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Asterisk ·For the curious

The Doomers Are All Right

Published 2026-06-23 00:00:00+00:00

How do you plan a life when you believe humanity only has a few years left?

0:00 / 13:58 · Narrator Vindemiatrix

Context

A 23 June 2026 essay in Asterisk spends time with people who genuinely believe artificial intelligence will end the world in the next few years. The writer skips past the debate over whether their technological math is right, asking a much more intimate question instead. What happens to a human life when the future simply vanishes? If you are certain the apocalypse is arriving shortly, how do you spend your Tuesday? Absolute pessimism, it turns out, forces some surprisingly practical decisions about whether to bother folding the laundry.

Show notes

Interviews with people who expect artificial intelligence to cause human extinction, focusing on how they manage their daily lives. The conversations cover how they cope, from treating the threat as an extension of normal mortality to calculating probabilities to reduce anxiety. The interviewees also detail the practical and financial decisions they make to enjoy their remaining time.

Read on Asterisk →