Tyler Cowen: The Case for Living Online - by Tyler Cowen

How much should we be online? Is it crazy to spend the majority of your day in chat groups, answering emails, and scrolling X? Is posing 20 to 30 queries a day to the AIs consistent with having meaningful respect for actual flesh-and-blood human beings? I say yes. Perhaps you balk at that answer. Perhaps you think that’s akin to admitting a heroin addiction. So I ask you to challenge yourself: Don’t think about how you should spend your time. Think about how you already choose to. Be honest. I suspect most people aren’t like me—spending hours a day with ChatGPT, Claude, WhatsApp, and X. But, whether or not those are your particular fancies, the online life attracts a great number of people. Just walk through an airport, where most people have idle time, and watch how many of them are on their phones. You must either think this is (mostly) justifiable, or you have a very low opinion of current humanity. In that case, you must think them incapable of creating meaningful, autonomous lives

How much should we be online? Is it crazy to spend the majority of your day in chat groups, answering emails, and scrolling X? Is posing 20 to 30 queries a day to the AIs consistent with having meaningful respect for actual flesh-and-blood human beings? I say yes. Perhaps you balk at that answer. Perhaps you think that’s akin to admitting a heroin addiction. So I ask you to challenge yourself: Don’t think about how you should spend your time. Think about how you already choose to. Be honest. I suspect most people aren’t like me—spending hours a day with ChatGPT, Claude, WhatsApp, and X. But, w