AI Is Repeating Humanity’s Oldest Mistake

Comments · 797

• UN

  @UniversalResilience · 1 month ago (edited) · pinned

  ** Other cases of -maxxing not in this video **<br>During the Soviet Union, factories weren’t rewarded for making profits. They were rewarded for hitting quotas. When nail factories were judged by the number of nails they produced, they manufactured millions of tiny, useless nails. When the quota changed from quantity to weight, factories responded by producing a handful of giant nails instead.<br><br>China’s Cultural Revolution maximized something that wasn’t even measurable: ideological purity. People were rewarded for exposing supposed political enemies. Friends, neighbors, and even family members denounced one another, often on fabricated evidence. Trust and social cohesion completely collapsed. Many scientists, doctors, and other experts resorted to burning books and feigning ignorance just to survive potential persecution.<br><br>During the Roman Empire, as military and administrative costs grew, emperors increasingly squeezed more taxes out of farmers and local communities to sustain the empire. Over time, many small farmers abandoned their land, businesses declined, and local economies weakened. Tax revenue eventually shrank anyway, forcing the government to tax even harder.<br><br>Also many governments around the world relied on standardized math and reading tests to measure educational success. Some even rewarded or penalized schools based on those scores. Over time, as the pressure to raise scores increased, many schools gradually shifted toward teaching the test instead of teaching students. Areas like art, history, science, and critical thinking got less time and attention. In some cases, the pressure became so intense that it even led many educators to report fraudulent scores.<br><br>More recently, Uber asked their employees to maximize AI usage, aka tokenmaxxing. They blew through its entire 2026 AI token budget in four months.<br><br>** Support my nonprofit **<br>I volunteer for the Northwest Cooperative Development Center. They help people establish housing cooperatives, community land trust, worker cooperatives, and more. Check them out at <a href="https://nwcdc.coop/">https://nwcdc.coop/</a><br><br>** A question for you **<br>What other examples of -maxxing have you found that I haven&apos;t covered here? (You can include ones that are not called -maxxing.)

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• DA

  @dankmemes8254 · 1 month ago

  You are telling me the machine that copies patterns copies mankind patterns

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• WH

  @whywegotnomoney · 1 month ago

  Amazon is so desperate for drivers they now post fake jobs that result in a phone interview about becoming a driver

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• AN

  @anahitas8066 · 1 month ago

  This is why Youtube is still worth people’s while! Great video, deep, well rounded, nicely delivered.

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• PY

  @pyTree · 1 month ago

  BALANCEMAXXING

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• LO

  @Logical_Refuter · 1 month ago

  Came in bracing for bad news, but left with a smarter mind

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• ML

  @mlemlumla5237 · 1 month ago

  This is very old concept, when there is extremism of anything, everything goes into the waste.

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• JU

  @JustAnOrdinaryDude-j3c · 1 month ago

  Something as simple as moss causing mass extinction makes me realize how fragile and how complex our systems really are.

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• RE

  @rescueafterhalfanddoubledo5175 · 1 month ago

  A similar problem also arises when we were thinking of continuous probabilities, where we tried to define probability as a point on a line and ended up zero everywhere.

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• ST

  @Student_of_Rhythm · 1 month ago

  This is one of the best things I&apos;ve listened to in a long time. I&apos;m getting theological understanding from this.

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• MA

  @MartinMizner · 1 month ago

  this is one of those top 100 yt videos that change your life

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• AN

  @ankyie7544 · 1 month ago

  Whatever you pay your editor, pay him more. If only one editor is making everything, that guy is equal to an entire team

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