Eschatology is baked into the American psyche, so don't over-read Silicon Valley doomerism
paulnovosad · x · 2026-09-27
Economist Paul Novosad on Silicon Valley's obsession with end-times narratives: eschatology has always been part of the American psyche. If you know that tendency, you should update a little less from seeing all of Silicon Valley consumed by doom — it's cultural inertia as much as evidence.
Related event: Anthropologist Calls Silicon Valley AI Doomerism an Old American Habit(3 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- UK's new AI Economics Institute hiring up to 15 research economists — TaniaBabina · 2026-11-11
- Not Boring: the three arguments that AI isn't a bubble are exactly how bubbles form — Not Boring (Packy McCormick) · 2026-11-11
- Viral post: five years of 'maybe next year,' then 2026 arrived — hey_abusiddik · 2026-11-11
- Jeremy Howard: LLMs "cosplay understanding," like the man in Searle's Chinese room — Machine Learning Street Talk · 2026-11-11
- 'Chat with your data' misses the point — people want a smart coworker — vboykis · 2026-11-11
- Ben Todd: AI task time horizons appear superexponential in AECI, not just revenue — ben_j_todd · 2026-11-11