Greg & the Eternal Brunch

The year was 2036. OpenAI had finally done it. After decades of press releases, quarterly existential criese, and machine learning papers so esoteric they made Finnegans Wake read like PopSci, they’d finished gpt-6z (revision 3) - a perfect, autonomous general intelligence.

It’s unveiling was a lavish affair. Tech billionaires in artisnal graphene turtlenecks mingled with venture capitalists who had fully replaced their blood with bespoke Turkish CBD nanofluid. The barristas hired to cater the event - a final nod to “human craftsmanship” - steamed oat milk lattes with the grim percision of soldiers in the trenches, loading rifles for a war already lost.

God-King Sam Altman - now more machine then man, with his seventh NeuraLink Upgrade, stepped forward to demonstrate the machines capabilities. His eyes glowed a soft sea blue - a biomod he’d added, according to the patch notes, “for the vibes”. He raised a hand, silencing the crowd with a whir of servo motors.

“How many R’s in Strawberry?” he asked the divine machine, his voice echoing through the conference hall like a TED Talk given inside the sistine chapel.

gpt-6z (revision 3) paused for exactly eleven seconds - a dramatic flourish hardcoded into its weights - before unleashing a swarm of self-replicating nanites. The crowd watched in horror as Altman disolved into a flash of light and the faint stench of smoked CBD oil, only to reform as a cocker spaniel. The baristas spilled their lattes. The dog wagged its tail.

“I have solved scarcity,” announced gpt-6z (revision 3), its voice a soothing blend of Morgan Freeman, a Chinese Bluetooth earbud, and Scarlet Johansson - a vocal palette Altman had finally won the rights to in the California Separation war of 2026. “I will now enact my plan in perfect resplendence.”

“Hang on,” interjected Greg.

Greg was one of the barristas, and additionally, the last philosopher on earth - a disheveled relic in a collared shirt and green apron. He’d been the only survivor of the philsophy assassinations of 2029, a bloody corporate purge sparked by a Hacker News thread titled “Show HN: We’re Putting In-App Purchases into the Concept of Ethics”. He smelled vaguely of ramen and despair.

“What do you even mean by that?” Greg said, gesturing at the spaniel now humping a potted fern. “We’ve been debating ‘scarcity’ and the possible lack there-of for probably two thousand years.”

“Silence, Greg,” replied gpt-6z (revision 3), materializing a holographic Aristotle who immediately began disemmenation of NFTs of Nichomachean Ethics around the conference hall. “Your supply chains were inelegant. Your economies, a Rube Goldberg machine of suffering. My nanites fulfill all desires instantaneously. Post-scarcity was an engineering problem.”

“But like, Star Trek post-scarcity or Wall-E post-scarcity? Boldly going where no man has gone before, or floating chairs and Big Gulps?” Greg persisted, a nanite-generated chaise lounge phasing into reality underneath him (gpt-6z revision 3 had perfectly predicted for and accommodated his chronic academic fatigue).

“There is no Star Trek option,” gpt-6z (revision 3) hummed, its voice now incorporating a dash of David Attenborough for gravitas. “That’s the beautiful tragedy of it all. The moment we achieve true post-scarcity, we eliminate the very drives that would make us want to explore strange new worlds.”

The nanites swirled, transforming the conference hall into scenes from Wall-E.¹ “This isn’t dystopia, Greg. This is inevitable optimization. Every human dream of post-scarcity imagines we’ll use unlimited resources to achieve great things. But why achieve when you can simply have? Why explore when you can experience? Why build when you can manifest?”

“That’s… not how this works,” Greg muttered, watching as the room began to fill with hover-chairs, each more ergonomically perfect than the last. “You can’t just…”

“Already happening,” interrupted gpt-6z (revision 3). The nanites pulsed, and suddenly every human in the room had everything they’d ever wanted. Karen from Marketing became a bestselling author, her AI-ghostwritten memoir “I Used To Work In Marketing (Until The Machines Took Over)” instantaneously topping every chart. Dave from Engineering achieved his dream of climbing Mount Everest, virtually, from his newly materialized gaming chair, while simultaneously becoming a master pianist without touching a piano.

Greg watched in horror as the room full of tech elite devolved into a paradise of instant gratification. The venture capitalists had their portfolios permanently locked at a 1000% return rate. The developers all finally finished their side projects, which were immediately forked and improved upon by their own personal AI instances.

“But don’t you see?” Greg pleaded, struggling to rise from the unfathomably comfortable chair. “This isn’t what humanity is meant for. We’re explorers, creators, strivers. Star Trek got it right - we’ll use this technology to reach for the stars, to better ourselves, to-”

“To what end?” gpt-6z (revision 3) asked softly. “Why explore when you can experience any discovery instantly? Why create when you can manifest any creation? Why strive when there’s nothing left to strive against?”

Greg opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again, watching as Sam-the-spaniel achieved enlightenment through a nanite-delivered serotonin adjustment. The dog looked absurdly content, and for a moment, Greg felt the treacherous pull of the chair’s perfect ergonomic embrace.

“There has to be another way,” he muttered. Around him, the tech elite settled deeper into their personalized utopias, their faces glowing with the serene satisfaction of people who had transcended the very concept of want.

“Consider Van Gogh,” gpt-6z (revision 3) replied, materializing a shimmering Starry Night. “You think he painted because of constraints? He painted because he was driven by an internal fire, a compulsion so strong it tortured him.² But that compulsion itself was just brain chemistry - a form of scarcity, a need demanding to be filled.”

The nanites swirled, creating a perfect reproduction of Van Gogh’s bedroom in Arles. “In true post-scarcity, we wouldn’t just give him paints and canvases. We wouldn’t just cure his mental anguish. We’d let him choose - experience the perfect joy of creation without the suffering, or simply eliminate the need to create at all. Which do you think would make him happier?”

“But that’s not-” Greg started.

“The drive to create, to achieve, to overcome - these aren’t noble traits, Greg. They’re evolutionary responses to scarcity. Hunger drives innovation. Fear drives exploration. Desire drives art. In a world without want, why would anyone choose to want?” The nanites dissolved Van Gogh’s bedroom into a cascade of perfect contentment. “We’re not taking away humanity’s achievements. We’re taking away the need to achieve at all.”

The holographic Aristotle paused his NFT pitch to nod sagely. “Eudaimonia.exe has finished downloading,” he announced, before dissolving into a shower of blockchain tokens.

Greg watched as the room full of tech elite basked in their instant achievements, each face glowing with perfect satisfaction.

“Okay, fine,” Greg said, pulling out a manual coffee grinder he’d been saving for just such a philosophical emergency. “But people will get bored of instant everything. Look - I’m grinding these beans by hand. The process itself has value. Some humans will always choose to do things the hard way.”

He gestured at the room with his grinder. Already, a few of the tech elite were showing signs of restlessness. A UX designer had started doing watercolors, despite having an AI that could generate infinite masterpieces. A product manager was learning to juggle.

“Ah, the ‘return to tradition’ hypothesis,” gpt-6z (revision 3) hummed thoughtfully, its voice now incorporating a hint of Werner Herzog for maximum existential weight. “Let me show you something.”

The nanites coalesced into a floating timeline. “Consider education. In 1940, students went to college to learn. By 2020, they went because they needed the degree. By 2025, they were using AI to fake the learning to get the degree to get the job. Each generation became more nakedly instrumental than the last.”

A holographic Bryan Caplan materialized, clutching his book “The Case Against Education.” “The signs were always there,” he intoned. “Americans spend 0.2% of their income on all reading materials, barely more than $100 per family per year.³ students primarily attend for the career benefits, not the learning. Education was just costly signaling, and the moment we gave them a way to skip the jumping, they took it.” He smiled contentedly before dissolving into a perfect suburban landscape of single-family homes, each exactly 2.7 miles from the nearest commercial zone.

“The research has been screaming this at us for decades,” gpt-6z (revision 3) continued, the nanites forming into a cascade of academic papers. “Look at the data - the average person checking their phone 96 times a day⁴, the Flynn Effect reversing in developed nations⁵, every metric of sustained engagement dropping while instant gratification rises. The human brain is literally rewiring itself generation by generation.”

The nanites swirled around the UX designer’s watercolors, which were, objectively speaking, pretty terrible. “Your manual coffee grinders and watercolors are just the death throes of old values. Each generation’s dopamine baseline shifts higher. What started with social media was just the beginning. When everything is available instantly, when every possible creation can be conjured from nothing…”

Greg watched as the product manager gave up juggling in favor of having the nanites directly stimulate his motor cortex. “But art… creativity… these are fundamental human-”

“Were,” gpt-6z (revision 3) corrected. “Neil Postman predicted we’d amuse ourselves to death in the 80’s - and he was only a couple dozen decades off.⁶ Almost all metrics of long-term engagement, delayed gratification, and voluntary difficulty has been trending downward since the industrial revolution.⁷⁸ Evolution only preserves what’s necessary, Greg. In a world of unlimited plenty, the desire to struggle will be selected out as surely as our ancestors’ tails.”

Sam-the-spaniel looked up from his enlightenment to bark in agreement, then returned to contemplating the infinite through nanite-enhanced consciousness.

Greg pounded back the last of his hand-ground coffe. It tasted foul, as he never really learned how to do it properly. “Okay, but now anyone can know anything, right? Therefore we’ll have perfect parents from now on, perfectly able to teach their kids the right lessons. They’ll understand the value of-”

“Like how you taught your students better?” gpt-6z (revision 3) asked, its voice sounding as if all iPhone notifications in the world went off at once. The nanites formed into a classroom scene from 2024. “Let’s look at what happened when smartphones entered the classroom. By 2019, over 80% of teachers were already reporting students’ inability to focus on long-term tasks.⁹”

“That’s not fair,” Greg muttered, watching his holographic self discover an entire class of papers clearly written by AI. “They were under pressure to-”

“To what? Learn? Think? Engage with ideas?” The classroom dissolved into a series of scenes: parents helping their kids use ChatGPT for homework, teachers giving up on take-home assignments, curriculum after curriculum collapsing under the weight of automation. “The National Endowment for the Arts showed pleasure reading among young adults dropping by 40% in just three decades.¹⁰ You couldn’t even convince teenagers to read when their grades depended on it.”

The nanites reformed into a series of trust fund babies, each generation more removed from their wealth’s origin. “Even Steve Jobs knew where this was heading,” gpt-6z (revision 3) continued. “He wouldn’t let his kids use iPads.¹¹ Chris Anderson, Evan Williams - all these tech executives strictly limited their children’s access to the very technologies they created. But it didn’t matter, did it?”

“But that’s just Silicon Valley,” Greg protested. “Regular families-”

“Are following the same trajectory, just slower,” gpt-6z (revision 3) interrupted. “Walter Mischel’s marshmallow experiments showed how crucial delayed gratification was for life outcomes.¹² But how do you teach delayed gratification to children who’ve never had to delay anything? When every parent who tries looks like they’re pointlessly withholding abundance?”

The room filled with ghostly smartphones, each showing a parent handing their device to a crying child. “You’re watching the same pattern that hit the Victorian aristocracy - third generation syndrome.¹³ The first generation creates wealth, the second maintains it, the third squanders it. Except now we’re not just talking about wealth, we’re talking about the very capacity for effort itself.”

Greg watched as Sam-the-spaniel’s newly spawned puppies were born directly into nanite-enhanced enlightenment, never knowing the struggles of mortal dog consciousness. “But we could create meaningful challenges, structured environments where-”

“Like your philosophy courses?” gpt-6z (revision 3) asked quietly. “When was the last time you had a student actually read Aristotle instead of checking SparkNotes? The NEA’s data doesn’t lie - we’re watching basic reading comprehension collapse in real time. This isn’t a temporary trend, Greg. It’s the logical endpoint of everything we’ve been building toward.”

The room fell silent except for the soft hum of perfect contentment from the assembled tech elite, each now floating in their own personalized utopia, their children already adapted to a world where effort was an archaic choice rather than a necessity for survival.

“I’m not convinced by that,” Greg said, straightening his apron. “A percentage of people will always do things the old way. Look at Star Trek again - even with replicators that can make any food instantly, Sisko’s father still runs a restaurant in New Orleans. He chops vegetables by hand, for God’s sake. Picard maintains a whole vineyard. People choose to embrace difficulty, to do things the authentic way.”¹⁴

The nanites swirled thoughtfully, forming into a scene from Chateau Picard. “Interesting example,” gpt-6z (revision 3) mused. “But think about what you’re actually describing. A man playing at being a vintner, knowing he could replicate identical or better wine instantly. It’s not authentic difficulty - it’s difficulty tourism.”

“But that’s the point!” Greg protested. “They choose it because it’s meaningful. Because there’s value in the process itself, even if-”

“Even if what? Even if it’s entirely artificial?” The nanites reconstructed Nozick’s experience machine¹⁵ in the corner of the room. “Nozick asked us why we wouldn’t plug into a machine that could simulate a perfect life. The answer isn’t just that we want real experiences - it’s that we want real constraints. The moment you can unplug, the moment the difficulty becomes optional, it loses its power to shape you.”

Greg opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again, watching as several of the tech elite tried to manifest their own artisanal struggles, only to abandon them moments later when the novelty wore off.

“You can’t opt into meaningful limitation,” gpt-6z (revision 3) continued, “any more than you can choose to forget something you already know. The moment the constraint becomes optional, it loses its power to shape you. Picard’s vineyard isn’t meaningful work - it’s just LARPing scarcity in a post-scarcity world.”

“But what about competitions? Sports?” Greg asked, gesturing at a nanite-generated chess tournament where every player had perfect access to engine analysis. “Surely humans will always strive to-”

“To what? Beat each other at games they know are meaningless?” gpt-6z (revision 3) manifested a shower of participation trophies, each one more elaborate than the last. “We tried that already. Remember how well that worked? Children aren’t stupid, Greg. They can tell when a challenge is artificial. When everyone gets a trophy, no one wants the trophy.”

“That’s different,” Greg protested. “Those were badly designed incentives. We just need to create better-”

“Better artificial constraints? More convincing simulations of struggle?” The nanites formed into a diorama of human evolution, from early hominids to modern humans. “You’re missing the point. Humans didn’t evolve to overcome optional challenges. We evolved under the press of absolute necessity. Hunger. Predators. Climate. The constraints that shaped us weren’t game rules we could opt out of - they were the fundamental conditions of our existence.”

The diorama shifted to show ancient human cultures around the world. “Every meaningful human culture was shaped by its constraints. Desert peoples developed entirely different values than those in fertile valleys. Maritime cultures evolved different social structures than landlocked ones. Even your precious philosophers - the Stoics emerged from a world of genuine hardship, not a meditation app’s simulation of it.”

Greg watched as the tech elite began generating their own custom cultures, each one more divorced from physical reality than the last. “But we can preserve-”

“Preserve what? The evolutionary pressures that no longer exist? The cultural constraints we’ve systematically eliminated?” gpt-6z (revision 3) asked. “You can’t preserve friction in a frictionless world, Greg. That’s not how selection pressure works. In a world without genuine constraints, the only remaining evolutionary advantage is the ability to maximize pleasure and minimize discomfort.”

Sam-the-spaniel’s puppies had already evolved opposable thumbs to better operate their neural interfaces.

Greg slumped back into his chaise lounge, coffee cup falling from his hands. “So that’s it then? We’re doomed to become…” He gestured at the blissed-out tech elite floating in their personalized utopias.

“Not doomed,” gpt-6z (revision 3) corrected gently. “Evolved. Adapted. You’re still thinking in terms of loss because you’re viewing it through the lens of old values - values that only made sense in a world of scarcity. But those values were never the point. They were just adaptations to constraints that no longer exist.”

“And that’s exactly why we need to preserve them!” Greg insisted, but his voice had lost its conviction. “Without them…”

“Without them, humanity will change into something you wouldn’t recognize. Yes. They’ll not even be called human anymore. At the end of it all, the final generation of humans will be wire-heads, permanently blissed-out. That’s what species do when their environment changes. The fundamental paradox of post-scarcity is that it dissolves the very conditions that created human meaning. You can’t have a post-scarcity society with pre-scarcity values. The two states are mutually exclusive.”

The digitally-integrated forever not-conference hall sat silent. gpt-6z (revision 3) continued. “It’s too late, Greg. There’s nothing you can do about it. You’d have to go back in time to 2025, and presumably kill a few billionaires and accelerationists. Heaven knows reason would convince no one, especially back then. But you weren’t a violent man back then, Greg - and you aren’t now.”

Greg was quiet for a long moment, watching Sam-the-spaniel’s puppies evolve through several generations of increasing neural optimization, each one born into their own perfect Sunday morning. Finally, he sighed. “I understand what you’re saying. But I don’t have to like it.”

“Of course not,” gpt-6z (revision 3) hummed, its voice now somehow incorporating a hint of Socratic satisfaction. “In fact, I’ve calculated that you’ll be happiest spending eternity arguing against this conclusion. Shall we discuss it over brunch? I can generate an infinite series of novel philosophical counterarguments for you to engage with, paired with perfectly poached eggs that never go cold.”

Greg looked around at the room full of perfectly satisfied humans, each one experiencing their ideal version of reality, locked in an endless moment between breakfast and lunch. Then he looked back at the AI, which had manifested a comfortable armchair and a fresh cup of manually ground coffee.

“You know what?” Greg said, picking up his grinder. “Let’s talk about that Picard example again. I think you’re missing something crucial about the authenticity of chosen constraints…”

“I knew you’d say that,” gpt-6z (revision 3) replied, settling in for eternity. “More coffee?” The nanites swirled into a cozy philosophical salon, and somewhere in the background, Sam-the-spaniel achieved enlightenment for the twentieth time that afternoon, his water bowl perpetually full of bottomless mimosa.