Folks! This is a quip from a novelist! Take it with a grain of salt. It has to be punchy, not accurate.

I don't know about number 3. As a 53 year old Gen X'er, I still haven't come across things that see against the natural order. The main things I don't understand are things like the Humane AI pin, which didn't seem against the natural order, I just didn't see the appeal or usefulness of it. Maybe it just doesn't seem like there is much new being invented.

Feel the third so much with LLM's. But I get the sense younger generations aren't a fan of where it's moving the world either.

This feels apt in more than just science/technology. It matches my experience with culture as well, e.g. music and movies.

I feel this more and more as I age. Especially after having children.

I used to be a "tech guy" (like most people here probably) and was excited about new technology. Now my main feeling when something disruptive (like AI currently) comes up is: "why the hell do people need to rock the boat".

The thing is, I'm perfectly happy living my life as I have been living so far, concentrating on doing stuff with my children and having fun. When the world changes, stuff I need to worry about it: is this going to affect my job in the future? What is the long term effect of exposing my children to this? Is the stuff I teach my children going to be relevant in the future after this disruption has happened?

I don't want to be forced to learn new stuff. I mean, I can learn new stuff occasionally for fun, but it's not fun if my life and salary depends on it. Fuck the tech bros trying to change everything up.

I disagree with

> 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

> 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

> 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

My experience is rather that early in your life you get "imprinted" with specific values, and then you judge technology by how it fits these values:

For example, I was "imprinted" against surveillance since I was born in West Germany, and people were telling me what evil surveillance stuff the Stasi does in "the other Germany (GDR)". Also I deeply detested authorities (I was likely born this way), and thus got attracted to hacking.

Thus, for example:

I already heard about the internet early in my life (from magazines) - say, when I was 8 years old - but I actually saw how people organized stuff "offline" against what I would consider "how the world naturally works" (believe it or not).

Smartphones were invented when I was between 15 and 35, but I immediately saw them as surveillance bugs. The same holds for the advent of social networks.

On the other hand, 3D printing got mainstreamed later than when I was 35, but I immediately got in love with it, and couldn't wait the day until 3D printing got more reliable and I earned enough money to get a 3D printer, since 3D printers fit my values very well.

So, in my experience it is typically not about the year when something was invented, but rather about whether the invention is a good or bad fit for the values that you were shaped with in your early life.

I'm not sure this is true?

3. is more like this: You've been through 2. so many times now that it is hard to get excited about new things anymore.

Enough time has passed that some of the things you've been excited for have failed or had negative consequences. You'll stick to the things that worked in 2. and are skeptical of things that have yet to prove themselves.

In your 3., things from 2. are accepted unconditionally despite failures, making 3. inherently irrational.

Or to be clichéd and quote 2Pac:

> You don't see no loud mouth thirty-year old motherfuckers

As for 3, I think by the time you're in that age bracket, you've seen enough to not be fooled as much by the marketing so that a sale from a brochure alone is much less likely. Take the crypto fad as an example. To me, it was obvious that the "good" use would be limited and by far exceeded by the "bad" use. Current AI hype train is leading me in the same direction as nothing has quite lived up to what's printed on the tin. It just has that same icky pump&dump feel. At least AI has a some products that have a wider range of use than crypto

It’s pretty damn accurate in my case.