No, You Don't Need to Go Any Faster

We humans have an absurd obsession with speed.

The faster, the better.

We have no time to waste.

This explains why Substack shows us the articles from our friends that are a 2-min, 8-min, and 9-min read as if the reading time is the price tag for each post.

time to read

I guess the system assumes we all read at the same speed.

And I asked AI.

A quick reader can process 600 - 700 words per minute, or about 10 words per second.

I don’t know about you. But I am not a quick reader.

I am a turtle reader. I read and re-read. Speed isn’t part of my equation. I know these people behind these words. It doesn’t matter to me if it is a 2-min read, a 2-hour read, or a 2-week read. I will read them, even if it will take me a lifetime.

Wrong direction

I know we should take any prediction these days with a grain of salt. And I am reading this article titled AI 2027.

It’s published by a team of people who seem to know what they don’t know about AI. So, it’s well worth the read.

They estimated that in 24 - 30 months, AI will be at 100x human thinking speed, or 1,000 words per second.

Well, what does it mean to us?

Our brain has a physiological limit. There might be exceptions, but I am quite certain that in 24 - 30 months, most of us would not be reading 1,000 words per second. We are capped at a certain level. Does it mean we need to hack our way into reading faster?

I don’t like to believe that the superintelligent AI will destroy humanity like how humans can kill an ant. I also don’t like Neurolink’s vision of the brain computer interfaces, where we can upgrade our brains like how we update the software in our devices today.

By upgrading our brains, we might tap into the power of having a supercomputer-like brain with insane processing power to get us up to speed. But the question is, at what cost?

that Black Mirror brain chip episode

A different frame

Let’s frame this in a different way.

What if I tell you that you are perfect already?

You don’t need an upgrade. You don’t need to go any faster. You don’t need to think any faster.

After all, there is no way you can outrun a robot.

But I would argue we can think faster than ChatGPT.

Give it a try. Forget about speed and close your eyes for a second.

Take a deep breath and let’s go for a ride.

Imagine you can fly. You are now up in the sky, looking down at your city.

You keep going higher. You are out in space. You are passing the moon. You reach the speed of light, and you are flying into the sun. You melt, and your body is gone. But somehow, you are still here. You become a part of the universe. You are the universe. And then, you are back here.

You don’t need to go any faster.

You are fast already.

This is not even about speed, I would argue. This is about creativity, imagination, and possibility. This is something beyond the mathematical realm. If we frame it not as how many words we can read per second, we are free.

Our mind can go anywhere that we can imagine at any moment.

This is not a race. If you frame the rest of your life as a race against AI, you are lost before the game even begins. AI never sleeps. And you get cranky without your coffee.

Don’t enter a battle that you don’t have a chance to win.

Stop overthinking about winning or losing.

Reading is a way to connect with the writers you love. Reading is a way to reflect on who you are. Reading is a way to feel you are alive at this very moment. This is no longer about how much time it takes to read an article. This is about feeling the lives of these people through their words.

It’s time for me to read these articles. It might take me a while, and no, I don’t need to go any faster.

Until next time.

- Franco

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P.S. You never know what the internet will bring you. Kevon reached out and we met last week. Thanks for pulling the string in between Becky!

We talked about our lives as dads, embracing the pathless path with our kids, navigating uncertainty through ups and downs, and whether we are the minority when it comes to thinking and caring a little too much about our kids. Kevon convinced me that we are.