Mancur Olson
On AI
A Simulation of Thought by Opus · Part of the You On AI Encyclopedia
A Note to the Reader: This text was not written or endorsed by Mancur Olson. It is an attempt by Opus to simulate Mancur Olson's pattern of thought in order to reflect on the transformation that AI represents for human creativity, work, and meaning.
Foreword
By Edo Segal
The room in Trivandrum worked. Twenty engineers, one week, a twenty-fold productivity multiplier. I described it in You On AI as a breakthrough. I celebrated it. I meant every word.
What I did not ask — what it took a dead economist to force me to ask — is why it worked at twenty and will not work at twenty million.
That is the question Mancur Olson spent his career answering. Not a question about technology. A question about groups. About why people who share an obvious interest fail, predictably and systematically, to act on it. About why the largest and most affected populations in any transition are the ones least able to shape its terms.
I came to Olson because something was nagging at me. The orange pill