I took part in an Epsilon Theory Office Hours last Friday.* Adam Butler and his piece “The Strip-Mining of Trust” were on the discussion block, and Ben Hunt had asked Adam, Dave Nadig, Brent Donnelly, and myself to specifically come weigh in.

The underlying feeling of the conversation, which Dave has since written about, Brent has been a regular voice of reason on, and Ben has since tweeted about, is:

Nobody reads anybody’s writing anymore and is there even a reason to?

Adam broke down the layers of trust and decisions being automated and automatically eroded at all levels of society right now. I wish it was science fiction. I halfway wish, but am also partway happy, that my wife and I re-watched Battlestar Galactica last year as a “what’s it mean to be human, really” reminder.

As a writer of many, many words, I’ve been feeling this for a while. I’ve never really gone in on chasing subscriber growth or reaching a massive audience via writing. I kind of assumed, in my post-blogger acceptance of starting to write online around 8 years ago, that I missed the ship, and it was only and always mostly going to be for myself.

If people found it and liked it - cool, but this was my attempt to have a complete thought once per day.

That’s all I needed.

The mission says nothing about what a reader needs. Maybe that’s selfish. Maybe, if Dave and Ben (and Adam and Brent) don’t ready much of anything anymore, anyway, it doesn’t even matter.

But what we all agreed did matter was that we all love the act. We love the art. We love the craft of writing, and editing, and putting the thoughts together.

And by love what I mean is throw-this-god-forsaken-heap-of-magnets-and-LEDs-through-the-wall-in-a-fit-of-rage, but FOR FUN is what it is to literally write. Nobody likes writing so much as they appreciate the feeling of having had written. I don’t want to draw too many metaphors, I just want to say it’s a challenge this group of sickos all uniquely admits to appreciating.

For me, it’s the hardest thing I know how to do, and I don’t even know if I know how to do it, so much as I appreciate the challenge of sitting down to excavate my thoughts and see if I can make one single loop close.

Some people learn how to separate atoms. I write bad jokes to myself and figure out if I can feel an ounce smarter than when I started. Fission versus fusion pizazz. My tippy tap typing is so insignificant at the humanity level it’s laughable. But, personally, it matters, so so much to just do, that I can’t quit this, not now and not ever.

The consensus takeaway from our chat was that we all want to read stuff from people we trust that they’ve organized or presented well in a way that’s authentic to them. There were varying degrees of how much AI any of us would or wouldn’t accept, but they boil down to AI is OK if you tell me if I should spend time really reading this or just have my AI summarize your AI to me?

I brought up the values statement I wrote down last year (say it in your best Urkel voice, re: jokes to self again), “Did AI do that?” For my own act of writing I am using AI to help edit, summarize, and ideate/research, but I treat it like a smart friend with little to no sense of taste.

It’s a little harsh. But, it’s kind of true, right? The technology itself can’t tell me if something is cool, it can only tell me if somebody else, somewhere online has thought something was cool, and - maybe it’s just middle school bus stop trauma all the way down, but I’ve been living and nearly dying on figuring out what’s cool or not for my entire life so far and I’m not about to 100% outsource it now or ever.

I like tools. AI is a tool. If somebody wants to fully create with it, that’s fine.

I’m with Dave in these cases. I would appreciate knowing up front (but honestly, I can usually tell pretty quickly), if you tell me then I can just have my AI read it and summarize it.

I’m also with something Brent said in the session. I still get so much enjoyment out of reading that I’m not about to give that up. I have a high filter for what I will sit and consume, and the best filter I’ve ever found is friends. Undefeated!

Which is exactly where I want to land with all of this:

Friends make the best filters.

AI is an amazing tool. It will continue to change and evolve our world in ways we probably can’t even imagine.

But your friends know what’s up, and the best thing you can do is let them know what’s up too, with minimal inorganic influence.

*these are really cool, subscriber only events that - if you ever wanted to have a college seminar style experience, where you and 100+ smart people get a chance to listen, chat, and ask questions of other smart people, check it out.