The World Will Be Unrecognizable. To Maneuver it Properly, Start by Closing Your Eyes.

You walk into an unfamiliar room. It's enormous. Imagine a cavern that stretches farther than your eyes can see, with a ceiling above the clouds. It could barely be considered a room. More like another world. The only reason you know it's an enclosed space is because before you stand innumerable pillars in an odd pattern. These pillars stretch up through the white clouds, but too high for you to see their termination point.

There are bodies of water here. Land, too. With strange looking grass and lush forests. It's filled with gardens hosting unknown flowers, beaches of red sand, deserts, and every other conceivable biome. But every organic element is somehow slightly different than what you're used to. The animals, plants, clouds, and weather all seem familiar but wrong in some intangible way. There are people, but they speak a strange language. Indeed, the only unnatural parts of the room are those damn pillars.

Before you get your bearings, you're already used to the omnipresent pillars. You even learn to appreciate them in a way. They're your reminder that you are in fact somewhere new. Somewhere exciting, with infinite possibilities. And that the world you're used to still exists somewhere else. Behind you.

If there's one thing for certain, it's that to move forward here, you're going to need to start learning something new. First of all, is the water safe to drink? Which of these plants can you forage and eat? How close is that thunderstorm, and is it moving in your direction? Can you trust any of these people?

Suddenly, you feel a rush of anxiety. You're overwhelmed. There are so many things that could go wrong here. You find yourself wanting to go back but you've already taken too many steps forward. You don't yet understand how to navigate the pillars, and the door you passed through is nowhere to be seen.

You close your eyes and take a breath. You steel yourself. Now is no time to panic. You can't learn everything about this place in a day. It may take you an entire lifetime. Expanding your mind is not an option, yet. Right now, you need to narrow it. You have to find something small to focus on. A piece of this world to grab onto. A splash of order in the ocean of chaos. You must uncover the structure on this alien landscape by reducing it to a set of fundamental truths.

Coming to Grips with Unreality

Right now you know what an AI image looks like. They may keep getting better, but in April 2024, they are mostly recognizable. It's one of those boomer litmus tests: they're easily good enough to fool our tech-illiterate parents, but not quite at the level where you're consistently being duped.

There may be a hard YET sitting right here, though I'm not quite convinced of the inexorable forward progress of AI. After all, these are still only images. The videos generators that exist are rough, to say the least, and not widely available. (Of note is the celebratory tone of every AI progress-related news article. These people really will welcome the robot overlords.) Regardless, I do believe these generations will get at least a little better. And a little better is probably all it's going to take for them to be good enough to fool 99% of the population. And if we reach that point, the world we live in will start to look a lot like the strange cavern.

How will you navigate a society in which the flow of information is not just subject to the corruption of bad-actors, but built in such a way as to encourage their presence?

The news, as bad as it is today, will be completely useless. Fake videos of politicians hurling racial slurs or engaging in pedophilia could replace campaign ads. And what if a politician actually is outed for some heinous crime? Their PR team will assure everyone--through AI-generated news articles--that this, too, was an AI creation, showing that even the truth can be smothered when information loses meaning.

Real internet users will be indistinguishable from AI-generated dialogue. Content will be mass-produced and pinpoint targeted at every niche interest, suffocating the organic creator. Friendships and relationships may be outsourced to machines. Men are already having sex with robots. How long until women, empowered by feminism's promises that men are evil and unnecessary, find solace in AI husbands, and the dating scene that today stands in ruins completely evaporates?

The digital world will take on a new character entirely. But all the while it will be marked by these inescapable pillars. How can what's on that screen actually hurt you? Just close your eyes.

A Triumphant Return

One of the most impressive aspects of God's creation is its inherent simplicity. The most profound truths are also the simplest. That's why you find them the second you start looking for them. And when you come across a truth like this, it feels exactly like remembering something you already knew. There are truths inside of you, even now, that you can't consciously articulate. But the day that truth manifests itself in the world, it will feel like seeing the face of an old friend.

The truth we'll all need to accept in the coming decades is that we have so rapidly strayed from the natural world of our immediate ancestors that we cannot easily rely on their wisdom to guide us further. Your own parents cannot prepare you for what's to come. This makes our time and place in history totally unique.

Go back 1000 years, and you'll find the lives of individuals didn't look that much different from the people 1000 years before them. Yes there were some technological advances but, other than language and cultural developments, would someone from 96 CE really find society in 1096 CE unnavigable? They'd have to make some adjustments, to be sure. But once they got their bearings, they'd be just fine. Now imagine taking that same 1st century peasant and trying to teach them how to code. Or explain what a large language model was.

The fact is we have no precedent here except one: there is always something unknown lurking over the horizon. Some possibility of major change that will upend everything. We just happen to be closer to that change than anyone in history, and we have some idea of what shape it's taking.

To meet this tsunami of technological change, we'll need to retreat further back. Actually, we'll need to retreat further inwards. We'll need to uncover those old pieces of fundamental wisdom that guided both the 96 CE peasant and the 1096 CE crusader; a reliance on God, the tangible truth, objective moral guardrails, and a commitment to the only thing any of us has real control over: mastery of the self.

The Truth Whispers Loudly

My prescription for the future is simple. Form a relationship with God. Call it the Universe. Call it good and evil. I don't care what you call it--acknowledge objective reality and get to know it, then commit to never stray from it. Proclaim it in every action you take.

Plant the right seeds in the fertile soil. Water them and wait patiently on their growth. Remember that if you're reaping disorder and anxiety, it's because you're sowing chaos.

Develop your skills and meet the demands of the marketplace. Deal honestly with others, and focus on genuine concern for helping your fellow man. God will add to you everything you need as long as you operate according to His will.

Prioritize your family. Build up your brothers. Judge the trees by the fruits they produce.

Trust your intuition. Properly categorize anyone who would rationalize away an ordered and purposeful universe: they have their sails open during a maelstrom, and will soon be smashed into the rocks.

These fundamental truths will serve as roots that dig deep into the Earth and keep you tied down when the winds pick up. As those roots dig deeper, the laws of nature will nourish you even more, accelerating your growth. You will start to succeed where others fail. You'll grow rapidly while others shrink or wander.

You'll become the interminable pillar that reminds everyone we still exist in the same world we always have. You'll become the truth. And you'll be rewarded for it.