The age of cognitive surrender

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

First of all, I am not going to write about what cognitive surrender is: there are fantastic materials out there, like this paper from the University of Pennsylvania. In short, cognitive surrender is the idea that humans lazily delegate their reasoning to an external entity that can do it for them, like modern LLMs.

Here I just want to show a couple of scenarios where your choices can make AI either harmful or useful, whether that’s for the software development industry specifically, or for our society in general. I hope you enjoy it!

The dystopian promise of cryptocurrencies

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

I would like to present a series of counterarguments to the mainstream crypto hype, let’s be clear from the start. If you are a believer and have a strong emotional attachment to your investments, this text is probably not for you.

And in the same spirit of honesty, I have no stake in this. I invested a small amount in 2017, rode up some gains, built a couple of cryptomining rigs out of 12 AMD RX 570s and RX 580s when I was at the peak of my hype, froze during the first bubble bust at the end of that year, messed up my Ethereum wallet password, and eventually sold my rigs to end up with a slight loss. My social circle stayed invested in it all along, and I have respectfully stepped aside ever since. This means I have missed a 3x return over those last 9 years ($20K to $60K), which, interestingly, is not that far off what the S&P 500 has done over the same period.

Society on depthstack blog

The age of cognitive surrender

Introduction

The dystopian promise of cryptocurrencies

Introduction