Nihilism in the AI era: when your skill tree lights up overnight
数字生命卡兹克 · wechat · 2026-10-23
A reflective Chinese essay on "AI-era nihilism": the author, a longtime AI enthusiast, finds himself increasingly numb despite unprecedented creative power — after spending 24 hours writing about OpenAI's math manuscripts, he felt only emptiness. He likens AI to a game trainer in Baldur's Gate 3: cheating removed the grind and, with it, the fun, because joy lives in the process of growth, not the win. AI lights up skill trees that took decades to climb, breaking the "effort → skill → reward" logic of life. He finds solace in the story of Liu Dapeng, a scholar abandoned by history when the imperial exam was abolished in 1905, whose 51 years of unrequested diaries became priceless historical material — a reminder that the side quests, not the main quest, make up a life.
Related event: AI-Age Nihilism: When AI Skips the Process, the Joy Disappears(2 posts)→
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