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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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If people decide collectively they don't need to build expertise because they think they can get AI to do everything, they will be worse at using AI

I mean, you're not wrong . . . but you know what would also make them worse at using AI? Not having AI available to use.

At some point there's just a limited amount of time to learn in. Yes, certainly it would be great if I could absorb the entire accumulated knowledge of humanity. But I can't. I don't have the millennia required to do that, especially because there's always a tradeoff between "learning things" and "doing things".

AI removes a bunch of the minimum-training requirements to accomplish many things, while simultaneously making some things far far faster to do. I don't pretend to understand where the new balance will land - that's two giant changes at the same time - but I am confident that in the end, for any reasonable definition of "accomplishment" that combines both quality and quantity, people will be accomplishing a lot more than they were before.

Some people will be doing this by learning the fundamentals anyway, some won't, and I'm okay with that.

Some people will be doing this by learning the fundamentals anyway, some won't, and I'm okay with that.

To be clear, my concern is that culture will shift away from a culture where some people learn the fundamentals. Some people will still do so, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, but having institutions (such as schools) roll over (...more) on the need to instill understanding would be a mistake.