Strand · OBS
The Human Layer
9 essays, May 2026 to August 2026. They test Difficulty Is Load-Bearing (2), Bottleneck Migration (2) and Goodhart Corollary (1). 31 claims across 2 of them are checked against a primary source in the public ledger.
Every essay in this strand
- Confidently Wrong The effort you're handing to AI was doing two hidden jobs. Skip them and you get faster, weaker, and blind to your own mistakes. 11 sourced claims
- You Cannot Try to Fall Asleep Sleep is only where you notice it first. Much of what matters works the same way. 20 sourced claims
- The Difficulty You're Escaping Was Making You AI can lift the effort out of almost anything you find hard. Some of that effort was the thing turning you into someone.
- The Safe Parts of Your Job Are the First to Go The parts of your job with a method feel the safest. A method is the first thing a machine learns.
- You Only Hold Four Thoughts Working memory tops out around four things at once. Every leap in human intelligence has come from storing the rest outside your head, and the most advanced AI systems get their gains the same way.
- Access Is Not Agency Access Is Not Agency
- AI Made You Faster. It Did Not Make You Safer. The strange thing about the AI productivity boom is that the people getting faster are not always getting more secure. Speed is becoming the surface. Proof is moving somewhere else.
- Taste Is What You Delete Generation got cheap. The scarce skill is knowing what to cut.
- The Displacement Rate Audit A five-minute scoring tool for any product, position, architecture, business model, or career bet. Find out what still works after the environment changes.