Matt Bogard

“You can’t buy happiness but you can buy dirt” - Joshua Cole Jenkins/Jordan Davis/Matt Jenkins/Jacob J.Davis

MIT's Nobel Prize-winning economist just published a model with one of the most alarming conclusions in the AI literature so far. If AI becomes accurate enough, it can destroy human civilization's ability to generate new knowledge entirely. Not gradually degrade it. Collapse it. The paper is called AI, Human Cognition and Knowledge Collapse. Authors: Daron Acemoglu, Dingwen Kong, and Asuman Ozdaglar. MIT. Published February 20, 2026. Acemoglu won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2024. He is not a doomer blogger. He is the most cited economist of his generation, and his models tend to be taken seriously by the people who set policy. Here is the argument in plain terms. Human knowledge is not just a collection of facts stored in individuals. It is a living system that requires continuous reproduction. People learn things. They apply them. They teach others. They build on prior work to generate new work. The entire engine of science, medicine, technology, and innovation runs on this cycle of active human cognition. What happens when AI provides personalized, accurate answers to every question people would otherwise have to learn themselves? Individually, each person is better off. They get correct answers faster. They make fewer errors. Their immediate outcomes improve. But they stop doing the cognitive work that sustains the collective knowledge base. Acemoglu's model shows this produces a non-monotone welfare curve. Modest AI accuracy: net positive. AI helps at the margin, humans still do enough learning to sustain collective knowledge, everyone gains. High AI accuracy: net catastrophic. AI is accurate enough that learning yourself feels unnecessary. Human learning effort collapses. The knowledge base that AI was trained on is no longer being refreshed or extended. Innovation stalls. Then stops. The model proves the existence of two stable steady states. A high-knowledge steady state where human learning and AI assistance coexist productively. A knowledge-collapse steady state where collective human knowledge has effectively vanished, individuals still receive good personalized AI recommendations, but the shared intellectual infrastructure that enables new discoveries is gone. And the transition between them is not gradual. It is a threshold effect. Below a certain level of AI accuracy, society stays in the high-knowledge equilibrium. Above that threshold, the system tips. And once it tips, the collapse is self-reinforcing. Because the people who would have learned the things that would have pushed the frontier forward never learned them. And the AI cannot push the frontier on its own. It can only recombine what humans already knew when it was trained. The dark irony at the center of the model: The AI does not fail. It keeps giving accurate, personalized, useful answers right through the collapse. From the individual's perspective, nothing looks wrong. You ask a question, you get a correct answer. But the collective capacity to ask questions nobody has asked before, to build the frameworks that generate new knowledge rather than retrieve existing knowledge, that capacity is quietly disappearing. Acemoglu has been the most prominent mainstream economist skeptical of transformative AI productivity claims. His prior work found that AI's actual measured productivity gains were much smaller than the technology industry projected. This paper is a different kind of warning. Not that AI will fail to deliver promised gains. But that if it succeeds too completely, it will undermine the human cognitive infrastructure that makes long-run progress possible at all. The welfare effect is non-monotone. That is the sentence worth sitting with. Helpful until it is not. Beneficial until it crosses a threshold. And past that threshold, the same accuracy that made it so useful is precisely what makes it devastating. Every student who uses AI instead of working through a problem is a data point. Every researcher who uses AI instead of developing intuition is a data point. Every generation that grows up with accurate AI answers and no incentive to develop deep domain knowledge is a data point. Individually rational. Collectively catastrophic. Acemoglu proved this is not just a cultural concern or a vague anxiety about screen time. It is a mathematically coherent equilibrium that a sufficiently accurate AI system will push society toward. And there is no visible warning sign before the threshold is crossed.

🧵 1/14: Just days after Paul Ehrlich (the man whose 1968 book “The Population Bomb” predicted billions would starve) passed away, it’s the perfect moment to celebrate the scientist who proved Ehrlich and other doomsayers spectacularly wrong. Meet Norman Borlaug, the Iowa farm boy who launched the Green Revolution and quite literally saved a billion lives. This is the ultimate story of human ingenuity triumphing over scarcity.

True. MAGA is being ripped apart by the paid influencers, bots, and blind cultists who are operating in hive mind attacks against anyone who dares to criticize and demand accountability from the very President and Republican majority they voted for. It is such a turn off and is pushing so many independent thinkers away, who were the very voters who swung the 24 election for Trump and Republicans, but now are saying they are registering independent or just simply will not vote in 26. These independent minded voters want America First results and accountability and when they demand it are being swarmed with MAGA cult like attacks on their posts and they will not tolerate being treated this way. X is filled with so many bots, AI generated commentary accounts, and MAGA paid influencers ridiculously demanding loyalty by vicious attacks and lies that it hardly even seems authentic anymore and so many people I know are saying that they may eventually leave the platform because it is so toxic and not worth engaging. Not only the platform but the Republican Party. This should not excite the Democrats though because Dems pushed many of their own and independents out under Biden with their open border which led to invasion, trans agenda on kids and women’s sports, strict covid lockdowns with devastating consequences on people’s lives and fueled crippling inflation, and DEI enforcement. And Dems have not changed their ways that led to their defeat in 24 or come with anything fresh and new and just continue their ‘we hate Trump’ messaging. While Trump and Republicans campaigned on MAGA, which many believed meant putting Americans First, yet after a year in the dish being served is neocon ways of foreign countries, foreign wars, regime change, and delivering for the billionaire big donors NOT the sea of American people who swarmed and waited countless hours at Trump rallies. And the Republican House and Senate are doing no better by continuing to pass spending bills, writing checks from the American people, funding the very things and foreign countries and foreign peoples that Americans demanded to stop. All of it is gross. Both parties currently are not offering a real platform, with tangible policies, that smart independent minded Americans can take seriously. Especially the younger generations. Now when I hit post after writing this, my comments will instantly fill in literally seconds with bot farms, AI commentary replies, and paid MAGA mindless drones. 3, 2, 1, go..

🚨 The Democrat Party didn’t lose the middle class. They abandoned it. Then they mocked it, replaced it, and declared war on its values. Now they’re reaping the whirlwind of a 30-year progressive fantasy turned national nightmare.🧵

If we extrapolate this across multiple D.C. agencies (and their satellite NGOs, consultants, etc.), just think what it will do to home prices around the Beltway.

1 - Do u think these folks actually do it for the money and free tractors and equipment? Do u farm just because of the $ …. I can only think of a couple on here that have legitimate deals… they do it because they’re passionate about it!!! Otherwise that list would be blank 2 - have u ever seen what traditional advertising costs from a Ag business stand of point? I have and it’s unbelievable!! Plus look at the reach some of these folks have 3 - this list could be so much bigger 4 - it’s something that u don’t need to be born into to make a good go at it, everyone single person out there could do this 5 - have u seen the younger crowds at farms shows because of these “influencer’s” they’ve literally made farming cool again and they’re reach isn’t to just ppl in farm country 6 - influencer is a terrible term 7 - no one is forcing you to watch their content Lastly, we’re only 2% probably less then that….. maybe we should think about getting along, agriculture has bigger fish to fry, don’t u see what’s going on over in Europe….. and for some strange reason I had a dream I was out visiting @formerTedHamer1 at his farm last night…. It was a weird one!!! Lol

"Your food is poison" is a common trope these days, but our food supply has never been safer or more abundant. Who is behind the disinformation? How does it spread? Complicit influencers even get the ear of US Senate committees. This week's podcast. share.transistor.fm/s/629b8dc5

Europe uses more pesticides per acre than USA! See ourworldindata.org/grapher/pestic…

Surgeon General says alcohol causes cancer National Academies says alcohol lowers all-cause mortality. WTF Breaking down the data here: parentdata.org/alcohol-and-he…

@NurseKateMBA @ProfEmilyOster I was thinking similarly. Their risk ratios for alcohol vs. say smoking seem small. I know RR are commonly reported in literature but agree absolute risk reduction would be more useful for public understanding. I guess that’s why as an applied economist I like marginal effects.

@ProfEmilyOster OMG the stated change in absolute risk is so minimal. If my doc told me I could decr my risk of cancer by 1-2% if I lowered my alcohol consumption, I'd laugh. Compare that to the absolute risk reduction for stopping smoking. Now *that* deserves a surgeon general warning.

Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek cafehayek.com/2024/12/quotat…

I was intrigued by the “studying magic” part so I read the report and did the most cursory googling and $6m of that is for a place called “magic city discovery center”, which is a STEM focused learning center for kids in North Dakota. Just magic in the name, no actual magic.

Cane sugar/beet sugar is 50% glucose, 50% fructose. HFCS is 50-55% fructose, the rest glucose. The latter comes from #GMO corn. I've said it 1000x- RFKj is not good for USA farmers. Agenda showing. #AgTwitter (Glyphosate is next)

@commodityweek look what I found. #plant68

Whoops this was Dr. Craig’s discussion regarding note taking: overcast.fm/+AARU5uhE1cc

@RFupdates listening to the intro of this discussion and Dr. Craig’s comments in taking notes while reading…that had worked for me and certainly with his book “Reasonable Faith” overcast.fm/+AARU5sklRHA

Potential for U.S. agriculture to be a net-negative greenhouse gas emitter nationalhogfarmer.com/livestock-mana…

The UN Climate Conference wants to transfer trillions from rich to poor Not going to happen Rich world won't Extreme weather death and cost decreasing Immoral to spend badly on climate instead of smartly on poverty, hunger, and disease graphic.com.gh/features/opini…

First born children have higher IQ than their siblings. 🧵1/9

This is going to a long thread on two issues I think are related, the challenge of having a national shared narrative in America and the nature of the political landscape that led to Trump's victory. I'm 70 years old and lived in America until three years ago. I have a PhD 1/