Everyone is Gambling and No One is Happy

Good morning from Washington DC!

华盛顿特区早上好！

This is a long one, so it might be cut off in your inbox.

此邮件很长，因此可能会在您的收件箱中被截断。

Also, if you’re looking for an economic holiday gift for your loved ones (or for anyone at all), and want to support local bookstores In This Economy?

另外，如果您正在为您所爱的人（或任何人）寻找一份经济的节日礼物，并想在这种经济中支持当地的书店？

is a great gift!

是一份很棒的礼物！

This is a reader-supported publication.

这是一本由读者支持的出版物。

To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

要接收新帖子并支持我的工作，请考虑成为付费订阅者。

I’m on the road again for work, traveling across Michigan, Kentucky, and DC.

我再次上​​路上班，穿越密歇根州、肯塔基州和华盛顿特区。

I was going through TSA and the woman in front of me just started open mouth coughing, like a baby does.

我当时正在办理 TSA 手续，我前面的那位女士开始张嘴咳嗽，就像婴儿一样。

I stared at her in wonder, imagining for a moment what it must be like to be so free from worry, and then in abject horror.

我惊奇地看着她，想象了一会儿如此无忧无虑的感觉，然后陷入了极度的恐惧。

Most people are very nice.

大多数人都很好。

But part of being a part of a society is dealing with other people’s different internal norms.

但成为社会一部分的一部分是处理其他人不同的内部规范。

Some people open mouth cough, and that’s just how it is.

有的人张口咳嗽，就是这样。

My theory is that they believe collective comfort isn’t their responsibility, perhaps because they feel disconnected from the commons.

我的理论是，他们认为集体舒适不是他们的责任，也许是因为他们感觉与公共空间脱节。

It’s a form of social drift that is increasingly noticeable in public spaces (like being bent neck 90 degrees over a phone walking into walls or standing directly in the flow of pedestrian traffic).

这是一种在公共场所越来越明显的社会漂移形式（比如在打电话时脖子弯曲 90 度，撞到墙壁或直接站在人流中）。

But I think this open mouth cougher and the persistent economic malaise we see have a lot in common.

但我认为这种张嘴咳嗽的现象和我们看到的持续的经济不景气有很多共同点。

Why have collective norms if you don’t trust in the systems around you?

如果你不信任周围的系统，为什么还要制定集体规范呢？

Hard work doesn’t pay off, it seems, so why shouldn’t you gamble?

努力工作似乎没有回报，那么为什么不应该赌博呢？

The institutions lie!

机构撒谎！

But this YouTuber who makes Thumbnails that ask BIG QUESTION with an open mouth scream while pointing at bowl of spaghetti or whatever doesn’t lie.

但是这位 YouTuber 制作的缩略图并指着一碗意大利面或其他东西张开嘴尖叫着问大问题，他并没有撒谎。

We don’t trust one another.

我们彼此不信任。

As Jordan Schwartz, student chair of the Harvard Public Opinion Project said:

正如哈佛民意项目学生主席乔丹·施瓦茨（Jordan Schwartz）所说：

Gen Z is headed down a path that could threaten the future stability of American democracy and society.

Z 世代正走上一条可能威胁美国民主和社会未来稳定的道路。

This is a five-alarm fire, and we need to act now if we hope to restore young people’s faith in politics, America, and each other.”

这是一场五级火灾，如果我们希望恢复年轻人对政治、美国和彼此的信心，我们就需要立即采取行动。”

His project, the Harvard Youth Poll, surveyed over 2,000 Americans between 18- and 29-years-old on trust, politics, and AI.

他的哈佛青年民意调查项目对 2000 多名 18 至 29 岁的美国人进行了信任、政治和人工智能方面的调查。

When asked if they think the United States is a health democracy, the split is pretty partisan, but the worry is there.

当被问及他们是否认为美国是一个健康民主国家时，党派分歧很大，但担忧是存在的。

Trust between groups is collapsing too.

群体之间的信任也在崩溃。

Only 35% of young Americans believe that people with opposing views want what is best for the country.

只有 35% 的美国年轻人认为持反对意见的人希望得到对国家最有利的结果。

50% see the mainstream media as a threat.

50% 的人将主流媒体视为威胁。

And only 30% believe that they will be better off financially than their parents.

只有 30% 的人相信他们的经济状况会比父母更好。

I don’t think you can understand the economy until you understand how we talk about the economy.

我认为，除非你了解我们如何谈论经济，否则你无法理解经济。

I think there we are dealing with a combination of (1) postpandemic adaptation and (2) the whole smartphone-induced micro-solipsism thing layered onto (3) younger generations watching objective unkindness rewarded by politics.

我认为我们正在处理（1）大流行后的适应和（2）整个智能手机引发的微观唯我论的结合，（3）年轻一代观看政治奖励的客观不友善行为。

People (understandably) are dealing with epistemic drift too, what some might call “medieval peasant brain” due to the constant influx of Internet ( people are putting potatoes in their socks to draw out toxins, for example).

人们（可以理解）也在应对认知漂移，由于互联网的不断涌入，有些人可能称之为“中世纪农民的大脑”（例如，人们将土豆放入袜子中以排出毒素）。

We’re trapped in somewhat of a compound crisis - economic deterioration plus cognitive overload creates a recursive trap where each makes the other worse and destroys the resources needed to escape.

我们陷入了某种复合危机——经济恶化加上认知超载造成了一个递归陷阱，每一个都让对方变得更糟，并破坏了逃脱所需的资源。

Economic stress (Baumol’s cost disease, housing, weakening labor market) reduces our ability to think clearly, which makes us more vulnerable to scams and bad decisions and extractive markets, which then furthers the economic stress.

经济压力（鲍莫尔成本病、住房、疲软的劳动力市场）降低了我们清晰思考的能力，这使我们更容易受到诈骗、错误决策和采掘市场的影响，从而进一步加剧经济压力。

Economic stress + information overload erodes institutional trust

经济压力+信息过载侵蚀机构信任

Loss of trust makes coordination impossible, which leaves problems unsolved.

失去信任使得协调变得不可能，从而导致问题无法解决。

Unresolved problems deepen the crisis.

未解决的问题加剧了危机。

Right now, we’re trying to make sense of an economy inside social and cognitive environments that have shifted faster than the indicators that claim to describe them.

目前，我们正试图理解社会和认知环境中的经济，这些环境的变化速度快于声称描述它们的指标。

That’s the backdrop for the Vibecession.

这就是 Vibecession 的背景。

Note: Given that both Paul Krugman and Scott Alexander recently returned to this idea, it’s worth re-examining what the Vibecession was then and what it has become now.

注：考虑到保罗·克鲁格曼和斯科特·亚历山大最近都回到了这个想法，有必要重新审视当时的 Vibecession 是什么以及它现在变成了什么。

I first wrote about the Vibecession in July of 2022, at a time when inflation was coming down (but was still painfully high), the labor market was recovering, and the economy was growing.

我第一次写有关 Vibecession 的文章是在 2022 年 7 月，当时通货膨胀正在下降（但仍然高得令人痛苦），劳动力市场正在复苏，经济正在增长。

All the chips were not yet stacked on AI, no tariffs , massive infrastructure investment.

所有的筹码还没有堆放在人工智能、没有关税、大规模的基础设施投资上。

On paper, things were improving.

从纸面上看，情况正在改善。

The 2000s and 2010s had plenty of problems (plenty!) but the bottom didn’t fall out on how people felt 1 .

2000 年代和 2010 年代有很多问题（很多！），但谷底并没有因为人们的感受而下降 1 。

There is a nostalgiacore trend on TikTok right now of teenagers now who are making up a fake 2012 - dreaming of infinity scarves and third-wave coffee shops and when Instagram was about posting some daisy you saw in a field rather than a hypercompetitive algorithmic bloodbath.

TikTok 上现在有一种怀旧趋势，青少年正在编造一个虚假的 2012 年——梦想无限的围巾和第三波咖啡店，而 Instagram 上发布的是你在田野里看到的雏菊，而不是竞争激烈的算法大屠杀。

There was an element of hope (it’s what Obama ran on!) and an idea of an Internet future that was Better.

其中有一丝希望（这就是奥巴马竞选的基础！），以及互联网未来更加美好的想法。

The Internet still had problems, but there wasn’t ragebait for income.

互联网仍然存在问题，但收入已经不再是问题。

People sometimes claim “the whole last decade was a vibecession,” but the sentiment data doesn’t support that.

人们有时会声称“过去十年是一场盛大的衰退”，但情绪数据并不支持这一点。

The break is visible and sharp.

断裂是可见且尖锐的。

The graph below is a rough look at when the Vibecession started, showing the divergence between sentiment and economic data.

下图是 Vibecession 开始时的粗略观察，显示了情绪和经济数据之间的差异。

Real disposable income recovered and kept rising after the pandemic shock, returning to trend.

实际可支配收入在疫情冲击后恢复并持续上升，回归趋势。

But sentiment never came back.

但情绪再也没有回来。

It slid into a recession-like range (and below) and stayed there, even as economic fundamentals stabilized.

即使经济基本面趋于稳定，它仍滑入类似衰退的区间（及以下）并保持在该区间。

I think part of the reason was the accumulation.

我认为部分原因是积累。

Again, pandemic dislocation wasn’t over.

同样，大流行性混乱还没有结束。

The price of everything was unstable.

所有东西的价格都不稳定。

Stores were understaffed.

商店人手不足。

Teachers (and their students) were burned out.

老师（和他们的学生）精疲力尽。

Public messaging had shattered.

公共信息已经崩溃。

Institutions felt brittle.

机构感到脆弱。

Everyday friction of life had increased in dozens of small ways.

日常生活中的摩擦在许多小方面都增加了。

The COVID-era spike in home prices never unwound.

新冠疫情时期的房价飙升从未缓解。

Mortgages locked people in place as the Fed started hiking.

随着美联储开始加息，抵押贷款将人们锁定在原地。

Rents surged.

租金飙升。

The entry path to adulthood where you move and rent and save and buy shattered for many people.

对于许多人来说，搬家、租房、储蓄和购买的成年之路已经破碎。

No house by 2020?

2020年还没有房子吗？

No house ever .

从来没有房子。

But as Dan Davies writes there might not have been any particular trigger for the Vibecession.

但正如丹·戴维斯（Dan Davies）所写，振动事件可能没有任何特定的触发因素。

“Vibes might be like a supercooled fluid, just waiting for a random shock to change phase.” The pandemic was the shock.

“振动可能就像一种过冷的流体，只是等待随机冲击来改变相。”大流行是令人震惊的。

The Vibecession was early.

Vibecession 很早。

Now, the economic data matches the sentiment, or at least matches it more than it did.

现在，经济数据与市场情绪相符，或者至少比以前更加相符。

We have a low-hiring environment, persistent inflation, and tremendously strange trade policy.

我们的就业环境低迷，通货膨胀持续存在，贸易政策极其奇怪。

When NBER classifies a recession, they look at three things:

当 NBER 对经济衰退进行分类时，他们会考虑三件事：

When we look at the fall in consumer sentiment, it fits (crudely, at least) this definition of a recession - it’s been long-lasting, widely spread, and continuously flirts with the lowest levels in history.

当我们观察消费者信心的下降时，它符合（至少粗略地）经济衰退的定义——它持续时间长、蔓延范围广，并且不断接近历史最低水平。

Kevin Gordon at Schwab calls it a Vibepression - precariously low sentiment, with GDP propped up by AI-related investment.

施瓦布 (Schwab) 的凯文·戈登 (Kevin Gordon) 将其称为“Vibepression”——情绪低迷，GDP 受到人工智能相关投资的支撑。

Is an economy that is booming from AI data center build outs going to feel good to the average person?

因人工智能数据中心建设而蓬勃发展的经济会让普通人感觉良好吗？

No!

不！

A few weeks ago, Michael Green wrote an article stating that $140k is the new poverty line, that no one can afford to participate in society.

几周前，Michael Green 写了一篇文章，指出 14 万美元是新的贫困线，没有人有能力参与社会生活。

It took over the Internet in a fiery storm.

它以一场激烈的风暴席卷了互联网。

There have been many rebuttals, from Tyler Cowen to Jeremy Horpedahl .

从泰勒·考恩（Tyler Cowen）到杰里米·霍佩达尔（Jeremy Horpedahl），都有很多反驳。

But the reaction to the piece was very interesting, as John Burn Murdoch wrote about.

但正如约翰·伯恩·默多克所写，人们对这篇文章的反应非常有趣。

People overwhelmingly agreed with the article (many of the rebuttals to the rebuttals were “who cares if the math is wrong, the vibe is correct!).

人们绝大多数同意这篇文章（许多对反驳的反驳都是“谁在乎数学是否错误，氛围是正确的！）。

Both More Perfect Union and the Free Press republished it.

《更完美联盟》和《自由报》都重新出版了它。

People on both sides of the aisle, read the article and said “Well, yes, that is why things feel so bad.

两党的人读了这篇文章后说：“嗯，是的，这就是为什么事情感觉如此糟糕。

This is poverty.

这就是贫穷。

My economic pain is justified by the data now.

现在的数据证明了我的经济痛苦是合理的。

What a relief.”

真是一种解脱。”

A relief to be seen in analysis.

在分析中可以看到一种解脱。

Paul Krugman , in his series on the Vibecession, argues that three concepts are poorly captured by standard economic numbers:

保罗·克鲁格曼（Paul Krugman）在他的 Vibecession 系列文章中认为，标准经济数据很难捕捉到三个概念：

Economic inclusion: Can you afford to participate in society?

经济包容性：您有能力参与社会吗？

People need to feel like they can afford a house or a kid or a car, that they aren’t one medical bill away from ruin, and that other people aren’t cheating them.

人们需要感觉自己有能力买得起房子、孩子或汽车，只要一张医疗费就可以让他们破产，而且其他人没有欺骗他们。

Those questions are getting harder to answer.

这些问题越来越难回答。

To the first question - the Federal Reserve cut rates yesterday, with a lot of drama and a lot of dissent.

关于第一个问题——美联储昨天降息，充满戏剧性，也有很多异议。

Their dual mandate - price stability and maximum employment - is under increasing pressure.

他们的双重使命——价格稳定和就业最大化——面临着越来越大的压力。

Inflation is not going down to 2% (and the bond market is very worried about that).

通货膨胀不会降至 2%（债券市场对此非常担心）。

The labor market is weakening.

劳动力市场正在疲软。

Inequality is worsening.

不平等现象正在恶化。

There is very real economic pain.

这是非常现实的经济痛苦。

It is harder to participate in society.

参与社会就更难了。

Young people voted for Trump to fix the economy, and now are turning against him.

年轻人投票支持特朗普来修复经济，现在却转而反对他。

18 - 29 year olds strongly disapprove of President Trump, due to his handling of the economy, according to the Yale Youth Fall 2025 poll .

根据耶鲁大学 2025 年秋季青年民意调查，18-29 岁的人强烈反对特朗普总统，因为他对经济的处理方式。

John Burn Murdoch pointed out that we are dealing with Baumol’s Cost Disease .

约翰·伯恩·默多克指出，我们正在应对鲍莫尔的成本病。

The same productivity growth that drives down the cost of tradeable goods causes the cost of in-person services to balloon.

生产力的增长降低了可贸易商品的成本，同时也导致了面对面服务的成本飙升。

Wages in sectors like healthcare and education that require intensive face-to-face labour, and have slow (if any) productivity growth, are forced upwards in order to attract workers who would otherwise opt for high-paying work in more productive sectors.

医疗保健和教育等需要密集面对面劳动且生产率增长缓慢（如果有的话）的行业的工资被迫上涨，以吸引那些原本会选择生产率更高行业的高薪工作的工人。

The result is that even if people keep consuming the exact same basket of goods and services, as living standards in their country increase they will find more and more of their spending is going on essential services.

结果是，即使人们继续消费完全相同的一揽子商品和服务，随着本国生活水平的提高，他们会发现越来越多的支出用于基本服务。

For the American Prospect , Paul Starr documents the collapse of cultural affordability under Baumol, pointing out that “public elementary and secondary education, public libraries, land grant colleges with low tuition, and the 20th century’s mass media—including free, over-the-air radio and television” used to be…

保罗·斯塔尔在《美国展望》中记录了鲍莫尔领导下文化负担能力的崩溃，指出“公立小学和中学教育、公共图书馆、低学费的赠地大学，以及 20 世纪的大众媒体——包括免费的无线广播和电视”曾经是……

free.

免费。

Or at least heavily subsidized.

或者至少得到大量补贴。

But now, support for the arts and education is being rolled back.

但现在，对艺术和教育的支持正在减少。

In practice, that means the core ingredients of a middle-class life like housing, healthcare, childcare, education, eldercare are all Baumol sectors.

实际上，这意味着住房、医疗、托儿、教育、养老等中产阶级生活的核心要素都属于鲍莫尔部门。

They’re getting more expensive faster than wages grow.

它们的涨价速度快于工资的增长速度。

You can “do everything right” and still feel underwater.

你可以“把每件事都做对”，但仍然感觉自己在水下。

In the 20th century, we solved Baumol, sort of, by socializing or heavily subsidizing these sectors with those public schools, public libraries, state universities with low tuition, public hospitals.

在 20 世纪，我们通过将公立学校、公共图书馆、低学费州立大学、公立医院等这些部门社会化或大力补贴来解决鲍莫尔问题。

We made the expensive, low-productivity stuff cheaper through policy.

我们通过政策使昂贵、低生产率的东西变得更便宜。

But we’re now privatizing (or destroying or redtaping) these sectors at the exact moment we shouldn’t be.

但我们现在正在不应该的时刻将这些部门私有化（或摧毁或重新制定）。

We’re asking households to absorb costs that used to be socialized.

我们要求家庭承担过去社会化的成本。

Is it any wonder that the middle class feels squeezed?

中产阶级感到受到挤压，这有什么奇怪的吗？

And of course, it’s going to get weirder.

当然，事情会变得更奇怪。

AI is going to make non-Baumol sectors hyper-productive.

人工智能将使非鲍莫尔行业的生产力极高。

Software development, data analysis, any sort of Computer thing will become abundant and cheap, meaning that the productivity gap between scalable sectors and non-scalable sectors will becoming a gaping hole.

软件开发、数据分析、任何类型的计算机产品都将变得丰富且廉价，这意味着可扩展行业和不可扩展行业之间的生产力差距将成为一个巨大的鸿沟。

The second question - the government shut down this year over healthcare.

第二个问题——政府今年因医疗保健而关闭。

The average health care premium for a family of four is $27,000 per year.

四口之家的平均医疗保险费为每年 27,000 美元。

Insurance premiums will increase by 10-20% next year.

明年保险费将上涨10-20%。

Many people will be a broken tooth away from bankruptcy.

许多人距离破产只差一颗牙就断了。

The third question - we are objectively speed running a quid-pro-quo type economy, where the US, which once was a beacon of democracy, is now doing land deals with Russia , requesting that tourists give five years of social media information, threatening the independence of independent agencies, including the Fed , and ignoring anti-trust law in favor for media control .

第三个问题——我们客观上正在加速运行一种交换式经济，曾经是民主灯塔的美国现在正在与俄罗斯进行土地交易，要求游客提供五年的社交媒体信息，威胁包括美联储在内的独立机构的独立性，并无视反垄断法以支持媒体控制。

2 When you read the news and see headlines like that, it feels terrible.

2 当你读新闻并看到这样的标题时，感觉很糟糕。

So the economic fundamentals are genuinely worse for many people, especially young people trying to build a life.

因此，对于许多人来说，经济基本面确实更糟，尤其是那些努力建立生活的年轻人。

But economic stress alone doesn’t fully explain the depth of malaise.

但仅靠经济压力并不能完全解释经济低迷的严重程度。

That’s where the cognitive dimension comes in.

这就是认知维度的用武之地。

None of this is really new, right?

这些都不是什么新鲜事，对吧？

The US has been drifting into a harder equilibrium for years.

多年来，美国一直在陷入更艰难的平衡。

People have always lived through high housing costs, tight job markets, and Baumol.

人们一直生活在高昂的住房成本、紧张的就业市场和鲍莫尔的压力下。

The difference now is that these pressures are landing on a public already stretched pretty thin cognitively and socially.

现在的不同之处在于，这些压力落在了认知和社交能力已经相当薄弱的公众身上。

For most of human history, literacy was scarce and attention was abundant.

在人类历史的大部分时间里，识字率很低，但注意力却很丰富。

People were what we would call “bored” most of the time, outside of work.

人们在工作之外的大部分时间里都是我们所说的“无聊”。

Today, it’s the opposite - literacy is collapsing, attention is a commodity, and people are completely overloaded.

如今，情况恰恰相反——识字率正在崩溃，注意力成为商品，人们完全超负荷了。

Jean Twenge published a piece in the NYT titled “The Screen That Ate Your Child’s Education” writing:

Jean Twenge 在《纽约时报》上发表了一篇题为“屏幕吞噬了你孩子的教育”的文章，写道：

In a study published in October in The Journal of Adolescence, I found that standardized test scores in math, reading and science fell significantly more in countries where students spent more time using electronic devices for leisure purposes during the school day than they did in countries where they spent less time.

在《青春期杂志》10 月发表的一项研究中，我发现，在学生在上学期间使用电子设备进行休闲活动的时间较多的国家中，数学、阅读和科学的标准化考试成绩比在学生使用电子设备时间较少的国家中下降得更多。

And Brady Brickner-Wood writes in The Curious Notoriety of Performative Reading :

布雷迪·布里克纳-伍德 (Brady Brickner-Wood) 在《表演阅读的奇怪恶名》一书中写道：

Americans read for pleasure 40% less than they did twenty years ago, and 40% of fourth graders lack basic reading comprehension […] Universities are brokering deals with companies like OpenAI to introduce chatbots into their students’ curricula and, all the while, slashing their humanities departments.

美国人为了娱乐而阅读的人数比 20 年前减少了 40%，40% 的四年级学生缺乏基本的阅读理解能力……大学正在与 OpenAI 等公司达成交易，将聊天机器人引入学生的课程，同时削减人文学科部门的规模。

If you don’t trust any information source, you’re not going to trust economic data either.

如果你不信任任何信息源，你也不会信任经济数据。

We ran this big experiment - can people have unlimited and unregulated access to millions of things that can make them lose their mind - and the answer is no, not really, it cooks the population like an egg.

我们进行了这个大型实验——人们是否可以无限制地、不受监管地接触数以百万计的东西，这些东西会让他们失去理智——答案是否定的，不是真的，它像煮鸡蛋一样把人们煮熟了。

The loss of education and deep reading has all sorts of downstream effects: weak basic skills, weaker media literacy, and, importantly, a collapse in trust.

教育和深度阅读的丧失会带来各种各样的下游影响：基本技能薄弱、媒体素养较弱，而且重要的是，信任崩溃。

David Bauder’s work on teen news consumption shows that “about half of the teens surveyed believe journalists give advertisers special treatment and make up details such as quotes”.

大卫·鲍德（David Bauder）关于青少年新闻消费的研究表明，“大约一半的受访青少年认为记者给予广告商特殊待遇，并编造引言等细节”。

AI is only going to complicate it more.

人工智能只会让事情变得更加复杂。

Greg Ip’s piece The Most Joyless Tech Revolution Ever: AI Is Making Us Rich and Unhappy for the WSJ summarizes it very well.

《华尔街日报》的格雷格·叶 (Greg Ip) 的文章《有史以来最无趣的技术革命：人工智能让我们变得富有但不快乐》对此进行了很好的总结。

Almost 2 in 3 people are uncomfortable with AI.

近三分之二的人对人工智能感到不舒服。

Only 40% of people trust the AI industry to do the right thing.

只有 40% 的人相信人工智能行业会做正确的事。

We have all this technology.

我们拥有所有这些技术。

But we don’t trust each other and we feel terrible.

但我们彼此不信任，感觉很糟糕。

So I mean, when we think about negative sentiment, there definitely is something Computer about all of it.

所以我的意思是，当我们思考负面情绪时，肯定与计算机有关。

We are all collectively haunted by the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle: We are all finding that it really is 10x harder to debunk lies than it is to produce them, leading to things like ragebait as a marketing and product strategy - it’s also a great way to raise a lot of venture capital money?

我们都被“废话不对称原则”所困扰：我们都发现，揭穿谎言确实比制造谎言困难十倍，从而导致了诸如“愤怒诱饵”之类的营销和产品策略——这也是筹集大量风险投资资金的好方法？

Misinformation is a great way to build wealth: Twitter pays you a lot of money if you lie to a lot of people and make them very angry at you.

错误信息是积累财富的好方法：如果你对很多人撒谎并让他们对你非常生气，Twitter 就会付给你很多钱。

People abroad are tapping into this money machine - logically!

国外的人们正在利用这台赚钱机器——这是合乎逻辑的！

- and polluting US politics in a way that should probably be illegal?

- 并以一种可能是非法的方式污染美国政治？

Lots of people are skimming off the top of everything too, cheating the system to get ahead, to Krugman’s scam point.

许多人也从一切事物的顶部掠夺，欺骗系统以取得成功，达到克鲁格曼的骗局。

Every adult senses that their attention is slipping, that their thinking is flattening, that their world is flooded with noise, no neutrality, and that no institution really exists to protect them.

每个成年人都感觉到他们的注意力正在下滑，他们的思维正在扁平化，他们的世界充满了噪音，没有中立性，并且没有真正存在的机构来保护他们。

Your brain is for sale, my guy - as your attention goes, so does your cognition, so does your sense of depth and certainty.

你的大脑是待售的，伙计——随着你的注意力的变化，你的认知也会随之变化，你的深度感和确定性也会随之变化。

Confidence, optimism, and long-term thinking all require mental spaciousness.

自信、乐观和长远思考都需要心灵的宽敞。

If the information environment becomes chaotic, the emotional environment will be too.

如果信息环境变得混乱，情感环境也会变得混乱。

And if attention is the infrastructure of democracy, that infrastructure is in disrepair.

如果注意力是民主的基础设施，那么该基础设施却年久失修。

We are seeing what happens when you outsource human learning to a screen.

我们正在看到当你将人类学习外包给屏幕时会发生什么。

Now, we might learn what happens when you outsource humanness itself with the AI of it all.

现在，我们可能会了解到当你将人类本身与人工智能外包时会发生什么。

3 When you can’t trust any information source, you can’t trust economic data either.

3 当你无法信任任何信息源时，你也无法信任经济数据。

When attention is fractured and thinking is flattened, people become more vulnerable to the next part: extraction.

当注意力被分散、思维被扁平化时，人们就更容易受到下一个部分的影响：提取。

At the same time that the cognitive world is melting, the physical world is not maintained very well.

在认知世界正在融化的同时，物质世界也没有得到很好的维护。

The tremendous friction between something physical and failing ( bridges , schools, labor markets) and something digital and over-optimized (LLMs, algorithms, whatever the heck people are doing with ads) is increasingly noticeable.

物理和失败的事物（桥梁、学校、劳动力市场）与数字和过度优化的事物（法学硕士、算法，无论人们在广告上做什么）之间的巨大摩擦越来越明显。

I am pretty tough on AI in this newsletter - and to be clear, I think it’s a tool, I think it can really make a difference for science - but AI itself is really just creating a complete downward spiral.

在这篇时事通讯中，我对人工智能的态度非常强硬——需要明确的是，我认为它是一种工具，我认为它确实可以为科学带来改变——但人工智能本身实际上只是在创造一个完整的螺旋式下降。

The way Demis Hassabis talks about AI in this documentary is really important and as Linus Torvald said in a recent interview:

Demis Hassabis 在这部纪录片中谈论人工智能的方式非常重要，正如 Linus Torvald 在最近的一次采访中所说：

I’m a huge believer in AI.

我是人工智能的忠实信徒。

I’m not a huge believer in the things around AI.

我不太相信人工智能相关的事物。

I find the market and marketing to be sick.

我发现市场和营销有病。

There is going to be a crash.

将会发生崩溃。

People are becoming billionaires from the data center buildout, which is driving up electricity costs and creating blackout risks.

人们通过数据中心的扩建而成为亿万富翁，这推高了电力成本并造成停电风险。

It’s an enormous physical footprint with outcomes largely invisible to ordinary people except through rising electricity bills.

这是一个巨大的物理足迹，除了电费上涨之外，普通人基本上看不到其后果。

The AI wars are energy wars, not compute wars.

人工智能战争是能源战争，而不是计算战争。

As the Financial Times wrote:

正如英国《金融时报》所写：

In a race between global superpowers, AI could be slowed down by decades old grid infrastructure and a failure to provide adequate capacity.

在全球超级大国之间的竞争中，几十年前的电网基础设施和无法提供足够的容量可能会减慢人工智能的速度。

The Financial Times also reports that OpenAI’s partners have taken on $100 billion in debt to build AI compute capacity , which is scary, because debt is where things get dangerous.

英国《金融时报》还报道称，OpenAI 的合作伙伴已经承担了 1000 亿美元的债务来建设 AI 计算能力，这很可怕，因为债务是事情变得危险的地方。

The dot-com bubble was mostly an equity blow up, meaning there wasn’t this web of complex who-owes-who.

互联网泡沫主要是股市泡沫，这意味着不存在复杂的谁欠谁的网络。

Once you get debt involved 4 , it gets very tricky very quickly.

一旦涉及债务 4 ，事情很快就会变得非常棘手。

The US has also decided to sell some of Nvidia’s best chips to China for some soybeans and a 25% kickback, which as the Department of Justice said:

美国还决定以一些大豆和 25% 的回扣向中国出售一些 Nvidia 最好的芯片，正如美国司法部所说：

The country that controls these chips will control AI technology; the country that controls AI technology will control the future.

控制这些芯片的国家就控制了人工智能技术；控制人工智能技术的国家就控制了未来。

So you know, that’s fine.

所以你知道，那很好。

The Financial Times reports that the US is losing the AI race “many US companies, including Airbnb , have become fans of the “fast and cheap” Qwen” and they ask the question “can the west catch up with China?”.

英国《金融时报》报道称，美国正在输掉人工智能竞赛，“包括 Airbnb 在内的许多美国公司都成为了‘快速、廉价’Qwen 的粉丝”，他们提出了“西方能赶上中国吗？”的问题。

The chart below is really important - when we think about the future, we often think of the US as number one global superpower big guy pants, but China is investing in what is required to succeed in AI, which is energy.

下图非常重要——当我们思考未来时，我们经常认为美国是全球第一超级大国，但中国正在投资人工智能领域取得成功所需的资源，那就是能源。

The US decided to do the opposite.

美国决定反其道而行之。

Barclays estimated that more than half of US GDP growth in 2025 came from AI related investment.

巴克莱预计，2025年美国GDP增长的一半以上来自人工智能相关投资。

People know that we are staking the economy on something that doesn’t really promise much other than hey :) this thing will take your job :) and it’s gonna do art now :) and maybeee make a lot of people real rich but your electricity bill ( which is already flipping voters ) is going to go up.

人们知道我们把经济押注在一些除了嘿:)之外没有什么真正承诺的东西上:)这东西会抢走你的工作:)现在它会做艺术:)也许会让很多人真正变得富有，但你的电费(这已经让选民感到震惊)将会上涨。

And China might win.

中国可能会赢。

Also, it’s against the terms of service to kill yourself.

另外，自杀也是违反服务条款的。

Almost all young people are very worried it’s going to take away their jobs.

几乎所有年轻人都非常担心这会夺走他们的工作。

MIT’s Iceberg Index estimate s about 12% of US wages are in jobs AI could already do cheaper today, but only 2% of that is actually being automated so far.

麻省理工学院的冰山指数估计，美国约 12% 的工资来自人工智能今天可以以更便宜的价格完成的工作，但到目前为止，其中只有 2% 实际上被自动化。

The capability exists even if it hasn’t all been turned on yet.

即使尚未全部启用，该功能仍然存在。

How do you have trust in a system that doesn’t seem to care that much about what is going to happen to you?

你如何信任一个似乎不太关心你会发生什么的系统？

It’s likely part of the reason that almost 40% of Americans over 50 largely view the economy as “getting better” while most Americans between 18 and 49 say the economy as “getting worse”.

这可能是近 40% 50 岁以上美国人主要认为经济“好转”，而大多数 18 岁至 49 岁美国人认为经济“恶化”的部分原因。

It’s two different economies.

这是两个不同的经济体。

Older people are more insulated from AI and the housing shock.

老年人更容易受到人工智能和住房冲击的影响。

Young people are staring down the barrel.

年轻人都盯着桶下看。

Adam Millsap wrote an interesting piece about ‘total boomer luxury communism’ which is the broad idea that older people are “hoarding opportunities and resources while the young struggle to buy a house and support the generous Social Security and Medicare benefits the richest Boomers expect.” This intergenerational intensity is only going to get worse with medically assisted longevity and the entitlement drought.

亚当·米尔萨普（Adam Millsap）写了一篇关于“完全婴儿潮一代奢华共产主义”的有趣文章，这是一个广泛的概念，即老年人“囤积机会和资源，而年轻人则努力买房并支持最富有的婴儿潮一代所期望的慷慨的社会保障和医疗保险福利。”随着医疗辅助长寿和权利匮乏，这种代际强度只会变得更糟。

So what do people do?

那么人们会做什么呢？

AI is taking the jobs, policies are increasingly designed around the older population, and everything seems murky.

人工智能正在抢走工作岗位，政策越来越多地围绕老年人制定，一切似乎都很模糊。

How does one move forward?

一个人如何前进？

Kalshi’s co-CEO, Tarek Mansour, recently stated that the "the long term-vision is to financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion.”

Kalshi 的联合首席执行官塔里克·曼苏尔 (Tarek Mansour) 最近表示，“长期愿景是将一切金融化，并在任何意见分歧的情况下创建可交易资产。”

Financialize everything????

一切金融化？？？

Every disagreement, every uncertainty, every future outcome - all of it becomes a betting line??

每一个分歧，每一个不确定性，每一个未来的结果——所有这些都变成了赌注？

This is Marx’s commodity fetishism taken to its logical endpoint.

这就是马克思的商品拜物教的逻辑终点。

It is difficult to have solidarity when every interaction is a transaction and every opinion is a tradable asset.

当每一次互动都是一次交易，每一个意见都是可交易的资产时，就很难团结一致。

5

5

Gambling has become one of the few activities with immediate and sometimes life-changing payouts.

赌博已成为为数不多的可以立即获得回报、有时甚至可以改变生活的活动之一。

Living near a casino increases the likelihood of becoming a problem gambler.

住在赌场附近会增加成为问题赌徒的可能性。

Living inside your phone , where the casino comes to you, well, I am sure you can imagine.

生活在你的手机里，赌场就在你身边，好吧，我相信你可以想象。

But no one wants this, as shown below.

但没有人想要这样，如下所示。

That’s the real bummer about the casino economy.

这才是赌场经济真正令人沮丧的地方。

No one wants it.

没有人想要它。

Attention being monetized, engagement being optimized, risk being financialized, everything is sort of structured like a scam - layers of middlemen extracting value as both Whitney Curry Wimbish wrote about for The American Prospect and Emily Stewart wrote about for Business Insider and no real regulation or stopguards.

注意力被货币化，参与度被优化，风险被金融化，一切的结构都像一个骗局——层层中间人榨取价值，就像惠特尼·库里·温比什（Whitney Curry Wimbish）为《美国前景》（The American Prospect）和艾米丽·斯图尔特（Emily Stewart）为《商业内幕》（Business Insider）所写的那样，没有真正的监管或阻止措施。

Some would say “well listen, clearly the market has spoken it’s preference, and that preference is that people spin the roulette wheel” but like, I don’t know.

有些人会说“听着，显然市场已经表达了它的偏好，而这种偏好就是人们旋转轮盘赌”，但我不知道。

When the labor market tightens and upward mobility stalls and when wealth is concentrated at the top and increasingly inaccessible, gambling feels like a rational response.

当劳动力市场收紧、向上流动停滞、财富集中在顶层且越来越难以获得时，赌博似乎是一种理性的反应。

When that’s the structure, people lose their sense of purpose and meaning ( Victor Frankl, help ) and that’s when problems develop.

当这种结构出现时，人们就会失去目标感和意义（维克多·弗兰克尔，帮忙），这就是问题出现的时候。

Reduced cognitive bandwidth + extractive systems everywhere = rational economic paranoia.

认知带宽的减少+无处不在的提取系统=理性的经济偏执。

People sense they’re being scammed because they often are.

人们感觉自己被骗了，因为他们经常被骗。

And when the usual paths feel unpredictable, people turn to narrative ladders - online communities, aesthetic categories, etc. These become ways to make sense of uncertainty.

当通常的路径感到不可预测时，人们就会转向叙事阶梯——在线社区、审美类别等。这些成为理解不确定性的方式。

The $140k poverty line debate fell into this landscape.

14 万美元贫困线的争论就属于这种情况。

The reaction was about recognition and experience and whether people’s version of the world was legible to anyone else.

人们的反应是关于认知和经验，以及人们对世界的看法是否对其他人来说是清晰的。

Not all of it is rational, but all of it exists.

并非所有的都是理性的，但所有的都是存在的。

When values diverge and shared baselines weaken, collective solutions become structurally impossible.

当价值观出现分歧且共同基线减弱时，集体解决方案在结构上就变得不可能。

Even when there’s broad consensus - no one actually wants the casino economy - we can’t coordinate to stop it because we can’t agree on what “stopping it” would look like or who should have the power to do it.

即使存在广泛共识——没有人真正想要赌场经济——我们也无法协调阻止它，因为我们无法就“阻止它”是什么样子或谁应该有权力做到这一点达成一致。

For 70 really bizarre and unusual years, America ran on a simple contract: deliver growth, and people will tolerate the rest.

在 70 个真正离奇和不寻常的年份里，美国遵循着一个简单的契约：实现增长，而人们将容忍其余的事情。

But on the most consistent things I hear from people across age, geography, and income from my 40 weeks on the road this year is that the basic arc of life has stopped making sense.

但在我今年 40 周的旅途中，我从不同年龄、地域和收入的人们那里听到的最一致的说法是，生活的基本弧线已经不再有意义。

This is anecdote, sure, but it’s what people stop to talk to me about.

当然，这只是轶事，但人们却停下来跟我谈论这个话题。

Their concerns.

他们的担忧。

Their worries, not only about their own finances, but also about the broad future.

他们的担忧，不仅是对自己的财务状况，更是对广阔的未来。

So here’s where we are: caught in a compound crisis where economic stress reduces cognitive bandwidth, reduced bandwidth enables extraction, extraction deepens economic stress, stress plus overload erodes trust, loss of trust prevents coordination, coordination failure leaves problems unsolved, and unsolved problems deepen the crisis.

所以，我们现在的处境是：陷入了一场复合危机，经济压力减少了认知带宽，减少的带宽导致了提取，提取加剧了经济压力，压力加上超负荷侵蚀了信任，信任的丧失阻碍了协调，协调失败导致问题得不到解决，而未解决的问题又加深了危机。

This isn’t a problem you solve with one policy lever.

这不是一个可以用单一政策杠杆解决的问题。

You can’t just “fix housing” or “regulate AI” or “improve media literacy” when the trap operates at the intersection of all of them.

当陷阱在所有这些的交叉点上起作用时，你不能只是“修复住房”或“监管人工智能”或“提高媒体素养”。

Economic deterioration and epistemic collapse are mutually reinforcing, and they’ve destroyed the institutional capacity and social trust required to address either one.

经济恶化和认知崩溃是相辅相成的，它们破坏了解决任一问题所需的机构能力和社会信任。

Which is bleak!

这真是惨淡啊！

But breaking that loop doesn’t require solving everything at once.

但打破这个循环并不需要立即解决所有问题。

It requires identifying which element is most actionable and recognizing that improving one part weakens the trap everywhere else.

它需要确定哪个元素最可行，并认识到改进一个部分会削弱其他地方的陷阱。

Reduce economic stress directly - Make the Baumol sectors affordable again (sooo easy, I know).

直接减轻经济压力 - 让鲍莫尔部门再次负担得起（我知道太容易了）。

If people have more economic breathing room, they have more cognitive bandwidth.

如果人们有更多的经济喘息空间，他们就有更多的认知带宽。

We all know this.

我们都知道这一点。

More bandwidth means less vulnerability to extraction and scams.

更多带宽意味着更少的漏洞被提取和诈骗。

Less vulnerability means better decision-making.

更少的脆弱性意味着更好的决策。

Better decisions mean less economic stress.

更好的决策意味着更少的经济压力。

Regulate extraction directly - Ban or heavily restrict the business models that profit from confusion and cognitive overload.

直接监管提取——禁止或严格限制从混乱和认知超载中获利的商业模式。

Kalshi wants to financialize everything?

卡尔希想把一切都金融化？

We can say no!

我们可以说不！

Prediction markets on elections can be prohibited.

可以禁止选举预测市场。

It’s all incentives.

这都是激励。

We regulated casinos, we can regulate digital casinos.

我们监管赌场，我们可以监管数字赌场。

Make AI benefits legible - Right now people experience AI as “your electricity bill is going up and eventually this will take your job.” If AI is going to drive growth, that growth needs to show up in ordinary people’s lives as tangible benefits - lower healthcare costs from diagnostic tools, cheaper goods, more time.

让人工智能的好处显而易见——现在，人们对人工智能的体验是“你的电费在上涨，最终会夺走你的工作”。如果人工智能要推动增长，那么这种增长需要以切实的好处体现在普通人的生活中——诊断工具降低医疗成本、更便宜的商品、更多的时间。

None of this is easy.

这一切都不容易。

All of it is impossibly hard.

这一切都是不可能的困难。

But it’s not hopeless.

但这并非没有希望。

You don’t need to fix everything simultaneously.

您不需要同时修复所有问题。

It requires affordability (the affordability tour just began, I hear) and state capacity and friction and sense of what it means to be human in a world full of technology and and the very simple and small task of eradicating crony capitalism and developing some sense of shared reality.

它需要负担能力（我听说，负担能力之旅才刚刚开始）、国家能力、摩擦和对在一个充满技术的世界中作为人类意味着什么的认识，以及根除裙带资本主义和发展某种共同现实意识的非常简单而小的任务。

An important note - the Internet went down halfway through my cross country flight, a mere few hours after the open mouth cougher.

重要的一点是——在我的跨国飞行中途，在张口咳嗽后仅仅几个小时，互联网就断掉了。

I was typing furiously, doing all types of Very Important Work, you know, writing this newsletter.

我疯狂地打字，做各种类型的非常重要的工作，你知道，写这篇时事通讯。

All of us were, typing, emailing, capital-S-slacking in the Dark.

我们所有人都在黑暗中打字、发邮件、偷懒。

With no Internet, we all started to open the windows to the plane.

由于没有互联网，我们都开始打开飞机的窗户。

Outside was one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve seen.

外面是我见过的最美丽的日落之一。

There’s something there too.

那里也有一些东西。

Finally, I really like this from a recent interview with Kahlil Joseph

最后，我真的很喜欢最近对 Kahlil Joseph 的采访

There’s the famous story of Jimi Hendrix mastering his music for the transistor radio because that’s what the GIs listened to, so he mastered his work for FM radio.

有一个著名的故事，吉米·亨德里克斯 (Jimi Hendrix) 为晶体管收音机掌握了他的音乐，因为大兵们都听这首歌，所以他为 FM 收音机掌握了他的作品。

He wasn’t thinking that somebody was going to have some thousand-dollar system listening to his music.

他没想到有人会用价值数千美元的系统来听他的音乐。

That always stuck with me, meeting people where they’re at.

在人们所在的地方与他们见面，这一直困扰着我。

This is a reader-supported publication.

这是一本由读者支持的出版物。

To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

要接收新帖子并支持我的工作，请考虑成为付费订阅者。

UMich Survey of Consumers changed to web surveys instead of random digit dialing in mid-2024

密歇根大学消费者调查将于 2024 年中期改为网络调查，而不是随机数字拨号

Netflix and Paramount are in a bidding war for Warner Brothers, and according to the WSJ , “David Ellison offered assurances to Trump administration officials that if he bought Warner, he’d make sweeping changes to CNN, a common target of President Trump’s ire”

Netflix 和派拉蒙正在为华纳兄弟展开竞购战，据《华尔街日报》报道，“大卫·埃里森向特朗普政府官员保证，如果他收购华纳，他将对 CNN 进行彻底改变，而 CNN 是特朗普总统愤怒的共同目标”

There is already a tremendous amount of backlash.

已经存在巨大的反弹。

The fact that Róisín Lanigan wrote a piece titled The Next Status Symbol is an Offline Childhood is pretty self-explainable.

罗伊辛·拉尼根（Róisín Lanigan）写了一篇题为《下一个地位象征是离线童年》的文章，这一事实是不言而喻的。

There are more and more pieces like P.E.

像P.E.这样的作品越来越多。

Moskowitz’s The Internet is Destroying Our Memory and History , noting what the Internet has taken - and given.

莫斯科维茨的《互联网正在摧毁我们的记忆和历史》，指出了互联网夺取和给予的东西。

Already some cracks.

已经有些裂缝了。

Applied Digital struggled to sell their bonds, offering 10% yields to attract buyers.

Applied Digital 难以出售其债券，提供 10% 的收益率来吸引买家。

They provide data center services to CoreWeave, which provides data center services to Nvidia & OpenAI.

他们为 CoreWeave 提供数据中心服务，而 CoreWeave 为 Nvidia 和 OpenAI 提供数据中心服务。

Kalshi also got hit with a nationwide class action lawsuit for operating what plaintiffs claim is an “illegal sports betting platform”.

卡尔希还因运营原告声称的“非法体育博彩平台”而受到全国范围内的集体诉讼。

The suit alleges that Kalshi was “duping” customers into believing they were betting against other consumers when they were actually betting against the house (which is Kalshi).

该诉讼称，卡尔希“欺骗”客户，让他们相信他们在与其他消费者下注，而实际上他们是在对赌庄家（即卡尔希）。

Also, the Nevada state court has ruled that Kalshi is not exempt from state gambling regulations , which complicates their business model substantially.

此外，内华达州法院裁定卡尔希不能免受州赌博法规的约束，这使他们的商业模式大大复杂化。

A Bloomberg analysis showed that Kalshi’s fees are so high that in most cases you’re better off just using FanDuel.

彭博社的分析显示，Kalshi 的费用如此之高，以至于在大多数情况下，你最好只使用 FanDuel。

Kyla, Your approach to this question of modern economics is just genius.

凯拉，你对这个现代经济学问题的方法真是天才。

Like Jimmy, meet people where they are at.

像吉米一样，在人们所在的地方认识他们。

Making this understandable and actionable is crazy difficult to be sure, but we have to start with understanding it.

让这一点变得易于理解和可操作是非常困难的，但我们必须从理解它开始。

I wish every Congress Person and every Senator and really everyone would/could read this objectively (as much as anyone really can) and see that this problem of our own making is also fixable if we can simply sit down and admit it is a problem and break it down into its component parts and start fixing them.

我希望每一位国会议员、每一位参议员以及实际上的每个人都能客观地阅读这篇文章（尽可能多地阅读），并看到，如果我们能够坐下来承认这是一个问题，并将其分解为各个组成部分并开始解决，那么我们自己造成的这个问题也是可以解决的。

My biggest take away is a certain level of hope that we actually can confront this next wave of Anthropocene evolution and do it smart.

我最大的收获是在一定程度上希望我们能够真正应对人类世进化的下一波浪潮并明智地应对。

It puts me in mind of the Amish.

这让我想起了阿米什人。

They are not Luddites as many people think, they just consider what technology and practices they want to let into their community.

他们并不像许多人想象的那样是勒德分子，他们只是考虑他们想要让哪些技术和实践进入他们的社区。

We need a similar approach and realize that components of AI are truly amazing (medical, space, virology - targeted disciplines), but unfortunately we are confronted with a 10 different bots and options every day that no on really wants and the combined specter of it taking your job.

我们需要类似的方法，并认识到人工智能的组成部分确实令人惊叹（医学、太空、病毒学 - 目标学科），但不幸的是，我们每天都会面临 10 个不同的机器人和选项，而这些机器人和选项并不是我们真正想要的，而且它们综合起来会夺走你的工作。

Keep it up and thanks!

坚持下去，谢谢！

Many of your newsletters have certainly influenced this: the more I've read/thought about these problems, the more I keep coming back to the solution needing to start with tuning down algorithmically curated content.

你们的许多时事通讯肯定对此产生了影响：我对这些问题阅读/思考的越多，我就越会不断回到需要从调整算法策划的内容开始的解决方案。

We are all SO mad, all the time, fight or flight response every time you open your phone because the algorithms know anger drives engagement and makes us FEEL, even if we feel bad.

每次你打开手机时，我们都非常生气，每时每刻都会做出战斗或逃跑的反应，因为算法知道愤怒会推动参与，让我们有感觉，即使我们感觉很糟糕。

Feeling bad also uses so much bandwidth.

心情不好也会占用大量带宽。

I remember a time where I would open social media (then chronologically sorted), scroll until I saw a post I had already seen, and then closed my phone and moved on.

我记得有一次我会打开社交媒体（然后按时间顺序排序），滚动直到看到我已经看过的帖子，然后关闭手机并继续前进。

I used to think I was "caught up", like you were done reading the paper for the day.

我曾经以为我“陷入困境”，就像你读完当天的报纸一样。

We underestimate the addiction to scrolling to the next thing.

我们低估了滚动到下一件事的瘾。

The timeline for when it feels like things really started falling apart coincides pretty well with the time where you stopped having quite as much say in what came across your desk (the algoritms know what you like more than you do, after all).

感觉事情真正开始崩溃的时间线与你不再对办公桌上的东西有太多发言权的时间线非常吻合（毕竟，算法比你更知道你喜欢什么）。

Ironically, that is when the serious echo-chamber formation actually accelerated and it's compounded at an alarming rate ever since.

具有讽刺意味的是，正是在那时，严重的回声室形成实际上加速了，并且从那时起它就以惊人的速度复合了。