Derek Rydall

We've never been the strongest or the fastest or the fiercest, but we had something no other creature had, which was a level of intelligence or you could say consciousness or metacognition, self-awareness, the ability to think about what we're thinking about, the ability to think independent of time and space and plan and all that stuff.

And it took us out of the trees on the savanna and up into the stars.

And it made us the apex predator because we could think.

And so, but AI is increasingly able to do that.

And eventually we'll be in a world where intelligence is sold, you know, tokens.

It's like,

Units of intelligence, units of cognition, like you'll go to your little candy machine and put in a quarter and get a certain number of units of cognition.

And the relative value of intelligence will go to zero.

The cost of intelligence, just like phones used to cost you a lot and internet and all that's just going down to nothing.

And so imagine where everything we've accomplished, and for most of the people listening, everything you've accomplished has had something to do with your intelligence and your capacity to think and do, create, and increasingly at a computer.

That's all increasingly becoming replaced and replaceable.

So it does force us to a very existential question.

What's a human for?

And that will lead us to, first of all, the biggest identity crisis humanity has ever faced because we define ourselves by our job and our work, even though work is a relatively new invention in the scope of history.

But it's going to cause a major identity crisis, I think initially more impactful to men.

or women who are high in masculine traits because we are so identified with doing and achieving and all of that.

And then in the midst of a meaning crisis and a big male crisis we have right now, especially in the West, where men are increasingly feeling disconnected and disenfranchised, and the women are doing much better and more power to them.

But if you take away purpose...

Because meaning and purpose is the one thing humans, humans survived everything, wars, famines, plagues, you name it.

What we've never survived and can never survive is a loss of meaning and purpose.