Thinking about phenomenology - studying your own subjective experience of the world - and how it might relate to a world of super-capable AI. Meditation can be a way of doing it.

One sign it may be interesting is it's something it doesn't really make sense to have AI do. They could synthesize from human accounts - but it feels clear to me that's missing the point. It's not about understanding your own subjectivity to achieve something in the world, it's more of a 'for the sake of it' thing. Making art is also often a 'for the sake of it' thing, but it also produces something, and so those goals can get confused since AI can produce art-shaped things too. But there's nothing produced with phenomenology - arguably writing - but even the writing is I think acknowledged as a hopeful guide or account - the real success of it can only be judged internally within the person.

I remember the philosophy from college but the last time I saw it really brought up was the Robert Irwin book - where he takes time out to really study the literature. His art being site-specific seems connected and also another thing that seems orthogonal (or close to it) from what AI does. Again focused not on condensing something down into a success criteria that can be achieved - but taking the time to observe a specific site and then make a specific intervention directed at other people's subjective experiences.

I'm collecting things that feel related to me - ritual, coziness. Partly the thought experiment is if AI becomes super capable of doing a bunch of work, what lies outside of work. Human relationships of course too.