060 - Choice Overload

The first step is often the hardest, because at that step humans often face the greatest Choice Overload. It means picking a direction, a method, and mentally modeling some concept of the intended destination or experience of that path. Every step after that carries momentum and builds the structure of habits, making the process that much easier.

However, that same structure can often betray us in the long-term, because every pattern has a point of obsolescence. Cognitive Biases exist to minimize the cognitive effort required of us every moment of every day. This is what allows us to cope with the overwhelming complexity of the modern world.

The step I see many procrastinating to take now is the choice to learn about new technology. The process of learning itself has to remain a healthy habit to grant the momentum to overcome this, but humanity also needs the misinformation detected, captured, and purged automatically.

The current misinformation ecosystem creates a massive drag on the learning process, often causing valid information to silo and misinformation to go viral, socially engineering public interest away from the material they desperately need to learn.

One of the drives behind the explosive interest in systems like ChatGPT over the past year is that complexity is becoming so great that people are getting desperate to find the means to cope with it. That desperation has become so severe that they'll use these tools knowing full well that the information will be biased, and may be complete nonsense.

People have sought out the "Oracle" throughout recorded history. Great quantities of snake oil have been sold from those who claimed the mantle of Oracle, as that history is now repeated across many AI trashbot and agent-based companies claiming capacities they fundamentally cannot deliver.

Seeking to engineer divinity is the providence of fools, and it certainly seems to serve as a magnet for them. However, scalable real-time human-like systems built to overcome the Complexity versus Cognitive Bias Trade-off may well satisfy the quote:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke