overshoot - 3 Quarks Daily

by Mike Bendzela

This is what happens when you revere the fancies of Iron Age sheep:

This is what happens when you christen a parcel of dust Holy Land:

This is what happens when you refuse to give up worship for Lent:

This is what happens when you litter North, South, East, West with prayers:

This is what happens when you ignore 3.8 billion years of organic evolution:

This is what happens when you fail to dismember the Great Chain of Being:

This is what happens when you think the word “ape” is an insult:

This is what happens when you no longer pine for a tail:

This is what happens when you try to burn your way to prosperity:

This is what happens when you can’t stop inhaling the exhaust fumes:

This is what happens when you become addicted to hypersonic speed:

This is what happens when you replace eyes with satellites, flesh with plastics, legs with wheels:

This is what happens when you deify the neoplasm:

This is what happens when you parse survival into fractions of billions:

This is what happens when your cornucopia takes root in the earth’s crust:

This is what happens when leverage, interest, derivatives become shibboleths: Read more »

by Jochen Szangolies

Illustration for W. W. Jacobs’ short story The Monkeys Paw, by Maurice Greiffenhagen. Image Credit: Public domain.

It was while watching the unveiling video of 1X Technologies’ home robot assistant Neo that I was hit with a revelation of a fundamental truth of our current moment in time: the world is a lot as if my ten year old sci-fi nerd self had had many of his wishes fulfilled, but by a cursed monkey’s paw. You want robots? You got it, but they’re creepy, kind of useless, probably spying on you and nevertheless will displace human workers from their jobs. You want AI? You got it, but it frequently makes stuff up, traps people in parasocial relationships while isolating them from the real world, floods the social sphere with misinformation and bad art, threatens the environment and funnels power to the people least fit to wield it.

A widespread narrative is that today, we have it better than at any previous time in human history: we live longer, are healthier and wealthier, better educated, have access to more and better nutrition, and are less likely to die from war or through homicide than ever. At the same time, however, we are faced with widespread ecosystem collapse, having just blown past the first catastrophic climate tipping point leading to near-certain die-off of coral reefs around the planet, the 1.5°C-goal may already have been eclipsed with global warming hitting a possible inflection point, depression and other mental health issues are on the rise even in the richest countries, income inequality is increasing as the richest snatch up an ever bigger piece of the pie, and wildlife populations have declined by a staggering 73% in the past 50 years. As a result, we seem to have very wildly divergent perceptions of our current reality: in one, we’re essentially living better than kings in the past; while in the other, we’re about to drive off a cliff with the wholesale destruction of our living environment.

So what gives? Who’s right—the Pinkerish peddlers of Panglossian optimism or the Monbiotesque negative Nancies decrying the despoliations of the neoliberal order? And how can there be two so vastly contradictory narratives, each of which claims a mountain of charts, data, and analysis in its favor? Read more »

Tag: overshoot

This Is What Happens

Sunday, November 16, 2025

The Monkey’s Paw: Markets And Misaligned Proxies