Cambodian Fertilizer

There is a story regarding the French arrival in Cambodia. It goes that the French first came and introduced commercial fertilizer to the farmers in the rural country. They demonstrated that with this technology it was possible to grow twice as many crops. A year later, when they returned the French expected to find a community that was producing double the crops, most likely so they could begin the process of colonial exploitation under the guise of trade. But instead they found the same amount of crops as the year before. The French asked the farmers why they didn't use the fertilizer. The farmers stated that they did, and emphasized how nice it was to be able to grow the same amount of crops (enough to sustain the local population comfortably) with only needing to do HALF the work. That is the difference here. It is not "human nature", it is the result of a cult of consumerism.

I found the text of that letter I originally wrote in January 2020 or December 2019 on a plane.

This is not going to be a good letter.

This is not going to be a good letter because the best letters are all about you, the reader.

Some letters achieve this by asking an endless stream of questions. "What's been going on in your life, how do you like your job, do you eat ass?" Standard Tinder stuff [1].

This is difficult for two reasons. First, it fills the page with questions, none of which can be answered immediately. The author begins to monologue and exhausts both themselves and the recipient as they scribble out sentences they barely care about just to make content [2].

To make things worse, the reader now has homework! They have to answer this barrage of questions AND precede each with "You asked whether I prefer waffles or French Toast. The truth is..." What a hassle. [3]

Many bad letters are entirely about the writer. Which is a shame because no one is as interesting[4] as they think they are.

Better letters — which again, I remind you, this is not — manage to make the letter about the reader without the use of pointed questions. They combine speculation with known facts and make something personalized and about the reader [5].

"I thought of you the other day. A man at the train station was humming that song you used to sing whenever we would bake together. Whenever I hear that song, I think of you, and not only you, but of---" [6]. They create or evoke intimacy and shared experience in a manner that is engaging.

This letter? No, this letter is about me.

Or rather, it's about my career and the problems its causing to society.[7]

Three problems plague us today:

1. Absorption.

We can't tell real from fake and don't care to. Evident in porn addictions, the declining interest in sex, the fact that when you close your eyes and think of a Western Duel or Intuits fishing or an old man feeding pigeons or a baby learning to walk, a basketball game... you don't think of your own memories. I'd bet at least half of those you thought of movies. Can you easily tell which of those are your imagination and which are from media you've consumed? Each of us has seen at least one of these things happen. But our own memory isn't what we're turning to. At the risk of this sounding like a manifesto, I will belabor this point no further. (Note: I got this idea from a Chuck Klosterman book, and he lifted it from some other book. Once, I knew the name of that book, now I neither know it nor have been able to find it.)

2. AI.

No, I'm not talking about SkyNet. I'm talking about how right now you can go and download an app[8] that — after hearing you speak for 15 seconds will perfectly emulate your voice. Add video, and it will sync your mouth to the sounds as well. Almost indistinguishable from the real thing. You can download[9] a different app[10] that will take a photo of a woman [11] and it will strip away her clothes and present (its version of) her naked body. Another app in VR will do the same thing in real time[12]. This is the future. This is the present. This is software.

3. Productivity.

Funny thing about productivity. The more of it we have, the more the goal moves. You ever hear the one about the Mexican fisher? He goes out every day, catches 5 fish in an hour, comes home, makes lunch, and reads and sleeps the rest of the day. An American businessman sees this and says woah! If you can catch 5 fish an hour, you can work 10 hour days, sell 45 fish, use that money to buy more boats. Soon you can employ 10 people, then 100.. you'll have a whole fleet of boats and workers. "To what end?" Asks the Mexican man. "Well you work hard for 40 years at this, then you get to retire!" "Then what?" "Well that's the best part -- then you can spend your days sleeping and reading!"

When we learn how to go from making 10 widgets a day to 10 widgets an hour, we don't work 1-hour days. We're now expected to make as many widgets each day as we were making in a week. Every improvement to productivity just moves the goal posts further up. Every piece of technology that makes your life easier just makes the expectation that much harder. College is the same way — once only the elite went. Now everyone goes. It's easier now. More expensive. But the easier it gets, the worse you look for not having gone. People used to not finish high school. It goes on and on. I suspect happiness works in a similar way[13], but this letter is long[14] enough.

Closing

I hope all is well. I'd ask about your life, but I'm afraid after my first paragraph it would come across as insincere. I trust in your response (provided you write one) you'll include the exciting things in your life.

Alex

[1] It's possible I had a somewhat... less that standard Tinder experience. I don't discuss it.
[2] Insert your own Buzzfeed joke.
[3] I didn't spell it out, but this forgetfulness is the second reason.
[4] Or as smart, as attractive, rational, immune-to-advertising....
[5] Every Millennial's dream. We (broadly speaking) are narcissistic and data-driven. We love tiny dashboards about ourselves that we can consume and immediately forget. This explains the success of both Fitbit and Spotify Year in Review.
[6] this is not, and will not be, that letter.
[7] See [5] re: narcissism.
[8] Deepfake
[9] Not easily, anymore. Thankfully.
[10] Which I will not name here.
[11] Because of course it only works on women.
[12] Unlike the voice app, this doesn't strive to be indistinguishable from reality, only realistic enough. I cannot comment on the efficacy.
[13] See Robert Sapolsky's essay, Will we still be sad fifty years from now? "...We will continue to come up with inventions that save us time, and then, as usual, we will readjust upward our expectation of how much there is to get done. We will fashion more material luxuries, but then we will recalibrate our baseline sense of entitlement..."
[14] And pretentious

See Also

The so-called AI Revolution
Productivity
The Price of College Education