Agency and the Midwit

Agency, intelligence and the default template: why most people run on someone else's instructions, and what that costs.

2026-11-05 — Premium Midwit Top twenty on the November 2026 chess list: all men. Hou Yifan is 161st, 123 Elo back. A real gap. Not an order of magnitude, and not a theory of women.
2026-11-05 — Less in the Way Specialized knowledge pays for a few more years, then depreciates to zero. What's left is adaptive intelligence that slows the machine least.
2026-09-23 — Grabbing the Wheel Give the same AI to an illiterate, a genius and a midwit. The illiterate and the genius both beat the midwit, who grabs the wheel.
2026-07-31 — The Loop Wake, work, mortgage, repeat. The loop doesn't make you an NPC; not minding it does. Thoreau's quiet desperation, updated.
2026-07-13 — Time of Death You die when the EEG goes flat. Most people die years earlier: the first time they say 'it's not so bad' about their life and mean it.
2026-07-04 — Running in Root Nobody knows how stupid they are; the diagnostic requires the upgrade. Some minds run everything as root: one ideology, no sandbox.
2026-07-04 — How Much Stupider The dumber you are, the smarter the model you need to compensate. Eventually everyone is dumber than the models. The question is how much.
2026-06-25 — What Else Are You Gonna Do 'I make a lot.' 'Numbers go up.' 'What else are you gonna do?' What a person says while selling his life by the day until 65.
2026-06-25 — Virtue of the Weak The weak turn weakness into a halo: powerless so pure, poor so good. But restraint you didn't choose isn't virtue. It's a vacancy, decorated.
2026-06-08 — Self-Prompt Most people aren't lazy. They're un-prompted: no intent of their own, only instincts and other people's instructions. Agency is a muscle.
2026-06-04 — Infinite Pause You hated your job and planned your escape. Then the restaurant, the order, the next thing mattered more, until the pause became a life.
2026-06-01 — Midwit Firmware Most people don't run autonomously. Without external firmware like religion, school, work or government, the system crashes.
2026-05-26 — Two Weeks a Year If your job grants two weeks of vacation a year, you're alive for two weeks a year. Eighty years times two weeks is the actual math.
2026-05-17 — Speedrun Low agency speedruns life. The less of the day belongs to you, the faster the calendar burns, until the years compress into a blur.
2026-04-10 — Default Template Civilization is designed by midwits, for midwits. If you fit the default template, the world carries you. If you don't, you pay a tax.
2026-02-22 — Zero-Dollar Layer The true sign of intelligence isn't syntax, credentials or interviews. It's getting what you want, and AI just made the bottom layer free.
2025-10-31 — Midwit Denial Most white-collar workers are in structural denial about AI, because their identity, status and income all depend on not seeing it coming.
2025-10-07 — Spotting Mental Retardation Intelligence is compressing reality into a sharp model that predicts the future. A low-resolution mind keeps getting surprised by the obvious.
2025-08-30 — Amazon Linux Someone hid a bird in the Amazon Linux login banner. Not a logo or a policy: a small escape glyph smuggled into /etc/motd.
2025-08-20 — AI's Near-Future Impact For a century the sharpest 10% slipped the leash of school, corporate catechism and propaganda. AI changes who gets out, and how fast.

Other topics: AI and Jobs · Corporate Life · Money and Ownership · School and Conditioning · Power and Control

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