Sunday Edition #10 - On The Decline of Conscientiousness

Also: On Rejections, Genie 3, Naked Gun, and new Night Tapes

Welcome to the Sunday Edition where I share interesting articles and links alongside what I’ve been up to!

Decline of Conscientiousness

Pretty alarming study on the decline of conscientiousness among younger Americans.

John points to an excellent article by

kyla scanlon

. In some sense, modern life for younger folk is rife with rejection.

Part of it is a feature of convenience. Online applications were meant to democratize access. But when everyone can apply, no one gets seen. In removing that friction, we unintentionally created seemingly infinite supply which is handled by algorithmic culling - and there is no real feedback loop, no human warmth, no dignity in the process (Brooks calls it the seventh circle of Indeed hell). And that sort of rejection is now the default condition of economic life.

…and:

Humans in a perpetual state of anxiety, constantly questioning their worth, experiencing rejection not as an occasional setback but as the default condition of existence.

It’s something I’ve touched upon before on the newsletter: when distribution and access goes wider (due to the web + algorithms), it creates a deeper power-law distribution of everything. Winners win more. It’s not enough to just apply to a local college, it *has* to be Stanford. It’s not enough to just be a good band in your city, you have to a viral TikTok popstar. It’s not enough to meet the girl next door, it has to be the undeniably best-in-everything partner that could live in LA, New York, London, Cape Town, etc. So yes, it seems like a trap of sorts, because younger people face rejection on a far larger scale today, but it’s in part because they *also* don’t want what’s merely around them. Unfortunately, in some cases, “don’t” turned into “can’t”. The web *has* destroyed local scenes in culture (for example), never to return. If you’re a basement band today, there’s no local venues to hang out in. You have to be on TikTok.

It still feels like the only way out is to recognize this trap, opt out, and touch grass. But it takes an understanding of the benefits and ills of web and algorithmic life and what you’re trading off.

Kyla agrees:

And not to get too abstract here in my economic newsletter - but rejection, convenience, and absence of surprise are all economic questions. When enough people choose friction over convenience, markets respond. We're seeing early signs of this: the (slow) revival of independent bookstores, the rise of deinfluencing, the growing market for durability over disposability, especially as the economy turns.

These are emerging from the simple recognition that the frictionless life is ultimately unsatisfying. Even the secular, modern, economic soul hungers for something deeper than convenience!

I feel like the “friction” framing is a bit off. It’s simply that good things are costly. I don’t call buying food “friction”. It’s that we’ve forgotten what something costs. It’s like buying a ticket to watch a show and you *also* get the opportunity to meet like-minded people.

A simple example is the entry price to an event. By having a ticket price, there’s a cost to get in. But because that ticket price is a barrier to entry, it increases social liquidity *inside* the event, because everyone “paid the price” to be in the same context. ie, I’m pretty sure I can strike a conversation with someone next to me about the DJ that’s playing vs asking someone in the street about that DJ.

Anyway, here’s to more slow in-person conversations. :)

Updates on Generative AI & Copyright Infringements

There’s *a lot* going on with generative AI, especially also in terms of how the legal cases are playing out. Thus, it’s always super useful to see TechnoLlama post great updates on this front. On the input front:

The legal question is whether that copy can be legally justified. In the US, the answer so far appears to be mixed, the courts seem to be leaning towards fair use in some cases, but there is a serious argument to be made that the source of the data really does matter. By using shadow libraries and other pirated content, the companies have made their fair use argument mode difficult to sustain.

On the outputs front:

But what this lawsuit signals is a shift in the legal arguments, because if models are increasingly able to reproduce training data, then more output lawsuits will follow. What is likely to happen is that then we may encounter more arguments based on secondary infringement, this is because the person making the infringement, say an image of Mario or Pikachu, will be the user. This will make most of the debate hinge on whether AI model providers are tools, and if any of the defences used for intermediaries and platform providers would apply.

Genie 3

Speaking of generative AI. The improvement of Genie by DeepMind has been super impressive. The ability to generate consistent, interactive virtual worlds like this is wild. This example where a person walks over a puddle? Quite fascinating.

While the consistency only lasts for a few minutes, it’s already quite an improvement over Genie 2.

What I’ve Been Up To

Packing, mostly packing. 😅

Every time I move, I realise again how much I dislike owning things in general. While I’ve made more peace with enjoying the “zen” of maintenance, it still just feels like most of the things we own simply accrue a debt on our time. But, I know this will fade again after the move is over. 😂

✍️ Writing - Querying Novel #2

Slowly but surely sending out more query letters. I’ve found that with some of the agents, they look for the 1st 10-50 pages from the cold query. So, this week, I spent more time polishing the first 10 pages or so. There were some elements that I knew I could do to improve it. In this case, it was literally adding a few paragraphs to give a character another choice/tension. I did receive another rejection, but because I’ve been so busy packing, I have not been able to send out many query letters as I had have hoped. Hoping to accelerate to more than one or two a week soon.

Speaking of rejection and the first article in the newsletter today: I really don’t mind getting rejected by agents and it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot. I’ve never really had issues with rejection or facing rejection, simply because I realised that where I face most of rejection in life is when I’ve offered myself to be rejected. Thus, in some sense, I am in control of my rejection. The hardest kind of rejection however, is when you are rejected when you 1) didn’t offer yourself up for it, and 2) when you aren’t sure why you were rejected. Maybe more on that in a future newsletter. :)

🕹 Gaming - Donkey Kong Bananza

This game has honestly been quite strange. As I mentioned before, it hasn’t felt particularly more-ish. Unlike Factorio or the open world Legend of Zelda games where I was excited to find time to play during the day, I still come back to the game every day for a few minutes. It’s almost in some sense like Animal Crossing, where the game is played over months in short snippets. But… it’s a platformer. Even Mario Odyssey, I had a desire to keep coming back to it. With this game, it feels it’s just there. I’m not craving it, but I’m still enjoying dipping my time into it.

📺 Watching - Naked Gun 1, Naked Gun 2

With the new Naked Gun movie out, I thought I’d watch the first Naked Gun movies. I’ve watched Airplane in this genre and I remember as a teenager finding it hilarious! Admittedly, (at least) the first two Naked Gun films are a bit of a tough watch for me. It’s far more slapstick than the sharper jokes in Airplane. It’s incredibly American. 😅. What’s interesting is to compare this style of humour with more modern American slapstick comedy. In “The Studio” (likely going to win many Emmy’s this year), Seth Rogen’s character experiences slapstick comedy (like falling over shit), but it’s far funnier because it’s tied to the context (falling over stuff when they have to be quiet for a one-shotter scene is *funny*). Good slapstick to me is when it fits the context. Don’t just make the character experience embarrassing moments that doesn’t actually mean something (like Leslie Nielsen falling onto the Queen). The funnier scenes in the second Naked Gun comes from Frank Drebin being aware of how things are going wrong (which in the first one he remains aloof and unaware).

I’ll skip the 3rd Naked Gun and curious how they’ve adapted the humour for the new one with Liam Neeson. I’ll watch it when the film gets to streaming.

📚 Reading - A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

🎶 Listening - Night Tapes - Storm

This group keeps surprising me with amazing ethereal pop tracks. Easily becoming one of my favourite modern groups making music today. I want to live in their music videos on some days. Also: these thumbnails always make for the best newsletter thumbnails too.

That’s it for this week friends. Hope you get to see a lovely sunset!

Simon