Cognitive Mercantilism: AI panic resembles fears of early capitalism

Re:Cognitive Mercantilism: AI panic resembles fears of early... by zkmon on Monday October 26, 2026 @02:37AM (#50239908)

The analogy between farm work and intelligence work breaks down at their transition continuation, which the author missed, I believe.

When the people were were freed from farm labour, due to farm automation, people could find another economic activity which required the other capacity of humans - intelligence.

The transition from muscle-power work to mind-work was meaningful, as both muscle and mind were attributes of humans, creating demand for humans having mind power instead of muscle power.

But the continuation of that transition breaks down. Muscle power -> Mind power -> ???

Those 3 questions marks at the end are what's scaring people, and what is threatening the stability of the transition from mind work. If both muscle power and mond power are not things of value, how would the humanity progress to create value? Who buys it? Why do they buy it? Who hires whom? Why?

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Re:Cognitive Mercantilism: AI panic resembles fears of early... by aswegs8 on Monday October 26, 2026 @03:28AM (#50240299)

Will power seems to have become the new differentiator.

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Re:Cognitive Mercantilism: AI panic resembles fears of early... by shoobiedoo on Monday October 26, 2026 @03:08AM (#50240156)

Yes, if you look at the examples the author used such as Indian cotton or tobacco as drivers of increased voluntary labor, both of those carried immediate intangible value as status symbols or bragging rights on top of their material value. It further stratified society which led to more people wanting more stuff and... on and on. What is this cognitive surplus value going to bring? I don't get it.

I guess their point is that, for example-- instead of requiring heaps of study and a genius mind to learn to how to reverse engineer complex things over the course of years, their intelligence can go to something that... AI can't do yet?

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Re:Cognitive Mercantilism: AI panic resembles fears of early... by zkmon on Monday October 26, 2026 @03:15AM (#50240211)

The author declares that it is fully written by AI using a few prompts. So, not surprising that the whole article is so weak at the core.

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Re:Cognitive Mercantilism: AI panic resembles fears of early... by zzrrt on Monday October 26, 2026 @04:16AM (#50240693)

Out of curiosity, where did he say that? FWIW I ran the first half through Pangram (truncated to use free credits) and it said 73% AI, evenly interspersed.

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Re:Cognitive Mercantilism: AI panic resembles fears of early... by shoobiedoo on Monday October 26, 2026 @04:45AM (#50240917)

I'm curious myself, in fact I was kind of relieved to read a long, well written article and just thought it felt human. I hope I'm right

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Re:Cognitive Mercantilism: AI panic resembles fears of early... by zkmon on Monday October 26, 2026 @08:48AM (#50242722)

There is an "about" page on their blog where author discusses extensively (probably written by AI as well) about how most of his writing is AI-written.

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Re:Cognitive Mercantilism: AI panic resembles fears of early... by pinkgolem on Monday October 26, 2026 @03:00AM (#50240087)

I mean some argue the 3d is creativity.

But I am sure people had the same question marks back then, for what's comes next

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Re:Cognitive Mercantilism: AI panic resembles fears of early... by AnimalMuppet on Monday October 26, 2026 @10:12AM (#50244068)

Back then, how many people had a university education? How many even finished high school?

It was not obvious then that "mind power" was something that everyone could use - or even that a large fraction of the population could use.

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Re:Cognitive Mercantilism: AI panic resembles fears of early... by decidu0us9034 on Monday October 26, 2026 @03:19AM (#50240230)

For many here the answer seems to be that everyone will be product manager or a capitalist (one suspects the people saying this are product managers and capitalists).

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Re:Cognitive Mercantilism: AI panic resembles fears of early... by zarzavat on Monday October 26, 2026 @04:44AM (#50240903)

The ??? is capital power. If both human mind and muscle have lesser value then what matters is the capital you possess. Can be financial capital or other kinds of capital. Indeed this is the default in many less developed countries.

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