Tree is an evolutionary pattern or tendency, but if you want a really ontologically nightmarish entity, rivers are always there (never being the same).

In my day we paid :10bux: to post

Paraphrasing one Jesse Ventura acted role:

"I ain't got time to [think]"

That this becomes the default unless immediate value capture can be attributed to the activity, before it begins, probably does not bode well for anyone.

At work I often need a "thinking partner," and to get one, outside of a few durable deep relationships, I need to first figure out what the 'value prop' will need to be for my interlocutor. Probably a decent example of how much legibility and extraction focus there is in the system.

"There are modes of human formation that require being unobserved, unjudged, and unscored. A society that cannot host that will slowly lose its capacity for renewal."

So much good stuff in here, both at a meta level of the article itself and within the contents.

Is it an excuse? Yes.
Has it kick started my thinking along an axis I had previously sensed ("linear text is not an easy way to communicate about this!") but not been able to fully articulate? Also yes

Feels like the standard Nazi disclaimer/apology everyone writes before they start citing him should be accompanied by this: