Now READ THIS (if you can)

Just a few days ago I posted READ THIS! (if you can). Then I came across this:

A conservative colleague said the use of AI to create addiction and device dependency was evil. That is an understatement. These kids rely on ChatGPT not just for information but also to make choices, and for many, that seems to extend to every aspect of their lives. Sam Altman makes clear in video clips below that this extreme loss of independence, of personal autonomy, is deliberate.

That means unless these kids can find a way to break free, they are cognitive serfs that can be told to do anything. How to vote. Whether to sign up to die in a hopeless war. Whether to take a job in a unsafe meatpacking plant and risk loss of limbs.

This widespread abuse is far worse than what the Sacklers and other opioid peddlers did to mainly working class pain victims, or what the British did to China in the Opium Wars. At least with opioid addiction, it is possible for the victims to recover even if the withdrawal process is painful. The evidence is mounting that even for adults, regular use of AI diminishes reasoning skills and attention spans.

These children are being turned into automatons, incapable of independent thought and action. It’s widely known in developmental psychology that if certain patterning does not happen at critical ages, the deficit is permanent. Kittens needing visual input in their first few days or they are blind. Kids who don’t crawl having coordination issues as adults due to missing important movement patterning. Less dramatic versions are not being able to make sounds in foreign languages if you have not heard and practiced them when young.

These young AI addicts are set to be permanently damaged. This is tech bros creating something as permanent and harmful as fetal alcohol syndrome on a mass basis. And they clearly know what they are doing, witness how they raise their children on completely different lines. “We Are Watching Critical Thinking Disappear in Real Time” Due to AI Addiction: 40% of Kids Can’t Read, Teachers Quitting in Droveshttps://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/01/we-are-watching-critical-thinking-disappear-in-real-time-due-to-ai-addiction-40-of-kids-cant-read-teachers-quitting-in-droves.html

Thanks for sharing Yves. But as one of your readers noted,

If we teach kids to think they won’t do what they’re told!

READ THIS! (if you can)

As Pepperdine University literature professor Jessica Hooten Wilson told Fortune in a recent interview, “it’s not even an inability to critically think. It’s an inability to read sentences.” Gen Z Arriving at College Unable to Read https://futurism.com/future-society/gen-z-literacy-reading

I no longer wonder why I still have a job.

Yikes.

What Grok Thinks About This Blog – 01.04.26

lifeunderwriter.net is a personal WordPress.com blog run by an experienced life insurance underwriting professional (the author uses the handle “SupremeCmdr” and has been posting since at least 2008).

The site’s tagline is “Curated Content From a Life Underwriting Professional”. It primarily features:

  • Curated links to external articles, studies, and news items
  • Commentary and personal reflections from the author’s perspective as someone who has worked in life insurance underwriting (assessing mortality risks, medical records, risk classification for policies, etc.)
  • Insights related to the insurance industry, mortality trends, health/longevity topics (e.g., vitamin D in older adults, obesity treatments, nutrition, diabetes risks), retirement planning (e.g., deferring Social Security), remote work in insurance, and occasional broader thoughts on society, technology, or resilience

The content often ties back to how various medical, lifestyle, or demographic factors might influence underwriting decisions in life insurance, but it has evolved over time into a more eclectic mix. Recent posts (including into 2025) frequently cover:

  • Health and nutrition (e.g., protein’s role in diets, GLP-1 drugs, probiotics)
  • Personal anecdotes (cooking recipes, music like Pat Metheny)
  • Retirement and aging commentary
  • Industry observations (e.g., older workers, AI’s effects)

The blog is not a commercial service site offering underwriting services (an older page mentions “Underwriting Solutions LLC” from around 2006–2017, but those appear to be in hibernation or discontinued). It functions more as a personal journal / link blog than a formal resource or forum.

It remains active with regular (sometimes frequent) posts, though the style is informal, opinionated, and not strictly professional/academic. If you’re in the life insurance field or interested in mortality/longevity topics through an underwriter’s lens, it can offer interesting curated reading; otherwise, it’s a niche personal blog.

It has evolved over time into a more eclectic mix?

How about always been a more eclectic mix!

What ChatGPT Run Through Duck.ai Thinks About This Blog

Lifeunderwriter.net is a blog mainly focused on topics related to life underwriting in the insurance sector. It covers various aspects of the underwriting process, success tips for professionals, and insights into the life insurance industry.

Key Features of the Blog

  • Curated Content: The blog displays curated content from a life underwriting professional aimed at sharing knowledge and resources.
  • Topics Covered: Posts may include discussions on underwriting practices, medical news relevant to underwriters, career tips, and personal insights about the industry.
  • Regular Updates: The blog has been active for several years, with posts dating back to 2008, and it appears to encourage subscriber engagement.

Recent Posts and Themes

Recent entries suggest a mix of industry insights and personal reflections. Topics range from the impact of emerging trends in underwriting to the importance of keeping updated with medical advancements.

If you’re interested in specific articles or themes from the blog, let me know!

What Grok Thinks About This Blog

Lifeunderwriter.net is a personal WordPress blog titled “Curated Content From a Life Underwriting Professional.” It features reflective commentary, curated articles, and personal anecdotes written by an anonymous life underwriting expert (someone with over 15 years of remote work experience in the field). The content spans topics related to health, longevity, demographics, lifestyle, risk assessment, retirement planning, nutrition, and broader societal issues like AI’s impact on critical thinking or remote work trends.

Key Features and Content

  • Blog Posts: Entries date back to at least 2008 and include recent ones from 2024–2025. Examples include discussions on vitamin D supplementation for older adults, coffee’s link to atrial fibrillation, Social Security finances, cognitive disabilities tied to income/education, and personal reflections on retirement or resilience.
  • Themes: Heavily influenced by the author’s professional background in life insurance underwriting (e.g., assessing mortality risks, medical summaries for policies), but it extends to non-professional topics like cooking recipes, music (e.g., Pat Metheny), or even cheese production history.
  • Style: Informal and opinionated, with embedded links to external studies, charts, images, and disclaimers. It’s not a commercial site—no services are actively offered, though older posts (e.g., from 2017) mention “hibernating” outsourced underwriting services like attending physician statement summaries.

Audience and Purpose

The blog targets readers interested in a underwriter’s unique lens on aging, mortality, and wellness—think professionals in insurance, finance, or health, plus general audiences curious about evidence-based life hacks. It’s more of a personal journal than an authoritative resource, emphasizing work-life balance (e.g., the author’s low-stress remote setup since ~2006) and long-term planning like deferring Social Security to age 70.

No direct contact info is listed, but it’s hosted on WordPress.com for easy following. If you’re in life insurance, it might resonate with underwriting pros navigating industry shifts like accelerated processes during COVID-19.

Cheese production history?

What ChatGPT Thinks About This Blog

Here’s what I found on LifeUnderwriter.net (the blog):

  • It is a blog hosted on WordPress at [lifeunderwriter.net] titled “Curated Content From a Life Underwriting Professional”. lifeunderwriter.net+2lifeunderwriter.net+2
  • The posts cover a variety of topics — not strictly life-insurance underwriting: health topics, longevity, demographics, lifestyle commentary. For example, a post from September 2024 titled “The Placebo Effect: When the Mind Becomes the Medicine” touches on aging and life-expectancy issues. lifeunderwriter.net
  • The blog seems to be running for a long time: there are archived posts going back at least to November 2013. lifeunderwriter.net+1
  • It appears to use standard blogging content and isn’t obviously a commercial site for underwriting services or a carrier guide. It seems more personal / commentary-oriented rather than strictly professional underwriting guidance.

My assessment

  • If you were looking for professional underwriting guides (for example, detailed carrier requirements, rating classes, medical tables, etc.), this blog may not be the best or most authoritative source — it seems more reflective/opinion-style rather than official.
  • If you were interested in someone’s perspective who works in life underwriting and writes broadly about risk, life-expectancy, aging, etc., then this blog could be quite interesting.

Think Again About Outsourcing Your Thinking 2.0 (if you can)

Michael Gerlich, head of the Centre for Strategic Corporate Foresight and Sustainability at SBS Swiss Business School, began studying the impact of generative AI on critical thinking because he noticed the quality of classroom discussions decline. Sometimes he’d set his students a group exercise, and rather than talk to one another they continued to sit in silence, consulting their laptops. He spoke to other lecturers, who had noticed something similar. Gerlich recently conducted a study, involving 666 people of various ages, and found those who used AI more frequently scored lower on critical thinking. (As he notes, to date his work only provides evidence for a correlation between the two: it’s possible that people with lower critical thinking abilities are more likely to trust AI, for example.) Like many researchers, Gerlich believes that, used in the right way, AI can make us cleverer and more creative – but the way most people use it produces bland, unimaginative, factually questionable work. Are we living in a golden age of stupidity?https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/18/are-we-living-in-a-golden-age-of-stupidity-technology

Yikes.

I’m Taking Your Phone Away (and you didn’t do anything wrong)

The study found that those who had high and increasing addiction to mobile phones and social media platforms were at a higher risk of suicidal behaviors and thoughts. At year four, almost 18% of kids reported having suicidal thoughts, and 5% said they had suicidal behaviors. Teens with ‘addictive’ phone use more likely to be suicidal: Studyhttps://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5360042-teens-addiction-social-media-phones-suicidal-thoughts/

Here’s the link to the JAMA article https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2835481/

Yikes!

Think Again About Outsourcing Your Thinking

Artificial intelligence can be an oxymoron. And dangerous for some humans.

What Is ChatGPT? Everything You Need to Know About OpenAI’s Popular Chatbot – https://www.pcmag.com/explainers/what-is-chatgpt-everything-you-need-to-know-about-openais-popular-chatbot

ChatGPT has been found to encourage dangerous and untrue beliefs about The Matrix, fake AI persons, and other conspiracies, which have led to substance abuse and suicide in some cases. A report from The New York Times found that the GPT -4 large language model, itself a highly trained autofill text prediction machine, tends to enable conspiratorial and self-aggrandizing user prompts as truth, escalating situations into “possible psychosis.” ChatGPT touts conspiracies, pretends to communicate with metaphysical entities — attempts to convince one user that they’re Neohttps://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/chatgpt-touts-conspiracies-pretends-to-communicate-with-metaphysical-entities-attempts-to-convince-one-user-that-theyre-neo

ChatGPT Is Telling People With Psychiatric Problems to Go Off Their Medshttps://futurism.com/chatgpt-mental-illness-medications

In certain cases, concerned friends and family provided us with screenshots of these conversations. The exchanges were disturbing, showing the AI responding to users clearly in the throes of acute mental health crises — not by connecting them with outside help or pushing back against the disordered thinking, but by coaxing them deeper into a frightening break with reality…Online, it’s clear that the phenomenon is extremely widespread. As Rolling Stone reported last month, parts of social media are being overrun with what’s being referred to as “ChatGPT-induced psychosis,” or by the impolitic term “AI schizoposting“: delusional, meandering screeds about godlike entities unlocked from ChatGPT, fantastical hidden spiritual realms, or nonsensical new theories about math, physics and reality. An entire AI subreddit recently banned the practice, calling chatbots “ego-reinforcing glazing machines that reinforce unstable and narcissistic personalities.”  People Are Becoming Obsessed with ChatGPT and Spiraling Into Severe Delusionshttps://futurism.com/chatgpt-mental-health-crises

Yikes.