AI can expand what we do without developing who we are.

Effort once built capability, but now, convenience bypasses that process.

As AI grows more capable, our human role in our own development deserves a harder look.

Every generation has had its version of this argument. The Greeks worried that the written word would weaken memory and produce the illusion of knowledge rather than knowledge itself. Calculators would hollow out mathematical intuition. Google would end the need to remember anything. We were mostly wrong each time, and the technologies mostly served us well.

But there's something different about this moment. AI doesn't just retrieve or calculate, it reasons and synthesizes. It operates in the cognitive space where we used to have to show up ourselves. And unlike the calculator, which still required you to understand what you were calculating, AI can produce a finished answer from a half-formed thought.

When Effort was the Point

I'll argue that capability and struggle were inexorably........

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