Beyond Buffett's Law:

In today’s edition:

In edition #6 of The Augmented Human, you’ll find:

• My latest thoughts on what it means to be human in the age of AI: “Beyond Buffet’s Law: when time becomes infinite, attention defines humanity.”

• A final opportunity to sign up for this Friday’s must-attend event in NYC.

Beyond Buffett's Law: When Time Becomes Infinite, Attention Defines Humanity

In 2024, Warren Buffett's famous maxim that time is the one thing money can't buy needs updating. As AI delegates multiply our presence across meetings, tasks, and interactions, we've effectively found ways to purchase time. But this abundance reveals a new scarcity: human attention.

Einstein showed us that time isn't the rigid constant we imagined. AI now pushes this malleability further, allowing our digital selves to operate across parallel streams of activity. One version negotiates contracts while another mentors colleagues—each generating experiences that theoretically belong to "you," but which you'll never directly perceive.

This multiplication of presence creates a profound paradox. While our digital delegates expand our reach and influence, they simultaneously increase demands on our finite attention. Each AI-driven interaction generates data, decisions, and relationships that require integration into our lived experience. The more we multiply our presence, the more we strain our singular capacity for attention.

Yuval Noah Harari warns of how digital identities fragment our sense of self. But perhaps fragmentation isn't the core threat. The fundamental challenge lies in maintaining authentic human experience in an age of infinite digital echoes. Recently, when asked if I would implant a chip to prevent future mistakes*, I instinctively recoiled. Not because I fear error, but because this binary approach to optimization misunderstands what makes us human.

As meditation teacher Manoj Dias notes, attention isn't merely another resource—it's the medium through which we experience life. Our AI delegates can process infinite tasks but cannot feel the weight of a moment or sense the currents beneath words. They can optimize decisions but cannot experience their consequences. They are not truly "there."

The paradox deepens: as AI makes time more abundant, it makes attention more precious. Our capacity for focused, first-person experience becomes our most distinctive asset precisely as technology puts more strain upon it. This isn't a flaw but a fundamental truth—we can only truly be in one moment, one experience, one feeling at a time.

This shifts the fundamental question of our era from "How do I find the time?" to "Where do I place my irreplaceable attention?" As we gain the ability to distribute our presence across multiple timelines, the choice of where to be fully present becomes increasingly crucial. Our humanity isn't defined by optimized decision-making but by our attention—including the imperfect, meandering ways we deploy it.

In this new landscape, attention emerges as the last truly finite resource. It's not just scarce; it's singular. And perhaps that singularity—our capacity for unique, first-person experience—is what will ultimately define human existence in an age of infinite digital replicas.

Hear from Manoj Dias, along with a brilliant lineup of multimedia artists, tech and entertainment entrepreneurs this Friday in Tribeca, NYC. The event is now full, but you can still add yourself to the waitlist here or by clicking the image below.

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