Embrace the Uncertainty

Observations at the start of 2025

Happy new year! It’s been a while since I last wrote here. I wanted to share some things I’m thinking about as 2025 starts. Given all of the below, an intention of mine for the upcoming year is to embrace uncertainty. I’m also very curious to hear what is on your mind as this year starts. Drop your thoughts in the comments or reply to let me know!

• Shifting Sovereignty: Over the past few decades, corporations and individuals have gained power and status at the expense of governments. In part, this has been accelerated by the platforms that have decentralized how people collect and share information about the world. This has led to many new competing narratives that are less compatible with the press releases that governments put out. Another factor that has accelerated the growing relative power of corporations and individuals has been the steady deterioration of governments’ abilities to adequately meet the needs of their populations and to communicate to their populations well. In contrast, the largest corporations and the richest individuals are perceived as more reliable and trustworthy.

• The Power of Vision: Visions of the future are still incredibly undervalued relative to how much change they can spur in the world when delivered by compelling messengers. I’d wager that visions of all sorts will continue to beat out the “expert consensus” - no matter how debatable the visions are and how “solid” the experts are. The 2024 U.S. presidential election was a great example of this. People want a picture they can point towards and be able to say, “That’s the future we are heading towards.” Despite how powerful visions are, I’d bet most will continue to worry that spending their time envisioning appealing futures will mean they aren’t conceiving of things in the bloodless way “an expert should.”

• Contested Migration: There is growing tension between the forces pushing people to move away from their home countries (slow governance, extreme climate, declining economic prospects, ethno-centric/uniparty governments), and the reasons why countries are wary of letting people in (resource constraints, cultural and political tensions, security concerns, inefficient immigration processes). It will be interesting to see which countries have robust enough governance to be able to navigate this situation in a way that allows them to pursue strategic priorities, such as attracting talent in areas that could be key to future global economic dominance (nuclear energy, AI, people/businesses with capital to invest and positions to hire) - and also bringing in enough people to offset the fertility collapse occurring in many developed countries.

• The Value of Attention: The ability to pay real attention is increasingly rare. People love to blame businesses for modern ills, but it’s interesting to consider that the most successful modern corporations are perhaps the only type of entity that has ever valued attention as highly as is actually appropriate. Most people have surrendered unconditionally to these devices and platforms, and have the 5-minute attention spans to show for it. The divide between those who do and do not have the ability to dedicate real attention to a prolonged project will become greater. Increasingly - as new generations grow up attached to touchscreens - only a few will even be able to pay attention to the existence of this divide.

• Artificial Intelligence: The capabilities of state-of-the-art artificial intelligence models are advanced enough such that even if progress were halted at this moment - and the next 25 years were spent taking the current most advanced frontier models and integrating their usage throughout society - the world would look quite different than it does now. But progress will not stop. Artificial intelligence models will get even more capable over the next 25 years. I think that both the pace and magnitude of societal change will be greater than most currently anticipate. I’m particularly interested in how we can all position ourselves to benefit from the rapid pace of change and to protect ourselves from the potential downsides. I’ll be writing and publishing more on all of this over at Augur, an AI research consultancy I’m getting off the ground this year - subscribe there to follow along!

• The Numinous: In the midst of so much uncertainty, I’m curious where people will look for greater meaning. For the past few years, we have seen signs of the increasing return to archaic religious traditions, new forms of both social conservatism and rigid wokery, as well as new ideologies that either deify or vilify AI. For myself, I find that looking inward is increasingly interesting and valuable. I find it important to remind myself that I have a self that is separate from the rest of the world and that staying in touch with that self can provide guidance through the noise. And I realize every day how much I benefit from setting solid boundaries to limit how much the world’s crazy effluvia can enter my mind and influence my thoughts and moods.

More to come soon! Excited to be writing here again :)