters sustain it? Once, sourcing food was a direct engagement with the earth that demanded physical prowess. Nowadays, food is 'given' to us--especially in the first world--. Even in the face of poverty, the immediate recourse is to seek aid through EBT(Electronic benefit transfer)—government-sponsored food assistance—rather than to take up the shovel and till the earth!(You're almost not allowed to) This shift underscores a profound transformation in our relationship with sustenance: from active participants in its cultivation to passive recipients. I mean, it just doesn't seem worthwhile for 80% of the population to engage in farming!
But this detachment not only reshapes our consumption patterns but also how we engage with our own physicality. The necessity for movement, once integral to survival, now requires a conscious effort—a scheduled appointment with the gym, a reminder to ourselves to engage in the most basic human activity: movement.
Now hold that thought for a bit, please.
Good enough is good enough
Okay, next question; do you enjoy learning? contemplating? Analyzing?
The joy of delving into a new topic, the thrill of analysis, and the satisfaction of understanding—are these not the pursuits that enrich our existence?
Well yes! That's probably why you're here reading this thing--Thank you!--. But what if, outside of this 'niche' community, thinking was just another cumbersome activity that you'd rather have some other professionals or, increasingly, machines do?
Or what if we do enjoy learning, but what we meant by it was to have it in the most efficient and entertaining way possible? Just like how we all finally learned a thing or two about law--more like how to claim for refunds to airlines--with the dear Tiktoker Erika and were pretty proud about it?
These questions would not hold any significance if we were not at a juncture where AI is evolving to proliferate conveniently processed and infinitely expandable 'information,' serving it directly to our screens. The cultural debates of our time, whether they lean towards imperialism or being 'absurdly woke'--as in the recent Gemini disaster--seem to pale in comparison to the convenience at our fingertips. Who here enjoyed going through the 3rd page on Google for research? (Or has anyone been there recently? )
Most of us enjoy good food. It doesn't have to be extraordinary—just good enough to tantalize our taste buds for a few seconds before being swallowed. Good enough to not interrupt the conversations at the table or, even better, to become an enjoyable topic of discussion to pair with the wine.
The pursuit of 'good enough' pervades not only our culinary tastes but our intellectual appetites as well. Students who uses ChatGPT for essay writing aren't striving for excellence but for adequacy. As a developer myself, I usually ask GPT for the good-enough-to-make-it-work code, not the I'm-going-to-prove-I-can-code-better-than-you code. Good enough is good enough.
Ben Davis once depicted this landscape of mediocrity, where taste and intellectual curiosity are not cultivated but passively experienced;
‘Ideally you just get a selection of perpetually “good enough” options. Taste is not something that you cultivate through a process of education and experiment. It is something that happens to you.'
Do you fear or welcome the time where intelligence is given and distributed to us? Where the $12 monthly subscription to OpenAI can serve you a nice Morning Mac set of knowledges and informations?
More important than what we think about this shift might be how the next generation views it. Many kids in America try McDonald's before they have meals based on whole foods(Today, I stumbled upon a parenting book in which the first paragraph described how her 2-year-old demanded "Donalds," shorthand for McDonald's, making her immediately realize she's **ked.) They will reach information via LLMs and other AIs, ask questions and get concise replies immediately, before they learn how to farm and harvest the knowledges. They will welcome it and consume it as happily as we consume our good enough food without the dirt under our nails.
It's not the consumption of the information I'm concerned about. I **love** efficiency. I don't want to dig into encyclopedia that becomes outdated every second just to look for simple statistics. As AIs are becoming more than a stochastic parrots, it will only feel absurd to not delegate most of the 'heavy' work to them. I've come to acknowledge the slow degeneration of our intellectual activity that's required for survival, just as how we've lost the physical activities along the way.
What gives me pause is recognizing the gradual erosion of the intellectual exertion once deemed necessary for survival, mirroring the decline of physical activity throughout our history.
Passing on the pause to you, I'll conclude Part 1 here to get some good enough sleep.
Returning next week with Part 2 on Universal Basic Intelligence (UBI), where I'll explore more specific foldouts of UBI, bizarre hobbies that might arise for intellect-seekers, and its byproducts: irrelevance and boredom.
