We're Investing in a Future That Won't Exist with Indy Johar | TGS 238
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(Conversation recorded on September 23rd, 2026)Traditional financial management tells us that, if we invest right, we’ll be able to retire and sink into a fu...

cross-posted from: https://dboft.com/post/14389/nate-hagens-and-indy-johar

In this conversation with Nate Hagens, Indy Johar argues that money is a claim on a future that’s being withdrawn. Climate, food, AI and conflict are now feeding each other in ways no market prices. His message to wealth holders isn’t “be kind” but “be smart” put some of your capital toward financing stability itself, the way you’d buy fire insurance. He also asks what it means to be human once machines can work and think, and points, tentatively, toward consciousness, our ability to know what we don’t know, and courage. Watch it to see the whole system at once, and to swap passive hope for …agency.

Anyone watch/listen yet?

  • kalman@dboft.comOP
    2·
    2 days ago

    Ok, so here is my summary of this… Everything you own is really a promise about the future. Those promises only hold if two things stay steady: the climate and the economy. AI is pulling at the economy by replacing workers. The heat already in the atmosphere is pulling at the climate. So the ground every investment was built on is moving, and the old ways of finding an edge are already dead, most just haven’t noticed yet.

    People are selfish, and Indy isn’t asking them to change. He’s saying the smart selfish move is to put a slice of your money into the stuff that keeps the ground still, like cooling cities, stabilizing the Arctic, and keeping land from burning. Think of it as fire insurance for everything else you own. The catch is everyone wants someone else to pay for it…and the people with the most money might just buy a bunker instead. His answer is that no bunker works in a world where everything is connected.

    • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      bunker is not going to work for anything that is not realtively a temporary state. If the thing that drove you in is long term its a prison or a tomb.

    • kalman@dboft.comOP
      2·
      3 days ago

      (repeat as I mistakenly posted from my testing account) Anyone catch where Indy mentioned something about … capital flowing into AI is justified by replacing labor, but that’s the cover story…The real search is for something deeper. Do you agree? And with replacing labor: This will cause so much pain and suffering… how do we justify doing that? Its like a deal with the devil?

      • Dogyote@slrpnk.net
        2·
        2 days ago

        That’s a fun prompt, thanks.

        I think I agree to some extent, but I think there are two parties involved: investors, and AI researchers/tech CEOs. Investors want to replace labor, or at the very least, want to own the thing that does the replacing. Nothing could be more profitable in the short term (but hugely detrimental to them in the long term). The AI researchers/tech CEOs are the dreamers who are trying to create a god and then somehow harness its abilities, or hold a mirror up to god iirc Indy’s metaphor. They’ll use whatever money they’re handed in pursuit of that goal.

        How do we justify replacing labor? I for one don’t want to work in the way I’m being forced to, so I’m fine with the idea of not working. However, income/merit/benefits must be uncoupled from work first. Forgive the following civ reference, but we’re not far enough along the civics tree to handle this kind of technology. I think Indy is right that we’ll need to wait for crises before people want to change. That is a very annoying trait humanity appears to have.

        Is it like a deal with the devil? I don’t know, but isn’t this what we always wanted?