Sunday Edition #7 - Solaris (1972) vs Solaris (2002)

Also: AI 2027, Marriage, and the new White Lies single

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

AI 2027

I’ve been enjoying the chatter around the AI-2027 future-plotting. If you want an editorialized take, this video is great.

Vitalik Buterin’s response puts the scenario in perspective:

Recently, the length of tasks that AIs can perform fully autonomously has been doubling roughly every seven months. If you assume this trend continues without limit, AIs will be able to operate autonomously for the equivalent of a whole human career in the mid-2030s. This is still a very fast timeline, but much slower than 2027.

While I believe that AI will continue to improve and be incredibly disruptive to a large portion of society, I’m more aligned with Vitalik’s belief that it will take longer to get there. Technologists rightly have an ability to map and see positive feedback loops. They sometimes *see* the network before others do. *But*, what I don’t think technologists often see are the second-order effects that also break and drag on the feedback loops. For example, in social media networks, that which originally spurred growth (like the feed or tagging people in photos) are now reasons why people avoid it. It collected information, but couldn’t figure out how to gracefully remove it. And so, users are faced with the problem of having to “manage” it and thus, simply, leave or delete their accounts. Vitalik points this out too:

Arguably we are already slowly moving into a post-Twitter world where the internet is becoming more fragmented. This is good (even if the fragmentation process is chaotic), and we generally need more info multipolarity.

And this is only the digital sphere. I think much of these AI predictions are done by people that are digital-first citizens and don’t actually see what happens to people IRL. A thinker that gets this right is

Anu Atluru

where she recently discussed what jobs we’ll see in this “gentle singularity”. One of them is what she calls “local social craft”.

The dominant non-utilitarian work will be what I call "local social craft." The real opportunity isn't everyone making art — it's everyone building community. The future we think of as an artist's utopia may actually be a community builder's utopia.

It's about creating context for people to connect and experience things together. Coffee shops, bookstores, town squares, libraries, theaters — the "third spaces" where community happens. You may not make a living selling paintings at Sotheby's, but you could be a local caricaturist or host paint nights. You may not write and publish books, but you may host salons to interpret them.

If people can’t keep pace with digital/knowledge work, they’ll opt to doing work that’s valuable socially that’s *not* the domain of AI. And this kind of work, this opting out and “peeling off”, will put breaks on adoption, persuasion, and value of AI at the same as the progress continues.

You don’t just run up the speed of progress without hitting new speedbumps you haven’t seen before.

On Marriage

Every relationship is deeply interesting. I enjoyed

Sasha Chapin

’s take on what he looks for in his marriage. Reminds me of

Henrik Karlsson

’s posts on his own relationship.

The points are:

Relationship as crucible that allows both people to confront their central insecurities and grow through them together

Goal of relationship is to create a space for both people to have full range of emotions and be cared for, not to manage each other into having nice feelings all the time

Openness about sexuality and ongoing care in giving everyone what they actually want in that department

Both partners taking accountability for having an outside support network (no attempt to make each other everything)

Both partners taking accountability for their reactions, you understand how to soothe yourself when triggered rather than taking it out on each other

Ongoing see-saw balance is struck between togetherness and separation, don’t smother and don’t abandon

Conflict is a non-problem, an expected occurrence that is handled ASAP skillfully

Both partners try to give 100%, accept that there are imbalances, keep scorekeeping to a minimum

Self-disclosure is very frank but not completely uninhibited or thoughtless

Definitely overlaps with what I want *and* could still improve on in a future relationship. Regardless of what style of relationship one prefers (there’s also very happily married couples that rarely delve this deep within the relationship’s confines), something that I personally miss after being single again this year (after 6.5 years in a relationship) is the growth and learning that can only come from being *in* a relationship. You can only learn so much from personal introspection, therapy, friends, and reading great posts about other people’s relationships. 😅

The Death of American Parties

Derek Thompson

has an excellent article on the decline of American social life. People are not hanging out as often. Of the reasons, Derek points to the collapse of the “middle ring”. I love this description of it.

Rather, I love the observation by Marc Dunkelman that digital technology has not obliterated our social connections but rather warped them. Americans today are in constant contact with the inner ring of family and the outer ring of "tribe"—that is, people we follow online, often because we share something in common, such as a sports allegiance or a political ideology. But the middle ring of community has atrophied. We know our online avatars better than we know our neighbors; we interact with certain online communities more than we text our friends.

…and ends it well.

Today, I believe we’ve built ourselves a world of greater professional ambition, more intensive parenting, and lavish entertainment abundance. But in making this world, we’ve lost a bit of each other. If summoning these magnificent technologies incurs the death of our social lives, a permanent surge of anxiety, and the long-term demise of deep friendships, then we’ll have built ourselves a glittering dungeon of insularity and called it progress.

I’m not sure how long this will continue, but if there’s anything, I think we’ve likely hit the dip. If predictions about generative AI ring true, we’ll see more people invest time again in this middle-ring. Let’s check in, in 5 years. 😅

What I’ve Been Up To

Back in a more regular schedule. Being back in DC, I already miss the dry California summer. But, glad to get back into the rhythm. Ready to settle in.

👨🏻‍💻 Coding - Restarting

Since I’ve been working on my novel for 2 years, I haven’t actively coded and totally missed the AI-assisted coding train. Hoping to update some art projects and through that play around with everything that’s changed. Quite excited to jump in. I asked on Farcaster about what tooling people use. Seems like Claude Code and Cursor in the IDE seems the most popular? What do you use?

✍️ Writing - Querying Novel #2

Before my trip to California, I sent my novel to 2 agents. One, I later realised closed for queries while I was away. I also sent it to 2 other agents this week. No responses, but also no rejections. Also, no CNR’s yet (Closed No Response is when you close a query after a few weeks because you receive no response). So, just waiting to see what happens. I’m enjoying learning more about the industry in general (searching for agents, using tools like QueryTracker and Publisher’s Marketplace), but the actual process of submissions/querying is tedious.

🕹 Gaming - Civ VII, Donkey Kong Bananza

Civ VII: Been playing Civ VII on flights. I feel like I want to love it more than I am. It definitely feels like a game that only gets better with more plays and honestly, not entirely sure how happy I am with that reality. There’s really great examples of complex games that also ease you into it really well (like Factorio). My biggest gripe is that understanding trade-offs isn’t clear. Grow a city? Great. But what do I actually need? I need everything right now. So what’s important? Then later, you realise you should’ve done something else. A great example too is that I inadvertently created enemies without knowing that I had restrictions (like being too close to a border or not choosing to make an alliance with an independent power). So yeah, it feels like it penalises the player unnecessarily when they start. So you only really get to enjoy it once you make more mistakes? 🤷

Donkey Kong Bananza: I’m a sucker for a AAA Nintendo platformer (like Mario Odyssey). Having a lot of fun with it. Unsure exactly where it will lead, but so far so good. It’s a bit mindless (cathartic to just smash shit up), but still entertaining.

📺 Watching - Thunderbolts, Another Round, Solaris (1972), Solaris (2002)

Got around to some films on my to-watch this week.

Thunderbolts: I haven’t really been that excited about the MCU recently. It just felt too much. I heard Thunderbolts was a bit different and so I finally watched it. It started off a bit slow, but I ended up really enjoying it. I’m a sucker for endings like it had (very EEAAO). That being said, I think I’m also struggling with the genre format atm. The pacing feels off (too fast) and the plot proceeds very predictably. Another thing I’m also tiring of is MCU’s humour. The in-the-middle-of-a-serious-fight-let-a-character-make-a-funny-joke type of humour. I feel like sincerity is coming back and films that interrupt these beats are poorer off for it. It’s feeling stale despite attempts to reset it.

Another Round: Really enjoyed this film.

A great look at not only addiction and mid-life crises, but also what permission we need to become the people we wish to be. It’s a theme I’ve been paying attention to a lot this year (another example was The Rehearsal Season 2). The act of people being ego-syntonic or ego-dystonic in one’s life. People that give you permission to broaden your own world, or people that give you permission to stop behaviours you do not like about yourself. I both cases, one can ask: what’s stopping you from doing it yourself? If you need alcohol to be the person you want to be, what’s stopping you from leaning in without it?

Solaris (1972): After reading Stanislav Lem’s Solaris a few years back, I always wanted to watch the films. After seeing a friend recommend it (ht Zander), I finally delved in. The first one, is Tarkovsky’s 1972 version. It was my 1st time watching a Tarkovsky film and so it definitely took some time to get into it. The slow, long, and meditative takes are not what I’m used to. At the end, I came to appreciate it, fitting the surreal nature of the story. I was particular struck by Natalya Bondarchuk’s (Hari) performance.

Solaris (2002): I enjoyed Soderbergh’s version too. The trailer is a *classic* example of what happens when your marketing department is separate from the creative crew. In peak turn-of-the-century rom-coms (with George Clooney!), why would it look any different? 😅

Interestingly, in both film adaptations, the ocean of Solaris is de-emphasised to the book. While the story does focus on memory and loss, I found that the ocean itself is what drew me to the story the most. The sense that there’s a futility in sometimes trying to model and understand complex systems. The act of understanding a system is sometimes more work than simply observing and reacting to its outcomes.

There *is* a 1968 Soviet TV adaptation, but it seems hard to come by. Not sure I have it in me right now to watch another Russian adaptation. 😅

🏃 Running - Back Into It

Now that I’m likely settled for a bit, I’m training again actively for a half in September + an ultra trail in November. Still incredibly humid, but learning to work with it. I’m mostly just focusing on taking it slow and getting more volume in general to build a base once we’re out of the worst of summer.

🎶 Listening - White Lies - In The Middle

So much of my life has been bookended by White Lies, always forming a background orchestra. Far and away my favourite band, and the new studio album (album 7) is coming out later this year. Very excited. And as always, the new singles are stellar. I’m sure this will also cement this new chapter of my life.

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

Simon