Toothbrushes & The Bering Strait
Aemula Writer Spotlight - 7.17.25
More people own a cellphone than a toothbrush.
A lot more. Potentially a billion more people own cellphones than toothbrushes (4.2b vs 3.2b).
This is even more surprising when you consider the fact that the global average price of a cellphone is $350 and the global average price of a toothbrush is $1.55. Admittedly, these numbers are nearly impossible to confirm, but the fact that this is reasonably plausible is enough to prove the point. We value social connectivity and access to information over our oral hygiene.
And who would blame us? With knowledge and without teeth you could at least figure out how to blend and drink all your meals. With teeth and without knowledge, you’d be just like any other member of the Gnathostomata clade (jawed vertebrates that account for over 99% of all living vertebrate species… so not all that special).
Of course, cellphones do not equal knowledge. Read a book. But, until 53 years ago, it would have been science fiction to believe that billions of people could carry a device with instant access to any knowledge they desire (unless you are one of the 2.8b people that live in countries that systematically censor the internet). And cellphones aren’t required for this access. 5.4b people have access to the internet, which is estimated to hold 175 zettabytes of data (though plausibly, only 10zb of this is publicly accessible). This level of collective intelligence should be a superpower.
To do some back-of-the-envelope math, 5.2b people each have an exaFlOP of processing power (a billion-billion operations per second, the same as the Oak Ridge Frontier supercomputer — which uses a million times the energy of a human brain) and 2.5 petabytes of memory (enough to store 3m hours of video). On average, each person has spent 21 years “training” on the 10zb of publicly accessible internet data.
For reference, the top ranked open-source artificial intelligence model as of the time of this writing, LLaMA 3.1, used roughly 11 orders of magnitude less compute (38m exaFLOPs), 12 orders of magnitude less memory (1.6tb of memory — model weights + context window), and spent 7 orders of magnitude less training time (30.8m GPU hours) on 5 orders of magnitude less data (60pbs) compared to humanity’s collective experience (5.2b people over 21 years). Granted, LLaMA 3.1 did this in 54 days (2 orders of magnitude faster), but it is no wonder we don’t think AI is ready to take over.
Yet, there are still countless solvable problems that we can’t seem to figure out. With so much collective intelligence, why can’t we achieve the results that we expect AI to achieve for us?
Is it because we are distracted? Surely we aren’t all using our full mental capacity to solve complex new problems every day. 44% of us still live in a state of day-to-day subsistence. Without free time to devote to solving future problems, we are unable to technologically progress.
Do we just not care? Quite the opposite. Through a global survey of over 1m respondents, 87% believe global cooperation is vital to solving today’s challenges. It may be that we are all talk and no action, but it is clear that we understand that we must continue collaborating at a global scale to deliver solutions to complex societal issues.
In reality though, it might just be that we aren’t as interconnected as we believe. We don’t work together as one big frictionless network, nor should we. But we should be able to seamlessly route impactful information to the people best equipped to handle it. Instead, our information systems incentivize us to self-consolidate into niche bespoke realities, walled off from most of the rest of the world. Pockets of information that shield us from the uncomfortable challenges to our core beliefs. Our current media environment is not designed for the benefit of humanity.
We receive digital information in one of two ways. We either pull in what we want to know, or we are pushed information that someone else thinks we should know.
Pulling information is not efficient for our goals. How do we know what we don’t know? Instead, we need to focus on pushing information. The vast majority of information is pushed through algorithmic curation, with hyper-scale corporate social platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok influencing roughly two-thirds of humanity. With so much attention and power, you would think these algorithms would be geared for human success. Instead, most people find their time spent on these platforms to be a net negative.
It is fairly simple to understand why. These algorithms are optimized to hack attention, collect user data, and sell advertisements. But why are we so susceptible to falling into this trap?
It is not our fault, this is how we were designed. Our brains are in a constant search for new patterns. We become restless in a slow-paced informational environment. We succeeded as a species because of this restlessness. We are in an elite group of animals that are capable of imagining things that don’t exist. While dolphins, elephants, and crows may show signs of these capabilities, none match our ability to build entire worlds in our heads and act on abstract ideas.
This ability has allowed us to leverage our spare time to develop new strategies for harnessing resources to create even more excess time in the future, creating a cycle of unlocking increasing capacity for critical thinking. Historically, major leaps into unknown frontiers were typically sparked by a blend of pressure and possibility. Resource constraints pushed groups to consider leaving their comfort zone, while surplus-driven curiosity and newly available technologies pulled them outward.
This undying natural curiosity for learning and problem solving drove us to explore the unknown. It is why we crossed the Wallace Line and traveled to the New World across the Bering Strait. Polynesian voyages launched ships into the open ocean without knowledge of what lay ahead. Yes, in modernity, we went to the moon, but at least we could see where we were heading.
Our frontier expansion has created a society that now has more excess spare time than ever before. Yet, with all this free time, what do we do? We spend 2.4 trillion hours on social media, endlessly scrolling content, despite believing there is no benefit to show for it. We need better systems of information distribution. The only solution is to align the incentives of our algorithms with our own human flourishing.
This week, we highlight writers who discuss how to effectively navigate our current information environment. We encourage you to consider subscribing to them directly to support their work!
mindbox
Written by Yana Yuhai, a neuroscience graduate exploring consciousness, wellness, and contemplative practice through synthesized insights at the intersection of science, design, and self-discovery.
“There’s a specific kind of mental fog that creeps in when you’ve been scrolling for too long. Tired but wired, overstimulated and undernourished. You sit down to do something and your brain slips through your fingers…you check your socials, then your email, then your texts, then your socials again…toggling between five apps, and yet - nothing really lands.
A lot of us are noticing this quiet unraveling of our attention……..We give it different names…….brain fog, dopamine burnout, decision fatigue. But at the root, it’s the same pattern. We’re spending more and more time on things, while feeling less and less in them.”
Wild Bare Thoughts
Written by Stepfanie Tyler, a former marketer turned writer who left behind the performative demands of social media to create a slower, more honest space for reflection on memory, attention, art, and the everyday thoughts that linger.
“We’re drowning in content.
Every platform, every scroll, every second—more inputs, more noise, more things trying to hook your attention. The old metrics of intelligence—who memorized the most, who spoke the loudest, who finished the book first—don’t mean much here.
In an age where AI can generate anything, the question is no longer "can it be made?" but "is it worth making?" The frontier isn’t volume—it’s discernment. And in that shift, taste has become a survival skill.”
The Garden of Forking Paths
Written by Brian Klaas, Author of Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters, Associate Professor of Global Politics at University College London, Contributing Writer for The Atlantic, and Creator/Host of the Power Corrupts podcast, previously featured in our spotlight, “Recommendation Engines“.
“Every piece of technology can either make us more human or less human. It can liberate us from the mundane to unleash creativity and connection, or it can shackle us to mindless robotic drudgery of isolated meaninglessness.
Contrary to popular opinion, the latter option is not inevitable. We get to choose whether—and how—we adopt technology that can eviscerate our humanity.
When artificial intelligence is used to diagnose cancer or automate soul-crushing tasks that require vapid toiling, it makes us more human and should be celebrated. But when it sucks out the core process of advanced cognition, cutting-edge tools can become an existential peril. In the formative stages of education, we are now at risk of stripping away the core competency that makes our species thrive: learning not what to think, but how to think.”
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