Josh Daws

“We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

"AAAAAAAAAH GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT WITH A STABLE INCOME I'M LITERALLY IN HELL SAVE ME KURT COBAIN'S GHOST AAAAAAAH!" Why was Gen X like this?

When I enjoy a piece of art, or a film, or a book, or a song, or a game, it’s extremely important to me that it is a carefully crafted, coherent design, made by a human with whom I can emotionally relate, and with whom I share the common elements of the human condition. If any of these things are purely AI generated—yes, even if superficially you cannot immediately tell—it immediately sours the experience, because I feel manipulated, not communicated with. There is no relatable higher purpose behind a scene in a painting, there is no truth in any lyrics in a song, there is no carefully designed experience intended for me by playing a game—it becomes equivalent to a slot machine, and I become the drunk zombie boomer in Vegas repeatedly pulling the lever. I don’t think this is an uncommon feeling at all, and because the economy is the cumulative effects downstream of human desire, I think there is far less demand for such things than—for instance—psychopaths in Silicon Valley would like investors to believe.

You can be pro AI and also deeply concerned about job displacement

TIL: DX: Developer Experience AX: Agent Experience AX is an awesome descriptor for something I've been thinking about - how well an agent can perform in your codebase How well-architected it is. How good the feedback loops are. How discoverable information is. Love it.

“Give him $2,500 he wasn’t expecting. Now give him $2,500 in unexpected car repairs.”

What seminaries are growing? Which ones are declining? I compared the 2024 data from ATS to the same data from 2007 below. Midwestern Baptist is up 290% United Theological is up 244% Southwestern Baptist is down 46% Fuller Theological is down 63%

This one thing explains way more in our culture politically, culturally, and ecclesiologically (“with regard to the church”) than anyone probably wants to admit: Until a man (in particular) has kids, he isn’t as emotionally tied to the future of society at a visceral level. When a man has kids, it does something to his energy and produces a desperation to use his strength to ensure a better societal and ecclesiological future for his children and grandchildren to inherit.

If it’s a tech capable of displacing that many jobs, then we’d be foolish to not worry about China having it while we stall development ourselves. If it won’t displace that many jobs, then there’s nothing much to worry about anyway. All I know is you can’t stop a meteor by arguing that the meteor will have bad effects.