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Four ways learning Econ makes people dumber re: future AI — LessWrong

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There’s a funny thing where economics education paradoxically makes people DUMBER at thinking about future AI. Econ textbooks teach concepts & frames that are great for most things, but counterproductive for thinking about AGI. Here are 4 examples. Longpost: THE FIRST PIECE of Econ anti-pedagogy is hiding in the words “labor” & “capital”. These words conflate a superficial difference (flesh-and-blood human vs not) with a bundle of unspoken assumptions and intuitions, which will all get broken by Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). By “AGI” I mean here “a bundle of chips, algorithms, electricity, and/or teleoperated robots that can autonomously do the kinds of stuff that ambitious human adults can do—founding and running new companies, R&D, learning new skills, using arbitrary teleoperated robots after very little practice, etc.” Yes I know, this does not exist yet! (Despite hype to the contrary.) Try asking an LLM to autonomously write a business plan, found a company, then run and

x Four ways learning Econ makes people dumber re: future AI — LessWrong Economic Consequences of AGI Economics AI Curated 2025 Top Fifty: 15 % 365 Four ways learning Econ makes people dumber re: future AI by Steven Byrnes 21st Aug 2025 AI Alignment Forum Linkpost for x.com 7 min read 52 365 Ω 118 ( Cross-posted from X , intended for a general audience. ) There’s a funny thing where economics education paradoxically makes people DUMBER at thinking about future AI. Econ textbooks teach concepts & frames that are great for most things, but counterproductive for thinking about AGI. Here are 4 exam

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