How you think about AI has a lot to do with how you think about chaos
The long list of things outside your control feels like it keeps getting longer. The question is, how do you keep that chaos outside, so you can make strategic, trust-made, growth decisions on the inside? Surprisingly, this has everything to do with how you think about AI.
SSN: Giving a Damn about Disruption, AI Hype, and What a Building the Future Really Requires
Super Show Notes for Episode 2.03 of Damns Given Podcast
Guest: Amy Carrillo Cotten
Amy Carrillo Cotten is a
Gen Z, Philosophy, and the Best Minds of a Generation
Mistakes have been made by attributing the current economic standstill to AI. This degradation is generational. Trying to build a world of shortcuts, not solutions. Vibes, not value. Without a dramatic change in course, it will be the legacy we leave to the world.
Misdefining "trust" and the cost of wasted attention
Trust seems like it's about defining right and wrong, but it isn't. It's a nervous system response. We distrust social media platforms because our bodies read them as unsafe, and then the tech is designed to override that "unsafe" response. And leaders have to shift their focus in response
Can credibility beat the algorithm? Sure it can. Here's how.
If you’re in the business of building real trust—premium, custodial, collaborative trust—can you actually win in this environment? Can credibility beat the algorithm?
Yes. But not by playing the algorithm’s game.
Getting to the root of brain rot: the business consequences of an anti-thinking life
The costs of the attention economy aren't just personal: when a culture stops thinking, stops tolerating friction, and outsources its judgment to machines, the business consequences are real - and they're only beginning to show up.
Everything is gambling now
The data-driven revolution has produced a self-induced digital Dark Age, where we're fumbling around having to build ventures, communities, and institutions with almost no clear idea what happens next.
The 2025 Good List
2025 will go down in history as the year online firmly lost touch with human reality. For this reason and many others, I have so much hope.
"BETTER!" is never better AKA the problem of POV
We need you to stop wondering what everyone else is doing. You know what they are doing: They are mass producing artificiality in the hopes of getting machines to do the work for them.
Stop Playing the Refs
We are not nearly as vulnerable as we feel.
Most of what we fear isn’t real; it’s rehearsed by algorithms and adrenaline. We still have agency — just not in the places we’ve been told to look.
Marketing truth in a lie factory
The gap between digital and reality is now an unmanageable chasm. If it's online, there's a very real chance it's not real. And that changes everything.
