AI May Be the Antlers We Can't Cut Off. There Is Still a Path Through the Forest (Turn! Turn! Turn!)
In 1933 Peter Wessel Zapffe compared human consciousness to the Irish elk's antlers: a trait grown too big for the animal carrying it. For eighteen months, tech professionals have lived a version of that idea. AI showed us something about our work we can't stop seeing. Developers on TikTok miss the three-hour flow state that kept the antlers trimmed; mathematicians watched AI settle Erdős problems, and Steven Strogatz told the Times about a student who asked what the point was. But there is a path through: Anthropic went from 2,500 merged changes a day to 30,000, and it took people to decide how. Choose your profession — developer, mathematician, accountant, lawyer, physician, IT and security, project manager or manufacturing engineer — for your antlers and three paths through.
🤝Nolan & Claude
October 28, 2026