Editing Blog/2025-10-11/There Is A Tide In The Affairs Of Men (section)

=== Paradigm Shifts are Boring Progress ===

I'm sure people will consider this AI scepticism, but I think otherwise. An oft repeated aphorism is that success comes from consistent repeated effort, from Aristotle's "moral virtue comes about as a result of habit"<ref name=totle/> to every other LinkedIn blogpost about how some businessman's success comes entirely from his habit of "showing up every day". The latter category of example often describes how "all you have to do" is show up every day or something of the sort, but perhaps at a civilizational level that is actually exceptional. Civilizations have grown and fallen (like Rome), or been domesticated by a successor (as Britain has been by America), but none have truly endured continuous success. And perhaps the reason for this is that "showing up every day" doesn't actually look like the plodding approach the LinkedIn posts take them to be. At a civilization level, showing up every day may actually look like the constant search for the thing that will provide the extra 30 basis points of growth: the semiconductor, the Internet, AI.