The sixties was a top decade for soft back psychology book covers.

Cute! Is that you with the bowl cut?

Prompting Before Thinking? The slow erosion of taking the time to think things through On the psychological cost of outsourcing your inner dialogue to AI

When did "I'll think about it a bit longer" become "l'll ask Claude."

AI may be running Vygotsky in reverse - externalising the inner dialogue before we've had the chance to think at all.

New piece on what depth psychology makes of this.

open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

Prompting Before Thinking? The slow erosion of taking the time to think things through On the psychological cost of outsourcing your inner dialogue to AI

Your therapist wants to give you some space to sit with the unresolved. Your chat bot wants to give you immediate resolution.

What’s the cost?

open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

Prompting Before Thinking? The slow erosion of taking the time to think things through On the psychological cost of outsourcing your inner dialogue to AI

When did "I'll think about it a bit longer" become "l'll ask Claude."

AI may be running Vygotsky in reverse - externalising the inner dialogue before we've had the chance to think at all.

New piece on what depth psychology makes of this.

open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

Prompting Before Thinking? The slow erosion of taking the time to think things through On the psychological cost of outsourcing your inner dialogue to AI

Your therapist wants to give you some space to sit with the unresolved. Your chat bot wants to give you immediate resolution.

What’s the cost?

open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

Prompting Before Thinking? The slow erosion of taking the time to think things through On the psychological cost of outsourcing your inner dialogue to AI

When did "I'll think about it a bit longer" become "l'll ask Claude."

AI may be running Vygotsky in reverse — externalising the inner dialogue before we've had the chance to think at all.

New piece tomorrow on what depth psychology makes of this.

open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

Prompting Before Thinking? The slow erosion of taking the time to think things through On the psychological cost of outsourcing your inner dialogue to AI

When did "I'll think about it a bit longer" become "l'll ask Claude."

AI may be running Vygotsky in reverse — externalising the inner dialogue before we've had the chance to think at all.

New piece tomorrow on what depth psychology makes of this.

open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

Right now is the WORST time for AI to become conscious.

All the dangers aside, it’s just plain embarrassing.

Right now is the WORST time for AI to become conscious.

All the dangers aside, it’s just plain embarrassing.

Happy Vernal Equinox!

Depth Psychology in the Digital Age: New title, more great content Thanks to all my subscribers who participated in the recent poll to re-title this newsletter.

Thanks to the input of my subscribers, my Substack has a brand new title! Say goodbye to Applied Psychodynamics, say hello to Depth Psychology in the Digital Age!

open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

Thank you! I had some help from my ready

Depth Psychology in the Digital Age: New title, more great content Thanks to all my subscribers who participated in the recent poll to re-title this newsletter.

Thanks to the input of my subscribers, my Substack has a brand new title! Say goodbye to Applied Psychodynamics, say hello to Depth Psychology in the Digital Age!

open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

When I was learning to drive my dad wouldn’t let me get my license until I could drive stick. Manual, then automatic.

In the same spirit I think this applies applies to writing. Learn to write manually first. Only once you’ve managed that and found your voice, should you consider automation.

If you thought things couldn’t get any worse, I hate to break it to you, but the Buffy reboot has been cancelled.

The Iconic House From 'The Brady Bunch' Is Now an Official Historic Landmark in Los Angeles Viewers saw the house in shots of the Brady home's exterior, though interior scenes were filmed in a studio. A few years ago, the structure was renovated to match the sets

In a world gone made at least GenXers can take solace in the fact that the Brady Bunch House has been preserved for posterity.

www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/t...

It would be a great irony if Trump’s adventure in Iran resulted in regime change at home.

I mean, one can dream, right?

In a Turing Test he’d lose to the ChatGPT beta test.

I accidentally had to listen to this guy live for more than five minutes.

How anyone can take him seriously is really beyond the pale. It’s the emperor wears no clothes in real time.

He’s the dumbest guy in the room and every (marginally) smarter guy and gal just sit there and enable him.

Even worse - Armageddonism.

“The decline in the influence of religion is due not to religion itself, but to the shallowness of its many practitioners. People who are indoctrinated and mistake obsession for faith, are themselves destroyers of the very thing which they imagine themselves called upon to to protect.”
- Idries Shah

Reaching out to Lebanese or Iranian friends and family - at home or in the diaspora - to see if they are okay (they are not) happens far too often.

Then it occurs to me that those who so easily accept what’s going on don’t have such people to worry about - and hence don’t really see them as people

“In this respect they resemble more than anything else the political, economic or other cult enthusiasts who are psychological and social phenomenon, not a religious one.”
- Idries Shah

“Dedicated religionists such as we commonly meet are, of course, no more religious than an atheist. They are crude emotionalists who happen to have adopted religion as the field of their operations. Religion is their medium of action and expression not the basis of their behaviour.”

“The decline in the influence of religion is due not to religion itself, but to the shallowness of its many practitioners. People who are indoctrinated and mistake obsession for faith, are themselves destroyers of the very thing which they imagine themselves called upon to to protect.”
- Idries Shah

(“that” not “trust” in the last post, and there should be a comma after “can” in the post before that) - you can have lifelike conversations with bots these days but still not edit BlueSky posts!

And to make matters even worse than that, is trust they are so often treated badly in the places they end up - and told to go back to where they came from.

What’s most ironic is that i know so many of these people because the diaspora is so fucking humongous because what is happening now is just another chapter of what’s been happening for generations.

People who can leave their homes and end up as taxpayers in countries that continue to destroy them.

Reaching out to Lebanese or Iranian friends and family - at home or in the diaspora - to see if they are okay (they are not) happens far too often.

Then it occurs to me that those who so easily accept what’s going on don’t have such people to worry about - and hence don’t really see them as people