Morgan Housel

What's very unique about AI historically, though, is that it's the first new technology that the people making it promise that if they're successful, they could destroy society.

One that's very unique to me maybe is I don't write nearly as much as I used to.

You know, I had a good 15-year run of writing every day.

Fool.com was writing two or three pieces per day, many of which you edited.

Thank you.

And, but about two years ago, I cut way, way back and I haven't really written anything significant in about two years.

And what was interesting for me that I noticed is how much of writing is not just an output, it's an input.

It's a very clear way to crystallize your thinking and to understand what you've been learning.

And as soon as I stopped writing,

I felt like even though I was reading more with my newfound spare time, I was learning less because I wasn't spending a lot of time actually trying to crystallize the thoughts that I'd had from learning.

And so I think for everybody, no matter who you are, forget professional writers, everybody,

If you're just reading all day and learning, but you're not going out of your way to really crystallize those thoughts, by just writing down what you've learned, taking notes in the books that you've read, you lose a lot.

And I think I knew that five years ago, but it was interesting to see in the last two years how quickly my brain turned to mashed potatoes when I stopped writing.

So that's one thing.

The other thing that's, I think, been very prevalent at the society level in the last five years is...

the reinforcement of how addictive pessimism is at the society level.

And that's always been true.

John Stuart Mill was writing about that 150 years ago.

This is not a new thing.

But I think 25, 30 years ago, cable news figured out that you can gain attention with pessimism.