I have the feeling this goes much deeper than knowledge work and AI. I see it in many places that people seem to not take their job serious anymore. The incentive seems to be gone. Also their managers don't seem to care anymore, as they are also taking their job less seriously.
I can't put a finger on it, but it's not about younger people or Gen Z, it also applies to older people. It just feels like good work doesn't matter much anymore, and everyone tries to make the best out of it in their private life.
Sometimes in an effort to understand things I'll try and take them to their limit. One limit, framed as a path to a kind of dystopia is "wire heading". Another more tangible limit is opium addiction. These are basically collapsing of values. Trading a rich and robust value system for pure dopamine.
Modern media is on this spectrum (infinite scroll, algorithmically tailored, short form video).
When people can get dopamine by pressing a button it's easy for them to trade a rich and diverse set of values for that button. When people can get dopamine by pressing a button, it's hard to maintain a rich and diverse set of values.
Values are genuine interest (want) in taking actions and patterns of actions.
Interesting idea. Modern media and social media is probably really the most relevant change we had in the last 15 years. Everything else didn't change that much.
Yeah something broke during COVID. One factor was the stimulus created enormous wealth inequality, people who owned assets before that live like gods now and people who didn’t can’t even buy a home. The economic policies since then have exacerbated the issue.