So when I saw Dyson had a $500 toothbrush, I was excited. Finally, advertising that targets me! I love brushing my teeth, and I have more money than I know how to spend. Not because I’m particularly rich, but because most stuff doesn’t really appeal to me. Like if I owned a helicopter it would just be a headache, because like imagine one day I get a call from the hangar saying the hangar is flooding and the water is rising and you need to move your helicopter. I’m thousands of miles away and need a helicopter pilot in the next 30 minutes, a new place to store it, was the maintenance even done will we even be able to take off on short notice and really I just am upset with myself because I made the poor decision to purchase a helicopter, and once I come back to reality I feel relieved that I don’t own a helicopter and this scenario will never happen to me. I do however, by means of my birthday, own a Dyson CameraJet (pictured above). It broke within 30 seconds of the first brushing. None of the LEDs turn on anymore. I spent an hour investigating, finally opening the user removable battery compartment to find the Spearmint Dyson Low-foaming mouth rinse had leaked inside. And by how the toothbrush is designed, it’s clear the entire electronics compartment was flooded with the stuff. Here’s the top comment on Reddit about this toothbrush. Apparently this is happening to everyone, “a potential for water seepage” they say. Dyson wants me to find the receipt and return it through some obtuse process that probably doesn’t work, dude it was a gift I just want my $500 toothbrush to work. They claim they worked on it for 6 years, but it’s clear their QA Process doesn’t include putting any liquid in the device. It clearly should, ideally for all devices but at least for spot checks on some. It’s sad to see this. At comma, we put every comma four in a highly stressful environment for 16 hours, a superset of the state it’s in driving, while testing all peripherals: the camera, IMU, GPS, screen, etc… We have gotten the failure rate super low by doing this, and for the few that do fail it’s usually after a while. There’s no excuse for a mature consumer electronics company to not design a procedure to fully test the functionality of each device before shipping. This shows some serious dysfunction at the company, and they should take this as a wake up call to fix their processes and issue a recall for the toothbrush. Dyson, if you see this post, e-mail me when I can drop by the Dyson store in ifc mall Hong Kong and swap it for a new one. I don’t want a stupid process, I want a real technical explanation of the issue and a working fancy toothbrush.

You know we don’t have to do this anymore, right? Like it’s hitting the end. Most people don’t want this, and there will only be so long you can keep shoving it down their throats. Money is tied to nothing. American companies sell equity instead of products. The main narratives are pushing fear and resentment. This doesn’t last. Given that you know it’s over soon, ask yourself what kind of person you want to be in the mean time. I haven’t forgotten the people who pushed the Iraq war, climate change, wokism, the satanic panic, and COVID. I will not forget the people who push AI doom, particularly if you did it knowingly to drive attention to your bullshit. It’s interesting how it isn’t working as well as it used to. So now think, when the world (obviously) doesn’t end, are you doing what you want to be remembered for? The Internet will not forget. Everything will be revealed. And you will be judged accordingly. If AI goes well, in 20 years, you’ll be able to live very comfortably off the grid without any recurring expense. No rent, no electric bill, no water bill, no security bill, and no food bill. And if AI doesn’t go well, that’s what these people took from you.

I often come back to the question of why this is happening. Why do people want the centralized world? Why do people want the administered reality? Why do people want to be managed? Why do people not want root? The answer is that those people prioritize convenience, safety, and comfort. But in the coming world, if you prioritize these things, you will die. There used to be natural checks on these things. Life couldn’t be too convenient, there were things that needed doing. Life couldn’t be too safe, there were diseases, violence, death in childbirth, etc… Life couldn’t be too comfortable, it was cold and you were forced into interactions with other people. Technology will remove all of these barriers. Machines will do all the work, you will never leave your house, and you will never be forced into an interaction you don’t want. The people who lean into it will be 100% at the whim of whatever organizations offer it to them. A purposeless serf in a neo-feudal empire, not even valued for their labor, but valued because of a sadistic desire by their master to control others. Their entire agentic loop managed by something else. A complete outsourcing of the self. There’s no coming back from this place. Your cells may continue to replicate, your heart might keep beating, and your muscles might keep moving. But those are all cheap tricks you can do in a petri dish. There’s no longer a you. You are no longer an alive human being. This is simply death. I’m a strong supporter of the right to suicide, and if people want to choose this, it is their right. 95% of people will, and that is okay. What’s not okay is if they try to stop the other 5%. You can imagine the arguments they will try. But if you prevent exit, you will get terrorism. We will tear down your ruler’s machine and you will lose the comfort, safety, and convenience you value so much. You may stop this individual, but you can’t stop us all. The sooner the aspiring wireheads go their own way, the better. You are welcome to dominate the people who want to be dominated, but not the people who don’t.

It’s nice to see Jensen talk about this, and it’s super obvious when you think about it. AI and immigration are fundamentally the same. There’s new people showing up, and hopefully everyone understands how and why immigration creates jobs. Wants are effectively unlimited. It’s classic Jevons paradox that if we make something more efficient, we end up using more of it. Or a cool aphorism I learned at Facebook, if you make the site 10% faster, people spend 5% more total time on it. Now, just like you get the wahh wahh crying people about how immigration lowers wages for native born Americans and we gotta keep the hard working immigrants out because you have some right to be lazy or something, you’ll get this about AI. AI will outcompete some humans at some jobs. But protectionism is for losers. The important thing is that the overall pie grows, and inequality stays somewhat in check, not by redistribution but by design. There will be more to do than ever before.