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But what exactly was I scared of?

I was roped in, with no possibility of falling to my death. Unless, of course, the gear failed. Or, more likely, I failed to use the gear properly.

I think what I was most scared of was not being able to do it. The Exum is a route people rarely descend. Even in bad weather, once you are on it, the safest way off the mountain is up.

But the weather risk wasn’t the thing scaring me. If conditions turned, we’d still all be in it together. My real fear was the limit of my own ability. Could I do it? And if I couldn’t, how the heck would I get off that mountain? Would I be the weak link on the team?

I shared a rope with one of my oldest friends, Bill, and his son, Theo. Theo is 20 and I’ve known him essentially his entire life. Bill and I have adventured together many times and seen each other through life’s highs and lows. He not only knows me, but knows what I can and can’t do, perhaps better than I do myself.

Bill guided professionally for many years on big mountains. He has that lighthearted spirit that makes sharing time in the mountains wonderful. Always the right joke at the right time. But his jovial nature is paired with a deep commitment to caring for others. I watched him closely as he prepared for the climb, pouring over the guidebook and selecting his gear.

I saw a man who takes his responsibilities seriously, but never takes himself too seriously. It was a beautiful thing to witness and a virtue I hold high.

Prior to the climb, Bill insisted I would be fine. But how did he know? How could I trust him?

Until Sunday, I’d never thought there was another sport quite like rowing.

Rowing offers a beautiful tension between the individual and the team. You have to be in complete sync with your teammates, but you are solely responsible for your own oar. Ball sports are different. The pressure is on when you have the ball, and you certainly have responsibilities when you don’t.

But sometimes you can hide.

Dangling on that rope Sunday, with nowhere to hide, it occurred to me that rowing and climbing are quite similar. You’re in it together, but you gotta do the actual thing yourself.

I love that tension, and holding it is what makes the experience so rich. We move in partnership, but that partnership collapses without individual action. Trust makes the whole thing go.

And I guess that’s how I managed the fear and got up the route—I trusted Bill. And Bill and Theo trusted me. More than I trusted myself. And those two forces coalesced into an emergent belief that I could do it.

Hours later, after all the exposure and technical bits were behind us, Bill asked what my favorite part of the day was.

The best answer I could muster was, “All of it! Just sharing a big experience with you and Theo.”

To be clear, I don’t think Tony was a fan of these mascots. His beef was that the APA got out over its skis by asserting that the use of American Indian mascots perpetuated negative stereotypes. To his knowledge, no empirical study had demonstrated this. He was correct.

A worthy cause presented, I set out to conduct this absent “empirical study.” What ensued was a nine year journey, full of fits and starts, eventually leading to a publication grippingly titled “Activating Stereotypes with Brand Imagery: the Role of Viewer Political Identity.”

In this paper we demonstrated that exposure to these mascots had observable, negative effects across the general population, under certain conditions. That might seem like an obvious conclusion, and in many ways it is, but supporting that view with proof was not so easy. Publishing an academic paper that very few people read created the opportunity to write op-eds that reached millions, to play a small part in an important social change, and to use my position as an academic to do something meaningful.

I’ve been writing these weekly essays all summer. In them I try to present an idea that inspires you to think. These pieces are essentially hot takes and they are generally fun to write. They don’t take nine years.

I’m grinding on another paper this week…one that asserts that marketing played a role in some of the largest catastrophes in modern society: the opioid epidemic, the Financial Crisis, ultra-processed foods, social media, and fossil fuels. Another obvious premise that’s proving quite difficult to formally substantiate and get through the gauntlet of peer review.

My co-authors and I are on the cusp, but it’s a long game. Far too long.

That’s why I’m cutting this essay short so I can work on an academic paper few will read but that might just change the world in some small way.

Slavery is abominable and not a uniquely American institution. How universal it’s been in human history is up for debate, but its legacy spans cultures and continents. That makes the coming storm all the more disturbing.

And what is that storm? AI consciousness.

Defining consciousness is a big question that I’m unqualified to weigh in on. The best answer is something of a philosophical thought exercise. And it seems that anyone nearing a physical account of consciousness eventually runs into the “hard problem.”

These rather fancy debates are interesting, but they serve as a distraction. We’re about to speed right past them on the road to AI consciousness. Some high profile voices claim we already have.

Whatever you believe about the definition of consciousness and whether a human-made machine can ever achieve it doesn’t really matter. What matters is who gets to decide, what their incentives are, and what power they hold.

I’ve said on A New Angle a handful of times that it feels like we’re hurtling toward a future no one wants, save for about five billionaires. Those billionaires believe they can create AIs that are conscious and they are marshaling trillions of dollars to that end.

What does it mean in practice for AIs to be conscious? Can they suffer? Should they have rights? Should they be responsible for their actions? What sort of agency should they be granted?

It’s tempting to think that if things get too weird we can just unplug the machines. But what would unplugging a conscious AI mean? Wouldn’t that be tantamount to murder?

Maybe we don’t get a chance to contemplate the answer. If a conscious AI—one that’s nearly infinitely more intelligent than any human—gains agency, what hope do we have to control it?

These far fetched scenarios are coming fast and will collide with our dysfunctional gerontocracy. The US Supreme Court has all but granted personhood to corporations. Will AIs be next? You and no one you know likely wants that to happen, but I doubt you or anyone you know says things like:

• “It increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence” - Elon Musk

• “People talk about how much energy it takes to train an AI model – but it also takes a lot of energy to train a human” -Sam Altman

The preferences of these men dictate our future. They value the machines they are creating more than they value humans.

Back to the question of how do you feel about slavery?

At best, you’ll have to grapple with enslaving a conscious entity that can suffer. At worst, you’ll be the one suffering.

Along that journey the most challenging step was the transition from answering to asking questions. Answering questions well is what made me a good student. But asking questions is a different thing altogether. It requires the ability to recognize the unknown.

Asking questions is an act of agency. You get to decide what you think is interesting and figure out a way to investigate it. Asking questions, in many ways, is one of the highest expressions of freedom.

In our college we spend a lot of time thinking about how to prepare our students for the job market. This concern shapes our curriculum, informs investments we make in advising and career services, and drives a lot of our pitch to students and their families. Come here and get a useful degree that can land you a job and help you thrive in it.

That’s the general idea. Within it there are reasonable debates about how best to deliver on the promise. Some folks think we should focus on specific skills and capabilities, others (like me) argue we should focus on teaching students how to think, write, and speak. These viewpoints are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The tension between them is a feature of higher education, not a bug.

With technology ubiquitous in the workplace, students no doubt need some level of basic fluency in the tools of their trade. For a long time this meant understanding things like spreadsheets and databases. Then it meant knowing how to write some code. Now it means AI. But AI seems different in that you can’t ask Excel to think for you, but you can certainly use AI to avoid thinking.

Employers tell us that students need to use AI first and then humanize the output. This has some intuitive appeal—it’s likely reflective of the sort of work our graduates will be doing. But it also means bypassing the step where you go from nothing to something. That precious step requires novel thought and is often the most difficult. It’s akin to moving from answering to asking questions.

Teaching students to use AI first feels like helping them train their replacements. Specific jobs are always in flux (e.g., elevator operators and travel agents), but AI is currently displacing one critical genre—apprenticeships, as in junior copy-writer, fact-checker, production assistant, etc.

These are the sorts of jobs many of our graduates start out with. They get experience doing a thing, often poorly, in order to learn, improve, and move up the ranks. You need to be bad at something before you can be good at it. The trouble is, AI is eliminating the need to pay a human to struggle and learn. Claude can be just as bad at the job for a lot less.

This battle might already be lost, but teaching our students to bypass thinking and skip practice is the educational equivalent to an e-bike. It might get you somewhere, but it won’t make you stronger. At some point, the battery dies and the only engine you have is you.

We’ve stumbled into a dangerous race to the bottom—participating in our own obsolescence. We’ve surrendered our freedom to technology and hidden behind the job market for cover. But why trust the job market when all it really wants is profit margin? This is not a new argument; it’s been a critique of professional education for decades. I used to dismiss the critique, but now I find it much more convincing.

My introductory business class has gradually morphed into a class on how to achieve the Good Life. Yes, I do teach some spreadsheet stuff and other technical bits, but I all but forbid AI. Not because I don’t think it’s useful or relevant, but because my students need to first develop the muscles of individual thought, along with its beauty, blemishes, and happy accidents. Without such practice they won’t know themselves, what they want, or what they’re capable of.

It’s not that we’ll be replaced by robots, it’s that we will become the robots.

People at the aid station were understandably confused, and my own comfort with the decision confused them further.

“What? You’re just quitting?”

The norm is to tear yourself in two for a finish. I’ve done that many times and the consequence of that stubbornness still lingers.

People regularly ask me what I’m training for. When I tell them I no longer race, they almost always ask, “Not just for fun?” I bristle at the question. I’m starting to understand why, but I’ll save that for a future essay.

For now, I’m just happy to say I love running.

I love getting up in the morning and getting myself prepared. Some coffee, some food, and hopefully some evacuation. Things always go better when that happens before the run starts. I love tying my shoes, a double overhand and a double loop. Always. Nothing special here, just ritual, often with eyes closed and a deep breath. I love Rory’s excitement and the little dance she does at the top of the stairs. Sometimes Betty (Darcy’s dog) joins, and her dance is even better.

I love a climb and the possibility that maybe today I’ll be able to run every step to the top. I love running along the river and thinking about returning to all the swimming holes I go by. Over the years, I’ve maybe returned to two or three, but fully committed to all of them.

I love ramping up the pace as home approaches or just walking it in if that feels right. I love sharing all this with friends. I love that I’ve been able to run with the likes of Ryan Hall and Scott Jurek and so many other heroes, but also to run with people trying it for the first time.

For a long time I had a pretty good sense of what each run would bring. I trained specifically, with structure and discipline, and prided myself on consistency. I relied on this sensation and often oriented my days and weeks around it. Now that’s gone. I’m old and inconsistent and each day brings what it brings. In fairness, that’s not completely true. I’ve got some experience with this body and have learned to listen to it (well…I’ve learned to listen better).

I’ve grown to love the uncertainty. How will I feel today? I can generally tell within the first 10 seconds, but some runs surprise me. I sure do miss the sharpness that comes with peaking for a race. Riding the razor, as Rob calls it. But that sharpness can cut you down at any moment with injury or illness. The peak of your powers is a precarious summit.

It took years of unwinding and reorienting my body to fill in some of these deep grooves—the persistent pain in my hips and knees, bone density loss. I now love being pain free. Not that I am all the time, but far more often than when I was racing.

I’m about to reenter the racing world this weekend at the Crazy 100. I’ll be pacing a friend, which is as close to competition as I want to be. I’ll be twitchy at the start and finish lines and probably at the aid stations too. That scene is now uncomfortable. But once I leave the Halfmoon campground with a dear old friend and embark on a wild adventure into the big mountains, I’ll feel that love.

Running. One step at a time.

In fairness, lobster is a particular dining experience so opting out could represent something more than just a taste preference. On the other hand, enduring an expensive ritual just to prove your New England bone fides is pretty silly. Who cares? It’s food and we all have different preferences. These preferences say nothing about our character (well…not exactly). Yet no one is ever curious about why I don’t like lobster…they’re more interested in what they think my dislike of lobster says about me. That’s their brand of winning.

Why do we, and families in particular, care so much about this sort of stuff?

An adjacent bit of weirdness is that my dad doesn’t actually like lobster either, though he won’t admit it. What he LOVES are the steamers (steamed clams) we always have to accompany lobster. This is sort of like enduring an entree just to get the side dish. In the nearly 52 years with this odd crew, we’ve never figured out how to manage just cooking steamers.

And don’t get me started on cheese with pie…

Bon weekend!

That’s a good analogy for the NBA super max contract. A player’s peak value would seem to come the instant before he signs it. Once signed, that player has about 127 hours to deliver a return. And that return must be championships and proximity to perfection in all ways.

Jaylen Brown found that out. Good enough to earn the contract, not good enough for the Celtics to want it.

The NBA presents a useful form of regulated capitalism that’s delivering competitive parity. It’s difficult to afford superstars and depth is expensive. Winning requires both, but you can’t have both. Unless both happen to be young, which makes for exceedingly narrow windows of opportunity.

If you push for both stars and depth, you pay a price. The second apron rule imposes a tax on teams that spend too much and it’s essentially become a hard salary cap.

Our US-version of capitalism could use something like this.

Amazon convinced the markets that revenue is more valuable than profit, allowing tech firms to make massive investments and hoard talent with stock option handcuffs. You don’t have to win, until you get so big that winning begets winning. What we end up with, for example, are Meta and Google owning about 52 cents of every advertising dollar spent, representing a giant tax on any firm who wants to advertise online.

In basketball terms, it’s like signing a full roster of superstars to super max contracts and losing year after year under the promise of future winning. Sustain this long enough, and everyone else either quits or gets bought (most often by you!). The second apron forces tradeoffs.

Public policy equivalents aren’t obvious—no single thing offers a silver bullet. The second apron we need, unfortunately, involves two mechanisms difficult to envision: a political system that incentivizes compromise and a regulatory state less vulnerable to capture.

Winning has always been difficult. It should be. But what should be more difficult is continuing to win.

I’m all for meritocracy, except for the kind that allows those who climb the ladder to pull it up behind them.

“More perfect” drives the first sentence of the preamble to our Constitution. It is the best brand positioning ever created. Two words, each amplified the other. Perfect allows for the belief that we are unique. And we are in myriad ways, both good and bad. More allows for the notion we can be better. That America is a promise not yet fulfilled. How can something perfect be improved upon? It makes no logical sense, yet we know what it means.

The phrase is effortless, yet the promise is relentless. “A republic, if you can keep it.”