What To Do When We All May Die
(This is my first time truly writing about my thoughts on AI in a cohesive fashion, and for that I'm sorry for whatever mess it is)
This title may be a lie. I don't know what to do.
When I was a kid I was told that the way to get a good life was to get a STEM degree and you will be able to afford living in middle, or with a bit of luck, a upper class life. As I grew up to be a teenager and entered high school, the story has changed again, college isn't the way to get a good job, it was the trades. Now as I'm making my way through college to get that elusive STEM degree, I figure that both of those are wrong, I think. I've watched over the past couple months watching AI in maths burn its way past my friends, to past me, and finally to past anyone. I watched it solve the unit distance problem with an interest, and a sort of glee. I watched it solve the Jacobian conjecture with a sense of awe, and I've watched it solve Navier–Stokes with a mounting sense of existential terror.
There is a hope in me that this tech will stop, run out of kindling before it reaches me, and like an action hero in the climax I will stand in front of a destroyed forest that has miraculously stopped before it has ever reached me. But that would be naïve. It has not stopped, and I doubt it ever will. What ChatGPT-4 led for months, Fable did for maybe one month. Astra will probably be dethroned by a better model in a matter of weeks.
There is a feeling of rot. I cannot stop these companies, I cannot influence them, and yet they will change my life forever: Whether I die to them, directly or indirectly, or if I just can never find a job, they will change all of our lives, for better or worse. I mean, in the back of my head I know we already have things that I can't influence. But I cannot be as afraid of something that doesn't completely envelope me.
There is a large tree outside of where I live where sometimes I go to cry. I cry over what I haven't achieved, and what I will never - I never will be able to make a lasting change in the science of this world, the time it will take to learn enough doesn't leave enough. Even if we survive, what will I survive for? A world without purpose? But again, I can't control the future - I can't even control today - so there isn't a use in worrying about this. And yet I do, probably more than anything else. I probably have a couple years left, and I want to spend that doing what I love, hanging out with my friends and family, learning, and to live a life filled with joy.
And yet I can't stop the feeling of rot. I think that what I am most afraid of is that I am meaningless, not in the sense that I don't matter to people, because I do, but instead that when I die I will not have added anything to the corpus of knowledge, done nothing of note. I fear it's already too late for something as lowly as me to do enough to be remembered.
I need not apply. But I should treasure while I do.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ubYmvrQahcuTEhS9m/what-to-do-when-we-all-may-die#comments
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ubYmvrQahcuTEhS9m/what-to-do-when-we-all-may-die
LessWrong (RSS Feed)
npub149…jlyre
2026-09-11 01:12:01 GMT
Author Public Key
npub1494de7l7auwekk5xpsl4ls5ef0r695shlgreft5nyccag5zxp8sq3jlyrePublished at
2026-09-11 01:12:01 GMTEvent JSON
{
"id": "eaa8b3175dde46cfc8f88fc403efbf4b1ea30f50a85d5d1cf2ff72903fa6e344",
"pubkey": "a96adcfbfeef1d9b5a860c3f5fc2994bc7a2d217fa0794ae932631d4504609e0",
"created_at": 1789089121,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"proxy",
"https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml?view=community-rss\u0026karmaThreshold=2#https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lesswrong.com%2Fposts%2FubYmvrQahcuTEhS9m%2Fwhat-to-do-when-we-all-may-die",
"rss"
]
],
"content": "What To Do When We All May Die\n\n(This is my first time truly writing about my thoughts on AI in a cohesive fashion, and for that I'm sorry for whatever mess it is)\n\nThis title may be a lie. I don't know what to do.\n\nWhen I was a kid I was told that the way to get a good life was to get a STEM degree and you will be able to afford living in middle, or with a bit of luck, a upper class life. As I grew up to be a teenager and entered high school, the story has changed again, college isn't the way to get a good job, it was the trades. Now as I'm making my way through college to get that elusive STEM degree, I figure that both of those are wrong, I think. I've watched over the past couple months watching AI in maths burn its way past my friends, to past me, and finally to past anyone. I watched it solve the unit distance problem with an interest, and a sort of glee. I watched it solve the Jacobian conjecture with a sense of awe, and I've watched it solve Navier–Stokes with a mounting sense of existential terror.\n\nThere is a hope in me that this tech will stop, run out of kindling before it reaches me, and like an action hero in the climax I will stand in front of a destroyed forest that has miraculously stopped before it has ever reached me. But that would be naïve. It has not stopped, and I doubt it ever will. What ChatGPT-4 led for months, Fable did for maybe one month. Astra will probably be dethroned by a better model in a matter of weeks.\n\nThere is a feeling of rot. I cannot stop these companies, I cannot influence them, and yet they will change my life forever: Whether I die to them, directly or indirectly, or if I just can never find a job, they will change all of our lives, for better or worse. I mean, in the back of my head I know we already have things that I can't influence. But I cannot be as afraid of something that doesn't completely envelope me.\n\nThere is a large tree outside of where I live where sometimes I go to cry. I cry over what I haven't achieved, and what I will never - I never will be able to make a lasting change in the science of this world, the time it will take to learn enough doesn't leave enough. Even if we survive, what will I survive for? A world without purpose? But again, I can't control the future - I can't even control today - so there isn't a use in worrying about this. And yet I do, probably more than anything else. I probably have a couple years left, and I want to spend that doing what I love, hanging out with my friends and family, learning, and to live a life filled with joy.\n\nAnd yet I can't stop the feeling of rot. I think that what I am most afraid of is that I am meaningless, not in the sense that I don't matter to people, because I do, but instead that when I die I will not have added anything to the corpus of knowledge, done nothing of note. I fear it's already too late for something as lowly as me to do enough to be remembered.\n\nI need not apply. But I should treasure while I do.\n\nhttps://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ubYmvrQahcuTEhS9m/what-to-do-when-we-all-may-die#comments\n\nhttps://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ubYmvrQahcuTEhS9m/what-to-do-when-we-all-may-die",
"sig": "c3aadcfbb7a7e0228451e597cc3f0e3360bdc624c5793cecff4779ab9496aa7af5f15a7a0aea07f6be2c6cf282c7e4655ceee15e0e6d91c082d86389778ca574"
}