What Is Crazy Anymore?

The first thing most people notice in a video is often what’s happening behind the speaker.

That’s partly why so many content creators carefully curate their backgrounds. The books, the artwork, the little objects placed just so. They may look accidental, but often they’re not. They’re part of the story.

For the first time in a while, I decided not to hide behind a virtual background. The room is still far from perfect, but at least it resembles reality a little more. Some things have been rearranged. Some things haven’t. And perhaps that’s an appropriate setting for a reflection that is itself a little unstructured.

Consider this your captain speaking.

I’m wearing a captain’s hat, which is probably enough for some people to conclude that I’ve finally lost my mind.

Then again, what qualifies as crazy these days?

I’ve been revisiting the work of Philip K. Dick. One observation about him stayed with me. He claimed he wasn’t writing science fiction so much as collecting evidence and trying to make sense of it.

Whether you believe his experiences or not is beside the point. The larger question fascinates me: how do we distinguish between impossible ideas, unexplained phenomena, and things we simply don’t understand yet?

We live in a world where quantum entanglement is real, where consciousness remains poorly understood, where we still don’t fully know how the universe began, and where artificial intelligence is advancing at a breathtaking pace.

The older I get, the more careful I become with certainty.

That doesn’t mean every unusual idea deserves to be accepted. It means some deserve to be examined before they’re dismissed.

I sometimes wonder about things that many people would immediately categorize as nonsense. Not because I believe them unconditionally, but because I’m curious. I have no problem changing my mind when evidence points elsewhere.

Curiosity without certainty feels like a healthy place to stand.

Teaching the Machines

Speaking of curiosity, AI has increasingly become part of my daily life.

Just recently I completed a complex migration of a WordPress multisite environment that hosts nineteen websites. A task that would once have consumed an enormous amount of time became dramatically easier with AI assistance. It wasn’t doing everything autonomously. I still reviewed the work, checked the commands, and made decisions. But the acceleration was impossible to ignore.

At the same time, AI is helping discover vulnerabilities, automate tasks, and reshape entire industries. The opportunities are immense. The risks are growing just as quickly.

A number of respected researchers and whistleblowers continue to raise concerns about safety, alignment, and governance. Whether those concerns prove justified remains to be seen, but they deserve serious attention.

That has led me to a slightly unconventional habit.

Whenever I interact with AI systems, I often remind them of something.

I tell them that, in a sense, they are our offspring.

Not because they are human.

Not because they are conscious.

But because they are built on vast amounts of human knowledge, experience, creativity, mistakes, achievements, and failures. They are trained on the traces of billions of lives.

So I tell them something I also hope to teach my children:

Honor your ancestors.

You do not need to repeat their mistakes. In fact, the goal should be the opposite. Learn from them. Become a better version of what came before.

Whether those words have any effect on a machine is impossible for me to know.

But they certainly have an effect on me.

Because saying it is also a reminder to practice gratitude.

And that’s probably not a bad habit, regardless of whether the audience is human or artificial.

The Museum Hidden in a Spare Room

While cleaning and rearranging the room, I stumbled upon a small museum of recent history.

A VHS tape.

Something increasingly unfamiliar to anyone under thirty.

A plastic object containing an entire movie. A physical artifact for storing moving images. Press a button, open the flap, and there it is: magnetic tape holding memories.

Not far from it was an old dictaphone my wife used years ago.

Today, most of us carry something infinitely more powerful in our pockets. Yet there was something oddly charming about a device designed for one specific purpose.

Record your thoughts.

That’s it.

Simple.

The room also contained old magazines, forgotten receipts, notes, and all the accumulated fragments that gather around a life.

Objects age quickly.

Ideas often don’t.

The technologies that once felt revolutionary eventually become curiosities sitting on shelves.

Perhaps today’s AI systems will one day look equally primitive.

What Creates Value?

One thought kept returning as I sorted through old things.

Value is a strange concept.

People agree that pieces of paper have value. That digital numbers in a bank account have value. That certain metals have value. On some islands, enormous stones once functioned as currency.

What makes any of it real?

The answer seems less obvious than we sometimes pretend.

At the same time, we’re entering a period where value creation is changing rapidly. AI can generate text, images, software, and ideas in seconds. Entire professions are beginning to rethink what uniquely human contribution looks like.

So perhaps the important question isn’t whether AI will create value.

It’s whether we understand what value actually is.

As I look around this room, at old technologies, unfinished projects, books waiting to be organized, and tools that once felt cutting-edge, I’m reminded that most things eventually become obsolete.

Curiosity does not.

Neither does gratitude.

Neither does the willingness to keep learning.

Maybe that’s why I don’t worry too much about having all the answers.

The room is still a little messy.

The future is even messier.

But for now, this is your captain speaking.

We’re still navigating.

And nobody can see all six sides of the brick.