My weird little aha moment came from an HN thread about moon dust smelling like gunpowder.

I recently moved to the Bay and have noticed a lot of AI anxiety in everyday conversation.

I'm in my early 20s, work in tech but not as an engineer, and a few friends have asked why I don't seem that anxious about it. I didn't have a good answer until yesterday.

Oddly, the answer came from an HN thread about moon dust smelling like gunpowder. The thread drifted into oxygen, reactivity, Mars, and long timescales. That ended up clarifying something for me.

I think a lot of AI anxiety comes from viewing yourself mainly through the lens of one job market at one moment in time. I don't naturally think that way.

Earth took a very long time to produce an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Life took a very long time to adapt to it. Humans are already the product of repeated adaptation to large changes, so I don't find it natural to jump straight from "AI changes work" to "human meaning is over."

For me, AI has mostly been good for learning. It makes many areas of knowledge much easier to approach than they used to be.

So my current view is that AI will change a lot, but I still trust human adaptability quite a bit.

Curious whether others here feel similarly, or whether this is just the optimism of having less sunk cost.