Item — HN Reader

On your second point - I don’t agree that humans in general will plateau. I think instead the _gap_ between humans who crave to create and learn, and those who are ostensibly potatoes, will be magnified.

I see it a bit like the creator economy, where you have these maker vs consumer tranches of people.

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Humans are fundamentally creators of tools and art and imaginary world - this is one of the factors that distinguishes us from animals. For most of human history, most humans spent a lot of their time creating. The very recent phenomena of a large fraction of humans creating almost nothing in their adult life is caused by modern economic systems, almost all of which force people to work so much every day that all their creative energies are sapped.

Go to a 4 day 24 hour work week and you will find almost everyone creating again.

Throughout all stages of my schooling from kindergarten to college, there were always artists, tinkerers and builders, but they were never the majority.

I can't think of any time in history, under any economic system, where humans who create tools and art were the majority. Most people just want to have families and enjoy life.

talk to people, pretty much everybody around you wants to make stuff.

be it music, cooking, drawing, house arrangement, get better at fishing, etc.

people with long gaps of "pure consumption" get depressed... (which is why i think it's important to protect kids from mobile phones, they're depression machines)