The Acceleration of Addictiveness by Paul Graham (2010)

One thing I really enjoy reading is old articles that turn out to be very prescient. Once these events play out, they become table stakes laden with assumptions that are hard to parse through.

Paul Graham argues that since technological progress is accelerating, so is the creation of things we like too much. Things that are addicting.

The next 40 years will bring us some wonderful things. I don't mean to imply they're all to be avoided. Alcohol is a dangerous drug, but I'd rather live in a world with wine than one without. Most people can coexist with alcohol; but you have to be careful. More things we like will mean more things we have to be careful about.

A healthy skepticism of the things to come seems reasonable. Every day, we get things that are harder to say no to, like the constant dopamine from TikTok.

And unless the rate at which social antibodies evolve can increase to match the accelerating rate at which technological progress throws off new addictions, we'll be increasingly unable to rely on customs to protect us.

Historically, society has evolved over time and what most people did was a good indicator of what was good for you. Now, so many things are addictive there is a chance society won't evolve fast enough to adjust in a reasonable time frame to what is good and bad^[1].

The last one comes from one of his footnotes:

I worry we may be heading for a future in which only a few people plot their own itinerary through no-land, while everyone else books a package tour.

This is a key worry when I consider the future. We enter The Matrix where everyone's lives are driven by the latest addiction we have yet to conquer…

1. Jonathan Haidt, who recently published The Anxious Generation, seems to feel like we are starting to adapt to reduce adolescents’ use of social media. A silver lining in the realm of modern addictions.