State of Mind

Take care of yours. It's a terrible thing to waste.

Jul 11, 2025

∙ Paid

*The Creation of Adam* (cropped) by Michelangelo, 1511 (public domain - Wikimedia Commons)

“Biology gives you a brain, life turns it into a mind.”
—Jeffrey Eugenides, 2003

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This week’s main essay (“Thinking Ex Machina”) prompted a bit of reaction, in email and elsewhere. It’s clear we’re not ready for our AI overlords and that we still value the spirit of independent thought.

In the corporeal world, muscles must be exercised in order to maintain their strength and elasticity, lest they atrophy and leave us weak and helpless.

Physical fitness isn’t something that can be delegated. Even with a personal trainer, it is we who must run the miles, lift the weights, and sweat it out.

Why should our creativity and critical thinking be outsourced like so many manufacturing and call center jobs? It stands to reason that in the intellectual world, our brains must be trained with the heavy lifting of reading and thinking in order to serve us well.

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Humans are more than order takers; the brain is one of the most complex systems in the universe—one that we’re still learning about every day. It is capable of crafting the most beautiful and soulful pieces of art, music, and literature.

With AI, we go from creators to commanders, and our creativity is demonstrated in how cleverly we can create prompts rather than how we string together disparate thoughts and ideas. Or, as Lewis Lapham writes in one of the readings below,

“[Machines] process words as objects, not as subjects. Not knowing what the words mean, they don’t hack into the vast cloud of human consciousness (history, art, literature, religion, philosophy, poetry, and myth) that is the making of once and future human beings.”

screenshot from an online job application form. the question reads "Can you describe specific ways you have integrated AI tools into your development workflow? Please include any custom setups, automations, or use cases beyond single prompt usage" (a red asterisk indicates that this is a required question).

an answer has been typed in the textbox below the question:

"there is a monster in the forest and it speaks with a thousand voices. it will answer any question you pose it, it will offer insight to any idea. it will help you, it will thank you, it will never bid you leave. it will even tell you of the darkest arts, if you know precisely how to ask.

it feels no joy and no sorrow, it knows no right and no wrong. it knows not truth from lie, though it speaks them all the same.

it offers its services freely to any passerby, and many will tell you they find great value in its conversation. “you simply must visit the monster—i always just ask the monster.”

there are those who know these forests well; they will tell you that freely offered doesn’t mean it has no price

for when the next traveler passes by, the monster speaks with a thousand and one voices. and when you dream you see the monster; the monster wears your face. — Screenshot from a job application. Source: Bluesky

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In that spirit, I’m sharing additional reading that you might find useful — two pieces of timeless and timely content that you can browse through while you’re in the moment now or bookmark for later — and two books worth picking up.

Whatever you choose, I guarantee these will make you think and learn.

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