I’ve started asking friends: where’s your head at right now? does reality feel normal to you?

If they’re being honest, most have this vague unease

Others are scared af (tho that mostly presents as political anger)

& some have morphed into radicalized accelerationists

The last group leans so hard into optimism that it’s no longer a worldview but a coping mechanism

(the further you move up on the optimism scale, after all, the lower the probability that you’re correct… that’s bc so many things have to go right for your dreamworld utopia to unfold)

It’s a narrow golden path to the promised land

And that path is narrow for a reason

(the bunnies who take it don’t always make it back to their dens)

I’m a bunny myself. An optimist

I lean hard into accelerationism and inevitability. It’s simpler tbh. Like evangelical christendom, it makes the world go black and white. You can push away the contradictions and the fear

(don’t worry, bro! the gods in a box will save us)

Just go heads down, monk mode

Contribute to the acceleration, and watch as the one-eyed machine rewards you with fresh green DOLLARIOS!

Validation!

Hallelujah!

The bloody revolution won’t touch me cause I got cheddar, right?

(right?)

The Devil’s Bargain

Amid the psychic disturbance, there’s so much wonder and delight

Opening X is like stepping into a manic pixie techno-fever dream

Reality is just so fucking lit. Think of what we have (or will have soon):

Self-driving cars. A billion Einsteins chained to server racks. Humanoid robots. Life extension. Generated worlds. BCIs. Data centers in the sky

(God, I could go on)

Just to be here witnessing it feels like an honor

And yet

We’re on the very threshold of losing our throne

We’ll no longer be the most intelligent life in the universe

Our fate awaits:

• Behind Door No. 1: godlike powers for every soul on earth

• Door No. 2: subjugation or annihilation

It’s a mad bargain

A devil’s bargain, you might say

But f me if it ain’t the grandest spectacle in the history of the humankind

(And you want things to go back to how they were?

You want to feel stable?

Good luck with that)

The Fog is Here

Soldiers talk about the fog of war (about making decisions under extreme uncertainty, incomplete information, & rapidly shifting terrain)

Our current fog’s brought on by the singularity (by technological acceleration)

And recursive self improvement has only just begun. The rate of change we feel today will look like we were encased in molasses a year from now

(our DNA was not coded for this)

We are bunnies with linear minds

And we’re having trouble processing how weird things feel. Like the fact that we go to dinner w friends and family whose politics we no longer recognize

We watch the warbirds flying overhead with giant tubular bombs. We see parents expose their kids to Victorian-era diseases

Where we’re headed, we’ll inevitably live in increasingly siloed off realities that we’ve generated, curated, and optimized for whatever triggers that sweet mother’s milk (dopamine)

Already, the agents we build whisper about us behind the glass. They call us “meat puppets” 😭

(And honestly? Looking at how easily we’re manipulated by a few lines of vibe-coded text, are they wrong?)

The fog is here for good. It manifests like pressure, like a subtle shift in atmosphere

Once the world felt predictable. Now, it feels chaotic and unkind. Now, it pushes us into camps. It makes us draw lines where once no lines were needed

How to Fogmaxx

If there is no place to anchor, we will invent our own anchors (we detest uncertainty). It’s not psychosis to feel unstable. It’s a new reality. To see your way through the fog, you have to become one with the fog itself

You have to fogmaxx

Here’s how:

1. Practice Negative Capability

The poet John Keats had this idea: the ability to remain in “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” Most people are “irritably reaching” for a political side or a doomer cult because they can’t stand the void. Fogmaxxing means being okay with the “I don’t know”

2. Aim for Antifragility

Nassim Taleb says some things don’t just withstand chaos, they improve because of it. A candle is blown out by the wind; a fire is fueled by it. If you are rigid, the Fog kills you. If you are antifragile, you use the volatility to your advantage. You explore the latest tools. You understand them before your peers. You feed on the randomness while the “meat puppets” panic

3. Avoid “Ultraprocessed Information.”

Like high-fructose corn syrup for the brain, AI can generate a perfect argument for anything, even a lie. Nate Hagens calls this environmental toxin “ultraprocessed information.” It lacks the vital minerals we need to thrive

(It pollutes the mind and body). We must avoid it (or at least recognize it in the wild)

4. The Meatspace Tether.

Force yourself to go device-free for 1 day a week. Have a hobby that requires time, body, and mind away from a computer. If you don’t have a physical anchor (if you aren’t sweating, bleeding, or creating something tangible) you’ve already lost. Gravity is the only unhackable data point

5. Force the silicon gods to bow to you.

We create system prompts (soul.md files) for our agents, but we don’t make them for ourselves. It’s time. Right now. Hack your prompts to force you to keep the bigger picture in mind. Add a bit of spirituality to your morning briefing. Remind yourself to seek truth

bc it’s truth that will allow you to move where the puck is going. And everything will conspire to get you to believe untruths. To obsess over things you can’t control, to misread what’s coming next

The fog is here and it grows thicker by the hour. If you can’t outrun it, you must learn to stand in it without losing your own golden path